Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

The Rājpūt, the Brahman, and the proud Pathān who attains a commission, and deports himself like an officer, never thinks himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the profession of the penman. This is a tone of feeling which it is clearly the interest of Government rather to foster than discourage, and the order which militated so much against it has happily been either rescinded or disregarded.

Three-fourths of the recruits of our Bengal native infantry are drawn from the Rājpūt peasantry of the kingdom of Oudh, on the left bank of the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a long series of generations.1097 The good feelings of the families from which they are drawn continue through the whole period of their service to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men and as soldiers. Though they never take their families with them, they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are always present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to those unacquainted with its source—veneration for parents cherished through life, and a never-impaired love of home, and of all the dear objects by which it is constituted.

Our Indian native army is perhaps the only entirely voluntary standing army that has been ever known, and it is, to all intents and purposes, entirely voluntary, and as such must be treated.1098 We can have no other native army in India, and without such an army we could not maintain our dominion a day. Our best officers have always understood this quite well; and they have never tried to flog and harass men out of all that we find good in them for our purposes. Any regiment in our service might lay down their arms and disperse to- morrow, without our having a chance of apprehending one deserter among them all.1099

When Frederick the Great of Prussia reviewed his army of sixty thousand men in Pomerania, previous to his invasion of Silesia, he asked the Prince d'Anhalt, who accompanied him, what he most admired in the scene before him.

'Sire,' replied the prince, 'I admire at once the fine appearance of the men, and the regularity and perfection of their movements and evolutions.'

'For my part,' said Frederick, 'this is not what excites my astonishment, since with the advantage of money, time, and care, these are easily attained. It is that you and I, my dear cousin, should be in the midst of such an army as this in perfect safety. Here are sixty thousand men who are all irreconcilable enemies to both you and myself', not one among them that is not a man of more strength and better armed than either, yet they all tremble at our presence, while it would be folly on our part to tremble at theirs—such is the wonderful effect of order, vigilance, and subordination.'

But a reasonable man might ask, what were the circumstances which enabled Frederick to keep in a state of order and subordination an army composed of soldiers who were 'irreconcilable enemies' of their Prince and of their officers? He could have told the Prince d'Anhalt, had he chose to do so; for Frederick was a man who thought deeply. The chief circumstance favourable to his ambition was the imbecility of the old French Government, then in its dotage, and unable to see that an army of involuntary soldiers was no longer compatible with the state of the nation. This Government had reduced its soldiers to a condition worse than that of the common labourers upon the roads, while it deprived them of all hope of rising, and all feeling of pride in the profession.1100 Desertion became easy from the extension of the French dominion and from the circumstance of so many belligerent powers around requiring good soldiers; and no odium attended desertion, where everything was done to degrade, and nothing to exalt the soldier in his own esteem and that of society.

Instead of following the course of events and rendering the condition of the soldier less odious by increasing his pay and hope of promotion, and diminishing the labour and disgrace to which he was liable, and thereby filling her regiments with voluntary soldiers when involuntary ones could no longer be obtained, the Government of France reduced the soldier's pay to one-half the rate of wages which a common labourer got on the roads, and put them under restraints and restrictions that made them feel every day, and every hour, that they were slaves. To prevent desertions by severe examples under this high- pressure System, they had recourse first to slitting the noses and cutting off the ears of deserters, and, lastly, to shooting them as fast as they could catch them.1101 But all was in vain; and Frederick of Prussia alone got fifty thousand of the finest soldiers in the world from the French regiments, who composed one-third of his army, and enabled him to keep all the rest in that state of discipline that improved so much its efficiency, in the same manner as the deserters from the Roman legions, which took place under similar circumstances, became the flower of the army of Mithridates.1102

Frederick was in position and disposition a despot. His territories were small, while his ambition was boundless. He was unable to pay a large army the rate of wages necessary to secure the services of voluntary soldiers; and he availed himself of the happy imbecility of the French Government to form an army of involuntary ones. He got French soldiers at a cheap rate, because they dared not return to their native country, whence they were hunted down and shot like dogs, and these soldiers enabled him to retain his own subjects in his ranks upon the same terms. Had the French Government retraced its steps, improved the condition of its soldiers, and mitigated the punishment for desertion during the long war, Frederick's army would have fallen to pieces 'like the baseless fabric of a vision'.

'Parmi nous,' says Montesquieu, 'les désertions sont fréquentes parce que les soldats sont la plus vile partie de chaque nation, et qu'il n'y en a aucun qui aie, ou qui croie avoir un certain avantage sur les autres. Chez les Romains elles étaient plus rares—des soldats tirés du sein d'un peuple si fier, si orgueilleux, si sūr de commander aux autres, ne pouvaient guère penser ā s' aviler jusqu'à cesser d'ētre Romains.'1103 But was it the poor soldiers who were to blame if they were 'vile', and had 'no advantage over others', or the Government that took them from the vilest classes, or made their condition when they got them worse than that of the lowest class in society? The Romans deserted under the same circumstances, and, as I have stated, formed the elite of the army of Mithridates and the other enemies of Rome; but they respected their military oath of allegiance long after perjury among senators had ceased to excite any odium, since as a fashionable or political vice it had become common.

Did not our day of retribution come, though in a milder shape, to teach us a great political and moral lesson, when so many of our brave sailors deserted our ships for those of America, in which they fought against us?1104 They deserted from our ships of war because they were there treated like dogs, or from our merchant ships because they were every hour liable to be seized like felons and put on board the former. When 'England expected every man to do his duty' at Trafalgar, had England done its duty to every man who was that day to fight for her? Is not the intellectual stock which the sailor acquires in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy mast' as much his property as that which others acquire in scenes of peace at schools and colleges? And have not our senators, morally and religiously, as much right to authorize their sovereign to seize clergymen, lawyers, and professors, for employment in his service, upon the wages of ordinary uninstructed labour, as they have to authorize him to seize able sailors to be so employed in her navy? A feeling more base than that which authorized the able seaman to be hunted down upon such conditions, torn from his wife and children, and put like Uriah in front of those battles upon which our welfare and honour depended, never disgraced any civilized nation with whose history we are acquainted.1105

Sir Matthew Decker, in a passage quoted by Mr. McCulloch, says, 'The custom of impressment put a freeborn British sailor on the same footing as a Turkish slave. The Grand Seignior cannot do a more absolute act than to order a man to be dragged away from his family, and against his will run his head against the mouth of a cannon; and if such acts should be frequent in Turkey upon any one set of useful men, would it not drive them away to other countries, and thin their numbers yearly? And would not the remaining few double or triple their wages, which is the case with our sailors in time of war, to the great detriment of our commerce?' The Americans wisely relinquished the barbarous and unwise practice of their parent land, and, as McCulloch observes, 'While the wages of all labourers and artisans are uniformly higher in the United States than in England, those of sailors are generally lower,' as the natural consequence of manning their navy by means of voluntary enlistment alone. At the close of the last war, sixteen thousand British sailors were serving on board of American ships; and the wages of our seamen rose from forty or1106 fifty to a hundred or one hundred and twenty shillings a month, as the natural consequence of our continuing to resort to impressment after the Americans had given it up.1107

Frederick's army consisted of about one hundred and fifty thousand men. Fifty thousand of these were French deserters, and a considerable portion of the remaining hundred thousand were deserters from the Austrian army, in which desertion was punished in the same manner with death. The dread of this punishment if they quitted his ranks, enabled him to keep up that state of discipline that improved so much the efficacy of his regiments, at the same time that it made every individual soldier his 'irreconcilable enemy'. Not relying entirely upon this dread on the part of deserters to quit his ranks under his high-pressure system of discipline, and afraid that the soldiers of his own soil might make off in spite of all their vigilance, he kept his regiments in garrison towns till called on actual service; and that they might not desert on their way from one garrison to another during relief, he never had them relieved at all. A trooper was flogged for falling from his horse, though he had broken a limb in his fall; it was difficult, he said, to distinguish an involuntary fault from one that originated in negligence, and to prevent a man hoping that his negligence would be forgiven, all blunders were punished, from whatever cause arising. No soldier was suffered to quit his garrison till led out to fight; and when a desertion took place, cannons were fired to announce it to the surrounding country. Great rewards were given for apprehending, and severe punishments inflicted for harbouring, the criminal; and he was soon hunted down, and brought back. A soldier was, therefore, always a prisoner and a slave.

Still, all this rigour of Prussian discipline, like that of our navy, was insufficient to extinguish that ambition which is inherent in our nature to obtain the esteem and applause of the circle in which we move; and the soldier discharged his duty in the hour of danger, in the hope of rendering his life more happy in the esteem of his officers and comrades. 'Every tolerably good soldier feels ', says Adam Smith, 'that he would become the scorn of his companions if he should be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.' So thought the philosopher-King of Prussia, when he let his regiments out of garrison to go and face the enemy. The officers were always treated with as much lenity in the Prussian as any other service, because the king knew that the hope of promotion would always be sufficient to bind them to their duties; but the poor soldiers had no hope of this kind to animate them in their toils and their dangers.

We took our System of drill from Frederick of Prussia; and there is still many a martinet who would carry his high-pressure system of discipline into every other service over which he had any control, unable to appreciate the difference of circumstances under which they may happen to be raised and maintained.1108

The sepoys of the Bengal army, the only part of our native army with which I am much acquainted, are educated as soldiers from their infancy—they are brought up in that feeling of entire deference for constituted authority which we require in soldiers, and which they never lose through life. They are taken from the agricultural classes of Indian society—almost all the sons of yeomen—cultivating proprietors of the soil, whose families have increased beyond their means of subsistence. One son is sent one after another to seek service in our regiments as necessity presses at home, from whatever cause—the increase of taxation, or the too great increase of numbers in families.1109 No men can have a higher sense of the duty they owe to the state that employs them, or whose 'salt they eat'; nor can any men set less value on life when the service of that state requires that it shall be risked or sacrificed. No persons are brought up with more deference for parents. In no family from which we drew our recruits is a son through infancy, boyhood, or youth, heard to utter a disrespectful word to his parents—such a word from a son to his parents would shock the feelings of the whole community in which the family resides, and the offending member would be visited with their highest indignation. When the father dies the eldest son takes his place, and receives the same marks of respect, the same entire confidence and deference as the father. If he be a soldier in a distant land, and can afford to do so, he resigns the service, and returns home to take his post as the head of the family. If he cannot afford to resign, if the family still want the aid of his regular monthly pay, he remains with his regiment, and denies himself many of the personal comforts he has hitherto enjoyed, that he may increase his contribution to the general stock.

The wives and children of his brothers, who are absent on service, are confided to his care with the same confidence as to that of the father. It is a rule to which I have through life found but few exceptions that those who are most disposed to resist constituted authority are those most disposed to abuse such authority when they get it. The members of these families, disposed, as they always are, to pay deference to such authority, are scarcely ever found to abuse it when it devolves upon them; and the elder son, when he succeeds to the place of his father, loses none of the affectionate attachment of his younger brothers.

They never take their wives or children with them to their regiments, or to the places where their regiments are stationed.1110 They leave them with their fathers or elder brothers, and enjoy their society only when they return on furlough. Three-fourths of their incomes are sent home to provide for their comfort and subsistence, and to embellish that home in which they hope to spend the winter of their days. The knowledge that any neglect of the duty they owe their distant families will be immediately visited by the odium of their native officers and brother soldiers, and ultimately communicated to the heads of their families, acts as a salutary check on their conduct; and I believe that there is hardly a native regiment in the Bengal army in which the twenty drummers who are Christians, and have their families with the regiment, do not cause more trouble to the officers than the whole eight hundred sepoys.

To secure the fidelity of such men all that is necessary is to make them feel secure of three things—their regular pay, at the handsome rate at which it has now been fixed; their retiring pensions upon the scale hitherto enjoyed; and promotion by seniority, like their European officers, unless they shall forfeit all claims to it by misconduct or neglect of duty.1111 People talk about a demoralized army, and discontented army! No army in the world was certainly ever more moral or more contented than our native army; or more satisfied that their masters merit all their devotion and attachment; and I believe none was ever more devoted or attached to them.1112 I do not speak of the European officers of the native army. They very generally believe that they have had just cause of complaint, and sufficient care has not always been taken to remove that impression. In all the junior grades the Honourable Company's officers have advantages over the Queen's in India. In the higher grades the Queen's officers have advantages over those of the Honourable Company. The reasons it does not behove me here to consider.1113

In all armies composed of involuntary soldiers, that is, of soldiers who are anxious to quit the ranks and return to peaceful occupations, but cannot do so, much of the drill to which they are subjected is adopted merely with a view to keep them from pondering too much upon the miseries of their present condition, and from indulging in those licentious habits to which a strong sense of these miseries, and the recollection of the enjoyments of peaceful life which they have sacrificed, are too apt to drive them. No portion of this is necessary for the soldiers of our native army, who have no miseries to ponder over, or superior enjoyments in peaceful life to look back upon; and a very small quantity of drill is sufficient to make a regiment go through its evolutions well, because they have all a pride and pleasure in their duties, as long as they have a commanding officer who understands them. Clarke, in his Travels, speaking of the three thousand native infantry from India whom he saw paraded in Egypt under their gallant leader, Sir David Baird, says, 'Troops in such a state of military perfection, or better suited for active service, were never seen—not even on the famous parade of the chosen ten thousand belonging to Bonaparte's legions, which he was so vain of displaying before the present war in the front of the Tuileries at Paris. Not an unhealthy soldier was to be seen. The English, inured to the climate of India, considered that of Egypt as temperate in its effects, and the sipāhees seemed as fond of the Nile as the Ganges.'1114

It would be much better to devise more innocent amusements to lighten the miseries of European soldiers in India than to be worrying them every hour, night and day, with duties which are in themselves considered to be of no importance whatever, and imposed merely with a view to prevent their having time to ponder on these miseries.1115 But all extra and useless duties to a soldier become odious, because they are always associated in his mind with the ideas of the odious and degrading punishment inflicted for the neglect of them. It is lamentable to think how much of misery is often wantonly inflicted upon the brave soldiers of our European regiments of India on the pretence of a desire to preserve order and discipline.1116

Sportsmen know that if they train their horses beyond a certain point they 'train off'; that is, they lose the spirit and with it the condition they require to support them in their hour of trial. It is the same with soldiers; if drilled beyond a certain point, they 'drill off', and lose the spirit which they require to sustain them in active service, and before the enemy. An over-drilled regiment will seldom go through its evolutions well, even in ordinary review before its own general. If it has all the mechanism, it wants all the real spirit of military discipline—it becomes dogged, and is, in fact, a body with but a soul. The martinet, who is seldom a man of much intellect, is satisfied as long as the bodies of his men are drilled to his liking; his narrow mind comprehends only one of the principles which influence mankind—fear; and upon this he acts with all the pertinacity of a slave-driver. If he does not disgrace himself when he comes before the enemy, as he commonly does, by his own incapacity, his men will perhaps try to disgrace him, even at the sacrifice of what they hold dearer than their lives—their reputation. The real soldier, who is generally a man of more intellect, cares more about the feelings than the bodies of his men; he wants to command their affections as well as their limbs, and he inspires them with a feeling of enthusiasm that renders them insensible to all danger—such men were Lord Lake, and Generals Ochterlony, Malcolm, and Adams, and such are many others well known in India.

Under the martinet the soldiers will never do more than what a due regard for their own reputation demands from them before the enemy, and will sometimes do less. Under the real soldier, they will always do more than this; his reputation is dearer to them even than their own, and they will do more to sustain it. The army of the consul, Appius Claudius, exposed themselves to almost inevitable destruction before the enemy to disgrace him in the eyes of his country, and the few survivors were decimated on their return; he cared nothing for the spirit of his men. The army of his colleague, Quintius, on the contrary, though from the same people, and levied and led out at the same time, covered him with glory because they loved him.1117 We had an instance of this in the war with Nepāl in-1813, in which a king's regiment played the part of the army of Appius.1118 There were other martinets, king's and Company's, commanding divisions in that war, and they all signally failed; not, however, except in the above one instance, from backwardness on the part of their troops, but from utter incapacity when the hour of trial came. Those who succeeded were men always noted for caring something more about the hearts than the whiskers and buttons of their men. That the officer who delights in harassing his regiment in times of peace will fail with it in times of war and scenes of peril seems to me to be a rule almost as well established as that he, who in the junior ranks of the army delights most to kick against authority, is always found the most disposed to abuse it when he gets to the higher. In long intervals of peace, the only prominent military characters are commonly such martinets; and hence the failures so generally experienced in the beginning of a war after such an interval. Whitelocks are chosen for command, till Wolfes and Wellingtons find Chathams and Wellesleys to climb up by.

To govern those whose mental and physical energies we require for our subsistence and support by the lash alone is so easy, so simple a mode of bending them to our will, and making them act strictly and instantly in conformity to it, that it is not at all surprising to find so many of those who have been accustomed to it, and are not themselves liable to have the lash inflicted upon them, advocating its free use. In China the Emperor has his generals flogged, and finds the lash so efficacious in bending them to his will that nothing would persuade him that it could ever be safely dispensed with. In some parts of Germany they had the officers flogged, and princes and generals found this so very efficacious in making those act in conformity to their will that they found it difficult to believe that any army could be well managed without it. In other Christian armies the officers are exempted from the lash, but they use it freely upon all under them; and it would be exceedingly difficult to convince the greater part of these officers that the free use of the lash is not indispensably necessary, nay, that the men do not themselves like to be flogged, as eels like to be skinned, when they once get used to it. Ask the slave-holders of the southern states of America whether any society can be well constituted unless the greater part of those upon the sweat of whose brow the community depends for their subsistence are made by law liable to be bought, sold, and driven to their daily labour with the lash; they will one and all say No; and yet there are doubtless many very excellent and amiable persons among these slave-holders. If our army, as at present constituted, cannot do without the free use of the lash, let its constitution be altered; for no nation with free institutions should suffer its soldiers to be flogged. 'Laudabiliores tamen duces sunt, quorum exercitum ad modestiam labor et usus instituit, quam illi, quorum milites ad obedientiam suppliciorum formido compellit.'1119