Sahib (29 page)

But for every young man whose enthusiasm or curiosity drew him into the army, there were perhaps two others who were compelled by what one 1913 recruit termed ‘unemployment and the need for food’. In 1846 a recruiting sergeant reckoned that two-thirds of recruits had joined to avoid unemployment, and the Heath Report of 1909 found that ‘well over 90 per cent’ of them had no jobs. John Fraser, born in 1860, had been in and out of work, and joined his local volunteer unit
(the forerunner of the Territorials). ‘I cannot pretend that I did so from any patriotic motive,’ he admitted, ‘actually I joined with the idea of finding some outlet for my physical energies and also with the idea of being able to meet and mix with other lads of my own age and tastes.’ From there it was a small step to joining the regular army, for the moment he and a comrade mentioned it to their sergeant-instructor in the Volunteers, the old patter flashed out:

There’s only one regiment for you, my lads, and that’s my old one – the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. Finest regiment in the British Army. See their roll of battle honours. No regiment has a longer one, nor a better reputation extending over years and years. It’s the Fifth Fusiliers for you, my boys, and I’ll not take no. Your names are going down this very minute, and good luck to you both.

They were trained by Lance-Sergeant Sloper Burns – whose favourite oath ‘by all the goats in Kerry’ leaves little doubt as to his origin – and soon found themselves aboard HM troopship
Crocodile
bound for Bombay.
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Much earlier, during the Napoleonic Wars, members of the militia, normally a part-time reserve but then ‘embodied’ for full-time service, had been subjected to both financial inducement and military pressure to persuade them to enlist in the regular army. Magistrates were perfectly prepared to give some offenders the opportunity of serving the sovereign in a martial rather than a penal capacity. In 1778 the under-sheriff of Surrey told a government minister that he had many convicts in his jail who had been sentenced to death for highway robbery or horse stealing, but were ‘exceedingly proper fellows for either the Land or the Sea service’.
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However, it was sometimes possible to discover a genuine gentleman-ranker. Robert Cureton was an officer in the Shropshire Militia in 1806, but got into financial difficulties, faked suicide by leaving his clothes on a beach, and enlisted in the 16th Light Dragoons under the name of Robert Taylor. He was commissioned in 1814, worked his way up to colonel, and was acting as brigadier when he was killed at Ramnagar in 1849.
For much of the period, officers’ commissions were bought and sold. Between 1660, when the regular army came into being, and 1871, when purchase was abolished, about two-thirds of commissions in the Guards, infantry and cavalry were bought. The practice was believed to be justified because, as Wellington put it, ‘it brings into the service men of fortune and character’; the military historian Sir John Fortescue thought it economical, secure and convenient. Officers’ pay was little more than the interest on the money they had paid for their commissions; the fact that they had ‘a stake in the country’ made them reliable; and a regular traffic in commissions ensured a steady flow of promotion. The system’s critics complained that there was no link between a man’s wealth and his military qualities, and maintained that many good officers soldiered on unpromoted.

Purchase became increasingly well regulated in the second half of the eighteenth century with the abolition of abuses such as the commissioning of children and the imposition of time limits to prevent the over-hasty rise of rich men. Each rank had a regulation price, which varied according to the arm of service, and smart regiments would add a non-regulation premium. An ensigncy would cost £450 and a cornetcy, its equivalent rank in the cavalry, £840. But although a cavalry lieutenant-colonelcy had a regulation price of £6,175, even a modest regiment expected a non-regulation addition of £1,400. In 1836, when Lieutenant Colonel Lord Brudenell, already a controversial figure because he had been dismissed from command of the 15th Hussars for bullying his officers, obtained command of the 11th Light Dragoons, then in Cawnpore, it was alleged that the regiment had cost him the staggering sum of £40,000. Not long after he arrived in India he heard that his father had died: he was now 7th Earl of Cardigan, with an income of £40,000 a year.

An officer who wished to sell his commission was obliged to offer it to the most senior officer of the rank next below his own, and if this officer was unwilling or unable to purchase then it would be offered to the next senior, and so on. The disappearance of a captain would open a vacancy for both a lieutenant and an ensign as officers of each rank were promoted to fill the vacancies created. Regimental agents, who looked after the financial affairs of their regiments,
could help orchestrate a complex pattern of sales, transfers and promotions as agile officers with money in their pockets slid from regiment to regiment, buying out the weary here and paying off the ambitious there, so as to finish up in the regiment of their choice with the highest rank they could afford. Regulations, applied with increasing stringency, governed the time an officer had to spend in one rank before he could purchase the next.

A good-natured officer who could afford promotion might nonetheless let a deserving junior ‘buy over’ him. In 1799, Lieutenant George Elers of HM’s 12th Foot, then at Seringapatam, was:

very near getting a company by purchase. A company became vacant in England, and old [Lieutenant Colonel] Shawe gave out an order that those Subalterns wishing and able to purchase should send their names in to the orderly-room. I knew I had the money in England but the whole sum (£1,500) must be placed down immediately. It so happened that my name happened to be the first for purchase, and I believe the only one. Old Shawe sent for me, and said: ‘I
persave,
sir, that you are the first officer for purchase. Where is your money?’ ‘In England, sir.’ ‘That will not do: it must be lodged at a house of agency in Madras.’ ‘Very well. Sir.’ So I returned to my tent and thought of all my friends in India. None struck me so likely as my kind friend Benjamin Torin of Madras. I wrote to him explaining my situation … By return of post he sent me the kindest answer, saying he had lodged the sum of £1,500 for me in the house of Harrington and Co. in Madras.

There was in the regiment a very deserving young Irishman, and a great favourite of Colonel Aston’s [the former commanding officer, killed in a duel] … Major Craigie requested Eustace to go to me and to beg me to resign the right to purchase as Major Craigie would arrange the purchase for him. I did not like to take the advantage which I had over him under the peculiar circumstances and I resigned my right in his favour. I did not get my company for four years after this, and then by purchase, and Captain Eustace got his majority and lieutenant colonelcy for nothing, which I should have had if I had insisted on my right to purchase the company. Such is the lottery of our service.
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Henry Havelock was brave and pious, but perennially unlucky in the matter of promotion. Yet he too was good natured. In 1851, then a major, he wrote:

I suppose [Lieutenant Colonel] Byrne’s resignation will arrive via Southampton, and that in the listing thereafter I shall see a youth of some sixteen years standing in the army gazetted over my head as a lieutenant colonel. Major Mansfield is, as I am told, for I have never made his acquaintance, a good officer. I was purchased over … by three sots and two fools, so I must persuade myself that it is a pleasant variety to be superseded by a man of sense and gentlemanly habits. Be this as it may, the honour of an old soldier on the point of having his juniors put over him is so sensitive, that if I had no family to support … I would not serve one hour longer.

The episode was particularly exasperating because Havelock had the money put by for the lieutenant-colonelcy, but Mansfield had already slipped Byrne the non-regulation addition to its price. Havelock felt that he could not undo the deal without gross injustice to Byrne, who was ‘about half a degree more broken than myself’ or to Mansfield, who had paid up in good faith.
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Promotion by purchase did not always apply. Vacancies created by death were filled by the promotion of the next most senior officer, and this created a vacancy, also filled by a seniority promotion, in each officer rank below. In 1857, Lieutenant Colonel the Hon. Adrian Hope of the 93rd Highlanders was commanding a brigade at Cawnpore. Back in his battalion was Captain Cornwall,

the oldest captain in the regiment … and for long he had been named by the men ‘Old Daddy Cornwall’. He was poor, and had been unable to purchase promotion, and in consequence was still a captain with over thirty five years’ service. The bursting of the shell right over his head stunned the old gentleman, and a [shrapnel] bullet went right through his shoulder, breaking his collar-bone and cutting a deep furrow down his back … Daddy came to himself just as the men were lifting him into a
dooly.
Seeing Dr Munro standing by with the bullet in his hand, about to present it to him as a memento of Cawnpore, Daddy gasped out: ‘Munro, is my wound dangerous?’
“No, Cornwall,’ was the answer, ‘not if you don’t excite yourself into a fever, you will get over it all right.’

The next question put was, ‘Is the road clear to Allahabad?’ To which Monro replied that it was. ‘Then by—’ replied Daddy, with considerable emphasis, ‘I’m off.’ The poor old fellow had through long disappointment become like our soldiers in Flanders – he sometimes swore; but considering how promotion passed him over that was perhaps excusable … He went home on the same vessel as a rich widow, who he married on arrival in Dublin, his native place, the corporation of which presented him with a valuable sword and the freedom of the city. The death of Brigadier-General Hope gave Captain Cornwall his majority without purchase, and he returned to India in the end of 1859 to command the regiment for about nine months, resigning from the army in 1860, when we lay at Rawal Pindi.
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It was difficult to find enough junior officers, especially in wartime, for most families had reservations about laying out large sums to give a son or nephew the early chance of death or disablement. In 1810, with the army nearing a level of manpower which it would not exceed for more than a century, perhaps four-fifths of commissions were granted without purchase. They were awarded by interest and influence, and by the commissioning of gentleman volunteers or worthy NCOs. We have already seen Colour Sergeant Thompson of the 50th at Sobraon. He was commissioned from the ranks in 1852, and worked his way steadily up the officer grades of his regiment by seniority alone, filling death vacancies as they arose, to die a major general.

Once an officer had reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, either by regimental rank, or by brevet – essentially an honorific promotion for brave or skilful performance – all promotion was by seniority, and if he contrived to live long enough the ranks of colonel, major general, lieutenant general and general must eventually be his. Everything depended on those at the top of the generals’ list dying off sufficiently quickly to make room for aspiring colonels. Regular issues of the
London Gazette,
which carried formal notification of all officers’ promotions, included a handful of colonels promoted
to major general by seniority. George Elers was on the march near Mysore with Colonel Arthur Wellesley in 1801 when news arrived from England that a
Gazette
had just elevated those at the top of the colonels’ list:

He was all hope and animation. ‘Do you happen to have an Army List, Elers?’ I said ‘Yes,’ and I ran to my tent and fetched it for him, saying: ‘I am sorry to tell you, Colonel, that it does not include you as a Major General. You are within about five or six of it.’ He said sorrowfully:
‘My highest ambition
is to be a
Major General
in His Majesty’s service.’ This was uttered to me in May 1801. Fourteen years afterwards he had fought the battle of Waterloo, conquered Bonaparte, was a Prince, a Duke, a Knight of the Garter, Grand Cross of the Bath, a Grandee of Spain and a Grand Cross of, I believe, every order of knighthood in Europe.
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Gratifying though it was to become a major general, no general officer rank brought any pay unless its holder managed to get a suitable appointment: ‘unattached pay’ for generals came in only at the end of the nineteenth century. Inexorable seniority might promote an officer too early, forcing him to relinquish one post but not guaranteeing him another. No sooner had Havelock become a lieutenant colonel than it seemed that backdated seniority ‘would make me a colonel of the year 1850 … that is, put me at once up near the very top of the list, and bring me nearer the rank of major general than would be financially desirable for me … ’.
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Charles MacGregor, on active service in the Second Afghan War, recalled that he: ‘Slept last night in a tent with Major General J. Hills VC CB. He was detailing his woes from being promoted major general too soon. He now has to go home.’
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In both HM’s and the Company’s service the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general were temporary, not substantive. Brigadier was the title assumed by the senior commanding officer of a group of battalions brigaded together on campaign. Brigadier Shelton, promoted to command a brigade in the First Afghan War, was actually the lieutenant colonel commanding HM’s 44th Foot in his brigade. He was not one of the brightest lights of that ill-starred conflict and Captain George Lawrence described him as ‘having incapacity
written on every feature of his face’. When the First Afghan War was over he reverted to lieutenant colonel, and was killed after falling from his horse in 1845.

Lieutenant Colonel John Pennycuick of HM’s 24th Foot was the senior lieutenant colonel in his brigade in 1848, and as his son Alexander (who had been born at sea on the family’s return from India in 1831) gleefully told his sister Jane: