Victoria’s Scottish Lion
Page 67
38 Beames, 114.
39 Roberts, F., Forty-One Years in India, I, 478.
40 Hurd, 121.
41 London Gazette, 16 September 1859; Fortescue, XIII, 405.
42 Walrond, 325.
43 Allgood, China War, 5–9.
44 Verner, I, 238–9.
45 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/2426 and 2436.
46 Verner, I, 252, 250.
47 Allgood, China War, 12.
48 Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 256.
49 Wolseley, Narrative, 5.
50 Allgood, China War, 7, 27, 69, 71.
51 Hare, III, 143.
52 Walrond, 358.
53 Fortescue, XIII, 415.
54 PP.H/C. Correspondence respecting China, Vol.LXVI.205.
55 Loch, H., 164.
56 PP.H/C. Correspondence respecting China, Vol.LXVI.206.
57 Loch, H., 165, 166, 160.
58 Walrond, 365.
59 Leavenworth, 196; Loch, H., 168.
60 Allgood, China War, 59.
61 The Times, 6 January 1860.
62 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/2759.
63 Hare, III, 138.
64 Hansard/HL/Deb.10/8/60, Vol.160, cc.1087.
65 Lee-Warner, Memoirs, 228; The Times, 21 December 1860.
66 Ramsay, I, 294.
67 The Times, 28 July 1860.
68 Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 304.
69 Shadwell, II, 445.
70 London Gazette, 25 June 1861.
71 Shadwell, II, 449.
72 The Times, 27 September 1861.
73 Shadwell, II, 448.
74 Martin, R.M., The Indian Empire, 470.
75 Shadwell, II, 455.
76 Sterling, Correspondence.
77 Shadwell, II, 454.
78 RA/GEO/MAIN/49001-49002.
79 Low, II, 443.
80 The Times, 9 June 1863.
81 Shadwell, II, 47.
Appendix A
The extent of British casualties in the summer campaign of 1858 in India
The accusation from Fortescue, Kaye, Malleson, Roberts, Burne and their contemporaries was that after an initially brilliant campaign in India, Campbell failed to stamp out the rebels at Lucknow in March 1858. Burne costed Campbell’s failure as follows: 109 European officers and 8,878 rank and file dead from exposure and sickness,1 due to ‘delays in the operations’. Since these unnecessary deaths are regarded as the greatest black mark on his record, they are worth examining in detail. Below is a table showing the mortality figures (excluding sepoys, for whom no figures were kept) from the East India Company’s own archives.2 To put them in context, the death rate for hospitalised European soldiers in Bengal, from 1846 to 1854, was on average 6.38 per cent. The worst year was 1848–49 (the year of the Second Sikh War),3 when the rate reached 9.82 per cent, so the first point to make is that the rates during the mutiny were lower than the old peacetime rates. Secondly, Burne’s figures do not take into account, for want of a better phrase, ‘background mortality’, i.e. the percentage of troops who died simply from being posted to India, whether fighting or not – in other words, those who would have died anyway.
Year
Av. Strength
Deaths
Mortality (%)
1858
HM Forces
65,591
3,884
5.92
Europeans
16,180
694
4.29
1859
HM Forces
79,317
2,651
3.34
Europeans
17,868
638
3.57
1860
HM Forces
61,656
1,868
3.03
Europeans
16,183
516
3.19
1861
Combined Army
72,791
2,408
3.31
The average mortality rate for 1859–61, when barely any white troops were fighting, was 3.2 per cent for HM Forces and 3.36 per cent for Europeans. If we take these figures as ‘background mortality’, and take them off the figure for 1858, we get the following results for deaths due to campaigning, rather than simply sitting in barracks.
Year
Av. Strength
Deaths
Mortality (%)
1858
HM Forces
65,591
1,764
2.69
Europeans
16,180
150
0.93
Even this figure for HM Forces is inflated as an illustration of the costs of campaigning. It is noticeable that in 1859–60 HM Forces actually had a lower mortality rate than the Company’s white European troops, yet in 1858 it was considerably higher, even though a much higher proportion of Europeans were on campaign. The reason is that 1858 saw an unprecedentedly large influx of HM troops to India, unused to the climate and with no developed immunity to local disease. As Campbell reported to the Duke of Cambridge, ‘The Young Ones lately from England invariably throng the hospitals and cannot take care of themselves.’4 There is a strong argument, therefore, to say the mortality for HM Forces that year was uncharacteristically high. More typical for HM Forces, if properly acclimatised, was the figure for European troops. Substituting that figure, we get the following indication of how many deaths from sickness were due to campaigning and not just natural attrition in the tropics.
Year
Av. Strength
Deaths
Mortality (%)
1858
HM Forces
65,591
609
0.93
Europeans
16,180
150
0.93
This is a world apart from Roberts’s accusation of ‘the needless loss of thousands’. Roberts himself quotes a mortality rate in India of 6.9 per cent for European troops for the period 1800–57.5 Under Campbell it never got that high, even during the most extensive war ever fought by the British in India. And of course 0.93 per cent is the figure for the whole year, including Rose’s heavy losses, which would have been suffered whatever Campbell had done at Lucknow. The deaths incurred by Campbell in the four months after he took Lucknow and before he paused for the summer would be only a fraction of the above total. His despatches back this up. At Bareilly, the hottest day of the year, Campbell incurred only eight casualties due to sunstroke. Single-figure daily rates of death from sickness put a very different spin on the cost of Campbell’s decision to let the rebels flee Lucknow.
Notes
1 Burne, 181.
2 BL/IOR/L/MIL/5/677 (Loose leaf at rear).
3 Indian Annals of Medical Science, No. 8, 577.
4 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/1038.
5 Roberts, F., Forty-One Years in India, I, 5.
Appendix B
Campbell’s Ancestry
Colin Campbell
|
Agnes MacLiver (née Campbell)
|
Alice Campbell (1728–?)
|
Duncan Campbell, Laird of Sunderland (1684–?)
|
Archibald Campbell, Laird of Sunderland (1660–1718)
|
Alexander Campbell, Laird of Sunderland (?–1676)
|
Colin ‘Maciphryar’ Campbell, Laird of Sunderland (?–1663)
|
Alexander Campbell (1555-1628)
|
John Campbell (?–1585)
|
Sir John Campbell (?–1546)
|
Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll (?–1513)
|
Colin Campbell, Earl of Argyll (1433–93)
|
Marjory Campbell (née Stewart)
|
Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany (1340–1420)
|
Robert II, King of Scotland (1316–90)
|
>
Marjory Stewart (née Bruce, 1296–1316)
|
Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland (1274–1329)
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