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Lord Curzon was very much disliked by the rank and file of the Army, who all agreed that he was giving the natives too much rope. Another thing that added to his unpopularity was that his wife … was supposed to have said that the two ugliest things in India were the water-buffalo and the British private soldier … One of our chaps said that he would like to see the whole of the battalion parade stark naked in front of Lady Curzon for inspection, with Lord Curzon also naked in front of them: for comparison, like a tadpole amongst the gods.
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At the Delhi Durbar, held to celebrate the accession of Edward VII as King Emperor, the Viceroy himself described how:

The 9th Lancers rode by amidst a storm of cheering; I say nothing of the bad taste of the demonstration. On such an occasion and before such a crowd (for of course every European in India
is on the side of the Army in the matter) nothing better could be expected.
¹⁷

Curzon warned the British government that India would find it hard to meet its requirement to produce a field army of 20,000 men from an overall military establishment of 220,000, because most of this would be required to secure India: this and other issues weakened his political support at home.

Kitchener then arrived determined to create a single unified Indian army by doing away with the remaining vestiges of the old presidency armies and removing Bengal, Madras and Bombay from unit titles. Units would be moved around India as the demands of the service required, not simply stationed in their own areas, and the army would be restructured to form nine infantry divisions and five cavalry brigades with standard organisations.

What really caused the clash with Curzon, though, was Kitchener’s desire to abolish the Military Department and to centralise all military power in the hands of the Commander in Chief. The Military Department had grown steadily in power, profiting from the abolition of presidency commanders in chief and military departments in 1895, and, in addition, controlling all the army’s logistic services. Its head was the military member of council who, although junior to the Commander in Chief in military rank, was becoming his rival in organisational terms. After falling out with the military member, Major General Sir Edmond Elles, Kitchener recommended that the post be abolished, declaring that the existing system caused ‘enormous delay’, ‘endless discussion’, and ‘duplication of work’, and he threatened to resign unless he had his way.

A compromise decision, imposed by London, greatly reduced the power of the Military Department, whose head was to become the military supply member, emphasising the civilian character of his work by wearing plain clothes rather than uniform. When Curzon tried to impose his own man as military supply member he over-reached himself, for council appointments were made by the Crown on the advice of the Secretary of State. The latter observed that he did not think Curzon’s nominee a suitable choice, and Curzon at once resigned. His successor, Lord Minto, was a former Foot Guards
officer with extensive campaign experience, who had reached the rank of major general. Edward VII advised him to ‘make the most of his General’s uniform’, and he duly did so. Kitchener welcomed him as a fellow military man, and the two got on well.

The Commander in Chief was assisted by a staff with three main branches. The adjutant general’s branch was responsible for personnel issues and the quartermaster general’s for matters of organisation and equipment. For most of the period these two officers were major generals, and until 1858 there were also two separate colonel’s posts, adjutant general and quartermaster general of British troops in India. Henry Havelock, clambering slowly up the hierarchy, found himself appointed to both jobs in succession shortly before the Mutiny. The former provided him with ‘no work [but] with nearly £3,000 a year’. And when he was given the latter, the Governor-General told Havelock’s brother-in-law: ‘You used to say in India that there were two sinecures there, a ladies’ watch and the Quartermaster-generalship of the Queen’s troops. I have just appointed your brother- in-law to the latter. There’s poetical justice for you.’
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Havelock himself was delighted, because his duties, he wrote, were: ‘literally
nil.
My work averages two returns and two letters
per mensem;
but time never hangs heavy on my hands. I ride, when it does not rain a deluge, and when it does, I am never without indoor occupation.
¹⁹

The Commander in Chief’s military secretary, usually also a colonel, managed the appointment, promotion and retirement of officers, dealing with the Governor-General over senior appointments that required his approval, and with London where British army officers were concerned. He was a far more important man than his rank suggested, for his hands were on the stopcock of interest, and knowing officers took pains to secure his support. Indeed interest – that rich mixture of patronage, influence, family and regimental connection, the comradeship of campaign and arm of service, debts for past favours and sureties for future help – remained hugely influential in India long after it was being progressively restricted in Britain. The harassed Lord Curzon railed against it as ‘jobbery’ in 1902, and complained that officers ‘love a job as a German loves a shut railway carriage and a frowst’.
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Even a junior officer was entitled to ask the military secretary
how his interest stood. In 1817, Richard Purvis, desperate for a captaincy, asked the military secretary what he might expect, and received the stock response that: ‘his name is noted in this office for consideration by his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief as opportunities for serving him may present themselves’.
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He then sent two letters, one ‘private’ and the other ‘public’ requesting suitable jobs, but when nothing materialised he eventually decided to go into the Church, and ended his days as vicar of St Leonard’s in the Hampshire village of Whitsbury, where at last he enjoyed significant backing, for his father owned the living. But his military interest remained so poor that when he petitioned the Company for a captain’s half-pay, it curtly replied that he had only held a brevet captaincy rather than substantive rank, and so could rub along on a lieutenant’s half-pay of 2 shillings and sixpence a day.

In contrast, John Clark Kennedy’s interest stood so high that he did not bother with the monkey but marched confidently to the organ-grinder. His father had captured a French eagle at Waterloo, and John himself had the necessary mix of well-placed contacts and personal determination. Shortly after he arrived in India in 1848 as a captain, he made an appointment to see Gough and ask to join the expedition to Multan.

I determined to strike while the iron was hot and, having arranged it with the AG, I went off to see Lord Gough and asked his permission to accompany it. He gave it to me and I had dinner with him: a family party and a very pleasant evening. That was a decided compliment when one thinks of all the usual etiquette! The old gentleman was as nice as could be.
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He later wrote of the death in action of Brigadier Robert Cureton ‘my father’s friend who was so kind to me at Simla’. When his own general was withdrawn from the campaign, another agreed to take him on as aide-de-camp. ‘I was very much pleased with this offer,’ he wrote. ‘Not so much for the pay which is attached to it – I can do well enough on what I have got although campaigning is expensive work – but for the kind and flattering way it was made to me.’
²³

Lieutenant Neville Chamberlain, born the second son of a baronet
in 1820, had created a bow wave of interest by several examples of spectacular bravery, and Lieutenant General Sir Henry Fane was a family friend. In 1847 Fane ensured that he was offered the post of military secretary to George Clark, the Governor of Bombay, who told him that if he accepted ‘I promise to let you go to the fore whenever there is more fighting among your old friends on the North-West frontier.’ When Clark had to go home unexpectedly, Chamberlain set off for the Sikh War without any official appointment, but was immediately made brigade major (chief of staff) to a cavalry brigade. He was a brigadier general at the age of thirty-six, a remarkable achievement in an era of glacial promotion (and impossibly rapid even today); he died a field marshal.

Lastly, John Low, a Madras ensign in 1804, played his interest like a lute. In 1826, by then a captain, he told the influential Sir John Malcolm that: ‘I shall not easily forget your tall figure upon your tall horse, cantering about this day eight years ago at the head of your division, amidst dust & smoke and grape shot, surrounded by your numerous staff and friends.’ Then he came to the business of the letter.

I had the misfortune to lose my worthy father, & shortly after the Fife Bank went down, by which my mother suffered a severe loss to her income, the interest however I am easily keeping up. It will keep me several more years in this country.
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He later noted that ‘the more active appointments, such as Brigade Majors, are not in the gift of the Governor, they belong to the patronage of the Commander-in-Chief’.

Having duly hooked a plum political appointment for himself as Resident at Lucknow, Low immediately engaged his own patronage for his nephew, observing that:

Alec Deas is at a station about 80 miles from here, & I have applied to my friends in Calcutta to get him appointed to command my escort, which will enable him to save a little of his pay, & I hope do him good in many ways.
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Not only were two of Low’s oldest friends, Lieutenant Colonel Vans Agnew and Sir John Lushington, directors of the East India Company, but Dalhousie, the Governor-General himself, assured him ‘for
God’s sake, my dear friend, don’t speak & don’t feel as if it were undue familiarity to call yourself my personal friend’.
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He became military member of council, and died, a general and a knight, a month short of his ninetieth birthday.

As long as Madras and Bombay retained their own commanders in chief, they maintained staffs with the same structure as that of the Commander in Chief, India, although the relevant ranks were usually one step lower. A proper general staff was not created in India until 1903, with a lieutenant general as its chief. It dealt with overall military policy, training, deployment, intelligence and the conduct of military operations. But it did not begin to have any real impact until after the First World War.

Prominent for much of the period because of their positions on the expanding frontier of India were the two frontier forces. The Sind Frontier Force – responsible to the Commander in Chief, Bombay – was raised in 1846 to protect the frontier of this recently annexed province. It initially consisted of a single regiment of Scinde Irregular Horse, but a second was soon added and a third followed in 1858. Two battalions of Jacob’s Rifles were raised in 1858. The men of Jacob’s Rifles initially provided the gunners for the Jacobabad light artillery, which was transferred to the artillery in 1876.

The Punjab Irregular Frontier Force was formed in 1849 to protect the north-west fringes of the newly acquired Punjab from raids by tribesmen in the broad and inhospitable area between the new frontier of British India and the border of Afghanistan. Five cavalry regiments and five infantry battalions were raised, and the force incorporated four Sikh battalions which had been formed in 1846–47 to guard the frontier. It also included the Corps of Guides, which incorporated a cavalry regiment and an infantry battalion, and had its own mountain artillery. The Scinde Camel Corps was transferred from the Bombay establishment to become part of the Punjab Frontier Force as 6th Punjab Infantry in 1849, although it retained the title Scinde Rifles.
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The Punjab Irregular Frontier Force was controlled by the Governor of the Punjab, who was responsible for its operations to the
Government of India’s Foreign Department, not to the Commander in Chief, India. The great Henry Lawrence ran the Frontier Force like a private fiefdom. In the spring of 1849 the enterprising Lieutenant Henry Daly was delighted to receive a note which read:

My dear Sir – You are nominated to the command of the 1st Cavalry Regiment, to be raised at Peshawar.

Yours truly,

H. M. Lawrence

Simla, 24th May.

Daly soon recruited 588 men, mainly Yusufzai Pushtuns, and had three other British officers, one a surgeon, to help him. There was: ‘A lieutenant, Bombay Army, commandant; a captain, Madras army, 2nd in command, and a cornet of Bengal cavalry, adjutant.’
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His method of recruiting mirrored that of many of these irregular units:

Here a native of good birth and character was to command a troop, in which, of course, a number of his own followers and dependants would be. He is allowed to mount a certain number of his friends and followers on his horses, otherwise the horse must be the property of the rider, who draws pay from the government for the service and support of himself and horse. These men arm, dress and mount themselves under the orders and responsibility of their commandants. Government provide
nothing
but pay and ammunition.
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Soldiering in irregular units had a strong attraction for some British officers. In 1857, Ensign Charles MacGregor’s own regiment, 57th BNI, had mutinied, and he determined to seek appointment to the irregular cavalry.

I confess that I have not got an eye for the
minutiae
which delights some men. I think it is quite enough if a man’s arms and accoutrements are clean and in serviceable order; but having every buckle so that you can see your face in it can’t make him fight more valiantly or more intelligently for these reasons.
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A brother officer said of MacGregor that: ‘He was the
only
man I ever met in the service that I
really believe
loved fighting,’ and he soon established a strong bond with his wild troopers.