Victoria’s Scottish Lion
Page 64
209 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/1038.
210 Robson, 288.
211 Stokes, The Peasant Armed, 45–6.
212 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/1038.
213 Birmingham Daily Post, 6 September 1858.
214 Hare, II, 467.
215 Amin - www.defencejournal.com 2/2000.
216 Birmingham Daily Post, 6 September 1858.
217 Bombay Times, 10 February 1858.
218 The Times, 5–6 August 1858.
219 Duff, 258.
220 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 135.
221 NAM 1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
222 Seaton, T., II, 296.
223 Shadwell, II, 481.
224 Glasgow Herald, 18 August 1858.
225 Havelock, 112.
226 Fortescue, XIII, 398.
227 Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 230.
228 Havelock, 166, 161.
229 Fortescue, XIII, 388.
230 Innes, 289.
231 NAM/1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
232 PP.H/C.East India, 1857-58, Vol.XLII.653.
233 Shadwell, II, 298.
234 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/1038.
235 Shadwell, II, 273.
236 Williams, E.A., Cruise, 217.
237 NAM/1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
238 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 525.
239 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 528.
240 Campbell, G., Memoirs, II, 27.
241 Shadwell, II, 318.
242 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 218–20.
243 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 266.
244 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 237–8.
245 Gordon-Alexander, 345.
246 NAM/1995-11-296 (VPP-Part).
247 Bombay Times, 4 December 1858.
248 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 227.
249 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 242.
250 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 261–2.
251 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 271.
252 Lee-Warner, Memoirs, 217.
253 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 276.
254 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 570.
255 Hare, II, 481.
256 Innes, 307.
12
Old Soldier
* * *
‘Need we say that the responsibility of British statesmen and of the British nation is most solemn? In two or three centuries a larger population than exists in the whole of Europe will curse or bless us according as we have given a bias of good or evil to their infant institutions’
Anthropological Review (1863)
* * *
Having contracted mild pleuropneumonia as a complication of his riding accident, on 1 March Campbell left for Simla to recuperate at the commander-in-chief’s official residence, the Surrey-styled ‘Barnes Court’. As so often in the past, he talked of retirement, although not as regretfully as before. On 14 March, he informed the viceroy of his intention to resign at the beginning of 1860. The mutiny was almost at an end. ‘I think we may assume we are dealing with the last embers of the late almost universal conflagration’, Campbell told the Duke of Cambridge. ‘The most obstinate of the rebel chiefs are giving themselves up in all parts.’1 Tantia Topee was captured on 8 April 1859, court-martialled and hanged.* The Nana Sahib remained at large to become the moustache-twirling fugitive of adventure novels and children’s nightmares. The Begum of Oudh wisely stayed in Nepal. As for the rest, the British were in magnanimous mood. ‘If Beni Madho comes in tomorrow, I suppose we could not do more to him than we had done, i.e. confiscate his territory’, wrote one civil servant.
Canning announced the official end of the rebellion on 8 July 1859. A special campaign medal was struck, with clasps for ‘Delhi’, ‘Central India’, ‘Defence of Lucknow’ (June to November), ‘Relief of Lucknow’ (November) and simply ‘Lucknow’ for the final assault. ‘History does not furnish a more valuable exhibition of heroical resistance to many adverse circumstances than was shown by the British troops during these mutinies’, wrote Campbell. ‘The memory of their constancy and daring will never die out in India and the natives must feel that while Britain contains such sons, the rule of the British sovereign must last undisputed.’2
Even while writing them, Campbell must have doubted those words. Before the sepoy mutiny was over, another threatened in the Company’s all-white, European regiments. Upon hearing the Queen’s Proclamation in November 1858, the men of the 4th European Light Cavalry had protested the precipitate transfer of their service to the Crown. When they enlisted to fight for the Company they had been rewarded with a bounty. If Queen Victoria now wanted them to fight for her, the British government would need to offer a fresh bounty. ‘This is a very ticklish question,’ Campbell had told the viceroy, ‘as the idea will probably run through all the European regiments … I am surprised that the point should have escaped attention at home … There would be great awkwardness, if not indeed calamity, if any serious misunderstanding should arise.’3 ‘They have never done a day’s service, were enlisted in the last months of the Company’s rule, and are still such raw soldiers that I believe they think of this as a Manchester strike rather than an offence against military law’, Lady Canning complained. ‘But it might become serious if the Sikhs and natives began to see disunion amongst our troops.’4 ‘I could scarcely exaggerate the apprehension with which I should see any ground laid for a suspicion amongst the Sikhs that misunderstanding had arisen between us and our English troops’,5 Canning warned Lord Stanley.**
The Indian government argued that Company troops implicitly agreed to serve the queen as the ultimate authority over the Company. Moreover, every recruit swore an oath to Queen and Company, so the complaint was a pedantic one. Then again, it was standard British practice to offer soldiers a bounty to encourage them to transfer to depleted regiments. When, as Private Metcalfe recorded, the 32nd Foot was ‘broken up to give volunteers for those regiments remaining in India’, every volunteer ‘got a bounty of 30 rupees’.6 There was also a sense that the troops were being taken for granted. Campbell warned Cambridge that the private soldier ‘may say, and I rather suspect he does, that it is very strange that a Man cannot be transferred from one Regiment to another without his consent, whereas his oath of attestation can be set aside when it involves change of Service altogether’. Cambridge agreed that ‘even if the law is not doubtful, still the equity of the view taken is extremely so’, and that ‘any want of discipline consequent on these doubts in the minds of the men would, in my humble opinion, be a very grave evil in our present unsettled rule in the East’.7
Within days, men from another of the Company’s European regiments, the 1st Madras Fusiliers, upped the stakes by demanding to be discharged, claiming they had no obligation to serve the Crown. Unlike the 4th European Light Cavalry, the Fusiliers were an old and respected corps, first raised in 1742 (see Plate 36). They also had the sanction of the previous prime minister. In February 1858, Palmerston stated that European regiments ‘will be transferred to the Crown from the service of the Company, subject to the same conditions of service as those under which they were enlisted, and if they dislike that change I think in common justice, they will be entitled to their discharge’.8
Campbell advised meeting their demands in full, and offering discharge or re-enlistment with a bounty. Canning countered that the government of India did not have the power to discharge men, or to set itself above English law.9 Behind this contention lay the fear that if the government surrendered the principle with regard to European regiments, it would have to offer 200,000 sepoys a bounty or discharge as well. Canning did at least agree to refer the matter back to London, hoping, no doubt, that by the time Stanley replied, the men would have forgotten their grievances.
Although the protests soon petered out, resentment remained. ‘Though there is no official demonstration, it is evident an under-current is still at work in some of the corps,’ Campbell warned the duke that December, ‘as evidenced by letters appearing from time to time in the local In
dian papers.’10 ‘Your Royal Highness knows the English soldier well, how he hangs his military existence on his attestation and how tenacious he is of the terms of the bond of his enlistment’, wrote Campbell. He feared that if the matter was tested by court martial, ‘it is not impossible that they might judge differently from the lawyers’.11
Regardless of Campbell’s concerns, the government in London was unyielding. ‘In curt terms, without a word of praise or softening’, Lord Stanley refused all concessions. On 8 April 1859, by General Order no. 480, it was confirmed that no bounty would be paid to European troops on their transfer to the queen’s army, and that no discharge was to be offered. After smouldering for a month, the troops’ resentment boiled over, in Meerut of all places. The first reports of discontent reached Campbell at Simla on 3 May. ‘A secret meeting took place at night of 400 men of the artillery and 2nd Cavalry’, wrote Norman:
This was discovered and at muster parade a considerable number of artillerymen and nearly every man of the 2nd Cavalry declared that they would not serve the Queen. The fact is they do not like being ‘turned over like sheep’. Some of the men are known to have threatened to burn the barracks, seize the guns, etc … The slightest collision might have led to bloodshed, which would doubtless have been followed by a rising of the natives.12
‘I left Simla for Kussowlie a few hours after the receipt of General Bradford’s first message,’ reported Campbell, ‘that I might at once have command of the wire, and be in readiness to proceed to Meerut if it should be necessary.’13 ‘We might see all our work of last year undone in an instant, under very much worse circumstances than before.’14 His first impulse was to head for Meerut but, like Napier in 1849, he realised his presence would imbue the matter with more importance than it deserved. As a precaution, the embarkation of queen’s infantry from Bombay was cancelled.
On 5 May, in a confusing cable, the viceroy reiterated that no concessions regarding bounty or discharge were to be offered. Nevertheless, he stipulated to Campbell that ‘if collision can be warded off by giving discharges to some of the least guilty, this may be done’. He finished by stressing that this was just his opinion, and Campbell should not feel bound by it, thus neatly washing his hands of responsibility for the consequences.15
Campbell immediately assembled a Board of Inquiry in Meerut under the Judge Advocate-General, to give every man the chance to ‘petition against what they conceive to be a hardship, in a soldier-like and regular manner’. The enquiry found a much wider problem than feared. Over the next twenty-eight days it heard the testimony of 770 men.16 It was clear that discontent had ‘spread to nearly every station in Bengal … in Lahore, Umballa, Meerut, Lucknow, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Berhampore, Agra and Gwalior’, as Campbell informed Cambridge:
Luckily the disclosures at Meerut were in time to prevent overt crime … We shall, I hope, be saved the disgrace and calamity of having to act against British soldiers. What threatened to be dangerous armed resistance has, I trust, been changed into a statement of grievances, sullen perhaps, but nevertheless legal and one with which we are able to deal.
The board also uncovered the ‘passive participation of the non-commissioned officers and so-called good men of the Bengal Artillery’. Campbell warned the viceroy:
It is impossible to over-estimate the gravity of this circumstance … A most mutinous and unlawful combination to intimidate the Government has been general throughout the service, which seems to have been arranged with singular care and forethought, and could not have been managed in a few days, or even a few weeks. A ‘general strike’, as the men call it, was arranged and determined on.
Campbell ordered boards of inquiry wherever discontent was apparent, but it failed to draw the poison. Although ‘the excitement of the Bengal Army has been allayed for the time being by the opportunity afforded the men of stating their grievances’, wrote Campbell. ‘The 3rd Madras European regiment at Jubblepore, the 1st Bengal Fusiliers at Dughsia, the 6th Bengal European Regiment at Huzarreebagh, the 3rd do. at Gwalior, the 5th do. at Berhampore, have all spoken out.’17 In Bangalore on 24 May, during a parade for the queen’s birthday, the Madras Fusiliers pointedly failed to join in the cheering. ‘They were Englishmen, but had been transferred like guns and bullocks to the queen, and they might be transferred again to the Americans tomorrow’, protested their commanding officer. ‘They were no longer men but cattle or goods transferable without their consent obtained, or even asked for, from one party to another.’18
The troops were encouraged by strong press support. ‘There is hardly a newspaper in the country which is not calling on them to agitate’, Mansfield told the Under-Secretary of State for War. ‘The small Press of India is little else than an organ of the various services, by the subscriptions of which it is altogether maintained.’ Despite his distaste for the media, Mansfield was broadly sympathetic to the grievances aired:
The truth is that the uncertainty of the last two years, in which the officers of the Bengal army have been placed, is too much for any man … Every man feels himself to be absolutely powerless, to be the victim of a Legislature which attacks his career vitally; in short that he is the victim of a revolution, as one of a class which, like the Red Indians of North America, is in the course of being improved off the face of the earth.19
Unsettled by the breadth and passion of the protest, Canning agreed to offer an immediate discharge and free passage home for the Europeans, but drew the line at a bounty. Though they could not re-enlist in India, they were free to join the queen’s army once they had returned to Britain, at which point they would receive a new bounty anyway, all of which rather robbed the scheme of credibility. ‘The Government could have been liberal and have given the bounty’, complained one officer:
If this had been done no agitation would have taken place and scarcely a man would have thought of wishing for his discharge, whereas now hundreds of men jumped at the chance of getting to England, though almost every man of them will enlist again before six months are over.20
According to Russell, it was the sepoys who had left them disenchanted. ‘One great and distressing result of the violent shock which the mutiny has given to the whole of the social relations of India, is a deep dislike to the country and to its inhabitants,’ he explained, ‘which is evinced by the constant cry for “Home!”’21 ‘It now appears that the Cavalry will go en masse’, reported Campbell. ‘Of the old Regiments of Infantry, at least one half will go, and possibly even more. Of the new ones, I have as yet no reports, but it may, I imagine, be assumed that the bulk will take their departure.’22 In the event, 10,116 of around 15,000 ex-Company European troops left India. After the taxpayer had spent £250,000 transporting them home, 2,809 re-enlisted in Britain, often in regiments which were subsequently posted to India; this at a time when Canning was pushing for an increase in the number of European regiments overall.23
‘India will not suffer’, declared Campbell. For him it was a good riddance. ‘Officers who have been brought up with Sepoy Regiments are incompetent from their previous military education and habits to organise young British Battalions or Cavalry Regiments’, he insisted. The government’s intention had been to keep the company’s European regiments as a special ‘local corps’, but for Campbell they were now pariahs. ‘It is clear, from what we have now seen, that it is absolutely necessary not to trust to Local Corps’, he told Cambridge:
We now know that [the] misconduct about to take place had been the subject of conversation in the Barracks at different times at various stations weeks before the first demonstration took place. Yet no Non-Commissioned Officer, no Sergeant, Corporal or Bombardier came forward to warn his officers in the old Regiment of the Bengal artillery at Meerut.24
‘In my own mind I must accuse the old soldiers of the Bengal Artillery* of having been the prime movers in all this bad business’, wrote an embittered Campbell. ‘I can never forget the utter absence of information, the manner in which the officers have been hoodw
inked, and how the non-commissioned officers have held aloof, giving no warning, uttering no hint, which might prepare their officers for what was impending.’ ‘Whatever may be done, the recollection of this strike or mutiny will never die out in the local Indian army’, he told the viceroy. ‘I am therefore irresistibly led to the conclusion that henceforth it will be dangerous to the state to maintain a European local army.’25 Instead, he advised that they should become fully-fledged, British army regiments, serving in India on rotation, to instil ‘a discipline which is constantly renovated by a return to England’. ‘I believe that, after this most recent experience, it will be unsafe to have any European forces which do not undergo the regular process of relief, and that this consideration must be paramount’, he explained to Canning.26 After much discussion, in May 1860 the British government agreed: the Company’s old European regiments had to go. The gunners and sappers were absorbed into the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, three of the cavalry regiments became the 19th, 20th and 21st Light Dragoons, and the oldest three European regiments from each presidency were made British regiments of the line (numbered 101st–109th).
The greater challenge was reorganising the sepoy regiments. Their allegiance might have changed from Company to Queen, but they were still a separate corps from the British army and accountable first to the government in Calcutta. As early as October 1857 the Duke of Cambridge had insisted that ‘two armies cannot co-exist as they are at present in India without serious injury to the State’.27 ‘The whole Army of India, both European and Native, should be a Royal Army, though distinct in many respects, and of course, the Native portion on the footing of a Colonial Army,’ argued the duke. ‘It is most important that the C-in-C should on military matters report directly home, and not be the servant of the Governor-Generals.’28