Sahib

by Richard Holmes

  John Roach and George Blake, each of whom had commanded a field gun in the Maratha armies (they would have been sergeants had they been in the British service), told Arthur Wellesley that:

  We, on the first instance of our being employed against the English, protested against our employment. We were hurried on by many marches latterly by night, and it was not until the period specified above that we knew against whom we were being sent. When we knew it, we determined on throwing ourselves on the clemency of our countrymen encamped, as we were told, at Aurangabad.50

  But some of their countrymen apparently remained with the Marathas, for on 3 October 1803, Wellesley wrote:

  I have some reason to complain of Scindia’s English officers, and I shall bring the matter forward more publicly as soon as I can ascertain the matter more completely … My soldiers say … that they heard one English officer with a battalion say to another: ‘You understand the language better than I do. Desire the jemadar of that body of horse to go and cut up those wounded European soldiers.’ The other did as he was desired, and the horse obeyed the orders they received.

  It is bad enough that these gentlemen should serve the enemies of their country, particularly after the British government offered them a provision, but it is too bad that they should make themselves the instruments, or rather that they should excite the savage ferocity of the natives against their brave and wounded countrymen.51

  In practice, though, most British officers had actually left the Marathas by this time. Amongst them was James Skinner, who was promptly asked to raise an irregular regiment, the nucleus of his famous ‘Yellow Boys’.

  The ‘soldierly and efficient’ John Howell was more circumspect, nether quitting his service nor harming his countrymen. Captured at the battle of Miani in 1843, he was

  brought before the Assistant Quartermaster General, Lieut MacMurdo, and, on being asked from where and whence he came, he replied: ‘My name is John Howell; I am a Welshman, and formerly served in the Royal Artillery, and am now in command of the artillery of the Amirs of Sindh.’ On being told that he would be shot as a traitor to his country, he said: ‘That is not so; I have not fired upon my countrymen, and you must admit that our shots went over your heads’ (which was quite true).

  He was duly released, and MacMurdo later saw him comfortably installed as wazir (principal minister) of the state of Bahawalpur.52

  Henry Charles Van Courtlandt, son of Colonel Van Courtlandt of the 19th Dragoons and an Indian woman, had served Ranjit Singh, who made him a colonel. However, he fought with the British at Multan, where he was awarded the medal for the siege but got no field allowances because he was not formally in the British army: he was ‘rather sore about it’. He served in the Second Sikh War and joined the Provincial Civil Service after it: he eventually retired ‘with the pay and allowances of a colonel of British Infantry’ and died in London in 1888.

  John Holmes was of mixed race and had been a trumpeter in the Bengal Horse Artillery before joining the Sikh service where he too became a colonel. Herbert Edwardes testified to his ‘energy and ability’, and Reynell Taylor called him ‘a most active, and intelligent assistant, whose heart and soul are in our interests’. He was murdered when his troops mutinied at Bannu in 1848. O’Brien was so helpful to the British, leaving his raja’s service to join them with a thousand ‘good hill men’, that he was given a free pardon for desertion. However, he was soon back in Sansor Chand’s service, where it was reported that he was ‘frequently under the influence of excessive intoxication for nearly a fortnight, when the fit usually terminated as on the present occasion, by a severe illness, after which he would continue well and sober for a short time’.53

  James Lucan went even further. He had been a captain in Maratha service, but left it in 1803 and joined Lord Lake’s army as a volunteer. When the fort of Aligargh, which he knew well, was attacked: ‘He gallantly undertook to lead Colonel Monson’s storming party to the gate, and point out the road through the fort, which he effected in the most gallant manner, and Colonel Monson has received infinite benefit from his services.’ He received a lieutenancy in HM’s 74th Foot and 24,000 rupees for his services. But, appointed to command a corps of irregular horse, he was captured by his former employers and died in prison.54

  European military specialists serving local rulers were an odd mixture, like the sixty or so British and Eurasian officers in the Maratha armies in 1800, a blend, it was claimed, of ‘men of inferior moral calibre’ and ‘men of recognised character and ability’. Perhaps the oddest examples of these specialists were Bombardier Herbert and Gunners Hennessy and O’Brian of the Bengal Foot Artillery who deserted to the enemy during the 1825 siege of Bhurtpore. The bombardier had fought at Waterloo, and it was unclear why he ventured on such a hazardous step, although a contemporary said that the trio were ‘slaves to drink, they knew no other master’. When the city fell Herbert was hanged from a gallows high upon one of the bastions, and his comrades were transported to the Andaman Islands for fourteen years apiece.

  There were some British officers, Wellesley amongst them, who argued that the part-Europeanising of Indian armies actually did them a disservice, because it deprived them of some of their martial qualities without making them comprehensively modern. But we may doubt whether the traditional hordes of Maratha horse would have been capable of checking Wellesley. As it was, when, much later in life, he was asked what was the most difficult thing he ever did in the way of soldiering, he thought for a minute, and then replied: ‘Assaye’ – his great victory over the Marathas in 1803. Similarly, it was precisely because the Sikhs combined natural bravery with European-style training and tactics that they proved such redoubtable adversaries. Indeed, had their leaders not been suborned by British political officers they may actually have won. But the problem with what we might now call ‘contract officers’ is that their relationship with their employer was often based on money and rarely on a deeper sense of trust and duty. They could seldom be relied upon to fight against their fellow countrymen, and, as the nineteenth century wore on, even other European officers grew reluctant to fight the British unless their own countries were at war.

  While we must be cautious at accepting all British assertions about their army in India at face value, it is clear that, in the words of one sceptical analyst, they:

  carefully fostered the structures of military collaboration on which their power depended. Every effort was made to bind the peasant-soldier communities to the Raj by the strong ties of self-interest … The bonds between the sepoy and the Raj were more complex than this. Had they not been so, Indian soldiers would not have risked their lives to fight the wars of empire.55

  There are many examples of Indian soldiers fighting for the British when it was clearly not in their interest to do so. Brigadier James Hope Grant, commanding officer of the 9th Lancers when the Mutiny began, and a major general and a knight when it ended, found himself in what a brother officer called ‘a fearful scrape’ on 19 June 1857. The British launched two cavalry charges to save their guns from a determined force of mutineers, and in one of them Hope Grant was:

  unhorsed, surrounded by the enemy. My orderly, a native Sowar of the 4th Irrregulars … rode up to me and said, ‘Take my horse – it is your only chance of safety’ … He was a Hindostanee Mussulman, belonging to a regiment the greater part of which had mutinied; and it would have been easy for him to have killed me and gone over to the enemy; but he behaved nobly, and was ready to save my life at the risk of his own. I refused his offer, but, taking a firm grip of his horse’s tail, I told [him] to drag me out of the crowd.56

  Demonstrative courage mattered much to men who valued their own izzat so greatly. Arab mercenaries were amongst the Marathas’ best troops: in August 1803, Major General Wellesley told his brother, the Governor-General, Lord Mornington, that they had held Ahmednagar against him ‘with the utmost obstinacy’.57 In a brisk action against them that year Lieutenant Bryant saved the life of a brother o
fficer and then cut down an enemy standard bearer. When his sepoys wavered, he harangued them and then returned to the fray, first snapping his sword across an opponent’s skull and then picking up a musket and bayonet to kill two more. His men were inspired by the example. In another action an Arab hurled a spear at Lieutenant Langlands of HM’s 74th Highlanders. Langlands pulled it out and threw it back, skewering the man. A big Indian grenadier rushed forward and patted him on the back, saying: ‘Atchah sahib! Bhota atchah Keeah!’ (Well done, sir! Very well done!)58 At Mudki: ‘Lieutenant Newton, 16th BNI, fell under five wounds, the first a sword-cut across the stomach (from a man who feigned dead) while trying to save the life of a wounded Mahratta. After this he still advanced with his corps, and marched along holding up his intestines with his hands.’59 Lieutenant Torrens Metje ‘danced on’ ahead of his company of 29th BNI at Chillianwallah, derisively throwing spent shot aside. Colonel Armine Mountain felt his loss very keenly.

  Poor Metje died of his wounds this morning. I had hoped he would live, for I saw him fall; and it pained me not to assist him; but we were under a tremendous fire, and all depended on keeping up the charge. I could not have stopped for my brother. He was a fine young fellow, always foremost in any sport, as in the field. I saw him yesterday, and asked him if he saw me when he fell. He said yes. I told him how sorry I was not to assist him, kissed his forehead and commended him to God.60

  Although the historian Lawrence James states that: ‘Sepoys provided the ballast of an army. They provided the weight of an attacking force, but the vanguard were always British soldiers, who were quite literally the cutting edge of empire,’61 of course there were times when this was not the case. For example, at the battle of Khushab in the Persian War of 1856–57, it was the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry, rather than HM’s 14th Light Dragoons (the only British cavalry regiment with the force), which charged and broke a well-conducted square of Persian infantry (‘a solid square with kneeling ranks … awaited us most steadily’), rallying after its first attack to charge again, and then chasing the survivors ‘till the troopers were weary of hewing’.62 The charge itself owed much to charismatic leadership by British officers, as one of them recalled how Captain Forbes, commanding the 3rd, and his adjutant, Lieutenant Moore:

  placed themselves in front of the 6th troop, which was the one directly opposite the nearest face of the square. The others, [the elder] Moore, Malcolmson and Spens, came the least thing behind, riding knee to knee, with spurs in their horses flanks, as if racing after a dog. In rear of them rushed the dark troopers of the 3rd … In spite of fire, steel and bullets, they tore down upon the nearest face of the devoted square. As they approached, Forbes was shot through the thigh and Spens’s horse was wounded; but unheeding they swept onwards.

  Daunted by the flashes and the fire and the noise and the crackle of musketry, the younger Moore’s horse swerved as they came up. Dropping his sword and letting it hang by the knot at the wrist, he caught up the reins in both hands, screwed his horse’s head straight, and then coolly, as if riding a fence, leaped him straight into the square … Of course the horse fell stone dead upon the bayonets; so did his brother’s, ridden with equal courage and determination.

  The elder Moore – 18 stone in weight and 6 feet seven inches in height, cut his way out on foot. Malcolmson took one foot out of his stirrup, when he saw his brother officer down and unarmed (for his sword had been broken to pieces by the fall) and holding on to that, the younger Moore escaped.

  The barrier once broken, and the entrance once made, in and through it poured [our] troops … Out of five hundred Persian soldiers … who composed that fatal square, only twenty escaped to tell the tale of their own destruction.63

  John Jacob called it ‘the best cavalry performance of modern times’. But it was not an isolated example. In December 1856, when the British-Indian force landed in the Gulf, 20th BNI took a fort by storm. Captain Wood, of the grenadier company, was hit seven times as he climbed the parapet, but he ran an enemy commander through with his sword, and his grenadiers followed him bravely and secured the place. He gained the first VC awarded to an officer of the Company’s forces.

  Examples like Khushab in 1857 and Chitral in 1895 (where not only the garrison, but the relief column which reached the little town first were all Indian troops) were, however, exceptions to a general rule. In 1803 Lake declared to Wellesley that it was ‘impossible to do things in a gallant style without Europeans’, and after his victory at Laswari he warned that unless his British casualties were replaced his army would lose its cutting edge.

  It was because of the importance that contemporaries attached to the combat performance of British units that failures were the source of such heart-searching. Several commentators observed that the real damage done by the retreat from Kabul in 1844 and the destruction of HM’s 44th Foot was to British prestige. Exactly the same was said about the rebuff to HM’s 24th at Chillianwallah, where the regiment fell back after suffering appalling casualties, dragging the flanking Indian regiments, 25th and 45th BNI, back with it. Sita Ram was not surprised, asking: ‘How could they stand if the Europeans could not?’64 When Colonel Charles MacGregor heard the news of Maiwand, where HM’s 66th Foot had been badly cut up in 1881, he wrote: ‘It is not so bad in the way of losses as I thought, but worse for our honour, as they ought all to have been killed.’65

  GOLD EPAULETTES, SILVER MEDALS

  BRAVE LEADERSHIP was fundamental to British military success , and prompt reward for courage and campaign service was widely esteemed. Sometimes British officers showed a bravery that was literally suicidal. We have already seen how the garrison of Delhi arsenal blew it up as the mutineers surged in. At the same time the great arsenal of Allahabad was held by ‘60 worn-out European pensioners’ of the Company’s service, supported by a few volunteers. In command were Lieutenants Russell and Tod Brown of the Bengal Artillery.

  These two gallant officers had taken the precaution to fill the cellars below the armoury (which contained some 50,000 to 60,000 stands of arms) with barrels of powder, their intention being to blow up the whole place in the event of the sepoys getting the upper hand. This determination was known to all in the fort … 66

  This sort of mettle was the sine qua non of officer leadership. In their personal accounts, British soldiers are often irreverent about their superior officers. Some, like Lieutenant Colonel St George Showers of the 2nd Bengal Fusiliers, were seen as fussy old pedants. Others did not even begin to look like warrior kings. The senior captain of HM’s 61st Foot, who commanded the battalion before Delhi,

  was, without exception, the greatest oddity for a soldier that our army has ever seen. Five feet two inches in height, with an enormous head, short, hunch back body, long arms, and thin shrivelled legs, his whole appearance reminded one of Dickens’s celebrated character Quilp … Entering the service in the ‘good’ old times, when there was no examination by a medical man, he had, through some back-door influence, obtained a commission in the army. All his service had been passed abroad, for it would have been utterly impossible for him to have retained his commission in England.

  Marching, he was unable to keep step with the men, and on horseback he presented the most ludicrous appearance, being quite unable to ride, and looking more like a monkey than a human being. On our first advance across the plain the little Captain was riding in our front, vainly endeavouring to make his horse move faster, and striking him every now and then on the flanks with his sword. I was on the right of the line, and, together with the men, could not keep from laughing, when a friend of mine – a tall officer of one of the native infantry regiments-rode to my side and asked me who that was leading the regiment. I answered ‘He is our commanding officer.’67

  And others, many others, drank too much. Private Waterfield thought it a scandal that, if no clergyman was present, his commanding officer should read the Sunday service ‘when perhaps not five minutes before that same man was damning his men, now his congregation to a
ll intents and purposes, and himself suffering from last night’s debauchery’.68 Lastly, there were suspicions that officers enjoyed more than their fair share of loot. Sergeant Forbes-Mitchell of the 93rd Highlanders lamented that his own regiment ‘got very little loot’ at Lucknow. However,

  it was shrewdly suspected by the troops that certain small caskets in battered cases, which contained the redemption of mortgaged estates in Scotland, England and Ireland … found their way inside the uniform cases of even the prize-agents. I could myself name one deeply-encumbered estate which was cleared of mortgage to the tune of £180,000 within two years of the plunder of Lucknow. But what good?69

  Two qualities featured greatly on the credit side of the ledger. Paternalism was generally admired. In 1870 Emily Wonnacott, whose husband William was schoolmaster to HM’s 8th Foot, told her parents of her delight that: ‘Dear old Col Woods is coming back on Sunday. We are all so glad. He is like a father to the regiment.’70 Corporal Ryder of HM’s 32nd remembered Colonel Hill weeping as he warned his men that they risked being shot for striking an officer, and John Pearman thought that grey-haired Colonel White, ‘such a happy face, so kind to all’ was a fine commander. When old Gough wandered round a field hospital after Chillianwallah, visiting men who might not unreasonably have attributed their presence there to his ‘Tipperary tactics’, Sergeant Keay of the Bengal Artillery affirmed that the very sight ‘of his venerable white head’ provoked a burst of cheering and ‘from many a poor fellow who had scarcely a head left upon his shoulders to shout with – it said, as plainly as ever words will say, “You will never find us wanting when you require us”.’71