‘Trust me, sir. Richard knows how important India is to England’s interests. But I will keep him abreast of events here, as I see them,’ he added carefully.
‘Very good. I appreciate that.’ Sir John spoke with quiet sincerity.‘Now then, I imagine you’ll want to make arrangements for your men?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘For the present the 33rd is to be accommodated here in the fort. Barracks have been prepared for them.When I say prepared, I mean that they have been emptied.You will of course have to spend a little time and effort to make them . . . habitable. But I would not make them too comfortable if I were you, Colonel.’ Sir John smiled slightly as Arthur gave him a searching look.
‘Sir?’
‘Let’s just say that the 33rd might well be afforded the chance to get to grips with the enemy sooner than you think. I can’t give you the details yet, but you will be told in good time. Now, if you’ll forgive me I have some tedious correspondence that demands my attention.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Arthur rose from his chair. ‘Thank you, sir.’
Sir John looked at him for a moment in silence before he concluded. ‘India might not be every Englishman’s cup of tea, Wesley. But you’re young and you look healthy enough. Who knows, India might be the making of you.After all, this is the land of the pagoda tree. Shake it hard enough and a fortune will be yours.There’s plenty of money and fame for the taking for those with the courage, and the good fortune, to seize it.’
‘Iqbal.’ Arthur smiled.
‘That’s right. Iqbal. It means everything here. Make sure you have it.’
Arthur shrugged. ‘Frankly, sir, I don’t believe in luck. It is simply too fickle to trust. I place my faith in myself. I aim to make my own success, and leave fate to others.’
‘Really? Nevertheless, I wish you good luck, Colonel Wesley.’ He glanced down at his papers, and Arthur was turning to leave when the Governor General suddenly looked up. ‘Oh! I forgot to say, welcome to India.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Sir John laughed. ‘You might thank me now. But I promise you there will be times when you curse the moment you ever set foot here. When that happens, and it will, then you will find yourself reflecting that you really are welcome to India.’
Chapter 24
The barracks that had been allocated to the 33rd were in a deplorable condition, Arthur discovered. It was true that they had been emptied of their last occupants in readiness for the arrival of the King’s regiment, but whether the last creatures to dwell there had been men or beasts was hard to discern. The rooms were filthy and some had clearly housed animals, from the musky smell and the presence of dried grass and traces of excrement.
As soon as the equipment and serge coats had been set down outside the men set to work scrubbing the barracks out with vinegar. The old bedrolls were taken out and burned. This immediately drew the attention of the quartermaster of the fort who angrily demanded to know who would be paying for a new issue. Arthur forced himself to respond calmly to the man and point out the need for his troops to live in the healthiest possible conditions. He indicated one of the bedrolls waiting to be added to the smoking pyre.
‘Do you see that?’ Arthur pointed. ‘The damn thing is crawling with lice.’
‘Lice?’The quartermaster snorted.‘Lice never hurt anyone, sir. That’s a perfectly serviceable bedroll. I demand you stop this wanton destruction of Company property at once!’
‘You’re right.’ Arthur nodded, with a slight smile. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it.You men!’ He called over to two soldiers standing by the pile of bedrolls. ‘Bring that one over here!’
They dragged the bedroll over and laid it on the bare ground between the two officers.The quartermaster’s nose wrinkled as a waft of old sweat and decay rose up. The material of the bedroll was stained, worn and torn in places, and over it all scurried the numerous tiny slivers of lice.
‘Perfectly serviceable, eh?’ Arthur looked at the quartermaster, and his expression hardened.‘Let’s see, shall we? Lie down on it.’
‘What?’ The quartermaster looked surprised, then horrified.
‘I said lie down on that bedroll,’ Arthur replied harshly. ‘You say it’s serviceable. I want you to demonstrate that to these men.’
The two soldiers watched the exchange in amusement, thoroughly enjoying the quartermaster’s discomfort.
‘You can’t be serious, sir.’ The quartermaster looked down at the bedroll and winced. ‘It’s practically alive with lice. I’m not going near it.’
‘I see.Then I take it you’re saying that it’s not serviceable after all?’>
The quartermaster squirmed miserably.
‘Well?’ Arthur pressed him. ‘Speak up, man.’
‘Perhaps not, sir.’
‘Good. Now I want you to get back to your desk and make sure that my men are issued with new bedrolls. Before the end of the day, understand?’
The quartermaster looked round at the soldiers cleaning the barracks and those still carrying out more bedrolls for the fire.‘All of them, sir?’
‘Every single man.’
‘Who’s going to pay for it?’
Arthur pointed at the bedroll. In the corner was a stencil: Property of the East India Company. ‘Since they belong to the Company the Company can pay for the replacements. See to it. Now, please.’
The quartermaster puffed out his cheeks and shook his head, but Arthur glared at him, daring him to make any further protest, and the man turned away and walked stiffly back towards headquarters.Arthur smiled as he watched him leave, then turned and saw that the two soldiers were grinning at him.
He frowned. ‘What are you standing there for? Get that bedroll up and burn the damned thing before anyone catches anything from it.’
‘Yes, sir!’ The soldiers bent to their task at once, lifting the spoiled bedroll by the ends and carrying it over to the blaze before tossing it on to the pyre. There was a faint pop and crack as the lice started to burst in the flames.
The next day, Arthur began to drill his men in earnest. The Governor General’s hint that the regiment would soon be seeing action was at the front of Arthur’s mind as he watched the sergeants and officers putting the 33rd through its paces over the following weeks.
Sir John made sure that the newly arrived colonel was introduced to Calcutta society, such as it was, as soon as possible. Calcutta was as wild a town as Dublin; the officers drank and gambled to even greater excess than any of the young swells that Arthur had known at the castle. He did his best to partake of the social life of the small European community of Calcutta, and drank with the officers in moderation, but he tended to withdraw from their company once the high jinks began, as befitted a man with his senior rank.
The officers were not accommodated in the barracks and had to look to their own resources to find accommodation in the better housing that had grown up close to the fort, on raised ground overlooking the teeming ramshackle sprawl of Calcutta. While the junior officers shared chummeries, Arthur rented a one-storey building with a wide veranda running around it: what the locals referred to as a bungalow. It was far finer than anything he could have hired in Dublin for the same price, and it overlooked a neat garden planted with mango trees and enclosed in a white-washed wall. Often, when the day’s duties were complete, Arthur sat on his veranda and wrote letters to Kitty describing his new life in India, and his longing to return to her as soon as he could. Even though it might be in several years’ time, he assured her of his undying love and urged her to write to him as often as possible.
As his men trained, Arthur studied the campaigns of Cornwallis, in particular the failed attempt to reduce Seringapatam and end the threat from Tipoo Sahib. Cornwallis had been defeated by the monsoon season, and the failure to secure a steady supply of food for his army. He had been forced to spike his guns, abandon the siege and retreat, occasioning a serious decline of faith in the iqbal of the English. The difficulties of campaigning
in India were immense: the terrible heat of the dry seasons and the torrential rains of the monsoons that turned tracks into glutinous mud and could transform dry river beds into raging torrents in a matter of hours. Then there was the lack of any roads worth the name, just a series of tracks that linked the fortified villages that dotted the landscape. Any modern army desiring to cross the subcontinent was further handicapped by the sheer distance it would be obliged to maintain its lines of communication. It was difficult to find horses strong enough to pull the guns and wagons of a baggage train. The mounts favoured by the Mahratta and other warrior nations were small and nimble and of little use as beasts of burden.
These were matters he took up with Harry Ball when the two officers were attending one of the numerous dinner parties that were held in the houses of Calcutta’s tiny European population. When the meal was over, officers and Company officials retired to the veranda outside the house to drink in the light draught of the punkahs swaying overhead. Arthur sat himself down on the chair next to Ball with a brief exchange of pleasantries.
‘So how are you finding life in Calcutta, sir?’
‘It’s pleasant enough provided one doesn’t get too hot.’ Arthur smiled. ‘Not that there’s any chance of avoiding the heat.’
‘You think this is bad?’ Ball looked amused. ‘Just wait until you encounter the climate further inland. Sometimes it gets so hot that a man will lie under his camp bed covered with a wet sheet just to stop his brains from boiling and sending him insane. It’s not good country for proper soldiers like yourself, sir.’
‘Nevertheless, we are required to fight here. Especially if we are to protect our interests from the French. So we are obliged to find some means of waging war effectively in India. From what I’ve read so far, we’ve not had much success.’
‘It is a problem,’ Ball agreed. ‘That is why our interests in India are confined to the lands immediately surrounding the three presidencies. That is the limit of our operations. Most attempts to campaign further afield have failed to achieve anything worthwhile, or ended in disaster.’
‘Perhaps we are wrong to think of conducting war as we would in Europe,’ Arthur suggested. ‘As you say, the distances are too great. The only way an army could stay in the field for long enough to cover the necessary ground is to be resupplied on the march.’
Ball nodded.‘It would make sense, sir, but the supplies of grain that we would need could not be met by the villages in the mofussil - sorry, the hinterland.’
Arthur smiled politely. ‘I understand the word, Major. But I wasn’t thinking of gleaning what little the natives had grown for themselves. I was thinking that our columns could be supplied by the brinjarris.’
Ball raised an eyebrow at the suggestion, then considered it carefully for a moment. The brinjarris were almost a separate nation in India, raising huge herds of bullocks which they contracted out, or used to carry excess grain and rice across the subcontinent in search of a decent profit. Ball nodded. ‘It might work, provided they could be assured that they would make money. Certainly it would relieve our commanding officers and their staffs of the burden of arranging supplies.’
‘That’s what I thought. Do you have any contacts with their headmen?’
‘I know some of the local boys. I could arrange a meeting with them, if you wish, sir.’
‘I’d be most grateful. One other thing.These bullocks that the brinjarris use, would they be suitable for drawing guns?’
‘Cannon?’ Ball pursed his lips for an instant. ‘I don’t see why not. We could arrange a trial and see.’
‘Then let’s do it.’Arthur nodded amiably.‘If the bullocks prove a success, then we may be a step nearer taking the fight closer to our enemies.’>
‘Very well, sir. I assume you’ll want an intermediary when you meet the headmen, someone to translate for you.’
‘I’d be grateful. My Hindoostani is coming along, but I would rather not rely on it at present.’
Ball raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re learning Hindoostani?’
‘Yes. Why not? You seem surprised, Ball.’
‘I am. It’s a rare officer of the King’s regiments who bothers to learn more than a handful of words. It’s different for the officers in the Company battalions. We have to live with the sepoys. Makes sense for us.’
‘I would have thought it makes sense for any Englishman serving here, whether he is employed by the Crown or the Company.’
‘I agree. But you would have a hard time convincing most of the officers of that, sadly.’ Ball considered the young colonel for a moment before he continued. ‘Frankly, I wish there were more here like you, sir. It’s what England needs in India if the place is ever to become more than an asset on the Company’s balance sheet. If there were more men like you, then there’d be a fine future for India.’
‘The future of India?’ Arthur mused. ‘I’ve been thinking of little else since I arrived here. Believe me, before I return home, I will have made my mark on these lands and their peoples.’
Chapter 25
Spring gave way to summer and the heat increased to stifling proportions, but Arthur continued to drill his men as often as possible until the 33rd moved with precision in response to his commands. They soon sweated off the extra weight they had gained on the voyage from England and became as fit and hardy as they had ever been. Arthur had persuaded the quartermaster at Fort William to provide his men with the lighter and looser uniforms issued to Company soldiers, but the men still grumbled under the weight of their backpacks, heavy boots and muskets.
He ordered that a firing range be set up in the fort, and once every fortnight he had the men perform a live fire drill, the sound of their muskets echoing round the fort and drawing curious glances from those not used to it.The cost of gunpowder was such that few armies anywhere in the world allowed their soldiers to discharge their weapons off the battlefield. But Arthur had no intention of putting the request for powder through official army channels. Instead, he drew on the stocks of the East India Company who had plentiful supplies of powder and ball in their Calcutta arsenal.
Naturally the quartermaster protested, and Arthur cordially invited him to write a letter of complaint to the board of directors in London, in the happy knowledge that time and distance would mean that any dispute over his actions would take years to resolve. At the same time, Arthur was writing long letters to his brother Richard, urging him to put his name forward when His Majesty’s government and the Company decided to find a replacement for Sir John Shore. He filled the pages of his letters with detailed reports on any aspect of India that might be of use to his brother: descriptions of the geography, the natural resources that England might harvest, the loyalties or otherwise of its peoples and carefully judged assessments of any Europeans who might help or hinder the expansion of British influence in the subcontinent. Most important of all Arthur outlined the threats to British influence in India which would need to be overcome before any grand vision for the future could become a reality. In addition to the resurgence of French involvement in the area, there were a number of powerful native warlords who must be reduced to client status.
In the south, there was Tipoo Sahib, ruler of Mysore, whose lands stretched to the borders of the Madras presidency and dominated the Carnatic. Tipoo had long harboured a hatred of the English, as his father had before him. His capital at Seringapatam was a strongly fortified city built on an island in the Cauvery river. It would have to be taken by storm, and that meant the creation of a practical siege train and supply system to allow the English army to operate nearly three hundred miles from Madras.
Then, in the heart of India, there was the Nizam of Hyderabad. Though the Nizam was far less hostile to English interests, he was a weak man, easily manipulated, and his army was large and well trained, principally by French mercenaries.The Nizam, like Tipoo, was being deliberately cultivated by the French who no doubt hoped to provoke both rulers into an open confrontation with England and the
East India Company.
North of Hyderabad was the vast sprawl of the Mahratta confederacy, composed of kingdoms ruled by warlords at the head of huge armies of mounted warriors. Here too the French were busy building their relationships with gifts, promises and military advisers.
All three powers would have to be brought to heel, Arthur wrote to his bother, by diplomacy if possible, by force if not. But the key to success lay in fighting them one at a time. If they ever united in common interest against English forces then they must surely succeed in driving the English out of India. It was a sobering prospect, yet much had to be risked in pursuit of the vast wealth and influence that England might gain from exerting itself in India and the far east.
‘Manila?’ Arthur’s eyebrows rose. ‘That’s in the Philippines, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Sir John nodded. ‘There will be a force leaving from Calcutta and another one from Madras.They’re to rendezvous at Penang before proceeding to Manila. Now that we’re at war with Spain our government wants us to extend the conflict into their colonies, and hit their trade. Manila’s their largest trading colony in the area. If we can take Manila then only the French will present us with much danger on this side of the world.’
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