PEACE SERVICE IN INDIA AND ENGLAND, 1859–1879
[Sidenote: 1859.]
For some time after the execution of Tantia the Seventeenth was kept
marching about from day to day; and it was not until the 13th May
that it finally went into quarters at Morar (Gwalior), detaching one
squadron under Captain Taylor to Jhansi. In both places the regiment
suffered severely from sickness, and lost many officers and men--the
result of the climate, bad accommodation, and the reaction after the
campaign. [Sidenote: 1860.]On the 10th January 1860 it was ordered to
Secunderabad, and proceeded thither by rapid marches under command
of Major White. On the way it lost thirty-eight more men of cholera
and other diseases, among them Veigh, the butcher of the Balaclava
charge, whose end was decidedly tragic. The deaths on the march, of
course, entailed the digging of graves for the dead, in which work
Veigh, who was a strong man and a thirsty soul, always glad to earn a
few extra rupees, was particularly zealous. One day when his task of
grave-digging was complete he was suddenly struck down by cholera, and
in a few hours was buried in the grave which he had made for another.
It was his final distinction to have dug his own grave.
[Sidenote: 1860–64.]
The regiment now remained at Secunderabad for five years. There is
little to be chronicled of this period except one or two small matters
of dress. In April 1860 the peaks on the forage caps were discontinued,
and in 1861 the regiment, for the first time in its life, was equipped
with white helmets. These were made of leather, covered with white
cloth, without plume or spike, [Sidenote: 1864.] and were the work of
a saddler sergeant who had come to the regiment from the 12th Lancers.
On the 14th December 1864 the Seventeenth left Secunderabad, and after
sixteen days’ march on foot arrived at Sholapore, whence it travelled
by rail to Poona, and, after halting there till the 20th January 1865,
reached Bombay, [Sidenote: 1865.] and embarked for England on the
_Agamemnon_ on the 21st. During the eight years of its service
in India it was recruited at various times to a total number of 48
officers and 404 men. Its losses from climatic causes and disease,
through death and invaliding, amounted to 38 officers and 373 men,
while 122 more men were left behind as volunteers to serve with other
regiments in India.
In April the regiment landed at Tilbury, and on the 6th May
marched to Colchester, where it was inspected in October by the
Commander-in-Chief, its sometime Colonel. Colonel White, the Commanding
Officer, was now the only officer remaining who had ridden through
the action at Balaclava, Sir William Gordon having retired in 1864.
[Sidenote: 1866.] In the following year Colonel White retired, and
was succeeded by Colonel Drury Lowe, a name that will live long
in the regiment. It was in this same year 1866, the year of the
Austro-Prussian war, that the Seventeenth were first quartered at
Aldershot.
[Sidenote: 1867.]
The year 1867 brings another name well known in the regiment on to the
list of officers, this time not at the head of all, but at the foot
of the cornets, that, namely, of John Brown, who held the adjutantcy
from this time until 1878. Lieutenant-Colonel Brown (to give him his
present rank) joined the Seventeenth as a band-boy in 1848. He rode the
Balaclava charge as a trumpeter, and was brought to the ground close to
the Russian battery, his horse’s off hind leg being carried away by a
cannon shot, and his own thigh pierced by a rifle bullet. After several
weeks in hospital he rejoined the regiment in the Crimea, and when
the Seventeenth went out to Central India dropped the trumpet for the
lance. He was one of Major White’s squadron at Barode, and from that
time rose rapidly until he received his commission in 1867. For the
present we need say no more than that he was Adjutant during Colonel
Drury Lowe’s command of the regiment.
In August 1867 the regiment was quartered at Shorncliffe and Brighton,
[Sidenote: 1868.] where it remained until May 1868, when, after two
months’ stay at Woolwich, it was moved in August to Hounslow and
Hampton Court. [Sidenote: 1869.] In the following year an experiment
was tried which proved most successful, and has now been finally
adopted, viz. the “squadron organisation.” The squadron became the
unit, and the word Troop was abolished--abolished, that is to say, in
hope rather than in deed; for words which have the sanction of two
centuries of use are not so easily expunged. When troops of cavalry
first came into existence in England they were at least sixty men
strong; when they were first organised by Statute they were one hundred
men strong. Squadrons, again, were not compounds, but fractions of
troops. Be that as it may, however, the old word Troop was for the time
abolished, though not for long, and that of Squadron took its place.
The establishment of cornets was, therefore, reduced by four; four
troop sergeant-majors became squadron quartermaster-sergeants; four
farriers were reduced and four shoeing-smiths added; and an additional
sergeant (fencing instructor) was also added to the establishment.
Simultaneously eight corporals and twenty-three privates were reduced,
bringing down the total strength from 588 to 553, while the number of
horses (a more serious matter) sank from 363 to 344.
In 1869 also the white plume, which had been adopted in 1857, was
done away with, and a black plume issued in its stead. The original
plume of the regiment, as we have seen, was scarlet and white, but was
arbitrarily altered, for all Lancer regiments alike, by King William
IV., to black. The old mourning lace, adopted by John Hale, having
been long since abandoned, the black plume might seem to be a means of
prolonging its memory; but the prejudice of the regiment ran in favour
of white (scarlet and white being apparently out of date), and after a
year or two the white plume was restored.
In July of the same year the regiment marched to Edinburgh and
Hamilton, and remained in Scotland for ten months. This was its first
visit to North Britain since 1760, when Colonel John Hale himself was
in command. [Sidenote: 1870.] In 1870, as in 1764, the regiment moved
from Scotland to Ireland--history thus repeating itself (if any one
took notice of it) with commendable accuracy.
On the 15th August 1870 the establishment of the regiment was
increased--the men from 457 to 540, the horses from 300 to 350. For
France and Germany just then were flying at each other’s throats,
and even while the order was a-signing, were fighting the four days’
battle (August 14–18) around Metz. As the outcome of this war, we shall
have shortly to mention a number of sweeping reforms in the army.
Meanwhile let us note that the first change of 1870, ordered before the
war (1st April), was a retrograde step--a reversion to the old troop
organisation. A step further back would have retained the name of a
troop with the strength of a squadron, as in the days of the Ironsides.
But the Army knows little of its own history.
[Sidenote: 1871.]
With 1871 we enter on the first series of reforms, or let us call them
changes, accomplished under the influence of the war of 1870.
First, the establishment of the regiment was fixed permanently at eight
troops, after vacillating for more than a century between the minimum
of six troops and the maximum of ten. Here, let us note, is a final
break with the traditions of the great Civil War, when the six-troop
organisation (each troop being 100 men strong) was first founded.
Strictly speaking, the system of 1645 continued for some years later
in the British regiments quartered in India; the Indian establishment
consisting of six troops, while the other two formed a depôt in
England; but this failing has now been remedied, and the old order is
therefore wholly extinct.
Next, by Royal Warrant, the Purchase and Sale of Commissions in the
Army were abolished. The system had existed for more than three hundred
years, and had been threatened as far back as 1766.
[Sidenote: 1871.]
Next the “short service system”--six years’ service with the colours
and six in the reserve--was introduced; and thereby the old British
soldier of history was, for good or ill, extinguished. The Seventeenth
felt the change little before 1876; and the British public hardly found
it out before 1879. It may be worth while to note that both short
service[14] and the territorial system were first suggested just about
a century before they were introduced.
Lastly, on the 1st November the historic rank of Cornet was abolished.
_Corneta_ or _cornette_ signifies the horn-shaped troop standard which
(like the ensign in the infantry) gave its name alike to the officer
who carried it and to the troop that served under it. The rank is gone
and all its historic associations with it; and a generation is arising
which will need to resort to a dictionary if it would understand what
Walpole meant when he called Pitt “that terrible cornet of horse.”
It is amusing to note that since the expurgation of the word Cornet
no abiding name has been found for the rank of a junior subaltern
of cavalry. Sub-lieutenants there have been and second lieutenants,
sometimes both and sometimes neither, but nothing of permanence.
[Sidenote: 1872.]
The following year witnessed the death of another venerable
institution, namely, of the “churns” carried by farriers. The name
transports us to the days when farriers alone of cavalry men were
dressed in blue and were armed with axes. The reintroduction of
knee-boots, after an exile of sixty years, also revived, though in a
different fashion, the memory of early days.
[Sidenote: 1873.]
The year 1873 likewise brought with it a reversion to primitive times
in the shape of an order that greater attention should be paid to
dismounted duty, the cavalry being now armed with the Snider carbine.
This did not immediately affect the Seventeenth, which as yet possessed
no carbines, but it was destined to do so before long. [Sidenote:
1875.] Two years later came another reform, this time in the matter
of drill. The old system of standing pivots, or as it was called the
“pivot system,” was abolished, and the “Evolutions” of 1759 lost their
influence on cavalry drill for ever.
While all these changes were going forward the Seventeenth was
quartered in Ireland, whither reform after reform pursued it across St.
George’s Channel. Being in Ireland it was, of course, called in to aid
the civil power (Mallow election, 1872) but was spared the trouble of
dealing with any disturbance. [Sidenote: 1876.] In 1876 it was brought
over to England for mobilisation with the 5th Army Corps. Having called
attention to the disavowal or attempted disavowal of the words Troop
and Cornet, one cannot do less than emphasise the introduction of the
comparatively strange terms, Mobilisation and Army Corps, which here
confront the regiment for the first time. The Seventeenth was encamped
on Pointingdown Downs in Somerset for a few weeks, and was reviewed
with the 5th Army Corps on the 22nd July. As it is unlikely that the
Seventeenth Lancers will ever again form part of a 5th Army Corps (for
it is not often that England is so rich in army-corps) it seems well to
record so unique an experience in a not uneventful career.
In this same year the Lancers’ tunic was embellished with a plastron of
the colour of the regimental facings,--a change which made the dress of
the Seventeenth, by general admission, the smartest in the Army. The
plastron being an essential feature in the uniform of the German Uhlan,
is presumably imitated from Napoleon’s Polish Lancers. No one will
quarrel with so smart a dress; but it is nevertheless a little curious
that the whole world should go to Poland for its Lancer fashions. The
lance may be called the oldest of cavalry weapons, at least it can
demonstrably be traced back beyond the days of Alexander the Great;
and its present vogue is simply a return, and a late return, to an old
favourite. Its reputation as the queen of cavalry weapons is not one
century, but many centuries old; and though it was for a time driven
out of the field by firearms, it may be said never to have wanted
champions. I have found the lance advocated, for instance, by a French
military writer in 1748, and by an English colonel, Dalrymple, in 1761.
In 1590 the best authorities swore by it.
[Sidenote: 1876.]
In 1876, likewise, came two more changes--the one temporary and
the other permanent. The first was the issue of six carbines to
every troop, a sign of a further change to come. The second was the
appointment of the Duke of Cambridge to be Colonel-in-Chief of the
regiment, which from henceforth is designated the “Duke of Cambridge’s
Own.” In the early days of the Army it was customary on all occasions
to insert the colonel’s name after the regimental number; and thus it
has been easy to identify the 18th (Hale’s) Light Dragoons of 1759 with
the present Seventeenth Lancers. The only colonels whose names enjoyed
the distinction in the Seventeenth were Hale, Preston, and Gage. The
Duke’s name is now permanently bound with that of the regiment, a
connection whereof, we trust, he will ever have good reason to feel
proud.
[Sidenote: 1877.]
After staying at Aldershot until August 1877, the Seventeenth marched
north to Leeds and Preston. After some service in aid of the civil
power, which brought it at Clitheroe in collision with a mob of cotton
operatives on strike, [Sidenote: 1878.] it returned to Aldershot in
July 1878. A month later Colonel Drury Lowe retired, and was succeeded
by Colonel Gonne. The Adjutant, Lieutenant John Brown, also resigned,
but remained with the regiment as paymaster with the rank of captain.
In 1878 a change was made in the armament of the Seventeenth which
takes us back to the earliest days of the British army. Martini-Henry
carbines were issued, and pistols returned into store. Carbines, of
course, were no new thing in the regiment, though they had been unknown
therein since they were withdrawn (weapons very different from the
Martini) in 1823. The bound from the old flint-lock to the Martini is
remarkable; but the abolition of the pistol is even more noteworthy,
for the pistol was a direct survival from the days of the Ironsides.
Quite unconsciously the five regiments of Lancers carried the armament
of Cromwell’s troopers into the forty-first year of Queen Victoria.
[Sidenote: 1878.] As a weapon the pistol had long been regarded as
of no account: it was a muzzle loader to the last, and as but ten
rounds annually were allowed to each man for practice therewith, it
was hardly taken seriously as a weapon at all. Still the abandonment
of the pistol, as a point of historical interest, deserves at least so
much notice. Sergeant-majors, and trumpeters were now provided with
revolvers, a change which was fated to have serious influence on the
careers of two officers of the regiment.
This year saw England committed to two wars, in Afghanistan and in
Zululand. It must now be told how the Seventeenth Lancers played a part
in both of them.