The Bundelcund force, under Lieutenant-Colonel Fawcett, had been protecting that province from Holkar’s incursions, and was encamped in May, 1804, near Kooch. A detachment of seven companies of native infantry, under Captain N. Smith, and fifty European artillery, from the 1st and 2nd companies 3rd battalion, under Captain-Lieutenant Feade and Lieutenant Morris, were sent against a small fort, named Baillah, in the neighbourhood. The guns having opened on the 21st May, the killidar offered to surrender on the following morning if the firing was directed to cease; his offer was accepted, but availing himself of the respite, he immediately despatched intelligence to Ameer Khan, who was in the vicinity, and requested him to fall on the detachment, which he did the next morning with 8,000 cavalry, and cut up two companies of the infantry, and the whole of the artillery,[58] with their officers, and took possession of the guns,[59] except one, which, with the remaining five companies, made good their retreat to Lieutenant-Colonel Fawcett’s head-quarters. This officer, alarmed at the reports he received, and unequal to the emergency in which he was placed, immediately retreated to Betwah; which movement caused much annoyance to the Commander-in-Chief, as it opened Bundelcund to Holkar, and left him undistracted to turn his whole force against Colonel Monson’s detachment in Rajasthan. Lord Lake would have ordered the command of this force to have been previously made over to “Lieutenant-Colonel Wittit, of the artillery, a most excellent officer; but for his ill-health;” this was very indifferent; so much so, indeed, that he died on the 27th May. In him the regiment lost a most valuable officer; as a subaltern he had served with his company in Lord Cornwallis’s campaigns on the coast, and was considered by Sir John Horsford one of the most superior officers in the regiment. Colonel Martindell, after some changes, was appointed to the command of the force, and in June succeeded in capturing Mahobar, and defeating the Ram Rajah and Nagahs, and with this the campaign closed.