It
consisted at first of three field batteries, five regiments of cavalry, five
of infantry, and the Corps of Guides, to which were added shortly
afterwards a company of garrison artillery, a sixth regiment of Panjab
infantry, five regiments of Sikh infantry, and two mountain batteries,
and in 1876 all its artillery was converted into mountain batteries.
consisted at first of three field batteries, five regiments of cavalry, five
of infantry, and the Corps of Guides, to which were added shortly
afterwards a company of garrison artillery, a sixth regiment of Panjab
infantry, five regiments of Sikh infantry, and two mountain batteries,
and in 1876 all its artillery was converted into mountain batteries.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
p.
280.
## p. 157 (#193) ############################################
RECRUITMENT OF OFFICERS
157
other troops assigned to each brigade being a company of artillery,
with lascars, and six battalions of sepoys. These orders remained in
force until 1796.
In 1765 the Madras establishment of seven battalions of sepoys was
increased to ten battalions, each 900 strong, a captain, a lieutenant
and an ensign being posted to each battalion; and in the following
year, when the Northern Circars (Sarkars) fell into the Company's
possession, eight new battalions were raised there. These, known as
the Circar battalions, were numbered separately from the Carnatic
battalions. They invariably served, in time of peace, in the Telugu
country, where they were raised, and were inferior, both in discipline
and courage, to the Carnatic battalions. The military force of the
Madras Presidency grew throughout the Mysore War, and was re-
organised in 1784, when the distinction between the Carnatic and
Circar battalions was abolished, the former being numbered from
1 to 21, and the latter from 22 to 29, while the raising of new bat-
talions brought the number up to thirty-five; but in 1785 the number
of battalions on the Madras establishment was reduced to twenty-one,
the Circar battalions being broken up and distributed among the
battalions which were retained. This introduced a “mixed”
system
of recruiting, under which the composition of each unit was a matter
of accident, “tempered from time to time by the predilections of the
officer who commanded it".
The Bombay army developed on a smaller scale. Its European
soldiers were formed into a regiment during the War of the Austrian
Succession, and before 1796 its sepoy battalions had reached twelve
in number.
The recruitment of European officers for the Company's troops was
at first a matter of difficulty. Until 1748 and again later, when the
seven sepoy battalions were formed, many sergeants were promoted
to the rank of ensign, but such promotions gradually became excep-
tional. “The great objection to these ranker-officers was their un-
seasonable drunkenness” and a tendency to continue to associate
with those of the rank from which they had risen. Both Clive and
Cootc observed these faults, and Coote remarked: “There is little
dependence on this kind of men's behaviour, who are raised from
sergeants to rank with gentlemen ”. 3. A few young writers followed
Clive's example, and received commissions.
Mixed blood was not a disqualification for the Company's com-
mission, which was often given to the sons of officers who had formed
irregular unions in India, as an acknowledgement of their fathers'
services, but colour was to some extent a bar, and later the Company
required of cadets appointed in India a certificate that they were not
a
the sons of wives or concubines of pure Indian blood. Foreign
i Wilson, Madras Army, 1, 224.
? Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitmenl, pp. 25-7.
• Dodwell, Nabobs of Madras, p. 42.
• Idem.
## p. 158 (#194) ############################################
158 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
1
officers, deserters and released prisoners of war were sometimes ad-
mitted to the Company's service, and in some instances served it well,
but naturally could not always be trusted when opposed to their own
countrymen, and an attempt to maintain a Foreign Legion failed.
A Frenchman who served in the ranks of the Madras European
Regiment, but never received a commission, was Bernadotte, after-
wards a marshal of France and king of Sweden.
The most valuable source of recruitment was the royal army.
Officers of king's regiments leaving India were permitted to volunteer
for the Company's service, in which they usually received a step in
rank, and when peace in Europe led to the reduction of regiments
there was always a number of officers on half-pay and in reduced
circumstances who were glad to accept employment under the East
India Company. Such officers improved the efficiency, the social
status and the military spirit of the officers in the Company's armies.
When service in those armies became attractive the directors dis-
couraged local appointments, and took the military patronage, as it
became more valuable, into their own hands. They first sent out
volunteers, who served in the ranks until vacancies occurred, and
later, cadets, who were sent out as such, and received commissions as
soon as they had acquired a sufficient knowledge of drill and military
duties.
The native troops first employed against the French were Moplahs,
and “Moors” and Hindus from Mangalore and Tellicherri. Later,
in the Carnatic battalions, Muslims were the most numerous class,
Tamils coming next. The “Telingas” of the Circar battalions have
already been noticed, and in spite of their poor reputation as soldiers
they continued to be recruited after the amalgamation of the Carnatic
and Circar battalions, the classes in the mixed battalions coming in
the following order in numerical strength: (1) Muslims, (2) Telingas,
(3) Tamils, (4) Rajputs, Marathas and Brahmans, and (5) other
castes.
Of the quality of the early sepoy force various opinions were ex-
pressed, some very unfavourable, but the Carnatic regiments, at least,
fought well when well led, and against the low opinion of them held
by some of the Company's officials we may set the confession of Lally:
You would be surprised at the difference between the black troops of the English
and ours; it is greater than that between a Nawab and a cooly; theirs will even
venture to attack white troops, while ours will not even look at their black ones. ”
Nevertheless, the poor quality of recruits obtainable even in the
Carnatic was noticed as early as in 1788, and in 1795 the Madras
Government, probably in consequence of Lord Cornwallis's criticism
of the produce of their recruiting grounds, proposed to draw recruits,
1 Broome, op. cit. pp. 392, 393.
2 Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment, chap. vii.
3 Idem, p. 12.
## p. 159 (#195) ############################################
SEPOY RECRUITMENT
159
to the number of six or seven hundred annually, from Bengal and
Bombay. The Bombay Government rejected the proposal, on the
ground that the natives of their presidency would not willingly serve
beyond its limits, and that they could not find, within those limits,
sufficient recruits for their own army, but the Supreme Government
agreed to supply recruits, not "stout Bengalese", as the originator of
the scheme, in his ignorance of Bengal and its inhabitants, had sug-
gested, but men more accustomed to military service. Two large
drafts were supplied, but the scheme was an utter failure. Owing to
the price of grain in the south, which was so high that a sepoy could
hardly live on his pay, and the uncongenial surroundings, it was found
impossible to keep the Bengal recruits with the colours, and they
deserted in such numbers that recruitment in the north was aban-
doned. 1
The Bengal army at first drew its recruits from the mixed classes
of adventurers to be found in the Bengal provinces, and from 1776
onwards from the kingdom of Oudh, enlisting chiefly Brahmans and
Rajputs, described as a brave, manly race of people. ”
It is not necessary to suppose that the discipline was exact, or the training perfect,
but both were infinitely superior to anything possessed by the Company's opponents.
The power of marching and manæuvring in solid formations, and of concentrating
fire, and the use of well-served guns enabled small bodies of the Company's soldiers
to overcome the loosely arrayed hordes of their adversaries. 3
In 1796 the armies of the three presidencies were, for the first time,
completely reorganised. 4 To Bengal were allotted three, and to
Madras two battalions, and to Bombay six companies of artillery, all
with complementary companies of lascars. Bengal was to maintain
three, and Madras and Bombay each two battalions of European
infantry, of ten companies, and Bengal and Madras were each to
maintain four regiments of regular native cavalry. The single-
battalion native infantry regiments were formed into regiments of
two battalions, of which Bengal had twelve, Madras eleven, and
Bombay six, with a single battalion of marines. The establishment of
British officers allowed to regiments of native cavalry and infantry
was nearly the same as in king's regiments. The reorganisation had
more than one serious defect. To the colonel commanding an infantry
regiment was transferred most of the authority which should have
been exercised by lieutenant-colonels commanding battalions, with
the result that the latter officers lost the respect of the sepoys. Both
Sir Thomas Munro and Sir John Malcolm considered the establish-
ment of British officers excessive, and believed that it would diminish
the sense of responsibility in the native officers. They would have
preferred the allotment, made after the Mutiny of 1857, of six or seven
1 Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment, pp. 33-7.
• Imperial Gazetteer of India, iv, 330.
Malcolm, Political History, pp. 495-6.
Broome, op. cit. p. 503.
• Idem, iv, 333.
## p. 160 (#196) ############################################
160 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
British officers to a battalion, to act as field officers and regimental
staff, the command of companies being left to the native officers; but
the provision of British officers was less generous than it appeared to
be. As the Company's territories extended, and it attended more
closely toʻmatters of administrative detail, Europeans were required
for many duties for which the establishment of the civil service was
insufficient, and with which its members were not well fitted to cope.
Public works, the staff and commissariat of the army, “political”,
that is to say diplomatic service at the courts of ruling chiefs, surveys,
the supervision of trunk roads, the administration of newly annexed
territory, the command and control generally of contingents and
irregular troops raised in native states and newly annexed territory,
and, later, the control of the civil police, were provided almost en-
tirely by officers of the army, and those deputed on such duties
remained on the establishments of their regiments, which they rejoined
when the regiment was ordered on active service, or when, by seniority,
they succeeded to the command. Allowing, besides this heavy drain,
for the number of officers on furlough, now, with pensions, granted
for the first time, the number of officers actually on duty with a regi-
ment of cavalry or a battalion of infantry was seldom more than half
the establishment. 1
The sources of recruitment have already been described. The
quality of the officers was for some time poor, with several brilliant
exceptions. This was partly due to the Company's treatment of its
military officers, which was parsimonious in the extreme, and pro-
duced many unfortunate results. The material inducement offered to
tempt candidates was an initial salary of about £120 a year, often in
an expensive environment and a noxious climate. It was practically
impossible for a young officer to keep out of debt. To set up the most
modest of households cost about £200,2 and an extract from a junior
officer's account-book shows his expenditure, in no way extravagant,
to have been Rs. 265 a month, while his pay was Rs. 195. Sir Thomas
Munro, who joined the Madras army in 1780, and held a staff ap-
pointment as a lieutenant, thus describes his attempts to live within
his means:
My dress grows tattered in one quarter whilst I am establishing funds to repair
it in another, and my coat is in danger of losing the sleeves, while I am pulling it
off to try a new waistcoat.
Later, while holding a comparatively lucrative civil appointment, he
writes:
I have dined to-day on porridge, made of half-ground flour instead of oatmeal,
and I shall most likely dine to-morrow on plantain fritters, this simplicity of fare
being the effect of necessity, not of choice.
If the Company had many bad bargains it had largely itself to thank.
1 Official Army Lists.
2 Williamson, East India Vade Mecum, 1, 173.
• Carey, Good Old Days, 1, 233.
• Idem, I, 229.
3
## p. 161 (#197) ############################################
ARMY LIFE
161
Cadets were at first allowed to find accommodation for themselves
in punch-houses, but were afterwards lodged in barracks, and sub-
jected to discipline. Early in the nineteenth century a college was
established at Barasat, fourteen miles from Calcutta, where they were
instructed in drill and the Hindustani language, but the officers in
charge of them lived at a distance, and except in class and on parade
they were subjected to hardly any control or discipline. The ruin of
many promising young men, the premature deaths of not a few, and
the disgrace and shame that overtook no mean portion of the crowd
of unfortunate youths, led to the closing of the college in 1811, and
cadets were then posted to regiments, but, owing to the comparatively
small number of British officers then doing duty with most native regi-
ments, discipline was not sufficiently strict, and it would have been
well for the Company's armies if Sir Thomas Munro's advice that all
· young men destined for native regiments should be attached for a year
or two to a British regiment, in order to learn their duties and acquire
military discipline, had been followed then, instead of much later.
The college for cadets at Addiscombe was founded in 1812.
The life of regimental officers in cantonments far from presidency
towns was insufferably dull and tedious. Books, book-clubs and news-
papers were few; there was practically no civilised female society, and
the monotony of the long hot-weather days, perforce spent indoors,
was dreary. Some procured books for themselves, and studied their
profession, the languages of the country, and history; some practised
music and painting, and some indulged in sport, but the sole relaxa-
tions of many were gambling and drinking. Their drink, beer, claret,
sherry, madeira and brandy, was expensive, and, if indulged in to
excess, unwholesome in the Indian climate. The mortality was great,
and ill-health, gambling and drinking produced tempers ready to take,
and equally ready to give, offence. Duels were not uncommon, and
were sometimes fatal. Concubinage was the natural result of the
absence of European women.
The number of European women to be found in Bengal and its dependencies
(early in the nineteenth century] cannot amount to two hundred and fifty, while
the European male inhabitants of respectability, including military officers, may
be taken at four thousand,
writes one officer, in a book” dedicated to the directors of the East
India Company. “The case speaks for itself”, he continues, “for, even
T
if disposed to marry, the latter have not the means. ” Young officers
could not be expected to accept a state of lifelong celibacy, and the
native “housekeeper" was an established institution. From such
unions, and from the marriages of European soldiers, sprang the class
known first as East Indians, then as Indo-Britons, then as Eurasians,
Carey, op. cit. I, 236–43.
· Buckle, Bengal Artillery, pp. 33, 34.
3 Williamson, op. cit. 1, 453.
CHIVI
11
## p. 162 (#198) ############################################
162 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
and now, officially but inaccurately, as “Anglo-Indians”. These
irregular unions were recognised not only by the officers' comrades
and superiors, but by the court of directors, who perceived that a
body of officers living with native mistresses would cost them less than
officers married to ladies of their own class and nation, and requiring
provision for their families. After the introduction of the furlough
rules, and as India became more accessible, the standard of morals
gradually improved, and, though it was long before the native mistress
ceased to be an institution, she retired 1, y degrees into the background,
and finally disappeared.
In 1824 the armies of the three presidencies, having grown greatly
in numbers during the third Maratha, the Pindari, and the Nepal
wars, were again reorganised. The two-battalion regiments of native
infantry were divided into single-battalion regiments, of which Bengal
now had sixty-eight, Madras fifty-two, and Bombay twenty-four. The
artillery was more than doubled in strength, and was divided into
brigades and batteries of horse, and battalions and companies of foot,
artillery. Bengal and Madras each had eight, and Bombay three
regiments of regular native cavalry, and Bengal had, in addition, five,
and Bombay three regiments of irregular cavalry. 1
In the same year the first Burmese War broke out, and three regiments
of Bengal infantry, ordered to march overland to Arakan, providing
their own transport, mutinied. Whether or not transport, as was urged
on their behalf, was unprocurable, there is no doubt that it was most
difficult to obtain, and most costly, and the men suspected that the
order was a device to compel them to cross the “black water”, and
thus to break their caste. Their petitions were disregarded, they broke
into mutiny, and they were““shot down and sabred on parade”. The
commander-in-chief protested against the finding of the court of
enquiry that the mutiny was “an ebullition of despair against being
compelled to march without the means of doing so”, but it was
certainly just.
The Company's behaviour to its military forces was too obviously
that of a group of traders towards their servants ever to command
from them that unquestioning loyalty and obedience with which the
royal troops served the king, and the record of disaffection and
mutinies in its armies is a long one. In 1674 and 1679 the European
force in Bombay mutinied in consequence of reductions in its pay, 4
and in 1683 Captain Richard Keigwin, commanding that force,
having been deprived of his seat in council, and the allowances
attached to it, rebelled against the Company, and declared that he
held the fort and island of Bombay on behalf of the king. Vice-
Admiral Sir Thomas Grantham eventually persuaded him, on the
1 Imperial Gazetteer of India, iv, 336.
2 Idem, iv, 336.
• Malcolm, Political History, p. 484.
• Malabari, op. cit. pp. 189, 190.
## p. 163 (#199) ############################################
MUTINIES
163
promise of a free pardon, to surrender in accordance with the royal
command, and he left for England. 1
In 1758 nine captains of the Bengal European Regiment, resenting
their supersession by officers of the Madras and Bombay detachments,
which were incorporated with the regiment, resigned their com-
missions together, but Clive dealt firmly with them. Six were dismissed
the service, and the other three were restored, with loss of seniority,
on expressing their contrition. In 1764 a mutiny in the Bengal Euro-
pean Regiment, fomented by the large numbers of foreigners who
had been enlisted, was suppressed, but was followed by a mutiny of
the sepoys, who were discontented with their share of the prize-money,
and with a new code of regulations and system of manquvres intro-
duced by Major Hector Munro, then commanding the Bengal army.
Munro quelled this mutiny with great, but not unnecessary severity,
the leading mutineers being blown from guns in the presence of their
disaffected comrades. "
The mutiny of the British officers of the Bengal army caused by the
reduction of batta, or field allowance, has been described in volume v. 5
In 1806 a mutiny broke out in the native ranks of the Madras army.
Orders had been issued that the sepoys were to wear shakos instead
of turbans, that they were to shave their beards, and that caste-marks
and ear-rings were not to be worn on parade. The men regarded these
orders as an attack on their religion, and the garrison of Vellore,
where some of the Mysore princes were interned, hoisted the Mysore
flag, and murdered their British officers and some of the European
soldiers, but the remnant of these, under Sergeant Brodie, held out
against them until a small force under Colonel Gillespie arrived from
Arcot, blew open the gates of the fortress, cut down 400 mutineers,
and captured nearly all the rest. There had also been trouble at
Hyderabad, but Gillespie's prompt action crushed the mutiny.
In 1809 a "white mutiny” broke out in the Madras army. Some
of its senior officers had personal grievances, some allowances had
been reduced, and the pay of the officers generally was less than that
of those on the Bengal establishment, but their chief complaint was
that the officers of the king's service monopolised the favours of the
local government, and held most of the staff appointments and
“situations of active trust, respectability, and emolument”, as they
were described by Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Arthur St Leger, one
of the leaders of the movement. The relative status of the officers of
the king's and the Company's services had long been a thorny ques-
tion, and the case for the Company's officers was thus moderately
>
1 Vol. v, p. 102, supra.
· Inncs, op. cit. pp. 71, 72.
• Idem, pp. 179-84.
• Broome, op. cit. pp. 458-61.
Pp. 178-80, and Broome, op. cit. chap. vi.
• Wilson, op. cit. in, chap. xviii.
5
## p. 164 (#200) ############################################
164 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
stated by Colonel (afterwards Major-General Sir John) Malcolm,
writing in 1811:
If it (the British Empire in India] cannot afford to give high pecuniary rewards,
it should purchase the services of men of birth and education; and remunerate the
great sacrifices which they make in entering the native army of India by approba-
tion, rank, and honours; and, instead of leaving them in a state of comparative
obscurity, depressed by the consideration that they are an inferior service, and that
military fame, and the applause of their King and country, are objects placed
almost beyond their hopes; their minds should be studiously elevated to these
objects; and they should be put upon a footing which would make them have an
honourable pride in the service to which they belong. This they never can have
(such is the nature of military feeling), while they consider themselves one shade
even below another, with which they are constantly associated. "
The officers of the Madras army had long been discontented, and
the commander-in-chief, Lieutenant-General Hay Macdowell, who
sympathised with them, had done nothing to allay their discontent,
and had left for England before it reached its climax. Sir George
Barlow, the governor, at first acted injudiciously, and at Masulipatam
the officers of the European Regiment openly defied the orders of
government. The mutiny spread to Gooty, Secunderabad, Jalna,
Bellary, Cumbum, Trichinopoly, Dindigul, Madras, Pallamcottah,
Cannanore, Quilon and Seringapatam, the troops in the last-named
place rising in arms against the government. Treasure was seized,
acts of violence were committed, and the intention of the mutineers
appeared to be the subversion of the civil government. At length
vigorous action was taken. European troops were obtained from
Ceylon, and the officers who were in revolt were called upon to sign
a test, or declaration of obedience. The influence of the governor-
general, Lord Minto, and of such officers as Colonels Close and Conran,
of Colonel Montresor and Captain Sydenham at Secunderabad, and
Colonel Davis at Seringapatam, the fear lest the king's troops should
be employed against them, the lukewarm support of the sepoys when
they understood that the quarrel was not theirs, and the removal of
many officers from their regiments, when their places were taken by
king's officers, brought them to reason. Eventually no more than
twenty-one were selected for punishment, as examples to the rest. Of
these one died, four were cashiered, and sixteen dismissed the service;
but of those cashiered three, and of those dismissed twelve, were after-
wards restored. This leniency amounted to an admission that the
offence of the officers, grave though it was, was not unprovoked. ?
The growth of the presidency armies failed to keep pace with that
of the Company's territories and responsibilities, and it was found
necessary to raise local corps, “more rough and ready than the regular
army”,3 for the defence of new territories and the protection of native
ruling chiefs. In the Mysore and Maratha wars the Nizam, as the
1 Malcolm, Political History, pp. 482, 483.
2 Malcolm, Observations; Cardew, White Mutiny.
: Imperial Gazetteer of India, IV, 337:
) 3
## p. 165 (#201) ############################################
LOCAL AND IRREGULAR CORPS
165
Company's ally, had provided contingents of troops, and Arthur
Wellesley had found the contingent provided in 1803 inefficient and
useless. As the Company maintained by treaty a large subsidiary
force for the protection of the Nizam and his dominions, it was entitled
to demand that he should provide troops fit to take the field with it
and this demand led to the establishment of the Hyderabad con-
tingent, a force of four regiments of cavalry, four field batteries and
six battalions of infantry, officered, but not on the same scale as the
Company's regular troops, by “respectable Europeans”. ?
The fighting qualities of the Gurkhas were discovered in the Nepal
War (1814-16), and a few irregular battalions of Gurkhas were
raised. The first, the Malaon Regiment, was incorporated in the line,
in 1850, as the 66th Bengal Native Light Infantry, but in 1861, after
the Mutiny, it and four other Gurkha battalions were removed from
the line and numbered separately.
In 1838, when the Company foolishly undertook the restoration of
Shah Shuja to. the throne of Afghanistan,4 an irregular force was
raised in India for his service, and the 3rd Infantry, which had dis-
tinguished itself in the defence of Kalat-i-Ghilzai,5 was retained in
the Company's service, at first as an irregular regiment, but after the
Mutiny incorporated in the line as the 12th Bengal Native Infantry.
In 1846, after the first Sikh War, a brigade of irregular troops was
raised for police and general duties on the Satlej frontier, and to it was
added the Corps of Guides, a mixed regiment of cavalry and infantry,
which was incorporated in 1849, after the second Sikh War,” in an
irregular force, known later as the Panjab Frontier Force, raised and
formed for duty in the Panjab and on the North-West Frontier.
It
consisted at first of three field batteries, five regiments of cavalry, five
of infantry, and the Corps of Guides, to which were added shortly
afterwards a company of garrison artillery, a sixth regiment of Panjab
infantry, five regiments of Sikh infantry, and two mountain batteries,
and in 1876 all its artillery was converted into mountain batteries.
This force, which did excellent service against the mutineers in 1857
and 1858, remained under the control of the local government of the
Panjab for many years before it was placed under that of the com-
mander-in-chief.
A local force was raised after the annexation of Nagpur in 1854,
and the Oudh Irregular Force after the annexation of Oudh in 1856,
but the former disappeared in the Mutiny, and the latter was broken
up shortly after it.
The history of the great Mutiny of the Bengal army, which raged
for nearly two years, is recorded in the following chapter. The in-
eptitude of senile and incompetent officers, and the pathetic con-
1 Burton, History of the Hyderabad Contingent, chap. iv.
• See vol. v, pp. 377-9.
Vol. v, pp. 495-521.
• Idem, pp. 548–53.
? Idem, pp. 555-7.
2 Idem.
5 Idem, p. 515
## p. 166 (#202) ############################################
166 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
fidence of old colonels, in whom esprit de corps was so strong that even
while regiments lying beside their own were butchering their officers
they refused to believe in the possibility of treason in their own men,
made the tragedy more ghastly than it need have been. The de-
moralisation of the Bengal army was due to more than one cause. The
great additions recently made to the Company's dominions demanded
for the administration of the newly acquired territory, and for the
irregular troops and police required for its defence and for the main-
tenance of peace and order, a far larger number of British officers
than the civil service could provide, and the principal source of
supply was the Bengal army. Those to whom the government of the
new territories was entrusted refused to be satisfied with any but the
most active and zealous officers whom the army could supply, and
the army was thus deprived of the services of a large number of its
best officers, the insufficient number left for regimental duty con-
sisting, to some extent, of the Company's bad bargains. Another
reason for the decay of discipline was the system of promotion, which
was regulated solely by seniority, so that many failed to reach com-
missioned rank before the time when, in the interests of the service,
they should have been superannuated, and were inclined to regard
their promotion rather as a reward for long service than as admission
to a sphere of more important duties. In the Madras and Bombay
armies seniority, as a qualification for promotion, was tempered by
selection, and the British officers refused to pander to the caste
prejudices of their men to the same extent as the British officers in
Bengal. Partly for these reasons, and partly owing to their dislike of
the Bengal army and its airs of superiority, these armies remained
faithful; and the irregular forces of the Panjab joined with glee in
crushing the “Pandies”, as the mutineers were called, from Pande,
one of the commonest surnames among the Oudh Brahmans, which
had been borne by a sepoy who had shot the adjutant of his regiment
at Barrackpore, a few months before the Mutiny broke out.
## p. 167 (#203) ############################################
CHAPTER X
>
>
THE MUTINY
“I WISH”, wrote the late Lord Cromer, “the younger generation
',
of Englishmen would read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the
history of the Indian Mutiny; it abounds in lessons and warnings.
During the generation that preceded the Mutiny various influences
were weakening the discipline of the sepoy army in the presidency of
Bengal, and awakening discontent, here and there provoking thoughts
of rebellion, in certain
groups of the civil population. In considering
the measures that produced these results it should be borne in mind
that the mere fact of their having caused discontent does not condemn
them. While some were injudicious, others were beneficial, and some
helped also to minimise the disturbances to which discontent gave
rise.
In the settlement of the North-Western Provinces, by which
arrangements were made for the collection of the revenue, the re-
sponsible officers, anxious to promote the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, decided that the agreement should be concluded,
not with middlemen, but with the actual occupants of the land, who
were generally either single families or village communities. Ac-
cordingly they deprived the talukdars, through whom the native
government had collected the revenue, and who were really the
territorial aristocracy, of the right of settling for any land to which
they could not establish a clear proprietary title. At the same time
holders of rent-free tenures, many of which had been fraudulently
acquired before the Company's government was established, were
required to prove the original validity of their titles; and since even
those whose estates had been obtained honestly were unable to pro-
duce documentary evidence, the tenures were for the most part
abolished, and the revenue was augmented for the benefit of the
government. The sale law, under which the estates of proprietors
were bought by speculators who were strangers to their new tenants,
aroused no less bitterness; and under Dalhousie the policy of re-
sumption was developed. In Bombay, for instance, the Inam Com-
mission enquired into a large number of titles to land and resumed
a large number of estates. 2
In 1853 an event occurred which provoked resentment that was
not immediately manifested. Baji Rao, the ex-Peshwa with whom
Wellesley had concluded the Treaty of Bassein, died, and his adopted
son, Nana Sahib, demanded that his pension should be continued to
1 Cf. pp. 80-4, supra.
· Cf. Baden Powell, Land Systems of British India, II, 302 sqq.
## p. 168 (#204) ############################################
168
THE MUTINY
a
him. In accordance with the terms of the original agreement the
demand was rejected, although the Nana was allowed to retain rent
free the Peshwa's landed estate.
The annexations which Dalhousie carried out under the title of
lapse, and by which he not only consolidated the empire, strengthened
its military communications, and increased its resources, but also
benefited millions who had suffered from misgovernment, caused
uneasiness to many who had submitted without any sense of injustice
to annexation that had followed conquest, and in one case provoked
passionate indignation. Under this right, Dalhousie annexed Satara,
Nagpur, Jhansi, and several minor principalities. The annexation of
Oudh was of a different kind. Misgovernment so scandalous that
even Colonel Sleeman and Henry Lawrence, those sympathetic
champions of native rulers, urged that the paramount power should
assume the administration, impelled the Board of Control and the
court of directors to insist upon a peremptory course which Dalhousie,
remembering the fidelity of the king of Oudh, was reluctant to adopt.
He urged that merely to withdraw'the British troops by whose support
the king had been maintained upon the throne, on the ground that
he had not fulfilled the conditions of the treaty concluded by Wellesley,
would compel him to accept a new treaty which should provide for
the administration by British officers in his name; the directors
decided that he should be required to accept such a treaty with the
alternative of submitting to annexation. As he rejected the proffered
treaty, which, while it vested the government in the Company,
guaranteed to him the royal title, an adequate pension, and main-
tenance for all collateral branches of his family, Oudh was forthwith
annexed. Though Muhammadan pride was doubtless offended, such
discontent as the annexation aroused mattered little in comparison
with the manner in which it was carried into effect. Perhaps it was
of no great moment that the revenues of the province were not
exclusively appropriated, as Sleeman and Lawrence had recom-
mended, to the benefit of the people and the royal family; nor would
it be just to blame Dalhousie because he decided that the provisional
settlement of the revenue should be made with the actual occupants
of the soil, and because the talukdars, although their claims were for
the most part examined with scrupulous fairness, resented the de-
cisions that compelled them to surrender their villages, and the
restraint that forced them to cease from controlling their neighbours.
What did cause indignation was that after the departure of Dalhousie,
orders which he had given were disregarded. For more than a year
no allowances were paid to the king's stipendiaries, among whom
were some of his relations; the officiating chief commissioner took
possession of a palace which had been expressly reserved for the royal
family; the officials employed by the late court were excluded from
pensions; the disbandment of the king's army had thrown professional
>
## p. 169 (#205) ############################################
DALHOUSIE'S ADMINISTRATION
169
1
soldiers upon the world with inadequate means of support; and in
many cases the demands of the settlement officers were excessive.
Nothing was done to guard against the disturbances which adminis-
trative changes might produce. Although Dalhousie had resolved to
disarm the country and raze every fort, his successor did nothing,
and supposed that one weak regiment of infantry and one battery of
artillery would be sufficient to keep the peace.
More provocative than settlements and annexations were other
measures by which Dalhousie endeavoured to confer upon India the
benefits of Western civilisation. In the railways which he began to
construct, the telegraph wires by which he connected Calcutta with
Peshawar and Bombay, and Bombay with Madras, the canal which
he linked to the sacred stream of the Ganges, Brahmans fancied that'
sorcery was at work. The more conservative elements of native society
suspected the European education by which he hoped to enlarge the
minds of the young, but by which the priests felt that their power was
endangered; and laws such as that permitting the remarriage of Hindu
widows, which he contemplated and which his successor passed, gave
deep offence.
Since it is impossible to describe by any comprehensive generalisa-
tion the sentiments of a vast heterogeneous population, divided into
numerous groups, the respective characteristics of which were more
dissimilar than those of the peoples of Europe, let us approach the
subject from different points of view. The Hindus, except in so far as
they had been offended by the measures of Dalhousie, were not
antagonistic to the government on the score of religion. While some
Muhammadans admired the strength and the justice of British rule,
others—notably the Wahabis—resented the loss of the supremacy
which their forefathers had enjoyed, and hoped to destroy as enemies
of Islam the aliens who had seized it. The mercantile and shop-
keeping classes, indeed all who knew that their position and pros-
perity were staked upon the continuance of orderly rule, were dis-
posed to support the British Government so long as it could keep the
upper hand and secure to them the enjoyment of their gains. The
magnates who had lost their lands were naturally resentful. The
countless millions who lived by tilling the soil did not care what
government might be in power, if it protected them and did not tax
them too heavily; but in some districts, especially in Bengal, they had
suffered so much from the venality of the police and the harpies who
infested the courts of justice that they were ill-disposed. In some parts
of the peninsula, notably in the Panjab and Rajputana, the people
were aware that they had profited by British rule. Ponder these words
of Sir John Strachey:
The duty was once imposed upon me of transferring a number of villages which
had long been included in a British district to one of the best governed of the native
1 Lee-Warner, Dalhousie, 11, 338–9; Baird, Private Letters of Dalhousie, pp. 401-3.
## p. 170 (#206) ############################################
170
THE MUTINY
states. I shall not forget the loud and universal protests of the people against the
cruel injustice with which they considered they were being treated. Everyone who
has had experience of similar cases tells the same story. Nevertheless I cannot say
that our government is loved; it is too good for that.
Reforms which interfered with native usages were resented as meddle-
some. Differences of colour, of religion, of custom, and of sympathies
separated the masses, which differed so widely among themselves,
from the ruling class. It is true that the more thoughtful acknowledged
that the British government was juster, more merciful, and more
efficient than any that had preceded it: but still many thought regret-
fully of the good old times, when, if there had been less peace, there
had been more stir, more excitement, and a wider field for adventure;
a
when, if there had been less security for life and property, there had
been more opportunities for gratifying personal animosities and
making money; when, if taxation had been heavier, there had been
some chance of evading it; when, if justice had been more uncertain,
there had been more room for chicanery and intrigue. The rulers
did not conceal their sense of racial superiority, and the French critic
who described their administration as "just, but not amiable” probed
a weak spot. Though the examples of Henry Lawrence, and John
Nicholson, and Meadows Taylor, prove that individuals could win
personal loyalty and even devotion, there was no real loyalty, except
in the rare instances of such men as the illustrious Muhammadan,
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, towards the alien government. For efficiency
was not enough to keep India contented; and since, as Lord Cromer
wrote, the Englishman is
always striving to attain two ideals, which are apt to be mutually destructive—the
ideal of good government, which connotes the continuance of his own supremacy,
and the ideal of self-government, which connotes the whole or partial abdication
of his supreme position-
there were Anglo-Indian statesmen, even before the Mutiny, who
desired to associate Indians with British rule. As early as 1818 Lord
Hastings looked forward to a
time not very remote when England will. . . wish to relinquish the domination
which she has gradually and unintentionally assurned over this country, and from
which she cannot at present recede;1
a few years later Sir Thomas Munro declared that eventually it would
“probably be best for both countries that the British control over
India should be gradually withdrawn";' and Dalhousie, the most
autocratic of governors-general, urged in vain that parliament should
authorise him to nominate an Indian member to his legislative council. 3
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, one of the wisest of Muhammadans, after-
wards declared that the absence of such members, who would have
kept their colleagues in touch with popular sentiment, prevented the
i Private Journal, 11, 326. 2 Gleig, Life of Munro, II, 388.
• Lee-Warner, op. cit. II, 232.
## p. 171 (#207) ############################################
DECAY OF DISCIPLINE
171
government from knowing that laws which they enacted were mis-
chievous, and that their motives would be misunderstood. 1 The
antagonism aroused by the ever-increasing pressure of Western civili-
sation during the period of Dalhousie's rule was little realised.
This antagonism, however, would never have provoked serious dis-
turbances so long as the sepoy army remained under control. Even
in earlier days isolated mutinies had occurred in consequence of the
credulity that dreaded attacks upon caste and religion. The moral of
the force was gradually weakened when the best British officers were
allured from regimental duty by the prospect of political employ and,
in consequence of the centralisation of military authority, com-
mandants were deprived of powers which they had exercised in the
days of Malcolm. But it was from the time of the Afghan War that
native officers, who understood the feelings of their men, dated the
deterioration which made even optimists anxious. Hindus were
prevented by the cold climate from bathing as their religion enjoined,
obliged to eat food and to drink water which they regarded as impure,
and compelled on returning to India to pay for readmission to the
caste which they had thus lost; Muhammadans were offended by
being obliged to fight against men of their own creed; and all alike,
affected by the calamities of the war, lost their traditional faith in the
invincibility of their leaders. The sepoys, indeed, fought well in Sind
and in the two Sikh wars, though in the second the disorderly conduct
of certain Bengal regiments astonished a competent observer; but the
general cessation of fighting that followed the annexation of the
Panjab left a mercenary army idle, restless, conscious of power, and
ripe for mischief; and discontent, caused by the withdrawal of pe-
cuniary allowances granted for extraordinary service, led to individual
outbreaks. 3 Dalhousie was well aware of this deterioration. "The
discipline of the army”, he wrote to the president of the Board of
Control, “from top to bottom, officers and men alike, is scandalous. "4
Unprejudiced observers urged that in each regiment men of different
races should be enlisted, so as to lessen the risk of mutinous combina-
tion; but, as John Lawrence afterwards wrote, “Reform was im-
practicable, for the officers would not admit that any was necessary,
and nobody not in the army was supposed to know anything about it”.
“The Bengal army”, as the same authority remarked, “was one great
brotherhood, in which all the members felt and acted in union. '
Recruited for the most part from Oudh and the North-Western
Provinces, they shared the discontents of the civil population. The
predominance of men of high caste or, at least, the deference that
was yielded to their prejudices, was fatal to discipline. A native
officer of low caste might often be seen crouching submissively before
i Causes of the Indian Revolt, pp. 11-12.
· Cf. Holmes, Indian Mutiny, pp. 55-6.
; Idem, pp: 57 599.
• Cf. Lee-Warner, op. cit. II, 257 sqq. ; also Baird, op. cit. pp. 168, 355.
>
>
## p. 172 (#208) ############################################
172
THE MUTINY
>
the Brahman recruit whom he was supposed to command; but men
of low caste who would have been glad to serve were often rejected.
"High caste—that is to say mutiny”, wrote Sir Charles Napier, who
warmly praised the sepoys of the Bombay and Madras presidencies,
“is encouraged”; “some day or other”, he prophesied of Delhi,
“much mischief will be hatched within those walls, and no European
troops at hand. Lhave no confidence in the allegiance of your high-
caste mercenaries”. 1 The disproportion between the numbers of the
British and the native troops was glaring. At the close of Dalhousie's
administration the latter amounted to two hundred and thirty-three
thousand, the former, who, moreover, were so distributed that their
controlling power was impaired, to less than forty-six thousand, and
the disproportion was increased in the same year in consequence of
the Persian War. Dalhousie, pointing out that the Crimean War had
begotten rumours injurious to British prestige, pleaded earnestly for
a diminution of the native and a corresponding increase of the British
troops; but for more than two years his suggestions were not brought
formally under the notice of the directors. 2
Another reform, which Dalhousie had planned and his successor
carried out, intensified the fears which the Bengal army had long felt
for their caste. Six regiments only were liable for general service, of
which three were in 1856 quartered in Pegu. Two were entitled to be
relieved within a few months; but none of the other three was
available. It was therefore impossible under the existing regulations
to send regiments by sea to the Burmese coast, and the overland route
was in part impassable. The Madras army was enlisted for general
service; but the presidency was unwilling to arouse discontent among
its own troops by calling upon them to garrison a country which lay
properly within the sphere of the Bengal army. Confronted by
necessity, the governor-general issued a general order, decreeing that
no recruit should thenceforward be accepted who would not under-
take to go whithersoever his services might be required. “There is
no fear”, he wrote a few months later, “of feelings of caste being
excited by the new enlistment regulations";' but, being a new-comer,
he did not realise that the Bengal army was a brotherhood, in which
military service was hereditary. Recruiting officers complained that
men of high caste, whose religious scruples were aroused by the
thought of being liable to cross the sea, had begun to shrink from
entering the service which their fathers and their brethren had flocked
to join, and old sepoys were whispering to each other their fears that
the oaths of the new recruits might be binding also upon themselves.
Two other changes, apparently trivial, increased the prevalent dis-
content. Sepoys declared unfit for foreign service were no longer to
1 The Times, 24 July, 1857, and History of the Siege of Delhi by an Officer who served there,
2 Lee-Warner, op. cit. 11, 285.
3 Holmes, op. cit. p. 76.
p. 1o n.
## p. 173 (#209) ############################################
THE GREASED CARTRIDGES
173
be allowed to retire on pensions, but to be employed in cantonment
duty, and all sepoys were thenceforth to pay the regular postage for
their letters instead of having them franked by their commandant.
The men were now in a mood to believe any lie that reflected dis-
credit upon the government. Seeing that the warlike Sikhs were
favoured by the recruiting sergeants, they fancied that a Sikh army
was to be raised to supersede them. Agitators assured them that
Lord Canning had been sent to India to convert them, and pointed
to the General Service Enlistment order as the first step. A manifesto
recently published by missionaries was interpreted as an official in-
vitation to embrace Christianity, and when the lieutenant-governor
of Bengal issued a reassuring proclamation, the bigoted Muham-
madans of the Patna division refused to believe him. 1 Certain British
officers, indeed, preached the Gospel to their men with the enthusiasm
of Cromwell's Ironsides, and incurred the displeasure of government
by their proselytising zeal. Meanwhile the Nana Sahib, dilating
upon the annexation of Oudh, was trying to stir up native chieftains
against the British, and there is reason to believe that he and other
disaffected princes had long been tampering with the sepoys. : British
officers, who no longer kept native mistresses, knew little of what was
disturbing the minds of their men; but even in the Panjab rumours
were current of approaching mutiny. Finally, an old Hindu prophecy
was circulated; in 1857, the centenary of Plassey, the Company's rule
was to be destroyed. "
The incident that precipitated the Mutiny is known to all the world.
One day in January, 1857, a lascar at Dum-Dum, near Calcutta,
asked a Brahman sepoy to give him some water from his drinking cup.
The Brahman refused, saying that the cup would be contaminated
by the lips of a low-caste man: the lascar retorted that the Brahman
would soon lose his caste, for cartridges, greased with the fat of cows
or swine, were being manufactured by the government, and every
sepoy would be obliged to bite them before loading his rifle. It needs
a sympathetic imagination to gauge the shock under which the mind
of that Brahman reeled. Greased cartridges had been sent to India
from England four years before. The adjutant-general of the Bengal
army warned the board, which was then vested with military authority,
that none should be issued to native troops until it had been ascertained
that the grease was inoffensive; but the warning was neglected. The
cartridges were issued to certain regiments, merely to test how the
climate would affect the grease, and were accepted without demur.
In 1856 similar cartridges, to be used with the new Enfield rifle, began
to be made up in India, and Brahman workers handled the grease
1 Kaye, Sepoy War (ed. 1872), 1, 472-3.
• Cf. Canning to Granville, 9 April, 1857 (Fitzmaurice, Life of Granville, 1, 245); also
Memorials of Sir H. B. Edwardes, 11, 251 n. ; Holmes, op. cit. p. 78.
; Kaye, op. cit. 1, 579.
• Holmes, op. cit. p. 79. Cf. Meadows Taylor, Story of my Life (ed. 1920), p. 340.
## p. 174 (#210) ############################################
174
THE MUTINY
+
without complaint; but, after the lascar blurted out his taunt, no
cartridges greased either with beef-fat or with lard were ever issued
to any sepoys, except to one Gurkha regiment, at their own request.
Nevertheless the delusion, due to the neglect of the adjutant-
general's warning, was ineradicable. 1 The story rapidly spread. The
Brahmans of Calcutta and the agents of the king of Oudh, who was
living in the suburb of Garden Reach, eagerly turned it to account. 2
The responsible officer at Dum-Dum promptly reported it, and
General Hearsey, commanding the presidency division, appended to
the report a recommendation that the sepoys at Dum-Dum, where
alone the new cartridges were immediately to be issued, should be
allowed to grease their own; but in consequence of official delay, he
was not informed of the approval of his suggestion until 28 January,
and by that time the sepoys at Barrackpore, convinced that the story
was true, were setting fire to officers' bungalows. The governor-
general directed that greased cartridges might be issued at rifle depôts,
provided that the lubricant were composed only of mutton-fat and
wax; but it soon became evident that such precautions were futile.
On 26 February the 19th Native Infantry at Berhampore, whose
suspicions had been allayed by the explanation of their commandant,
took alarm on hearing from detachments of the 34th, which had been
foolishly allowed to march thither from Barrackpore, that the lascar
had told the truth, and refused to receive their percussion caps for the
next day's parade. The commandant, instead of explaining the un-
reasonableness of their fears, threatened them with condign punish-
ment, but, having no means of enforcing his threat, was obliged to
forgo the parade. The men continued to perform their ordinary
duties; but their disobedience could not be ignored, and, as it was
impossible to punish it without British troops, the governor-general
sent for the 84th Regiment from Rangoon. Meanwhile the sepoys at
Barrackpore were becoming more and more excited. Though they
had been allowed to grease their own cartridges, they fancied that
the cartridge paper must contain objectionable fat, and when, after
analysis, it was declared to be harmless, they refused to credit the
report. Hearsey, who thoroughly understood the sepoys' mentality,
tried in vain to convince them that there was nothing to fear. Canning
accepted a suggestion that they should be allowed to avoid tasting
the paper by pinching off the ends of the cartridges; but, as might
have been expected, the concession was useless. Hearsey had thought-
lessly told the 34th that the mutinous 19th was to be disbanded, and
they disregarded his assurance that no punishment was in store for
them. On 29 March a sepoy named Mangal Pandy murderously
attacked the adjutant; while others belaboured their officers with the
butt-ends of their muskets, one alone came to the rescue; and the
1 Cf. Kaye, op. cil.
## p. 157 (#193) ############################################
RECRUITMENT OF OFFICERS
157
other troops assigned to each brigade being a company of artillery,
with lascars, and six battalions of sepoys. These orders remained in
force until 1796.
In 1765 the Madras establishment of seven battalions of sepoys was
increased to ten battalions, each 900 strong, a captain, a lieutenant
and an ensign being posted to each battalion; and in the following
year, when the Northern Circars (Sarkars) fell into the Company's
possession, eight new battalions were raised there. These, known as
the Circar battalions, were numbered separately from the Carnatic
battalions. They invariably served, in time of peace, in the Telugu
country, where they were raised, and were inferior, both in discipline
and courage, to the Carnatic battalions. The military force of the
Madras Presidency grew throughout the Mysore War, and was re-
organised in 1784, when the distinction between the Carnatic and
Circar battalions was abolished, the former being numbered from
1 to 21, and the latter from 22 to 29, while the raising of new bat-
talions brought the number up to thirty-five; but in 1785 the number
of battalions on the Madras establishment was reduced to twenty-one,
the Circar battalions being broken up and distributed among the
battalions which were retained. This introduced a “mixed”
system
of recruiting, under which the composition of each unit was a matter
of accident, “tempered from time to time by the predilections of the
officer who commanded it".
The Bombay army developed on a smaller scale. Its European
soldiers were formed into a regiment during the War of the Austrian
Succession, and before 1796 its sepoy battalions had reached twelve
in number.
The recruitment of European officers for the Company's troops was
at first a matter of difficulty. Until 1748 and again later, when the
seven sepoy battalions were formed, many sergeants were promoted
to the rank of ensign, but such promotions gradually became excep-
tional. “The great objection to these ranker-officers was their un-
seasonable drunkenness” and a tendency to continue to associate
with those of the rank from which they had risen. Both Clive and
Cootc observed these faults, and Coote remarked: “There is little
dependence on this kind of men's behaviour, who are raised from
sergeants to rank with gentlemen ”. 3. A few young writers followed
Clive's example, and received commissions.
Mixed blood was not a disqualification for the Company's com-
mission, which was often given to the sons of officers who had formed
irregular unions in India, as an acknowledgement of their fathers'
services, but colour was to some extent a bar, and later the Company
required of cadets appointed in India a certificate that they were not
a
the sons of wives or concubines of pure Indian blood. Foreign
i Wilson, Madras Army, 1, 224.
? Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitmenl, pp. 25-7.
• Dodwell, Nabobs of Madras, p. 42.
• Idem.
## p. 158 (#194) ############################################
158 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
1
officers, deserters and released prisoners of war were sometimes ad-
mitted to the Company's service, and in some instances served it well,
but naturally could not always be trusted when opposed to their own
countrymen, and an attempt to maintain a Foreign Legion failed.
A Frenchman who served in the ranks of the Madras European
Regiment, but never received a commission, was Bernadotte, after-
wards a marshal of France and king of Sweden.
The most valuable source of recruitment was the royal army.
Officers of king's regiments leaving India were permitted to volunteer
for the Company's service, in which they usually received a step in
rank, and when peace in Europe led to the reduction of regiments
there was always a number of officers on half-pay and in reduced
circumstances who were glad to accept employment under the East
India Company. Such officers improved the efficiency, the social
status and the military spirit of the officers in the Company's armies.
When service in those armies became attractive the directors dis-
couraged local appointments, and took the military patronage, as it
became more valuable, into their own hands. They first sent out
volunteers, who served in the ranks until vacancies occurred, and
later, cadets, who were sent out as such, and received commissions as
soon as they had acquired a sufficient knowledge of drill and military
duties.
The native troops first employed against the French were Moplahs,
and “Moors” and Hindus from Mangalore and Tellicherri. Later,
in the Carnatic battalions, Muslims were the most numerous class,
Tamils coming next. The “Telingas” of the Circar battalions have
already been noticed, and in spite of their poor reputation as soldiers
they continued to be recruited after the amalgamation of the Carnatic
and Circar battalions, the classes in the mixed battalions coming in
the following order in numerical strength: (1) Muslims, (2) Telingas,
(3) Tamils, (4) Rajputs, Marathas and Brahmans, and (5) other
castes.
Of the quality of the early sepoy force various opinions were ex-
pressed, some very unfavourable, but the Carnatic regiments, at least,
fought well when well led, and against the low opinion of them held
by some of the Company's officials we may set the confession of Lally:
You would be surprised at the difference between the black troops of the English
and ours; it is greater than that between a Nawab and a cooly; theirs will even
venture to attack white troops, while ours will not even look at their black ones. ”
Nevertheless, the poor quality of recruits obtainable even in the
Carnatic was noticed as early as in 1788, and in 1795 the Madras
Government, probably in consequence of Lord Cornwallis's criticism
of the produce of their recruiting grounds, proposed to draw recruits,
1 Broome, op. cit. pp. 392, 393.
2 Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment, chap. vii.
3 Idem, p. 12.
## p. 159 (#195) ############################################
SEPOY RECRUITMENT
159
to the number of six or seven hundred annually, from Bengal and
Bombay. The Bombay Government rejected the proposal, on the
ground that the natives of their presidency would not willingly serve
beyond its limits, and that they could not find, within those limits,
sufficient recruits for their own army, but the Supreme Government
agreed to supply recruits, not "stout Bengalese", as the originator of
the scheme, in his ignorance of Bengal and its inhabitants, had sug-
gested, but men more accustomed to military service. Two large
drafts were supplied, but the scheme was an utter failure. Owing to
the price of grain in the south, which was so high that a sepoy could
hardly live on his pay, and the uncongenial surroundings, it was found
impossible to keep the Bengal recruits with the colours, and they
deserted in such numbers that recruitment in the north was aban-
doned. 1
The Bengal army at first drew its recruits from the mixed classes
of adventurers to be found in the Bengal provinces, and from 1776
onwards from the kingdom of Oudh, enlisting chiefly Brahmans and
Rajputs, described as a brave, manly race of people. ”
It is not necessary to suppose that the discipline was exact, or the training perfect,
but both were infinitely superior to anything possessed by the Company's opponents.
The power of marching and manæuvring in solid formations, and of concentrating
fire, and the use of well-served guns enabled small bodies of the Company's soldiers
to overcome the loosely arrayed hordes of their adversaries. 3
In 1796 the armies of the three presidencies were, for the first time,
completely reorganised. 4 To Bengal were allotted three, and to
Madras two battalions, and to Bombay six companies of artillery, all
with complementary companies of lascars. Bengal was to maintain
three, and Madras and Bombay each two battalions of European
infantry, of ten companies, and Bengal and Madras were each to
maintain four regiments of regular native cavalry. The single-
battalion native infantry regiments were formed into regiments of
two battalions, of which Bengal had twelve, Madras eleven, and
Bombay six, with a single battalion of marines. The establishment of
British officers allowed to regiments of native cavalry and infantry
was nearly the same as in king's regiments. The reorganisation had
more than one serious defect. To the colonel commanding an infantry
regiment was transferred most of the authority which should have
been exercised by lieutenant-colonels commanding battalions, with
the result that the latter officers lost the respect of the sepoys. Both
Sir Thomas Munro and Sir John Malcolm considered the establish-
ment of British officers excessive, and believed that it would diminish
the sense of responsibility in the native officers. They would have
preferred the allotment, made after the Mutiny of 1857, of six or seven
1 Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment, pp. 33-7.
• Imperial Gazetteer of India, iv, 330.
Malcolm, Political History, pp. 495-6.
Broome, op. cit. p. 503.
• Idem, iv, 333.
## p. 160 (#196) ############################################
160 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
British officers to a battalion, to act as field officers and regimental
staff, the command of companies being left to the native officers; but
the provision of British officers was less generous than it appeared to
be. As the Company's territories extended, and it attended more
closely toʻmatters of administrative detail, Europeans were required
for many duties for which the establishment of the civil service was
insufficient, and with which its members were not well fitted to cope.
Public works, the staff and commissariat of the army, “political”,
that is to say diplomatic service at the courts of ruling chiefs, surveys,
the supervision of trunk roads, the administration of newly annexed
territory, the command and control generally of contingents and
irregular troops raised in native states and newly annexed territory,
and, later, the control of the civil police, were provided almost en-
tirely by officers of the army, and those deputed on such duties
remained on the establishments of their regiments, which they rejoined
when the regiment was ordered on active service, or when, by seniority,
they succeeded to the command. Allowing, besides this heavy drain,
for the number of officers on furlough, now, with pensions, granted
for the first time, the number of officers actually on duty with a regi-
ment of cavalry or a battalion of infantry was seldom more than half
the establishment. 1
The sources of recruitment have already been described. The
quality of the officers was for some time poor, with several brilliant
exceptions. This was partly due to the Company's treatment of its
military officers, which was parsimonious in the extreme, and pro-
duced many unfortunate results. The material inducement offered to
tempt candidates was an initial salary of about £120 a year, often in
an expensive environment and a noxious climate. It was practically
impossible for a young officer to keep out of debt. To set up the most
modest of households cost about £200,2 and an extract from a junior
officer's account-book shows his expenditure, in no way extravagant,
to have been Rs. 265 a month, while his pay was Rs. 195. Sir Thomas
Munro, who joined the Madras army in 1780, and held a staff ap-
pointment as a lieutenant, thus describes his attempts to live within
his means:
My dress grows tattered in one quarter whilst I am establishing funds to repair
it in another, and my coat is in danger of losing the sleeves, while I am pulling it
off to try a new waistcoat.
Later, while holding a comparatively lucrative civil appointment, he
writes:
I have dined to-day on porridge, made of half-ground flour instead of oatmeal,
and I shall most likely dine to-morrow on plantain fritters, this simplicity of fare
being the effect of necessity, not of choice.
If the Company had many bad bargains it had largely itself to thank.
1 Official Army Lists.
2 Williamson, East India Vade Mecum, 1, 173.
• Carey, Good Old Days, 1, 233.
• Idem, I, 229.
3
## p. 161 (#197) ############################################
ARMY LIFE
161
Cadets were at first allowed to find accommodation for themselves
in punch-houses, but were afterwards lodged in barracks, and sub-
jected to discipline. Early in the nineteenth century a college was
established at Barasat, fourteen miles from Calcutta, where they were
instructed in drill and the Hindustani language, but the officers in
charge of them lived at a distance, and except in class and on parade
they were subjected to hardly any control or discipline. The ruin of
many promising young men, the premature deaths of not a few, and
the disgrace and shame that overtook no mean portion of the crowd
of unfortunate youths, led to the closing of the college in 1811, and
cadets were then posted to regiments, but, owing to the comparatively
small number of British officers then doing duty with most native regi-
ments, discipline was not sufficiently strict, and it would have been
well for the Company's armies if Sir Thomas Munro's advice that all
· young men destined for native regiments should be attached for a year
or two to a British regiment, in order to learn their duties and acquire
military discipline, had been followed then, instead of much later.
The college for cadets at Addiscombe was founded in 1812.
The life of regimental officers in cantonments far from presidency
towns was insufferably dull and tedious. Books, book-clubs and news-
papers were few; there was practically no civilised female society, and
the monotony of the long hot-weather days, perforce spent indoors,
was dreary. Some procured books for themselves, and studied their
profession, the languages of the country, and history; some practised
music and painting, and some indulged in sport, but the sole relaxa-
tions of many were gambling and drinking. Their drink, beer, claret,
sherry, madeira and brandy, was expensive, and, if indulged in to
excess, unwholesome in the Indian climate. The mortality was great,
and ill-health, gambling and drinking produced tempers ready to take,
and equally ready to give, offence. Duels were not uncommon, and
were sometimes fatal. Concubinage was the natural result of the
absence of European women.
The number of European women to be found in Bengal and its dependencies
(early in the nineteenth century] cannot amount to two hundred and fifty, while
the European male inhabitants of respectability, including military officers, may
be taken at four thousand,
writes one officer, in a book” dedicated to the directors of the East
India Company. “The case speaks for itself”, he continues, “for, even
T
if disposed to marry, the latter have not the means. ” Young officers
could not be expected to accept a state of lifelong celibacy, and the
native “housekeeper" was an established institution. From such
unions, and from the marriages of European soldiers, sprang the class
known first as East Indians, then as Indo-Britons, then as Eurasians,
Carey, op. cit. I, 236–43.
· Buckle, Bengal Artillery, pp. 33, 34.
3 Williamson, op. cit. 1, 453.
CHIVI
11
## p. 162 (#198) ############################################
162 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
and now, officially but inaccurately, as “Anglo-Indians”. These
irregular unions were recognised not only by the officers' comrades
and superiors, but by the court of directors, who perceived that a
body of officers living with native mistresses would cost them less than
officers married to ladies of their own class and nation, and requiring
provision for their families. After the introduction of the furlough
rules, and as India became more accessible, the standard of morals
gradually improved, and, though it was long before the native mistress
ceased to be an institution, she retired 1, y degrees into the background,
and finally disappeared.
In 1824 the armies of the three presidencies, having grown greatly
in numbers during the third Maratha, the Pindari, and the Nepal
wars, were again reorganised. The two-battalion regiments of native
infantry were divided into single-battalion regiments, of which Bengal
now had sixty-eight, Madras fifty-two, and Bombay twenty-four. The
artillery was more than doubled in strength, and was divided into
brigades and batteries of horse, and battalions and companies of foot,
artillery. Bengal and Madras each had eight, and Bombay three
regiments of regular native cavalry, and Bengal had, in addition, five,
and Bombay three regiments of irregular cavalry. 1
In the same year the first Burmese War broke out, and three regiments
of Bengal infantry, ordered to march overland to Arakan, providing
their own transport, mutinied. Whether or not transport, as was urged
on their behalf, was unprocurable, there is no doubt that it was most
difficult to obtain, and most costly, and the men suspected that the
order was a device to compel them to cross the “black water”, and
thus to break their caste. Their petitions were disregarded, they broke
into mutiny, and they were““shot down and sabred on parade”. The
commander-in-chief protested against the finding of the court of
enquiry that the mutiny was “an ebullition of despair against being
compelled to march without the means of doing so”, but it was
certainly just.
The Company's behaviour to its military forces was too obviously
that of a group of traders towards their servants ever to command
from them that unquestioning loyalty and obedience with which the
royal troops served the king, and the record of disaffection and
mutinies in its armies is a long one. In 1674 and 1679 the European
force in Bombay mutinied in consequence of reductions in its pay, 4
and in 1683 Captain Richard Keigwin, commanding that force,
having been deprived of his seat in council, and the allowances
attached to it, rebelled against the Company, and declared that he
held the fort and island of Bombay on behalf of the king. Vice-
Admiral Sir Thomas Grantham eventually persuaded him, on the
1 Imperial Gazetteer of India, iv, 336.
2 Idem, iv, 336.
• Malcolm, Political History, p. 484.
• Malabari, op. cit. pp. 189, 190.
## p. 163 (#199) ############################################
MUTINIES
163
promise of a free pardon, to surrender in accordance with the royal
command, and he left for England. 1
In 1758 nine captains of the Bengal European Regiment, resenting
their supersession by officers of the Madras and Bombay detachments,
which were incorporated with the regiment, resigned their com-
missions together, but Clive dealt firmly with them. Six were dismissed
the service, and the other three were restored, with loss of seniority,
on expressing their contrition. In 1764 a mutiny in the Bengal Euro-
pean Regiment, fomented by the large numbers of foreigners who
had been enlisted, was suppressed, but was followed by a mutiny of
the sepoys, who were discontented with their share of the prize-money,
and with a new code of regulations and system of manquvres intro-
duced by Major Hector Munro, then commanding the Bengal army.
Munro quelled this mutiny with great, but not unnecessary severity,
the leading mutineers being blown from guns in the presence of their
disaffected comrades. "
The mutiny of the British officers of the Bengal army caused by the
reduction of batta, or field allowance, has been described in volume v. 5
In 1806 a mutiny broke out in the native ranks of the Madras army.
Orders had been issued that the sepoys were to wear shakos instead
of turbans, that they were to shave their beards, and that caste-marks
and ear-rings were not to be worn on parade. The men regarded these
orders as an attack on their religion, and the garrison of Vellore,
where some of the Mysore princes were interned, hoisted the Mysore
flag, and murdered their British officers and some of the European
soldiers, but the remnant of these, under Sergeant Brodie, held out
against them until a small force under Colonel Gillespie arrived from
Arcot, blew open the gates of the fortress, cut down 400 mutineers,
and captured nearly all the rest. There had also been trouble at
Hyderabad, but Gillespie's prompt action crushed the mutiny.
In 1809 a "white mutiny” broke out in the Madras army. Some
of its senior officers had personal grievances, some allowances had
been reduced, and the pay of the officers generally was less than that
of those on the Bengal establishment, but their chief complaint was
that the officers of the king's service monopolised the favours of the
local government, and held most of the staff appointments and
“situations of active trust, respectability, and emolument”, as they
were described by Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Arthur St Leger, one
of the leaders of the movement. The relative status of the officers of
the king's and the Company's services had long been a thorny ques-
tion, and the case for the Company's officers was thus moderately
>
1 Vol. v, p. 102, supra.
· Inncs, op. cit. pp. 71, 72.
• Idem, pp. 179-84.
• Broome, op. cit. pp. 458-61.
Pp. 178-80, and Broome, op. cit. chap. vi.
• Wilson, op. cit. in, chap. xviii.
5
## p. 164 (#200) ############################################
164 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
stated by Colonel (afterwards Major-General Sir John) Malcolm,
writing in 1811:
If it (the British Empire in India] cannot afford to give high pecuniary rewards,
it should purchase the services of men of birth and education; and remunerate the
great sacrifices which they make in entering the native army of India by approba-
tion, rank, and honours; and, instead of leaving them in a state of comparative
obscurity, depressed by the consideration that they are an inferior service, and that
military fame, and the applause of their King and country, are objects placed
almost beyond their hopes; their minds should be studiously elevated to these
objects; and they should be put upon a footing which would make them have an
honourable pride in the service to which they belong. This they never can have
(such is the nature of military feeling), while they consider themselves one shade
even below another, with which they are constantly associated. "
The officers of the Madras army had long been discontented, and
the commander-in-chief, Lieutenant-General Hay Macdowell, who
sympathised with them, had done nothing to allay their discontent,
and had left for England before it reached its climax. Sir George
Barlow, the governor, at first acted injudiciously, and at Masulipatam
the officers of the European Regiment openly defied the orders of
government. The mutiny spread to Gooty, Secunderabad, Jalna,
Bellary, Cumbum, Trichinopoly, Dindigul, Madras, Pallamcottah,
Cannanore, Quilon and Seringapatam, the troops in the last-named
place rising in arms against the government. Treasure was seized,
acts of violence were committed, and the intention of the mutineers
appeared to be the subversion of the civil government. At length
vigorous action was taken. European troops were obtained from
Ceylon, and the officers who were in revolt were called upon to sign
a test, or declaration of obedience. The influence of the governor-
general, Lord Minto, and of such officers as Colonels Close and Conran,
of Colonel Montresor and Captain Sydenham at Secunderabad, and
Colonel Davis at Seringapatam, the fear lest the king's troops should
be employed against them, the lukewarm support of the sepoys when
they understood that the quarrel was not theirs, and the removal of
many officers from their regiments, when their places were taken by
king's officers, brought them to reason. Eventually no more than
twenty-one were selected for punishment, as examples to the rest. Of
these one died, four were cashiered, and sixteen dismissed the service;
but of those cashiered three, and of those dismissed twelve, were after-
wards restored. This leniency amounted to an admission that the
offence of the officers, grave though it was, was not unprovoked. ?
The growth of the presidency armies failed to keep pace with that
of the Company's territories and responsibilities, and it was found
necessary to raise local corps, “more rough and ready than the regular
army”,3 for the defence of new territories and the protection of native
ruling chiefs. In the Mysore and Maratha wars the Nizam, as the
1 Malcolm, Political History, pp. 482, 483.
2 Malcolm, Observations; Cardew, White Mutiny.
: Imperial Gazetteer of India, IV, 337:
) 3
## p. 165 (#201) ############################################
LOCAL AND IRREGULAR CORPS
165
Company's ally, had provided contingents of troops, and Arthur
Wellesley had found the contingent provided in 1803 inefficient and
useless. As the Company maintained by treaty a large subsidiary
force for the protection of the Nizam and his dominions, it was entitled
to demand that he should provide troops fit to take the field with it
and this demand led to the establishment of the Hyderabad con-
tingent, a force of four regiments of cavalry, four field batteries and
six battalions of infantry, officered, but not on the same scale as the
Company's regular troops, by “respectable Europeans”. ?
The fighting qualities of the Gurkhas were discovered in the Nepal
War (1814-16), and a few irregular battalions of Gurkhas were
raised. The first, the Malaon Regiment, was incorporated in the line,
in 1850, as the 66th Bengal Native Light Infantry, but in 1861, after
the Mutiny, it and four other Gurkha battalions were removed from
the line and numbered separately.
In 1838, when the Company foolishly undertook the restoration of
Shah Shuja to. the throne of Afghanistan,4 an irregular force was
raised in India for his service, and the 3rd Infantry, which had dis-
tinguished itself in the defence of Kalat-i-Ghilzai,5 was retained in
the Company's service, at first as an irregular regiment, but after the
Mutiny incorporated in the line as the 12th Bengal Native Infantry.
In 1846, after the first Sikh War, a brigade of irregular troops was
raised for police and general duties on the Satlej frontier, and to it was
added the Corps of Guides, a mixed regiment of cavalry and infantry,
which was incorporated in 1849, after the second Sikh War,” in an
irregular force, known later as the Panjab Frontier Force, raised and
formed for duty in the Panjab and on the North-West Frontier.
It
consisted at first of three field batteries, five regiments of cavalry, five
of infantry, and the Corps of Guides, to which were added shortly
afterwards a company of garrison artillery, a sixth regiment of Panjab
infantry, five regiments of Sikh infantry, and two mountain batteries,
and in 1876 all its artillery was converted into mountain batteries.
This force, which did excellent service against the mutineers in 1857
and 1858, remained under the control of the local government of the
Panjab for many years before it was placed under that of the com-
mander-in-chief.
A local force was raised after the annexation of Nagpur in 1854,
and the Oudh Irregular Force after the annexation of Oudh in 1856,
but the former disappeared in the Mutiny, and the latter was broken
up shortly after it.
The history of the great Mutiny of the Bengal army, which raged
for nearly two years, is recorded in the following chapter. The in-
eptitude of senile and incompetent officers, and the pathetic con-
1 Burton, History of the Hyderabad Contingent, chap. iv.
• See vol. v, pp. 377-9.
Vol. v, pp. 495-521.
• Idem, pp. 548–53.
? Idem, pp. 555-7.
2 Idem.
5 Idem, p. 515
## p. 166 (#202) ############################################
166 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
fidence of old colonels, in whom esprit de corps was so strong that even
while regiments lying beside their own were butchering their officers
they refused to believe in the possibility of treason in their own men,
made the tragedy more ghastly than it need have been. The de-
moralisation of the Bengal army was due to more than one cause. The
great additions recently made to the Company's dominions demanded
for the administration of the newly acquired territory, and for the
irregular troops and police required for its defence and for the main-
tenance of peace and order, a far larger number of British officers
than the civil service could provide, and the principal source of
supply was the Bengal army. Those to whom the government of the
new territories was entrusted refused to be satisfied with any but the
most active and zealous officers whom the army could supply, and
the army was thus deprived of the services of a large number of its
best officers, the insufficient number left for regimental duty con-
sisting, to some extent, of the Company's bad bargains. Another
reason for the decay of discipline was the system of promotion, which
was regulated solely by seniority, so that many failed to reach com-
missioned rank before the time when, in the interests of the service,
they should have been superannuated, and were inclined to regard
their promotion rather as a reward for long service than as admission
to a sphere of more important duties. In the Madras and Bombay
armies seniority, as a qualification for promotion, was tempered by
selection, and the British officers refused to pander to the caste
prejudices of their men to the same extent as the British officers in
Bengal. Partly for these reasons, and partly owing to their dislike of
the Bengal army and its airs of superiority, these armies remained
faithful; and the irregular forces of the Panjab joined with glee in
crushing the “Pandies”, as the mutineers were called, from Pande,
one of the commonest surnames among the Oudh Brahmans, which
had been borne by a sepoy who had shot the adjutant of his regiment
at Barrackpore, a few months before the Mutiny broke out.
## p. 167 (#203) ############################################
CHAPTER X
>
>
THE MUTINY
“I WISH”, wrote the late Lord Cromer, “the younger generation
',
of Englishmen would read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the
history of the Indian Mutiny; it abounds in lessons and warnings.
During the generation that preceded the Mutiny various influences
were weakening the discipline of the sepoy army in the presidency of
Bengal, and awakening discontent, here and there provoking thoughts
of rebellion, in certain
groups of the civil population. In considering
the measures that produced these results it should be borne in mind
that the mere fact of their having caused discontent does not condemn
them. While some were injudicious, others were beneficial, and some
helped also to minimise the disturbances to which discontent gave
rise.
In the settlement of the North-Western Provinces, by which
arrangements were made for the collection of the revenue, the re-
sponsible officers, anxious to promote the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, decided that the agreement should be concluded,
not with middlemen, but with the actual occupants of the land, who
were generally either single families or village communities. Ac-
cordingly they deprived the talukdars, through whom the native
government had collected the revenue, and who were really the
territorial aristocracy, of the right of settling for any land to which
they could not establish a clear proprietary title. At the same time
holders of rent-free tenures, many of which had been fraudulently
acquired before the Company's government was established, were
required to prove the original validity of their titles; and since even
those whose estates had been obtained honestly were unable to pro-
duce documentary evidence, the tenures were for the most part
abolished, and the revenue was augmented for the benefit of the
government. The sale law, under which the estates of proprietors
were bought by speculators who were strangers to their new tenants,
aroused no less bitterness; and under Dalhousie the policy of re-
sumption was developed. In Bombay, for instance, the Inam Com-
mission enquired into a large number of titles to land and resumed
a large number of estates. 2
In 1853 an event occurred which provoked resentment that was
not immediately manifested. Baji Rao, the ex-Peshwa with whom
Wellesley had concluded the Treaty of Bassein, died, and his adopted
son, Nana Sahib, demanded that his pension should be continued to
1 Cf. pp. 80-4, supra.
· Cf. Baden Powell, Land Systems of British India, II, 302 sqq.
## p. 168 (#204) ############################################
168
THE MUTINY
a
him. In accordance with the terms of the original agreement the
demand was rejected, although the Nana was allowed to retain rent
free the Peshwa's landed estate.
The annexations which Dalhousie carried out under the title of
lapse, and by which he not only consolidated the empire, strengthened
its military communications, and increased its resources, but also
benefited millions who had suffered from misgovernment, caused
uneasiness to many who had submitted without any sense of injustice
to annexation that had followed conquest, and in one case provoked
passionate indignation. Under this right, Dalhousie annexed Satara,
Nagpur, Jhansi, and several minor principalities. The annexation of
Oudh was of a different kind. Misgovernment so scandalous that
even Colonel Sleeman and Henry Lawrence, those sympathetic
champions of native rulers, urged that the paramount power should
assume the administration, impelled the Board of Control and the
court of directors to insist upon a peremptory course which Dalhousie,
remembering the fidelity of the king of Oudh, was reluctant to adopt.
He urged that merely to withdraw'the British troops by whose support
the king had been maintained upon the throne, on the ground that
he had not fulfilled the conditions of the treaty concluded by Wellesley,
would compel him to accept a new treaty which should provide for
the administration by British officers in his name; the directors
decided that he should be required to accept such a treaty with the
alternative of submitting to annexation. As he rejected the proffered
treaty, which, while it vested the government in the Company,
guaranteed to him the royal title, an adequate pension, and main-
tenance for all collateral branches of his family, Oudh was forthwith
annexed. Though Muhammadan pride was doubtless offended, such
discontent as the annexation aroused mattered little in comparison
with the manner in which it was carried into effect. Perhaps it was
of no great moment that the revenues of the province were not
exclusively appropriated, as Sleeman and Lawrence had recom-
mended, to the benefit of the people and the royal family; nor would
it be just to blame Dalhousie because he decided that the provisional
settlement of the revenue should be made with the actual occupants
of the soil, and because the talukdars, although their claims were for
the most part examined with scrupulous fairness, resented the de-
cisions that compelled them to surrender their villages, and the
restraint that forced them to cease from controlling their neighbours.
What did cause indignation was that after the departure of Dalhousie,
orders which he had given were disregarded. For more than a year
no allowances were paid to the king's stipendiaries, among whom
were some of his relations; the officiating chief commissioner took
possession of a palace which had been expressly reserved for the royal
family; the officials employed by the late court were excluded from
pensions; the disbandment of the king's army had thrown professional
>
## p. 169 (#205) ############################################
DALHOUSIE'S ADMINISTRATION
169
1
soldiers upon the world with inadequate means of support; and in
many cases the demands of the settlement officers were excessive.
Nothing was done to guard against the disturbances which adminis-
trative changes might produce. Although Dalhousie had resolved to
disarm the country and raze every fort, his successor did nothing,
and supposed that one weak regiment of infantry and one battery of
artillery would be sufficient to keep the peace.
More provocative than settlements and annexations were other
measures by which Dalhousie endeavoured to confer upon India the
benefits of Western civilisation. In the railways which he began to
construct, the telegraph wires by which he connected Calcutta with
Peshawar and Bombay, and Bombay with Madras, the canal which
he linked to the sacred stream of the Ganges, Brahmans fancied that'
sorcery was at work. The more conservative elements of native society
suspected the European education by which he hoped to enlarge the
minds of the young, but by which the priests felt that their power was
endangered; and laws such as that permitting the remarriage of Hindu
widows, which he contemplated and which his successor passed, gave
deep offence.
Since it is impossible to describe by any comprehensive generalisa-
tion the sentiments of a vast heterogeneous population, divided into
numerous groups, the respective characteristics of which were more
dissimilar than those of the peoples of Europe, let us approach the
subject from different points of view. The Hindus, except in so far as
they had been offended by the measures of Dalhousie, were not
antagonistic to the government on the score of religion. While some
Muhammadans admired the strength and the justice of British rule,
others—notably the Wahabis—resented the loss of the supremacy
which their forefathers had enjoyed, and hoped to destroy as enemies
of Islam the aliens who had seized it. The mercantile and shop-
keeping classes, indeed all who knew that their position and pros-
perity were staked upon the continuance of orderly rule, were dis-
posed to support the British Government so long as it could keep the
upper hand and secure to them the enjoyment of their gains. The
magnates who had lost their lands were naturally resentful. The
countless millions who lived by tilling the soil did not care what
government might be in power, if it protected them and did not tax
them too heavily; but in some districts, especially in Bengal, they had
suffered so much from the venality of the police and the harpies who
infested the courts of justice that they were ill-disposed. In some parts
of the peninsula, notably in the Panjab and Rajputana, the people
were aware that they had profited by British rule. Ponder these words
of Sir John Strachey:
The duty was once imposed upon me of transferring a number of villages which
had long been included in a British district to one of the best governed of the native
1 Lee-Warner, Dalhousie, 11, 338–9; Baird, Private Letters of Dalhousie, pp. 401-3.
## p. 170 (#206) ############################################
170
THE MUTINY
states. I shall not forget the loud and universal protests of the people against the
cruel injustice with which they considered they were being treated. Everyone who
has had experience of similar cases tells the same story. Nevertheless I cannot say
that our government is loved; it is too good for that.
Reforms which interfered with native usages were resented as meddle-
some. Differences of colour, of religion, of custom, and of sympathies
separated the masses, which differed so widely among themselves,
from the ruling class. It is true that the more thoughtful acknowledged
that the British government was juster, more merciful, and more
efficient than any that had preceded it: but still many thought regret-
fully of the good old times, when, if there had been less peace, there
had been more stir, more excitement, and a wider field for adventure;
a
when, if there had been less security for life and property, there had
been more opportunities for gratifying personal animosities and
making money; when, if taxation had been heavier, there had been
some chance of evading it; when, if justice had been more uncertain,
there had been more room for chicanery and intrigue. The rulers
did not conceal their sense of racial superiority, and the French critic
who described their administration as "just, but not amiable” probed
a weak spot. Though the examples of Henry Lawrence, and John
Nicholson, and Meadows Taylor, prove that individuals could win
personal loyalty and even devotion, there was no real loyalty, except
in the rare instances of such men as the illustrious Muhammadan,
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, towards the alien government. For efficiency
was not enough to keep India contented; and since, as Lord Cromer
wrote, the Englishman is
always striving to attain two ideals, which are apt to be mutually destructive—the
ideal of good government, which connotes the continuance of his own supremacy,
and the ideal of self-government, which connotes the whole or partial abdication
of his supreme position-
there were Anglo-Indian statesmen, even before the Mutiny, who
desired to associate Indians with British rule. As early as 1818 Lord
Hastings looked forward to a
time not very remote when England will. . . wish to relinquish the domination
which she has gradually and unintentionally assurned over this country, and from
which she cannot at present recede;1
a few years later Sir Thomas Munro declared that eventually it would
“probably be best for both countries that the British control over
India should be gradually withdrawn";' and Dalhousie, the most
autocratic of governors-general, urged in vain that parliament should
authorise him to nominate an Indian member to his legislative council. 3
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, one of the wisest of Muhammadans, after-
wards declared that the absence of such members, who would have
kept their colleagues in touch with popular sentiment, prevented the
i Private Journal, 11, 326. 2 Gleig, Life of Munro, II, 388.
• Lee-Warner, op. cit. II, 232.
## p. 171 (#207) ############################################
DECAY OF DISCIPLINE
171
government from knowing that laws which they enacted were mis-
chievous, and that their motives would be misunderstood. 1 The
antagonism aroused by the ever-increasing pressure of Western civili-
sation during the period of Dalhousie's rule was little realised.
This antagonism, however, would never have provoked serious dis-
turbances so long as the sepoy army remained under control. Even
in earlier days isolated mutinies had occurred in consequence of the
credulity that dreaded attacks upon caste and religion. The moral of
the force was gradually weakened when the best British officers were
allured from regimental duty by the prospect of political employ and,
in consequence of the centralisation of military authority, com-
mandants were deprived of powers which they had exercised in the
days of Malcolm. But it was from the time of the Afghan War that
native officers, who understood the feelings of their men, dated the
deterioration which made even optimists anxious. Hindus were
prevented by the cold climate from bathing as their religion enjoined,
obliged to eat food and to drink water which they regarded as impure,
and compelled on returning to India to pay for readmission to the
caste which they had thus lost; Muhammadans were offended by
being obliged to fight against men of their own creed; and all alike,
affected by the calamities of the war, lost their traditional faith in the
invincibility of their leaders. The sepoys, indeed, fought well in Sind
and in the two Sikh wars, though in the second the disorderly conduct
of certain Bengal regiments astonished a competent observer; but the
general cessation of fighting that followed the annexation of the
Panjab left a mercenary army idle, restless, conscious of power, and
ripe for mischief; and discontent, caused by the withdrawal of pe-
cuniary allowances granted for extraordinary service, led to individual
outbreaks. 3 Dalhousie was well aware of this deterioration. "The
discipline of the army”, he wrote to the president of the Board of
Control, “from top to bottom, officers and men alike, is scandalous. "4
Unprejudiced observers urged that in each regiment men of different
races should be enlisted, so as to lessen the risk of mutinous combina-
tion; but, as John Lawrence afterwards wrote, “Reform was im-
practicable, for the officers would not admit that any was necessary,
and nobody not in the army was supposed to know anything about it”.
“The Bengal army”, as the same authority remarked, “was one great
brotherhood, in which all the members felt and acted in union. '
Recruited for the most part from Oudh and the North-Western
Provinces, they shared the discontents of the civil population. The
predominance of men of high caste or, at least, the deference that
was yielded to their prejudices, was fatal to discipline. A native
officer of low caste might often be seen crouching submissively before
i Causes of the Indian Revolt, pp. 11-12.
· Cf. Holmes, Indian Mutiny, pp. 55-6.
; Idem, pp: 57 599.
• Cf. Lee-Warner, op. cit. II, 257 sqq. ; also Baird, op. cit. pp. 168, 355.
>
>
## p. 172 (#208) ############################################
172
THE MUTINY
>
the Brahman recruit whom he was supposed to command; but men
of low caste who would have been glad to serve were often rejected.
"High caste—that is to say mutiny”, wrote Sir Charles Napier, who
warmly praised the sepoys of the Bombay and Madras presidencies,
“is encouraged”; “some day or other”, he prophesied of Delhi,
“much mischief will be hatched within those walls, and no European
troops at hand. Lhave no confidence in the allegiance of your high-
caste mercenaries”. 1 The disproportion between the numbers of the
British and the native troops was glaring. At the close of Dalhousie's
administration the latter amounted to two hundred and thirty-three
thousand, the former, who, moreover, were so distributed that their
controlling power was impaired, to less than forty-six thousand, and
the disproportion was increased in the same year in consequence of
the Persian War. Dalhousie, pointing out that the Crimean War had
begotten rumours injurious to British prestige, pleaded earnestly for
a diminution of the native and a corresponding increase of the British
troops; but for more than two years his suggestions were not brought
formally under the notice of the directors. 2
Another reform, which Dalhousie had planned and his successor
carried out, intensified the fears which the Bengal army had long felt
for their caste. Six regiments only were liable for general service, of
which three were in 1856 quartered in Pegu. Two were entitled to be
relieved within a few months; but none of the other three was
available. It was therefore impossible under the existing regulations
to send regiments by sea to the Burmese coast, and the overland route
was in part impassable. The Madras army was enlisted for general
service; but the presidency was unwilling to arouse discontent among
its own troops by calling upon them to garrison a country which lay
properly within the sphere of the Bengal army. Confronted by
necessity, the governor-general issued a general order, decreeing that
no recruit should thenceforward be accepted who would not under-
take to go whithersoever his services might be required. “There is
no fear”, he wrote a few months later, “of feelings of caste being
excited by the new enlistment regulations";' but, being a new-comer,
he did not realise that the Bengal army was a brotherhood, in which
military service was hereditary. Recruiting officers complained that
men of high caste, whose religious scruples were aroused by the
thought of being liable to cross the sea, had begun to shrink from
entering the service which their fathers and their brethren had flocked
to join, and old sepoys were whispering to each other their fears that
the oaths of the new recruits might be binding also upon themselves.
Two other changes, apparently trivial, increased the prevalent dis-
content. Sepoys declared unfit for foreign service were no longer to
1 The Times, 24 July, 1857, and History of the Siege of Delhi by an Officer who served there,
2 Lee-Warner, op. cit. 11, 285.
3 Holmes, op. cit. p. 76.
p. 1o n.
## p. 173 (#209) ############################################
THE GREASED CARTRIDGES
173
be allowed to retire on pensions, but to be employed in cantonment
duty, and all sepoys were thenceforth to pay the regular postage for
their letters instead of having them franked by their commandant.
The men were now in a mood to believe any lie that reflected dis-
credit upon the government. Seeing that the warlike Sikhs were
favoured by the recruiting sergeants, they fancied that a Sikh army
was to be raised to supersede them. Agitators assured them that
Lord Canning had been sent to India to convert them, and pointed
to the General Service Enlistment order as the first step. A manifesto
recently published by missionaries was interpreted as an official in-
vitation to embrace Christianity, and when the lieutenant-governor
of Bengal issued a reassuring proclamation, the bigoted Muham-
madans of the Patna division refused to believe him. 1 Certain British
officers, indeed, preached the Gospel to their men with the enthusiasm
of Cromwell's Ironsides, and incurred the displeasure of government
by their proselytising zeal. Meanwhile the Nana Sahib, dilating
upon the annexation of Oudh, was trying to stir up native chieftains
against the British, and there is reason to believe that he and other
disaffected princes had long been tampering with the sepoys. : British
officers, who no longer kept native mistresses, knew little of what was
disturbing the minds of their men; but even in the Panjab rumours
were current of approaching mutiny. Finally, an old Hindu prophecy
was circulated; in 1857, the centenary of Plassey, the Company's rule
was to be destroyed. "
The incident that precipitated the Mutiny is known to all the world.
One day in January, 1857, a lascar at Dum-Dum, near Calcutta,
asked a Brahman sepoy to give him some water from his drinking cup.
The Brahman refused, saying that the cup would be contaminated
by the lips of a low-caste man: the lascar retorted that the Brahman
would soon lose his caste, for cartridges, greased with the fat of cows
or swine, were being manufactured by the government, and every
sepoy would be obliged to bite them before loading his rifle. It needs
a sympathetic imagination to gauge the shock under which the mind
of that Brahman reeled. Greased cartridges had been sent to India
from England four years before. The adjutant-general of the Bengal
army warned the board, which was then vested with military authority,
that none should be issued to native troops until it had been ascertained
that the grease was inoffensive; but the warning was neglected. The
cartridges were issued to certain regiments, merely to test how the
climate would affect the grease, and were accepted without demur.
In 1856 similar cartridges, to be used with the new Enfield rifle, began
to be made up in India, and Brahman workers handled the grease
1 Kaye, Sepoy War (ed. 1872), 1, 472-3.
• Cf. Canning to Granville, 9 April, 1857 (Fitzmaurice, Life of Granville, 1, 245); also
Memorials of Sir H. B. Edwardes, 11, 251 n. ; Holmes, op. cit. p. 78.
; Kaye, op. cit. 1, 579.
• Holmes, op. cit. p. 79. Cf. Meadows Taylor, Story of my Life (ed. 1920), p. 340.
## p. 174 (#210) ############################################
174
THE MUTINY
+
without complaint; but, after the lascar blurted out his taunt, no
cartridges greased either with beef-fat or with lard were ever issued
to any sepoys, except to one Gurkha regiment, at their own request.
Nevertheless the delusion, due to the neglect of the adjutant-
general's warning, was ineradicable. 1 The story rapidly spread. The
Brahmans of Calcutta and the agents of the king of Oudh, who was
living in the suburb of Garden Reach, eagerly turned it to account. 2
The responsible officer at Dum-Dum promptly reported it, and
General Hearsey, commanding the presidency division, appended to
the report a recommendation that the sepoys at Dum-Dum, where
alone the new cartridges were immediately to be issued, should be
allowed to grease their own; but in consequence of official delay, he
was not informed of the approval of his suggestion until 28 January,
and by that time the sepoys at Barrackpore, convinced that the story
was true, were setting fire to officers' bungalows. The governor-
general directed that greased cartridges might be issued at rifle depôts,
provided that the lubricant were composed only of mutton-fat and
wax; but it soon became evident that such precautions were futile.
On 26 February the 19th Native Infantry at Berhampore, whose
suspicions had been allayed by the explanation of their commandant,
took alarm on hearing from detachments of the 34th, which had been
foolishly allowed to march thither from Barrackpore, that the lascar
had told the truth, and refused to receive their percussion caps for the
next day's parade. The commandant, instead of explaining the un-
reasonableness of their fears, threatened them with condign punish-
ment, but, having no means of enforcing his threat, was obliged to
forgo the parade. The men continued to perform their ordinary
duties; but their disobedience could not be ignored, and, as it was
impossible to punish it without British troops, the governor-general
sent for the 84th Regiment from Rangoon. Meanwhile the sepoys at
Barrackpore were becoming more and more excited. Though they
had been allowed to grease their own cartridges, they fancied that
the cartridge paper must contain objectionable fat, and when, after
analysis, it was declared to be harmless, they refused to credit the
report. Hearsey, who thoroughly understood the sepoys' mentality,
tried in vain to convince them that there was nothing to fear. Canning
accepted a suggestion that they should be allowed to avoid tasting
the paper by pinching off the ends of the cartridges; but, as might
have been expected, the concession was useless. Hearsey had thought-
lessly told the 34th that the mutinous 19th was to be disbanded, and
they disregarded his assurance that no punishment was in store for
them. On 29 March a sepoy named Mangal Pandy murderously
attacked the adjutant; while others belaboured their officers with the
butt-ends of their muskets, one alone came to the rescue; and the
1 Cf. Kaye, op. cil.
