To relieve the important fortress of Vellore, our army advanced by the Pass of Sholingur, where it encountered the enemy. A protracted and desperate fight ensued, but nothing could withstand the impetuous and persevering assaults of the British, who ultimately drove the enemy before them. In the spring of 1782, the relief of Vellore was a second time accomplished, despite the strenuous efforts of Hyder Ali to prevent it. The after and unsatisfying inactivity of our army permitted a powerful French force, landed from the fleet of Admiral Suffrein, to effect a junction with the Indian army, and these together succeeded in reducing the important strongholds of Permacoil and Cudalore. These successes, energetically followed up by Hyder Ali, threatened our utter destruction, and brought about the battle of Arnee, in which the Seventy-third was conspicuous under the leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel Elphinstone and, more immediately, of Captain the Honourable James Lindsay. The British, reinforced by the arrival of the Seventy-eighth (now the Seventy-second) regiment, recently arrived from Europe, were in a position to assume the offensive, and having anew provisioned Vellore, undertook the siege of Cudalore, which was only abandoned for lack of the requisite means of attack, thus postponing its fate for another year. So deeply interested was the Commander-in-chief, Sir Eyre Coote, in this undertaking, that, vexed with its miscarriage—esteeming himself inadequately supported by Government in the attempt—grieved and disappointed, he fell a prey to melancholy, which, ere an opportunity to retrieve the present failure had come, the veteran chief had fallen. He was succeeded in the command by Major-General James Stuart, and the army, reinforced by the arrival of the Twenty-third Light Dragoons, the One-hundred-and-first and One-hundred-and-second British regiments, and the Fifteenth regiment of Hanoverian infantry, resumed the siege of Cudalore under more auspicious circumstances. The defence was resolutely maintained by the French under General Bussy. The besiegers so vigorously pressed the enemy that he was at length compelled to withdraw within the fortress. The loss on our side was very severe—the Seventy-third had to mourn a melancholy list of nearly 300 comrades killed or wounded. The news of a treaty of peace having been signed between Great Britain and France, snatched the prize from our troops which we had imagined within our grasp. In 1786, the numerical title of the regiment was changed from the Seventy-third to the Seventy-first, as at present, by the reduction, etc., of senior corps.