The ladies withdrew to tea and scandal while the gentlemen shifted to the end of the table where the decanters were placed, their diet being of port and rumour.
“What was this business with this fellow Sawbridge, Major Pearce?”
“I am not entirely certain, sir. I was not wholly sure that I wanted to discover the ins and outs of the affair, but I do know that he behaved in a way that I would never expect of a gentleman born. I do not know of his family, Mr Carruthers?”
“Neither do I, sir, it is not a name known to me.”
“The father is a High Court Judge, sir,” Colonel Horncastle interposed. “Of the mother, I know nothing, but I believe a grandfather to be the second son of an Irish baron. Not outstanding in any way, but genteel, or sufficiently so that I could not argue when the commission was purchased.”
They accepted that he should have qualified as an officer and a gentleman.
“What becomes of him now, Colonel Horncastle?”
It was rare for an officer to be formally broken and there was a genuine curiosity.
“I do not know, sir. I have never in my career come across such a case. He may return to England, though I cannot imagine that his family will recognise him if he does! He had a private income, an allowance, but whether he will keep that, I cannot tell. Perhaps he might take himself to the Americas – many of the disgraced flee there, I am told, and sometimes make a new life for themselves. Possibly he will remain at the Cape. More likely he will make an end to himself, I fear – he was in a sad case when he was bundled aboard his ship, or so I am informed.”
There was a general agreement that the last eventuality was likely; some wondered why he had not been given a pistol before his trial was convened.
Septimus took it on himself to answer, said that it would have been an honourable way out, and he had not felt that the man had deserved such.
“The men of the regiment, sir, have the right to know that there is no escape from justice for a so-called gentleman who lowers himself to such an extent.”
There were a few raised eyebrows and an acceptance that the young major was a man of the most rigidly unforgiving standards. There were worse sins, in their opinion.
“You are to march after the Monsoon, Colonel Horncastle? I understand that there is to be an expansion of the Company’s rule across the richer lands of the sub-continent.”
“I believe we are to join the forces being assembled, Mr Carruthers. The intention, I understand, is to bring an end to French influence by subduing every state they have chosen to subvert. There is a substantial siege train assembled now, I understand, and the expectation is that the major fortresses will all be reduced.”
“Making an end to them, this time, Colonel Horncastle. Defeat in the field to be followed by the taking of every city and bringing them into our direct control. An excellent aim and one that has been urged upon the King’s forces for some few years.”
There was a long-standing tension between the Company’s forces and the Royal battalions. The three Company armies believed that the King’s regiments sneered at them and ignored their local knowledge and skills; the King’s soldiers were sure that the Company’s directors wanted them to die in battle in order to increase their profits. To a great extent the conflict was expressed as between ‘gentlemen’ and ‘shopkeepers’ and was often wholly irrational in its partisanship and bad temper.
Colonel Horncastle was aware of the undertones to Carruthers comment and was in receipt of the strictest of instructions to do and say nothing that might add fuel to the fire. The battalions in Bombay expected to spend the Wet months in preparation for the campaigning season; they would wish to buy or conscript the services of ox-carts and elephants and drivers for their baggage trains and hoped to re-equip themselves to an extent with uniform accoutrements purchased locally at not too high a price. Many of the men carried old muskets, still serviceable but better replaced by new, unworn pieces. The Company’s arsenal and contractors produced all of their firearms in country and could, if they wished, be cooperative to the needs of the King’s men.
“I understand, Mr Carruthers, that there have been long conferences in all three Presidencies that have led to the creation of the current plan of campaign. The Governor-General has certainly stated his wish to create a stable and peaceful condition in India, all of its forces working together to achieve that end. I am told that there have been past difficulties in cooperation between the military commanders, and that these are to be brought to an end.”
“The Wellesleys are to listen to the local men, you say, sir?”
“The Governor-General has not vouchsafed his intentions to me, sir, but from all I have been told by my masters then that is to a great extent the case. Colonel Wellesley is to play a leading part in the campaigns, I understand, and he, of course, has shown skills in the field which have included the ability and desire to bring his people together.”
The young brother of the Governor-General was not universally popular in India. The Company armies promoted their officers by seniority and were suspicious of both purchase and merit as a means of assigning rank in the field. Colonel Wellesley had been bought his steps in rank at a very early age and had been made up to Brigadier young. The Company’s senior people expected grey hair from its general officers and could hardly be reconciled to the upstart boy – who was, after all, Irish by extraction and habit and tended to bustle about his business and was a lady’s man besides.
“Well, let us trust they know their business, Colonel Horncastle. The Marathas can put huge armies into the field, and the French have been training them, I believe. Certainly their fortresses have benefitted from French engineers in their construction.”
Horncastle ventured to suggest that every wall could be breached, sooner or later, and that the contest then came down to the merits of the men involved. He ventured to suggest that he would back his English soldiers against any number of foreigners, be they French-trained or otherwise.
The decanters had been circulating busily by that time and the appeal to Jingo could not fail to succeed. They cheered and thumped the table mightily, and a lesser Company man commenced a rather warm joke that brought them all to tears of laughter.
A highly successful dinner-party, they felt as they wended their way homewards.
“Possibly a rather mixed set of people,” Marianne observed as they breakfasted next morning.
“Not all born to our rank of society, my dear, certainly. But the most of them doing their best to behave properly, among the men that is. Did you discover the same among the females, my dear?”
“Not entirely, no, sir. It was noticeable that more than one of the ladies of the Company gentlemen found tea to be, shall we say, insufficiently stimulating for their tastes.”
“A discreet nip of gin, my dear?”
“Brandy, husband, and not particularly subtly imbibed! It might be observed that in more than one case a veneer of proper diction was too easily lost, sir.”
It seemed that some of the ladies lost their genteel accents with the aid of the bottle.
“Any in particular who I should notice, my dear?”
She named three senior wives, two of them of Company officials, one the lady of Mr Melksham, an independent merchant of considerable wealth.
“I must chat with the colonel, I think, and discover whether I should avoid the company of these people, or if we should simply fail to notice infelicities in their behaviour.”
The colonel had much to say of one of the three.
“Melksham is rich, Major Pearce, a true nabob, and will return to England within one or two years. There, he will buy an estate and soon afterwards a title of some sort. I doubt he will pick up more than a lesser knighthood, but it will nonetheless put a ‘sir’ in front of his name, to overawe lesser mortals. I have talked with him on occasion and suspect he intends to buy a seat in the House of Commons – not at all a difficult proposition. He is in his forties, may expect to be acti
ve for another fifteen or twenty years, so, if he is careful, he may become a Minister of the Crown for a decade or so. That will make him baronet, at least. He has two sons and three daughters, the elder boy of some eighteen years – so he has an interest in a title to be inherited. All of that put together says that you snub him at your peril, sir! He is one who may be no more than a lukewarm friend but a deadly enemy. Invitations to dine must be accepted, with pleasure, and your lady wife should be encouraged to take tea and be at home to his other half.”
Septimus took the message to Marianne, who grimaced but noted the Melkshams as guests for the dinner they must host within a month or two.
“Wines, husband, are likely to be a problem. I do not know what is done here, but I do know we have only the most meagre stock in our little cellar.”
Septimus did not know his wines – his father had been almost teetotal and he had never had the chance to learn.
“Do not, they say, keep a dog and bark, my dear!”
He called the major-domo to him, explained that they must entertain in the near future, broached the question of alcohol.
“Constantia, from the Cape, sahib, is well-liked and may be obtained from merchants of my acquaintance. It is possible as well to find wines from Persia which are drunk happily by many of the sahibs. Port is to be discovered very easily, sahib. Brandy and arrack and other spirits are also sold, often by reputable suppliers. I will be pleased to obtain all that is required, major-sahib.”
“Very good! I would be very happy as well if you were to make a dinner that the sahibs would enjoy, finding it better than the ordinary run of meals.”
“There is a Chinese man, sahib, who may be prevailed upon to become a cook in our kitchen. He has been a badly paid worker on a ship, almost a slave, sahib, and will be pleased to run away from his bad master.”
“Pay him the wage he asks for, and set him to work, if you will be so good.”
The Pearces hosted their first dinner to great applause – a change from the everlasting curries was thoroughly welcomed and the wines were definitely of a rare quality. The Major became famous overnight in the English community and his lady wife found herself invited to sip tea with the highest in Bombay, all of whom wanted an invitation to their next dinner.
Colonel Horncastle was delighted – it all reflected well upon the regiment and made it so much more certain that they would be called upon to march in the coming campaign.
There was a series of meetings between the regimental seniors and the Brigadier and his staff as they made ready for war, culminating in a very disappointing final conference.
“Word has come from the Governor-General, gentlemen. There are to be negotiations with the Marathas, with the expectation that an agreement can be reached without war. There will be no great campaign in the Year One, I am afraid.”
The colonels of the three English regiments were downcast – particularly the Devons who were to return home at the end of a year and whose last real hope it had been. The Company officers were less upset – they would see more than enough action during their careers.
“However, gentlemen, we are to tidy up on our northern border, so that we will need fear no onslaught on our rear when we eventually march out. There is unrest, as always, in the grain-growing lands which are seen as particularly rich and are disputed between the various small states. The decision has been made that we should solve their arguments by taking the lands to ourselves. Thus an expedition will assimilate the small towns and forts and pacify the whole area. A matter of some twenty miles north from our present boundaries and extending some eighty miles to the east. There are four significant fortresses, and reason to suppose that not all will be held against us; there is a problem in some that the Rajah is Hindu and his subjects predominantly Muslim, thus making us welcome at court. Devons and Hampshires and two Bombay battalions of foot; three regiments of Company cavalry; two batteries of Royal Artillery and a company of Engineers – together these will make up the column.”
“The Artillery, sir – field or siege guns?”
“Eighteen and twenty-four pounders, Colonel Horncastle. Eight guns in total.”
They would be adequate to breach the walls of a small, old-fashioned fortalice; against the modern copies of Vauban’s designs to be found where the French were strong, they would be almost useless. The new French forts were proof against anything less than a full siege-train with mortars and a score of thirty-six or forty-two pounders.
“Field guns would be of value, sir, in case we meet an army. We cannot guarantee to march unmolested from siege to siege.”
“Batteries of six-pounders might be possible, Colonel Horncastle. They would have to be Company, I fear, as the Royal Artillery are to be shifted to the south. It will probably be possible to secure the services of the four batteries of European horse artillery.”
The Company maintained the fiction that there were batteries of sepoy artillery, but that they were in temporary abeyance; in reality they would not allow great guns into Indian hands, for fear that they might lead them into temptation. They recruited gunners exclusively from the white-skinned, though quite happy to employ French or Spanish or any others from the West, irrespective of the state of hostilities in Europe. The Royal Navy raised frequent objections that the Company encouraged its gun-captains to desert, receiving no satisfaction at all, the Company inevitably responding that it had investigated the claims but could not bear them out.
Horncastle recognised the political ploy. It had already been arranged that the Company field artillery would be available, but only if the King’s Regiments could be made to beg for them – another round in the Company versus Crown sparring match.
Reynolds brought his people back to camp, his ranks a fraction thinner than when he had left, sickness and accident having taken a few of the men.
“Two snakebites, sir and three sun strokes and one who drowned, jumping into a river to cool off of the evening with a score of others and simply discovered missing when it came to lights out. His body was found in the morning. Besides that, a dozen of intermittent fevers and the normal run of dysenteries and poxes led to the deaths of another fifteen. Twenty-one in total, sir, of dead and another ten or twelve who will be invalided out, I fear.”
An attrition rate of ten per cent, or thereabouts, was common in the first two years in the country; after that the rate fell away, the weak and those incompatible with the Tropics having been weeded out.
“There may be a draft from the Second Battalion next year, Major Reynolds. We should expect one more while we are out. For the while, we shall be part of a small column in the Dry Season, little more than a Brigade, Cholmondely in command. The expectation is of siege rather than battle in the field. Major Pearce will give you the details and you will work with him to determine our march order and general way of going on. He has the experience, of course, and is familiar with all of the little ways of campaigning.”
Reynolds saluted and murmured his agreement – having little choice in the matter, but he hardly welcomed such overt subordination. He would have preferred consultation as an equal. More reason to sell out when the posting came to an end. He counted on his fingers, confirmed that there was no more than four and a half years left in the hell-hole of India.
Man of Conflict Series
BOOK TWO
Chapter Six
The Brigadier’s staff laid down the order of march for the column and dealt with questions of camp sites and water-supply and the purchase of foodstuffs where possible. Any wise regimental officer made his own arrangements against the inevitable, hopefully rare, breakdowns in that organisation. It all depended on the career ambitions of the Brigadier – the higher the Brigadier hoped to climb, the more he needed patronage and the greater the number of idiot sons of the aristocracy he collected around him and the less competent his staff grew. Intelligent would-be general officers were aware of this and tried to balance the necessary congenital morons with a number of usef
ul soldiers, but those same soldiers did their very best to be elsewhere, avoiding the staff, being choosy about the company they kept.
Septimus used battalion funds to purchase water-barrels to be carried on additional bullock-carts for the benefit of animals and men. He bought extra fodder for the animals and sacks of rice, and cauldrons for boiling, which added again to the number of oxen required, but it gave the battalion a week in hand that the others might not possess. The rank and file might not like rice, but they liked starvation even less. He organised as well a cart full of the absolute necessities of battalion life, including a pair of rum barrels and additional supplies for the Surgeon.
“Rum and Peruvian Bark, and the battens for a flogging triangle, sir,” Septimus informed Colonel Horncastle. “A sufficient supply of each and any private soldier will face all that the Tropics may throw at him. Officers may bring their own brandy on their personal mules, sir!”
Horncastle was not certain whether the major was venturing upon wit; he smiled politely in any case.
“What have you in mind for our column, Major Pearce?”
“Alternate, sir, each day, Companies A to E to the fore on odd days; F to J on evens. Our battalion baggage to be in line in the middle, sir. Camp followers can tag along behind as normal, with the Brigade baggage wagons, but our foodstuffs, water and powder and ball to be kept strictly under our eyes, sir.”
“Officers’ mules, Major Pearce?”
“Where they wish, sir. I would incline to keep them with us, but they must make the pace if that is so, sir.”
It seemed wholly reasonable to the colonel; he would take care that his own six mules were kept well in his sight.
Septimus took advice from the colonel on his personal comforts, not being au fait with Indian practice and knowing how important it was to conform to local habits. He must not be seen to be an outsider.
“Tent and canvas ground sheets first of all, Major Pearce, and a simple cot. Wiser not to sleep on the ground if possible – snakes and scorpions and nasty little insects on the one hand; dampness and the rheumatics on the other. A small folding table and chair – easier to eat on if there is no mess tent and useful for the paper work any field officer must put up with. Mosquito net, of course, and bed linen, a blanket at least. Two mules there. Uniforms and shirts and stockings, very important to have changes of those; it may not be possible to launder all as you would wish, so it is necessary to have spare. A second pair of boots as well; I can remember having a hole develop in the sole of one boot while I was in America and limping along for six damned weeks! One mule. Food and drink to your personal taste – always useful, just the occasional luxury to sit with of an evening. One mule. Sporting guns and powder and ball; that great pistol belt of yours; hanger and ceremonial sword; horseshoes and spare tack; gauntlets and a waterproof cape. One more mule.”
Raging Rajahs (Man of Conflict Series, Book 2) Page 14
