by David Rooney
Chapter 7
India
June 1840 to July 1847
Harry and Juana arrived in India in June 1840 to find the Army enmeshed in a disastrous war in Afghanistan. Although dying to get into action, Harry had to endure the intense frustration of being a senior staff officer, as the Adjutant General at the Commander-in-Chief’s headquarters. Here he was responsible for manning, discipline and operational support of the army in India.
They had had a dramatic voyage from the Cape to Madras, enduring a three-day gale, with topmasts carried away and sails shredded. Harry described the ship – a year later to be burned in Mauritius – as a ‘log in the water’. Ominously, the storm occurred over the anniversary of Waterloo and, with a soldier’s superstition and a belief in a Divine Hand, a reading from the 91st Psalm saw them safely into harbour. Harry, however, lost one of his six horses and the others were substantially shaken and bruised. What Juana felt is not recorded, though clearly she was apprehensive of this new and dangerous land, rife with fever and disease.
When they reached Madras, they were warmly welcomed by an old friend, Dr Murray, the medical services Inspector General who was to die of fever some two years later in Upper Bengal. A swift and uneventful voyage round to Calcutta followed and here they were met by more old friends and acquaintances, some of whom they had last seen in South Africa, which had become what we would now call a ‘Rest and Recuperation’ (or R&R) centre away from the unhealthy Indian climate.
In Calcutta, Harry and Juana fell comfortably into the delightful family atmosphere of Lord Auckland, the Governor General, and his sisters. Auckland was a pleasant enough man but lacked drive and charisma. Harry thought him ‘sensible but timid’. Others – more critical – thought him weak and prone to unscrupulous policies. Sir Jasper Nicolls, the Commander-in-Chief, and his daughters added to the welcome. Sadly, Nicolls’s wife had died previously in Rome on her way home. Harry was initially very wary of his immediate superior. He thought Sir Jasper a hard and uncommunicative man but, as time went on, he realized that he had a warm heart, a sound businesslike brain and an honesty not always found in the East India Company. Nicolls was a professional soldier of considerable experience in South America and the Peninsula, having commanded the 59th of Foot (later the East Lancashire Regiment), but he was not particularly comfortable with Harry’s hotheaded impetuosity. Juana, though, was enchanted to find herself the object of much warm affection from the Nicolls girls.
Harry had hoped to be given command of troops, but when that failed to materialize, he assumed his staff appointment with quiet resignation. ‘I get on very well here with the public functionaries of all descriptions tho' they are odd fellows to deal with. But I have very much learned to restrain an impetuosity which never produces so favourable a result as moderation, for, if right, it frequently makes you wrong.’ India at this time was a real opportunity for the professional soldier. There were reputations to be made, medals to be won, the possibility of prize money and considerable financial advantages. For instance, an officer serving in England, even in the most ordinary regiment, let alone the Cavalry and Guards, required a private income. In India an officer could comfortably live on his pay, employ a servant or two and run a couple of polo ponies with a ‘syce’ or groom. This favourable situation had been created by the combination of the power of the Royal Navy, together with the huge mass of both British and Indian troops maintained in India. British policies led to expansion in Burma and Singapore, and led to the Opium Wars in China – the opium trade producing a substantial part of India’s revenue, and 40 per cent of its exports.
With the defeat of France, Britain’s main potential foe was seen to be Russia, particularly with its ambitions set on the wealth of India and the classic, and only, invasion route to it through Afghanistan. In late 1840 and early the following year, it looked as though the Anglo-Indian Army had achieved a reasonable settlement in Afghanistan. Shah Shujah was made Amir by the British, the Army moved out of the fortified citadel in Kabul into conventional cantonments, a complete brigade started to withdraw to India, families were summoned and soldiers settled down to normal garrison life. Ominous signs, though, were becoming increasingly apparent: supply columns crossing the Khyber Pass were being constantly attacked; tribal revolt in northern Baluchistan made the region ungovernable; and Shah Shujah’s writ barely extended outside the main towns – certainly not down to the Helmand River. Finally, command of the forces in Afghanistan devolved onto the incompetent and indecisive General Elphinstone – described by contemporaries as ‘elderly, fat, gouty and nearly senile’. How could ineffective officers such as this be placed in positions of critical command? Harry, though, had a soft spot for Elphinstone, who had commanded a regiment during the years of the occupation of France between 1815 and 1818 when he and Juana were there.
In October 1841, a brigade, which was part of the force reduction, was heavily attacked while withdrawing, only reaching Jellalabad with difficulty and significant losses. Murder and mayhem broke out in Kabul, where Elphinstone dithered and the situation rapidly deteriorated. The beginning of the end came on 6 January 1842 when, with a supposed safe-conduct guarantee from the Afghan warlords, the British garrison of Kabul set out for India. As part of the agreement, all guns had to be left behind bar one horse artillery battery and three mountain guns. A number of hostages, including Elphinstone and the redoubtable Lady Florentia Sale, were forced to remain in Kabul. They were the lucky ones. Lady Sale remarkably managed to write a journal during her captivity. Imprisoned in three small rooms in an Afghan chief ’s compound, where luxuries such as tables and chairs were rare, she concealed pages of her diary in her clothing and later smuggled out instalments. While the European hostages certainly had the most unpleasant time – sleeping on the floor, eating greasy Afghan mutton and only being able to wash once a week – those Indians disabled by frostbite, or for whom rations were no longer available, were simply stripped of their clothes and possessions and pushed outside the compound to die. The withdrawing column was attacked the moment it left Kabul. Throughout the following days and freezing nights, the army was sniped at and duped with empty promises by the local tribesmen, in exchange for large sums of money. Further hostages were taken and the force subjected to continual local attacks and harassment. On the afternoon of 13 January, the single figure of Dr Brydon – immortalized in Lady Butler’s iconic painting – approached Jellalabad on his exhausted horse. He was the sole European survivor, apart from the hostages, of a force of 690 British, 2,840 Indian soldiers and 12,000 camp followers. The 44th of Foot (later the Essex Regiment) lost twenty-two officers and 645 men. The shock wave was to be felt throughout the Empire.
Harry was beside himself with anger and frustration, constantly badgering the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Jasper Nicolls, to send him to Afghanistan. His view was that a strong and well-equipped force, moving fast, under decisive leadership – his, of course – would restore the situation. Nicolls, however, knew his Harry well and being of a less aggressive nature, clearly worried that, if put in charge, the only obstacle preventing him reaching Persia would be the Caspian Sea. Nicolls was not prepared to take the risk and wrote to Harry: ‘Your rapid style has often made me think you were inclined, in your Peninsula manner, to take me by storm or surprise.’ This professional disagreement did not, however, affect the very warm personal relationship that the Smiths had with the Nicolls family. Juana stayed with them when she was recovering from a tropical fever inevitably picked up in India, and they were very affectionate towards her.
Harry maintained that the depleted brigade in Jellalabad should have been swiftly reinforced and then the Afghans in Kabul attacked. As always, timing was crucial and the opportunity was soon lost, to Harry’s increased fury. Furthermore, the so-called Army of Retribution, later sent into Afghanistan to avenge the disaster, instead of being given to Harry was split into two, with Brigadier Nott commanding in the south and General Pollock in the north. They were both junio
r to Harry. He sarcastically compared the bickering between the two to Napoleon’s quarrelling Marshals in Spain. Nevertheless, in March 1842, Pollock’s force arrived at Jellalabad to find that the garrison had courageously beaten off the besieging Afghans. This was a major fillip to British morale in India and when the 13th of Foot (later the Somerset Light Infantry) marched back to India out of Jellalabad, every garrison the Battalion went through gave them a ten-gun salute. From then on the Regiment wore, as part of their cap badge, a depiction of the walls of the town, with the word ‘Jellalabad’ superimposed. In the south, Nott resolutely held Kandahar with a well-trained force.
In the meantime, Lord Ellenborough had replaced Lord Auckland as Governor General in Calcutta. Initially, on Ellenborough’s arrival, Harry had thought he stood more chance of a command appointment, but this soon turned sour. Harry criticized Ellenborough, who he privately called ‘The Moghul’ for his fondness for pomp and ceremony, for having little idea of time, and for lack of foresight and the knowledge of preparations required to deploy a large army. Both Nott and Pollock confidently anticipated orders to free the hostages held in Kabul. To their astonishment they were initially ordered to retreat to India and, by implication, abandon Kabul to its fate. Harry was incensed and issued a number of Memoranda in August and September 1842. These went out on a widespread distribution and were not only highly critical of the strategy employed by his superiors but added his own views as to how the campaign should have been run. It is remarkable that, whether right or wrong, Harry escaped censure from the Commander-in-Chief for what amounted to insubordination or, at the very least, disloyalty. Perhaps it was realized that he was right.
The order to retreat was soon rescinded and both commanders were then given wide rein to withdraw to India, via Kabul. Pollock reached Kabul on 15 September, having extracted revenge on the way with the utmost severity. Nott made less progress from the south and had his force badly mauled by the Afghans at Ghunzee, but eventually arrived in Kabul on 17 September, infuriated to find Pollock there before him. The hostages were rescued some way from Kabul but, when found, had cleverly negotiated their own release. Elphinstone had died in captivity, so this was probably the work of the formidable Lady Florentia Sale. (Lady Sale was one of the indomitable women of the Victorian Empire. Born Florentia Wynch, she was twenty-one when she married Captain Robert Sale, by whom she had twelve children, one of whom, Mrs Alexandrina Sturt, shared with her mother the horrors of the march from Kabul. Lady Sale was then fifty-four, but although she was twice wounded and had her clothing shot through, she worked tirelessly for the sick and wounded, and for the women and children who took part in that fearful journey. Throughout the march, and during the months which she suffered in Afghan captivity, she kept the diary, which exists to today. It is one of the great military journals and a remarkable personal memoir of a woman, who recorded battle, massacre, earthquake, hardship, escape and everyday detail with a sharp and often caustic eye. Her reaction when soldiers were reluctant to take up their muskets to form an advance guard was: ‘You had better give me one, and I will lead the party.’ Other typical observations are: ‘I had, fortunately, only one ball in my arm,’ and the brisk entry for 24 July, when she was a prisoner: ‘At two p.m. Mrs. Sturt presented me with a grand-daughter – another female captive.’ During the march her son-in-law, Captain Sturt, had died beside her in the snow. Her heroism was rewarded by an annual pension of £500 from Queen Victoria and when she died in her sixty-sixth year, her tombstone was given the appropriate inscription: ‘Under this stone reposes all that could die of Lady Sale.’)
Harry’s view was that Nott and Pollock, being divided, were lucky to survive. Had the Afghans managed to consolidate their forces, always difficult in tribal communities, they would, undoubtedly, have taken Pollock and Nott apart piecemeal, but, as Harry rather smugly said, ‘In all wars the folly of one party is exceeded by that of the other, and that which is least culpable succeeds.’ On their withdrawal back to India, both forces set about destroying villages and towns, including Jellalabad, with the utmost ferocity while at the same time being harried by local tribesmen.
Ellenborough, who fancied himself as an orator, decided to welcome the avenging army back to Ferozepore in December 1842 with a dazzling display of elephants in gilded accoutrements, triumphal arches and numerous speeches. In the event it all turned to dust. The tired and dirty returning troops were drawn up in some sort of star formation, the arches tottered, the terrified elephants bolted and the Indian princes, whom all this was designed to impress, thought the whole thing a joke. So instead of consolidating British prestige and power in India, loss of face and status started to sow dangerous seeds of rebellion and ridicule. The British experience in the First Afghan War was destructive and dramatic, and, sensibly, they kept out of Afghanistan for another thirty years. How would those involved then have commiserated with today’s British soldiers, still fighting much the same people over the same territory?
At this time, successive British governors were determined to keep the Indus valley open for trade and as an important route from the port of Karachi up to the Punjab. In contrast, the Amirs of Sind were equally determined to prey on all the traffic passing through. This gave Ellenborough sufficient reason to prepare a large force and to order the aggressive General Charles Napier into the province to crush any resistance. He set about the task with severity and relish. (He was the elder brother of the less fiery George and William. Between the three of them they had sustained twenty-three wounds in the Peninsula.) By March 1843, Napier had subdued Sind and sent the famous message, probably apocryphal and later thought up by some clever classicist, ‘Peccavi’ (‘I have sinned’). Harry was green with envy. If anyone was going to carry out this sort of operation, he thought, it should be him. This was compounded when Napier was made Governor of Sind Province, made Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) and given £50,000 as his share of the plunder. Harry sourly commented that that ended his financial worries, but Napier proved himself a resolute and efficient governor. He had to deal with a serious outbreak of Suttee – the custom of burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre. When he was told that it was a national custom, he replied that we too had a national custom – that when men burn women alive, we hang them.
Although living in India was financially easier than England, Harry and Juana had considerable social responsibilities due to his position, and there was no such thing as an ‘entertainment allowance’. Coupled with that, he was supporting his favourite sister, Alice (Mrs Sargant), and her two sons. He did receive £75 a year as Colonel of the 3rd Regiment of Foot (later The Buffs) but it did not go far. Prize money, without a command appointment, so far eluded him.
In July 1843, Sir Jasper Nicolls handed over command to Sir Hugh Gough. Harry had rather hoped his old friend Sir Benjamin D’Urban, with whom he had had such a close rapport in South Africa, would have been appointed, but it was not to be. Gough arrived with a sound reputation from the Peninsula and the Opium Wars and was known as a ‘soldier’s soldier’ – an officer who looked after his troops and did not ask of them something he was not prepared to do himself. He wore a conspicuous white coat in battle in order to draw enemy fire onto himself rather than his troops (Wellington would not have approved). Despite their differences over Afghanistan, Harry and Juana parted from the Nicolls with a good deal of sadness. Juana and the Nicolls daughters clearly enjoyed each other’s company and, although now aged forty-five, which by standards of the day was certainly middle-aged, Juana found them highly amusing. The Smiths then spent an unpleasant twelve days in the muggy heat of Calcutta, in the middle of the rainy season, welcoming the new Commander-in-Chief and being involved in endless briefings. As fellow ‘front-line’ soldiers, Gough and Harry had a natural affinity for each other. However, in the view of Harry and others, Gough was no military intellectual and his reaction to a threat was to take it head-on without much thought, let alone guile. This was to be, very nearly, hi
s undoing in the 2nd Sikh War after Harry had left. However, the immediate problem facing the East India Company was trouble in Gwalior and the coordination of an army to deal with it.
The campaign in Gwalior, often called the ‘One Day War’ was the result of internal dissent and intrigue in the Maharatta court. The Court was riven with complex and dynastic feuds, and struggles for supremacy. Ellenborough happily followed the policy that the British had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Indian States if they considered it was in the interests of peace and stability. The reality was that an unfriendly Gwalior – with its sizeable and ill-disciplined army – could threaten British lines of communication. If the Maharattas allied themselves to the Sikhs, though that was unlikely, British India could be in real trouble.
Ellenborough, the Governor General, and Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, were determined that the Maharattas should be in no doubt as to the power of the East India Company and the Queen Empress, either by force of arms in battle or by a significant demonstration of power. Harry, of course, still Adjutant General, was heavily involved in the planning and organization of a force of considerable strength. He was appalled how cumbersome and slow moving was such an army. The sheer size, with its siege equipment, bullock carts, elephants, camels and thousands of servants and camp followers, spread over a vast country with few roads, exasperated a man used to moving fast and lightly equipped. The rate of progress was little better than 2 miles an hour, with frequent halts to allow the baggage train to close up.