Sahib (10 page)

As a junior King’s officer, Corneille’s own chances of shaking the pagoda tree were somewhat limited; but King’s officers were not entirely immune from greed. Clive, who did not like Eyre Coote, complained acidly that he was ‘a great stickler for the rights and privileges of a Royal officer, not least his own emoluments and allowances’. When Coote returned home to England in 1763 (having stopped en route at St Helena to marry the Governor’s daughter), he had enough money to purchase a substantial country estate in Hampshire, and was further gratified by the presentation of a handsome sword worth £700.

Coote, in short, had become a nabob – a man who had made his fortune in India and then invested it, as any successful London merchant might have done, in land: the word originated in English mispronunciation of the title nawab. Coote was the sixth son of an Irish clergyman, whose military career surmounted a setback in 1745 when, as an ensign in Blakeney’s regiment, he appeared in Edinburgh after the defeat at Prestonpans, happily still with his colour but, less wisely, well in advance of his regiment’s survivors. A court martial stopped short of cashiering him, as a lot of people had run away that day, but a furious George II thought ‘the crime so infamous in nature’ that he had ‘no further occasion’ for the services of the officers involved.
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Coote, with his refurbished military reputation and wellbred wife, could at least claim gentility. But many other nabobs could not, and the homeward rush of merchants desiring not simply landed property but the titles, prestige and social distinction that went with it exasperated not only the gentry who dominated Georgian England, but also merchants and tradesmen who found it harder to scrub the ink from their fingers. The nabobs tinkled into Parliament in force in the 1768 election, and in 1771 the play
The Nabobs
sent up the whole gang, turning the word into one of envious abuse.

Clive’s gains had already involved the Company in costly wars, and more followed as senior officials supported local rulers against their rivals for their own and the Company’s benefit, though it was sometimes hard to see where the two joined. The First Mysore War (1767–69) saw the Company ally itself with the Nawab of Arcot in an inconclusive campaign against the formidable Hyder Ali, a capable adventurer who had risen to become sultan of the southern state of Mysore. The episode caused widespread criticism, and – with the volatility of the Company’s stock, the apparent inability of its directors to control their employees, widespread resentment of nabobbery, and something of a genuine sense of moral outrage – fuelled public and parliamentary demands for reform. William Pitt the elder lamented that:

The riches of Asia have been poured in upon us, and have brought not only Asiatic luxury, but, I fear, Asiatic principles of government. Without connections, without natural interest in the soil, the importers of foreign gold have forced their way
into Parliament by such a torrent of private corruption as no hereditary fortune could resist.
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Edmund Burke struck even harder, telling the House of Commons that: ‘The office given to a young man going out to India is of trifling consequence. But he that goes out an insignificant boy in a few years returns a great Nabob.’
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Indian society, he declaimed, was being corrupted by the money-grabbing activities of the Company’s servants, in a clear breach of the sacred trust that one powerful nation held towards another.

This agitation produced the Regulating Act of 1773. Although each presidency retained its own governor, a governor-general based in Calcutta would rule the whole of British India, with a council of four members appointed by the Cabinet and the Company’s directors. A supreme court, its judges appointed by the Crown, could hear pleas and appeals from both British and Indians. Day-to-day control of the Company lay in the hands of its twenty-four directors, only six of whom could stand for re-election each year. The government lent the Company sufficient money to deal with its immediate debts, and limited dividend payments on its stock.
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The Regulating Act, however, failed to remedy the Company’s ills, and the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the first governor-general appointed under its provisions and seen by his many critics as the arch-nabob, highlighted its deficiencies. It took Pitt’s India Act of 1784 to establish a government-appointed Board of Control, based in London, and to strengthen the powers of the governor-general, appointed and replaced by the government of the day, over the three presidencies.

This system had only three significant modifications. When its charter was renewed in 1833, the Company was compelled to give up commercial transactions in return for an annuity of £630,000, taken from the territorial revenue of India. The Governor-General of Bengal was renamed the Governor-General of India, and a governor of Bengal was created, on a par with the governors of Madras and Bombay. In 1835 the lieutenant-governorship of the North-West Provinces was introduced. Lastly, the Company’s charter was renewed in 1853, the Governor of Bengal was reduced to the status of lieutenant governor and a legislative council was established.

In the short term the 1784 mechanism worked well enough. Lord Cornwallis, the first of the new governors-general from 1786 to 1793, went far to stamping out nabobbery amongst the Company’s servants, establishing a well-paid civil service, the root of the ‘covenanted’ Indian Civil Service whose members undertook not to involve themselves in commerce. The Company’s college at Haileybury in Hertfordshire, with a syllabus that included oriental languages, was not set up till 1809, but it was clearly rooted in the impartial bureaucracy established under Cornwallis. He defended the Sultan of Travancore, a Company ally, against Hyder Ali’s son, Tipu, in the Third Mysore War (1790–92). And in 1793 he concluded the Permanent Settlement in Bengal, delegating tax-collection rights to
zamindars –
much as the Mughal emperor had done.

Sir John Shore, Cornwallis’s successor, ran into difficulties because none of the previous reforms had really addressed the Company’s armed forces. These had risen from 18,000 in 1763; 6,580 of them in Bengal, 9,000 in Madras and 2,550 in Bombay. By 1805 there were no less than 64,000 in Bengal, 64,000 in Madras and 26,500 in Bombay. The officers of this army, as we shall see, were subtly different from those of HM’s regiments serving in India. They were often significantly less well off, did not purchase their commissions and, long after their civilian brothers had become properly regulated, they retained a keen interest in making extra money, usually through the scam of
batta,
allowances over and above their pay, which once reflected genuine campaign expenses but in many cases had come to be a lucrative allowance given for no clearly defined purpose. But their promotion prospects were far poorer than those of officers in HM’s regiments: of the thousand or so officers in Bengal in 1780, there were only fifty-two posts for majors and above, and battalions, commanded by lieutenant colonels in the British service, were only captain’s commands. On three major occasions between 1766 and 1808, officers mutinied to retain their
batta,
and the government gave way. A rueful Shore wrote:

Whether I have pursued the most eligible plan of alleviating anarchy and confusion by temperance and moderation, or whether I should have adopted coercion, is a question on which opinion will be various. I think the wisest mode has
been followed; and that severity might have occasioned the absolute disorganisation of the army, whose expectations have been too much trifled with.
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There were few similarities between Shore, a long-time servant of the Company, and his successor as governor-general, Richard Wellesley, 2nd Earl of Mornington. A scion of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy with close friends in the government, Mornington knew little of administration or of India, but had a vision that went well beyond commercial advantage. In 1799 he beat Tipu, the Sultan of Mysore, who was killed when Seringapatam was stormed, and his brother, Arthur Wellesley, was installed to supervise the new British-supported ruler. While Arthur pocketed £10,000, Richard declined the proffered £100,000, but helpfully told the Prime Minister:

You will gain credit by conferring some high and brilliant title upon me immediately. The Garter would be much more acceptable to me than an additional title, nor would any title be an object which did not raise me to the same rank which was given Lord Cornwallis.

He was shocked to be created Marquess Wellesley because it was an Irish title. He quipped acidly that it was a double-gilt potato, and told the Prime Minister that:

I cannot conceal my anguish of mind … at the reception the King has given my services. I will confess openly that there had been nothing Irish or pinchbeck in my conduct or its results, I felt in equal confidence that I should find nothing Irish or pinchbeck in its reward.
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With Mysore now under the Company’s tutelage, Wellesley went on to secure Tanjore and the Carnatic, and in 1801 about half Oudh came under the Company’s control. This left the Marathas as the principal rivals of the East India Company; a powerful confederation of Hindu princes (including Holkar, Scindia, and the Bhonsla of Berar) grouped under the Peshwa of Poona, they had proved a serious challenge to the Mughals. Their wings had been clipped by the Afghan ruler of Kabul, Ahmed Shah Durrani, at the fourth battle of Panipat in 1761, which fortuitously prevented a clash between the British and the Marathas at time when the Company was not well
placed to face it. The First Maratha War (1777–82), initiated by Governor-General Warren Hastings, ended in a compromise peace. The Second (1803–05) was a more extensive affair, in which Arthur Wellesley beat the Marathas at Assaye and Argaum while the Commander in Chief, Lord Lake, enjoyed victories at Delhi and Laswaree. There were peace treaties with Scindia and the Bhonsla but Holkar was not included, and the Company suffered two significant reverses, the first when Colonel Monson’s force was roughly handled, and the second when Lake’s attempt to take Bhurtpore by storm met with a bloody repulse. Mornington, his conduct the subject of increasing criticism in Britain, was replaced in 1805 by Lord Cornwallis, who had been Governor-General from 1786–93 and was now an old and dying man. It was not until the Third Maratha War (1816–19) that the Marathas were at last overcome: the Peshwa at Kirkee in November 1817; the Bhonsla at Sitabaldi later the same month; and Holkar at Mahdipore that December. These victories secured the borders of British India along the frontiers of Sind and the Punjab. In 1814–16 the Gurkhas were defeated, though with some difficulty, in the Nepal War, and while Nepal remained independent it proved a fruitful recruiting-ground for tough and martial soldiers.

But now the British suffered a major reverse that would profoundly damage their
iqbal
and overshadow the next decade. The steady Russian advance across Central Asia mirrored British gains in India, and by the 1830s the prospect of a Russian descent into India through Afghanistan loomed increasingly large in the minds of successive governors-general. In 1837 Alexander Burnes, a British envoy, was sent to Kabul to negotiate with the Amir Dost Mohammed. But when the amir demanded the restitution of Peshawar, seized by the Sikhs in 1834, as the price for his support, the British drew back, as they were anxious to preserve good relations with the formidable Sikh ruler, Ranjit Singh. This induced Dost Mohammed to approach the Russians in the hope of securing a better offer; in response the Governor-General, George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, replaced the amir with Shah Shujah, a former ruler.

The Sikhs were persuaded to give the British free passage across the Punjab. A combined army of British and Indian forces, the Army of the Indus, concentrated at Ferozepur, marched down the Indus,
crossed into Afghanistan by the Bolan Pass and reached Kandahar, where it was joined by a force from Bombay. The combined army set off for Kabul – storming the strong fortress of Ghazni on the way – and duly installed Shah Shujah on the throne. But it was clear that the new amir did not enjoy widespread support; it was equally clear that the army could not stay in Afghanistan indefinitely and much of it was sent back to India. The remainder might have been saved by firm command, but Major General William Elphinstone, sent up by Auckland, was not the man for sudden and decisive action. Emily Eden, the Governor-General’s sister, recorded that he was: ‘In a shocking state of gout, poor man – one arm in a sling and very lame but he is otherwise a young-looking general for India.’
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In November, Burnes was killed by a mob in Kabul, and Sir William Macnaghten, chief secretary to the government of India and political adviser to the force, was murdered when he went to negotiate with Akbar Khan, Dost Mohammed’s son. When the British force, numbering some 4,500 troops (amongst them only one British battalion, HM’s 44th) and 12,000 camp followers, including women and children, began to retreat on 6 January 1842 it was repeatedly attacked by the Afghans.

What followed was nothing short of a disaster. Order broke down almost immediately, and Lieutenant Vincent Eyre described ‘a mingled mob of soldiers, camp-followers and baggage-cattle, preserving not even the faintest semblance of that regularity and discipline on which depended our only chance of escape from the dangers which threatened us’.
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That ‘grenadier in petticoats’, Florentia Sale, travelling with her daughter and her son-in-law, now mortally wounded, wrote in her journal for 9 January:

Before sunrise, the same confusion as yesterday. Without any orders given, or bugle sounded, three fourths of our fighting men had pushed on in advance of the camp followers. As many as could had appropriated to themselves all public
yaboos
[Afghan ponies] and camels, on which they mounted. A portion of the troops had also regularly moved off, the only order appearing to be: ‘Come along; we are all going, and half the men are off, with the camp followers in advance!’.

Mrs Trevor kindly rode a pony and gave up her place in the
kajara
[camel pannier] to [the mortally wounded Lieutenant]
Sturt. Who must otherwise have been left to die on the ground. The rough motion increased his suffering and accelerated his death: but he was still conscious that his wife and I were with him: and we had the sorrowful satisfaction of giving him Christian burial.
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