Sahib (66 page)
Authors: Richard Holmes
Munro, Capt Innes,
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The Munro Letters
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Richards, Frank,
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Roberts, Frederick,
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------
Forty-One Years in India
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Robinson, Jane,
Angels of Albion: Women of the Indian Mutiny
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Robson, Brian,
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------
Swords of the British Army: The Regulation Patterns
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Rotton, The Revd John Edward Wharton,
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Russell, W. H.,
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Sandys, Lt Col H. W. C.,
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vols (Chatham: 1935)
Shephard, E. W.,
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Daily Life during the Indian Mutiny
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Singh, B. S. (ed.),
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Southwick, Leslie,
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ARTICLES
Carleton, Neil, and Buck, Matthew, ‘Guns of the Rajas: Indian Artillery from the Mughals to the Sikhs’,
Journal of the Ordnance Society,
Vol. XVI, 2004
Cave, Revd Alfred, ‘The Kandahar Letters of the Revd Alfred Cave’,
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research,
Vol. 69, 1991
Cumming, Capt J., ‘The Night of Ferozeshah’,
Army Quarterly,
January 1937
Fawcett, Sir Charles, ‘The striped flag of the East India Company, and its connexion with the American “Stars and Stripes’”,
Mariner’s Mirror,
Vol. XXIII, No. 4, October 1937
Frazer, John, ‘Field Surgeon at the Battle of Aliwal’,
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research,
No. 72, 1994
Harfield, Alan, ‘Died at Sea: Officers of the HEIC who died at sea 1827-28’,
Durbar: Journal of the Indian Military Historical Society
(formerly the Indian Military Collectors’ Society), Vol. 10, No. 2, 1993
------’The Loss of the Guildford’,
Durbar: Journal of the Indian Military Collectors’ Society,
Vol. 9, No. 3, 1992
Hayes, N. C., ‘British Tactics in the Fourth and Fifth Maratha Wars’,
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research,
No. 77, 1999
Mukherjee, Rundrangshu, ‘“Satan Let Loose upon the Earth”: The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857’,
Past and Present,
No. 128, August 1990
Robbins, Maj Colin, ‘Overland to India: By Donkey’,
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research,
Vol. 78, 2000
‘Soldier Bat’,
The Londoner: Journal of 1/25th Battalion The London Regiment,
February 1917
Stigger, Michael, ‘Recruiting for rank in 1764, 1804 and 1857’,
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research,
No. 70, 1992
Vadgama, Kusoom, ‘Reassessing the Raj’,
BBC History Magazine,
May 2004
Wood, Stephen, ‘Blades of Glory: Swords of Scottish Infantry 1750-1900’,
The American Society of Arms Collectors’ Bulletin,
No. 72, Spring 1995
Much as my wife Lizzie might raise an eyebrow at being termed a memsahib, I know well what Herbert Edwardes meant when he wrote of the importance of being ‘helped by a noble wife,’ and I simply could not have written this book without her. As usual I am in the debt of the librarians and staff at the Prince Consort Library and the Aldershot Public Library. Dr A. D. Harvey, Dr S. R. Johnson and Miss Maryam Philpott provided invaluable research support. Arabella Pike at HarperCollins gave her customary deft editorial direction. It speaks volumes for her commitment and my own preoccupations that I failed to observe that she latterly did so when the birth of her son was imminent: she would, I think, have done well on Delhi ridge. Kate Johnson attacked my split infinitives and wobbly references with her editorial pencil, and I wish that I had made her task easier. I seldom write a book that does not in some way feature that martial tribe the Pennycuicks, and I thank Stuart Sampson for providing me with the letters and diaries of Brigadier John Pennycuick, who died leading his brigade on the field of Chillianwallah. I owe much to The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (whose nickname ‘The Tigers’ originates in service in India) of which I have the honour to be colonel. In the late summer of 2004 they showed me, in the heat and dust of Al Amarah, just what infantry soldiering east of Suez is about.
Introduction
1
Penderel Moon,
The British Conquest and Dominion of India
(London: 1989), P. 3.
2
Niall Ferguson,
Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order
(London: 2003).
3
Linda Colley,
Captives: Britain, Empire and the World
(London: 2002).
4
Kusoom Vadgama, ‘Reassessing the Raj’, in
BBC History Magazine,
May 2004, p. 96.
5
Moon,
British Conquest,
P. 4.
6
Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell,
Hobson-Jobson
(Calcutta: 1903), pp. 781-2.
7
Sir Walter Lawrence,
The India We Served
(London: 1928), p. 37.
8
Yule and Burnell,
Hobson-Jobson,
p. 388.
9
Yule and Burnell,
Hobson-Jobson,
p. 734, and
Concise Oxford Dictionary
(Oxford: 1976), p. 994.
10
James Lunt (ed.),
From Sepoy to Subedar, Being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram
(London: 1970), p. 23. Hanuman, the monkey god, is one of the most popular members of the Hindu pantheon. Sita Ram Pande served in the Bengal army from 1812-60. The authenticity of this account is sometimes questioned, although, on the balance of probabilities, it seems reliable.
11
Michael Brander (ed.),
The Sword and the Pen
(London: 1989), p. 88.
12
Lawrence,
India We Served,
p. 31.
13
Quoted in Dennis Holman,
Sikander Sahib: The Life of Colonel James Skinner 1778-1841
(London: 1961), pp. 213-14.
14
Holman,
Sikander Sahib,
pp. 213-14. There are several things in Skinner’s account of his parents’ relationship that do not quite add up, but of the six children there is no doubt.
15
Holman,
Sikander,
p. 207.
16
Holman,
Sikander,
pp. 238-9.
17
The Indian army has been well covered by historians. There are three admirable surveys: Philip Mason’s sublimely anecdotal A
Matter of Honour,
T. A. Heathcote’s
The Indian Army,
the best starting point for the subject, and the same author’s scholarly
The Military in British India.
David Omissi’s important book
The Sepoy and the Raj
is a social and political history of the Indian army at the apogee of colonial rule, and Lieutenant General S. L. Menezes’s
Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century
provides an Indian perspective of an institution which could command respect and affection even when it fought for a foreign ruler.
18
Hodson, Rev G. H.
Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India: Hodson of Hodson’s Horse
(London: 1859) p. 32.
19
Charles Allen,
Soldier Sahibs
(London: 2000), p. 336.
20
See Major F. G. Cardew,
Hodson’s Horse 1857-1922
(London: 1928).
21
‘The Soldier in India’, British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Mss Eur C548. I have done something for Private Smith’s spelling, but his metre, rather like ‘The Poet’ by William McGonagall, is wholly beyond human aid.
22
Peter Stanley,
White Mutiny
(New York: 1998), p. xi.
:
Drums on the Sutlej
1
Colonel A. E. Fyler,
The History of the 50th (or Queen’s Own) Regiment from the earliest date to the year 1881
(London: 1895), pp. 205-6. Drummer Fulcher is the only invention in this section.
2
Thompson had enlisted in 1842 and had already become a colour sergeant, which was brisk work. He was commissioned in 1852, and eventually rose to the rank of major general, ‘working his way up without interest’, that is without money or patronage.
3
Albert Hervey,
A Soldier of the Company: The Life of an Indian Ensign 1833-43
(London: 1988), p. 120.
4
See Bryan Foster’s illustrations to Lt Col. L. M. Wilson and Maj. T. P. Crowley,
The Infantry Regiments of Surrey
(London: 2002), p. 29. These deal specifically with the 50th’s sister regiment, HM’s 31st, but are an invaluable visual reference. The question of the sword carried by drummers at the time is a difficult one. Although the cruciform-hilted short sword, a version of which is still in use, was not officially introduced until 1856, some were certainly carried earlier. Some drummers seem to have continued to carry a version of the officer’s 1822 pattern sword, in theory discontinued for drummers in 1823. See Brian Robson,
Swords of the British Army: The Regulation Patterns
(London: second edition, 1996), pp. 251-2.
