answer that generally speaking they were extremely comfortable.
The theatre of war, which extended along about two hundred miles
of the east coast from Madras to the River Cavery, and about
fifty miles inland, is mostly easy country, cultivated and full
of supplies, with abundance of old fortified places to serve for
depots and magazines. Thus the sea could be used for the conveyance
of troops and heavy stores along the coast (though the ports are
unsafe during the monsoon); while inland there was abundance of
native carts and of bullocks, which, though small and weakly, could
travel at the rate of two miles an hour. The army was, as always
in India, accompanied by a vast number of followers--in those days
about ten followers to one fighting man, though the proportion has
now been greatly reduced. In fact an army on the march had much
the appearance of a moving city, every kind of trade, profession
and calling being represented, with speculators, in particular, in
great strength. On the march the officers were for the most part
carried in palanquins, and they were of course attended by the full
strength of their native households, with every appliance for their
comfort. The men marched, the British, so far as one can gather,
in full European costume and with no special protection from the
sun; though it is difficult to be certain about the matter, for
it is quite likely that they were equipped very much according to
the notions of their officers. They too had plenty of followers to
look after them. The Sepoys, so far as uniform went, were dressed
in a short red jacket, a curious semi-oriental, semi-European
black headdress, very short little white drawers barely reaching
mid-thigh, and native shoes. The Madrassi is not a fighting
man--indeed Lord Roberts went so far as to disband most of the
true Madras infantry--and it is almost certain that the sepoys who
fought with Lawrence, Clive, Coote, and Wellesley were adventurers
from all parts of India, including many from the fighting races
of the north. The British in column of route marched two abreast,
the Sepoys three abreast, for though well disciplined their drill
was primitive; and, so far as I can gather, they knew few words of
command (apart from the manual and firing exercise) except "Right
turn" and "Left turn," which sufficed to bring them from line into
column and from column into line, the British in two ranks, the
Sepoys in three. It must be added that the Company's troops, being
accustomed to march from place to place to relieve each other in
various garrisons, always kept a respectable amount of transport
with them, and hence could enter upon a campaign ready mobilised.
But at all times the number of the followers was, and still is, a
great encumbrance, and, when supplies and forage were scanty, an
appalling difficulty.
So much for Madras; but Madras was only one of three presidencies,
which were practically as far from each other as England is from
Portugal. From Calcutta to Madras is a good eight hundred miles
by sea; and by land the journey was almost impracticable owing
to the number of great rivers that cross the line of march. From
Bombay to the British settlements on the Malabar coast is another
eight hundred miles by sea, and to Madras itself, going round
Ceylon, over two thousand miles. From Calcutta to Bombay overland
is a thousand miles as the crow flies, though part of the distance
could be travelled by river, and by sea at least two thousand five
hundred miles. Moreover there was until 1773 no Governor-General;
but the three presidencies of Bombay, Bengal and Madras were
co-equal, and divided moreover by jealousies and self-importance.
The opening of the Seven Years' War in 1756 brought about a
renewal of hostilities: but it began with an unexpected disaster
in the capture of Calcutta, through a sudden hit of jealousy, by
Siraj-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Bengal. Upon this disaster followed
the tragedy of the Black Hole. It was necessary to send troops
up from Madras under Clive to recover the city with all haste,
for French reinforcements were expected at Pondicherry, and there
was no fleet to stop them. Having but a handful of men, Clive
contrived to detach one of the Nawab's principal officers from him,
and by the man's treacherous assistance defeated Siraj-ud-Daula
at Plassey. This done, he installed Mir Jaffier, the officer
aforesaid, in the Nawab's place, and left a young clerk named
Warren Hastings to keep him in order.
Meanwhile a very able French officer, one de Bussy, had contrived
by consummate skill and daring to restore French influence with the
Viceroy of the Dekhan, but, having little military force at his
command, was unable to effect much, while the British themselves
were too weak greatly to harm their enemies. In the spring of
1758 the French reinforcements arrived, and the commander, Count
Lally Tollendal, was able to take the field with twenty-five
hundred Europeans--an enormous force in those days--and half as
many Sepoys. He captured several minor places in the first few
months, but, finding himself short of money, turned southward to
take some from the rich Rajah of Mysore. Persecuting and bullying
wherever he went, he soon turned all the natives against him. All
cattle were driven off, all food was hidden away; and, when Tanjore
was reached, he found himself opposed not only by natives but by
part of the British garrison of Trichinopoly, which the British
commandant had sent to their assistance. After heavy loss and much
suffering he returned to Pondicherry, where he learned that after a
sharp action the French fleet had been driven from the coast by a
British fleet of inferior numbers; and, what with one trouble and
another, it was December before he could lay siege to Madras. He
stayed before the city for two months, when the appearance of the
British fleet, which had been refitted after the recent engagement,
compelled him to retreat. Meanwhile Clive in Bengal had detached a
small force, as a diversion, by sea against the French settlements
in the Northern Sirkars, about two hundred miles north of Madras;
where the commander, Colonel Forde of the Thirty-ninth, fought a
brilliant campaign against superior numbers, and by his success not
only extinguished the French power in that quarter but banished
French influence in favour of English at the court of the Viceroy
of the Dekhan. The tide now turned. Fresh reinforcements arrived
from England together with a new commander, Colonel Eyre Coote, to
take the place of Lawrence whose health had given way. The Dutch in
Batavia, always jealous of the British, fitted out an expedition to
attack their rivals in Bengal while the bulk of British troops were
in Madras; but it was useless. Clive detached Forde with orders to
fight them immediately. Forde did so, overthrowing their superior
numbers in half an hour, and capturing their army almost to a man.
Three months later Coote met Lally at Wandewash upon equal terms
and completely defeated him, thus destroying for ever the French
competition for the mastery of India.
While the British power was thus growing, that of the Marathas
had increased likewise; and they had organised themselves into a
confederacy of five co-equal parts under five principal chiefs.
In 1758 their success ran so high that they laid hold upon Delhi
itself; but this was too much for the Mohammedan Afghans. They
came down in their wrath; and in 1761 a great battle was fought
at Panipat in which the Marathas were utterly defeated. Had the
Afghans followed up their success, the Marathas would have taken
long to recover from the blow; but the victors were obliged to
look to their own western frontier which was threatened by the
Persians; and the only result of the fight was to exhaust two of
the possible masters of northern India and leave the country in
greater confusion than ever. Most unfortunately, too, Clive, the
representative of the third possible master, went home on leave at
this time; and the supreme power in Bengal passed into the hands
of the Company's clerks. Having no high standard before their
eyes and being miserably paid, these clerks saw the chance of
enriching themselves by selling the use of the Company's troops
to any potentate or adventurer who might offer to buy; and, by
setting up and throwing down the Nawabs of Bengal as best suited
their pockets, they involved the Company in most perilous and
soon disastrous wars. From the worst of their difficulties they
were extricated by the military genius of Major Thomas Adams, who
though deficient alike in men, arms and supplies, contrived by
three victories at Katwa, Suti and Undwa Nala in July, August and
September, 1763, to maintain the terror of the British arms. But
the titular Emperor of Delhi of the Mogul dynasty also entered the
fray, and strove with the help of the Nawab of Oudh to re-establish
his former sovereignty over Bengal; and to make matters worse at
this critical moment there was a mutiny among the Sepoys of the
Bengal Presidency. The mutiny, however, was sternly repressed by
Major Hector Munro, who then led his army against the Emperor
and utterly defeated him at Buxar on the 23rd of February, 1764.
This victory opened the way to Oudh, and the British captured in
succession the great cities of Allahabad and Lucknow; when at this
moment Clive returned and stopped further annexation. He had no
wish to have for neighbours the adventurers who had sprung up at
Delhi, Agra, Bhurtpore and in Rohilkhand. He therefore restored
Oudh to its Nawab, so as to keep it a buffer-state between Bengal
and the rest of Hindostan.
In Madras likewise the British officials had lost their heads.
They were threatened by two dangerous enemies, the Marathas, and
Hyder Ali, a Mohammedan soldier who by sheer military genius
had acquired the sovereignty of Mysore, and from that base was
threatening the territory alike of the Marathas, the Nizam, and
the British in southern India. The British might have played off
their rivals against each other, but they contrived instead to
make enemies of both; and Hyder Ali was a formidable opponent.
Happily there was a British officer, Colonel Joseph Smith, who
was more than his equal, and before whom Hyder trembled in the
field. But the Council of Madras displaced Smith to make room for a
creature of their own; and the consequence was that in 1769 Hyder
Ali advanced to within five miles of Madras itself, and forced the
Council to an humiliating peace. Even so, however, though they
obtained the mercy, they did not obtain the forgiveness of the
ruler of Mysore.
In 1773 the British Parliament passed an Act which, among other
reforms, made the Governor of Bengal the Governor-General of all
three provinces, but most foolishly omitted to make him supreme in
his own Council, leaving him instead at the mercy of the majority.
Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General, and well for us
it is that he was so; for no smaller man would have sufficed to
preserve our dominion in India against the folly and malignity
of the adverse faction in his Council. He made of his own will
but one war, against the predatory Rohillas, whom he compelled
to pay due obedience to their suzerain the Nawab of Oudh. This
action was afterwards distorted by the malignity of his enemies
into a crime. But the Government of Bombay, like those of Madras
and Bengal, had through greed of territory entangled itself in a
war with the Marathas; and Hastings, while utterly disapproving
its policy, found it imperative to send assistance. Moreover, he
had the courage to order the reinforcements to march overland
from the frontier of Oudh to Bombay, a thing which hitherto had
never been dreamed of; and indeed the passage of six battalions
of Sepoys across Hindostan over a vast extent of territory which
no Englishman knew and where no one could say whether they would
be welcomed or fired upon, is a sufficiently striking episode.
Unfortunately the commander allowed himself to be tempted to do
a little fighting for some petty potentates on the way; and this
delay caused Hastings's heroic determination to be in great measure
fruitless. The Bombay Government too managed its military affairs
so ill that no operations of their designing could prosper; and
finally it was necessary to patch up a hasty and discreditable
peace with the Marathas in the north-west in view of a far more
formidable danger elsewhere.
For in 1778, as will be remembered, the French declared war upon
us in consequence of our disasters in America; and in 1780 Hyder
Ali, the southern Marathas and the Nizam formed a confederacy to
expel the British from India. In June of that year Hyder descended
from Mysore upon Madras with ninety thousand men, including
four hundred French, and fifteen thousand Sepoys trained and
disciplined after the European manner. The wretched Council of
Madras had nothing ready, neither men, nor stores, nor supplies;
and unfortunately Hector Munro of Buxar, who held the command of
such troops as there were, managed his affairs badly and divided
his force. One detachment of three thousand men was cut to pieces;
and matters were so serious that Hastings sent Sir Eyre Coote down
to take command in the Carnatic, with every soldier that could be
spared from Bengal. A superior French fleet was on the coast, and
Hyder conceived the bold notion of capturing or destroying all
supplies that Coote might use ashore, while the French cut off
all that might arrive by sea. Happily the French admiral left the
coast in the nick of time to save Coote, who averted all immediate
danger by the victory of Porto Novo; but in the campaign that
followed the British general was so much hampered by Hyder's light
troops that he could hardly keep the field from want of transport
and supplies. Another mishap then occurred; and a detachment of
a thousand British troops was surprised and cut to pieces; while
a succession of naval actions left the French fleet practically
supreme on the coast. Hyder Ali died early in 1782, and Eyre Coote
soon followed him, but Hyder's son Tippoo was an abler man than
Coote's successor. In 1783 the crisis came. A detachment of a
thousand men from Bombay, which had been sent to make a diversion
on the west side of Mysore, was cut off and captured by Tippoo;
and a month later a formidable French force landed at Cuddalore
(Gadalur) on the east coast, and fought a severe though indecisive
action against the British under General Stuart. Three days later
the French squadron on the coast under Admiral Suffren drove off
the British ships and landed yet more reinforcements, which gave
them a decided superiority over the British. The fate of British
supremacy in India hung in the balance for seven anxious days, when
in the nick of time news came that peace had been concluded between
France and England in Europe. So nearly were all the victories
of Lawrence, Clive and Eyre Coote neutralised by incompetent
administration at Bombay and Madras. The one able man among Indian
officials, Warren Hastings, went home to be shamefully persecuted
under the form of a judicial trial by a clique of vindictive
politicians. They succeeded in ruining him financially by sheer
blackguardly cunning; but they could not damage his great name,
which will never be forgotten in India while British rule endures.
Parliament now amended the government of India by giving the
Governor-General absolute and supreme power, and making the chief
officials responsible to Parliament instead of to the Company.
These were good and useful reforms; but extreme anxiety to check
the levying of war for purposes of gain led English statesmen to
enact further that the Governor-General should not make war at
all except for defence, thus leaving to his enemies practically
the undisputed power of taking the initiative in hostilities.
Lord Cornwallis, a good soldier, was the first Governor-General
under the new system; and Tippoo Sahib at once took advantage of
it to make a raid into the Carnatic. Cornwallis accordingly took
the field against him in 1791, and invaded Mysore from the east,
while a detachment from Bombay invaded it from the west. The
enterprise was most difficult, for it was certain that, as soon as
the British arrived on the table-land of Mysore, Tippoo would draw
a ring of devastation about them, destroying all food and forage.
With enormous difficulty Cornwallis reached Seringapatam, Tippoo's
capital city, and laid siege to it; but, strive as he would, he
could not provide transport for more than twenty days' supplies,
and he could only bring forward his ammunition by paying the women
and boys among the followers to carry each a cannon-shot or two.
Before he reached the city nearly all of his animals were dead, and
not only his guns but all the public conveyances of the army were
dragged by the troops. Ultimately he was obliged to destroy the
whole of his siege-train and retreat, his camp being poisoned by
the bodies of starved followers and cattle, and his troops weakened
by want of food. He must not be blamed. It is not easy to take an
army, even without a mass of followers, for a hundred miles through
a country where there is neither food nor forage.
In the next year, 1792, Cornwallis decided to try again, having
meanwhile captured several strong forts which would serve him as
advanced bases and magazines. The whole force from Bengal and
Bombay exceeded thirty thousand men; and, as he advanced, Tippoo
as usual burned the whole country on his line of march. But the
previous year's operations had given Cornwallis secure bases within
little more than fifty miles of Seringapatam; and four marches
sufficed to bring his force before the walls. Even so, if Tippoo
had left a garrison in the capital and used the rest of his force
to harass the British communications from end to end, Cornwallis
would have had much ado to keep his army in sufficient strength
before the walls; but Tippoo was proud of his disciplined infantry
and of his fortifications, and preferred to meet the British
with their weapons instead of with his own. The result was that
Cornwallis stormed Seringapatam out of hand within forty-eight
hours, and compelled Tippoo to sign a treaty which deprived him of
half of his territory and resources.
Now came the war of the French Revolution, a war above all of
French intrigues with every people, nation and language that
might bear England a grudge. During the ten years which followed
the peace of 1783 there had been little peril to the British in
Hindostan owing to the gathering strength of the Sikhs, who in
1785 had mastered the whole of the eastern Punjab from the Jhelum
to the Sutlej, where they formed at once a barrier against any
invasion from the passes on the north-west, and a dam against the
rising flood of the Marathas from the south. The Marathas had by
this time thrown off the authority of the Peshwa, and broken up
into five practically independent states; and the most powerful of
their chiefs, Scindia of Gwalior, had reoccupied Delhi and Agra and
had actually called upon the East India Company to pay tribute for
Bengal to him, as the holder of the old Mogul capital. A contest
between British and Marathas for the mastery of India was therefore
certain, sooner or later; but meanwhile the various members of
the late confederacy fought indiscriminately against each other.
The whole country was overrun with mercenary bands, eager to sell
themselves to the highest bidder; and adventurers of all nations
were to be found among them, not the least remarkable of such
being an Irish sailor, who became for a time a reigning prince
with an army of ten thousand men. Luckily for us these adventurers
prevailed upon many of the chiefs to train their armies after the
European model, which was a fatal error for them; for, choosing
to fight the British with their own weapons, they were bound to
deliver themselves into their enemies' hands.
Cornwallis left India in 1793, and was succeeded by Sir John Shore.
This well-meaning but feeble gentleman allowed both the Marathas
and Tippoo to increase their strength at the expense of the Nizam,
the ally of the British, and by his weakness encouraged Tippoo
to cultivate relations with the French. In 1798 he was succeeded
by a very different kind of man, Lord Mornington, better known
as Marquess Wellesley, who speedily made up his mind that the
anarchy outside the British dominions must cease, and that to
this end British authority must become paramount in India. Tippoo
Sahib, being the open ally of the French, was the first enemy to
be attacked; and the command of the expedition was entrusted to
General Harris with Colonel Arthur Wellesley, Mornington's younger
brother, for one of his brigadiers. Harris, knowing Tippoo's
trick of devastating his country before an invading army, had to
think out some method of neutralising it, for his difficulties of
transport and supply were frightful. In all he had 120,000 bullocks
to draw supplies and stores for his army, and those bullocks must
be fed, or the campaign would go for nothing. To protect them he
was obliged to advance in a hollow square, two miles broad and
seven miles deep, an extremely cumbersome formation; and yet his
only resource was to make feints of an advance in one direction so
that Tippoo should destroy the country in that quarter, and then
swerve away to a district which Tippoo had spared. This device was
successful. By much zig-zagging Harris reached Seringapatam in
thirty-two days without mishap, and after a month's siege stormed
the city for the last time. Tippoo was killed; Tanjore and the
Carnatic were annexed to the British dominions; and Mysore was
restored to the Hindu dynasty which had formerly ruled it. Arthur
Wellesley was meanwhile left in civil and military command of the
province, and during the next two years did excellent service in
restoring order in southern India. In particular he took note of
the superiority, for purpose of transport, of the Mysore bullocks,
which can trot six miles an hour.
Mornington's next step was to endeavour to restore the authority
of the Peshwa, so as to keep the Maratha chiefs from fighting
with their neighbours; but two of those chiefs, Scindia and
Holkar, evaded all British overtures; and accordingly an army
under General Gerard Lake was sent against Scindia's dominions
in the north, and another under General Arthur Wellesley against
those in the south. Scindia had a vast number of guns cast under
European direction, and twenty thousand infantry trained by
European officers; but Wellesley had thought out the means of
beating him whether he should adopt European tactics or the old
guerilla warfare--always worrying and never fighting--which was
traditional with the Marathas. He would make his campaign in the
rainy season, and always attack the enemy when on the march and not
when in position, for the Maratha chiefs had the gift of choosing
very strong positions. This he could ensure by organising his
transport, his supply-service and his pontoon-train to perfection.
The rivers being in flood he could always cross them with his
pontoons, whereas the Marathas would be stopped by them, so that
he could catch his enemy wherever he liked. Moreover, since the
Marathas lived on the country, whereas he carried his food with
him, he could always wait until hunger drove them from any position
they might have occupied, and then follow them up. This plan seems
very simple when you know it, but it needs a great general to think
out the details of a campaign in this way. Matters did not turn
out exactly as Wellesley had arranged; but he beat the Marathas
in a first desperate action at Assaye, where only his own skill
and coolness in the presence of tremendous odds saved the day; and
in a second action at Argaum, which victory being crowned by the
storm of the almost inaccessible fortress of Gawilghur crushed the
Maratha power in the south. In the north Lake likewise stormed
Aligarh, captured Agra, won one victory at Delhi, and then by a
second most desperate action at Laswari broke the might of Scindia
in the north. With Holkar however, who pursued guerilla tactics,
Lake was less successful. Holkar almost annihilated one of his
detachments under Colonel Monson, though this same Monson shortly
afterwards beat him handsomely at Deig. Lake himself stormed Deig a
little later, but failed with heavy loss in four several assaults
upon Bhurtpore, and was obliged to abandon the attempt and take up
the chase of Holkar, whom he hunted almost to the Indus before he
brought him to terms after three years of hard warfare. Peace left
the British in possession of Delhi and Agra with the contiguous
tracts on both sides of the Jumna, the whole of the country between
the Jumna and the Ganges, and the province of Cuttack, or in other
words with a continuous length of territory from Bengal north and
westward to the Upper Jumna, and southward to the Presidency of
Madras. Mornington further instituted the principle that native
states under British influence should keep no regular troops but
those hired from the Anglo-Indian Government, should refer all
disputes with their neighbours to British arbitration, and should
enter into no negotiations with foreign powers.