Under circumstances the most distressing and unpromising, but with the hope of obtaining the supplies of provisions of which the army was quite destitute, and for which no previous arrangement had been made by the Government, Lieut. General Sir Eyre Coote, on the 1st of October, boldly pushed through the Sholingur Pass, and after a march of two days encamped at Altamancherry, in the Polygar country. Here, by the friendly aid and kindness of Bum-Raze, one of the Polygar princes, the troops were well supplied with every requisite.
The British camp was moved on the 26th of October to Pollipet, and the sick and wounded were sent to Tripassoor. Vellore was also relieved. This desirable object being effected, and the army reinforced by Colonel Laing with a hundred Europeans from Vellore, it proceeded to the attack of Chittoor, which, after a gallant resistance, capitulated.
With a view to get the British from a country so very inaccessible, Hyder Ali proceeded to the attack of Tripassoor, and on the 20th of November Sir Eyre Coote retired out of the Pollams, through the Naggary Pass, which obliged the enemy to raise the siege of Tripassoor, and to retire to Arcot. The campaign closed by the recapture of Chittoor by the enemy.
On the 2d of December, the monsoon having set in, the army broke up its camp on the Koilatoor Plain, and the different corps marched into cantonments in the neighbourhood of Madras.
During the campaign of 1781, the battalion was commanded by Captain John Shaw.
2d bat.
While the first battalion had been thus actively employed in India, the second battalion was engaged in the gallant defence of Gibraltar, the garrison of which was again relieved, in April 1781, by the arrival of a numerous fleet under Vice-Admiral Darby.
The Spaniards, relinquishing all hope of reducing the fortress by blockade, resolved to try the power of their numerous artillery. Scarcely had the fleet cast anchor, when the enemy’s batteries opened, and the fire of upwards of one hundred guns and mortars enveloped the fortress in a storm of war; a number of gun-boats augmented the iron tempest which beat against the rock, and the houses of the inhabitants were soon in ruins. On the 8th of May, Captain James Foulis, of the second battalion of the regiment, was wounded in the lines.
On the night of the 17th of September the following incident relating to the battalion occurred in an attack of the enemy, the account of which is extracted from the “History of the Siege of Gibraltar,” by Colonel John Drinkwater, of the late Seventy-second Regiment, or Royal Manchester Volunteers:—
“A shell during the above attack fell in an embrasure opposite the King’s lines bomb-proof, killed one of the Seventy-third, and wounded another of the same corps. The case of the latter was singular, and will serve to enforce the maxim, that, even in the most dangerous cases, we should never despair of a recovery whilst life remains. This unfortunate man was knocked down by the wind of the shell, which, instantly bursting, killed his companion, and mangled him in a most dreadful manner. His head was terribly fractured, his left arm broken in two places, one of his legs shattered, the skin and muscles torn off part of his right hand, the middle finger broken to pieces, and his whole body most severely bruised, and marked with gunpowder. He presented so horrid an object to the surgeons, that they had not the smallest hopes of saving his life, and were at a loss what part to attend to first. He was that evening trepanned, a few days afterwards his leg was amputated, and other wounds and fractures dressed. Being possessed of a most excellent constitution, nature performed wonders in his favour, and in eleven weeks the cure was completely effected. His name is Donald Ross, and he long continued to enjoy his sovereign’s bounty in a pension of ninepence a day for life.”