Historical Record of the Seventy-first Regiment, Highland Light Infantry: Containing an Account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1777, and of Its Subsequent Services to 1852Cannon, Richard
History
Historical Record of the Seventy-first Regiment, Highland Light Infantry: Containing an Account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1777, and of Its Subsequent Services to 1852
Cannon, Richard
Great Britain. Army -- History; Great Britain. Army. Regiment of Foot, 71st (Highland Light Infantry)
Lieut.-Colonel Pack afterwards marched into Spain, under
Lieut.-General Sir John Moore, and was at the affair of Lugo on
the 5th of January 1809, and at the battle of Corunna on the 16th
of that month, after which he returned to England, and embarked
in July following for Holland, under Lieut.-General the Earl
of Chatham. On landing at Walcheren, Lieut.-Colonel Pack was
appointed to command a small corps of cavalry and light infantry;
was employed in the siege of Flushing, and particularly named by
Lieut.-General Sir Eyre Coote for the command of a detachment to
storm an advanced work on the right of the enemy’s line. These
orders were successfully executed, the detachment taking forty-nine
prisoners, and spiking the guns, though defended by five times
the number of men under Lieut.-Colonel Pack. After the surrender
of Flushing he was appointed commandant of Ter Veer, where he was
dangerously ill for a short period, but remained until the island
was evacuated, on which occasion, in conjunction with Commodore
Owen, he commanded the rear-guard of the army.
Soon after the return of the SEVENTY-FIRST to England, in December
1809, the battalion was prepared again for active service; but the
government did not consider the men had sufficiently recovered from
the effects of the Walcheren fever.
Lieut.-Colonel Pack, being extremely anxious to bear a part in the
momentous campaign about to commence in the Peninsula, obtained His
Majesty’s permission to proceed to Portugal, and offer his services
to Viscount Wellington and Marshal Beresford. Both generals having
decided that he could not be more usefully employed than with the
Portuguese troops, he accepted an infantry brigade in that service,
and took the command of it just before the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo
by Marshal Massena, previously to his invasion of Portugal.
On the 25th of July 1810 Lieut.-Colonel Pack was appointed
aide-de-camp to the king, with the rank of colonel in the
army. After the surrender of Ciudad Rodrigo, of Almeida, and
Marshal Massena’s passage of the Coa, Colonel Pack’s brigade (an
independent one) was directed to take a separate route with a
regiment of cavalry attached to it, and remained in presence of the
enemy’s army at St. Combadoa, retiring slowly before it, on his
advance to the position at Busaco. The conduct of the brigade was
noticed in that battle, which was fought on the 27th of September
1810. In the admirable retreat afterwards to the lines of Lisbon,
it formed, with the light division and cavalry, the rear-guard of
the allied army. The first battalion of the SEVENTY-FIRST having
at that period joined Viscount Wellington, Colonel Pack’s wish
was to have returned to the battalion, but by the desire of both
commanders-in-chief, he continued to serve in the Portuguese army.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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