Victoria’s Scottish Lion
Page 22
Campbell left Chusan proud of his term as governor. ‘Altogether I have every reason to be grateful to God for sending me to a situation wherein I was enabled to accomplish so much for my own benefit and that of the comfort of others’, he wrote on his last day.143 In British eyes, Campbell’s tenure had been a resounding success. ‘We continued on the best possible terms with the people’, noted one traveller writing to The Times. ‘No community could be more peaceable than that of Chusan, and nowhere could life and property be more secure.’144 The Chinese were likewise free with their compliments. ‘You behaved with the utmost kindness and the greatest liberality towards our own people, and restrained by laws and regulations the military of your honourable country’,145 enthused Campbell’s official testimonial. That may have been mere diplomatic flim-flam. George Smith was more struck by ‘the absence of any marked feelings of regret on the part of the inhabitants generally at their return to Chinese rule and the positive joy at the prospect cherished by large numbers’.146
Notes
* The ritual of kneeling three times with nine prostrations, bowing so low that your nose brushes the floor.
* Punch was rather radical in the early 1840s and not the droll parlour periodical it later became.
** Six women per 100 soldiers were allowed on garrison duty abroad, twelve to India or New South Wales, but none on active field service. Evidently Campbell turned a blind eye on this occasion (PP/King’s Regulations, 409).
*** Usually the lowest deck in a ship, often below the water line.
**** Saltoun’s letters reveal a man of conviviality and charm when addressing his social equals. He was a proven fighter – at Eton he had beaten the bareknuckle champion of the Windsor bargees (Fraser, A., I, 227) – and had shown himself a dogged officer in the Peninsular War, but he had seen no action since Waterloo.
* The Apollo, a 38-gun ship launched in the same year as the Battle of Trafalgar, was one of the navy’s oldest. The Sapphire was 14 years old with twenty-eight guns. The two ships carried the half-company of artillery considered too much for the Belleisle, plus detachments of the 26th, 49th and 55th Foot (Shadwell, I, 114).
** It was not unknown for men to be keelhauled as a bit of fun (Rees, 143). Occasionally victims got their own back. Henry Coleridge, on a merchant ship heading to the West Indies in 1825, having been soaked with buckets of water thrown from the rigging, forced to drink salt water, ducked in a water bath and finally assaulted by a crewman dressed as a bear, lost his temper, thrashed out, winded the bear, knocked down the barber and escaped to his cabin. Crews were so keen to do a ‘crossing the line’ ceremony that they would often perform it, as in Coleridge’s case, when they crossed the Tropic of Cancer (Coleridge, 42). In some RN vessels, officers got off more lightly by tipping Neptune half a gallon of rum (Cree, 39).
* Singapore had only been founded as a British colony in 1819.
* The matchlock worked in a similar way to a flintlock, but instead of igniting the powder in the pan with a flint sparking off the frizzen, it used a slow match held in a small clamp.
** Saltoun was plagued for years by his guitar bridge and in May 1843 complained that it had fallen off again (Fraser, A., III, 193). It became such an obsession that when he was ordered north, his main concern was that the cooler climate might finally allow the glue to set. See also Verney, G., 26.
* Gough’s plan contradicts the common view of him as a general who only understood simple, frontal attacks and had no tactical imagination.
** Chinkiangfoo’s governor, Haelin, had refused Liu’s troops entry to the town, so the fact that they had eaten very little for the last five days may have been a factor (Waley, 205).
* Some had been killed before the battle as suspected spies (Lovell, 216). Many Tartar soldiers murdered their own families once they realised the city was lost.
** Here, in a temple Hope Grant stumbled upon the dead body of a young Chinese girl with ‘the wonderfully small deformed feet common among the women of this country’. He pointed them out to the doctor from the Belleisle, who, ‘to my great horror cut off these tiny feet and preserved them in his private collection’ (Cunynghame, 100–1; Knollys, 27).
*** Captain Hall remarked, ‘this must be a regular Chinese gallop and not exactly that of an English hunter’ (Hall, W.H., 368).
* This famous image of the signing of the treaty shows more than fifty officers and dignitaries in a vast room on the Cornwallis at an impossible perspective. Saltoun said that only Chinese officials and Pottinger were present. Parkes describes only a few people in attendance. However, when Chinese officials were received on the 20th on board the Cornwallis, ‘an immense number of officers were assembled there, all in their full-dress uniform’, suggesting that Platt conflated the two events (Lane-Poole, 28).
* The Order of the Bath (originally an order of chivalry) had, under George IV, become a recognition of gallantry or military success. Companion was the lowest class. There were only six aides-de-camp to the sovereign and the post was ‘a highly honourable distinction and is rarely conferred but for services in the field’. The holder was given the rank of colonel in the army. Campbell’s stipend as ADC to the queen and colonel was 10s 5d per day (Stocqueler, 32–3).
* See note on local rank on p. 15.
* Campbell stopped the practice of defendants openly offering bribes to witnesses or magistrates (Smith, 274).
** District or quarter, often with some defensive structure, for British soldiers.
* It is surprising that Shadwell included these passages. Campbell’s depression was deeply un-Victorian, and Shadwell’s excerpts may have been merely a taste. As the journals are lost, one cannot be sure.
1 Collis, 187.
2 Warren, 1.
3 Kuo, 147.
4 Rait, I, 164.
5 Fortescue, XII, 310–11.
6 Baker, 91.
7 Rait, I, 204.
8 Kuo, 157.
9 Punch (1842), III, 126.
10 BL/Add.Ms.54514 14 December 1841; Shadwell, I, 114.
11 Knollys, I, 12.
12 Cunynghame, 3.
13 Fraser, A., III, 84.
14 Fraser, A., III, 93.
15 Jeans, 99.
16 Bell, G., 202–3.
17 Fraser, A., III, 92.
18 Cunynghame, 11.
19 Fraser, A., III, 100.
20 Cunynghame, 28.
21 Knollys, I, 15.
22 Cunynghame, 36–7.
23 Cunynghame, 39–41.
24 Fraser, A., III, 106.
25 Shadwell, I, 114.
26 Fraser, A., III, 93.
27 PRO/ADM51/3562 and 53/237.
28 Ouchterlony, 24.
29 Baker, 67.
30 Baker, 96; Collis, 163–4.
31 Mountain, 194.
32 NLS/MS.2257/318.
33 Costin, 100.
34 Punch (1841), I, 74.
35 Inglis, B., 162.
36 Baker, 111.
37 PRO/ADM51/3562 and 53/237.
38 Fraser, A.,III, 113.
39 Fraser, A.,III, 106–7.
40 Fraser, A.,I, 293; PRO/ADM51/3562 and 53/237.
41 Shadwell, I, 116.
42 London Gazette, 24 November 1842. Major Anstruther had a copy of an old French Jesuit map. See Loch, G., 54; Fraser, A.,III, 117.
43 Fortescue, XII, 319.
44 Fraser, A.,III, 121–2.
45 London Gazette, 24 November 1842; Ouchterlony, 337.
46 Waley, 205.
47 London Gazette, 24 November 1842.
48 PRO/ADM51/3562 and 53/237.
49 Cunynghame, 95–6.
50 Knollys, I, 20.
51 Ouchterlony, 356.
52 Cunynghame, 96.
53 Fraser, A., III, 125–6.
54 Knollys, I, 22.
55 Cunynghame, 97–9.
56 Ouchterlony, 363.
57 Bernard, II, 405.
58 London Gazette, 24 November 1842; Rait, I, 274–5.
> 59 Rait, I, 275.
60 Kuo, 161.
61 Bernard, II, 417; Murray, A., 181.
62 Shadwell, I, 117.
63 Cook, 37.
64 China Dragon (Regimental Magazine of the 98th Foot), October 1904.
65 Hall, W.H., 365; Rait, I, 277.
66 PRO/ADM51/3562 and 53/237; Cunynghame, 168; Shadwell, I, 118.
67 Bernard, II, 417.
68 Fraser, A.,III, 130.
69 Hall, W.H., 367.
70 Rait, I, 278.
71 Fraser, A., III, 129.
72 Backhouse and Bland, 401.
73 Rait, I, 281.
74 Fraser, A.,III, 155.
75 Kuo, 162.
76 Punch (1842), III, 238.
77 Murray, A., 214.
78 Baker, 96.
79 Fraser, A.,III, 127.
80 Knollys, I, 36.
81 Fraser, A.,III, 136.
82 Murray, A., 211.
83 Cunynghame, 154; PRO/ADM51/3562 and 53/237.
84 Bernard, II, 462.
85 Shadwell, II, 387.
86 Fraser, A.,III, 138.
87 Bernard, II, 465; Hall, W.H., 375; Cunynghame, 170.
88 Fraser, A.,III, 141.
89 PRO/ADM51/3562 and 53/237.
90 Shadwell, I, 112.
91 Sirr, 15.
92 PP/Report on System of Purchase, 196.
93 Sayer, 128.
94 Fraser, A., III, 153–4.
95 Shadwell, I, 119–20.
96 Sayer, 128.
97 Fraser, A.,III, 160.
98 Endacott, 100; Cunynghame, 229–30; Fraser, A.,III, 147.
99 Cunynghame, 228; Northern Star, 14 January 1843.
100 Cunynghame, 226.
101 Eitel, 203.
102 Martin, R.M., The British Position, 13.
103 Endacott, 96.
104 Shadwell, I, 122.
105 Fraser, A.,III, 190.
106 PRO/ADM51/3562 and 53/237.
107 Cunynghame, 229.
108 Martin, R.M., The British Position, 7.
109 Chesney, 380.
110 Chinese Repository, XIV/295.
111 Urmston, 21; Eitel, 204.
112 Michie, I, 273.
113 Martin, R.M., The British Position, 7.
114 Chesney, 382.
115 Urmston, 20.
116 Shadwell, I, 125–6.
117 Martin, R.M., The British Position, 37.
118 Cunynghame, 196–7.
119 Fraser, A.,III, 144.
120 Martin, R.M., The British Position, 42–3.
121 Smith, G., 262.
122 Urmston, 21.
123 Fairbank, I, 169.
124 Shadwell, I, 133.
125 Smith, 261, 272.
126 Martin, R.M., The British Position, 37.
127 Martin, R.M., The British Position, 9–10.
128 China Dragon, October 1904.
129 Shadwell, I, 127.
130 Macpherson, 50.
131 Shadwell, I, 128.
132 Chesney, 382.
133 Smith, 256, 272–3.
134 Shadwell, I, 129–30.
135 Healy, 53.
136 Shadwell, I, 132–4.
137 Davis, II, 143.
138 Fieldhouse, 251.
139 Shadwell, I, 137.
140 Smith, 317–18, 273.
141 Shadwell, I, 137.
142 Davis, II, 146.
143 Shadwell, I, 140.
144 Martin, R.M., The British Position, 63.
145 Shadwell, I, 138.
146 Smith, 278.
5
Mutiny Apprenticeship
* * *
‘There never was a country … in which the government of foreigners is really popular. It will be the end of our empire when we forget this elementary fact, and entrust the greater executive powers to the hands of Natives, on the assumption that they will always be faithful and strong supporters of government’
Sir John Strachey
* * *
Of all British colonial possessions, India was pre-eminent, the keystone of empire. Consequently, though India was administered by the East India Company, the British government kept a finger on the wheel through its own dedicated cabinet minister: the President of the Indian Board of Control. It also preselected India’s governor-general, the Company’s chief executive and grand vizier.
The governor-general’s domain stretched across three ‘presidencies’, Madras, Bombay and Bengal, the last, with Calcutta as its capital, being paramount. To secure its territories, the East India Company retained its own massive private army, reinforced by British regiments like the 98th Foot. This portmanteau force marched on the orders of India’s commander-in-chief, under the governor-general’s guidance. Divisional officers were drawn from both armies. In manner and dress the Indian Army resembled its crown counterpart but in polite society there was a lingering prejudice that it was not entirely pukka, a poor relation fit only for arrivistes and second-raters.
While the Company’s commissioned officers were exclusively European, the army’s rank and file, the sepoys, were recruited from the natives. It was on these sepoys that the Company’s rule rested. Like the rest of the empire, white power in India was pure masquerade. As governor-general Lord Hardinge admitted, ‘The extraordinary fact is felt every day and every hour that these ferocious men submit themselves to us, and, if each black man took up his handful of sand and by a united effort cast it upon the white-faced intruders, we should be buried alive!’1 So, to keep an eye on the sepoys, the Company maintained a few European regiments as well.*
British India was not one bloc, but a hotch-potch of realms. At one extreme were provinces under direct British rule, acquired piecemeal as the Company’s influence grew, as well as those ostensibly under the thumb of local rajahs, but in practice lorded over by British agents. At the other were foreign enclaves left to their own devices, like Portuguese Goa, and independent states like Oudh, governed, and often tyrannised, by native kings and maharajahs of ancient lineage, bound in treaty with the Company.
Starting as a guild of merchant adventurers in the late sixteenth century, the East India Company had been doggedly pragmatic, seeking profit not territory, but from the eighteenth century it had gradually acquired estates by treaty or conquest. ‘Corrupt or warlike Indian potentates on the fringes of British territory would threaten trade or order’, as Barnett put it. ‘The British would therefore take military action against the potentates. This would lead to a further extension of British rule, and by thus bringing the British up against another set of native potentates, the forward process would begin all over again.’2
Since Waterloo, the Company’s empire had expanded on all fronts. Ceylon had been formally annexed during the last days of Napoleon’s rule. The Nepalis’ defeat in 1815–16 cost them two provinces. Conflict in 1817–19 extended British India north-west to the Sutlej River, and war in 1824 resulted in new Burmese territories. Campbell’s old boss Charles Napier had done his bit to broaden the Company’s portfolio. Ordered into Scinde with a detachment of 3,000 men to deal with certain restless amirs,** he returned in 1843 having appropriated the entire region.*** Most recently of all, after beating the Sikhs in 1846, the British had annexed parts of the Punjab. The one exception to this imperial crescendo was Afghanistan. Here British attempts in 1839 to install their own chosen ruler ended in the most devastating retreat in British military history thus far.
The cost of garrisoning all this territory was biting deep into company profits. Conquest was not the long-term policy either of the East India Company or of the home government. Both saw expansion as ruinously expensive. At the same time, ideological pressure to enlarge the empire was flagging. Its original mercantilist raison d’être had been undermined by the rise of free trade and, in any case, British traders seemed to be doing very well in China and South America from the scantiest of outposts. But, as Napier had proved, one needed neither vast legions nor official sanction to be an empi
re builder. By the time Campbell arrived in late 1846, India was full of Britons, all of whom, given half a chance, would stride forth manfully to plant the flag on foreign soil and perform Deeds Which Won the Empire. As explorer Sir Richard Burton remarked of his own regiment, ‘There was not a subaltern in the 18th who did not consider himself capable of governing a million Hindus.’3
India’s allure was also financial. The Company offered British officers generous salaries for a range of additional official duties. No sooner had he reached Calcutta on 24 October 1846, than Campbell handed the day-to-day running of the 98th to Lieutenant-Colonel Gregory and accepted the post of Commandant of Fort William, the grey citadel clinging like a giant stone limpet to the banks of the Hooglie. If Campbell hoped for some convalescence for the 98th, he found India scarcely less noxious than China. Between 1815 and 1855 around 100,000 British soldiers died in India from causes other than combat, the vast majority from disease.4 Fort William was the hub of formal British military power in India, but it was ‘about the worst station in India for Europeans – especially for new comers’.5 The sight of corpses floating downstream outside the walls was depressingly common. ‘The men were crowded into small, badly-ventilated buildings, and the sanitary arrangements were as deplorable as the state of the water supply’, explained Field Marshal Lord Roberts. ‘The inevitable result of this state of affairs was endemic sickness, and a death-rate of over ten percent per annum.’6
Fortunately for Campbell, his stay was fleeting. The 98th were soon ordered to Dinapore to relieve the 9th Foot. Having impressed Hardinge as ‘the best officer of Her Majesty in Bengal’,7 Campbell was offered promotion to brigadier of the second class* in the Jullundur Doab, a newly annexed Punjabi territory. ‘This is very flattering’, he wrote, ‘but I would prefer remaining with my regiment, because, by the time I am determined to get home, I should be a richer man than if I were to go as a general officer to the Punjab.’8
Nevertheless, by the time he arrived in Dinapore, Campbell had accepted command of the infinitely more demanding garrison at Lahore, capital of the Punjab. Campbell could have chosen one of dozens of sleepy little cantonments offering an agreeable stipend where he could while away the years before his much-vaunted retirement. Hardinge must have caught him in one of those exuberant, contra mundum moods in which no challenge seemed too great, for Lahore was the most unstable, exotic and scandalous city in India.