In 1792 he transferred to the
20th Light Dragoons with the rank of
lieutenant and soon embarked with his new regiment for Jamaica. However, his ship was shipwrecked at the Portuguese islands of
Madeira forcing Gillespie to come ashore by a small boat and he then contracted
yellow fever India, Java, Sumatra, Nepal In 1804 he was honourably acquitted He continued overland through
Germany,
Austria, and
Serbia, to the
Euxine where he felt obliged to force his ship's captain at gunpoint to take him to
Constantinople as agreed, rather than a corsair port for murder or slavery. He passed through
Greece without recorded incidents, and took ship for
Aleppo. In the desert, he narrowly saved his own life, and his servant's, by curing the chief of a band of Arabs who were planning to murder and rob him. A few days after taking up his new post, Gillespie was warned of the
Vellore Mutiny of 1806. He immediately collected about twenty dragoons, with
galloper guns, and he set out ahead of a relief force within a quarter of an hour of the alarm being raised. Dashing ahead of his men, he arrived at Vellore within two hours, to find the surviving British troops within minutes of extinction by some hundreds of mutineers. About sixty men of the 69th, commanded by Sergeant Brady (who recognized Gillespie from the West Indies) and by two assistant surgeons, were holding the ramparts but were out of ammunition. Gillespie was unable to gain entry through the gate (which was controlled by the mutineers), so the sergeant lowered a chain of soldier's belts to allow Gillespie to climb the wall onto the battlements. To gain time for the rest of his men to arrive Gillespie led the 69th in a bayonet-charge along the ramparts, engaging in close combat with the enemy. With the rest of the 19th arrived, Gillespie ordered them to blow in the gates with their galloper guns and then made a second charge with the 69th, clearing the space just inside the gate to permit the cavalry to deploy. The 19th and Madras Cavalry then charged and slaughtered any enemy who stood in their way; about a hundred fugitives, captured within the fort, were summarily executed. Gillespie arrested the sons of
Tipu Sultan, who were suspected of fomenting the mutiny, and sent them under guard to Madras. The mutiny was thus suppressed. In 1811 he commanded forces in the
Invasion of Java On his return to India he speared a tiger that escaped from a cage and prowled on
Bangalore racecourse. Two years later, at the beginning of the
Anglo-Nepalese War, he led a column to attack a Nepalese hill fort at Khalanga, in the
Battle of Nalapani, repulsing a
Gurkha counter-attack. Gillespie then tried to follow them back into the fort with a dismounted party of the
8th Dragoons. Although this failed, Gillespie renewed the attack with companies of the
53rd Foot. Thirty yards from the fort he shouted the words, "One shot more for the honour of Down" and charged with the men when a Nepalese
sharpshooter shot him through the heart and he died within seconds of falling. With his death the attack faltered causing the next senior officer to call a retreat. He was posthumously knighted with a K.C.B. on 1 January 1815. ==Memorials==