Page:Historical Record of the Fifty-Sixth, Or the West Essex Regiment of Foot.djvu/55

Rh stationed until November, when they marched to Mahebourg. The overthrow of Bonaparte on the field of Waterloo, and the restoration of peace, removed all cause of apprehension for the tranquillity of the Mauritius at that period.

The second battalion again took the field with the Poonah subsidiary force, in the early part of 1816; and in May it went into cantonments at Jaulna; from whence Lieut.-Colonel Kingscote, of the, was detached in September, with a light battalion, comprising part of the regiment, in pursuit of a native chief, called Trimbuckjee Dainglia, who had murdered the minister of state of Guzerat, escaped from prison, and was suspected of a design to assemble a force on the frontiers of the dominions of his late sovereign, the Peishwa. The pursuit of this chieftain occasioned the soldiers many fatiguing marches, and on one occasion the fortified village of Nimgaum, on the banks of the Peera, was surrounded in the expectation that the chief was there; but when, on the advance of the artillery, the inhabitants opened the gates, he could not be found: the pursuit was afterwards discontinued, and the detachment re-joined the Poonah subsidiary force at Seroor, whither it had been removed from Jaulna in October. At the close of active operations. Colonel Lionel Smith expressed the high opinion he entertained of the battalion, in division orders, dated Seroor, 31st of October, in the following terms:—“There is no language of praise, or thanks, Colonel Smith could feel to be too strong in describing the merits of such a corps.”

In August the first battalion returned to Port St. Louis; and about a month afterwards so serious a conflagration occurred at that place, that the destruction of the town appeared inevitable; but this calamity was averted by the efforts of the soldiers of the