During the rest of the year small detachments of the regiment were employed in repelling aggressions on the part of the Kandians, who raided British territory in many directions. Several officers and a considerable number of men died of disease, and the 51st was reduced to a mere skeleton. Nor was the health of the other troops at Colombo any better; and when it became known, in June 1803, that the garrison at Kandy, now a handful of weaklings, was being besieged by the infuriated Kandians, it was found to be impossible to send a force to its relief; and India could not spare a single man for Ceylon, as all available troops were required for the Mahratta War. In the end, the Kandians recaptured their capital, and murdered the remnant of the British garrison in cold blood, though preserving the life of Major Davie, the commandant, whom they cast into prison, doubtless under the impression that he might be useful to them some day. The war died out in 1805, without any attempt on the part of the British to revenge their murdered compatriots, for the reason that no sufficient reinforcements were ever available, and the fate of Major Davie is pitiful to think of. For nearly nine years he languished in a dungeon in Kandy, and died there, worn out by disease, not to be revenged until 1815, when the power of the Kandian kings was broken for ever, and the whole island taken over by the British. The 51st continued to garrison Colombo until 1807, and suffered much from the enervating climate, losing a great many officers and men, and having a number of officers invalided home--amongst them Samuel Rice, whose constitution was undermined, and who never really recovered from the effects of service in Ceylon, although he managed to fight through many subsequent campaigns. In September the remnant of the regiment landed in England, after an absence of fifteen years, the last nine of which had been passed in absolute exile. Home news lost most of its interest during the six or eight months which it took to drift through to Ceylon, and what was going on in Europe affected the exiles little, for their own petty war and its attendant hardships gave them sufficient to think about. Yet, in Europe stirring events had been in progress, and the 51st, in going to the East, were denied the satisfaction of taking part in the reoccupation of the Mediterranean, which commenced with the capture of Minorca by a force under Sir Charles Stuart, only a month after the regiment sailed from Lisbon. They missed also the subsequent capture of Malta in 1800, and the chance of sharing in Abercromby's great victories over the French in Egypt in 1801. But they did not miss much else, for the Peace of Amiens (March 1802) brought the war to a close, and though France again declared war against England fourteen months later, no actual fighting took place on shore. The British navy, however, continued to be actively employed, more