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Chapter 5

After this, there was again a season of quiet. The remaining years of Lord Dalhousie’s administration passed away without any further military outbreaks to disturb his rooted conviction of the fidelity of the Sipahi. There were not wanting those who declared that there was an ineradicable taint in the constitution of the Bengal Army, that it was rotten to the very core. But the angry controversies which arose – the solemn warnings on the one side, and the indignant denials on the other – proved nothing more than that among men entitled. to speak with authority on the subject there were vast diversities of opinion. Much of this was attributed to class prejudices and professional jealousies. One voice, very loud and very earnest, pealing from the West, sustained for years a continual remonstrance against the laxities of the Bengal system. But Bengal resented the outrage. A genuine man, above all pettiness, John Jacob, was declared to be the exponent only of small Presidential envyings and heart-burnings. The voice of Truth was proclaimed to be the voice of Bombay. And when officers of the Bengal Army wrote, as some did most wisely, of the evil symptoms which were manifesting themselves, and of the dangers which appeared to be looming in the distance, they were denounced as defilers of their own nest, and as feeble-minded alarmists, to whose utterances no heed should be given. There was a general unwillingness to believe in the decay of discipline throughout one of the finest armies of the world; and in the absence of any outward signs of mischief, we willingly consented not to look beneath the surface for the virus of undeveloped disease.

There is nothing that is strange, and little that is blamable in this. The Bengal Sipahi had evinced signs of a froward, petulant nature, and he had, on several occasions, broken out

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after a fashion which, viewed by European military eyes, is criminality of the deepest dye. But these aberrations were merely a few dark spots upon a century of good service. It was not right that rare exceptions of this kind should cancel in our minds all the noble acts of fidelity which were chronicled in the history of our Empire. Nor was it to be forgotten that, in most instances, the criminality of the Sipahi had been the direct growth of some mismanagement on the part either of the officers whom he followed or the Government which he served. To have looked with suspicion on the Sipahi, because from time to time some component parts of our Army had done that which the Armies of every Native State had done with their whole accumulated strength, would have been equally unwise and unjust. For although it might be said that the examples which those Natives States afforded ought to have taught us to beware of the destroying power of a lawless soldiery, the English were justified in believing that there were special reasons why their own mercenaries should not tread in the footsteps of the Maratha and Sikh Armies. They did not believe in the love of the Sipahi; but they believed in his fidelity to his Pay.

Character of the Sipahi

Whilst it was natural, and indeed commendable, that the remembrance of all the good service which the Native soldiery had done for their English masters, should have sustained our confidence in them as a body, there was nothing in the individual character of the Sipahi to subvert it. Even his outbreaks of rebellion had recently partaken more of the naughtiness of the child than of the stern resolution of manhood. He had evinced a disposition, indeed, rather to injure himself than to injure others; and it was not easy for those who knew him to believe that he was capable of any violent and sanguinary excesses. His character was made up of inconsistencies, but the weaker and less dangerous qualities appeared to have the preponderance; and though we knew that they made him a very difficult person to manage, we did not think that they made him a dangerous one. From the time when, in the very infancy of the Sipahi Army, a Madras soldier cut down Mr. Haliburton, and was immediately put to death by his own comrades, to the day when Colin Mackenzie was well-nigh butchered at Bolaram by troopers of his own brigade, there had been ever and anon some murderous incidents to disfigure the Military History of

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our Indian Empire137. But outrages of this kind are common to all armies; and there was no reason to regard them in any other light than that of exceptional aberrations. It was not to be said that the Sipahi was a ruffian because he had done some ruffianly deeds.

He was, indeed, altogether a paradox. He was made up of inconsistencies and contradictions. In his character, qualities so adverse as to be apparently irreconcilable with each other met together and embraced. He was simple and yet designing; credulous and easily deceived by others, and yet obstinately tenacious of his own inbred convictions; now docile as a child, and now hard and immovable in the stubbornness of his manhood. Abstemious and yet self-indulgent, calm and yet impetuous, gentle and yet cruel, he was indolent even to languor in his daily life, and yet capable of being roused to acts of the most desperate energy. Sometimes sportive, and sometimes sullen, he was easily elevated and easily depressed; but he was for the most part of a cheerful nature, and if you came suddenly upon him in the Lines you were more likely to see him with a broad grin upon his face than with any expression of moroseness or discontent. But light-hearted as was his general temperament, he would sometimes brood over imaginary wrongs, and when a delusion once entered his soul it clung to it with the subtle malevolence of an ineradicable poison.

And this, as we now understand the matter, was the most dangerous feature of his character. For his gentler, more genial qualities sparkled upon the surface and were readily appreciated, whilst all the harsher and more forbidding traits lay dark and disguised, and were not discernible in our ordinary intercourse with him. There was outwardly, indeed, very much to rivet the confidence of the European officer, and very little to disturb it. It is true that if we reasoned about it, it did not seem to be altogether reasonable to expect from the Sipahi any strong affection for the alien officer who had usurped all the high places of the Army, and who kept him down in the dead level of the dust. But Englishmen never reason about their position in the midst of a community of strangers; they take their popularity for granted, and look for homage as a thing of course. And that

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homage was yielded to the British officer, not for his own sake, for the Sipahi hated his colour and his creed, his unclean ways, and his domineering manners; but because he was an embodiment of Success. It was one of the many inconsistencies of which I have spoken, that though boastful and vainglorious beyond all example, the Native soldier of India inwardly acknowledged that he owed to the English officer the aliment which fed his passion for glory and sustained his military pride. This, indeed, was the link that bound class to class, and resisted the dissolving power of many adverse influences. It was this that moved the Sipahi to light up the tomb of his old commanding officer; it was this that moved the veteran to salute the picture of the General under whom he had fought. But there was a show also of other and gentler feelings, and there were instances of strong personal attachment, of unsurpassed fidelity and devotion, manifested in acts of charity and love. You might see the Sipahi of many fights, watchful and tender as a woman, beside the sick-bed of the English officer, or playing with the pale-faced children beneath the verandah of his captain’s bungalow. There was not an English gentlewoman in the country who did not feel measureless security in the thought that a guard of Sipahis watched her house, or who would not have travelled, under such an escort, across the whole length and breadth of the land. What was lurking beneath the fair surface we knew not. We saw only the softer side of the Sipahi’s nature; and there was nothing to make us believe that there was danger in the confidence which we reposed in those outward signs of attachment to our rule.

Defects in the System

But whilst cherishing this not unreasonable confidence in the general good character of the Sipahi, the British Government might still have suffered some doubts and misgivings to arise when they looked into the. details of the System. They might, it has been urged, have believed in the soundness of the whole, but admitted the defectiveness of parts, and addressed themselves earnestly and deliberately to the details of the great work of Army Reform. Instead of boasting that the condition of the Native soldier left nothing to be desired, Lord Dalhousie, it is said, ought to have looked beneath the surface, to have probed all the vices of the existing system, and to have striven with all his might to eradicate them. Information was not wanting. “Officers of experience” were at all times ready to tell him what it behoved him to do. But in

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the multitude of counsellors there was inextricable confusion. As with the whole, so with the parts. The forty years’ experience of one greybeard belied the forty years’ experience of another. And when the responsible ruler had been almost persuaded to see a blot and to promise to erase it, another adviser came, straightway declared it to be a beauty, and besought him to leave it as it was. Thus distracted by the conflicting judgments of the best military critics, Dalhousie did, as others had done before him; he admitted that if he had then for the first time to construct a Native Army it would in some respects differ from that which he saw before him, the growth not of systems and theories but of circumstances; but that as it had grown up, so on the whole it was better to leave it, as change is sometimes dangerous, and almost always misunderstood.

That, indeed, there was no more difficult question to understand than that of the Sipahi Army, was a fact which must have been continually forced upon the mind of the Governor-General, by the discordant opinions which were pronounced on points vitally affecting its fidelity and efficiency.

Caste

Even on the great question of Caste, men differed. Some said it was desirable that Native regiments should be composed mainly of high-caste men; because in such men were combined many of the best qualities, moral and physical, which contribute to the formation of an accomplished soldier. The high-caste man had a bolder spirit, a purer professional pride, a finer frame, and a more military bearing, than his countrymen of lower social rank. Other authorities contended that the Native soldiery should be enlisted indiscriminately, that no account should be taken of Caste distinctions, and that the smaller the proportion of Brahmans and Rajputs in the service the better for the discipline of the Army. Comparisons were drawn between the Bengal and the Bombay Armies. There was a strong and not unnatural prejudice in favour of the Bengal Sipahi; for he was a fine, noble-looking fellow, and in comparison with his comrades from the Southern and Western Presidencies, was said to be quite a gentleman; but there were those who alleged that he was more a gentleman than a soldier; and it was urged that the normal state of the Bengal Army was Mutiny, because in an Army so constituted caste was ever stronger than discipline; and the social institutions of the Sipahi domineered over the necessities of the State.

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It was contended, for this reason, that the Bengal Army required a larger infusion of low-caste men. But it was alleged, on the other hand, that this very mixture of castes tended to des-tray the discipline of which it was proposed to make it the preservative; for that military rank was held to be nothing in comparison with Brahmanical Elevation, and that the Sipahi was often the “master of the officer138.” To this it was replied that the presumption of Caste was favoured and fostered by the weakness and indulgence of the officers of the Bengal Army; that, in the armies of Madras and Bombay, Caste had found its level; that it had neither been antagonistic to good service, nor injurious to internal discipline; that high-caste men in those armies did cheerfully what they refused to do in Bengal, and that low-caste native officers met with all the respect from their social superiors due to their superior military rank. It was asserted, indeed, that Brahmanism was arrogant and exacting in Bengal, because it saw that it could play upon the fears of the English officers. To this it was replied, that disregard caste as we might, we could never induce the natives to disregard it. And then again the rejoinder was, that in the other Presidencies we had taught them to disregard it, why, then, might not the same lesson be taught in Bengal? The answer to this was, that men will often do in other countries what they cannot be persuaded to do in their own; that high-caste Hindustanis enlisting into the Bombay or Madras Armies were, to a great extent, cut off from the brotherhood, that they were greatly outnumbered in their several regiments, that it was convenient to conform to the custom of the country, and that what he did in a foreign country amongst strangers was little known at home. In a word, when he took service in the Bombay Army, he did what was done in Bombay; just as among ourselves, men who, fearful of losing caste, would on no account be seen to enter a London hell, think nothing of spending whole days in the gambling-rooms of Homburg or Baden-Baden.

Of a kindred nature was the question hotly discussed, whether it were wiser to compose each regiment of men of the same race,

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or to mix up different races in the same corps.

Nationalities

On the one hand, it was alleged that the fusion of different nationalities had a tendency to keep internal combinations in check; but that if men of one tribe were formed into separate regiments; if we had Patan regiments and Gurkha regiments, Sikh regiments and Maratha regiments, facilities for mutinous combinations would be greatly increased. On the other hand, it was contended that the fusion of different tribes and castes in the several regiments encouraged external combinations by imparting common interests to the whole Army; that if safety were to be sought in the antagonism of nationalities, it was more likely to be attained by keeping them apart than by fusing them into a heterogeneous mass; that it was easier to keep one regiment from following the example of another composed of different materials, raised and stationed in a different part of the country, than to keep one half of a regiment from following the example of the other; easier to make men fight against those whom they had never seen, than against those with whom they had long lived, if not in brotherhood of caste, at least in brotherhood of service.

Local and General Service

Again, men discussed, with reference to this question of combination, the relative advantages and disadvantages of localisation and distribution. Whilst some contended that the different Sipahi regiments should serve respectively only in certain parts of the country, except under any peculiar exigencies of war – in other words, that they should be assimilated as much as possible to a sort of local militia – others were in favour of the existing system, under which there were periodical reliefs, and regiments marched from one station to another, often many hundreds of miles apart. On the one hand, it was argued that there was much danger in the local influence which would be acquired by men long resident in the same place, and that intrigues and plots, rendered perilous by the fusion of the civil and military classes, might result from this localisation; and, on the other, it was urged that it was far more dangerous to suffer the Sipahi regiments to become extensively acquainted with each other, for the men to form friendships, and therefore to have correspondents in other corps, and thus to afford them the means, in times of excitement, of forming extensive combinations, and spreading, as it were, a network of conspiracy over the whole face of the country. Thus,

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again, men of wisdom and experience neutralised one another’s judgments, and from amongst so many conflicting opinions it was impossible to evolve the truth.

Families

It was a question also much debated whether the fidelity and efficiency of the Sipahi were best maintained by keeping him apart from his family, or by suffering the wives, the children, and the dependents of the soldier to attach themselves to his regiment, and to follow his fortunes. The former was the system in the Bengal Army; the latter, in the Army of Madras, and partially in that of Bombay. Each system had its advocates; each its special advantages. The Bengal Sipahi visited his family at stated times, and remitted to them a large part of his pay. If he failed to do this he was a marked man in his regiment; and it was said that the knowledge that if he failed in his duty as a soldier, a report of his misconduct would surely reach his native village, and that his face would be blackened before his kindred, kept him in the strict path of his duty. The presence of the Family led to much inconvenience and embarrassment, and the necessity of moving it from one station to another, when the regiments were relieved, strained the scanty resources of the Sipahi, and developed grievances out of which mutiny might arise139. It was said, indeed, that there was “hardly a Native regiment in the Bengal Army in which the twenty drummers, who were Christians, and had their families with them, did not cause more trouble to their officers than the whole eight hundred Sipahis140.” On the other hand, it was urged that the presence of the Family afforded the best guarantee for the fidelity and good conduct of the Sipahi. His children were hostages in our hands; the honour of his women was in our keeping. These were held to be safeguards against mutiny and massacre. It was urged, too, that the system tended more to keep them, as a race, apart from the general mass of their countrymen; that the ties which bound them to the country were thus weakened, and their interests more indissolubly associated with the State. They were less representative men than their brethren of the Bengal Army, and more a part of the machinery of Government. And so each system had its advocates, and each was left to work itself out and develop its own results.

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Promotion

Great, also, was the difference of opinion with respect to Promotion. Some said that the Bengal Army was destroyed by the Seniority system, which gave to every Sipahi in the service an equal chance of rising to the rank of a Commissioned Officer141. Others maintained that this was the very sheet-anchor which enabled it to resist all adverse influences. Strong arguments were adduced, and great names were quoted upon both sides. It was said that under such a system there was no incentive to exertion; that the men were independent of their officers, that they had no motive to earn the good opinion of their superiors, that it was enough for them to drowse through a certain number of years of service, to slide quietly into a commission, and then to end their military lives in a state of senile somnolence and apathy. The Native officers of the Bengal Army were, therefore, for the most part, respectable, worn-out, feeble-minded old men, with no influence in their regiments, and no desire beyond that of saving themselves as much trouble as possible, and keeping things as quiet as they could. On the other hand, it was alleged that the seniority system was the very prop and support of the Sipahi service; that all men were happy and contented, and had some aliment of hope, so long as they felt that nothing but their own misconduct could deprive them of the right of succession to the highest grades of the Native Army. It was said that to pass over a man at the head of the list, and to give promotion to others of shorter service, would be to flood the regiments with desperate malcontents, or else with sullen, broken-spirited idlers. Whilst Henry Lawrence and John Jacob were descanting on the evil of filling the commissioned ranks of the Sipahi Army with “poor old wretches, feeble in body and imbecile in mind142,” Charles Napier was peremptorily commanding that “the fullest attention and consideration should invariably be given to the claim of seniority in every grade” of the Native Army, and William Sleeman was asserting, not less emphatically, in his published writings, that “though we might have in every regiment a few smarter Native officers, by disregarding the rule of promotion than by adhering to it, we should, in the diminution

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of good feeling towards the European officers and the Government, lose a thousand times more than we gained143.” What wonder, then, that Governor-General after Governor-General was perplexed and bewildered, and left things, when he passed away from the scene, as he found them on his first arrival.

European Officers

Then, again, there were wide diversities of opinion with respect to the European officering of regiments. There were those who contended for the Irregular and those who were loud in their praises of the Regular system; some who thought it better to attach to each regiment a few select officers, as in the old times, giving them some power and authority over their men; and others who believed it to be wiser to officer the regiments after the later English system, like regiments of the Line, with a large available surplus for purposes of the General Staff, and to leave all the centralised power and authority in the hand of the Adjutant-General of the Army144. There was a continual cry, not always, it must be admitted, of the most unselfish character, for “more officers”; and yet it was plain that the Irregular regiments, to which only three or four picked officers were attached, were in a perfect state of discipline in peace, and capable of performing admirable service in war. It was said that in action the Sipahis, losing their officers, killed or carried wounded to the rear, lost heart, and were soon panic-struck;

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and that if officers were so few, this contingency must often happen. To this, however, it was replied, that if the Native officers were of the right class, they would keep their men together, and still do good service; but if they were worn-out imbeciles, or over-corpulent and scant of breath, of course disorder and ruin must follow the fall of the English officers. Then, hearing this, the disputant on the other side would triumphantly ask how many years’ purchase our empire in India were worth, if our Native officers were as efficient as ourselves. It was often argued, indeed, that our instructions might some day return to plague the inventor; that to make men qualified to lead our battalions to battle against our enemies is to qualify them to command troops to fight against ourselves. But there were others, and chief among them Henry Lawrence, who, taking a larger and more liberal view of the question, contended that it was sound policy to give every man, European and Native, a motive for exertion; who declared that it was one of the crying wants of our system that it afforded no outlet for the energies of Native soldiers of superior courage and ability, and urged that we could not expect to have an efficient Native Army so long as we rigidly maintained in it the theory of the Dead Level, and purposely excluded every possible inducement to superior exertion.

Nor less curious were the fundamental diversities of opinion which manifested themselves, when thinking men began to consider whether the English in India carried into their daily lives too much or two little of their nationality. It was asserted on the one side, that the English officer was too stiff-necked and exclusive, that he dwelt apart too much, and subdued himself too little to surrounding influence; and on the other side, that he fell too rapidly into Oriental habits, and soon ceased to be, what it should have been his ambition to remain to the last, a model of an English Gentleman. It was urged by some that increased facilities of intercourse with Europe rendered men more dissatisfied with the ordinary environments of Eastern life and professional duty, whilst others declared that one of the most serious defects in the Indian Military System was the difficulty with which the English officer obtained furlough to Europe145. The stringency of the Furlough Regulations had, however, been greatly relaxed during the administration of Lord

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Dalhousie, and the establishment of regular steam-communication between the two countries had made the new rules practical realities. But whatsoever increased intercourse with Europe may have done to promote the application of Western science to our Indian Military System, it did not improve the regimental officer. It was contended that he commonly returned to his duty with increased distaste for cantonment life; and that he obeyed the mandate, “Let it be the fashion to be English,” by suffering a still greater estrangement to grow up between him and the Native soldier.

Indeed, there was scarcely a single point, in the whole wide range of topics connected with the great subject of the efficiency of the Native Indian Army, which did not raise a doubt and suggest a controversy. And there was so much of demonstrable truth in the assertions, and so much cogency in the arguments adduced, on both sides, that in the eyes of the looker-on it was commonly a drawn battle between the two contending parties; and so, as it was the easier and perhaps the safer course to leave things as they were, the changes which Army Reformers so earnestly advocated were practically rejected, and we clung to evils which had grown up in the system rather than we would incur the risk of instituting others of our own.

Intermixture of European Troops

But perplexing as were these practical details, there was nothing so difficult of solution as the great doubt which arose as to the amount of confidence in the Sipahi Army which it was expedient outwardly. to manifest. It was said, upon the one hand, that any diminution of our confidence would be fatal to our rule, and, on the other, that our confidence was leading us onward to destruction. Some said that the Native Army should be narrowly watched, and held in control by sufficient bodies of European soldiery; other contended that we could commit no more fatal mistake than that of betraying the least suspicion of the Sipahi, and suggesting even a remote possibility of one part of our Army ever being thrown into antagonism to the other. This controversy was half a century old. When, after the massacre of Vellur, the Madras Government urged upon the Supreme Authority in Bengal the expediency of sending some reinforcements of European troops to the Coast, the latter refused to respond to the call, on the ground that such a movement would betray a general want of confidence in the Native Army, and might drive regiments still loyal into rebellion

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under an impulse of fear. There was force in this argument, which will be readily appreciated by all who understand the character of the Sipahi Army; and its cogency was not diminished by the fact put forth by the Madras Government that the European troops under their command were fewer by two thousand men than they had been before the recent large extension of territory. But a great lesson was to be learnt from the embarrassment which then arose; a lesson which ought to have been taken to the hearts of our rulers from one generation to another. It was then clearly revealed, not merely that “prevention is better than cure,” but that prevention may be possible when cure is not; that we may hold danger in check by quietly anticipating it, but that, when it has arisen, the measures, to which we might have resorted before the fact, cannot be pursued, after it, without increasing the evil. If anything should teach us the wisdom of never suffering our European force, even in the most tranquil times, to decline below what we may call “the athletic standard,” it is the fact that, when the times cease to be tranquil, we cannot suddenly raise it to that standard without exciting alarm and creating danger.

But this lesson was not learnt. Or, if Indian statesmen ever took it to their hearts, it was remorselessly repudiated in the Councils of the English nation, Other considerations than those of the actual requirements of our Indian empire were suffered to determine the amount of European strength to be maintained on the Company’s establishment. Stated in round numbers, it may be said that the normal state of things, for some years, had been that of an Army of 300,000 men, of which 40,000 were European troops. Of these, roughly calculated, about one-third were the local European troops of the Country, raised exclusively for Indian service; the rest were the men of Royal regiments, Horse and Foot, periodically relieved according to the will of the Imperial Government, but paid out of the Revenues of India. In the five years preceding the departure of Lord Dalhousie from India, the strength of the Company’s European troops had been somewhat increased, but the force which England lent to India was considerably reduced. In 1852, there were twenty-nine Royal regiments in the three Presidencies of India, mustering 28,000 men; in 1856, there were twenty-four Royal regiments, mustering 23,000 men. During those five years there had been a vast extension of

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empire; but the aggregate European strength was lower in 1856 than in 1852 by nearly three thousand men. Between those two dates England had been engaged in a great war, and she wanted her troops for European service.

The Crimean War

We deceive ourselves, when we think that European politics make no impression on the Indian Public. The impression may be very vague and indistinct; but ignorance is a magnifier of high power, and there are never wanting a few designing men, with clearer knowledge of the real state of things, to work upon the haziness of popular conceptions, and to turn a little grain of truth to account in generating a harvest of lies. That a number of very preposterous stories were industriously circulated, and greedily swallowed, during the Crimean War, and that these stories all pointed to the down fall of the British power, is not to be doubted. It was freely declared that Russia had conquered and annexed England, and that Queen Victoria had fled and taken refuge with the Governor-General of India. The fact that the war was with Russia gave increased significance to these rumours; for there had long been a chronic belief that the Russlog would some day or other contend with us for the mastery of India; that, coming down in immense hordes from the North, and carrying with them the intervening Muhammadan States, they would sweep us, broken and humbled, into the sea. And it required no great acuteness to perceive that if a popular insurrection in India were ever to be successful, it was when the military resources of the empire were absorbed by a great European war. It is at such times as these, therefore, when there is always some disturbance of the public mind, that especial care should be taken to keep the European strength in India up to the right athletic standard. But, in these very times, the dependency is called upon to aid the empire, and her European regiments are reluctantly given up at the critical moment when she most desires to retain them. “The idea broached in Parliament,” said a Native gentleman, “of drawing troops from India for the Crimean War, took intelligent natives of India by surprise.” They saw plainly the folly of thus revealing our weakness to the subject races; for we could not more loudly proclaim the inadequacy of our resources than by denuding ourselves in one quarter of the world in order that we might clothe ourselves more sufficiently in another.

Nor was it this alone that, during the last years of Lord

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Dalhousie’s administration, “took intelligent natives of India by surprise.” They saw us increasing our territory, in all directions, without increasing our European force. There were those who argued that territorial increase did not necessarily demand increased means of defence, as it might be a change, not an extension, of frontier; indeed, that the consolidation of our empire, by diminishing the numbers of our enemies, ought rather to be regarded as a reason for the diminution of our military strength. And this, in respect to our external enemies, it has already been observed, was not untrue146. But our dangers were from within, not from without; and it was forgotten that false friends might be more dangerous than open enemies. The English in India were, indeed, continually in a state of siege, and the conquest of their external enemies increased the perils of their position, for it deprived them of those safety-valves which had often before arrested a ruinous explosion. We were far too sanguine in our estimates of the results of conquest or annexation. We saw everything as we wished to see it. We saw contentment in submission, loyalty in quiescence; and took our estimate of national sentiment from the feelings of a few interested individuals who were making money by the change. But “intelligent natives” seeing clearly our delusion, knowing that we believed a lie, wondered greatly at our want of wisdom in suffering vast tracts of territory, perhaps only recently brought under British rule, to lie naked and defenceless, without even a detachment of English fighting-men to guard the lives of the new masters of the country. And little as we gave them credit for sagacity in such matters, they touched the very kernel of our danger with a needle’s point, and predicted that our confidence would destroy us.

It was fortunate that, when we conquered the Panjab, it was impossible to forget that Afghanistan, still festering with animosities and resentments born of the recent invasion, lay contiguous to the frontier of our new province. It was fortunate, too, that Henry Lawrence, being a man of a quick imagination, could feel as a Sikh chief or a Sikh soldier would feel under the new yoke of the Faringhi, and could therefore believe that we were not welcomed as deliverers from one end of the country to the other. But it was not fortunate that the

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obvious necessity of garrisoning this frontier Province with a strong European force should have been practically regarded as a reason for denuding all the rest of India of English troops. Acting in accordance with the old traditions, that the only danger with which our position in India is threatened, is danger coming from the North-West, we massed a large body of Europeans in the Panjab, and scattered, at wide intervals, the few remaining regiments at our disposal over other parts of our extended dominions. Thus we visibly became more and more dependent on our Native Army; and it needed only the declaration of weakness made, when England called on India for regiments to take part in the Crimean War, to assure “intelligent natives” that the boasted resources of England were wholly insufficient to meet the demands made upon them from different quarters, and that we could only confront danger in one part of the world by exposing ourselves to it in another147.

Effects of the Annexation of Oudh

And this impression was strengthened by the fact that when Oudh was annexed to our British territories, although the province was thereby filled with the disbanded soldiery of the destroyed Native.

Government, and with a dangerous race of discontented nobles, whom the revolution had stripped of their privileges and despoiled of their wealth, the English appeared not to possess the means of garrisoning with European troops the country which they had thus seized. As Oudh was not a frontier province, there was no necessity to mass troops there, as in the Panjab, for purposes of external defence; and the English, emboldened by success, were stronger than ever in their national egotism, and believed that, as they could not be regarded in Oudh in any other light than that of deliverers, there was small need to make provision against the possibility of internal disturbance. They left the province, therefore, after annexation had been proclaimed, with only a small handful of European fighting-men; and “intelligent natives” were again surprised to see that the English gentlemen were carrying out their new scheme of administration, to the ruin of almost every pre-existing interest in the country, with as much

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confidence as if every district of Oudh were bristling with British bayonets. They saw, too, that the English had absorbed one of the last remaining Muhammadan States of India; and they felt that not only would this prodigious appropriation be regarded from one end of India to the other as the precursor of new seizures, and that it would thus greatly disturb the public mind, but that the very class of men on whom we appeared to rely for the continued security of our position were, of all others, most likely to resent this act of aggression.

For the annexation of Oudh had some results injurious to the Sipahi. A very large portion of the Bengal Army was drawn from that province. In every village were the families of men who wore the uniform and bore the arms of the English. Being for the most part high-caste Hindus, they might not have regarded the peaceful revolution by which a Muhammadan monarchy was destroyed with any strong feelings of national resentment; and it is certain that this extension of territory was not provocative of the feelings of aversion and alarm with which they regarded those other seizures which had sent them to rot in the charnel-house of Sindh, or to perish in exile on the frontiers of Afghanistan. Their griefs were of another kind. The old state of things had suited them better. They had little sympathy, perhaps, with Wajid Ali, and service in Oudh brought them nearer to their homes. But so long as it was a foreign province, they derived certain special privileges and advantages from their position as the servants of the Company, and increased importance in the eyes of the people of the province. They had, indeed, been a favoured race, and as such the Sipahi families had held up their heads above those of their countrymen who had no such bonds of privilege and protection to unite them to the Paramount State. “The Sipahi,” wrote the man who had studied the character and probed the feelings of the Native more deeply and philosophically perhaps than any of his contemporaries – “the Sipahi is not the man of consequence he was. He dislikes annexations; among other reasons, because each new province added to the Empire widens his sphere of service, and at the same time decreases our foreign enemies and thereby the Sipahi’s importance The other day, an Oudh Sipahi of the Bombay Cavalry at Nimach, being asked if he liked annexation, replied, ‘No; I used to be a .great man when I went home. The best in my village rose as

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I approached. Now the lowest puff their pipes in my face148.’ ” Under the all-prevailing lawlessness and misrule, which had so long overridden the province, the English Sipahi, whatever might be the wrongs of others, was always sure of a full measure of justice on appeal to the British Resident. If he himself were not, some member of his family was, a small yeoman, with certain rights in the land – rights which commonly among his countrymen were as much a source of trouble as a source of pride – and in all the disputes and contentions in which these interests involved him, he had the protection and assistance of the Resident, and right or wrong carried his point. In the abstract it was, doubtless, an evil state of things, for the Sipahi’s privileges were often used as instruments of oppression, and were sometimes counterfeited with the help of an old regimental jacket and pair of boots, by men who had never gone right-face to the word of command. But for this very reason they were dearly valued; and when the Sipahis were thus brought down by annexation to the dead level of British subjects, when the Residency ceased to be, and all men were equally under the protection of the Commissioner, the Sipahi families, like all the other privileged classes in Oudh, learnt what the revolution had cost them, and, wide apart as their several grievances lay from each other, they joined hands with other sufferers over a common grief.

Summary of deteriorating influences

Looking, then, at the condition of the Native Army of India, and especially at the state of the Bengal regiments, as it was in the spring of 1856, we see that a series of adverse circumstances, culminating in the annexation of Oudh, some influencing him from without and some from within, had weakened the attachment of the Sipahi to his colours. We see that, whilst the bonds of internal discipline were being relaxed, external events, directly or indirectly affecting his position, were exciting within

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him animosities and discontents. We see that as he grew less faithful and obedient, he grew also more presuming; that whilst he was less under the control of his officers and the dominion of the State, he was more sensible of the extent to which we were dependent upon his fidelity, and therefore more capricious and exacting. He had been neglected on the one hand, and pampered on the other. As a soldier, he had in many ways deteriorated, but he was not to be regarded only as a soldier. He was a representative man, the embodiment of feelings and opinions shared by large classes of his countrymen, and circumstances might render him one day their exponent. He had many opportunities of becoming acquainted with passing events and public opinion. He mixed in cantonments, or on the line of march, with men of different classes and different countries; he corresponded with friends at a distance; he heard all the gossip of the Bazaars, and he read, or heard others read, the strange mixture of truth and falsehood contained in the Native newspapers. He knew what were the measures of the British Government, sometimes even what were its intentions, and he interpreted their meanings, as men are wont to do, who, credulous and suspicious, see insidious designs and covert dangers in the most beneficent acts. He had not the faculty to conceive that the English were continually originating great changes for the good of the people; our theories of government were beyond his understanding, and as he had ceased to take counsel with his English officer, he was given over to strange delusions, and believed the most dangerous lies.

But in taking account of the effect produced upon the Sipahi’s mind by the political and social measures of the British Government, we must not think only of the direct action of these measures – of the soldier’s own reading of distant events, which might have had no bearing upon his daily happiness, and which, therefore, in his selfishness he might have been content to disregard. For he often read these things with other men’s eyes, and discerned them with other men’s understandings. If the political and social revolutions, of which I have written, did not affect him, they affected others, wiser in their generation, more astute, more designing, who put upon everything we did the gloss best calculated to debauch the Sipahi’s mind, and to prepare him, at a given signal, for an outburst of sudden madness. Childish, as he was, in his faith, there was nothing

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easier than to make him believe all kinds and conditions of fictions, not only wild and grotesque in themselves, but in violent contradiction of each other. He was as ready to believe that the extension of our territory would throw him out of employment, as that it would inflict upon him double work. He did not choose between these two extremes; he accepted both, and took the one or the other, as the humour pleased him. There were never wanting men to feed his imagination with the kind of aliment which pleased it best, and reason never came to his aid to purge him of the results of this gross feeding.

Many were the strange glosses which were given to the acts of the British Government; various were the ingenious fictions woven with the purpose of unsettling the mind and uprooting the fidelity of the Sipahi. But diverse as they were in many respects, there was a certain unity about them, for they all tended to persuade him that our measures were directed to one common end, the destruction of Caste, and the general introduction of Christianity into the land. If we annexed a province, it was to facilitate our proselytising operations, and to increase the number of our converts. Our resumption operations were instituted for the purpose of destroying all the religious endowments of the country. Our legislative enactments were all tending to the same result, the subversion of Hinduism and Muhammadanism. Our educational measures were so many direct assaults upon the religions of the country. Our penal system, according to their showing, disguised a monstrous attempt to annihilate caste, by compelling men of all denominations to feed together in the gaols. In the Lines of every regiment there were men eager to tell lies of this kind to the Sipahi, mingled with assurances that the time was coming when the Faringhis would be destroyed to a man; when a new empire would be established, and a new military system inaugurated, under which the high rank and the higher pay monopolised by the English would be transferred to the people of the country. We know so little of what is stilling in the depths of Indian society; we dwell so much apart from the people; we see so little of them, except in full dress and on their best behaviour, that perilous intrigues and desperate plots might be woven, under the very shadow of our bungalows, without our perceiving any symptoms of danger. But still less can we discern that quiet under-current of hostility which is continually flowing on without any immediate

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or definite object, and which, if we could discern it, would baffle all our efforts to trace it to its source. But it does not the less exist because we are ignorant of the form which it assumes, or the fount from which it springs. The men, whose business it was to corrupt the minds of our Sipahis, were, perhaps, the agents of some of the old princely houses, which we had destroyed149, or members of old. baronial families which we had brought to poverty and disgrace. They were, perhaps, the emissaries of Brahmanical Societies, whose precepts we were turning into folly, and whose power we were setting at naught. They were, perhaps, mere visionaries and enthusiasts, moved only by their own disordered imaginations to proclaim the coming of some new prophet or some fresh avatar of the Deity, and the consequent downfall of Christian supremacy in the East. But whatsoever the nature of their mission, and whatsoever the guise they assumed, whether they appeared in the Lines as passing travellers, as journeying hawkers, as religious mendicants, or as wandering puppet-showmen, the seed of sedition which they scattered struck root in a soil well prepared to receive it, and waited only for the ripening sun of circumstance to develop a harvest of revolt.

Footnotes

137. See Williams’s Bengal Army and Mackenzie’s Narrative of the Mutiny at Bolaram; compare also section on the Sipahi Army in Sutherland’s Sketcher of the Native States of India.

138. “I cannot conceive the possibility of maintaining discipline in a corps where a low-caste non-commissioned officer will, when he meets off duty a Brahman Sipahi, crouch down to him with his forehead on the ground. I have seen this done. The Sipahi thus treated is the master of the officer.” – Evidence of Major-General Birch.

139. See the case of the 6th Madras Cavalry, ante, p. 213.

140. Sleeman on the Spirit of Discipline in the Native Army.

141. To every regiment of Native infantry were attached one Subahdar-major, ten Subahdars, and ten Jamadars.

142. Views and Opinions of General John Jacob, p. 120; compare also Sir Henry Lawrence’s Essays, Military and Political, p. 24 et seq.

143. Sleeman relates, that “an old Subahdar, who had been at the taking of the Isle of France, mentioned that when he was the senior Jamadar of his regiment, and a vacancy had occurred to bring him in as Subahdar, he was sent for by his commanding officer, and told that by orders from Head-Quarters he was to be passed over, on account of his advanced age and supposed infirmity. ‘I felt,’ said the old man, ‘as if I had been struck by lightning, and fell down dead. The Colonel was a good man, and had seen much service. He had me taken into the open air, and when I recovered he told me that he would write to the Commander-in-Chief and represent my case. He did so immediately, and I was promoted, and I have since done my duty as Subahdar for ten years.’ ” But, it may be asked, how? It must be borne in mind, too, that Sleeman speaks here of the effect of supercession under a Seniority system. Under a system of selection such results would not be apparent, because there would not be the same disgrace in being passed over.

144. A regiment of Native Infantry in March, 1856, was officered by 1 colonel, 1 lieutenant-colonel, 1 major, 6 captains, 10 lieutenants, and 5 ensigns. A few months afterwards another captain and another lieutenant were added to each regiment.

145. Views and Opinions of Brigadier-General John Jacob.

146. Ante, p. 202.

147. It has been alleged, too, that the subscriptions raised towards the support of the Patriotic Fund during the Crimean War, impressed intelligent natives with the belief that we were as short of money as we were of men.

148. Sir Henry Lawrence to Lord Canning, MS. Correspondence. I may give here in a note the words omitted in the text, as bearing, though not immediately, upon the Oudh question, and upon the general subject of annexation: “Ten years ago, a Sipahi in the Panjab asked an officer what we would do without them. Another said, ‘Now you have got the Panjab, you will reduce the Army.’ A third remarked, when he heard that Sindh was to be joined to the Bengal Presidency, ‘Perhaps there will be an order to join London to Bengal.’ ”

149. It was asserted at the time of the “Mutiny of Vellur,” that not only were agents of the House of Tipu busy in all the lines of Southern India, but that there was scarcely a regiment into which they had not enlisted.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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