On this occasion the valour of the regiment was rewarded by the exceptional permission to carry a third colour, bearing thereon the “Elephant” and “Assaye,” specially commemorative of the unparalleled glory of the day. The inconvenience of a third colour has since brought about its disallowance as other than an honorary distinction to be borne only when on peaceful parade. The severe losses of the regiment at the battle of Assaye required it should be released from active duty for a time, to allow these losses to be repaired, and the wounded to recover and resume their posts. However, in November of the same year we find it in the field with the army on the plains of Argaum, burning to avenge, by a new victory, the death of friends sacrificed at Assaye. Major-General Wellesley, in his official despatch, particularly commends the perseverance, steadiness, and bravery of the Seventy-fourth and Seventy-eighth Highlanders as materially helping to the triumph of Argaum. A variety of minor actions closed the campaign, crowned by the submission of the enemy. Thereafter selected by the Commander-in-Chief, the regiment was detached with other troops, under his own command, which marching sixty miles in twenty hours, destroyed a camp of freebooters, which, quartered at Perinda, had been the pest and terror of the neighbourhood. In 1804, the regiment was stationed with the Seventy-eighth and some native troops for protective purposes in the territory of the Peishwah, until the war with Holkar anew occasioned it to undertake more active service. In the capture of Gaulnah, the Seventy-fourth was called upon to supply volunteers for the forlorn hope. Such was the spirit of the corps, that the whole regiment spontaneously offered itself. After sixteen years’ service in India, during which it was almost always engaged with an enemy—earning therefrom the name it afterwards gloriously upheld as the “fighting regiment”—the gallant remnant was ordered to return home, and, in consequence, embarking at Madras in September, 1805, landed at Portsmouth in February, 1806. [Illustration: DUKE OF WELLINGTON.] CHAPTER XXXV. “Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit; For ’tis a throne where honour may be crowned Sole monarch of the universal earth.” PENINSULA—AMERICA—WEST INDIES—CANADA—“THE WRECK OF THE BIRKENHEAD”—1806–1862.