Part 10

It is curious how often people complain of the ignorance and narrowness of young officers, saying that they can think of nothing outside their regiments, unless it be polo or some other game in which the regiment is interested. No doubt it is better for men of any profession to know something, and the more the better, of subjects outside that profession; and yet what could more profitably occupy an officer's thoughts than the men and horses under his charge? Military routine can have no doubt a somewhat straitening and deadening effect upon officers, even as academic routine may injuriously affect the minds of school masters and professors; and no doubt there are officers who chafe under it. But the majority find more than sufficient interest in the study of their men, in the selection of the promising for promotion, the encouragement of the good, the improvement, suppression and elimination of the bad, the bringing on of the backward, and above all in honest endeavour to enter into the _thoughts_ of their men--a task so difficult that not one in ten thousand succeeds in mastering it. For they know that it is their business to lead men and not drive them to discipline, and to inspire such confidence between commanded and commander that even in the most desperate situation he may be able to say, _I can depend upon my men_.

But even those who tire of military routine in time of peace change their opinion when they go upon active service. In England they cannot see why all kinds of tiresome details should not be left to the sergeants, but in the field they soon discover that the men will listen to and trust no one but an officer. The non-commissioned officer does not suffice for them. He may be a veteran of eighteen years' service; but the men will follow a commissioned boy of eighteen fresh from Eton infinitely more readily than they will the non-commissioned veteran. It is a very remarkable fact, and to those who hold that all men are equal it is extremely unpalatable; but a fact beyond question it is, and not difficult of explanation. Men who by the fortune of their birth are exempted from the bitterness of the struggle for existence, trust their fellows because they have no reason to dread their competition; men who have been brought up in the thick of the fight with none but themselves to help them, see a possible competitor--it may be even a dangerous enemy--in every neighbour, and trust no one.

Yet active service is by no means necessary to cure the officer who is bored with military service at home. Send him away to some outlandish corner of the Empire, and entrust him with the training and command of a few hundred black soldiers, and he will find exile, hardship and discomfort more congenial to him in such company than the softest of lives at home. He realises that everything, so far as those few hundred men are concerned, depends upon himself; and he delights in the sensation. There are hundreds of such officers in remote places quietly doing what some consider the dirty work, but what they themselves know to be the most honourable work, of the Empire. The officers of the Indian Army are in precisely the same case. Few of us realise how much we owe to them, and to how great an extent the Empire is dependent upon them. Operatives in our huge over-grown towns, who exhaust themselves in condemnation of everything military, never reflect that, but for this handful of officers, their comrades of the Indian Army, and the disciplined men, Indian too, but above all British, who serve under them, millions of themselves who subsist upon our trade with India would be in a state of starvation. Happily the officers, and therefore the men who serve under them, do their duty patiently and quietly without regarding the volumes of chatter which flow unceasingly from the north country; for they know that empires are won and governed not by talk but by action.

This, I think, is a thing that we should all do well to remember from time to time. Exaggerated esteem for our Parliamentary institutions has led us to attach too much importance to speeches. Their original purpose was to persuade men to a common course of action; but they have never been very efficacious, and in this country have long been superseded by political organisation or, in plain English, wire-pulling. People have a strange notion that, without much chatter, there can be no liberty. But liberty (whatever liberty may be) is a small thing to a nation compared with discipline; and in fact liberty of any kind is impossible without discipline. If I am to judge of a nation it is useless to tell me of its political institutions, for the best of them will work badly and the worst of them well according to the honesty of the men whose business it is to apply them. Let me know what is the state of its discipline, parental, social, national, and with what spirit that discipline is borne. Let me know what are its military institutions, and how far they are supported or ignored; whether the citizens come forward with cheerfulness to fulfil a national duty, or whether they are reckless, self-indulgent shirkers who try to impose on a few the service that is common to all, and take refuge in cant to disguise their cowardice. Then I will tell you without reading a single speech whether the nation is sound at heart or rotten. If the text of all the speeches ever delivered in Parliament were destroyed to-morrow, the world would lose remarkably little. Great men are best studied in their letters and their actions, whether they were great speakers or not; and by no means the worst way of appreciating the actions of very many of them, both civilians and soldiers, is to read military history.

LECTURE IV

BRITISH CAMPAIGNS IN INDIA

To-day I propose to speak to you upon a very great and most intractable subject--British Military History in India. It is difficult to do so without saying something of the history of India itself; yet the subject is so immense that I must compress the whole of that vast story into one or two sentences.

Let me begin then by reminding you that what we call India is divided into a northern portion, which extends from the Himalayas southward to the Narbada river and the Vindhya Mountains and is called Hindostan; and a southern portion called the Dekhan which stretches from those boundaries southward to Cape Comorin. This division is less arbitrary than a glance at the map would lead you to suppose; for between these two huge territories there lies a belt of barren and mountainous country, through which, before the days of railways, there was practically but one passage, famous in Indian military history as the Ajanta Pass. The earliest invaders of whom we have any knowledge came by sea, and landing in the extreme south worked their way from thence to the northern boundary of the Dekhan. The people of the Dekhan still speak the language of these invaders, which is unknown in Hindostan. The next invaders, the Aryans, came through the passes of Afghanistan from the north-west, bringing with them the religious and social institutions which are known to us as Hinduism, Brahminism and caste, and which still govern the lives of most of the millions who now inhabit Hindostan. They penetrated, however, only into one corner of the Dekhan--the north-west--where the Aryan language, Marathi, betrays their presence.

I pass over the innumerable tides of invasion which swept over Hindostan from the north-west, until we come to the first formidable inroad of Mohammedan Arabs in 999 A.D. The great champions of Hinduism against Islam were the Rajputs, whose nobles still represent the highest aristocracy and the bluest blood in India. For a long time they combated desperately and with success; but in 1193 the Mohammedans captured Delhi, and within another twenty years they definitely overthrew the Rajputs and established themselves as potential masters of India. For Delhi, though the maps do not show it, is a great strategical position, marking the centre of a kind of pass, where the access to India from the north-west is narrowed to a tract, not above one hundred miles broad, between the mountains on the north and a desert on the south. Hence all the decisive battles of India against invaders from the north-west have been fought within fifty miles of Delhi.

In the fifteenth century a new set of Mohammedan invaders--the Turkis or Tartars--came down upon the Arabs, and after more than a hundred years of raiding, invaded Hindostan in good earnest under a great leader, Baber. In 1526 they became masters of Delhi. Then for two hundred years strong man succeeded strong man, and there was consolidated what is called the Mogul Empire. Akbar, one of the great men of all time, reigned from 1556 until 1605--almost exactly the period of our own Elizabeth--and gathered all India north of the Narbada, from Kandahar to the Bay of Bengal, into a single Empire. His successors strove hard, though with indifferent results, to subjugate the Dekhan; but by the middle of the seventeenth century signs of decay were evident among the Moguls. The Hindus, whether warriors as the Rajputs, or meek and submissive, as the Bengalis, have an amazing power of silently and gradually absorbing all alien races into themselves. At this moment a sharp line divides Mohammedans from Hindus; and yet the Mohammedans have already caught the system of caste from the Hindus, and as centuries roll on will doubtless be more and more drawn into the likeness of the Hindus, until the two races are indistinguishable. Intermarriage contributes greatly to this; and it was intermarriage with Hindu women, and the consequent dilution of the stern Tartar blood, which weakened and ruined the Mogul Emperors.

The last eminent man of the line, Aurungzib, perhaps inspired by the deterioration of his countrymen, was a rabid Mohammedan fanatic, so relentless in his persecutions that he raised up a host of enemies and brought about the ruin of the Mogul Empire. The Rajputs reappeared as the champions of Hinduism, but there also came forward two new defenders. The first may be described as a Puritan sect, the Sikhs. They were at the outset only martyrs, but later, when a man of genius was born among them, they became in the nineteenth century a great military power. The second and more important were the Marathas, the followers of Sivaji Bonsla, a petty chief from the hills above Bombay, who being a fine military leader, wore out the armies of Aurungzib by what we call guerilla tactics. What the Marathas were no one can say. They were not a caste, nor a sect, nor a nation; but they were a homogeneous body, and they would, but for us English, have become the masters of India.

Our own start in India was humble; but the East India Company began in the early years of the seventeenth century to establish factories, or trading depots, at various points on the coast, including one at Madras in 1640 and on the Hugli in 1651. Bombay, which was part of the dowry of Katharine of Bragança, was leased to the Company in 1661, and Calcutta was founded in 1690. But all the factories suffered much during the incessant fighting between Sivaji and Aurungzib; and the Company in 1686 declared its intention of making reprisals. It had already formed the nuclei of European armies in Madras in 1644 and in Bombay in 1668; and had begun to enlist native troops in 1683. But meanwhile another European power, the French, had established factories in Madras at Pondicherry and in Bengal at Chandernagore in the year 1674; and the progress of events was such as to offer great temptation to foreign adventurers. Aurungzib died in 1707, and with the passing of the last strong man the realm of the Moguls crumbled rapidly away. The viceroy of the Dekhan set himself up as an independent sovereign at Haiderabad; a Hindu dynasty was founded at Tanjore; another imperial official seized Oude; one adventurer laid hold of Bengal; another of Rohilkhand; countless soldiers of fortune planted themselves as petty chieftains in hill-fortresses; a Persian invader sacked Delhi; and an Afghan chieftain conquered the whole of the western Punjab. India had never been in a more appalling welter of confusion and chaos than in the midst of the eighteenth century.

Just at this period the English and French for the first time came to blows in the Peninsula, the pretext being the war of the Austrian Succession. The French, represented at Pondicherry by a very able agent, Dupleix, had initiated a policy of diplomatic interference in the affairs of the neighbouring states, having an army of seven thousand Sepoys to back them. The British on the other hand stuck to their trading, and, as usual, were unprepared for any attack. The French therefore besieged and took Madras in 1746; but, being reinforced in time, the British in turn besieged but did not take Pondicherry. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle followed, which put an end to hostilities; and Madras was restored to us in exchange for Louisburg. The most significant incident of the war, however, was that the Nawab of the Carnatic, the nominal suzerain of both the English and the French on the Coromandel coast, had attempted to keep the peace between them; and that his raw levies, to the number of ten thousand, had been swept off the field in five minutes by two hundred and fifty French soldiers and thrice that number of trained Sepoys. This showed that a handful of disciplined European soldiers could suffice to rout any primitive Oriental host. Another important matter was that the operations against the French had revealed a remarkable leader in the British ranks, namely Major Stringer Lawrence, a simple man who could hardly write his name, but a fine soldier and a judge of men. For he selected from the counting-house of the Company a young clerk named Robert Clive, took his military education in hand, and to all intents adopted him as his son.

Meanwhile the death of the Nawab of the Carnatic and of the Viceroy of the Dekhan almost simultaneously gave Dupleix an opportunity, which he did not neglect, of making French influence paramount at both Courts. The succession, as almost invariably happens in the East, was disputed; and Dupleix, by supporting in each case one candidate, saw his way to making him a puppet and himself the actual ruler. The English of course supported the rival candidates; and thus, though France and England were at peace, the representatives of both nations in India were at war as auxiliaries of native princes. Stringer Lawrence being at home on leave, English military affairs went sadly wrong; and at one moment the situation was so desperate that it was only saved by a diversion against Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, by the young but not uninstructed volunteer Clive. However in 1752 Lawrence returned, and in that and the following year he gained victory after victory over the French. The centre of the fighting, by a singular chain of accidents, was the city of Trichinopoly; and in the plain before it Lawrence, with forces ranging from eight hundred to three thousand regular troops, two-thirds of them Sepoys, against superior numbers of French, fought a series of beautiful little actions, out-manœuvring his enemy on the open ground by what would now be called parade movements, but which were then the finest achievements of training and discipline. In 1754 Dupleix was recalled to France to answer for misconduct, and the struggle was closed by a suspension of arms. The interest of these few years, 1748 to 1754, is that, France and England being at peace, their fleets could not intervene in the contest; otherwise the power which enjoyed supremacy at sea was bound to win, being always able to bring out her own reinforcements and exclude those of the enemy. When the fight was resumed, the influence of superiority at sea was very clearly seen; but meanwhile the year 1753 had witnessed a new departure in British policy in India, namely the arrival of a king's regiment, the 39th Dorsetshire, which still bears the motto _Primus in Indis_. Henceforward the rivalry in the great peninsula was not to be between trading companies but between nations.

And now you will ask what manner of campaigns were these? I must answer that generally speaking they were extremely comfortable. The theatre of war, which extended along about two hundred miles of the east coast from Madras to the River Cavery, and about fifty miles inland, is mostly easy country, cultivated and full of supplies, with abundance of old fortified places to serve for depots and magazines. Thus the sea could be used for the conveyance of troops and heavy stores along the coast (though the ports are unsafe during the monsoon); while inland there was abundance of native carts and of bullocks, which, though small and weakly, could travel at the rate of two miles an hour. The army was, as always in India, accompanied by a vast number of followers--in those days about ten followers to one fighting man, though the proportion has now been greatly reduced. In fact an army on the march had much the appearance of a moving city, every kind of trade, profession and calling being represented, with speculators, in particular, in great strength. On the march the officers were for the most part carried in palanquins, and they were of course attended by the full strength of their native households, with every appliance for their comfort. The men marched, the British, so far as one can gather, in full European costume and with no special protection from the sun; though it is difficult to be certain about the matter, for it is quite likely that they were equipped very much according to the notions of their officers. They too had plenty of followers to look after them. The Sepoys, so far as uniform went, were dressed in a short red jacket, a curious semi-oriental, semi-European black headdress, very short little white drawers barely reaching mid-thigh, and native shoes. The Madrassi is not a fighting man--indeed Lord Roberts went so far as to disband most of the true Madras infantry--and it is almost certain that the sepoys who fought with Lawrence, Clive, Coote, and Wellesley were adventurers from all parts of India, including many from the fighting races of the north. The British in column of route marched two abreast, the Sepoys three abreast, for though well disciplined their drill was primitive; and, so far as I can gather, they knew few words of command (apart from the manual and firing exercise) except "Right turn" and "Left turn," which sufficed to bring them from line into column and from column into line, the British in two ranks, the Sepoys in three. It must be added that the Company's troops, being accustomed to march from place to place to relieve each other in various garrisons, always kept a respectable amount of transport with them, and hence could enter upon a campaign ready mobilised. But at all times the number of the followers was, and still is, a great encumbrance, and, when supplies and forage were scanty, an appalling difficulty.

So much for Madras; but Madras was only one of three presidencies, which were practically as far from each other as England is from Portugal. From Calcutta to Madras is a good eight hundred miles by sea; and by land the journey was almost impracticable owing to the number of great rivers that cross the line of march. From Bombay to the British settlements on the Malabar coast is another eight hundred miles by sea, and to Madras itself, going round Ceylon, over two thousand miles. From Calcutta to Bombay overland is a thousand miles as the crow flies, though part of the distance could be travelled by river, and by sea at least two thousand five hundred miles. Moreover there was until 1773 no Governor-General; but the three presidencies of Bombay, Bengal and Madras were co-equal, and divided moreover by jealousies and self-importance.

The opening of the Seven Years' War in 1756 brought about a renewal of hostilities: but it began with an unexpected disaster in the capture of Calcutta, through a sudden hit of jealousy, by Siraj-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Bengal. Upon this disaster followed the tragedy of the Black Hole. It was necessary to send troops up from Madras under Clive to recover the city with all haste, for French reinforcements were expected at Pondicherry, and there was no fleet to stop them. Having but a handful of men, Clive contrived to detach one of the Nawab's principal officers from him, and by the man's treacherous assistance defeated Siraj-ud-Daula at Plassey. This done, he installed Mir Jaffier, the officer aforesaid, in the Nawab's place, and left a young clerk named Warren Hastings to keep him in order.

Meanwhile a very able French officer, one de Bussy, had contrived by consummate skill and daring to restore French influence with the Viceroy of the Dekhan, but, having little military force at his command, was unable to effect much, while the British themselves were too weak greatly to harm their enemies. In the spring of 1758 the French reinforcements arrived, and the commander, Count Lally Tollendal, was able to take the field with twenty-five hundred Europeans--an enormous force in those days--and half as many Sepoys. He captured several minor places in the first few months, but, finding himself short of money, turned southward to take some from the rich Rajah of Mysore. Persecuting and bullying wherever he went, he soon turned all the natives against him. All cattle were driven off, all food was hidden away; and, when Tanjore was reached, he found himself opposed not only by natives but by part of the British garrison of Trichinopoly, which the British commandant had sent to their assistance. After heavy loss and much suffering he returned to Pondicherry, where he learned that after a sharp action the French fleet had been driven from the coast by a British fleet of inferior numbers; and, what with one trouble and another, it was December before he could lay siege to Madras. He stayed before the city for two months, when the appearance of the British fleet, which had been refitted after the recent engagement, compelled him to retreat. Meanwhile Clive in Bengal had detached a small force, as a diversion, by sea against the French settlements in the Northern Sirkars, about two hundred miles north of Madras; where the commander, Colonel Forde of the Thirty-ninth, fought a brilliant campaign against superior numbers, and by his success not only extinguished the French power in that quarter but banished French influence in favour of English at the court of the Viceroy of the Dekhan. The tide now turned. Fresh reinforcements arrived from England together with a new commander, Colonel Eyre Coote, to take the place of Lawrence whose health had given way. The Dutch in Batavia, always jealous of the British, fitted out an expedition to attack their rivals in Bengal while the bulk of British troops were in Madras; but it was useless. Clive detached Forde with orders to fight them immediately. Forde did so, overthrowing their superior numbers in half an hour, and capturing their army almost to a man. Three months later Coote met Lally at Wandewash upon equal terms and completely defeated him, thus destroying for ever the French competition for the mastery of India.