Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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It is different when regiments are concentrated for active service.
Nothing tends so much to improve the tone of feeling between the
European officers and their men, and between European soldiers and
sepoys, as the concentration of forces on actual service, where the
same hopes animate, and the same dangers unite them in common bonds
of sympathy and confidence. '_Utrique alteris freti, finitimos armis
aut metu sub imperium cogere, nomen gloriamque sibi addidere_.' After
the campaigns under Lord Lake, a native regiment passing Dinapore,
where the gallant King's 76th, with whom they had fought side by
side, was cantoned, invited the soldiers to a grand entertainment
provided for them by the sepoys. They consented to go on one
condition--that the sepoys should see them all back safe before
morning. Confiding in their sable friends, they all got gloriously
drunk, but found themselves lying every man upon his proper cot in
his own barracks in the morning. The sepoys had carried them all home
upon their shoulders. Another native regiment, passing within a few
miles of a hill on which they had buried one of their European
officers after that war, solicited permission to go and make their
'salam' to the tomb, and all went who were off duty.[39] The system
which now keeps the greater part of our native infantry at small
stations of single regiments in times of peace tends to preserve this
good tone of feeling between officers and men, at the same time that
it promotes the general welfare of the country by giving confidence
everywhere to the peaceful and industrious classes.

I will not close this chapter without mentioning one thing which I
have no doubt every Company's officer in India will concur with me in
thinking desirable to improve the good feeling of the native
soldiery--that is, an increase in the pay of the Jemadars. They are
commissioned officers, and seldom attain the rank in less than from
twenty-five to thirty years;[40] and they have to provide themselves
with clothes of the same costly description as those of the Subadar;
to be as well mounted, and in all respects to keep the same
respectability of appearance, while their pay is only twenty-four
rupees and a half a month; that is, ten rupees a month only more than
they had been receiving in the grade of Havildars, which is not
sufficient to meet the additional expenses to which they become
liable as commissioned officers. Their means of remittance to their
families are rather diminished than increased by promotion, and but
few of them can hope ever to reach the next grade of Subadar. Our
Government, which has of late been so liberal to its native civil
officers, will, I hope, soon take into consideration the claims of
this class, who are universally admitted to be the worst paid class
of native public officers in India. Ten rupees a month addition to
their pay would be of great importance; it would enable them to
impart some of the advantages of promotion to their families, and
improve the good feeling of the circles around them towards the
Government they serve.[41]

Notes:

1. This chapter and the following one were printed as a separate
tract at Calcutta in 1841 (see Bibliography). That small volume
included an Introduction and two statistical tables which the author
did not reprint. He has utilized extracts from the Introduction in
various parts of the _Rambles and Recollections_. I am not sure that
the tract was ever published, though it was printed; for the author
says in his Introduction: 'They (_scil._ these two essays) may never
be published; but I cannot deny myself the gratification of printing
them.'

2. This order is confined to the Indian Army.

3. The punishment of working on the roads is long obsolete.

4. The author spells this word 'sipahee'. I have thought it better to
use throughout the now familiar corruption.

5. The ordinary infantry pay was raised from seven to nine rupees in
1895.

6. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief of the 5th of January,
1797, declare that no sepoy or trooper of our native army shall be
dismissed from the service by the sentence of any but a general court
martial. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere,
of the 19th of March, 1827, declare that his Excellency is of opinion
that the quiet and orderly habits of the native soldiers are such
that it can very seldom be necessary to have recourse to the
punishment of flogging, which might be almost entirely abolished with
great advantage to their character and feelings; and directs that no
native soldier shall in future be sentenced to corporal punishment
unless for the crime of _stealing, marauding, or gross
insubordination_, where the individuals are deemed unworthy to
continue in the ranks of the army. No such sentence by a regimental,
detachment, or brigade court martial was to be carried into effect
till confirmed by the general officer commanding the division. When
flogged the soldier was invariably to be discharged from the service.

A circular letter from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, on
the 16th of June, 1827, directs that sentence to corporal punishment
is not to be restricted to the three crimes of _theft, marauding, or
gross insubordination_; but that it is not to be awarded except for
very serious offences against discipline, or actions of a disgraceful
or infamous nature, which show those who committed them to be unfit
for the service; that the officer who assembles the court may remit
the sentence of corporal punishment, and the dismissal involved in
it; but cannot carry it into effect till confirmed by the officer
commanding the division, except when an immediate example is
indispensably necessary, as in the case of plundering and violence on
the part of soldiers in the line of march. In all cases the soldier
who has been flogged must be dismissed.

A circular letter by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir E. Barnes, 2nd of
November, 1832, dispenses with the duty of submitting the sentence of
regimental, detachment, and brigade courts martial for confirmation
to the general officer commanding the division; and authorizes the
officer who assembles the court to carry the sentence into effect
without reference to higher authority; and to mitigate the punishment
awarded, or remit it altogether; and to order the dismissal of the
soldier who has been sentenced to corporal punishment, though he
should remit the flogging, 'for it may happen that a soldier may be
found guilty of an offence which renders it improper that he should
remain any longer in the service, although the general conduct of the
man has been such that an example is unnecessary; or he may have
relations in the regiment of excellent character, upon whom some part
of the disgrace would fall if he were flogged.' Still no court
martial but a general one could sentence a soldier to be simply
dismissed. To secure his dismissal they must first sentence him to be
flogged.

On the 24th of February, 1835, the Governor-General of India in
Council, Lord William Bentinck, directed that the practice of
punishing soldiers of the native army by the cat-o'-nine-tails, or
rattan, be discontinued at all the presidencies; and that henceforth
it shall be competent to any regimental, detachment, or brigade court
martial to sentence a soldier of the native army to dismissal from
the service for any offence for which such soldier might now be
punished by flogging, provided such sentence of dismissal shall not
be carried into effect unless confirmed by the general or other
officer commanding the division.'

For crimes involving higher penalties, soldiers were, as heretofore,
committed for trial before general courts martial.

By Act 23 of 1839, passed by the Legislative Council of India on the
23rd of September, it is made competent for courts martial to
sentence soldiers of the native army in the service of the East India
Company to the punishment of dismissal, and to be imprisoned, with or
without hard labour, for any period not exceeding two years, if the
sentence be pronounced by a general court martial; and not exceeding
one year, if by a garrison or line court martial; and not exceeding
six months, if by a regimental or district court martial.
Imprisonment for any period with hard labour, or for a term exceeding
six months without hard labour, to involve dismissal. Act 2 of 1840
provides for such sentences of imprisonment being carried into
execution by magistrates or other officers in charge of the gaols.
[W. H. S.]

This last paragraph has been brought up from the end of the volume
where it is printed in the original edition.

The army has been completely reorganized since the author's time, and
the regulations have been much modified.

In October, 1833, Lord William Bentinck had assumed the command of
the army, on the retirement of Sir Edward Barnes, and thus combined
the offices of Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, as the
Marquis Cornwallis and the Marquis of Hastings had done before him.

7. Batavia was occupied by Sir Samuel Auchmuty in August, and the
whole island was taken possession of in September, 1811. But at the
general peace which followed the great war the island of Java, with
its dependencies, was restored to the Dutch.

8. The Isle of France, otherwise called the Mauritius, which is still
British territory, was gallantly taken at the end of November, 1810,
by Commodore Rowley and Major-General Abercrombie. Full details of
the Java and Mauritius expeditions are given in Thornton's twenty-
second chapter. The brilliant operations in both localities deserve
more attention than they usually receive from students of Indian
history.

9. The funeral obsequies which are everywhere offered up to the manes
of parents by the surviving head of the family during the last
fifteen days of the month Kuar (September) were never considered as
acceptable from the hands of a soldier in our service who had been
tied up and flogged, whatever might have been the nature of the
offence for which he was punished; any head of a family so flogged
lost by that punishment the most important of his civil rights--that,
indeed, upon which all others hinged, for it is by presiding at the
funeral ceremonies that the head of the family secures and maintains
his recognition. [W. H. S.] I have invariably found that natives of
India, enjoying a good social position, who happen to be interested
in an offender, care nothing for the disgraceful nature of the
offender's crime, while they dread the disgrace of the punishment,
however just it may be.

10. The worst feature of this abolition measure is unquestionably the
odious distinction which it leaves in the punishments to which our
European and our native soldiers are liable, since the British
legislation does not consider that it can be safely abolished in the
British army. This odious distinction might be easily removed by an
enactment declaring that European soldiers in India should be liable
to corporal punishment for only two offences: first, mutiny, or gross
insubordination; second, plunder or violence while the regiment or
force to which the prisoner belongs is in the field or marching. The
same enactment might declare the soldiers of our native army liable
to the same punishments for the same offences. Such an enactment
would excite no discontent among our native soldiery; on the
contrary, it would be applauded as just and proper. [W. H. S.]
Subsequently, corporal punishment in the Indian or native army was
again legalized. The present law is thus stated by Sir Edwin Collen:
'A "summary court martial"... may pass any sentence allowed by the
articles of war, except . . . and may carry it out at once. Corporal
punishment not exceeding fifty lashes may be given for certain
offences, but is rarely awarded, and the amount of military crime is,
on the whole, very small in the native army. The native officers have
power to inflict minor punishments' [_I.G. (1908), vol. iv, p. 370].

Flogging in the British army in time of peace was prohibited in
April, 1868, by an amendment to the Mutiny Bill, and was completely
abolished by the Army Discipline Act of 1881.

11. The author also gives the Hindustani word as 'kaelkur-hin', which
seems to be intended for _qail karen_, or in rustic form _karahin_,
meaning 'confute'.

12. No wonder that the native army, pampered in this sentimental
fashion, gradually became more and more inefficient, till it needed
the fires of the Mutiny to purge away its humours. No army could be
efficient when its subordinate officers on the active list were men
of sixty or seventy years of age.

13. The sepoys were quite right; no other service in the world was
managed on such principles. The illusion of the old Company's
officers about the gratitude and affection of the men generally was
rudely dispelled nineteen years after the conversations recorded in
the text. But, even in 1857. a noble minority remained faithful and
did devoted service.

14. The best troops now are the Sikhs, Gorkhas, and frontier
Muhammadans. Oudh men still enlist in large numbers, but do not enjoy
their old prestige. The army known to the author comprised no Sikhs,
Gorkhas, or frontier Muhammadans. The recruitment of Gorkhas only
began in 1838, and the other two classes of troops were obtained by
the annexation of the Panjab in 1849.

15. Enlistment in the native army is absolutely voluntary, and does
not even require to be stimulated by a bounty. A subsequent passage
shows that the author refuses to describe the British army as an
'entirety voluntary' one, because a soldier when once enlisted is
bound to serve for a definite term; whereas the sepoy could resign
when he chose.

16. Desertions are frequent among the regiments recruited on the
Afghan frontier. These regiments did not exist in the author's day.

17. An ordinance issued in France so late as 1778 required that a man
should produce proof of four quarterings of nobility before he could
get a commission in the army. [W. H. S.]

18. '_Est et alia causa, cur attenuatae sint legiones_,' says
Vegetius. 'Magnus in illis labor est militandi, graviora arma, sera
munera, severior disciplila. Quod vitantes plerique, in auxiliis
festinant militiae sacramenta percipere, ubi et minor sudor, et
maturiora sunt premia.' Lib._ II. _cap._ 3. [W. H. S.] Vegetius,
according to Gibbon and his most recent editor (_recensuit Carolus
Lang. Editio altera. Lipsiae, Teubner_, 1885), flourished during the
reign of Valentinian III (A.D. 425-55). His 'Soldier's Pocket-book'
is entitled 'Flavi Vegeti Renati Epitoma Rei Militaris'.

'Montesquieu thought that 'the Government had better have stuck to
the old practice of slitting noses and cutting off ears, since the
French soldiers, like the Roman dandies under Pompey, must
necessarily have a greater dread of a disfigured face than of death.
It did not occur to him that France could retain her soldiers by
other and better motives. See _Spirit of Laws_, book vi, chap. 12.
See _Necker on the Finances_, vol. ii, chap. 5; vol. iii, chap. 34. A
day-labourer on the roads got fifteen sous a day; and a French
soldier only six, at the very time that the mortality of an army of
forty thousand men sent to the colonies was annually 13,333, or about
one in three. In our native army the sepoy gets about double the
wages of an ordinary day-labourer; and his duties, when well done,
involve just enough of exercise to keep him in health. The casualties
are perhaps about one in a hundred. [W. H. S.]

20. Just precisely what the French soldiers were after the revolution
had purged France of all 'the perilous stuff that weighed upon the
heart' of its people. Gibbon, in considering the chance of the
civilized nations of Europe ever being again overrun by the
barbarians from the North, as in the time of the Romans, says: 'If a
savage conqueror should issue from the deserts of Tartary, he must
repeatedly vanquish the robust peasantry of Russia, the numerous
armies of Germany, the gallant nobles of France, and the intrepid
free men of Britain.' Never was a more just, yet more unintended
satire upon the state of a country. Russia was to depend upon her
'robust peasantry'; Germany upon her 'numerous armies'; England upon
her 'intrepid free men'; and poor France upon her 'gallant nobles'
alone; because, unhappily, no other part of her vast population was
then ever thought of. When the hour of trial came, those pampered
nobles who had no feeling in common with the people were shaken off'
like dew-drops from the lion's mane'; and the hitherto spurned
peasantry of France, under the guidance and auspices of men who
understood and appreciated them, astonished the world with their
powers. [W. H. S.]

21. The allusion is to the now half-forgotten war with the United
States in the years 1812-14, during the course of which the English
captured the city of Washington, and the Americans gained some
unexpected naval victories.

22. The author has already denounced the practice of impressment,
_ante_, chapter 26, note 27.

23. 'to' in the original edition.

24. See McCulloch, _Pol. Econ._, p. 235, 1st ed., Edinburgh, 1825.
[W. H. S.]

25. Many German princes adopted the discipline of Frederick in their
little petty states, without exactly knowing why or wherefore. The
Prince of Darmstadt conceived a great passion for the military art;
and when the weather would not permit him to worry his little army of
five thousand men in the open air, he had them worried for his
amusement under sheds. But he was soon obliged to build a wall round
the town in which he drilled his soldiers for the sole purpose of
preventing their running away--round this wall he had a regular chain
of sentries to fire at the deserters. Mr. Moore thought that the
discontent in this little band was greater than in the Prussian army,
inasmuch as the soldiers saw no object but the prince's amusement. A
fight, or the prospect of a fight, would have been a feast to them.
[W. H. S.] It is hardly necessary to observe that the modern system
of drill is widely different.

26. Speaking of the question whether recruits drawn from the country
or the towns are best, Vegetius says: '_De qua parte numquam credo
potuisse dubitari, aptiorem armis rusticam plebem, quae sub divo et
in labore nutritur; solis patiens; umbrae negligens; balnearum
nescia; delictarurum ignara; simplicis animi; parvo contenta; duratis
ad omnem laborem membris; cui gestara ferrum, fossam ducere, onus
ferre, consuetudo de rare est.' (De Re Militari_, Lib. i, cap. 3.)
[W. H. S.] The passage quoted is disfigured by many misprints in the
original edition.

27. As the Madras sepoys do.

28. The writing of the bulk of this work was completed in 1839. These
concluding supplementary chapters on the Bengal army seem to have
been written a little later, perhaps in 1841, the year in which they
were first printed. The publication of the complete work took place
in 1844. The Mutiny broke out in 1857, and proved that the fidelity
of the sepoys could not be so easily assured as the author supposed.

29. I believe the native army to be better now than it ever was--
better in its disposition and in its organization. The men have now a
better feeling of assurance than they formerly had that all their
rights will be secured to them by their European officers that all
those officers are men of honour, though they have not all of them
the same fellow feeling that their officers had with them in former
days. This is because they have not the same opportunity of seeing
their courage and fidelity tried in the same scenes of common danger.
Go to Afghanistan and China, and you will find the feeling between
officers and men as fine as ever it was in days of yore, whatever it
may be at our large and gay stations, where they see so little of
each other. [W. H. S.] The author's reputation for sagacity and
discernment could not be made to rest upon the above remarks. His
judgement was led astray by his lifelong association with and
affection for the native troops. Lord William Bentinck took a far
juster view of the situation, and understood far better the real
nature of the ties which bind the native army to its masters. His
admirable minute dated 13th March, 1835, published for the first time
in Mr. D. Boulger's well-written little book (_Lord William
Bentinck_, 'Rulers of India', pp. 177-201), is still worthy of study.
As a corrective to the author's too effusive sentiment, some brief
passages from the Governor-General's minute may be quoted. 'In
considering the question of internal danger,' he observes, 'those
officers most conversant with Indian affairs who were examined before
the Parliamentary Committee apprehend no danger to our dominion as
long as we are assured of the fidelity of our native troops. To this
opinion I entirely subscribe. But others again view in the native
army itself the source of our greatest peril. In all ages the
military body has been often the prime cause, but generally the
instrument, of all revolutions; and proverbial almost as is the
fidelity of the native soldier to the chief whom he serves, more
especially when he is justly and kindly treated, still we cannot be
blind to the fact that many of those ties which bind other armies to
their allegiance are totally wanting in this. Here is no patriotism,
no community of feeling as to religion or birthplace, no influencing
attachment from high considerations, or great honours and rewards.
Our native army also is extremely ignorant, capable of the strongest
religions excitement, and very sensitive to disrespect to their
persona or infringement of their customs. . . . In the native army
alone rests our internal danger, and this danger may involve our
complete subversion. . . .

'All these facts and opinions seem to me to establish
incontrovertibly that a large proportion of European troops is
necessary for our security under all circumstances of peace and war.
. . .

'I believe the sepoys have never been so good as they were in the
earliest part of our career; none superior to those under De Boigne.
. . I fearlessly pronounce the Indian army to be the least efficient
and most expensive in the world.'

The events of 1857-9 proved the truth of Lord William Bentinck's wise
words. The native army is no longer inefficient as a whole, though
certain sections of it may still be so, but the less that is said
about the supposed affection of mercenary troops for a foreign
government, the better.

30. Of course, all the military forces, British and Indian, are now
alike the King's. Each service has its own rules and regulations.

31. 'General Baird had started from Bombay in the end of December
1800, but only arrived at Kossir, on the coast of Upper Egypt, on the
8th of June. In nine days, with a force of 6,400 British and native
troops, he traversed 140 miles of desert to the Nile, and reached
Cairo on 10th August with hardly any loss. The united force then
marched down on Alexandria, and on 31st August Menou capitulated, and
the whole French army evacuated Egypt.' (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd
ed., s.v. 'Egypt.') The Indian native army again did brilliant
service in the Egyptian campaign of 1882.

32. Great progress has been made in the task of lightening the
miseries of European soldiers in India by the provision of innocent
amusements. Lord Roberts, during his long tenure of the office of
Commander-in-Chief, pre-eminently showed himself to be the soldier's
friend.

33. Their commanding officers say, as Pharaoh said to the Israelites,
'Let there be more work laid upon them, that they may labour therein,
and not enter into vain discourses.' Life to such men becomes
intolerable; and they either destroy themselves, or commit murder,
that they may be taken to a distant court for trial. [W. H. S.] The
quotation is from Exodus v. 9. The Authorized Version is, 'Let there
be more work laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let
them not regard vain words.'

34. See Livy, lib. ii, cap. 59. The infantry under Fabius had refused
to conquer, that their general, whom they hated, might not triumph;
but the whole army under Claudius, whom they had more cause to
detest, not only refused to conquer, but determined to be conquered,
that he might be involved in their disgrace. All the abilities of
Lucullus, one of the ablest generals Rome ever had, were rendered
almost useless by his disregard to the feelings of his soldiers. He
could not perceive that the civil wars under Marius and Sylla had
rendered a different treatment of Roman soldiers necessary to success
in war. Pompey, his successor, a man of inferior military genius,
succeeded much better because he had the sagacity to see that he now
required not only the confidence but the affections of his soldiers.
Caesar to abilities even greater than those of Lucullus united the
conciliatory spirit of Pompey [W. H. S.]

35. This curious incident, which is not mentioned by Thornton in the
detailed account of the Nepalese War given in his twenty-fourth
chapter, may be the failure of the 53rd Regiment to support General
Gllespie in the attack on Kalanga, in 1814, not 1815 (Mill, Bk. II,
chap. 1; vol. viii, p. 19, ed. 1858). The war was notable for the
number of blunders and failures which marked its earlier stages.