Sahib

by Richard Holmes

  ------’The Loss of the Guildford’, Durbar: Journal of the Indian Military Collectors’ Society, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1992

  Hayes, N. C., ‘British Tactics in the Fourth and Fifth Maratha Wars’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, No. 77, 1999

  Mukherjee, Rundrangshu, ‘“Satan Let Loose upon the Earth”: The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857’, Past and Present, No. 128, August 1990

  Robbins, Maj Colin, ‘Overland to India: By Donkey’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. 78, 2000

  ‘Soldier Bat’, The Londoner: Journal of 1/25th Battalion The London Regiment, February 1917

  Stigger, Michael, ‘Recruiting for rank in 1764, 1804 and 1857’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, No. 70, 1992

  Vadgama, Kusoom, ‘Reassessing the Raj’, BBC History Magazine, May 2004

  Wood, Stephen, ‘Blades of Glory: Swords of Scottish Infantry 1750-1900’, The American Society of Arms Collectors’ Bulletin, No. 72, Spring 1995

  ACKNOWLEGDGEMENTS

  Much as my wife Lizzie might raise an eyebrow at being termed a memsahib, I know well what Herbert Edwardes meant when he wrote of the importance of being ‘helped by a noble wife,’ and I simply could not have written this book without her. As usual I am in the debt of the librarians and staff at the Prince Consort Library and the Aldershot Public Library. Dr A. D. Harvey, Dr S. R. Johnson and Miss Maryam Philpott provided invaluable research support. Arabella Pike at HarperCollins gave her customary deft editorial direction. It speaks volumes for her commitment and my own preoccupations that I failed to observe that she latterly did so when the birth of her son was imminent: she would, I think, have done well on Delhi ridge. Kate Johnson attacked my split infinitives and wobbly references with her editorial pencil, and I wish that I had made her task easier. I seldom write a book that does not in some way feature that martial tribe the Pennycuicks, and I thank Stuart Sampson for providing me with the letters and diaries of Brigadier John Pennycuick, who died leading his brigade on the field of Chillianwallah. I owe much to The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (whose nickname ‘The Tigers’ originates in service in India) of which I have the honour to be colonel. In the late summer of 2004 they showed me, in the heat and dust of Al Amarah, just what infantry soldiering east of Suez is about.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1 Penderel Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India (London: 1989), P. 3.

  2 Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order (London: 2003).

  3 Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World (London: 2002).

  4 Kusoom Vadgama, ‘Reassessing the Raj’, in BBC History Magazine, May 2004, p. 96.

  5 Moon, British Conquest, P. 4.

  6 Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (Calcutta: 1903), pp. 781-2.

  7 Sir Walter Lawrence, The India We Served (London: 1928), p. 37.

  8 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 388.

  9 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 734, and Concise Oxford Dictionary (Oxford: 1976), p. 994.

  10 James Lunt (ed.), From Sepoy to Subedar, Being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram (London: 1970), p. 23. Hanuman, the monkey god, is one of the most popular members of the Hindu pantheon. Sita Ram Pande served in the Bengal army from 1812-60. The authenticity of this account is sometimes questioned, although, on the balance of probabilities, it seems reliable.

  11 Michael Brander (ed.), The Sword and the Pen (London: 1989), p. 88.

  12 Lawrence, India We Served, p. 31.

  13 Quoted in Dennis Holman, Sikander Sahib: The Life of Colonel James Skinner 1778-1841 (London: 1961), pp. 213-14.

  14 Holman, Sikander Sahib, pp. 213-14. There are several things in Skinner’s account of his parents’ relationship that do not quite add up, but of the six children there is no doubt.

  15 Holman, Sikander, p. 207.

  16 Holman, Sikander, pp. 238-9.

  17 The Indian army has been well covered by historians. There are three admirable surveys: Philip Mason’s sublimely anecdotal A Matter of Honour, T. A. Heathcote’s The Indian Army, the best starting point for the subject, and the same author’s scholarly The Military in British India. David Omissi’s important book The Sepoy and the Raj is a social and political history of the Indian army at the apogee of colonial rule, and Lieutenant General S. L. Menezes’s Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century provides an Indian perspective of an institution which could command respect and affection even when it fought for a foreign ruler.

  18 Hodson, Rev G. H. Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India: Hodson of Hodson’s Horse (London: 1859) p. 32.

  19 Charles Allen, Soldier Sahibs (London: 2000), p. 336.

  20 See Major F. G. Cardew, Hodson’s Horse 1857-1922 (London: 1928).

  21 ‘The Soldier in India’, British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Mss Eur C548. I have done something for Private Smith’s spelling, but his metre, rather like ‘The Poet’ by William McGonagall, is wholly beyond human aid.

  22 Peter Stanley, White Mutiny (New York: 1998), p. xi.

  PROLOGUE: Drums on the Sutlej

  1 Colonel A. E. Fyler, The History of the 50th (or Queen’s Own) Regiment from the earliest date to the year 1881 (London: 1895), pp. 205-6. Drummer Fulcher is the only invention in this section.

  2 Thompson had enlisted in 1842 and had already become a colour sergeant, which was brisk work. He was commissioned in 1852, and eventually rose to the rank of major general, ‘working his way up without interest’, that is without money or patronage.

  3 Albert Hervey, A Soldier of the Company: The Life of an Indian Ensign 1833-43 (London: 1988), p. 120.

  4 See Bryan Foster’s illustrations to Lt Col. L. M. Wilson and Maj. T. P. Crowley, The Infantry Regiments of Surrey (London: 2002), p. 29. These deal specifically with the 50th’s sister regiment, HM’s 31st, but are an invaluable visual reference. The question of the sword carried by drummers at the time is a difficult one. Although the cruciform-hilted short sword, a version of which is still in use, was not officially introduced until 1856, some were certainly carried earlier. Some drummers seem to have continued to carry a version of the officer’s 1822 pattern sword, in theory discontinued for drummers in 1823. See Brian Robson, Swords of the British Army: The Regulation Patterns (London: second edition, 1996), pp. 251-2.

  5 I have adapted the pose from A. J. Dubois Drahonet, ‘Night Rounds: Drummer, Scots Fusilier Guards’, about 1832. Collection of HM the Queen, Cat no 2154, reproduced in A. E. Haswell Miller and N. P. Dawnay, Military Drawings in the Royal Collection (London: 1969), vol. I, plate 397.

  6 See Hugh Barty-King, The Drum (London: 1998), passim.

  7 Robert S. Rait, The Life and Campaigns of Hugh, First Viscount Gough, Field Marshal (London: 1903), II, pp. 57-8.

  8 Rait, Gough, II, p. 75.

  9 Quoted in George Bruce, Six Battles for India (London: 1969), p. 178.

  10 Quoted in Bruce, Six Battles, p. 182.

  11 N. W. Bancroft, From Recruit to Staff Sergeant (Hornchurch: 1979), p. 79.

  12 Capt. the Hon. W. G. Osborne, The Court and Camp of Runjeet Singh (London: 1840), pp. 161, 164.

  13 The Marquess of Anglesey (ed.), Sergeant Pearman’s Memoirs: being chiefly, his account of service with the Third (King’s Own) Light Dragoons (London: 1968), pp. 52-3.

  14 The historian Sir John Fortescue reckoned that ‘there was certainly mismanagement of the heavy artillery, particularly of the eighteen pounders which, if properly handled, should have levelled a great part of the enemy’s entrenchments’, but he found it hard to apportion blame. See J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (London: 1910-30), XII, pp. 388-9.

  15 Rait, Gough, II, p. 68.

  16 Bancroft, From Recruit to Staff Sergeant, p. 80.

  17 Marquess of Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 53.

  18 Quoted in Donald
Featherstone, At Them with the Bayonet (London: 1968), pp. 148-9. I would love a more robust source for this quotation: it is hard to resist the conclusion that Hookhum Singh is telling the gora-log what they want to hear. The suggestion that he is a zumbooruk gunner is my own: he could not have loaded and fired a field gun on his own.

  19 Quoted in Bruce, Six Battles, p. 187.

  20 Quoted in Colonel Hugh W. Pearse, History of the 31 st Foot (London: 1916), I, p. 207.

  21 Regiments had two lieutenant colonels at this time. The senior of the 50th’s, Thomas Ryan, was ‘acting up’ to command Harry Smith’s 2nd Brigade (HM’s 50th, 42nd BNI, and Gurkha Naisiri Battalion) after its commander was wounded.

  22 The Sikhs had cut up some British wounded after Mudki, and both sides now regularly butchered wounded men. The expression ‘to give Brummagem’ meant to take the bayonet to an opponent, and stemmed from the fact that some Birmingham-made bayonets were stamped with their town of origin.

  23 Major General Sir Joseph Thackwell, the one-armed Waterloo veteran who commanded Gough’s cavalry that day, quoted in the Marquess of Anglesey, History of the British Cavalry (London: 1973), I, p. 268.

  24 Fyler, History of the 50th, p. 233.

  25 Pearse, 31st Foot, p. 206.

  26 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, P. 55.

  27 Quoted in Bruce, Six Battles, pp. 188-9.

  28 Quoted in Bruce, Six Battles, p. 189.

  29 Quoted in Bruce, Six Battles, p. 190.

  30 Lunt (ed.), From Sepoy to Subedar pp. 143-4.

  31 Letters of Private Richard Perkes, National Army Museum: 7505-57.

  32 Lunt (ed.), From Sepoy to Subedar, p. 141.

  33 Bancroft, From Recruit to Staff Sergeant, p. 82.

  34 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 57. The campaign’s veterans received the silver Sutlej Campaign Medal, impressed with the name of the recipient’s first battle and with bars listing the others in which he had fought. Most of those issued to the 50th had bars for ‘Ferozeshuhur’, Aliwal and Sobraon.

  I. In India’s Sunny Clime

  1 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 161-2.

  2 Philip Woodruff, The Men Who Ruled India: Volume II, The Guardians (London: 1963), p. 110.

  3 Jan Morris and Simon Winchester, Stones of Empire: The Buildings of The Raj (Oxford: 1986), p. 124.

  4 W. H. Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary (London: 1967), p. 206.

  5 Major General Sir C. E. Callwell, Stray Recollections (London: 1923), I, pp. 87-8.

  6 Morris and Winchester, Stones of Empire, p. 125.

  7 Surgeon-General Sir A. D. Home, Service Memoirs (London: 1912), p. 98.

  8 Carter journal in Mss Eur E262.

  9 Woodruff, Guardians, p. 98.

  10 Woodruff, Guardians, p. 111.

  11 Quoted in Brian Robson, The Road to Kabul: The Second Afghan War 1878-81 (London: 1986), p. 71. The episode was the basis of Kipling’s poem ‘Ford O’ Kabul River’.

  12 Quoted in Maud Diver, The Unsung: A Record of British Services in India (London: 1945), pp. 73-4.

  13 John Corneille, Journal of My Service in India (London: 1966), p. 152.

  14 Isabella Fane, Miss Fane in India (Gloucester: 1985), p. 79.

  15 Arthur Swinson and Donald Scott (eds), The Memoirs of Private Waterfield (London: 1968), p. 27.

  16 Osborne, Court and Camp, pp. 134-5.

  17 Russell, Mutiny Diary, p. 98.

  18 R. G. Wilberforce, An Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny (London: 1894), p. 22.

  19 Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi: Mutiny Memories of an Old Officer (London: 1984), p. 4.

  20 Callwell, Stray Recollections, I, pp. 83-4.

  21 Mrs Muter, My Recollections of the Sepoy Revolt (London: 1911), p. 198.

  22 Lieutenant Colonel R. G. Thomsett, With the Peshawar Column, Tirah Expeditionary Force (London: 1899), pp. 21-2.

  23 Major James Outram, Rough Notes of the Campaign in Sinde and Afghanistan in 1838-9 (London: 1840), p. 17.

  24 William Forbes-Mitchell, Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny (London: 1894), p. 85.

  25 Patrick MacRory (ed.), William Bryden’s Account (London: 1960), p. 161.

  26 Patrick MacRory (ed.), Lady Sale: The First Afghan War (London: 1969), p. 102.

  27 Revd Alfred Cave, ‘The Kandahar Letters of the Revd Alfred Cave’, in Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. 69, 1991, pp. 149-50.

  28 Sidney Toy, The Strongholds of India (London: 1957), pp. 1-2.

  29 Osborne, Court and Camp, p. 51.

  30 Jeremy Black, European Warfare 1660-1815 (London: 1994), pp. 1-2.

  31 John Keay, India: A History (London: 2000), p. 288.

  32 Second Panipat has much in common with an important battle in Japan at a similar time, Oda Nobugnada’s victory over the Takeda clan at Nagashino in 1575.

  33 Keay, India, p. 319.

  34 C. A. Bayley, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, (Cambridge: 1983), p. 123.

  35 Holman, Sikander Sahib, p. 31.

  36 Bayley, Rulers, Townsmen, p. 54.

  37 Bayley, Rulers, Townsmen, p. 30.

  38 G. W. Forrest (ed.), The Life of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain (London: 1909), p. 391.

  39 Quoted in Lunt (ed.), Sepoy to Subedar, p. 134, fn4.

  40 Lunt (ed.), Sepoy to Subedar, p. 134.

  41 Surendra Nath Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven (Delhi: 1957), p. 411.

  42 Moon, British Conquest, p. 5.

  43 Our Indian Empire (London: 1898), p. 74.

  44 The Company’s flag bore a remarkable resemblance to the Grand Union Flag flown in the early stages of the American Revolution, and may be the ancestor of the Stars and Stripes. See Sir Charles Fawcett, ‘The striped flag of the East India Company, and its connexion with the American “Stars and Stripes”’, in Mariners’ Mirror, Vol, XXIII, No. 4, October 1937.

  45 When the British arrived in India they first used the gold mohur, a major unit of currency of the Mughal empire, but gradually replaced it by the rupee, another Mughal coin, named after the Sanskrit rupya, wrought silver. It took many years for the rupee to become standardised in a land where measures and money were often local, and it was not until 1836 that ‘the Company’s rupee’ of 180 grs weight, 165 grs pure silver, became the legal currency throughout British India. Until then there had been several versions of the rupee, including its most valuable species, the sicca rupee. The rupee comprised 16 annas (giving rise to the ditty: ‘Sixteen annas – one rupee; seventeen annas – one buckshee’) and 64 copper pice. The latter coin was once known as a dam, and the expression ‘I don’t give a damn’ (used so memorably in Gone with the Wind) actually meant ‘I don’t give a brass farthing’. One hundred thousand rupees were a lakh and one hundred lakhs were a crore.

  46 Pace Yule and Burnell, who think a corruption of battalion rather more likely: I beg to differ.

  47 Quoted in Michael Edwardes, Plassey (London: 1963), p. 82.

  48 Quoted in Edwardes, Plassey, p. 144.

  49 Moon, British Conquest, p. 115.

  50 Quoted E. W. Shephard, Coote Bahadur (London: 1957), p. 77.

  51 Moon, British Conquest, p. 114.

  52 Corneille, Journal, p.55.

  53 Shephard, Coote, p. 28.

  54 Quoted in Philip Lawson, The East India Company (London: 1998), p. 120.

  55 Quoted in Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 611.

  56 Lawson, East India Company, pp. 121-2.

  57 Quoted in Moon, British Conquest, p. 270.

  58 Quoted in Moon, British Conquest, pp. 289-90.

  59 Emily Eden, Miss Eden’s Letters.

  60 Sir Vincent Eyre, The Kabul Insurrection (London: 1879), p. 261.

  61 Florentia, Lady Sale, A Journal of the First Afghan War (London: 1958), pp. 107-8.

  62 Eyre, Kabul Insurrection, p. 278.

  63 Eyre, Kabul Insurrection, p. 280.

  64 John Clark Marsham (ed.), The Memoirs of Major Ge
neral Sir Henry Havelock (London: 1967), p. 97.

  65 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, p. 102.

  66 Fortescue, History, XII, p. 271.

  67 Quoted in Lt Gen. S. L. Menezes, Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: 1999), p. 65.

  68 C. G. C. Stapylton, ‘The First Afghan War: An Ensign’s Account’, private collection.

  69 Quoted in Arthur Swinson, The North-West Frontier (London: 1967), p. 84.

  70 Fortescue, History, XII, p. 290.

  71 Quoted in Moon, British Conquest, p. 573.

  72 The four-volume biography of this remarkable man, W. F. P. Napier’s The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier (London: 1857), still repays reading.

  73 Osborne, Court and Camp, pp. 53-4.

  74 Osborne, Court and Camp, p. 147.

  75 Osborne, Court and Camp, p. 203.

  76 B. S. Singh (ed.), The Letters of the First Viscount Hardinge of Lahore (London: 1986), p. 64.

  77 Osborne, Court and Camp, p. 151.

  78 Several of these fine guns came to England after the Sikh Wars. Several survive in the Royal Artillery Historical Trust; there is one in the Royal Armouries’ artillery collection at Fort Nelson, Portsmouth; another in the Museum of the Royal West Kent Regiment (descendants of HM’s 50th) at Maidstone, and a final one is in the care of 3rd Battalion, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, at Canterbury. See Neil Carleton and Matthew Buck, ‘Guns of the Rajas: Indian Artillery from the Mughals to the Sikhs’, in journal of the Ordnance Society, Vol. XVI, 2004.

  79 Rait, Gough, II, p. 28.

  80 Quoted in Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, p. 63.

  81 Lunt (ed.), Sepoy to Subedar, p. 135.

  82 Quoted in Fortescue, History, XII, p. 368.

  83 Quoted in Moon, British Conquest, p. 598.

  84 C. G. Moore Smith (ed.), The Autobiography of Sir Harry Smith (London: 1901), II, p. 194.

  85 Quoted in Anglesey, British Cavalry, Vol. I, p. 263.

  86 Quoted in Moon, British Conquest, p. 606.