Major-General Sir David Baird, who had received the honour of knighthood, was promoted to the rank of lieut.-general on the 30th of October 1805, and commanded an expedition against the Cape of Good Hope, where he arrived on the 5th of January 1806, and effected a landing on the following day. On the 8th, the Dutch army was defeated; on the 10th, the castle and town of Cape Town surrendered; and on the 18th, General Janssens surrendered the colony. In 1807 Lieut.-General Sir David Baird returned to England, and on the 19th of July of that year was removed from the colonelcy of the fifty-fourth to that of the twenty-fourth regiment. His next service was in the expedition to Copenhagen under Lieut.-General Lord Cathcart, at the siege of which he commanded a division, and was twice slightly wounded. In 1808 Lieut.-General Sir David Baird was placed on the staff in Ireland, and commanded the camp on the Curragh of Kildare. In September of that year he embarked at the Cove of Cork, in the command of a division, consisting of about five thousand infantry, for Falmouth, where he received reinforcements, and sailed in command of about ten thousand men for Corunna, where he arrived in the beginning of November, and formed a junction with the army under Lieut.-General Sir John Moore. Lieut.-General Sir David Baird commanded the first division of that army, and in the battle of Corunna, on the 16th of January 1809, he lost his left arm. Sir David Baird received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament for his services at Corunna; “an honor of which,” he remarked in his reply to the House of Peers, “no one can be more fully sensible than myself, having had the good fortune to be deemed worthy of this eminent distinction on four several occasions;” alluding to his name having been included in the votes of thanks for the operations of the army in India in 1799, for those of Egypt in 1801, and in the Danish expedition in 1807.
In testimony of the Royal approbation, Lieut.-General Sir David Baird was created a baronet, by patent dated 13th April 1809, and was promoted to the rank of general on the 4th of June 1814; on the 2d of January 1815 he was nominated a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and was appointed governor of Kinsale on the 11th of March 1819, and of Fort George, North Britain, on the 4th of December 1827. He was also a privy councillor for Ireland. His decease occurred at his seat, Ferntower, in Perthshire, on the 18th of August 1829.
Memoir of the services of Major-General Sir Denis Pack, K.C.B. and C.T.S., formerly Lieut.-Colonel of the Seventy-first regiment.
This distinguished officer entered the army as a cornet in the fourteenth light dragoons, his commission being dated 30th November 1791, and joined that regiment in Dublin in January 1792. He served in Ireland, and was engaged in quelling some disturbances, between that period and 1794, when he embarked at Cork for the Continent, and landed with the forces under Lieut.-General the Earl of Moira at Ostend. After his lordship’s march from thence to form a junction with the army under His Royal Highness the Duke of York, Cornet Pack offered his services and was employed to carry an important despatch to Nieuport, in which attempt he fortunately succeeded, and was thanked for it by Major-General Richard Vyse. His commanding officer’s squadron of the fourteenth light dragoons was destined, after the embarkation at Ostend, to retreat to Nieuport, which it effected by the advance of a corps from that place to its support. Nieuport being almost immediately invested, farther retreat from thence became extremely hazardous and difficult. Cornet Pack was in a boat with about two hundred emigrants, and did not gain the sea without a sharp action and a severe loss. It conveyed the last of those who escaped the horrors which befell that ill-fated garrison. He joined the Duke of York’s army near Antwerp, and was in the action at Boxtel, and some partial affairs. He served that severe winter campaign, and in 1795 returned to England, and was promoted to a lieutenancy in the fourteenth light dragoons on the 12th of March of that year.
Lieutenant Pack subsequently embarked at Southampton in command of a detachment of eighty dragoons destined for Quiberon Bay. After the failure of the emigrants there, he proceeded under the orders of Major-General Welbore Ellis Doyle to the Isle de Dieu, where he landed, and did duty for some months as field officer. In 1796, Lieutenant Pack returned to England, and on the 27th February of that year was promoted to the rank of captain in the fifth dragoon guards, which regiment he accompanied to Ireland, and was frequently engaged during the rebellion in that country, and was noticed in a despatch dated 21st of June 1798, from General the Marquis Cornwallis, K.G., on the occasion of Captain Pack’s detachment defeating a party of rebels, on the 19th of that month, between Rathangan and Prosperous.
When the French landed a force in that country, Captain Pack was specially employed by General the Marquis Cornwallis, with a detached squadron, and after the surrender of General Humbert he was appointed to command the escort which was despatched in charge of him and the other French generals to Dublin.
On the 25th of August 1798 Captain Pack was advanced to the rank of major in the fourth royal Irish dragoon guards, and embarked with his regiment in the expedition to Holland, but was countermanded, and stationed in England and Scotland until 1800, when he was promoted, on the 6th of December of that year, to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Seventy-first regiment, and on the 24th of April 1801 joined that corps in Ireland, in which country he served until August 1805, when he embarked at Cork with the first battalion of the Seventy-first regiment in the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope under Major-General Sir David Baird, and was engaged and severely wounded in effecting the landing at the Cape on the 6th of January 1806, but continued in the field, and was, on the 8th of January, in the action at Bleuberg. These operations led to a treaty, which was signed on the 19th of the same month, by which the Cape of Good Hope was surrendered to Great Britain.
In April 1806 Lieut.-Colonel Pack proceeded, with the first battalion of the Seventy-first, in the expedition to South America under the command of Brigadier-General William Carr Beresford, afterwards General Viscount Beresford, and was present in six actions with the enemy in that country, and was wounded, and detained a prisoner, contrary to the capitulation which restored the town of Buenos Ayres to the Spaniards. Lieut.-Colonel Pack subsequently effected his escape with Brigadier-General Beresford, and joined the army at Monte Video, under Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Auchmuty, who, at the request of Lieut.-Colonel Pack, directed a board of naval and military officers to inquire into the particulars of his escape, by whom it was unanimously approved, and he was declared free to serve.[34] Lieut.-Colonel Pack was then detached with a small force to Colonia, where he commanded successfully in two actions; namely, in an attack on the enemy on his post, and in one made on his, at St. Pedro, when, after a forced night march, the troops under his orders, amounting to 1,013 rank and file, routed the enemy, on the 7th of June 1807, and captured a standard, together with 105 prisoners, including one lieut.-colonel and five other officers; all his artillery, baggage, &c. were likewise taken.
Lieut.-Colonel Pack was shortly afterwards appointed by Lieut.-General John Whitelocke to the command of all the light companies in his army, and joined the force then in the River Plate destined to act against Buenos Ayres. He was engaged in two successful actions with the enemy prior to the unfortunate attack on the town, in which he was three times wounded. Towards the end of 1807 he returned to Europe, and early in 1808 had the Seventy-first completely re-equipped; and, proceeding with the first battalion of the regiment from Cork to Portugal, on the 17th of June following, in the expedition under Lieut.-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, was present in the battles of Roleia and Vimiera, on the 17th and 21st of August 1808, which rescued Portugal from the French. The conduct of the battalion and of Lieut.-Colonel Pack was noticed in the public despatches, and the troops received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament.