At four o’clock next morning, when the wind and surf had considerably increased, the enemy was seen advancing in two columns, with far superior numbers, against Coote’s position. Outnumbered and outflanked the British force fought for two hours against hopeless odds, until Coote was wounded while rallying the 11th Foot. [Sidenote: 1798.] Then General Burrard, the second in command, seeing the front broken and both flanks turned, was compelled to surrender. Of the 1100 men landed, 163 were killed and wounded, and the rest of course taken prisoners. Of the nine men of the Seventeenth, one was wounded. So exemplary had been their behaviour, we are told, that when, shortly after, they were exchanged and returned to the regiment, [Sidenote: 1799.] every man of them was promoted to be a non-commissioned officer, while the sergeant, William Brown, was given a commission, first in the waggon train and latterly in the regiment. As usual the non-commissioned officer of the Seventeenth, when in independent command, brings credit to his corps. In this same year two squadrons of the regiment were ordered to Portsmouth to embark for Egypt, but, the order having been countermanded, the whole regiment joined a large cavalry camp then formed at Swinley. [Sidenote: 1800.] In the following year another camp of 30,000 men was formed on Bagshot Heath under the command of the Duke of York, of which the regiment again formed part. In September it was employed in suppressing riots which had arisen in consequence of the high price of provisions. While engaged in this service many men were badly knocked about, and Captain Werge, who had escaped without injury from such deadly marksmen as the Maroons, narrowly escaped death at the hands of his own countrymen, receiving a shot through his helmet. [Sidenote: 1801.]Two troops having been added to the establishment, the regiment paraded in its greatest recorded strength at Manchester in the following year--upwards of 1000 non-commissioned officers and men, and nearly 1000 horses, being present. Colonel Grey was the fortunate officer who held command, and we must hope that Major-General Oliver Delancey, the Colonel-in-Chief, who alone could remember the regiment before it went to the American War, went up to inspect so fine a corps. Unfortunately this magnificent strength did not last long. [Sidenote: 1802.] In May 1802, England and France, being both of them exhausted after nine years’ fighting, agreed to the peace of Amiens. Thereupon, with the usual blindness, the army was reduced, and two troops of the Seventeenth were disbanded. Their horses were valued by a dealer at forty guineas apiece, a larger price in those days than in these, which shows that the regiment must have been superbly mounted.[10] [Sidenote: 1803.]