Among all who had opportunities of knowing her she bore the character of a kind-hearted, benevolent, and good woman; and I have conversed with men capable of judging, who had known her for more than fifty years. She had uncommon sagacity and a masculine resolution; and the Europeans and natives who were most intimate with her have told me that though a woman and of small stature, her 'ru'b' (dignity, or power of commanding personal respect) was greater than that of almost any person they had ever seen.[36] From the time she put herself under the protection of the British Government, in 1808, she by degrees adopted the European modes of social intercourse, appearing in public on an elephant, in a carriage, and occasionally on horseback with her hat and veil, and dining at table with gentlemen. She often entertained Governors-General and Commanders-in-Chief, with all their retinues, and sat with them and their staff at table, and for some years past kept an open house for the society of Meerut; but in no situation did she lose sight of her dignity. She retained to the last the grateful affections of the thousands who were supported by her bounty, while she never ceased to inspire the most profound respect in the minds of those who every day approached her, and were on the most unreserved terms of intimacy.[37]

Lord William Bentinck was an excellent judge of character; and the following letter will show how deeply his visit to that part of the country had impressed him with a sense of her extensive usefulness:

'To Her Highness the Begum Sumroo.

'My esteemed Friend,—I cannot leave India without expressing the sincere esteem I entertain for your highness's character. The benevolence of disposition and extensive charity which have endeared you to thousands, have excited in my mind sentiments of the warmest admiration; and I trust that you may yet be preserved for many years, the solace of the orphan and widow, and the sure resource of your numerous dependants. To-morrow morning I embark for England; and my prayers and best wishes attend you, and all others who, like you, exert themselves for the benefit of the people of India.

'I remain, 'With much consideration, 'Your sincere friend, (Signed) 'M. W. BENTINCK.[38]

'Calcutta, March 17th, 1835.'

Notes:

1. The reader will observe that the lady's name is spelt Sumroo in the heading and Sombre in the text. The form Samru, or Shamru, transliterates the Hindustani spelling.

2. The author means General Regholini who was in the Begam's service at the time of her death. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. iii, p. 295.) The church, or cathedral, was consecrated in 1822, and coat 400,000 rupees. A portrait of the General, from Sardhana, is now in the Indian Institute, Oxford, which also possesses a portrait of the Bishop.

The best account of Begum Sumroo is to be found in A Tour through the Upper Provinces of Hindustan, 1804-14, by A. D. = Ann Deane (1823). Walter Scott introduces more than one of the stories about the Begum into The Surgeon's Daughter (1827), e.g.: "But not to be interred alive under your seat, like the Circassian of whom you were jealous," said Middlemas, shuddering (vol. 48, Black's ed. of the novels, p. 382).

3. The Begam's benefactions are detailed post.

4. 'This remarkable woman was the daughter, by a concubine, of Asad Khan, a Musalman of Arab decent settled in the town of Kutana in the Meerut district. She was born about the year A.D. 1753 [see post.] On the death of her father, she and her mother became subject to ill- treatment from her half-brother, the legitimate heir, and they consequently removed to Delhi about 1760. There she entered the service of Sumru, and accompanied him through all his campaigns. Sumru, on retiring to Sardhana, found himself relieved of all the cares and troubles of war, and gave himself entirely up to a life of ease and pleasure, and so completely fell into the hands of the Begam that she had no difficulty in inducing him to exchange the title of mistress for that of wife.' (E. T. Atkinson in N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. ii, p. 95. The authorities for the history of Begum Samru are very conflicting. Atkinson has examined them critically, and his account probably is the best in existence.) An anonymous pamphlet published apparently at Sardhana and sent to the editor anonymously long ago, gives the name of the Begam's father as 'Lutf Ali Khan, a decayed nobleman of Arabian descent' living at Kotana. Some writers state that the Begam was a dancing girl, and was bought by Sumroo. Her name was Zeb-un-nissa.

5. This first wife died at Sardhana during the rainy season of 1838. She must have been above one hundred years of age; and a good many of the Europeans that he buried in the Sardhana cemetery had lived above a hundred years. [W. H. S.] She was a concubine, named Baha Begam. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii, p. 96.)

6. His name is spelt Reinhard on his tombstone, as in the text. It is also spelt Renard. According to some authorities, his birthplace was Treves, not Salzburg. He is said to have been a butcher by trade, and certainly deserted from both the French and the English services.

7. A more probable explanation is that the name is a corruption of an alias, Summers, assumed by the deserter.

8. Kasim Ali Khan is generally referred to in the histories under the name of Mir Kasim (Meer Cossim). Mir Jafir was deposed in 1760, and his son-in-law Mir Kasim was placed on the throne of Bengal in his stead by the English. The history of Mir Kasim is told in detail by Thornton in his sixth chapter, and also by Mill.

9. Probably 'Gorgin' is a corruption of 'Gregory'. This name may be a corruption of 'Georgian'.

10. Mill observes upon these transactions: 'The conduct of the Company's servants upon this occasion furnishes one of the most remarkable instances upon record of the power of self-interest to extinguish all sense of justice and even of shame. They had hitherto insisted, contrary to all right and all precedent, that the government of the country should exempt all their goods from duty; they now insisted that it should impose duties upon all other traders, and accused it as guilty of a breach of the peace towards the English nation, because it proposed to remit them.' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Book iv, chapter 5 (5th ed., 1858, vol. iii, p. 237).

11. The 3rd of October was the day of slaughter at Patna. The Europeans at other places in Mir Kasim's power were also massacred; and the total number slain, men, women, and children, amounted to about two hundred. Sumroo personally butchered about one hundred and fifty at Patna.

12. Our troops, under Sir David Ochterlony, took the fort of Makwanpur in 1815, and might in five days have been before the defenceless capital; but they were here arrested by the romantic chivalry of the Marquis of Hastings. The country had been virtually conquered; the prince, by his base treachery towards us and outrages upon others, had justly forfeited his throne; but the Governor- General, by perhaps a misplaced lenity, left it to him without any other guarantee for his future good behaviour than the recollection that he had been soundly beaten. Unfortunately he left him at the same time a sufficient quantity of fertile land below the hills to maintain the same army with which he had fought us, with better knowledge how to employ them, to keep us out on a future occasion. Between the attempt of Kasim Ali and our attack upon Nepal, the Gorkha masters of the country had, by a long series of successful aggressions upon their neighbours, rendered themselves in their own opinion and in that of their neighbours the beat soldiers of India. They have, of course, a very natural feeling of hatred against our government, which put a stop to the wild career of conquest, and wrested from their grasp all the property and all the pretty women from Kathmandu to Kashmir. To these beautify regions they were what the invading Huns were in former days to Europe, absolute fiends. Had we even exacted a good road into their country with fortifications at the proper places, it might have checked the hopes of one day resuming the career of conquest that now keeps up the army and military spirit, to threaten us with a renewal of war whenever we are embarrassed on the plains. [W. H. S.]

The author's uneasiness concerning the attitude of Nepal was justified. During the Afghan troubles of 1838-43 the Nepalese Government was in constant communication with the enemies of the Indian Government. The late Maharaja Sir Jang Bahadur obtained power in 1846, and, after his visit to England in 1850, decided to abide by the English alliance. He did valuable service in 1857 and 1858, and the two governments have ever since maintained an unbroken, though reserved, friendship. The Gorkha regiments in the English service are recruited in Nepal.

13. Aasaye (Assye, Asai) is in the Nizam's dominions. Here, on the 23rd of September, 1803, Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, with less than 5,000 men, defeated the Maratha host of at least 32,000 men, including more than 10,000 under European leaders. Ajanta, or Ajanta Ghat, is in the same region. (Owen, Sel. from Wellington Despatches (1880), pp. 301-9.)

14. His tombstone bears a Portuguese inscription: 'Aqui iaz Walter Reinhard, morreo aos 4 de Mayo no anno de 1778.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 96.)

15. According to this statement she must have been born in or about 1741, not in 1753, as stated by Atkinson. If the earlier date were correct, she would have been ninety-five when she died in 1836. Higginbotham, referring to Bacon's work, says she died at the age of eighty-nine, which places her birth in 1747. According to Beale, she was aged eighty-eight lunar years when she died, on the 27th January, 1836, equivalent to about eighty-five solar years. This computation places her birth in A.D. 1751, which may be taken as the correct date. The date of her baptism is correctly stated in the text.

16. She added the name Nobilis, when she married Le Vaisseau. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 106, note.)

17. The author spells the German's name Pauly; I have followed Atkinson's spelling. The man was assassinated in 1783.

18. This circumstance indicates that the execution of the slave girls took place in 1782. (See N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 91.)

19. The darker aide of the Begam's character is shown by the story of the slave girl's murder. By some it is said that the girl's crime consisted in her having attracted the favourable notice of one of the Begam's husbands. Whatever may have been the offence, her barbarous mistress visited it by causing the girl to be buried alive. The time chosen for the execution was the evening, the place the tent of the Begam; who caused her bed to be arranged immediately over the grave, and occupied it until the morning, to prevent any attempt to rescue the miserable girl beneath. By acts like this the Begam inspired such terror that she was never afterwards troubled with domestic dissensions.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. ii, p. 110.) It will be observed that this version mentions only one girl. According to Higginbotham (Men whom India has Known, 2nd ed., s.v. 'Sumroo'), this execution took place on the evening of the day on which Le Vaisseau perished in 1795. (See post.) He adds that 'it is said that this act preyed upon her conscience in after life'. This account professes to be based on Bacon's First Impressions and Studies from Nature in Hindustan, which is said to be 'the most reliable, as the author saw the Begam, attended and conversed with her at one of her levees, and gained all his information at her Court'. But Bacon's account of the Begam's history, as quoted by Higginbotham, is full of gross errors; and Sir William Sleeman may be relied on as giving the most accurate obtainable version of the horrid story. He had the beat possible opportunities, as well as a desire, to ascertain the truth.

20. Atkinson (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 106) uses the spelling Le Vaisseau, which probably is correct, and observes that the name is also written Le Vassont. The author writes Le Vassoult; and Francklin (Military Memoirs of Mr. George Thomas, London, 8vo reprint (Stockdale), p. 55) spells the name phonetically as Levasso. 'On every occasion he was the declared and inveterate enemy of Mr. Thomas.'

21. Thomas was an Irishman, born in the county of Tipperary. 'From the best information we could procure, it appears that Mr. George Thomas first came to India in a British ship of war, in 1781-2. His situation in the fleet was humble, having served as a quarter-master, or, as is affirmed by some, in the capacity of a common sailor. . . . His first service was among the Polygars to the southward, where he resided a few years. But at length setting out overland, he spiritedly traversed the central part of the peninsula, and about the year 1787 arrived at Delhi. Here he received a commission in the service of the Begam Sumroo. . . . Soon after his arrival at Delhi, the Begam, with her usual judgement and discrimination of character, advanced him to a command in her army. From this period his military career in the north-west of India may be said to have commenced.' Owing to the rivalry of Le Vaisseau, Thomas 'quitted the Begam Sumroo, and about 1792 betook himself to the frontier station of the British army at the post of Anopshire (Anupshahr). . . . Here he waited several months. . . . In the beginning of the year 1793, Mr. Thomas, being at Anopshire, received letters from Appakandarow (Apakanda Rao), a Mahratta chief, conveying offers of service, and promises of a comfortable provision.' (Francklin, op. cit., p. 20.) The author states that Thomas left the Begam's service in 1793, after her marriage with Le Vaisseau in that year. Francklin (see also p. 55) was clearly under the impression that the marriage did not take place till after Thomas had thrown up his command under the Begam. He made peace with her in 1795. The capital of the principality which he carved out for himself in 1798 was at Hansi, eighty-nine miles north- west of Delhi. He was driven out at the close of 1801, entered British territory in January 1802, and died on the 22nd of August in that year at Barhampur, being about forty-six years of age. A son of his was an officer in the Begam's service at the time of her death in 1836. A great-granddaughter of George Thomas was, in 1867, the wife of a writer on a humble salary in one of the Government offices at Agra. (Beale.)

22. This incident happened in 1788. (See N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 99; I.G., 1908, vol. xii, p. 106.)

23. 'A more competent estimate may perhaps be formed of his abilities if we reflect on the nature and extent of one of his plans, which he detailed to the compiler of these memoirs during his residence at Benares. When fixed in his residence at Hansi, he first conceived, and would, if unforeseen and untoward circumstances had not occurred, have executed the bold design of extending his conquests to the mouths of the Indus. This was to have been effected by a fleet of boats, constructed from timber procured in the forests near the city of Firozpur, on the banks of the Satlaj river, proceeding down that river with his army, and settling the countries he might subdue on his route; a daring enterprise, and conceived in the true spirit of an ancient Roman. On the conclusion of this design it was his intention to turn his arms against the Panjab, which he expected to reduce in a couple of years; and which, considering the wealth he would then have acquired, and the amazing resources he would have possessed, these successes combined would doubtless have contributed to establish his authority on a firm and solid basis.' He offered to conquer the Panjab on behalf of the Government of India, for the welfare of his king and country. (Francklin, pp. 334-6.)

24. A small town in the Bulandshahr district of the North-Western Provinces, seventy-three miles south-east of Delhi. Its fort used to be considered strong and of strategical importance.

25. Afterwards Lord Teignmouth.

26. Major Bernier was killed at the storm of Hansi in 1801. His tombstone at Barsi village was found ninety years later (Pioneer, Dec. 14, 1894). For epitaph of Joseph Even Bahadur see N.I.N. & Qu., vol. i, note 265.

27. Francklin says that the troops overtook the fugitives 'at the village of Kerwah, in the begum's jaghire, four miles distant from her capital', (p. 58.)

28. 'For three days it lay exposed to the insults of the rabble, and was at length thrown into a ditch.' (Francklin, p. 60.)

29. According to George Thomas (whose version of the story is given by his biographer), the Begam, when the mutiny broke out, was actually preparing to attack Thomas. A German officer, known only as the Liegeois, strenuously dissuaded the Begam from the proposed hostilities, and was, in consequence, degraded by Le Vaisseau. The troop then mutinied, and swore allegiance to Zafar Yab Khan. (Francklin, p. 37.)

30. Thomas says that the overtures came from the Begam. 'In a manner the most abject and desponding, she addressed Mr. Thomas . . . implored him to come to her assistance, and, finally, offered to pay any sum of money the Marathas should require, on condition they would reinstate her in the Jagir. On receipt of these letters, Mr. Thomas, by an offer of 120,000 rupees, prevailed on Bapu Sindhia to make a movement towards Sardhana.' After negotiation, Thomas marched to Khatauli, and 'publicly gave out that unless the Begam was reinstated in her authority, those who resisted must expect no mercy; and to give additional weight to this declaration, he apprised them that he was acting under the orders of the Maratha chiefs.' After some difficulty, 'she was finally reinstated in the full authority of her Jagir'. This version of the affair, it will be noticed, does not quite agree with that given more briefly by the author.

31. The paper was written by a Muhammadan, and he would not write Christ the Son of God. It is written 'In the name of God, and his Majesty Christ'. The Muhammadans look upon Christ as the greatest of prophets before Muhammad; but the most binding article of their faith is this from the Koran, which they repeat every day: 'I believe in God, who was never begot, nor has ever begotten, nor will ever have an equal,'—alluding to the Christians' belief in the Trinity. [W. H. S.] For Mohammed's opinion of Jesus Christ see especially chapters 4 and 5 of the Koran.

32. To my mind the circumstances all tend to throw suspicion on the Begam. The author evidently was disposed to form the beat possible opinion of her character and acts.

33. After the Begam's death the revenue settlement of the estate was made by Mr. Plowden, who writes in his report, as quoted in N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. iii, p. 432, 'The rule seems to have been fully recognized and acted up to by the Begam which declared that, according to Muhammadan law, "there shall be left for every man who cultivates his lands as much as he requires for his own support, till the next crop be reaped, and that of his family, and for seed. This much shall be left to him; what remains is land-tax, and shall go to the public treasury." For, considering her territory as a private estate and her subjects as serfs, she appropriated the whole produce of their labour, with the exception of what sufficed to keep body and soul together. It was by these means . . . that a factitious state of prosperity was induced and maintained, which, though it might, and I believe did, deceive the Begam's neighbours into an impression that her country was highly prosperous, could not delude the population into content and happiness. Above the surface and to the eye all was smiling and prosperous, but within was rottenness and misery. Under these circumstances the smallness of the above arrear is no proof of the fairness of the revenue. It rather shows that the collections were as much as the Begam's ingenuity could extract, and this balance being unrealizable, the demand was, by so much at least, too high.' The statistics alluded to are:

Average demand of the portions of the Begam's Rs. Territory in the Meerut district . . . . 5.86.650 Average collections . . . . . . 5.67.211 Balances . . . . . . . . 19.439

'Ruin was impending, when the Begam's death in January, 1836, and the consequent lapse of the estate to the British, induced the cultivators to return to their homes.'

Details of the Begam's military forces are given in N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii, p. 295. For the last thirty years of her life the Begam had no need for the large force (3,371 officers and men, with 44 guns) which she maintained. In her excessive expenditure on a superfluous army, in her niggardly provision for civil administration, and in her merciless rack-renting, she followed the evil example of the ordinary native prince, and was superior only in the unusual ability with which she worked an unsound and oppressive System. She left L700,000. The population of Sardhana town has risen from 3,313 in 1881 to 9,242 in 1911.

34 Zafaryab Khan died in 1802 or 1803. His son-in-law, Colonel Dyce, was employed in the Begam's service. 'The issue of this marriage was: (l) David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, who married Mary Anne, daughter of Viscount St. Vincent, by whom he had no issue. He died in Paris in July, 1851. In August, 1867, his body was conveyed to Sardhana and buried in the cathedral. (2) A daughter, who married Captain Rose Troup. (3) A daughter, who married Paul Salaroli, now Marquis of Briona. The present owner of Sardhana is the Honourable Mary Anne Forester, the widow of David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, and the successful claimant in the suit against Government which has recently been decided in her favour.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii (1875), p. 296.) This lady, in 1862, married George Cecil-Weld, third Baron Forester, who died without issue in 1886. (Burke's Peerage.) Lady Forester died on March 7, 1893.

35. In the original edition these statistics are given in words. Figures have been used in this edition as being more readily grasped. The amounts stated by the author are approximate round sums. More accurate details are given in N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii (1875), p. 295. The Begam also subscribed liberally to Hindoo and Muhammadan institutions. Her contemporary, Colonel Skinner, was equally impartial, and is said to have built a mosque and a temple, as well as the church at Delhi.

The Cathedral at Sardhana was built in 1822. St. John's College is intended to train Indians as priests, There are, or were recently, about 250 native Christians at Sardhana, partly the descendants of the converts who followed their mistress in change of faith. 'The Roman Catholic priests work hard for their little colony, and are greatly revered and respected. At St. John's College some of the boys are instructed for the priesthood, and others taught to read and write the Nagari and Urdu characters. The instruction for the priesthood is peculiar. There are some twelve little native boys who can quote whole chapters of the Latin Bible, and nearly all the prayers of the Missal. Those who cannot sympathize with the system mast admire the patience and devotion of the Italian priests who have put themselves to the trouble of imparting such instruction. The majority of the Christian population here are cultivators and weavers, while many are the pensioned descendants of the European servants of Begam Sumru, and still bear the appellation of Sahib and Mem Sahib.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii (1875), pp. 273, 430.)

The Begam's palace, built in 1834, was chiefly remarkable for a collection of about twenty-five portraits of considerable interest. They comprised likenesses of Sir David Ochterlony, Dyce Sombre, Lord Combermere, and other notable personages. (Calcutta Review, vol. lxx, p. 460; quoted in North Indian N. & Q., vol. ii, p. 179.) The mansion and park were sold by auction in 1895. Some of the portraits are now in the Indian Institute, Oxford, some in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and some in Government House, Allahabad. A long article by H. N. on Sardhana and its owners appeared in the Pioneer (Allahabad) on December 12,1894.

36. A miniature portrait of the Begam is given on the frontispiece to volume ii of the original edition. Francklin, describing the events of 1796, in his memoirs of George Thomas, first published in 1803, describes her personal appearance as follows: 'Begum Sumroo is about forty-five years of age, small in stature, but inclined to be plump. Her complexion is very fair, her eyes black, large and animated; her dress perfectly Hindustany, and of the most costly materials. She speaks the Persian and Hindustany languages with fluency, and in her conversation is engaging, sensible, and spirited.' (London ed., p. 92, note.) The liberal benefaction of her later years have secured her ecclesiastical approval, and I should not be surprised to hear of her beatification or canonization. Her earlier life certainly was not that of a saint.

37. In her younger days she strictly maintained Hindustani etiquette. 'It has been the constant and invariable usage of this lady to exact from her subjects and servants the most rigid attention to the customs of Hindoostan. She is never seen out of doors or in her public durbar unveiled.

'Her officers and others, who have business with her, present themselves opposite the place where she sits. The front of her apartment is furnished with chicques or Indian screens, these being let down from the roof. In this manner she gives audience and transacts business of all kinds. She frequently admits to her table the higher ranks of her European officers, but never admits the natives to come within the enclosure,' (Francklin, p, 92.)

38. The Governor-General's name was William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, I do not understand the signature M. W. Bentinck, which may be a misprint. The eulogium seems odd to a reader who remembers that the recipient had been for fifteen years the mistress and wife of the Butcher of Patna. But when it was written, the memory of the massacre had been dimmed by the lapse of seventy-two years, and His Excellency may not have been well versed in the lady's history.

Perhaps the author was mistaken, and the letter was sent by Lady Bentinck, whose name was Mary.



CHAPTER 76

ON THE SPIRIT OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE IN THE NATIVE ARMY OF INDIA

Abolition of Corporal Punishment—Increase of Pay with Length of Service—Promotion by Seniority.

The following observations on a very important and interesting subject were not intended to form a portion of the present work.[1] They serve to illustrate, however, many passages in the foregoing chapters touching the character of the natives of India; and the Afghan war having occurred since they were written, I cannot deny myself the gratification of presenting them to the public, since the courage and fidelity, which it was my object to show the British Government had a right to expect from its native troops and might always rely upon in the hour of need, have been so nobly displayed.

I had one morning (November 14th, 1838) a visit from the senior native officer of my regiment, Shaikh Mahub Ali, a very fine old gentleman, who had recently attained the rank of 'Sardar Bahadur', and been invested with the new Order of British India.[2] He entered the service at the age of fifteen, and had served fifty-three years with great credit to himself, and fought in many an honourable field. He had come over to Jubbulpore as president of a native general court-martial, and paid me several visits in company with another old officer of my regiment who was a member of the same court. The following is one of the many conversations I had with him, taken down as soon as he left me.

'What do you think, Sardar Bahadur, of the order prohibiting corporal punishment in the army; has it had a bad or a good effect?'

'It has had a very good effect.'

'What good has it produced?'

'It has reduced the number of courts martial to one-quarter of what they were before, and thereby lightened the duties of the officers; it has made the good men more careful, and the bad men more orderly than they used to be.'

'How has it produced this effect?'

'A bad man formerly went on recklessly from small offences to great ones in the hope of impunity; he knew that no regimental, cantonment, or brigade court martial could sentence him to be dismissed the service; and that they would not sentence him to be flogged, except for great crimes, because it involved at the same time dismissal from the service. If they sentenced him to be flogged, he still hoped that the punishment would be remitted. The general or officer confirming the sentence was generally unwilling to order it to be carried into effect, because the man must, after being flogged, be tumed out of the service, and the marks of the lash upon his back would prevent his getting service anywhere else. Now he knows that these courts can sentence him to be dismissed from the service—that he is liable to lose his bread for ordinary transgressions, and be sentenced to work on the roads for graver ones.[3] He is in consequence much more under restraint than he used to be.'

'And how has it tended to make the well-disposed more careful?'

'They were formerly liable to be led into errors by the example of the bad men, under the same hope of impunity; but they are now more on their guard. They have all relations among the native officers, who are continually impressing upon them the necessity of being on their guard, lest they be sent back upon their families—their mothers and fathers, wives and children, as beggars. To be dismissed from a service like that of the Company is a very great punishment; it subjects a man to the odium and indignation of all his family. When in the Company's service, his friends know that a soldier gets his pay regularly, and can afford to send home a very large portion of it. They expect that he will do so; he feels that they will listen to no excuse, and he contracts habits of sobriety and prudence. If a man gets into the service of a native chief, his friends know that his pay is precarious, and they continue to maintain his family for many years without receiving a remittance from him, in the hope that his circumstances may one day improve. He contracts bad habits, and is not ashamed to make his appearance among them, knowing that his excuses will be received as valid. If one of the Company's sepoys[4] were not to send home remittances for six months, some members of the family would be sent to know the reason why. If he could not explain, they would appeal to the native officers of the regiment, who would expostulate with him; and, if all failed, his wife and children would be tumed out of his father's house, unless they knew that he was gone to the wars; and he would be ashamed ever to show his face among them again.'

'And the gradual increase of pay with length of service has tended to increase the value of the service, has it not?'

'It has very much; there are in our regiment, out of eight hundred men, more than one hundred and fifty sepoys who get the increase of two rupees a month, and the same number that get the increase of one. This they feel as an immense addition to the former seven rupees a month.[5] A prudent sepoy lives upon two, or at the utmost three, rupees a month in seasons of moderate plenty, and sends all the rest to his family. A great number of the sepoys of our regiment live upon the increase of two rupees, and send all their former seven to their families. The dismissal of a man from such a service as this distresses, not only him, but all his relations in the higher grades, who know how much of the comfort and happiness of his family depend upon his remaining and advancing in it; and they all try to make their young friends behave as they ought to do.'

'Do you think that a great portion of the native officers of the army have the same feelings and opinions on the subject as you have?'

'They have all the same; there is not, I believe, one in a hundred that does not think as I do upon the subject. Flogging was an odious thing. A man was disgraced, not only before his regiment, but before the crowd that assembled to witness the punishment. Had he been suffered to remain in the regiment he could never have hoped to rise after having been flogged, or sentenced to be flogged; his hopes were all destroyed, and his spirit broken, and the order directing him to be dismissed was good; but, as I have said, he lost all hope of getting into any other service, and dared not show his face among his family at home.'

'You know who ordered the abolition of flogging?'

'Lord Bentinck.'[6]

'And you know that it was at his recommendation the Honourable Company gave the increase of pay with length of service?'

'We have heard so; and we feel towards him as we felt towards Lord Wellesley, Lord Hastings, and Lord Lake.'

'Do you think the army would serve again now with the same spirit as they served under Lord Lake?'

'The army would go to any part of the world to serve such masters—no army had ever masters that cared for them like ours. We never asked to have flogging abolished; nor did we ever ask to have an increase of pay with length of service; and yet both have been done for us by the Company Bahadur.'

The old Sardar Bahadur came again to visit me on the 1st of December, with all the native officers who had come over from Sagar to attend the court, seven in number. There were three very smart, sensible men among them; one of whom had been a volunteer at the capture of Java,[7] and the other[s] at that of the Isle of France.[8] They all told me that they considered the abolition of corporal punishment a great blessing to the native army. 'Some bad men who had already lost their character, and consequently all hope of promotion, might be in less dread than before; but they were very few, and their regiments would soon get rid of them under the new law that gave the power of dismissal to regimental courts martial.'

'But I find the European officers are almost all of opinion that the abolition of flogging has been, or will be, attended with bad consequences.'

'They, sir, apprehend that there will not be sufficient restraint upon the loose characters of the regiment; but now that the sepoys have got an increase of pay in proportion to length of service there will be no danger of that. Where can they ever hope to get such another service if they forfeit that of the Company? If the dread of losing such a service is not sufficient to keep the bad in order, that of being put to work upon the roads in irons will. The good can always be kept in order by lighter punishments, when they have so much at stake as the loss of such a service by frequent offences. Some gentlemen think that a soldier does not feel disgraced by being flogged, unless the offence for which he has been flogged is in itself disgraceful. There is no soldier, sir, that does not feel disgraced by being tied up to the halberts and flogged in the face of all his comrades and the crowd that may choose to come and look at him; the sepoys are all of the same respectable families as ourselves, and they all enter the service in the hope of rising in time to the same stations as ourselves, if they conduct themselves well; their families look forward with the same hope. A man who has been tied up and flogged knows the disgrace that it will bring upon his family, and will sometimes rather die than return to it; indeed, as head of a family he could not be received at home.[9] But men do not feel disgraced in being flogged with a rattan at drill. While at the drill they consider themselves, and are considered by us all, as in the relation of scholars to their schoolmasters. Doing away with the rattan at drill had a very bad effect. Young men were formerly, with the judicious use of the rattan, made fit to join the regiment at furthest in six months; but since the abolition of the rattan it takes twelve months to make them fit to be seen in the ranks. There was much virtue in the rattan, and it should never have been given up. We have all been flogged with the rattan at the drill, and never felt ourselves disgraced by it-we were shagirds (scholars), and the drill-sergeant, who had the rattan, was our ustad (schoolmaster); but when we left the drill, and took our station in the ranks as sepoys, the case was altered, and we should have felt disgraced by a flogging, whatever might have been the nature of the offence we committed. The drill will never get on so well as it used to do, unless the rattan be called into use again; but we apprehend no evil from the abolition of corporal punishment afterwards. People are apt to attribute to this abolition offences that have nothing to do with it; and for which ample punishments are still provided. If a man fires at his officer, people are apt to say it is because flogging has been done away with; but a man who deliberately fires at his officer is prepared to undergo worse punishment than flogging.[10]

'Do you not think that the increase of pay with length of service to the sepoys will have a good effect in tending to give to regiments more active and intelligent native officers? Old sepoys who are not so will now have less cause to complain if passed over, will they not?'

'If the sepoys thought that the increase of pay was given with this view, they would rather not have it at all. To pass over men merely because they happen to have grown old, we consider very cruel and unjust. They all enter the service young, and go on doing their duty till they become old, in the hope that they shall get promotion when it comes to their turn. If they are disappointed, and young men, or greater favourites with their European officers, are put over their heads, they become heart-broken. We all feel for them, and are always sorry to see an old soldier passed over, unless he has been guilty of any manifest crime, or neglect of duty. He has always some relations among the native officers who know his family, for we all try to get our relations into the same regiment with ourselves when they are eligible. They know what that family will suffer when they learn that he has no longer any hopes of rising in the service, and has become miserable. Supersessions create distress and bad feelings throughout a regiment, even when the best men are promoted, which cannot always be the case; for the greatest favourites are not always the best men. Many of our old European officers, like yourself, are absent on staff or civil employments; and the command of companies often devolves upon very young subalterns, who know little or nothing of the character of their men. They recommend those whom they have found most active and intelligent, and believe to be the best; but their opportunities of learning the characters of the men have been few. They have seen and observed the young, active, and forward; but they often know nothing of the steady, unobtrusive old soldier, who has done his duty ably in all situations, without placing himself prominently forward in any. The commanding officers seldom remain long with the same regiment, and, consequently, seldom know enough of the men to be able to judge of the justice of the selections for promotion. Where a man has been guilty of a crime, or neglected his duty, we feel no sympathy for him, and are not ashamed to tell him so, and put him down[11] when he complains.'

Here the old Subadar, who had been at the taking of the Isle of France, mentioned that when he was senior Jemadar of his regiment, and a vacancy had occurred to bring him in as Subadar, he was sent for by his commanding officer, and told that, by orders from headquarters, he was to be passed over, on account of his advanced age, and supposed infirmity. 'I felt,' said the old man, 'as if I had been struck by lightning, and fell down dead. The colonel was a good man, and had seen much service. He had me taken into the open air; and when I recovered, he told me that he would write to the Commander-in-Chief, and represent my case. He did so, and I was promoted; and I have since done my duty as Subadar for ten years.'[12]

The Sardar Bahadur told me that only two men in our regiment had been that year superseded, one for insolence, and the other for neglect of duty; and that officers and sepoys were all happy in consequence—the young, because they felt more secure of being promoted if they did their duty; and the old, because, they felt an interest in their young relations. 'In those regiments,' said he, 'where supersessions have been more numerous, old and young are dispirited and unhappy. They all feel that the good old rule of right (hakk), as long as a man does his duty well, can no longer be relied upon.'

When two companies of my regiment passed through Jubbulpore a few days after this conversation on their way from Sagar to Seoni, I rode out a mile or two to meet them. They had not seen me for sixteen years, but almost all the native commissioned and non-commissioned officers were personally known to me. They were all very glad to see me, and I rode along with them to their place of encampment, where I had ready a feast of sweetmeats. They liked me as a young man, and are, I believe, proud of me as an old one. Old and young spoke with evident delight of the rigid adherence on the part of the present commanding officer, Colonel Presgrave, to the good old rule of 'hakk' (right) in the recent promotions to the vacancies occasioned by the annual transfer to the invalid establishment. We might, no doubt, have in every regiment a few smarter native officers by disregarding this rule than by adhering to it; but we should, in the diminution of the good feeling towards the European officers and the Government, lose a thousand times more than we gained. They now go on from youth to old age, from the drill to the retired pension, happy and satisfied that there is no service on earth so good for them.[13] With admirable moral, but little or no literary education, the native officers of our regiments never dream of aspiring to anything more than is now held out to them, and the mass of the soldiers are inspired with devotion to the service, and every feeling with which we could wish to have them inspired, by the hope of becoming officers in time, if they discharge their duties faithfully and zealously. Deprive the mass of this hope, give the commissions to an exclusive class of natives, or to a favoured few, chosen often, if not commonly, without reference to the feelings or qualifications we most want in our native officers, and our native army will soon cease to have the same feelings of devotion towards the Government, and of attachment and respect towards their European officers that they now have. The young, ambitions, and aspiring native officers will soon try to teach the great mass that their interest and that of the European officers and European Government are by no means one and the same, as they have been hitherto led to suppose; and it is upon the good feeling of this great mass that we have to depend for support. To secure this good feeling, we can well afford to sacrifice a little efficiency at the drill. It was unwise in one of the commanders-in- chief to direct that no soldier in our Bengal native regiments should be promoted unless he could read and write-it was to prohibit the promotion of the best, and direct the promotion of the worst, soldiers in the ranks. In India a military officer is rated as a gentleman by his birth, that is caste, and by his deportment in all his relations of life, not by his knowledge of books.

The Rajput, the Brahman, and the proud Pathan who attains a commission, and deports himself like an officer, never thinks himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the profession of the penman. This is a tone of feeling which it is clearly the interest of Government rather to foster than discourage, and the order which militated so much against it has happily been either rescinded or disregarded.

Three-fourths of the recruits of our Bengal native infantry are drawn from the Rajput peasantry of the kingdom of Oudh, on the left bank of the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a long series of generations.[14] The good feelings of the families from which they are drawn continue through the whole period of their service to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men and as soldiers. Though they never take their families with them, they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are always present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to those unacquainted with its source—veneration for parents cherished through life, and a never-impaired love of home, and of all the dear objects by which it is constituted.

Our Indian native army is perhaps the only entirely voluntary standing army that has been ever known, and it is, to all intents and purposes, entirely voluntary, and as such must be treated.[15] We can have no other native army in India, and without such an army we could not maintain our dominion a day. Our best officers have always understood this quite well; and they have never tried to flog and harass men out of all that we find good in them for our purposes. Any regiment in our service might lay down their arms and disperse to- morrow, without our having a chance of apprehending one deserter among them all.[16]

When Frederick the Great of Prussia reviewed his army of sixty thousand men in Pomerania, previous to his invasion of Silesia, he asked the Prince d'Anhalt, who accompanied him, what he most admired in the scene before him.

'Sire,' replied the prince, 'I admire at once the fine appearance of the men, and the regularity and perfection of their movements and evolutions.'

'For my part,' said Frederick, 'this is not what excites my astonishment, since with the advantage of money, time, and care, these are easily attained. It is that you and I, my dear cousin, should be in the midst of such an army as this in perfect safety. Here are sixty thousand men who are all irreconcilable enemies to both you and myself', not one among them that is not a man of more strength and better armed than either, yet they all tremble at our presence, while it would be folly on our part to tremble at theirs— such is the wonderful effect of order, vigilance, and subordination.'

But a reasonable man might ask, what were the circumstances which enabled Frederick to keep in a state of order and subordination an army composed of soldiers who were 'irreconcilable enemies' of their Prince and of their officers? He could have told the Prince d'Anhalt, had he chose to do so; for Frederick was a man who thought deeply. The chief circumstance favourable to his ambition was the imbecility of the old French Government, then in its dotage, and unable to see that an army of involuntary soldiers was no longer compatible with the state of the nation. This Government had reduced its soldiers to a condition worse than that of the common labourers upon the roads, while it deprived them of all hope of rising, and all feeling of pride in the profession.[17] Desertion became easy from the extension of the French dominion and from the circumstance of so many belligerent powers around requiring good soldiers; and no odium attended desertion, where everything was done to degrade, and nothing to exalt the soldier in his own esteem and that of society.

Instead of following the course of events and rendering the condition of the soldier less odious by increasing his pay and hope of promotion, and diminishing the labour and disgrace to which he was liable, and thereby filling her regiments with voluntary soldiers when involuntary ones could no longer be obtained, the Government of France reduced the soldier's pay to one-half the rate of wages which a common labourer got on the roads, and put them under restraints and restrictions that made them feel every day, and every hour, that they were slaves. To prevent desertions by severe examples under this high-pressure System, they had recourse first to slitting the noses and cutting off the ears of deserters, and, lastly, to shooting them as fast as they could catch them.[18] But all was in vain; and Frederick of Prussia alone got fifty thousand of the finest soldiers in the world from the French regiments, who composed one-third of his army, and enabled him to keep all the rest in that state of discipline that improved so much its efficiency, in the same manner as the deserters from the Roman legions, which took place under similar circumstances, became the flower of the army of Mithridates.[19]

Frederick was in position and disposition a despot. His territories were small, while his ambition was boundless. He was unable to pay a large army the rate of wages necessary to secure the services of voluntary soldiers; and he availed himself of the happy imbecility of the French Government to form an army of involuntary ones. He got French soldiers at a cheap rate, because they dared not return to their native country, whence they were hunted down and shot like dogs, and these soldiers enabled him to retain his own subjects in his ranks upon the same terms. Had the French Government retraced its steps, improved the condition of its soldiers, and mitigated the punishment for desertion during the long war, Frederick's army would have fallen to pieces 'like the baseless fabric of a vision'.

'Parmi nous,' says Montesquieu, 'les desertions sont frequentes parce que les soldats sont la plus vile partie de chaque nation, et qu'il n'y en a aucun qui aie, ou qui croie avoir un certain avantage sur les autres. Chez les Romains elles etaient plus rares—des soldats tires du sein d'un peuple si fier, si orgueilleux, si sur de commander aux autres, ne pouvaient guere penser a s' aviler jusqu'a cesser d'etre Romains.'[20] But was it the poor soldiers who were to blame if they were 'vile', and had 'no advantage over others', or the Government that took them from the vilest classes, or made their condition when they got them worse than that of the lowest class in society? The Romans deserted under the same circumstances, and, as I have stated, formed the elite of the army of Mithridates and the other enemies of Rome; but they respected their military oath of allegiance long after perjury among senators had ceased to excite any odium, since as a fashionable or political vice it had become common.

Did not our day of retribution come, though in a milder shape, to teach us a great political and moral lesson, when so many of our brave sailors deserted our ships for those of America, in which they fought against us?[21] They deserted from our ships of war because they were there treated like dogs, or from our merchant ships because they were every hour liable to be seized like felons and put on board the former. When 'England expected every man to do his duty' at Trafalgar, had England done its duty to every man who was that day to fight for her? Is not the intellectual stock which the sailor acquires in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy mast' as much his property as that which others acquire in scenes of peace at schools and colleges? And have not our senators, morally and religiously, as much right to authorize their sovereign to seize clergymen, lawyers, and professors, for employment in his service, upon the wages of ordinary uninstructed labour, as they have to authorize him to seize able sailors to be so employed in her navy? A feeling more base than that which authorized the able seaman to be hunted down upon such conditions, torn from his wife and children, and put like Uriah in front of those battles upon which our welfare and honour depended, never disgraced any civilized nation with whose history we are acquainted.[22]

Sir Matthew Decker, in a passage quoted by Mr. McCulloch, says, 'The custom of impressment put a freeborn British sailor on the same footing as a Turkish slave. The Grand Seignior cannot do a more absolute act than to order a man to be dragged away from his family, and against his will run his head against the mouth of a cannon; and if such acts should be frequent in Turkey upon any one set of useful men, would it not drive them away to other countries, and thin their numbers yearly? And would not the remaining few double or triple their wages, which is the case with our sailors in time of war, to the great detriment of our commerce?' The Americans wisely relinquished the barbarous and unwise practice of their parent land, and, as McCulloch observes, 'While the wages of all labourers and artisans are uniformly higher in the United States than in England, those of sailors are generally lower,' as the natural consequence of manning their navy by means of voluntary enlistment alone. At the close of the last war, sixteen thousand British sailors were serving on board of American ships; and the wages of our seamen rose from forty or[23] fifty to a hundred or one hundred and twenty shillings a month, as the natural consequence of our continuing to resort to impressment after the Americans had given it up.[24]

Frederick's army consisted of about one hundred and fifty thousand men. Fifty thousand of these were French deserters, and a considerable portion of the remaining hundred thousand were deserters from the Austrian army, in which desertion was punished in the same manner with death. The dread of this punishment if they quitted his ranks, enabled him to keep up that state of discipline that improved so much the efficacy of his regiments, at the same time that it made every individual soldier his 'irreconcilable enemy'. Not relying entirely upon this dread on the part of deserters to quit his ranks under his high-pressure system of discipline, and afraid that the soldiers of his own soil might make off in spite of all their vigilance, he kept his regiments in garrison towns till called on actual service; and that they might not desert on their way from one garrison to another during relief, he never had them relieved at all. A trooper was flogged for falling from his horse, though he had broken a limb in his fall; it was difficult, he said, to distinguish an involuntary fault from one that originated in negligence, and to prevent a man hoping that his negligence would be forgiven, all blunders were punished, from whatever cause arising. No soldier was suffered to quit his garrison till led out to fight; and when a desertion took place, cannons were fired to announce it to the surrounding country. Great rewards were given for apprehending, and severe punishments inflicted for harbouring, the criminal; and he was soon hunted down, and brought back. A soldier was, therefore, always a prisoner and a slave.

Still, all this rigour of Prussian discipline, like that of our navy, was insufficient to extinguish that ambition which is inherent in our nature to obtain the esteem and applause of the circle in which we move; and the soldier discharged his duty in the hour of danger, in the hope of rendering his life more happy in the esteem of his officers and comrades. 'Every tolerably good soldier feels ', says Adam Smith, 'that he would become the scorn of his companions if he should be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.' So thought the philosopher-King of Prussia, when he let his regiments out of garrison to go and face the enemy. The officers were always treated with as much lenity in the Prussian as any other service, because the king knew that the hope of promotion would always be sufficient to bind them to their duties; but the poor soldiers had no hope of this kind to animate them in their toils and their dangers.

We took our System of drill from Frederick of Prussia; and there is still many a martinet who would carry his high-pressure system of discipline into every other service over which he had any control, unable to appreciate the difference of circumstances under which they may happen to be raised and maintained.[25]

The sepoys of the Bengal army, the only part of our native army with which I am much acquainted, are educated as soldiers from their infancy—they are brought up in that feeling of entire deference for constituted authority which we require in soldiers, and which they never lose through life. They are taken from the agricultural classes of Indian society—almost all the sons of yeomen—cultivating proprietors of the soil, whose families have increased beyond their means of subsistence. One son is sent one after another to seek service in our regiments as necessity presses at home, from whatever cause—the increase of taxation, or the too great increase of numbers in families.[26] No men can have a higher sense of the duty they owe to the state that employs them, or whose 'salt they eat'; nor can any men set less value on life when the service of that state requires that it shall be risked or sacrificed. No persons are brought up with more deference for parents. In no family from which we drew our recruits is a son through infancy, boyhood, or youth, heard to utter a disrespectful word to his parents—such a word from a son to his parents would shock the feelings of the whole community in which the family resides, and the offending member would be visited with their highest indignation. When the father dies the eldest son takes his place, and receives the same marks of respect, the same entire confidence and deference as the father. If he be a soldier in a distant land, and can afford to do so, he resigns the service, and returns home to take his post as the head of the family. If he cannot afford to resign, if the family still want the aid of his regular monthly pay, he remains with his regiment, and denies himself many of the personal comforts he has hitherto enjoyed, that he may increase his contribution to the general stock.

The wives and children of his brothers, who are absent on service, are confided to his care with the same confidence as to that of the father. It is a rule to which I have through life found but few exceptions that those who are most disposed to resist constituted authority are those most disposed to abuse such authority when they get it. The members of these families, disposed, as they always are, to pay deference to such authority, are scarcely ever found to abuse it when it devolves upon them; and the elder son, when he succeeds to the place of his father, loses none of the affectionate attachment of his younger brothers.

They never take their wives or children with them to their regiments, or to the places where their regiments are stationed.[27] They leave them with their fathers or elder brothers, and enjoy their society only when they return on furlough. Three-fourths of their incomes are sent home to provide for their comfort and subsistence, and to embellish that home in which they hope to spend the winter of their days. The knowledge that any neglect of the duty they owe their distant families will be immediately visited by the odium of their native officers and brother soldiers, and ultimately communicated to the heads of their families, acts as a salutary check on their conduct; and I believe that there is hardly a native regiment in the Bengal army in which the twenty drummers who are Christians, and have their families with the regiment, do not cause more trouble to the officers than the whole eight hundred sepoys.

To secure the fidelity of such men all that is necessary is to make them feel secure of three things—their regular pay, at the handsome rate at which it has now been fixed; their retiring pensions upon the scale hitherto enjoyed; and promotion by seniority, like their European officers, unless they shall forfeit all claims to it by misconduct or neglect of duty.[28] People talk about a demoralized army, and discontented army! No army in the world was certainly ever more moral or more contented than our native army; or more satisfied that their masters merit all their devotion and attachment; and I believe none was ever more devoted or attached to them.[29] I do not speak of the European officers of the native army. They very generally believe that they have had just cause of complaint, and sufficient care has not always been taken to remove that impression. In all the junior grades the Honourable Company's officers have advantages over the Queen's in India. In the higher grades the Queen's officers have advantages over those of the Honourable Company. The reasons it does not behove me here to consider.[30]

In all armies composed of involuntary soldiers, that is, of soldiers who are anxious to quit the ranks and return to peaceful occupations, but cannot do so, much of the drill to which they are subjected is adopted merely with a view to keep them from pondering too much upon the miseries of their present condition, and from indulging in those licentious habits to which a strong sense of these miseries, and the recollection of the enjoyments of peaceful life which they have sacrificed, are too apt to drive them. No portion of this is necessary for the soldiers of our native army, who have no miseries to ponder over, or superior enjoyments in peaceful life to look back upon; and a very small quantity of drill is sufficient to make a regiment go through its evolutions well, because they have all a pride and pleasure in their duties, as long as they have a commanding officer who understands them. Clarke, in his Travels, speaking of the three thousand native infantry from India whom he saw paraded in Egypt under their gallant leader, Sir David Baird, says, 'Troops in such a state of military perfection, or better suited for active service, were never seen—not even on the famous parade of the chosen ten thousand belonging to Bonaparte's legions, which he was so vain of displaying before the present war in the front of the Tuileries at Paris. Not an unhealthy soldier was to be seen. The English, inured to the climate of India, considered that of Egypt as temperate in its effects, and the sipahees seemed as fond of the Nile as the Ganges.'[31]

It would be much better to devise more innocent amusements to lighten the miseries of European soldiers in India than to be worrying them every hour, night and day, with duties which are in themselves considered to be of no importance whatever, and imposed merely with a view to prevent their having time to ponder on these miseries.[32] But all extra and useless duties to a soldier become odious, because they are always associated in his mind with the ideas of the odious and degrading punishment inflicted for the neglect of them. It is lamentable to think how much of misery is often wantonly inflicted upon the brave soldiers of our European regiments of India on the pretence of a desire to preserve order and discipline.[33]

Sportsmen know that if they train their horses beyond a certain point they 'train off'; that is, they lose the spirit and with it the condition they require to support them in their hour of trial. It is the same with soldiers; if drilled beyond a certain point, they 'drill off', and lose the spirit which they require to sustain them in active service, and before the enemy. An over-drilled regiment will seldom go through its evolutions well, even in ordinary review before its own general. If it has all the mechanism, it wants all the real spirit of military discipline—it becomes dogged, and is, in fact, a body with but a soul. The martinet, who is seldom a man of much intellect, is satisfied as long as the bodies of his men are drilled to his liking; his narrow mind comprehends only one of the principles which influence mankind—fear; and upon this he acts with all the pertinacity of a slave-driver. If he does not disgrace himself when he comes before the enemy, as he commonly does, by his own incapacity, his men will perhaps try to disgrace him, even at the sacrifice of what they hold dearer than their lives—their reputation. The real soldier, who is generally a man of more intellect, cares more about the feelings than the bodies of his men; he wants to command their affections as well as their limbs, and he inspires them with a feeling of enthusiasm that renders them insensible to all danger—such men were Lord Lake, and Generals Ochterlony, Malcolm, and Adams, and such are many others well known in India.

Under the martinet the soldiers will never do more than what a due regard for their own reputation demands from them before the enemy, and will sometimes do less. Under the real soldier, they will always do more than this; his reputation is dearer to them even than their own, and they will do more to sustain it. The army of the consul, Appius Claudius, exposed themselves to almost inevitable destruction before the enemy to disgrace him in the eyes of his country, and the few survivors were decimated on their return; he cared nothing for the spirit of his men. The army of his colleague, Quintius, on the contrary, though from the same people, and levied and led out at the same time, covered him with glory because they loved him.[34] We had an instance of this in the war with Nepal in-1813, in which a king's regiment played the part of the army of Appius.[35] There were other martinets, king's and Company's, commanding divisions in that war, and they all signally failed; not, however, except in the above one instance, from backwardness on the part of their troops, but from utter incapacity when the hour of trial came. Those who succeeded were men always noted for caring something more about the hearts than the whiskers and buttons of their men. That the officer who delights in harassing his regiment in times of peace will fail with it in times of war and scenes of peril seems to me to be a rule almost as well established as that he, who in the junior ranks of the army delights most to kick against authority, is always found the most disposed to abuse it when he gets to the higher. In long intervals of peace, the only prominent military characters are commonly such martinets; and hence the failures so generally experienced in the beginning of a war after such an interval. Whitelocks are chosen for command, till Wolfes and Wellingtons find Chathams and Wellesleys to climb up by.

To govern those whose mental and physical energies we require for our subsistence and support by the lash alone is so easy, so simple a mode of bending them to our will, and making them act strictly and instantly in conformity to it, that it is not at all surprising to find so many of those who have been accustomed to it, and are not themselves liable to have the lash inflicted upon them, advocating its free use. In China the Emperor has his generals flogged, and finds the lash so efficacious in bending them to his will that nothing would persuade him that it could ever be safely dispensed with. In some parts of Germany they had the officers flogged, and princes and generals found this so very efficacious in making those act in conformity to their will that they found it difficult to believe that any army could be well managed without it. In other Christian armies the officers are exempted from the lash, but they use it freely upon all under them; and it would be exceedingly difficult to convince the greater part of these officers that the free use of the lash is not indispensably necessary, nay, that the men do not themselves like to be flogged, as eels like to be skinned, when they once get used to it. Ask the slave-holders of the southern states of America whether any society can be well constituted unless the greater part of those upon the sweat of whose brow the community depends for their subsistence are made by law liable to be bought, sold, and driven to their daily labour with the lash; they will one and all say No; and yet there are doubtless many very excellent and amiable persons among these slave-holders. If our army, as at present constituted, cannot do without the free use of the lash, let its constitution be altered; for no nation with free institutions should suffer its soldiers to be flogged. '_Laudabiliores tamen duces sunt, quorum exercitum ad modestiam labor et usus instituit, quam illi, quorum milites ad obedientiam suppliciorum formido compellit.'[36]

Though I reprobate that wanton severity of discipline in which the substance is sacrificed to the form, in which unavoidable and trivial offences are punished as deliberate and serious crimes, and the spirit of the soldier is entirely disregarded, while the motion of his limbs, cut of his whiskers, and the buttons of his coat are scanned with microscopic eye, I must not be thought to advocate idleness. If we find the sepoys of a native regiment, as we sometimes do at a healthy and cheap station, become a little unruly like schoolboys, and ask an old native officer the reason, he will probably answer others as he has me by another question, '_Ghora ara kyun? Pani sara kyun?' 'Why does the horse become vicious? Why does the water become putrid?'-For want of exercise. Without proper attention to this exercise no regiment is ever kept in order; nor has any commanding officer ever the respect or the affection of his men unless they see that he understands well all the duties which his Government entrusts to him, and is resolved to have them performed in all situations and under all circumstances. There are always some bad characters in a regiment, to take advantage of any laxity of discipline, and lead astray the younger soldiers, whose spirits have been rendered exuberant by good health and good feeding; and there is hardly any crime to which they will not try to excite these young men, under an officer careless about the discipline of his regiment, or disinclined, from a mistaken _esprit de corps_, or any other cause, to have those crimes traced home to them and punished.[37]

There can be no question that a good tone of feeling between the European officers and their men is essential to the well-being of our native army; and I think I have found this tone somewhat impaired whenever our native regiments are concentrated at large stations. In such places the European society is commonly large and gay; and the officers of our native regiments become too much occupied in its pleasures and ceremonies to attend to their native officers or sepoys. In Europe there are separate classes of people who subsist by catering for the amusements of the higher classes of society, in theatres, operas, concerts, balls, &c., &c.; but in India this duty devolves entirely upon the young civil and military officers of the Government, and at large stations it really is a very laborious one, which often takes up the whole of a young man's time. The ladies must have amusement; and the officers must find it for them, because there are no other persons to undertake the arduous duty. The consequence is that they often become entirely alienated from their men, and betray signs of the greatest impatience while they listen to the necessary reports of their native officers, as they come on or go off duty.[38]

It is different when regiments are concentrated for active service. Nothing tends so much to improve the tone of feeling between the European officers and their men, and between European soldiers and sepoys, as the concentration of forces on actual service, where the same hopes animate, and the same dangers unite them in common bonds of sympathy and confidence. 'Utrique alteris freti, finitimos armis aut metu sub imperium cogere, nomen gloriamque sibi addidere.' After the campaigns under Lord Lake, a native regiment passing Dinapore, where the gallant King's 76th, with whom they had fought side by side, was cantoned, invited the soldiers to a grand entertainment provided for them by the sepoys. They consented to go on one condition—that the sepoys should see them all back safe before morning. Confiding in their sable friends, they all got gloriously drunk, but found themselves lying every man upon his proper cot in his own barracks in the morning. The sepoys had carried them all home upon their shoulders. Another native regiment, passing within a few miles of a hill on which they had buried one of their European officers after that war, solicited permission to go and make their 'salam' to the tomb, and all went who were off duty.[39] The system which now keeps the greater part of our native infantry at small stations of single regiments in times of peace tends to preserve this good tone of feeling between officers and men, at the same time that it promotes the general welfare of the country by giving confidence everywhere to the peaceful and industrious classes.

I will not close this chapter without mentioning one thing which I have no doubt every Company's officer in India will concur with me in thinking desirable to improve the good feeling of the native soldiery—that is, an increase in the pay of the Jemadars. They are commissioned officers, and seldom attain the rank in less than from twenty-five to thirty years;[40] and they have to provide themselves with clothes of the same costly description as those of the Subadar; to be as well mounted, and in all respects to keep the same respectability of appearance, while their pay is only twenty-four rupees and a half a month; that is, ten rupees a month only more than they had been receiving in the grade of Havildars, which is not sufficient to meet the additional expenses to which they become liable as commissioned officers. Their means of remittance to their families are rather diminished than increased by promotion, and but few of them can hope ever to reach the next grade of Subadar. Our Government, which has of late been so liberal to its native civil officers, will, I hope, soon take into consideration the claims of this class, who are universally admitted to be the worst paid class of native public officers in India. Ten rupees a month addition to their pay would be of great importance; it would enable them to impart some of the advantages of promotion to their families, and improve the good feeling of the circles around them towards the Government they serve.[41]

Notes:

1. This chapter and the following one were printed as a separate tract at Calcutta in 1841 (see Bibliography). That small volume included an Introduction and two statistical tables which the author did not reprint. He has utilized extracts from the Introduction in various parts of the Rambles and Recollections. I am not sure that the tract was ever published, though it was printed; for the author says in his Introduction: 'They (scil. these two essays) may never be published; but I cannot deny myself the gratification of printing them.'

2. This order is confined to the Indian Army.

3. The punishment of working on the roads is long obsolete.

4. The author spells this word 'sipahee'. I have thought it better to use throughout the now familiar corruption.

5. The ordinary infantry pay was raised from seven to nine rupees in 1895.

6. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief of the 5th of January, 1797, declare that no sepoy or trooper of our native army shall be dismissed from the service by the sentence of any but a general court martial. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, of the 19th of March, 1827, declare that his Excellency is of opinion that the quiet and orderly habits of the native soldiers are such that it can very seldom be necessary to have recourse to the punishment of flogging, which might be almost entirely abolished with great advantage to their character and feelings; and directs that no native soldier shall in future be sentenced to corporal punishment unless for the crime of stealing, marauding, or gross insubordination, where the individuals are deemed unworthy to continue in the ranks of the army. No such sentence by a regimental, detachment, or brigade court martial was to be carried into effect till confirmed by the general officer commanding the division. When flogged the soldier was invariably to be discharged from the service.

A circular letter from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, on the 16th of June, 1827, directs that sentence to corporal punishment is not to be restricted to the three crimes of theft, marauding, or gross insubordination; but that it is not to be awarded except for very serious offences against discipline, or actions of a disgraceful or infamous nature, which show those who committed them to be unfit for the service; that the officer who assembles the court may remit the sentence of corporal punishment, and the dismissal involved in it; but cannot carry it into effect till confirmed by the officer commanding the division, except when an immediate example is indispensably necessary, as in the case of plundering and violence on the part of soldiers in the line of march. In all cases the soldier who has been flogged must be dismissed.

A circular letter by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir E. Barnes, 2nd of November, 1832, dispenses with the duty of submitting the sentence of regimental, detachment, and brigade courts martial for confirmation to the general officer commanding the division; and authorizes the officer who assembles the court to carry the sentence into effect without reference to higher authority; and to mitigate the punishment awarded, or remit it altogether; and to order the dismissal of the soldier who has been sentenced to corporal punishment, though he should remit the flogging, 'for it may happen that a soldier may be found guilty of an offence which renders it improper that he should remain any longer in the service, although the general conduct of the man has been such that an example is unnecessary; or he may have relations in the regiment of excellent character, upon whom some part of the disgrace would fall if he were flogged.' Still no court martial but a general one could sentence a soldier to be simply dismissed. To secure his dismissal they must first sentence him to be flogged.

On the 24th of February, 1835, the Governor-General of India in Council, Lord William Bentinck, directed that the practice of punishing soldiers of the native army by the cat-o'-nine-tails, or rattan, be discontinued at all the presidencies; and that henceforth it shall be competent to any regimental, detachment, or brigade court martial to sentence a soldier of the native army to dismissal from the service for any offence for which such soldier might now be punished by flogging, provided such sentence of dismissal shall not be carried into effect unless confirmed by the general or other officer commanding the division.'

For crimes involving higher penalties, soldiers were, as heretofore, committed for trial before general courts martial.

By Act 23 of 1839, passed by the Legislative Council of India on the 23rd of September, it is made competent for courts martial to sentence soldiers of the native army in the service of the East India Company to the punishment of dismissal, and to be imprisoned, with or without hard labour, for any period not exceeding two years, if the sentence be pronounced by a general court martial; and not exceeding one year, if by a garrison or line court martial; and not exceeding six months, if by a regimental or district court martial. Imprisonment for any period with hard labour, or for a term exceeding six months without hard labour, to involve dismissal. Act 2 of 1840 provides for such sentences of imprisonment being carried into execution by magistrates or other officers in charge of the gaols. [W. H. S.]

This last paragraph has been brought up from the end of the volume where it is printed in the original edition.

The army has been completely reorganized since the author's time, and the regulations have been much modified.

In October, 1833, Lord William Bentinck had assumed the command of the army, on the retirement of Sir Edward Barnes, and thus combined the offices of Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, as the Marquis Cornwallis and the Marquis of Hastings had done before him.

7. Batavia was occupied by Sir Samuel Auchmuty in August, and the whole island was taken possession of in September, 1811. But at the general peace which followed the great war the island of Java, with its dependencies, was restored to the Dutch.

8. The Isle of France, otherwise called the Mauritius, which is still British territory, was gallantly taken at the end of November, 1810, by Commodore Rowley and Major-General Abercrombie. Full details of the Java and Mauritius expeditions are given in Thornton's twenty- second chapter. The brilliant operations in both localities deserve more attention than they usually receive from students of Indian history.

9. The funeral obsequies which are everywhere offered up to the manes of parents by the surviving head of the family during the last fifteen days of the month Kuar (September) were never considered as acceptable from the hands of a soldier in our service who had been tied up and flogged, whatever might have been the nature of the offence for which he was punished; any head of a family so flogged lost by that punishment the most important of his civil rights—that, indeed, upon which all others hinged, for it is by presiding at the funeral ceremonies that the head of the family secures and maintains his recognition. [W. H. S.] I have invariably found that natives of India, enjoying a good social position, who happen to be interested in an offender, care nothing for the disgraceful nature of the offender's crime, while they dread the disgrace of the punishment, however just it may be.

10. The worst feature of this abolition measure is unquestionably the odious distinction which it leaves in the punishments to which our European and our native soldiers are liable, since the British legislation does not consider that it can be safely abolished in the British army. This odious distinction might be easily removed by an enactment declaring that European soldiers in India should be liable to corporal punishment for only two offences: first, mutiny, or gross insubordination; second, plunder or violence while the regiment or force to which the prisoner belongs is in the field or marching. The same enactment might declare the soldiers of our native army liable to the same punishments for the same offences. Such an enactment would excite no discontent among our native soldiery; on the contrary, it would be applauded as just and proper. [W. H. S.] Subsequently, corporal punishment in the Indian or native army was again legalized. The present law is thus stated by Sir Edwin Collen: 'A "summary court martial"... may pass any sentence allowed by the articles of war, except . . . and may carry it out at once. Corporal punishment not exceeding fifty lashes may be given for certain offences, but is rarely awarded, and the amount of military crime is, on the whole, very small in the native army. The native officers have power to inflict minor punishments' [_I.G. (1908), vol. iv, p. 370].

Flogging in the British army in time of peace was prohibited in April, 1868, by an amendment to the Mutiny Bill, and was completely abolished by the Army Discipline Act of 1881.

11. The author also gives the Hindustani word as 'kaelkur-hin', which seems to be intended for qail karen, or in rustic form karahin, meaning 'confute'.

12. No wonder that the native army, pampered in this sentimental fashion, gradually became more and more inefficient, till it needed the fires of the Mutiny to purge away its humours. No army could be efficient when its subordinate officers on the active list were men of sixty or seventy years of age.

13. The sepoys were quite right; no other service in the world was managed on such principles. The illusion of the old Company's officers about the gratitude and affection of the men generally was rudely dispelled nineteen years after the conversations recorded in the text. But, even in 1857. a noble minority remained faithful and did devoted service.

14. The best troops now are the Sikhs, Gorkhas, and frontier Muhammadans. Oudh men still enlist in large numbers, but do not enjoy their old prestige. The army known to the author comprised no Sikhs, Gorkhas, or frontier Muhammadans. The recruitment of Gorkhas only began in 1838, and the other two classes of troops were obtained by the annexation of the Panjab in 1849.

15. Enlistment in the native army is absolutely voluntary, and does not even require to be stimulated by a bounty. A subsequent passage shows that the author refuses to describe the British army as an 'entirety voluntary' one, because a soldier when once enlisted is bound to serve for a definite term; whereas the sepoy could resign when he chose.

16. Desertions are frequent among the regiments recruited on the Afghan frontier. These regiments did not exist in the author's day.

17. An ordinance issued in France so late as 1778 required that a man should produce proof of four quarterings of nobility before he could get a commission in the army. [W. H. S.]

18. '_Est et alia causa, cur attenuatae sint legiones_,' says Vegetius. 'Magnus in illis labor est militandi, graviora arma, sera munera, severior disciplila. Quod vitantes plerique, in auxiliis festinant militiae sacramenta percipere, ubi et minor sudor, et maturiora sunt premia.' Lib._ II. _cap._ 3. [W. H. S.] Vegetius, according to Gibbon and his most recent editor (_recensuit Carolus Lang. Editio altera. Lipsiae, Teubner_, 1885), flourished during the reign of Valentinian III (A.D. 425-55). His 'Soldier's Pocket-book' is entitled 'Flavi Vegeti Renati Epitoma Rei Militaris'.

'Montesquieu thought that 'the Government had better have stuck to the old practice of slitting noses and cutting off ears, since the French soldiers, like the Roman dandies under Pompey, must necessarily have a greater dread of a disfigured face than of death. It did not occur to him that France could retain her soldiers by other and better motives. See Spirit of Laws, book vi, chap. 12. See Necker on the Finances, vol. ii, chap. 5; vol. iii, chap. 34. A day-labourer on the roads got fifteen sous a day; and a French soldier only six, at the very time that the mortality of an army of forty thousand men sent to the colonies was annually 13,333, or about one in three. In our native army the sepoy gets about double the wages of an ordinary day-labourer; and his duties, when well done, involve just enough of exercise to keep him in health. The casualties are perhaps about one in a hundred. [W. H. S.]

20. Just precisely what the French soldiers were after the revolution had purged France of all 'the perilous stuff that weighed upon the heart' of its people. Gibbon, in considering the chance of the civilized nations of Europe ever being again overrun by the barbarians from the North, as in the time of the Romans, says: 'If a savage conqueror should issue from the deserts of Tartary, he must repeatedly vanquish the robust peasantry of Russia, the numerous armies of Germany, the gallant nobles of France, and the intrepid free men of Britain.' Never was a more just, yet more unintended satire upon the state of a country. Russia was to depend upon her 'robust peasantry'; Germany upon her 'numerous armies'; England upon her 'intrepid free men'; and poor France upon her 'gallant nobles' alone; because, unhappily, no other part of her vast population was then ever thought of. When the hour of trial came, those pampered nobles who had no feeling in common with the people were shaken off' like dew-drops from the lion's mane'; and the hitherto spurned peasantry of France, under the guidance and auspices of men who understood and appreciated them, astonished the world with their powers. [W. H. S.]

21. The allusion is to the now half-forgotten war with the United States in the years 1812-14, during the course of which the English captured the city of Washington, and the Americans gained some unexpected naval victories.

22. The author has already denounced the practice of impressment, ante, chapter 26, note 27.

23. 'to' in the original edition.

24. See McCulloch, Pol. Econ., p. 235, 1st ed., Edinburgh, 1825. [W. H. S.]

25. Many German princes adopted the discipline of Frederick in their little petty states, without exactly knowing why or wherefore. The Prince of Darmstadt conceived a great passion for the military art; and when the weather would not permit him to worry his little army of five thousand men in the open air, he had them worried for his amusement under sheds. But he was soon obliged to build a wall round the town in which he drilled his soldiers for the sole purpose of preventing their running away—round this wall he had a regular chain of sentries to fire at the deserters. Mr. Moore thought that the discontent in this little band was greater than in the Prussian army, inasmuch as the soldiers saw no object but the prince's amusement. A fight, or the prospect of a fight, would have been a feast to them. [W. H. S.] It is hardly necessary to observe that the modern system of drill is widely different.

26. Speaking of the question whether recruits drawn from the country or the towns are best, Vegetius says: 'De qua parte numquam credo potuisse dubitari, aptiorem armis rusticam plebem, quae sub divo et in labore nutritur; solis patiens; umbrae negligens; balnearum nescia; delictarurum ignara; simplicis animi; parvo contenta; duratis ad omnem laborem membris; cui gestara ferrum, fossam ducere, onus ferre, consuetudo de rare est.' (De Re Militari, Lib. i, cap. 3.) [W. H. S.] The passage quoted is disfigured by many misprints in the original edition.

27. As the Madras sepoys do.

28. The writing of the bulk of this work was completed in 1839. These concluding supplementary chapters on the Bengal army seem to have been written a little later, perhaps in 1841, the year in which they were first printed. The publication of the complete work took place in 1844. The Mutiny broke out in 1857, and proved that the fidelity of the sepoys could not be so easily assured as the author supposed.

29. I believe the native army to be better now than it ever was— better in its disposition and in its organization. The men have now a better feeling of assurance than they formerly had that all their rights will be secured to them by their European officers that all those officers are men of honour, though they have not all of them the same fellow feeling that their officers had with them in former days. This is because they have not the same opportunity of seeing their courage and fidelity tried in the same scenes of common danger. Go to Afghanistan and China, and you will find the feeling between officers and men as fine as ever it was in days of yore, whatever it may be at our large and gay stations, where they see so little of each other. [W. H. S.] The author's reputation for sagacity and discernment could not be made to rest upon the above remarks. His judgement was led astray by his lifelong association with and affection for the native troops. Lord William Bentinck took a far juster view of the situation, and understood far better the real nature of the ties which bind the native army to its masters. His admirable minute dated 13th March, 1835, published for the first time in Mr. D. Boulger's well-written little book (Lord William Bentinck, 'Rulers of India', pp. 177-201), is still worthy of study. As a corrective to the author's too effusive sentiment, some brief passages from the Governor-General's minute may be quoted. 'In considering the question of internal danger,' he observes, 'those officers most conversant with Indian affairs who were examined before the Parliamentary Committee apprehend no danger to our dominion as long as we are assured of the fidelity of our native troops. To this opinion I entirely subscribe. But others again view in the native army itself the source of our greatest peril. In all ages the military body has been often the prime cause, but generally the instrument, of all revolutions; and proverbial almost as is the fidelity of the native soldier to the chief whom he serves, more especially when he is justly and kindly treated, still we cannot be blind to the fact that many of those ties which bind other armies to their allegiance are totally wanting in this. Here is no patriotism, no community of feeling as to religion or birthplace, no influencing attachment from high considerations, or great honours and rewards. Our native army also is extremely ignorant, capable of the strongest religions excitement, and very sensitive to disrespect to their persona or infringement of their customs. . . . In the native army alone rests our internal danger, and this danger may involve our complete subversion. . . .