Sahib (24 page)

In 1884, Charles Callwell proudly announced that his own knowledge of bat was ‘in advance of that suggested by the well-known lines:

His Hindustani words were few – they could not very well be fewer Just idharao, and jaldi jao and khabadar you soor.
²⁰¹

This was bat at its most abrupt and meant: ‘Just come here, and go quick, and take care, you swine.’

Part of the delight of bat, of course, was to use it in Britain to demonstrate that one was an Old India Hand. Private Edwin Mole
of the 14th Hussars, eating his first meal in an English barrack room in 1863, tells how:

There were fifteen men in my mess, fourteen of whom wore three or four medals. They were good-natured fellows in the main, though a little short-tempered; and all bore signs of their long residence in India, where the regiment had been for nineteen years without coming home. They used many queer Hindustani names and terms, which it took me some time to get the hang of. For instance they never spoke of knives, or salt, or bread, but always ‘Give me a
churrie!’,
‘Pass the
neemuck!’
or ‘sling over some
rootee!’.
²⁰²

Let us leave Drummer Fulcher, Private Richards and Private Pearman for the moment, as they sling the bat, look out at the Indian landscape across the verandah through a haze of pipe-smoke, weighing the possibility of walking out into the bazaar and securing those twin preoccupations of the soldier: drink and female company. And, perhaps musing, just for a moment, about that mighty military machine in which they had now become small cogs.

I have eaten your bread and salt.

I have drunk your water and wine.

The deaths ye died I have watched beside,

And the lives ye led were mine.

KIPLING
, ‘Prelude to Departmental Ditties’

W
HEN THE HOT WEATHER
made life on the plains almost unbearable, the key figures in the Government of India decamped to the little hill station of Simla. It lay in a small British enclave surrounded by native states, on a crescent-shaped ridge about five miles long, covered with deodars and big rhododendrons. There was a single main street, called the Mall, as main streets in British-Indian towns so often were, with the unlovely Christ Church, built in 1857, a couple of hotels, a club, a bank, a town hall, an assembly room for concerts and a theatre for the amateur theatricals of which the Victorians and Edwardians were so fond. Annie Steel warned her readers against Simla. ‘It is a very large place, very expensive, very gay, very pretty,’ she wrote. ‘No one should go up to Simla who has not a bag of rupees and many pretty frocks.’
¹

The four hundred or so European-style houses, architecturally a mixture of Tudor and Tibet with a splash of Surrey, had names like Moss Grange, Ivy Glen, Eagle’s Nest, The Crags, The Highlands, Sunny Bank and The Dovecot. The Viceroy’s house was called ‘Peterhof’: Lady Lytton, who went there as vicereine in 1876, thought it ‘a hideous little bungalow, horribly out of repair and wretchedly uncomfortable’. A major disadvantage was the fact that ‘there is no such thing as a WC in the whole of India … only … horrid night tables – there are always bathrooms for them, but it is always horrid’.
²
From Simla the Viceroy dealt with his capital and thus the rest of his realm in what Lord Lytton called ‘a despotism of office-boxes tempered by occasional loss of keys’.
³

Most of Simla’s inhabitants walked, rode, or travelled in the local equivalent of sedan chairs. Only three people were allowed to use carriages on the Mall: the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, who was, so to speak, the landlord; the
Mulki Lart Sahib,
or viceroy, and the
Jungi Lart Sahib,
the lord of war, or Commander in Chief, India. On Sunday, after morning service, a visitor strolling back to his hotel and clouding the gin-clear air with the blue smoke of his cheroot might see the topmost link of India’s chain of command trotting home for lunch to his official residence, Wildflower Hall.

There had been a Commander in Chief, India, since Major Stringer Lawrence, a veteran of Culloden, went to Madras to shake the pagoda tree in 1748 and was given authority over all the Company’s forces on the subcontinent. Lawrence’s real skill was as a raiser and trainer of troops. It was under his tutelage that the raggle-taggle mix of superannuated Europeans and locally recruited peons – there were 3,000 of the latter in 1747, but only 900 had muskets – began its transformation into the Company’s army, with Indian sepoys forming the bulk of its soldiers. They had their own native officers and NCOs, but were commanded by British officers, and were armed, trained and – but for a fondness for shorts rather than trousers – dressed in European style.

Although Lawrence laid the foundations for one of the most remarkable armies in history, his own position embodied strains which lasted as long as the Company’s rule. For though he had held the King’s commission as a captain, his major’s rank came from the Company. The Mutiny Act of 1754 granted the Company’s officers power of command over British troops in India, but ensured that royal officers ranked senior to the Company’s officers of the same grade, quite regardless of how long they had enjoyed that rank. When Colonel Adlercron (John Corneille’s commanding officer) arrived that year at the head of HM’s 39th Foot, he superseded Lawrence, although the latter was granted a royal lieutenant-colonelcy by way of compensation.

There was an unbecoming spat two years later when Rear Admiral Watson, indisputably the senior British officer in India, appointed Eyre Coote (who had a royal captaincy) to command the recently recaptured Fort St George. Robert Clive, the senior Company officer
present, and a royal lieutenant colonel to boot, declined to accept the decision, although Watson threatened to bombard Fort St George unless he did so. Clive eventually gave way only when Watson landed in person, and handed over authority in the fort to the president of the Bengal Council. There was another squabble in 1770 when Eyre Coote, by then a major general, was sent to India to command the forces of all three presidencies. The Governor of Madras, however, insisted that his own status as ‘governor and commander in chief’ did not oblige him to accept Coote’s authority in his presidency, and added unhelpfully that he had no intention of doing so.

Coote promptly returned home, but when he went out to India again at the end of 1778 there was general agreement that he was indeed Commander in Chief, in direct control of the Bengal army, but also something rather more than
primus inter pares
in Madras and Bombay too. He did not normally correspond directly with the Commanders in Chief of Madras and Bombay, who were responsible to the governors of their own presidencies. But these governors were themselves subordinate to the Governor-General, who was advised on military matters by the Commander in Chief, India. It would be hard to think of a more British way of achieving a nice constitutional balance which combined theoretical autonomy with practical control. The arrangement survived until 1895, when both Bombay and Madras lost their commanders in chief. Thereafter, India was divided into a number of military districts, first and second class, and in 1904 Lord Kitchener, then Commander in Chief, India, superimposed a system of divisions and brigades on this.

Until 1858, Coote’s successors were appointed by the directors of the East India Company on the advice of the Crown, and afterwards by the Secretary of State for India. They usually had the rank of general or lieutenant general, held their appointment for five years (Fred Roberts did an unprecedented seven and a half), and enjoyed an annual salary of a
lakh
of rupees and the title of ‘Your Excellency’. Most came from the British army: between 1822 and 1922 only seven out of twenty-six were from the Indian service.
⁴
It was certainly no mere titular appointment. Sir Colin Campbell was the last of them to command in the field, during the Mutiny, and amongst his predecessors Lord Lake had a horse killed under him
at Laswaree, and Hugh Gough, never one to spare himself, helped his men at Mudki in a wholly characteristic way:

I dashed forward with my gallant ADC [the Hon C. R. Sackville West] to draw a portion of the artillery fire away from our hard pressed infantry. We, thank God, succeeded, and saved many unhurt, my gallant horse being a conspicuous mark – unheeding of the Sikh shot (both round and grape) ploughing up the earth around him.
⁵

Some were popular. Captain Innes Munro, who fought under him, described Eyre Coote as:

The soldier’s friend, most dear to the soldiers he commanded for his personal bravery, his great likeability, and his affectionate regard for their honour and interests. Other generals have been approved, but Sir Eyre Coote was beloved of the British Army in India.
⁶

John Shipp, just commissioned from the ranks, proudly declared that, ‘Lord Lake was my friend, as he was of every soldier in the army’, and that benevolent officer at once confirmed the fact by giving him a tent, two camels and a horse.
⁷
Some were less popular. General Lord Combermere (1825–30) was not the brightest star in the military firmament, and kept a poor table to boot: one officer dining with him on campaign complained that ‘the beef is white, the mutton lean, and everything sour but the vinegar’.
⁸

Others were controversial. Scots loved their countryman, Sir Colin Campbell, and he in turn loved his Highlanders above all things. He addressed them intimately – ‘Ninety-third, you are my own lads’ – and there was always a hirsute warrior ready to reply from within the kilted ranks: ‘Aye, Sir Colin, you ken us and we ken you.’ Whereas Scots appreciated his warmth, others felt rather left out. Richard Barter, himself adjutant of a Scots battalion, thought that: ‘Without a spark of noble generosity he did not hesitate to let other regiments do the work, and then shove in “The Heeland Bonnets” to reap the honour … ’.
⁹
Gunner Richard Hardcastle of the Royal Horse Artillery was also unimpressed. ‘But it is no use saying anything about Highlanders,’ he wrote. ‘The Commander in Chief belongs to the 93rd and he has tried to put them in every
place where they could gain distinction. Other Regiments have no chance against them.’
¹⁰

Hugh Gough (1843–49) was widely admired for his courage but as much mistrusted for his unsubtle tactics. ‘I regret to say,’ wrote Lord Dalhousie, ‘that every man in the army – generals of division – officers, Europeans and sepoys – have totally lost confidence in their leader – loudly proclaim it themselves, and report it in their letters to their friends.’
¹¹
But it was hard not to admire Gough’s frank simplicity. Henry Daly was busy before the walls of Multan when:

An old gent in a white jacket, with a plain staff-surgeon look, came up … and the old gent addressed some queries to me, which deeming irrelevant I answered curtly … Gordon, who was behind and listening to me, said to me, ‘You treat the General coolly!’ Lord! Lord! I thought he was either an old sapper sergeant or a deputy surgeon – the General.
¹²

The life of Lieutenant General the Hon. Sir Henry Fane (1835–39) was complicated by his inability to divorce his wife and marry ‘Lady Fane’, but he was certainly a hero to their daughter. Isabella Fane confided to a friend in 1836:

you cannot think how popular my father is as Commander-in-Chief. It is said of him that he has the interests of the army thoroughly at heart and that ere long it will begin to recover the great injuries done it by that plague spot of India, Lord William Bentinck.
¹³

Perhaps the greatest British general to serve in India never actually became Commander in Chief. Sir James Outram had Havelock’s courage without his chilliness, Campbell’s skill laced with Nicholson’s dash, and the most open of human faces. What general could wish for a more supportive witness than Lieutenant Edward Vibart:

Perhaps it may not be uninteresting to state, in this place, as an illustration of General Outram’s genial disposition, that one day, on duty with a company of my regiment in one of the batteries near the iron bridge [at Lucknow], we were visited by the General, who, after chatting with us in a friendly way for a few minutes, pulled out his cigar-case, and, lighting one himself, distributed the rest amongst the officers present. No
commander, I believe, was ever more beloved by those who were fortunate enough to serve under him, than was this illustrious Bayard,
sans peur et sans reproche.

The Commander in Chief, India, was neither subject to the authority of the Commander in Chief of the British army, nor to the control of the War Office. The Governor-General (later the Viceroy) in council exercised supreme authority over all troops in India, but the Commander in Chief, India, was responsible for the conduct of military operations and for the efficiency of the troops which took part in them. The Governor-General, as the Crown’s political representative, decided that a campaign should take place, but the Commander in Chief, as the Crown’s military representative, determined the form of the campaign and issued the appropriate orders. A resolute governor-general could make it very clear who was in charge. ‘I have been warned not to allow you to encroach on my authority,’ wrote Lord Dalhousie to Sir Charles Napier on his appointment in 1849, ‘and I will take damned good care that you do not.’
¹⁴
Potential ambiguity was avoided when the Governor-General and Commander in Chief were the same person, which happened on four occasions: Major General Lord Clive was Governor of Bengal as well as Commander in Chief from 1765–67; Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis was Governor-General and Commander in Chief in 1805, as were General the Earl of Moira (later Marquess of Hastings) from 1813–23 and General Lord William Bentinck from 1833–35.

Relations between a viceroy and his commander in chief might be good, bad or indifferent. They worked best when the former had a clear idea of what he hoped to achieve by the use of force, and left it to the Commander in Chief to work out how that force should be applied. They deteriorated when Hardinge, a governor-general with extensive military experience, accompanied the army in the field, serving as a volunteer in his military capacity but retaining overall political control. However, the most spectacular breakdown during the whole of the period came when George Nathaniel, Baron Curzon of Kedleston, was Viceroy (1899–1904) and General Horatio Herbert, Viscount Kitchener of Khartoum, was Commander in Chief (1902–09).

Curzon was a rising star in the Conservative party and, at thirty-nine, the youngest viceroy since Dalhousie. Kitchener, a dour and monkish engineer, had led the Egyptian army to victory in the Omdurman campaign of 1898, and then served first as Roberts’s chief of staff and latterly as commander in chief in South Africa. Many of those who knew Kitchener well feared that his brusque manner, lack of Indian experience, and tendency to over-centralise, would create difficulties. Curzon, however, believed that Kitchener would help him carry out much-needed reforms. There was squabbling between the Viceroy’s own Military Department (the Indian equivalent of the War Office) and army headquarters, and more generally Curzon lamented: ‘absurd and uncontrolled expenditure. I observe a lack of method and system. I detect slackness and jobbery. And in some respects I detect want of fibre and tone.’
¹⁵

By the time Kitchener arrived, Curzon had already punished two British units whose soldiers had assaulted Indian civilians, posting an infantry battalion to Aden (quite the worst garrison manned by the Government of India), and stopping all leave in the 9th Lancers for six months. He was well aware that his action was unpopular with both the army and with the majority of British civilians in India. Private Frank Richards wrote that he found that: