Sahib (32 page)

During the siege of Delhi, Lieutenant Arthur Lang, of the Bengal Sappers and Miners, noted that:

Major Goodwin drew down the opprobrium of all our corps by resigning his appointment in a huff: so a Lt Lennox of
Royal
Engineers (hang them all, what do they mean by coming here) is our Chief Engineer: a very pleasant fellow, but fancy, an RE Lt Chief Engineer in an army in Bengal.
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In August 1858, a Royal Engineer officer assured a colleague in England that both their own corps and the Royal Artillery were ‘under a cloud in India’, declaring that the absence of any mention of the Royal Engineers in Sir Colin Campbell’s Lucknow dispatch was ‘a thing never to be forgotten by the Corps’. He attributed this to the sharp differences between the employment of Royal Engineers and the Company’s engineers, which had led to the former being more narrowly military in their outlook, while the latter had wide non-military interests and abilities:

HEIC Engineers in India partake far less of the military character than the Royal Engineers, and the Bengal Army regulations even recognise this so far as to lay down that their Engineer Officers are not available for garrison duties while our code particularly lays down the reverse. In time of peace Indian Engineers, with very few exceptions, are employed in the ‘Department of Public Works’ in which employment they cease to be under the military authority of the Commander in Chief
 … as the above Department embraces civilians, as well as officers of all arms and ranks, the whole of whom have seniority by date of entering the Department it is quite clear that the military spirit cannot be expected to flourish in it. It cannot therefore be said that Engineer Officers in India are unjustly charged with some lack of military discipline.
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There were more fundamental reasons for the friction than simple professional jealousy or regimental clannishness. The two officer corps were noticeably different in social composition. Although this gap narrowed as time went on, even in 1914 commissions in the Indian army were much sought after because it was significantly cheaper than the British service, and an officer could serve in India without the need for private means to buttress his pay. Lord Roberts, as he had then become, observed that ‘all the best men at Sandhurst try to get into the Indian Army’.
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Part of the problem stemmed from the fact that the Company’s Court of Directors initially resolved to employ no gentlemen as its servants, and in consequence it recruited some decidedly odd fish. In 1740 Lieutenant Stirling was promoted to the vacant captaincy in the Bombay garrison despite being illiterate which, it was felt, ‘might be inconvenient in an emergency’. So Lieutenant Thomas Andrews was appointed his assistant, and proved helpful in running the local rice trade, one of the perks of the captain’s office. It was averred that in 1753 one of the Company’s officers had been a trumpeter in a travelling circus in England, and another had been a barber. The Governor of Bombay’s steward became lieutenant of the garrison’s grenadier company, but saw nothing incompatible in remaining steward as well.
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The well-turned-out George Elers of HM’s 12th Foot arrived in India in 1796 to find that he was expected to associate with some shabby fellows purporting to be officers:

Nothing could be more ludicrous than the dress of the Company’s officers at that period, some wearing shoes and buckles on guard; others shoe-strings, their facings not more than two inches broad; epaulettes not fastened to the shoulder, but hanging down upon their breast. One of their Generals I have seen with a pair of black silk smalls, and stockings to match,
white waistcoat and a General’s red coat. The name of this officer was Sir Eccles Nixon.
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The Company sought to improve the status of its officers by taking on some King’s officers who had been made redundant by the disbandment of their regiments after the Seven Years’ War. At times of particular crisis, officers and men of HM’s regiments whose time in India was up were allowed to exchange into the Company’s service, and both bounties and promotion were on offer. In 1757, some of HM’s 39th transferred to what was then the Bengal European Regiment, with a bounty of 10 gold pagodas (35 rupees) a head. On a far larger scale, in 1764 two lieutenants obtained captaincies and four ensigns were promoted lieutenant on transfer from HM’s service to the Madras European Regiment, and twenty-five sergeants, 545 rank and file and sixteen drummers followed them.
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Some transfers reflected individual tragedies that we can only guess at. In December 1768, William Hickey sailed to India aboard the
Plassey,
and:

of the mate’s mess there was a Madras cadet named Ross, a man at least forty years of age, who had been a captain in the King’s service, but reduced to such distress as to be obliged to sell his commission and accept a cadetship in the Company’s service.
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Commissions in the Company’s service were never bought and sold, but were obtained solely by interest. In August 1768, William Hickey’s father, understandably exasperated by his son’s repeated feckless behaviour, and recently widowed to boot, told him:

Since I last saw you I have procured for you the situation of a cadet in the East India Company’s Service; and God grant you may do better in the future than you have hitherto. And now leave me; I feel too weak and exhausted to say more.

He was later taken to see Sir George Colebrook, who had nominated him as a cadet. ‘The baronet received me with great politeness,’ he wrote,

telling my father it afforded him pleasure to have had it in his power to comply with his request. He said he had appointed
me for Madras, in preference to Bengal, which was considered by many to be the most advantageous for a military man, because the Coast of Coromandel was then the seat of an active war with Hyder Ally, and consequently more likely to give promotion to a young soldier.

Hickey was summoned to India House and was:

called into the committee room after waiting of near two hours in the lobby, at which my pride was greatly offended, I saw three old dons sitting close to the fire, having by them a large table, with pens, ink, paper, and a number of books laying upon it. Having surveyed me, as I conceived, rather contemptuously, one of them in such a snivelling tone that I could scarcely understand him, said:

‘Well, young gentleman, what is your age?’

I having answered ‘Nineteen’ he continued:

‘Have you ever served, I mean been in the army? Though I presume from your age and appearance that you cannot.’

I replied, I had not.

‘Can you go through the manual exercise?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then you must take care and learn it.’ I bowed.

‘You know the terms on which you enter our service?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Are you satisfied therewith?’

A clerk, was writing at the table, then told me I might withdraw; whereupon, I made my congé and retired. From the committee room I went to Mr Coggan’s office, who, after making me sit down for near an hour, presented me with my appointment as a cadet and an order for me to be received and accommodated with a passage to Madras … But another document, wholly unexpected on my part, leased me much more than either of the others. This was a cheque upon the paymaster for twenty guineas … to purchase bedding and other necessaries.

As his father had already set him up with these things, Hickey generously decided that he could not dispose of the donation ‘better than in the society of a few unfortunate females’. Accordingly he got Sally Brent, a lady in business on her own account, to arrange a party
which eventually cost more than the Company had so thoughtfully provided.
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Fred Roberts’s father was a senior officer in the Company’s service, and was able to secure him a commission in the Bengal Artillery. Although Henry Daly’s father was a Queen’s officer, he was serving in India and had just been given brevet promotion for gallantry at the storming of Ghazni, which helped secure young Henry his commission in 1840. In 1849 Henry Havelock was trying to procure a commission for his son Joshua but, as usual, had no money to buy one. There was nothing to be had from the Horse Guards, he wrote, so he ‘resolved to besiege the India House. I have personally asked the aid of eighteen of the directors … and though I have got little but civil speech, without the slightest promise of an appointment, I am resolved, with God’s blessing, to persevere.’ His visit went well:

Though a Queen’s officer, my claim on the score of services was everywhere listened to with attention, and my name and career seemed to be more familiar to the bankers, merchants, civilians and ship-captains of Leadenhall-Street, than to the … aristocratic soldiers of Horse Guards, whose immediate concern they were.
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And a cadetship duly materialised.

There were times when the Company displayed a strong sense of responsibility towards its employees and their progeny. Major General A. Monin, who died at Trichnopoly in 1839, at the age of sixty-five, was commissioned at the age of five. His father had been killed in action, and the grant of a child commission was one way in which the Company could give what was in effect a family allowance.
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In another case, that of Hercules, one of James Skinner’s sons, the Company made it clear that it would make an unusual concession as a reward for Skinner’s services. The young man was given local rank in the Nizam of Hyderabad’s Contingent in 1832 after Lord William Bentinck assured the Court of Directors that young Skinner had ‘lately returned from England, where, for the last seven or eight years, he has been receiving the education of an English gentleman … his conduct and character are unexceptionable’. And then, on 3 December 1851, the Court of Directors told the Governor of
Madras: ‘As a mark of respect for the memory of the late Lieut-Col Skinner CB, we have much pleasure in giving you our authority to confer upon his son, an unattached commission as captain in the army of your presidency.’
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(James Skinner was himself of mixed race, and seven sons were the result of relationships which reflected his ‘wholly Mughal’ lifestyle.)

Family tradition and the contacts this involved were important throughout. Of those officers in a sample group in T. A. Heathcote’s
The Indian Army,
who listed their fathers’ professions (542), nearly half were connected with India in some way, and of those with military fathers (252) there were eighteen sets of brothers. All four Bellew brothers joined the Bengal army: two died in India aged eighteen and twenty-five; one was killed in the First Afghan War and one retired to draw his pension. All ten sons of George Battye of the Bengal Civil Service became soldiers: the second and the three youngest were killed in action. Lieutenant Quentin Battye died at Delhi commanding the Guides cavalry, gut-shot in his first battle, murmuring
‘Dulce et decorum est pro Patria mori’;
Major Wigram Battye was killed commanding the same unit in 1879; Major Leigh Battye was ‘barbarously hacked to death’ on the frontier in 1888, and Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Battye was killed in the Chitral relief expedition of 1895. Richmond Battye’s eldest son, also called Richmond, was commissioned into the British army in 1889 but transferred to the Indian army, and he too was killed on the frontier in 1897.

Neville Chamberlain had been a cadet at Woolwich, but wisely resigned when it appeared ‘extremely improbable’ that he would pass the final exam; his family then secured him a Bengal cadetship. His brother Crawford had gone to Haileybury and was destined for the Indian Civil Service, but decided to join the Bengal army instead. ‘You cannot tell how happy I was hearing that Crawford’s appointment was through,’ wrote Neville to their mother, ‘though it has made the difference of his being a poor man instead of a rich one … Oh, how happy I shall be if we can be together; we should be able to talk of home sweet home, and it would in a measure take off being so far away.’
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Charles MacGregor, however, had to warn his mother to:

prepare yourself for the worst. The list of survivors [from Lucknow] has come: in vain have I looked for the name of MacGregor. Oh God! To think that I should have to write such a thing – to think that poor Edward is cut off, so young … 

He was given his brother’s sword, ‘all covered with blood, and the hilt and scabbard are all dented as if with bullets, showing that it has not remained idle in its sheath … ’.
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Brother followed brother, and son followed father. On 16 August 1849 the
Bombay Times
noted that: ‘Major Mynin, who led the Fusiliers up the breach at Multan, is the son of Colonel Mynin, who, exactly half a century ago, led the flank companies of the Bombay Army at the storming of Seringapatam.’

Richard Purvis had served in the navy for two years when he decided to become a soldier, and though his clergyman father would not stump up for a King’s commission, he engaged the family’s London agent to work on Richard’s behalf, and in 1804 the agent reported: ‘Richard was admitted last Friday a Cadet and received his Commission as a Cadet and he and I went through all the necessary formalities of the different offices at the India House.’
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In 1768, young Fulwood Smeardon was secured a Madras cadetship through the interest of Sir Robert Palk, who owned the living of the parish of Ottery St Mary, where his father was vicar. But things did not go well, and a disappointed captain told his patron that ‘his behaviour is so very unsuited with the way of life he is embarked upon, I fear he will never get a commission’. When ordered on service he replied ‘the air did not agree with him neither did he by any means approve of a military life’. He was commissioned but seems to have deserted, and disappears from the written record, broke and unhappy, a long way from his Devon home.
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