The spectacular fortunes of Clive and Hastings had made a lasting impression. It was jokingly said that there existed in India a pagoda tree which, when shaken, dropped its fruit of gold coins. This legend and its influence were described in Tom Raw:
The colonies and foreign governments
Are famous drains for pride and poverty;
For gentlemen deficient in their rents,
Always in India turn a longing eye.
They talk in England of a precious tree
That, but to shake, brings down its fruit, – (pagodas).
Contemplation of that crop sustained James Young during the dog days in the trenches at Deeg and, when the fortress fell, he took a lively interest in the progress of the prize agents and what they had accumulated.32 The prospects of prize money animated every officer in India. ‘Money, medals and promotion’ and ‘prize money’ lay ahead of Cornet Thomas Pearson of the 11th Light Dragoons, newly landed in India and happy to be part of the army which was about to lay siege to Bharatpur in December 1825.33 He got what he wanted, but it took time; in 1835 he received his cornet’s share of the prize money, £218 16 shillings (£212.80) and sixteen years later an Army of India medal with a clasp for Bharatpur.34 There were, however, no instant fortunes available, save for senior officers chosen to command expeditions who, according to the official sliding scale, always took the largest sum. The major and captain in charge of the punitive force sent against Cochin in 1795 each received £2,218, while lieutenants got £93 19 shillings (£93.95).35 Knowledge of these discrepancies made the scramble for promotion more intense.
The best most officers could hope for was a steady acquisition of comparatively small sums augmented by what could be saved from pay and allowances. In 1820 it was estimated that a thrifty ensign might save as much as £120 a year from his salary, but it is unlikely that many managed this, given the temptations which surrounded them.36 William Home, who had entered the Company’s service as an officer in the Bengal European service in 1786, was able to pay £200 a year towards the mortgage of the family estate in 1806.37 Five years later, he asked his brother whether £500 a year was enough to rent an estate in his native Berwickshire.38 His dreams remained unfulfilled; he died, aged forty-three, in Calcutta in 1816, leaving his house there and £1,500 for the upkeep of his favourite horse, a mare called ‘Khoose Khan’. His will included special instructions as to her diet and preference for eating it from a table.39 Like many others, particularly from Scotland, Home’s exile provided his family with the wherewithal to restore its fortunes. Another borderer, Sir Walter Scott, saw India as ‘the corn chest for Scotland where we poor gentry must send our youngest sons as we send our black cattle to the South’.40
Getting the corn often involved young officers in a lifetime’s game of snakes and ladders. Consider James Campbell, who joined the Madras army in 1771 as a subaltern. During the winter of 1773–74 he served on an up-country expedition against brigands, for which he was delighted to get an additional allowance of £10 a month. It failed to cover the costs of his transport and servants and when he returned to Fort St George he complained of a ‘very foolish’ campaign in which there was no action and ‘instead of making a great deal of money which was not expected, we are all greatly out of pocket’.41 An officer with the wonderful old Puritan name of Goodbehere was forced to borrow £40 at 12 per cent during the 1803–05 Maratha campaign to meet his immediate campaign expenses.42
James Campbell quickly recouped his losses when he secured a command in a nawab of Arcot’s cavalry in 1774, with a monthly salary of £14. But a year after the Company banned what was, in effect, ‘moonlighting’ by its officers. Campbell’s chance came in January 1787 when he obtained the lucrative contract to supply bullocks to the Madras army. ‘I shall have a genteel enrichment,’ he told his family, ‘and a fair chance of returning to you in a very independent situation.’ It did not turn out as he had wished; Cornwallis, with a mandate to eradicate corruption, refused to allow a serving officer to act as a private contractor. Campbell was obliged to resign on the eve of the 1790–92 Maratha war. He was disappointed, but by the time he returned to Scotland as a colonel at the beginning of 1797 he had been able to remit home a total of £25,000. This sum was, he felt, ‘poor recompense considering the magnitude of the Concern and the trouble, torment and anguish of mind I underwent’.43 He retired to Edinburgh’s New Town, a minor but eventually contented nabob whose life revolved around convivial evenings in the New Club. He died in 1836.
Campbell had learned his soldiering by experience, but, by the time he left India, his successors were receiving professional training, not least in the languages of the men they commanded. The quality of this education varied. Baraset military college, sixteen miles from Calcutta, was a bear-garden where cadets, not satisfied with their daily allocation of a pint of wine, regularly drunk themselves silly. In or approaching this condition, they fought duels, terrorised the inhabitants of neighbouring villages, and made riotous forays into Calcutta. Their ‘ungentlemanlike’ conduct was explained by the presence among them of former militia officers from Britain who were often men of humble background – the sort of fellows whom Mrs Bennett wished to keep out of her younger daughters’ way. In 1808 the Baraset cadets mutinied, were bloodlessly put down by the Governor-General’s bodyguard and reform was set in hand. It failed, and the college was closed three years later.44
The faults of the Company’s military academy at Addiscombe near Croydon were less glaring, but equally damaging to its army. Founded in 1809 as an Indian army equivalent to the new military college at Marlow (later Sandhurst), its curriculum included Hindustani along with such professional subjects as mathematics, fortification and surveying. Instruction was skimpy and rushed and Hindustani soon languished in the face of student hostility and slipshod teaching. The Hindustani professor appointed in 1829 was then aged nineteen and had never heard the language spoken. Generations of cadets embarked for India better versed in Latin than any native language, and the tendency of lecturers to cram meant that many were hazy about their regimental duties. For this preparation their families paid £65 a term in 1835.
During their voyage out, Addiscombe graduates discovered more of their new life and what was expected from them in a handbook written by a former Company officer. At all times and in all circumstances, they were to behave as gentlemen. Aboard ship, they were free to enjoy the society of its officers, but keep a distance from the crew to whom they were to show a ‘pleasant condescending civility’. The rest of the advice was concerned with the expenses of servants, essential items for the wardrobe and the need to conduct themselves decorously. Nothing was said about their military duties or the men they would lead, save that aspirants ought to master Hindustani.45 In India, the primary duty of the Company officer was ‘to uphold the British character’.46 The mainsprings of his conduct were love of country and the quest for reputation. ‘The proper motives of a Soldier are Patriotism and love of Fame,’ wrote Blacker. ‘Of these excitements, neither can have any valuable operation without constant and attentive study of the Military Profession.’47 Artillery and engineer officers certainly heeded Blacker’s advice as a matter of practical necessity, but few cavalry or infantry officers investigated the arcane mysteries of the science of war or even concerned themselves with the everyday running of their regiments. As a former officer of the Madras army remarked in 1833, the undertaking of ‘minor and trifling duties’ diminished the standing of British officers in Indian eyes.48
Leadership was the chief preoccupation of the officer. The exercise of authority came naturally to a gentleman, whether over the British working classes, who filled the ranks of the white regiments, or sepoys. But the gentleman officer could not rely on instinctive authority alone in the thick of battle, he had to set an example of bravery and strong nerves. Both needed fostering, and this was conveniently and agreeably provided by stalking and shooting game of all kinds, from tigers to partridges. Hunting was the commones
t diversion of officers who found time heavy on their hands and it was, as it had been in the Middle Ages, a preparation for war. During his frequent expeditions in pursuit of antelope, hyenas, foxes and wildfowl, Lieutenant Horward of the 13th Bombay NI convinced himself that he was fine-tuning his mettle for the moment when his sepoys would look to him for inspiration on the battlefield. Like his brothers-in-arms, he knew the interior strengths which distinguished the ideal officer: ‘Unflinching courage must inspire him, imperturbable coolness must govern him.’49 He was something of a fire-eater and anxious to make a name for himself, which was why he tried to secure a command in the newly-formed Sind Horse. It was ‘the finest corps in India’, full of ‘rough and ready’ tribal cavalry who were ‘in action as steady as an old Waterloo man’.50
III
There was a tremendous romantic appeal in winning the respect and obedience of such free spirits. Commanding sepoys was a different matter, in so far as their submissiveness and response to authority were seen as inbred. ‘It is rare indeed that they desert, and, from their temperate habits, they are easily managed,’ wrote a British NCO who was used to the bloodymindedness of his countrymen.51 Always a volunteer, the high-caste Hindu or man from a Muslim warrior class was engaging to serve in a profession which had always been honoured in Indian society, even if this involved, as it inevitably did, fighting against his own people. The Indian fighting man had always commanded respect, often fear, and old military customs died hard. On campaign, the soldier was traditionally a law unto himself and, in spite of the threats and punishments delivered by their officers, many sepoys believed this was still so. During operations in Gujarat in 1809, sepoys stole silver bangles, nose rings and necklaces from villagers along the route of march and seized firewood for baking their chapattis.52 A uniform also gave its wearer the right to throw his weight around: in 1831 Jemadar (junior officer) Ranjit Khan and his nephew, both Company cavalrymen on leave, grabbed two Bhopali villagers and ordered them to carry their baggage. When one refused he was slashed about the head with a tulwar. This high-handed pair had a bad record; they had committed a similar outrage before, were ‘turbulent and mutinous’ characters, and had beaten up a couple of sowars when their commanding officer had been on leave. For these reasons they were dismissed from the Company’s service.53 It says something for the Company’s reputation for disciplining its men that the villagers made a complaint, although many similar cases may probably have passed unnoticed.
Soldiering carried with it dignity and offered a good livelihood and pension. But the rewards of wearing a red coat alone did not make a sepoy brave or steady in battle. This was the task of British officers, according to the conventional wisdom. They enkindled pride in their men, taught them discipline, and trained them to drill and shoot. Most importantly, and in this they had the advantage of working with men who were accustomed to hierarchy, they ruled their sepoys as fathers. Explaining the success of operations in Mysore in 1780–81, an officer remarked that it owed everything to men like himself who ‘infuse a martial Spirit’ into the sepoys, especially ‘those Boys they breed up in their battalions’. The magical formula was an amalgam of impartiality, strictness and ‘daily unremitting discipline’ as instinctively understood by every Englishman.54 It helped, the writer added, to get recruits young, which was easy enough since it was the custom in many battalions for sons and nephews to follow their fathers and uncles into the Company’s service.
This was how Sita Ram joined up in about 1814. He had been brought into the battalion by his uncle, a jemadar, and was immediately struck by the friendly manner of the British officers. The adjutant warmly greeted the jemadar, enquired how he was, and touched his sword, a gesture of respect. Nearly fifty years later, Sita Ram remembered how the colonel had ‘spoke very kindly to me, telling me to be good boy and imitate my uncle in everything’. It was easy to like the colonel; he was a portly, bald, red-faced old buffer who smoked a large hookah. But, as Sita Ram soon discovered, appearances were misleading. His commanding officer had shot nine tigers, a feat which made him a figure of awe among his sepoys.55 Sita Ram had become part of what was, in effect, an extended family presided over by a benevolent patriarch in which everyone knew his duty and where discipline rested in great part upon the Indians’ natural quietism. This ideal was striven after by Captain Charles Christie, who raised and trained the second battalion of the 25th Bengal NI ‘with all the fondness of a parent and all the solicitude and pride of a soldier’. A bond of mutual respect and personal attachment was created, which was poignantly illustrated when Christie died on active service in April 1805 as his regiment was marching between Agra and Mathura. His corpse was carried by native officers and NCOs and the battalion followed, many men weeping as he was buried by the banks of the Jumma.56
A brother officer composed an encomium in which Christie became a dual paragon, combining the inseparable virtues of his countrymen and the doctrines of Christianity. ‘Men, who, by such noble conduct, exalt the character of their nation among foreign Tribes and in distant regions of the globe’, whatever other rewards they might receive, had the nobler satisfaction of having ‘well fulfilled one great principle of Christian duty, by having considered and treated all mankind as brethren’.57
The backbone of every sepoy regiment was its Indian officers (jemadars and subadars) and NCOs. They had the daily supervision of the sepoy lines, were the eyes and ears of their white superiors and enforced discipline. Sepoys were always tried by native courts martial, in which Indian officers heard the evidence, assessed it and passed judgement. Their punishments were the same as those handed down to British miscreants: a sepoy who murdered a woman was sentenced to hang, looters got 500 lashes each, as did a servant who lost his temper and threw water over a British officer.58 Ties of race and culture gave the Indian officer and NCO an intimate knowledge of the sepoys and an insight into their thinking denied the European. According to an anonymous jemadar petitioner, ‘The secrets of the natives are to be learned from natives only’ and would always remain hidden from British officers.59 He was writing soon after the Vellore mutiny of July 1806, in which three battalions of Madras infantry had risen up and killed several of their British officers. It was a bolt from the blue which sent shudders through the entire British community in India, and left behind lingering misgivings about the trustworthiness of the native army.
The Vellore mutiny was a consequence of official ham-handedness coupled with complacency. In November 1805 the Madras commander-in-chief ordained that henceforward all Madras sepoys would shave their whiskers, remove their caste marks and earrings, and wear a European-style cylindrical shako with a leather cockade. At a stroke Hindu and Muslim sensibilities had been trampled on and, when there were objections, two NCOs were made scapegoats and given 900 lashes each. Uncowed by these punishments, the disgruntled soldiers were easy prey to agitators, including the exiled sons of Tipu Sultan and two Indian officers who planned a mass uprising. The conspiracy was exposed by a sepoy informer, Mustafa Beg, but his commanding officer ignored his warning, preferring instead the word of two native officers, both plotters, who assured him all was well in the sepoy lines.60 The mutiny began in the early hours of 2 July 1806 with the murder of several officers and sleeping soldiers of the only British regiment in Vellore, the 69th. Many of the insurgents were interested only in what they could plunder; two sepoys broke into the bungalow of Colonel St John Fancourt, broke his furniture, but did not harm his wife Amelia and their small children. Later, one returned with some bread for her son, Charles, who was fretful, although afterwards there were lurid rumours that women and children had been slaughtered.61 At dawn, the terrified Amelia heard the ‘Huzzas’ of the 19th Light Dragoons who had rushed to Vellore with a horse battery. After a brisk fight, the core of the mutineers had been either killed or disarmed. Some of the survivors were executed by being tied to the mouth of a cannon and blown apart, the punishment once prescribed by the Mughals for disloyalty.
The
post-mortem which followed the Vellore mutiny revealed the fragility of the Company’s regimental system. Sepoy discontent and intrigues had gone undetected because they had the covert support of Indian officers and NCOs. Many imagined that they were undervalued and they took umbrage easily at real and imagined slights from their British superiors. What was most unbearable, according to the jemadar petitioner, were the discrepancies between the status of the Indian and British junior officers. Better-paid Company officers could procure ‘agreeable and beautiful women’ as their mistresses, while Indian officers cannot ‘obtain the Slave of a handsome woman’ and were ‘ashamed to show even our faces to fine women’. God had created black and white men equal and alike, and yet within the Company’s army, they were divided by a vast gulf:
Horses, palanquins, carriages, lofty houses, ample tents, couches, pleasure and enjoyment, gratification and delight, whatever yields joy is the portion of the European Officer; pain, wind, cold and heat, fatigue and hardship, trouble and pain and the sacrifice of life itself is the portion of the Sepoy.62
It would be wrong to take this outburst from an embittered but articulate native soldier as a reflection of the mood throughout the Company’s native army. At the same time, it would be naïve to imagine that the idealised paternal relationship between white officers and Indian soldiers was universal. Whatever his officers imagined, the sepoy was never an automaton who blindly obeyed. Soldiering might be his profession, but his religious faith remained central to his life and he protested whenever he imagined that it was being ignored or slighted. Hindu and Muslim holy men blessed regimental colours and sent armies into battle with prayers, and when sepoys charged their war-cry was ‘Deen!’ (the Faith).63 The sepoy was also sensitive about his martial honour and did not take kindly to the practice of always placing British troops in positions of the greatest danger. During the 1824–26 Burma war, Madras infantrymen complained of the ‘unfair partiality’ which deployed British troops in the front line of an attack, for they wanted to take the same risks as Europeans.64
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