Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19]

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 desertions sont frequentes
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 etaient plus rares--des
soldats tires du sein d'un peuple si fier, si orgueilleux, si sur de
commander aux autres, ne pouvaient guere penser a s' aviler jusqu'a
cesser d'etre Romains_.'[20] 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?[21] 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.[22]

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 or[23] 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.[24]

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.[25]

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.[26] 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.[27]
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.[28] 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.[29] 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.[30]

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 sipahees seemed as fond of the Nile as the
Ganges.'[31]

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.[32]
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.[33]

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.[34] We had
an instance of this in the war with Nepal in-1813, in which a king's
regiment played the part of the army of Appius.[35] 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.'[36]

Though I reprobate that wanton severity of discipline in which the
substance is sacrificed to the form, in which unavoidable and trivial
offences are punished as deliberate and serious crimes, and the
spirit of the soldier is entirely disregarded, while the motion of
his limbs, cut of his whiskers, and the buttons of his coat are
scanned with microscopic eye, I must not be thought to advocate
idleness. If we find the sepoys of a native regiment, as we sometimes
do at a healthy and cheap station, become a little unruly like
schoolboys, and ask an old native officer the reason, he will
probably answer others as he has me by another question, '_Ghora ara
kyun? Pani sara kyun?' 'Why does the horse become vicious? Why does
the water become putrid?'-For want of exercise. Without proper
attention to this exercise no regiment is ever kept in order; nor has
any commanding officer ever the respect or the affection of his men
unless they see that he understands well all the duties which his
Government entrusts to him, and is resolved to have them performed in
all situations and under all circumstances. There are always some bad
characters in a regiment, to take advantage of any laxity of
discipline, and lead astray the younger soldiers, whose spirits have
been rendered exuberant by good health and good feeding; and there is
hardly any crime to which they will not try to excite these young
men, under an officer careless about the discipline of his regiment,
or disinclined, from a mistaken _esprit de corps_, or any other
cause, to have those crimes traced home to them and punished.[37]

There can be no question that a good tone of feeling between the
European officers and their men is essential to the well-being of our
native army; and I think I have found this tone somewhat impaired
whenever our native regiments are concentrated at large stations. In
such places the European society is commonly large and gay; and the
officers of our native regiments become too much occupied in its
pleasures and ceremonies to attend to their native officers or
sepoys. In Europe there are separate classes of people who subsist by
catering for the amusements of the higher classes of society, in
theatres, operas, concerts, balls, &c., &c.; but in India this duty
devolves entirely upon the young civil and military officers of the
Government, and at large stations it really is a very laborious one,
which often takes up the whole of a young man's time. The ladies must
have amusement; and the officers must find it for them, because there
are no other persons to undertake the arduous duty. The consequence
is that they often become entirely alienated from their men, and
betray signs of the greatest impatience while they listen to the
necessary reports of their native officers, as they come on or go off
duty.[38]