The immense and increasing territory which circumstances had placed under British protection, and in the end consigned to our possession in India, occasioned a considerable increase of our army in order to maintain these new gotten provinces against the incursions of neighbouring and powerful tribes. Thus, in 1780, a second battalion was raised for the Forty-second Royal Highlanders, which was ultimately constituted independently the Seventy-third regiment. The battalion was embodied at Perth, under Lord John Murray as Colonel, and Macleod, of Macleod, as Lieut.-Colonel. Amongst its early officers, Lieutenant Oswald was distinguished as the subject of a strange speculation which at this time so tickled the brilliant imaginings of our “literati,” as to call forth from the pen of a learned doctor an elaborate disquisition, intended to prove that Napoleon the Great was none else than Lieutenant Oswald, who, imbibing republican ideas, had passed over to France, and by a chain of circumstances been elevated from the command of a republican regiment to be the great captain and ruler of France. Such marvellous transformations were by no means uncommon in the then disordered state of French society. Virtue as well as vice was ofttimes the idol for a time, to be exalted and adored. But the life and adventures of Lieutenant Oswald, however notorious, did not attain such a grand ideal. With his two sons, he fell fighting at the head of his regiment in La Vendee in 1793. Scarce had the battalion been completed ere it was shipped for foreign service. Intended to prosecute an attack upon the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the aim of the expedition was frustrated by the promptitude of Admiral Sufferin, who commanded the French fleet, and arriving first at the colony, prevented a landing being successfully effected. The expedition thus interrupted sailed for India, in the passage making a valuable capture of richly laden Dutch Indiamen. In the division of the spoil arising, after much disputing, the soldiers shared. One hundred and twenty officers and men of the regiment fell a prey to the scurvy and fever on the voyage, which, from the ignorance and incapacity of the commanders of the transports, was protracted to twelve months. The “Myrtle,” without maps or charts, separated from the fleet in a tempest, was only saved by the cool resolution of Captain Dalyell, who, amid many perils, succeeded in navigating the vessel to St Helena, and so rescuing many valuable lives who otherwise would probably have been lost. Arrived at Madras, the battalion was immediately advanced into the interior, where the critical position of British affairs, assailed by the numerous black legions of Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo Saib, aided by a French force under General Lally, rendered the presence of every bayonet of importance. The utmost efforts of Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Frederick Mackenzie Humberston could only muster a British force of 2500 men, of whom 2200 were Sepoys.