At the battle of Assaye, where the Duke of Wellington, then known as General Wellesley, established his character as one of the first leaders of the day, the 78th Highlanders acted a distinguished part. The British army was drawn up in a line of fifteen battalions, with the 78th on the right and the 74th on their immediate left. In the advance, the 78th had to attack a battery of nine guns which supported the enemy’s left; before they reached it a body of eight hundred infantry rushed forward with the apparent intention of forcing their way between the 78th and the 74th, and thus breaking the line of attack. In order to intercept them these two regiments obliqued their march, and moved forward with ported arms. On observing this movement, the enemy drew up on the other side of a muddy ditch and kept firing till their last man fell. They were impelled by religious fanaticism, and next morning upwards of five hundred bodies were found lying near the ditch. The loss of the British was trifling; the 78th, who were exposed to the hottest fire of the enemy, had only nine men killed and twenty-one wounded. At the commencement of the battle, the musicians of the 78th had received orders to attend to the wounded and to carry them to the surgeons in the rear. This office was usually entrusted to the members of the band, but the orders were not intended to include the pipers, who were expected to accompany the regiment and to animate the men by their war notes. One young piper, who had never taken part in a battle before, from a mistaken sense of duty, laid aside his instrument and devoted himself to the wounded. His conduct was regarded as a dereliction of duty by his comrades, and exposed him to their reproaches and ridicule. It was all very well for the flutes and hautboys to cease their music; they could well be spared; but who ever heard of a piper sinking himself to the same level, and doing work which specially belonged to them? It was his duty to be in front of the battle, in the hottest of the fight; to go to the rear with the _whistlers_, as the bandsmen were derisively termed, was contrary to all the proprieties of Highland etiquette. The poor fellow, who had erred from ignorance and was not deficient in courage, felt these reproaches very deeply, and longed for an opportunity to retrieve his character. He had not to wait long; the battle of Argaum soon followed that of Assaye; in the advance the young piper played with such animation and evoked such soul-stirring notes from his instrument, that the Highlanders could scarcely be restrained from breaking the line and rushing upon the enemy before the preparations were completed. The Colonel, in fact, could only restrain his men by silencing the musician, who thus recovered his good name, and led on his comrades in many a future fight.