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Chapter 3

The War in Afghanistan

Peace is never long-lived in India, and the Army was soon again in the bustle and excitement of active service. There was a long war; and, if it had been a glorious one, it might have had a salutary effect upon the disposition of the Sipahi. But when all his soldierly qualities were thus, as it were, at the last gasp, the War in Afghanistan came to teach him a new lesson, and the worst, at that time, which he could have been taught. He learnt then, for the first time, that a British army is not invincible in the field; that the great “Ikhbal,” or Fortune, of the Company, which had carried us gloriously through so many great enterprises, might sometimes disastrously fail us; he saw the proud colours of the British nation defiled in the bloody snows of Afghanistan, and ho believed that our reign was hastening to a close. The charm of a century of conquest was then broken. In all parts of Upper India it was the talk of the Bazaars that the tide of victory had turned against the Faringhis, and that they would soon be driven into the sea. Then the Sikh arose and the Maratha bestirred himself, rejoicing in our humiliation, and eagerly watching the next move. Then it was that those amongst us, who knew best what was seething in the heart of Indian society, were “ashamed to look a native in the face.” The crisis was a perilous one, and the most experienced Indian statesmen regarded it with dismay, not knowing what a day might produce. They had no faith in our allies, no faith in our soldiery. An Army of Retribution, under a wise and trusted leader, went forth to restore the tarnished lustre of the British name; but ominous whispers soon came from his camp that. that Army was tainted – that the Sipahi regiments, no longer assured and fortified by the sight of that ascendant Star of Fortune which once had shone with so bright and steady a light, shrunk from entering the passes which had been the grave of so many of their comrades. It was too true. The Sikhs

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were tampering with their fidelity. Brahman emissaries were endeavouring to swear them on the Holy Water not to advance at the word of the English commander. Nightly meetings of delegates from the different regiments were being held; and, perhaps, we do not even now know how great was the danger. But the sound discretion and excellent tact of Pollock, aided by the energies of Henry Lawrence and Richmond Shakespear, brought the Sipahis to a better temper, and, when the word was given, they entered the dreaded passes, and, confiding in their leader, carried victory with them up to the walls of the Afghan capital.

The Sipahi did his duty well under Pollock. He had done his duty well under Nott, who spoke with admiration of his “beautiful regiments,” and manfully resented any imputation cast upon them. And when, after the British Army had been disentangled from the defiles of Afghanistan, war was made against the Amirs of Sindh, the Sipahi went gallantly to the encounter with the fierce Biluchi fighting-man, and Napier covered him with praise. Then there was another war, and the native regiments of the Company went bravely up the slopes of Maharajpur, and turned not aside from the well-planted, well-manned batteries of the turbulent Marathas. But peace came, and with peace its dangers. Sindh had become a British province, and the Sipahi, who had helped to conquer, had no wish to garrison the country.

Results of Conquest of Sindh

The direct and immediate result of well-nigh every annexation of Territory, by which our Indian empire the has been extended, may be clearly discerned in the shattered discipline of the Sipahi Army. To extend our empire without increasing our means of defence was not theoretically unreasonable; for it might have been supposed that as the number of our enemies was reduced by conquest and subjection, the necessity for the maintenance of a great standing army was diminished rather than increased. These annexations, it was said, consolidated our own territories by eradicating some native principality in the midst of them, or else substituted one frontier, and perhaps a securer one, for another. But the security of our empire lay in the fidelity of our soldiery. To diminish the number of our enemies, and to extend the area of the country to he occupied by our troops, was at the same time to diminish the importance of the Sipahi, and to render his service more irksome to him;

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for it sent him to strange places far away from his home, to do the work of military Police. It frittered away in small detached bodies the limited European force at the disposal of the Indian Government, or massed large ones on a distant frontier. This extension of territory, indeed, whilst it made us more dependent upon our native troops, made that dependence more hazardous. The conversion of Sindh into a British province, by which our long line of annexations was commenced, had burnt this truth into our history before Lord Dalhousie appeared upon the scene. For indeed it was a sore trial to the Sipahi to be posted in a dreary outlying graveyard of this kind, far away from his home and his people – far beyond the limits of the empire in which he had enlisted to serve. And when it was proposed to take from him the additional allowances, which had been issued to the troops, on active service in an enemy’s country, on the plea that they had subsided into the occupation of British cantonments, he resented this severe login, and rose against the retrenchment. He did not see why, standing upon the same ground, he should not receive the same pay, because the red line of the British boundary had been extended by a flourish of the pen, and the population of the country had by the same magic process been converted into British subjects; and still less easily could he reconcile himself to the decision when he thought that the Sipahi himself had contributed to bring about the result that was so injurious to him; that he had helped to win a province for his employers, and, in return for this good service, had been deprived of part, of his pay. In the old time, when the Company’s troops conquered a country, they had profited in many ways by the achievement, but now they were condemned to suffer as though gallantry were a crime.

Mutiny of the 34th

In more than a camel-load of documents the story lies recorded, but it must be briefly narrated here. In the month of February, 1844, Governor-General Ellenborough, being then absent from his Council in the Upper Provinces, received the disheartening intelligence that the 34th Sipahi Regiment of Bengal, which had been warned for service in Sindh, had been halted at Firuzpur. It had refused to enter our newly-acquired province, unless its services were purchased by the grant of the additional allowances given to the soldiery beyond the Indus in time of war. The distressing character of the

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intelligence was aggravated by many circumstances of time and place. In a moment, Ellenborough’s quick perceptions had grappled the whole portentous truth. Our troops were mutinying for pay, on the Panjab frontier, almost in the presence of the disorderly masses of Sikh troops, who, gorged with the donatives they had forced from a weak Government, were then dominating the empire. Other regiments were coming up, on the same service, who might be expected to follow the rebellious lead of the 34th; and so Ellenborough and Napier might have found themselves with the province they had just conquered on their hands, and no means of securing its military occupation, without destroying the authority of Government by humiliating concessions.

In this conjuncture, the first thing that Ellenborough did was the best that could have been done. He delegated to the Commander-in-Chief the full powers of the Governor-General in Council for the suppression of mutiny in the Army. But how were those powers to be exercised? Doubt and perplexity, and something nearly approaching consternation, pervaded Army Head-Quarters. The 7th Bengal Cavalry, on the line of march to the frontier, had broken into open mutiny, and in spite of all the efforts of their officers, who had guaranteed to pay them from their own funds the allowances they demanded, the troopers had refused to obey the trumpet-call to march, and were halted, therefore, sullen and obstinate, in the neighbourhood of Firuzpur. Some companies of Native Artillery had already refused to march, and there were rumours of other regiments being on the eve of declaring their refusal. The most obvious course, under such circumstances, was to march the recusant regiments back to one or more of the large stations, as Lodiana, and Mirath, where European troops were posted, and there to disband them. But sinister whispers were abroad that the sympathies of the Europeans, in this instance, were with the native soldiery. One regiment of the Line, it was reported, had openly declared that it would not act against the Sipahis, who were demanding no more than their rights. There were Sikh emissaries from beyond the Satlaj doing their best to debauch the Sipahis by offering both their sympathy and their assistance. Dick, the General of Division, declared his belief that an order to the mutineers to march back for disbandment would not be obeyed; and a violent collision at such a time would have set the whole frontier in a blaze. The

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project of disbandment was, therefore, suspended; and all the more readily, as even at Head-Quarters there was a belief that, although the recusant troops might have had no reasonable ground of complaint, the actual state of the case with respect to the Sindh pay and allowances had not been properly explained to them113.

Uncondemned, the mutinous regiments were ordered back to the stations from which they had marched, to await the result of a reference to the Governor-General; and other corps, warned for the Sindh service, came up to the frontier. Dick’s first and wisest impulse had been to halt the regiments marching to Firuzpur, in order that they might not run the risk of contamination by the tainted corps, or the corrupting influence of the Sikhs. But, by some strange fatality, this judicious measure had been revoked; the regiments marched to the frontier; and Dick’s difficulties increased.

The 69th and the 4th

The 69th refused to embark, unless the old Indus allowances were guaranteed to them. By the exertions of the officers, one-half of the regiment was afterwards brought round to a sense of their duty; they loaded their carriage cattle, marched to the banks of the river, and declared their willingness to embark on the boats. They ought to have been embarked at once with the colours of their regiment. Their comrades would then have followed them; and other regiments, moved by the good example, might also have asserted their fidelity. But the golden opportunity was lost; and all example was in the way of evil. The 4th Regiment, trusted overmuch by its commanders, followed the 69th into mutiny at Firuzpur, and such was the conduct of the Sipahis, that Philip Goldney, a man of equal courage and capacity, suddenly called to the scene of tumult, drew upon one the foremost of the mutineers, and a younger officer, moved to passion by their violence, struck out with a bayonet, and wounded two soldiers in the face. Those were days when

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mutiny did not mean massacre, and the Sipahi did not turn upon his officer. But neither regiment would march. On many hard-fought fields Sir Robert Dick had proved himself to be a good soldier, but he was not equal to such a crisis as this: so Ellen-borough at once ordered him to be cushioned in some safer place.

The 64th

In the meanwhile, aid to the embarrassed Government was coming from an unexpected quarter. The 64th Regiment of Sipahis had formed part of that unfortunate detachment known in history as Wilde’s Brigade, which had been sent, before Pollock’s arrival at Peshawar, to carry the Khaibar Pass, without guns and without provisions. It had afterwards served with credit during the second Afghan campaign, since the close of which it had been cantoned at the frontier station of Lodiana. The Sipahis had manifested a strong reluctance to serve in Sindh, and had addressed to the Adjutant-General more than one arzi, or petition, couched in language of complaint almost akin to mutiny. From Lodiana the regiment had been ordered down to Banaras. On the 15th of February it reached Ambalah, then become the Head-Quarters of the Sirhind division of the Army, which General Fast, an old officer of the Company’s service, commanded. Well able to converse in the language of the country, and knowing, from long intercourse with them, the character and feelings of the native soldiery, Fast believed that something might still be done to bring the regiment back to its allegiance. So he halted the 64th at Ambalah, and summoned the native officers to his presence. Questioned as to the disposition of the regiment, they one and all declared that the men had never refused to march to Sindh; that they were still willing to march; that only on the evening before the native officers had severally ascertained the fact from their respective companies; that the matter of the allowances would not influence the Sipahis; and that the mutinous arzis had emanated only from a few bad characters in the regiment; perhaps, it was added, from a Sipahi who had been already dismissed. From these and other representations, it appeared to the General that the 64th really desired to wipe out the stain, which the arzis had fixed upon their character, and, believing in this, he recommended that they should be permitted to march to Sindh. Under certain stringent conditions, the Commander-in-Chief adopted the recommendation; and so Moseley, with his Sipahis, again turned his face towards the Indus.

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The disposition of the regiment now seemed to be so good, it was marching with such apparent cheerfulness towards the dreaded regions, and setting so good an example to others, that the Commander-in-Chief was minded to stimulate its alacrity, and to reward its returning fidelity, by a voluntary tender of special pay and pension, and relaxations of the terms of service114. The language of these instructions was somewhat vague, and Moseley, eager to convey glad tidings to his men, turned the vagueness to account by exaggerating the boon that was offered to them. And so the error of Head-Quarters was made doubly erroneous, and the Governor-General was driven wild by the blunder of the Commander-in-Chief.

Whatsoever Head-Quarters might have intended to grant, was contingent upon the good conduct of the regiment. But before the letter had been received by Moseley, on the line of march, mutiny had again broken out in the ranks of the 64th. At Mudki, now so famous in the annals of Indian warfare, the regiment, not liking the route that had been taken, assumed a threatening front, and attempted to seize the colours115. The petulance of the hour was suppressed, and next day the regiment resumed its march. But transitory as was the outbreak, it was mutiny in one of its worst forms. On the second day, the Colonel received, at Tibi, the letter from Head-Quarters, on the subject of the additional allowances. The outbreak at Mudki had converted it into an historical document, to be quietly put aside for purposes of future record. It was, indeed, a dead letter. The fatal words “too late” were already written across

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the page. But Moseley laid eager hands upon it, as a living reality, for present uses. The 64th was plainly in an excitable state. It had mutinied once on the march, and, without the application of some very powerful sedative, it might mutiny again. The outbreak at Mudki had not been reported to Head-Quarters. It might pass into oblivion as an ugly dream of the past; and the future might be rendered peaceful and prosperous by the letter of the Adjutant-General. So Moseley, having caused it to be translated into Hindustani, summoned a parade, and ordered it to be read aloud to his men.

Tremendous as was this error – for it tendered to the mutinous the reward intended only for the faithful – its proportions were dwarfed by the after-conduct of the infatuated Colonel. He put a gloss of his own on the Head-Quarters’ letter, and told the regiment that they would receive the old Indus allowances given to Pollock’s Army116. Upon which they set up a shout of exultation. And then the 64th pursued its journey to Sindh.

The horrible mistake which had thus been committed soon began to bear bitter fruit. The inevitable pay-day came; and Moseley, like a man who has silenced the clamorous demands of the Present by drawing a forged bill upon the Future, now saw his gigantic folly staring him in the face. The crisis came at Shikarpur. The Indus war-allowances were not forthcoming, and the 64th refused in a body to receive their legitimate pay.

George Hunter

There was then, under Governor Napier, commanding the troops in Sindh, an old Sipahi officer, familiarly and affectionately known throughout the Army as George Hunter. Of a fine presence, of a kindly nature, and of a lively temperament, he led all men captive by the sunny influence of his warm heart and his flowing spirits; whilst his manly courage and resolution commanded a wider admiration and respect. Of his conspicuous gallantry in action he carried about with him the honourable insignia in an arm maimed and mutilated by the crashing downward blow of a Jat swordsman, as he was forcing one of the gates of Bharatpur. In the whole wide circle of the Army, there was scarcely one man whom the Sipahi more loved and honoured; scarcely one whose

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appearance on the scene at this moment could have had a more auspicious aspect. But there are moods in which we turn most angrily against those whom we most love; and General Hunter in this emergency was as powerless as Colonel Moseley.

Mutiny of the 64th

George Hunter was not a man to coquet with mutiny. Ho saw at a glance the magnitude of the occasion, and he was resolute not to encourage its further growth by any inopportune delay. The short twilight of the Indian summer was already nearly spent when news reached him that the regiment had refused to receive its pay. Instantly calling a parade, he declared his intention of himself paying the troops. Darkness had now fallen upon the scene; but lamps were lit, and the General commenced his work. The light company, as the one that had evinced the most turbulent spirit, was called up first; the Sipahis took their pay to a man, and were dismissed to their Lines. Of the company next called, four men had refused to receive their pay, when Moseley went up to the General, and told him that the whole regiment would take their money quietly, if disbursed to them by their own officers. Hunter had once refused this, but now he consented, and again the effort to flatter the corps into discipline was miserably unsuccessful. No sooner was this reluctant consent wrung from the General, than the parade was broken up with a tumultuous roar. Filling the air with shouts, sometimes shaped into words of derision and abuse, the Sipahis flocked to their Lines. In vain Hunter ordered them to fall in; in vain he implored them to remember that they were soldiers. They turned upon him with the declaration that they had been lured to Sindh by a lie; and when he still endeavoured to restore order and discipline to the scattered rabble into which the regiment had suddenly crumbled, they threw stones and bricks at the fine old soldier and the other officers who had gone to his aid.

Nothing more could be done on that night; so Hunter went to his quarters, and waited anxiously for the dawn. A morning parade had been previously ordered, and when the General went to the ground, he saw, to his exceeding joy, that the 64th were already drawn up – “as fine-looking and steady a body of men,” he said, “as he could wish to see.” No signs of disorder greeted him; and as he inspected company after company, calling upon all who had complaints to make to come forward, the regiment preserved its staid and orderly demeanour, and it seemed as if a

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great shame held them all in inactivity and silence117. Returning then to the head of the column, drawn up left in front, Hunter proceeded to resume the work which had been broken off so uproariously on the preceding evening. Ten men of one company refused their pay, but none others followed their example. All now seemed to be proceeding to a favourable issue; and Hunter believed that the favourable disposition which had begun to show itself might be confirmed by a suitable address. So he prepared himself to harangue them.

The ways of the Sipahi are as unaccountable as the ways of a child. It is impossible to fix the limits of his anger, or rightly to discern the point at which his good temper has really returned. Unstable and inconsistent, his conduct baffles all powers of human comprehension. So it happened that just on the seeming verge of success the ground crumbled away under Hunter’s feet. As each company had been called up to receive its pay, the men had piled their arms to the word of command. But when the word was given to un-pile, there was an immediate shudder of hesitation, which seemed to be caught by one company from another, until it pervaded the whole regiment. Each man seemed to read what was in his neighbour’s heart, and without any previous concert, therefore, they clung to each other in their disobedience. Three Grenadier Sipahis took their muskets, and were promoted on the spot; but not another man followed their example. The regiment had again become a rabble. Nothing now could reduce them to order.

Until the blazing June sun was rising high in the heavens, Hunter and the regimental officers remained on the parade-ground, vainly endeavouring to persuade the Sipahis to return to their duty. They had only one answer to give – their Colonel and their Adjutant had promised them what they had not received. If the General would guarantee them the old Indus war-allowances, they would serve as good soldiers; if not, they wished to be discharged, and return to their homes. All through the day, and all through the night, without divesting themselves of their uniform, without going to their lines to cook or to eat, the mutineers remained on the ground, sauntering about in the neighbourhood of their piled arms, and discussing their wrongs.

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Day broke, and found them still on the ground. But hunger and fatigue had begun to exhaust the energies of their resistance, and when Hunter appeared again on the scene, accompanied only by his aide-de-camp, and beat to arms, the men fell in, took their muskets, and evinced some signs of contrition. Then the General spoke to them, saying that he would receive at his quarters a man from each company, and hear what he had to say on the part of his comrades. Satisfied with this promise, and being no longer irritated by the presence of the officers who had deceived them, the 64th allowed the parade to be quietly dismissed, and went to their Lines. At the appointed hour, the delegates from the several regiments waited on the General, and each man told the same story of the deception that had been practised upon the regiment. They had been promised “General Pollock’s Batta,” and the twelve rupees which they had expected had dwindled down into eight.

With this evidence before him, the General removed Colonel Moseley from the command of the station and from the command of the regiment118, and ordered the 64th to march to Sukkhar, on their way back to our older provinces. It was an anxious time; a hazardous march. So Hunter went with them. But the hot stage of the fever had passed, and the paroxysm seemed to have left them feeble and sore-spent.

June 25, 1844

Unresistingly they went to Sukkhar, and encamped in the presence of European troops; and George Hunter, thanking God that the peril was over, and that not a drop of blood had been shed, then took upon himself the responsibility of pardoning the regiment as a body, and bringing to punishment only the worst of the individual offenders119. Such moderation could hardly be misunderstood at a time when there was present power to enforce the decrees of a sterner justice. So he addressed the regiment on parade, told them that he pardoned all but the leading mutineers, who would be tried by Court-martial; and he trusted that the mercy thus shown to them would not be thrown away, that they would repent of their misconduct and return to their allegiance. And perhaps the provocation which

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they had received was ample warrant for the leniency of their treatment120.

But the embarrassments of the Government did not end here. Whatsoever might be the punishment of the offence, it could not afford a remedy for the evil. The mutinous regiments might be disbanded, and their ringleaders might be hanged by the neck, or blown to atoms from the guns; but still there would be no answer to the question of how was Sindh to be garrisoned with British troops? It had been the design of the Government to employ only Bengal regiments on that service, seeking aid in other quarters from Madras. But the Bengal Army had broken down under the experiment; and there was small hope, after what had passed, of its ever being induced, except by humiliating concessions, to look that hated province in the face. There were, however, two other Presidencies, and two other Armies, not so nice as Bengal; and the defence of Sindh might be entrusted to Bombay or Madras regiments. If such had been the design in the first instance, it might, under judicious management, have been successfully carried into effect. But after such an example as had been set by the Bengal regiments, there was small consolation to be drawn from the prospect of loyal service to be rendered by their comrades. Already, indeed, were there signs that the disposition to strike for higher pay which had manifested itself among the Bengal troops was not confined to the Sipahis of that “pampered and petted” Army. The Bombay regiments were untainted121; but a mutinous spirit had again displayed itself among the native soldiery of the Coast Army122.

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Mutiny of the 6th Madras Cavalry

The first symptom of this was in a Cavalry regiment at Jabalpur. Among the results of an extension of empire without a corresponding augmentation of our military force, are frequent violations of old Presidential limits in the location of our troops, which, however unobjectionable they may appear at the Adjutant-General’s office, are seldom carried out without some disturbance of our military system. It might seem to be of small consequence whether the station at which a regiment was posted were within the limits of one Presidency or another; but if a Madras regiment were called upon to serve in the Bengal Presidency, or a Bombay regiment in Madras, or any other departure from ordinary rule was decreed, the Government was fortunate if it were not seriously perplexed and embarrassed by the results. Now, the Madras Army, though, as has been said, more cosmopolitan and less nice than that of Bengal, and not deterred by caste prejudices from proceeding to strange places, suffered even more than the Bengal troops from being ordered to distant stations, because the family of the Madras soldier followed his regiment, whilst the belongings of his Bengal comrade remained in their native village. The removal of the family from one station to another was a sore trouble and a heavy expense to the Madras Sipahi; and whatever increased the distance to be traversed was, therefore, a grievance to him.

To the Cavalry it was especially a grievance, for the troopers were principally well-born Muhammadans, and the rigid seclusion in which their women were kept greatly increased the cost of their conveyance from one station to another. The 6th Cavalry had been more than commonly harassed in this respect, when, towards the close of 1843, just as they were expecting to get their route for the favourite cavalry station of Arkat, they received orders to march from Kampati to Jabalpur, in the valley of the Narbada, which, in consequence of the demand for Bengal troops on the Indus, it had been necessary to occupy with regiments from Madras. The sharp disappointment, however, was in some measure mitigated by the assurance that the service on which they were required was but temporary, and that they would soon return within the proper limits of their own Presidency. They went, therefore, leaving their families behind them; but when they reached Jabalpur, they found that they were to be permanently located there upon lower allowances than they had expected, that they must send

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for their families from Kampati, and that their next march would be nine hundred miles southward to Arkat.

Only by savings from their pay at the higher rates could the troopers hope to defray these extraordinary expenses. On the lower rates of pay it was impossible; for the greater part of their earnings was remitted for the support of their absent families, and what remained was barely enough to keep together body and soul. When, therefore, they found that they were to receive these lower rates at Jabalpur, they broke into open manifestations of discontent, and bound themselves by oaths to stand by each other whilst they resisted the unjust decree.

Major Litchfield

The first few days of December were, therefore, days of sore vexation and disturbance to the officers of the 6th, and most of all to the Commandant, Major Litchfield, to whose want of personal sympathy with their sufferings the Sipahis, reasonably or unreasonably, attributed a great part of their affliction. The conduct of the men was violent and outrageous. They were with difficulty induced to saddle and mount for exercise; and when the trumpet sounded for the canter, they loosened rein, urged their horses forward at a dangerous pace, and raising the religious war-cry of “Din! din!” broke into tumultuous disorder.

Capt. Byng

Brought back to something like discipline, the regiment was dismissed; but throughout the day the greatest excitement prevailed among them, and a large body of troopers marched in a defiant manner through the lines to the tent of a favourite officer, declaring that they would obey his orders, and serve under him, and beseeching him to place himself at their head. On the following day the excitement had increased. The troop-officers went among their men, endeavouring to pacify them. But they could report nothing more satisfactory than that the troops were in a frantic state, and that if Litchfield ventured on parade next morning the result would be fatal to him.

Undeterred by this, the Major would have held the parade, but the Brigadier commanding the station, to whom, in due course, all the circumstances were reported, caused it to be countermanded, and an Inspection Parade under his own command ordered in its stead. To this the regiment sullenly responded; and when the Brigadier addressed them, saying that he was willing to hear their complaints, many of the men stepped forward and presented him with petitions, which were given over to the troop-officers, to be forwarded to him through

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the regular official channels. But, although it was plain that there was a bitter feeling of resentment against Litchfield, no act of violence was committed at that parade. And it happened that before its dismissal a letter reached the Brigadier announcing that the higher allowances were to be given to the men; and so the active danger was passed. But the disturbance which had been engendered did not soon pass away; the Sipahis remained sullen and discontented, and for some days it appeared to the Brigadier not improbable that he would be compelled to call the Infantry and Artillery to his assistance. But the Madras Army was spared this calamity of bloodshed; and after a little while the regiment returned to the quiet and orderly performance of its duty.

As the old year closed upon the scene of mutiny in the Madras Cavalry, so, very soon, the new year opened upon a kindred incident in the Madras Infantry. When it was found that the Bengal troops were reluctant to serve, under the proposed terms, in the Sindh province, and serious embarrassment was, thereby, likely to be occasioned to the Supreme Government, the Madras authorities, believing that the crisis was one in which it behoved everyone to do his best, promptly and vigorously, for the salvation of the State, determined, on a requisition from the Government of Bombay, to send two infantry regiments to Sindh123. The Sipahis were to embark on board transport vessels at Madras, to touch at Bombay, and thence to proceed to Karachi. One of these regiments, the 47th, was in orders for Moulmein, on the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal – a station at which, being beyond Presidential limits, extra allowances, known as field-batta, and rations, were paid to the troops. Ignorant, it would appear, of the Bengal regulations, the Madras Government, represented by the Marquis of Tweedale, who held the double office of Governor and Commander-in-Chief, guaranteed to the regiments ordered to Sindh the allowances received at Moulmein; and under these conditions the 47th embarked for Bombay.

Mutiny of the Madras 47th

Meanwhile, the Supreme Government had been advised of the unauthorised measures of the Madras authorities. Chafing under such usurpation of the powers and prerogatives of the Governor-General, Ellenborough sent orders

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for the detention of the Madras regiment at Bombay, and it was disembarked on its arrival124. There the Madras Sipahis learnt that the advantages of foreign service, promised to them at Madras, and on the faith of which they had set their faces towards Sindh, were disallowed. The greater part of their pay up to the end of March had already been disbursed to them, for the benefit of their families whom they left behind, and now they found, in the middle of February, that the scanty residue, on which they had relied for their own support, was by these retrenchments taken from them, and that, far away from their homes, starvation stared them in the face. It was not strange that they should have regarded this as a cruel breach of faith; and that they should have resented it. They had been promised rations, and they asked for them, and when they found they were not likely to be supplied, they manifested their discontent, after the wonted fashion, by breaking out on parade.

February 19, 1844

When the word of command was given for them to march to their Lines, by fours from the left, they stood fast. The word was repeated, but still they stood fast; and when the Adjutant rode up to the leading section and asked the men if they had not heard the word of command, they answered sullenly that they had heard it; and when a Native officer asked them why they did not move, they told him that they wanted food, and that they would not stir without it.

When the order to advance was again given, the regiment moved off; but only to renew on the following morning the exhibition of disobedience and discontent. Paraded before the General commanding the garrison, the regiment soon evinced signs of being in the same mood. After inspection, when the order was given to march by companies to their respective Lines, the Grenadiers stepped off, but presently wavered and halted; and when their captain, having ordered their arms, went off to report their conduct to the commanding officer, they insisted on following him in a body, declaring that if they then lost their chance of representing their hard case to the General, they might never find it again. Another company was even more violent in its demands. When the word of command was

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given to advance at the quick march, a man from the ranks cried out “Right about face,” and the whole company stood fast, as did other parts of the column. Taken in the act of flagrant mutiny, the Sipahi was disarmed, and sent to the guard, whither the greater part of the company followed, declaring that they also would go to the guard, that they wanted rice, and must have it.

After a while order was restored. The General addressed the European and Native officers, and told them to assure the men, that any complaints advanced in a soldierly manner would be inquired into and any grievances redressed, but that such conduct as had been displayed on parade could not be overlooked. The regiment was then moved off to its Lines, some of the ringleaders being carried off as prisoners; and an advance of money, at first reluctantly received, stifled the further progress of mutiny. Here, then, the story may end. The Madras Army was not destined to supply the want accruing from the defective loyalty of Bengal. It broke down at a critical time; but only under such a weight of mismanagement as might have crushed out the fidelity of the best mercenaries in the world.

In these, as in instances above cited, by conflicts of authority and variations of system, the Sipahi was not unreasonably alarmed for the integrity of his pay; and although we may condemn the manner in which he manifested his discontent, we must not think too harshly of the tenacity with which he asserted his rights. If an English soldier strikes for more pay, it is in most cases only another name for more drink. He seeks it, too often, as a means of personal indulgence. There is nothing to render less greedy his greed. But the avarice of the Sipahi was purified by domestic affection, by a tender regard for the interests of others, and that strong feeling of family honour which in India renders Poor Laws an useless institution. He had so many dependents with whom to divide his slender earnings, that any unexpected diminution of his pay excited alarm lest those who were nearest and dearest to him should in his absence be reduced to want. The honour of his family was threatened; he chafed under the thought; and if he took unsoldierly means of asserting his rights, we must remember the provocation, and not forget those peculiarities of national sentiment which lighten the dark colours in which all such resistance of authority presents itself to European eyes.

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Penal Measures

Eventually Bombay troops were sent to garrison Sindh, and the province became a part of the Bombay Presidency. But it is hard to say how much these first abortive attempts to provide for its defence shook the discipline of the Sipahi Army. For the evil was one to which it was difficult to apply a remedy; and the authorities were greatly perplexed and at variance one with another. The disbandment of a mutinous regiment is, in such a ease, the most obvious, as it is the easiest, measure to which Government can resort; but it may often be unjust in itself and dangerous in its results. It falls alike on the innocent and on the guilty. It fills the country with the materials of which rebellions are made, or sends hundreds of our best fighting-men, with all the lessons we have taught them, into the enemy’s ranks. To be effective, it should follow closely on the commission of the crime which it is intended to punish; but it can rarely be accomplished with this essential promptitude, for it is only under certain favouring circumstances that an order to reduce to penury and disgrace a thousand trained soldiers can be carried out with safety to the State. To delay the execution of the punishment is outwardly to condone the offence. It was not strange, therefore, that when the 34th Infantry and the 7th Cavalry of Bengal mutinied on the frontier, almost in the presence of the Sikh Army, there should have been obstinate questionings at Head-Quarters as to the expediency of disbandment on the spot, or at some safer place remote from the scene of their crimes. It was the opinion of Lord Ellenborough, at the time, that a regiment of Europeans and a troop of European artillery should have been summoned with all haste from Lodiana to Firuzpur, and that, in presence of this force, the mutinous corps should have been at once disbanded. But a reference, it has been said, was made to Government, and the mutinous regiments were marched down, unsentenced, to Lodiana and Mirath, there to await the decision of supreme authority. The orders given left some discretion with the Commander-in-Chief. The 7th Cavalry had not mutinied in a body. The native officers and nearly two hundred troopers were true to their Salt. Discipline might, therefore, be vindicated by ordinary processes of law without involving the innocent and the guilty alike in one common ruin. But the 34th, Native officers and Sipahis, were all tainted; so, with every mark of infamy, in the presence of all the troops, European

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and Native, at Mirath, the regiment was broken up, the British uniform was stripped from the backs of the mutineers, and the number of the regiment was erased from the Army List125.

Propinquity to an overawing European force removes the chief difficulties which oppose themselves to the sudden dissolution of a Native regiment. But under no other circumstances is it to be counselled. The question of disbandment, therefore, perplexed the Madras authorities even more than those of Bengal. To march a regiment, with arms in its hands, some hundreds of miles across the country, to receive its services, and perhaps to witness its repentance during a period of many weeks, all that time concealing the fate that is in store for it, and then, having caged it in a safe place, pinioned it, as it were, beyond all hope of resistance, to visit it with all the terrors of a long-hidden, long-delayed retribution, is altogether abhorrent to the generous nature of an English officer. To have disbanded, for example, the 6th Madras Cavalry at Jabalpur would have been cruel and dangerous. To have marched it to Arkat in ignorance of its fate, would have been cruel and dastardly. To have broken it up at Kampati would have been to incur, only in a less degree, the evil of both courses. And nothing else appeared possible; for it was not to be supposed that all those indignant Muhammadans, men with whom revenge is a virtue, would have quietly gone down, mounted on good horses, and with sharpened sabres at their sides, in full knowledge of their destiny, to the disgraceful punishment awaiting them. With these considerations before them, it was not strange the Madras authorities hesitated to carry out the comprehensive penalty of disbandment, and that, as a choice of difficulties, it should have suffered many guilty men to escape.

In this instance, Lord Ellenborough was eager for disbandment. He said that the conduct of the regiment had been equally bad in itself and pernicious in its results, for that the disturbed state of Bundelkhand rendered it little short of mutiny before the enemy, and it had disconcerted all the

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arrangements of his Government for the general defence of the country. But it was not his, either on principle or in practice, to deal harshly with the errors and delusions of the Native Army, and there were few men living who had a more kindly appreciation of the good qualities of the Sipahi, or who could more readily sympathise with him. If he did not know precisely how to deal with a mutiny of that Army; if he could not, with accurate calculation of the results, so apportion the just measures of leniency and severity as in no case to encourage by the one or to exasperate by the other, he only failed where no one had yet succeeded, and need not have blushed to find himself mortal. He often said that a general mutiny of the Native Army was the only real danger with which our empire in India was threatened; and he believed that the surest means of maintaining the fidelity of the Sipahi was by continually feeding his passion for military glory. In this he was right. But the passion for military glory cannot always be fed without injustice, and the evils of conquest may be greater than its gains. He had much faith, too, in the good effect of stirring addresses, appealing to the imaginations of the soldiery, and in the application of donatives promptly following good service.

Sweetmeats

And, although in working out his theory he was sometimes impelled to practical expressions of it, which caused people to smile, as in the famous Somnat Proclamation, and in the distribution of the “favourite mihtais” to the Sipahis after the battle of Maharajpur, there was, doubtless, sound philosophy at the bottom of it. But such light as this only served to show more clearly the many and great difficulties with which the whole question of the Sipahi Army was beset, and to convince reflecting minds that, though human folly might accelerate the break-down of the whole system, human wisdom could not so fence it around with safeguards as to give it permanent vitality and strength.

That the treatment to which the mutinies arising out of the annexation of Sindh were subjected by the Government of the day was nothing more than a series of expedients is a fact, but one which may be recorded without censure. The disbandment of one regiment, the punishment of a few ringleaders in others, the forgiveness of the rest; the dismissal of an officer or two for culpable mismanagement, and a liberal issue of donatives to all who during the preceding year had either done well, or suffered much, in the service of the State, were so many palliatives,

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born of the moment, which did not touch the seat of the disease, or contribute to the future healthy action of the system. But there were circumstances, both intrinsic and extrinsic, which seemed to forbid, on grounds alike of justice and of policy, the application of more vigorous remedies. The fact, indeed, that the misconduct of the soldiery had, in a great measure, been the direct growth of the injuries which they had sustained at the hands of the Government, would have made severity a crime. But it was no less certain that leniency was a blunder. If an Army once finds that it can dictate to Government the amount of its pay, there is an end to the controlling power of the latter. What the State ought to have learnt from this lesson was the paramount obligation which rested upon it of clearly explaining to its troops all regulations affecting their pay and allowances, and especially such as entailed upon them any loss of privileges antecedently enjoyed. Under any circumstances a reduction of pay is a delicate and hazardous operation. Even the loyalty of European officers is not always proof against such a trial. But the absence of explanation aggravates it, in the Sipahi’s eyes, into a breach of faith; he believes that he is only asserting his rights when he strikes for the restoration of that of which he has been, in his own eyes unjustly, deprived and the Government then, perplexed in the extreme, has only a choice of evils before it, and either on the side of leniency or severity is too likely to go lamentably wrong.

Footnotes

113. The extraordinary allowances – the withdrawal of which had created all this ill-feeling – were originally granted when the troops crossed the Indus in 1838, on their march to Kandahar and Kabul. They were withdrawn from the troops in Sindh early in 1840, when there seemed to be no longer any extraordinary duties to be performed by them. When the insurrection broke out in Afghanistan, and retributory operations were commenced, the allowances were restored; but they were again reduced from the 1st of July 1843, after the close of the war in Afghanistan and the conquest of Sindh.

114. “In addition to the full or marching batta always allowed to regiments serving in Sindh, still higher advantages in regard to pay, together with the benefits of the regulated family pension to the heirs of those who may die from disease contracted on service.” The commanding officer was also instructed “to make known to the corps that it shall be brought back to a station in the provinces in one year in the event of the ensuing season proving unhealthy, and under no circumstances be kept in Sindh beyond two years, while the indulgence of furlough to visit their homes will, in the latter case, be extended to the men in the proportion enjoyed by corps located at stations within the British frontier.” – [The Adjutant-General to Colonel Moseley, March 15, 1844.] Sindh, however, had become a British “province,” and was “within the British frontier.”

115. It was advisable to march the troops proceeding to Sindh along a route which would not bring them into contact with other regiments, either coming from that province or stationed on the frontier; and it was specially desirable to mask Firuzpur.

116. This was known among the Sipahis as “Pollock’s Batta.” It made up the soldier’s pay to twelve rupees a month.

117. Only one man came forward, and his complaint was that he had been passed over in promotion.

118. Colonel Moseley was afterwards tried by court-martial, and cashiered.

119. Thirty-nine prisoners were sent to trial, of whom one only was acquitted. Six were ordered for capital punishment, and the sentence of death passed upon the others was commuted to imprisonment and hard labour for various terms.

120. There is something very touching in the humility which pervades the letters written at this time by George Hunter to Lord Ellenborough and Sir Charles Napier. He asks to be pardoned for all shortcomings, in consideration of the difficulty of the circumstances. “I never could write,” he says at the end of one letter, “and old age does not improve a man in any way, except, I trust, in seeing his own failings and praying for mercy.”

121. The Bombay Army was said at that time to have more duty on its hands than it could perform without a severe strain, and the Bombay Government were clamouring for an augmentation.

122. There had been several recent instances of extreme insubordination, amounting, indeed, to mutiny, in the Madras Army. The 52nd Native Infantry had mutinied at Asigarh and Maligaon; there had been a mutiny of the Madras troops at Sikandarabad; and the 2nd and 41st Regiments had shown a bad spirit, when ordered to embark for China. The 3rd and 4th Native Cavalry regiments had also mutinied; the former in 1838, the latter In 1842.

123. Sir Charles Napier had made an urgent call on Bombay, which, Bombay not being able to comply with it, passed on to Madras.

124. Intelligence of the change of destination was communicated to the officers during the voyage. It should be stated that one detachment of the regiment mutinied on board the John Line transport vessel; but the discontent then manifested arose from circumstances unconnected with the after-causes of disaffection.

125. Two or three years afterwards the gap was filled up by the raising of a new regiment, in no degree better than the old. [It was a rose-water measure which inflicted but little real punishment, and failed entirely to stop the plague. – G.B.M.]

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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