Several circumstances having occurred to render further operations in Holland unadvisable, the army re-embarked and returned to England. The three battalions of the KING'S OWN landed at Yarmouth and marched to Ipswich, where they passed the winter.
After the decease of General Morrison, the colonelcy of the regiment was conferred on Major-General the Earl of Chatham, by commission dated the 5th of December, 1799.
In the summer of 1800 the KING'S OWN were encamped on Swinley downs, near Windsor, where they were reviewed by King George III. They passed the succeeding winter and summer at Winchester; in September, 1801, the first and second battalions proceeded to Horsham barracks, and the third battalion to Lewes. This year the cocked hats were replaced by caps.
In the mean time great alterations had taken place in the affairs of Europe; while several states which in former periods had nobly fought for their civil and religious liberties, were seen crouching beneath the iron rule of republican despotism, the British troops had triumphed in Egypt and the West Indies, and the conditions of a treaty of peace were taken into consideration. The men of the KING'S OWN having been engaged to serve only during the war, they were offered a farther bounty to enlist for unlimited service, and upwards of nine hundred volunteered an extension of their services, and were constituted the _first_ battalion.
In April, 1802, the second and third battalions proceeded to Portsmouth, and in May the first was removed to Chatham. The treaty of Amiens having been concluded, the third battalion was disbanded at Portsmouth on the 24th of May, and the second at Winchester in October of that year. In November the regiment marched to Dover Castle.
The short respite from the horrors of war ceded to Europe by the treaty of Amiens proved, like the calm which precedes a storm, the harbinger of a mighty struggle which shook the basis of the constitution of the states of Christendom. The ambitious designs of Bonaparte, first consul of France, were ripening for execution, and hostile preparations were secretly made under the deceptive cloak of pacific designs. The conditions of the peace were evaded, and, while Britain was reducing the numbers of her land and sea forces, and cultivating amicable relations, Bonaparte was preparing, under the pretence of colonial purposes, a gigantic naval and military power with which he designed to crush, by one mighty effort, the British people, who appeared as a barrier to his schemes of aggrandizement, and were ever ready to oppose his progress.