Sahib (67 page)

5
I have adapted the pose from A. J. Dubois Drahonet, ‘Night Rounds: Drummer, Scots Fusilier Guards’, about 1832. Collection of HM the Queen, Cat no 2154, reproduced in A. E. Haswell Miller and N. P. Dawnay,
Military Drawings in the Royal Collection
(London: 1969), vol. I, plate 397.

6
See Hugh Barty-King,
The Drum
(London: 1998),
passim.

7
Robert S. Rait,
The Life and Campaigns of Hugh, First Viscount Gough, Field Marshal
(London: 1903), II, pp. 57-8.

8
Rait,
Gough,
II, p. 75.

9
Quoted in George Bruce,
Six Battles for India
(London: 1969), p. 178.

10
Quoted in Bruce,
Six Battles,
p. 182.

11
N. W. Bancroft,
From Recruit to Staff Sergeant
(Hornchurch: 1979), p. 79.

12
Capt. the Hon. W. G. Osborne,
The Court and Camp of Runjeet Singh
(London: 1840), pp. 161, 164.

13
The Marquess of Anglesey (ed.),
Sergeant Pearman’s Memoirs: being chiefly, his account of service with the Third (King’s Own) Light Dragoons
(London: 1968), pp. 52-3.

14
The historian Sir John Fortescue reckoned that ‘there was certainly mismanagement of the heavy artillery, particularly of the eighteen pounders which, if properly handled, should have levelled a great part of the enemy’s entrenchments’, but he found it hard to apportion blame. See J. W. Fortescue,
A History of the British Army
(London: 1910-30), XII, pp. 388-9.

15
Rait,
Gough,
II, p. 68.

16
Bancroft,
From Recruit to Staff Sergeant,
p. 80.

17
Marquess of Anglesey (ed.),
Pearman’s Memoirs,
p. 53.

18
Quoted in Donald Featherstone,
At Them with the Bayonet
(London: 1968), pp. 148-9. I would love a more robust source for this quotation: it is hard to resist the conclusion that Hookhum Singh is telling the
gora-log
what they want to hear. The suggestion that he is a
zumbooruk
gunner is my own: he could not have loaded and fired a field gun on his own.

19
Quoted in Bruce,
Six Battles,
p. 187.

20
Quoted in Colonel Hugh W. Pearse,
History of the 31 st Foot
(London: 1916), I, p. 207.

21
Regiments had two lieutenant colonels at this time. The senior of the 50th’s, Thomas Ryan, was ‘acting up’ to command Harry Smith’s 2nd Brigade (HM’s 50th, 42nd BNI, and Gurkha Naisiri Battalion) after its commander was wounded.

22
The Sikhs had cut up some British wounded after Mudki, and both sides now regularly butchered wounded men. The expression ‘to give Brummagem’ meant to take the bayonet to an opponent, and stemmed from the fact that some Birmingham-made bayonets were stamped with their town of origin.

23
Major General Sir Joseph Thackwell, the one-armed Waterloo veteran who commanded Gough’s cavalry that day, quoted in the Marquess of Anglesey,
History of the British Cavalry
(London: 1973), I, p. 268.

24
Fyler,
History of the 50th,
p. 233.

25
Pearse, 3
1st Foot,
p. 206.

26
Anglesey (ed.),
Pearman’s Memoirs,
P. 55.

27
Quoted in Bruce,
Six Battles,
pp. 188-9.

28
Quoted in Bruce,
Six Battles,
p. 189.

29
Quoted in Bruce,
Six Battles,
p. 190.

30
Lunt (ed.),
From Sepoy to Subedar
pp. 143-4.

31
Letters of Private Richard Perkes, National Army Museum: 7505-57.

32
Lunt (ed.),
From Sepoy to Subedar,
p. 141.

33
Bancroft,
From Recruit to Staff Sergeant,
p. 82.

34
Anglesey (ed.),
Pearman’s Memoirs,
p. 57. The campaign’s veterans received the silver Sutlej Campaign Medal, impressed with the name of the recipient’s first battle and with bars listing the others in which he had fought. Most of those issued to the 50th had bars for ‘Ferozeshuhur’, Aliwal and Sobraon.

1
Hervey,
Soldier of the Company,
pp. 161-2.

2
Philip Woodruff,
The Men Who Ruled India: Volume II, The Guardians
(London: 1963), p. 110.

3
Jan Morris and Simon Winchester,
Stones of Empire: The Buildings of The Raj
(Oxford: 1986), p. 124.

4
W. H. Russell,
My Indian Mutiny Diary
(London: 1967), p. 206.

5
Major General Sir C. E. Callwell,
Stray Recollections
(London: 1923), I, pp. 87-8.

6
Morris and Winchester,
Stones of Empire,
p. 125.

7
Surgeon-General Sir A. D. Home,
Service Memoirs
(London: 1912), p. 98.

8
Carter journal in Mss Eur E262.

9
Woodruff,
Guardians,
p. 98.

10
Woodruff,
Guardians,
p. 111.

11
Quoted in Brian Robson,
The Road to Kabul: The Second Afghan War 1878-81
(London: 1986), p. 71. The episode was the basis of Kipling’s poem ‘Ford O’ Kabul River’.

12
Quoted in Maud Diver,
The Unsung: A Record of British Services in India
(London: 1945), pp. 73-4.

13
John Corneille,
Journal of My Service in India
(London: 1966), p. 152.

14
Isabella Fane,
Miss Fane in India
(Gloucester: 1985), p. 79.

15
Arthur Swinson and Donald Scott (eds),
The Memoirs of Private Waterfield
(London: 1968), p. 27.

16
Osborne,
Court and Camp,
pp. 134-5.

17
Russell,
Mutiny Diary,
p. 98.

18
R. G. Wilberforce,
An Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny
(London: 1894), p. 22.

19
Richard Barter,
The Siege of Delhi: Mutiny Memories of an Old Officer
(London: 1984), p. 4.

20
Callwell,
Stray Recollections,
I, pp. 83-4.

21
Mrs Muter,
My Recollections of the Sepoy Revolt
(London: 1911), p. 198.

22
Lieutenant Colonel R. G. Thomsett,
With the Peshawar Column, Tirah Expeditionary Force
(London: 1899), pp. 21-2.

23
Major James Outram,
Rough Notes of the Campaign in Sinde and Afghanistan in 1838-9
(London: 1840), p. 17.

24
William Forbes-Mitchell,
Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny
(London: 1894), p. 85.

25
Patrick MacRory (ed.),
William Bryden’s Account
(London: 1960), p. 161.

26
Patrick MacRory (ed.),
Lady Sale: The First Afghan War
(London: 1969), p. 102.

27
Revd Alfred Cave, ‘The Kandahar Letters of the Revd Alfred Cave’, in
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research,
Vol. 69, 1991, pp. 149-50.

28
Sidney Toy,
The Strongholds of India
(London: 1957), pp. 1-2.

29
Osborne,
Court and Camp,
p. 51.

30
Jeremy Black,
European Warfare 1660-181
5 (London: 1994), pp. 1-2.

31
John Keay,
India: A History
(London: 2000), p. 288.

32
Second Panipat has much in common with an important battle in Japan at a similar time, Oda Nobugnada’s victory over the Takeda clan at Nagashino in 1575.

33
Keay,
India,
p. 319.

34
C. A. Bayley,
Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion,
(Cambridge: 1983), p. 123.

35
Holman,
Sikander Sahib,
p. 31.

36
Bayley,
Rulers, Townsmen,
p. 54.

37
Bayley,
Rulers, Townsmen,
p. 30.

38
G. W. Forrest (ed.),
The Life of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain
(London: 1909), p. 391.

39
Quoted in Lunt (ed.),
Sepoy to Subedar,
p. 134,
fn4.

40
Lunt (ed.),
Sepoy to Subedar,
p. 134.

41
Surendra Nath Sen,
Eighteen Fifty-Seven
(Delhi: 1957), p. 411.

42
Moon,
British Conquest,
p. 5.

43
Our Indian Empire
(London: 1898), p. 74.

44
The Company’s flag bore a remarkable resemblance to the Grand Union Flag flown in the early stages of the American Revolution, and may be the ancestor of the Stars and Stripes. See Sir Charles Fawcett, ‘The striped flag of the East India Company, and its connexion with the American “Stars and Stripes”’, in
Mariners’ Mirror,
Vol, XXIII, No. 4, October 1937.

45
When the British arrived in India they first used the gold
mohur,
a major unit of currency of the Mughal empire, but gradually replaced it by the rupee, another Mughal coin, named after the Sanskrit
rupya,
wrought silver. It took many years for the rupee to become standardised in a land where measures and money were often local, and it was not until 1836 that ‘the Company’s rupee’ of 180 grs weight, 165 grs pure silver, became the legal currency throughout British India. Until then there had been several versions of the rupee, including its most valuable species, the
sicca rupee.
The rupee comprised 16 annas (giving rise to the ditty: ‘Sixteen annas – one rupee; seventeen annas – one buckshee’) and 64 copper pice. The latter coin was once known as a dam, and the expression ‘I don’t give a damn’ (used so memorably in
Gone with the Wind
) actually meant ‘I don’t give a brass farthing’. One hundred thousand rupees were a
lakh
and one hundred
lakhs
were a
crore.

46
Pace
Yule and Burnell, who think a corruption of battalion rather more likely: I beg to differ.

47
Quoted in Michael Edwardes,
Plassey
(London: 1963), p. 82.

48
Quoted in Edwardes,
Plassey,
p. 144.

49
Moon,
British Conquest,
p. 115.

50
Quoted E. W. Shephard,
Coote Bahadur
(London: 1957), p. 77.

51
Moon,
British Conquest,
p. 114.

52
Corneille,
Journal,
p.55.

53
Shephard,
Coote,
p. 28.

54
Quoted in Philip Lawson,
The East India Company
(London: 1998), p. 120.

55
Quoted in Yule and Burnell,
Hobson-Jobson,
p. 611.

56
Lawson,
East India Company,
pp. 121-2.

57
Quoted in Moon,
British Conquest,
p. 270.

58
Quoted in Moon,
British Conquest,
pp. 289-90.

59
Emily Eden,
Miss Eden’s Letters.

60
Sir Vincent Eyre,
The Kabul Insurrection
(London: 1879), p. 261.

61
Florentia, Lady Sale,
A Journal of the First Afghan War
(London: 1958), pp. 107-8.

62
Eyre,
Kabul Insurrection,
p. 278.

63
Eyre,
Kabul Insurrection,
p. 280.

64
John Clark Marsham (ed.),
The Memoirs of Major General Sir Henry Havelock
(London: 1967), p. 97.

65
Marsham (ed.),
Havelock,
p. 102.

66
Fortescue,
History,
XII, p. 271.

67
Quoted in Lt Gen. S. L. Menezes,
Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century
(Oxford: 1999), p. 65.

68
C. G. C. Stapylton, ‘The First Afghan War: An Ensign’s Account’, private collection.

69
Quoted in Arthur Swinson,
The North-West Frontier
(London: 1967), p. 84.

70
Fortescue,
History,
XII, p. 290.

71
Quoted in Moon,
British Conquest,
p. 573.

72
The four-volume biography of this remarkable man, W. F. P. Napier’s
The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier
(London: 1857), still repays reading.

73
Osborne,
Court and Camp,
pp. 53-4.

74
Osborne,
Court and Camp,
p. 147.

75
Osborne,
Court and Camp,
p. 203.

76
B. S. Singh (ed.),
The Letters of the First Viscount Hardinge of Lahore
(London: 1986), p. 64.

77
Osborne,
Court and Camp,
p. 151.

78
Several of these fine guns came to England after the Sikh Wars. Several survive in the Royal Artillery Historical Trust; there is one in the Royal Armouries’ artillery collection at Fort Nelson, Portsmouth; another in the Museum of the Royal West Kent Regiment (descendants of HM’s 50th) at Maidstone, and a final one is in the care of 3rd Battalion, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, at Canterbury. See Neil Carleton and Matthew Buck, ‘Guns of the Rajas: Indian Artillery from the Mughals to the Sikhs’, in
journal of the Ordnance Society,
Vol. XVI, 2004.

79
Rait,
Gough,
II, p. 28.

80
Quoted in Menezes,
Fidelity and Honour,
p. 63.

81
Lunt (ed.),
Sepoy to Subedar,
p. 135.

82
Quoted in Fortescue,
History,
XII, p. 368.

83
Quoted in Moon,
British Conquest,
p. 598.

84
C. G. Moore Smith (ed.),
The Autobiography of Sir Harry Smith
(London: 1901), II, p. 194.

85
Quoted in Anglesey,
British Cavalry,
Vol. I, p. 263.

86
Quoted in Moon,
British Conquest,
p. 606.