After a favorable passage, the ships arrived at Bombay in April, when the regiment immediately disembarked and went into barracks, where it remained for six months. The Seventy-fifth and Seventy-seventh regiments having, in this interval, arrived at Bombay from England, the services of the Seventy-first became no longer necessary at that Presidency, and the regiment proceeded in October to Madras, where it arrived in December.
Five companies, under Lieut.-Colonel Elphinston, occupied the barracks in Fort St. George, and the other five companies proceeded to Poonamallee.
1789.
Major-General the Honorable William Gordon was appointed colonel of the Seventy-first regiment on the 9th of April 1789, in succession to Major-General John Lord Macleod, deceased.
In the course of the year 1789, the five companies at Poonamallee were removed to Tripassoor.
1790.
On the 16th of March 1790, the companies at Madras and Tripassoor received orders to join a force which was assembling at Wallajohabad, under the orders of Colonel Thomas Musgrave, of the Seventy-sixth, in consequence of the hostilities which Tippoo Saib had commenced against the Rajah of Travancore, a faithful British ally. The Seventy-first arrived at Wallajohabad on the 18th of March, and joined the other troops, consisting of the nineteenth light dragoons, fifty-second, and Seventy-first regiments, the third and fourth native cavalry, the first battalion of coast artillery, and the second, fourth, ninth, fourteenth, and twenty-fifth coast sepoys.
This force was put in movement on the 29th of March, and proceeded towards Trichinopoly, which it did not reach until the 29th of April, and found there the following corps, under the command of Colonel Brydges:—two King’s regiments, the thirty-sixth and seventy-second; the second and fifth native cavalry; the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, sixteenth, twentieth, and twenty-third coast sepoys. At the same time Colonel Deare, with three companies of Bengal artillery, joined, the whole being under the orders of Major-General Musgrave, to which rank he had been promoted on the 28th of April 1790.
The army was immediately divided into brigades and wings; Lieut.-Colonel James Stuart, of the Seventy-second Highlanders, was appointed to command the left wing, and Colonel Brydges, of the East India Company’s service, the right; the Seventy-first and seventy-second regiments, and first East India Company’s European battalion, formed the second European brigade, under Lieut.-Colonel Clarke, of the Company’s service.
The whole of the cavalry and the advance were commanded by Lieut.-Colonel, afterwards General Sir John Floyd, of the nineteenth light dragoons, since disbanded.