General Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet, of Newbyth, GCB (6 December 1757 – 18 August 1829) was a British Army officer.
Military career
He was born at Newbyth House in Haddingtonshire, Scotland, the son of an Edinburgh merchant family, and entered the British Army in 1772. He was sent to India in 1779 with the 73rd (afterwards 71st) Highlanders, in which he was a captain. Immediately on his arrival, Baird was attached to the force commanded by Sir Hector Munro, which was sent forward to assist the detachment of Colonel Baillie, threatened by Hyder Ali. In the action which followed the whole force was destroyed, and Baird, severely wounded, fell into the hands of the Mysore chief. The prisoners remained captive for over four years. Baird's mother, on hearing that her son and other prisoners were in fetters, is said to have remarked, "God help the chiel chained to our Davie." The bullet was not extracted from Baird's wound until his release.
He was promoted to major in 1787, visited England in 1789, and purchased a lieutenant-colonelcy in 1790, returning to India the following year. He held a brigade command in the war against Tipu Sultan, and served under Lord Cornwallis in the Seringapatam operations of 1792. He captured Pondicherry being promoted colonel in 1795. Baird served also at the Cape of Good Hope as a brigadier-general, and he returned to India as a major-general in 1798. In the last war against Tipu in 1799 Baird was appointed to the senior brigade command in the army. At the successful assault of Seringapatam, Baird led the storming party, and soon took the stronghold where he had previously been a prisoner.
Disappointed that the command of the large contingent of the nizam was given to the then Colonel Arthur Wellesley, and that after the capture of the fortress the same officer obtained the governorship, Baird felt he had been treated with injustice and disrespect. He later received the thanks of parliament and of the Honourable East India Company for his gallant bearing on that important day, and a pension was offered him by the company, which he declined, apparently in the hope of receiving the Order of the Bath from the government.
General Baird commanded an Anglo-Indian expeditionary that had been raised in Bombay early 1801 to co-operate with Sir Ralph Abercromby in the expulsion of the French from Egypt. He arrived after the Battle of Alexandria on 21 March 1801, where soon afterward Abercromby was killed in a skirmish, dying on 28 March. Wellesley had been appointed second in command to Baird, but owing to ill-health did not accompany the expedition on 9 April 1801. Baird reached Jeddah on 17 May, where he was joined by a contingent from the Cape of Good Hope. The force went onto and landed at Kosseir on 8 June, and marched 167 miles across the desert to Qena on the Nile, and then another 253 miles to Cairo. The French surrendered Cairo on 27 June. The Indian contingent then marched on to Alexandria in time for the Siege of Alexandria fought between 17 August and 2 September 1801.
On his return to India in 1802, he was employed against Sindhia, but being irritated at another appointment given to Wellesley he relinquished his command and returned to Europe. In 1804 he was knighted, and in 1805–1806, being by now a lieutenant-general, he commanded the expedition against the Cape of Good Hope with complete success, capturing Cape Town and forcing the Dutch general Janssens to surrender. But here again his usual ill luck attended him. Commodore Sir Home Popham persuaded Sir David to lend him troops for an expedition against Buenos Aires; the successive failures of operations against this place involved the recall of Baird early in 1807, though on his return home he was quickly re-employed as a divisional general in the Copenhagen expedition of 1807. During the subsequent Battle of Copenhagen, Baird was wounded. The same year he was made Colonel of the 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot, a post he would hold until his death.