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Baird French treated the prisoners kindly, but were soon obliged to surrender thein to their ally. Hyder Ali treated the captives with oriental barbarity, and had not Captain Lucas volunteered to bear two sets of irons, Captain Baird, though wounded and nearly dead, would have been heavily ironed. The captive officers lived for three years and eight months in most terrible agony, seeing their fellows going mad, and dying of fever, and knowing that many of them were taken from prison only to be poisoned or tortured to death. Nevertheless they managed to keep up their spirits, and Baird mentions that in three successive years they gaily drank the king's health on the 4th of June. At last, in March 1784, the remaining officers were released, and Captain Baird joined his regiment, and had the bullet, which had lodged in his thigh three years before, extracted. In 1787 he became major in his regiment, and came home to England in 1789. He purchased the lieutenant-colonelcy of his regiment in 1790, but, owing to the slowness of his agent, was not gazetted till after Moore, Cavan, and Ludlow, a mistake which, on two occasions, lost him the command-in-chief of an army.

In 1791 Lieutenant-colonel Baird returned to India, and was at once appointed by Lord Cornwallis to the command of a brigade of sepoys in the war against Tippoo. With it he did good service in reducing the southern hill forts of Mysore, and was present in 1792 at the operations of Lord Cornwallis and General Medows before Seringapatam. In 1793 he took Pondicherry, almost without resistance, from the French, and in 1795 was promoted colonel, and appointed to command at Tanjore. Here he got into considerable trouble by opposing the resident, who, under the direction of Lord Hobart, the governor of Madras, was doing his best to procure the annexation of Tanjore. The consequences might have been serious had not the 71st regiment been at this time ordered home after an absence of eighteen years, when Lieutenant-colonel Baird and one sergeant were the only survivors of the original establishment. The regiment was in splendid condition, so much so that whenever a European regiment arrived in India it was always sent to the quarters of the 71st to learn how a regiment should be conducted in India; but the men were now drafted into various other regiments, and only the officers and headquarters returned home. On his way to England Colonel Baird touched at the Cape and was implored by Lord Macartney, the governor, to remain there as brigadier-general, for the opposition of both officers and men to Sir David Dundas, who commanded in the colony, was so great that a mutiny was expected. Baird, therefore, remained at the Cape till 1798, when he was promoted major-general, and ordered to proceed to India with the Scotch brigade and 86th regiment. Major-general Baird was disappointed to find that, owing to the number of general officers in India, he could only receive the command of the first European brigade instead of a division in the second war with Tippoo, and was especially chagrined that the important command of the Nizam's contingent should be given to Colonel Arthur Wellesley instead of himself. Nevertheless, from his thorough knowledge of Indian warfare and his former experience in Mysore, he did good service, and when the storming of Seringapatam was determined on, he volunteered to lead the storming column. The confidence of the troops in him was unbounded, and the former prisoner of Hyder Ali successfully stormed Seringapatam on 4 May 1799, and Tippoo Sultan fell in the assault. Wearied with his exertions he requested to be relieved, and Colonel Wellesley was ordered to relieve him, and immediately afterwards appointed governor of Seringapatam. Baird felt that he had won this lucrative appointment, and indignantly complained to General Harris. Of course General Harris had a perfect right to bestow the governorship on whomsoever he pleased, and Lord Wellesley afterwards declared that he would have himself appointed his brother; yet there can be no doubt that it was Baird who had taken Seringapatam, and not Wellesley or Harris. Baird's temper was not improved when Lord Wellesley took him to Calcutta and gave him the subsidiary command at Dinapore, and he openly remonstrated when he found the governor-general's brother appointed to command an important expedition to the Spanish islands, and that too without surrendering his lucrative post at Seringapatam. This time Lord Wellesley felt obliged to yield, and the command of the expedition, the destination of which was now altered, was transferred to Baird.

When Lord Wellesley heard that the English army in the Meditenanean under Sir Ralph Abercromby was ordered to capture the French army which had been left in Egypt by Bonaparte, he determined that a force should co-operate from India, and Baird obtained the command. Arthur Wellesley was appointed second in command, but illness detained him at Bombay, and Baird reaped the whole credit of the operations. He reached Cosseir, on the Red Sea, in June 1801, and determined to march across the desert to the Nile. The march was a most difficult one; it was the middle of summer, the country