THE FIRST BATTALION.
1865-1884.
CHANGES IN ARMY ORGANISATION: THE SECOND AFGHAN WAR.
While the second battalion of the Royal Irish regiment was winning
its spurs in New Zealand, the first was quartered in southern India.
At the end of 1865 it was ordered home; volunteering into other corps
was permitted, and 381 non-commissioned officers and men elected to
finish their service in the East, while 29 officers[225] and 450
other ranks, with 44 women and 72 children, embarked in February,
1866, at Bombay in two ships, the slower of which did not reach
England until the end of June. Two years later the battalion was
sent to Ireland, and in August, 1871, was warned for another tour
of foreign service. This order filled all ranks with dismay, for if
any corps in the British army had the right to expect a long rest at
home it was the first battalion of the XVIIIth. Since 1692, when it
first landed on the Continent, it had spent a hundred and nineteen
years out of the United Kingdom, and between 1837, when it sailed for
Ceylon, and its return from India in 1866, it had served abroad with
one short break of less than six months’ duration; it had fought with
distinction in China, in Burma, and in the Crimea, and had shared in
the suppression of the Indian Mutiny. To explain why the War Office
sent the first battalion on foreign service again so quickly, it
becomes necessary to allude briefly to the long series of changes in
the organisation of the army which began to take effect in 1870.
The strain thrown on the military resources of Britain by the
Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny had convinced even the most
determined economists in the House of Commons not only that the army
was too small, but that it was utterly lacking in power of rapid
expansion in case of need. To increase its numbers in time of peace
was comparatively easy, and by the addition in 1858-59 of second
battalions to the twenty-five senior regiments of the line, the
infantry was materially strengthened. But to render the army more
elastic, more fit to meet a sudden national emergency, was a far
more difficult matter. The process by which the XVIIIth was brought
up to war strength for the Crimea[226] was the only method then
known for making a regiment ready to take the field, for as there
were no reservists to replace men too weakly or too young for a
campaign, the ranks of a corps ordered on active service could only
be filled by the depletion of other units, which by this process of
“robbing Peter to pay Paul” were reduced to impotence, until they
in turn had obtained recruits and trained the raw material into
soldiers. Of the various attempts to form an adequate reserve one
only was successful--the “militia reserve,” composed of the best
men in the constitutional force, who for a small annual retaining
fee undertook in case of need to serve as regular soldiers in any
part of the world. But this was only a reversion to the methods of
the Crimean days, for it called away the pick of the militia at the
moment when they were required, if not for active service, at least
for garrison duty at home and in the Mediterranean; and at best it
could produce but a limited supply of men who were obviously very
inferior in quality to well-trained ex-regular soldiers. The problem
of how to create an adequate reserve remained virtually unsolved for
many years, though numberless committees were appointed to consider
the question in all its bearings. The subject was, indeed, most
complex. The army at home had to be prepared to defend the British
Isles, to embark on expeditions beyond the limits of the United
Kingdom, and to replace the waste caused by death, by invaliding, and
by the discharge of “time-expired” men among the troops abroad, of
whom 70,000 were quartered in India, while nearly 50,000 more were
scattered in garrisons among our fortresses and colonies in other
parts of the world. Gradually the opinion gained ground that it was
hopeless to expect the army to discharge these varied duties, unless
there was behind it a large body of highly-trained and disciplined
men who, when a war was imminent, could be counted upon to reinforce
the troops at home; and the brilliant success of the Prussians in
“the Seven Weeks’ War” of 1866, determined our government to adopt
a modification of the German principle of short service with the
Colours, followed by a period of service in the Reserve. To devise
a system suitable to an army recruited by voluntary enlistment,
and of which a very large proportion is normally stationed abroad,
required years of preparation, and it was not until 1870 that Mr
Cardwell, then Secretary of State for War, began to introduce
the great innovations which modernised the British army. By the
abolition of “purchase,” rich men were no longer able to buy their
steps, and by the power of the purse obtain promotion over the heads
of their poorer comrades; the ages were fixed at which officers
of various ranks were to retire, so that a reasonable flow of
promotion was obtained; the garrisons of the tropical colonies were
reduced, while those of the great oversea provinces were gradually
withdrawn; recruits were enlisted for twelve years--the first six
to be passed with the Colours, and the remainder in the Reserve;
while to provide for an adequate and systematic flow of trained men
to India and our other outlying possessions, regiments were linked
together in pairs--one serving at home, the other abroad. One of the
functions of the “home” battalion was to impart to the recruits the
ground-work of military training, and, when the young soldiers were
fit to serve out of the United Kingdom, to send them in drafts to
the “foreign” battalion, where they remained for the rest of their
service with the Colours, and then on their return to the United
Kingdom were transferred to the Reserve. In the first twenty-five
regiments, which already possessed two battalions, the process of
“linking” was effected without the difficulty and friction which
frequently occurred in cases where two corps, strangers to each other
in tradition and sentiment, were suddenly brought into the intimate
relation of virtual partnership; and when in 1882, regiments ceased
to be designated by numbers, and the identity of the original units
was merged into that of the territorial regiment, the XVIIIth became
the Royal Irish regiment with no regret beyond that of the loss of
the number under which it had won distinctions in every part of the
world.
As the second battalion had only just returned from New Zealand
and Australia, it was the turn of the first battalion, under the
newly introduced system, to go abroad; and on January 18, 1872,
Lieutenant-Colonel G. H. Pocklington, with 26 officers and 606 other
ranks, embarked for Malta. After three years the first battalion,
917 strong, sailed for India under command of Lieutenant-Colonel
E. L. Dillon, and early in December reached Bareilly, where it was
quartered for nearly four years. While it was at this station His
Majesty King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, made a Royal progress
through the Eastern Empire that would one day be his, and on the
6th of March, 1876, stopped at Bareilly on his way from the Terai
to Allahabad: His Royal Highness was received by a guard of honour
of the Royal Irish, while the remainder of the battalion lined the
avenue through which he passed on his way to the palace of the Nawab
of Rampore. In the evening the Prince did the battalion the honour
of dining with the officers, and gave to the mess portraits of the
Princess of Wales and himself as a memento of his visit, and a few
days later two large steel engravings of the Prince and Princess of
Wales were sent by His Royal Highness as a present to the sergeants’
mess. A year later the death occurred of Field-Marshal Sir John
Forster Fitzgerald, G.C.B.,[227] who since 1850, when he succeeded
Lord Aylmer, had been the Colonel of the XVIIIth, Royal Irish
regiment. This veteran, whose age had earned for him the title of
“the father of the British Army,” was born in Ireland in 1786, before
the abolition of the iniquitous system by which wealthy men were
allowed to buy commissions for infants prattling in the nursery. At
the mature age of eight Fitzgerald was a captain in the regular army,
at seventeen he was a major, and he obtained his lieutenant-colonelcy
when only twenty-four years of age. He served in the Peninsula,
commanding a brigade in the battle of the Pyrenees in 1813; in 1854
he became General, and in 1875 received a Field-Marshal’s bâton. He
died in March, 1877, at Tours, and by the special order of Marshal
Macmahon, then President of the French Republic, the whole of the
garrison attended the funeral to pay to the British officer the
honours accorded to Frenchmen of his exalted military rank. He was
succeeded as Colonel of the XVIIIth by Lieutenant-General Clement A.
Edwards, C.B.[228]
The first battalion changed stations from Bareilly to Ferozepore
in February, 1878, and just after Lieutenant-Colonel M. MacGregor
succeeded to the command on September 13, 1878, two companies were
detached to Mooltan, while a third was sent to Dera Ismail Khan,
one of the posts guarding the north-west frontier of India. For
a few days there seemed to be a chance of “blooding” some of the
young soldiers of the XVIIIth, for the Mahsood Waziris raided into
our country and burned the town of Tank some thirty miles from Dera
Ismail Khan. The native cavalry of the garrison were at once sent
to the scene of the outrage, and fell heavily upon the freebooters,
many of whom were killed and wounded, while the remainder fled to
the neighbouring hills, where they threw up sangars and challenged
us to attack them. But the officer in command of the British column
was not disposed to squander the lives of his troops by assaulting
stone breast-works without a preliminary bombardment; and remembering
that some of the Royal Irish had been taught gun-drill at Dera Ismail
Khan, he ordered up a couple of pieces, manned by soldiers of the
XVIIIth under an officer of the regiment, Lieutenant H. Shuldham-Lye.
The amateur gunners, “spoiling for a fight,” pushed on to Tank at
speed, but when the tribesmen heard that guns were to be used against
them they suddenly dispersed, and the little campaign came to an end.
For its services the detachment was officially thanked by the officer
in command of the operations.
A few months after the Royal Irish arrived at Ferozepore Russian
intrigues involved Britain in war with Afghanistan, an independent
State whose mountains overhang part of the north-west frontier of
India. As early as 1837, England and Russia were contending for the
privilege of directing the foreign policy of the Amir of Afghanistan,
upon whose borders the rival European Powers were advancing by giant
strides in the course of their Asiatic conquests; and when the Amir,
Dost Mahomed, cordially welcomed a Russian officer, who brought from
the Czar proposals for an alliance against England, our government
determined to depose Dost Mahomed and to replace him with a nominee
of their own. The attempt to carry this scheme into execution
produced the first Afghan war, in which the Czar made no effort to
help the Amir, being satisfied at having involved his great rival in
an expensive and disastrous campaign with the country he proposed
some day to use as a stepping-stone in the invasion of India. At the
end of the Crimean war Russia, foiled in her projects against Turkey,
devoted her energies to the subjugation of Central Asia, where vast
territories fell into her hands; and by the conquest of Khiva in
1873, she advanced her outposts to within four hundred miles of our
Indian frontier, establishing herself within easy striking distance
of Afghanistan. Shere Ali, the Amir, trembling for his independence,
offered his friendship to England if she would give him a specific
promise of help against Muscovite aggression, but as our government
refused any such guarantee he decided to throw in his lot with
Russia. In 1877, there was war between the Sultan and the Czar, and
as it seemed probable that England would again intervene by force
of arms to save Turkey from annihilation, the Russians intrigued
more vigorously than ever with Afghanistan, sending a military envoy
to the Amir, who received him with every mark of distinction. To
counteract the effect produced in every village in India by the
knowledge that a Russian envoy had been officially welcomed at Kabul,
the Viceroy decided that a British mission should visit Shere Ali,
who was informed that Sir Neville Chamberlain was coming to discuss
matters of importance with him in a friendly spirit. In due time the
mission set forth from Peshawar, but in the Khyber Pass, just within
the Amir’s boundary, its members were turned back by Afghan troops,
who under orders from Kabul refused to allow them to advance farther
into Afghanistan. As Shere Ali declined to apologise for this insult,
war became inevitable, and after our ultimatum had been rejected
British troops invaded his country from various points.
It is not proposed to describe the operations of the second Afghan
war, for the first battalion of the Royal Irish, upon whom fortune
had frowned during the Mutiny, were still pursued by ill luck, and
played but the smallest part in the campaign. Though the war began in
November 1878, it was not until the beginning of the following year
that the first battalion was ordered up from Ferozepore to join the
reserve division of the Northern Afghanistan field force at Peshawar.
A few weeks later this division was broken up; the battalion was
transferred to the Khyber Line force; and on May 2, 1879, eight
hundred and four stalwart Royal Irishmen found themselves at the
foot of the great wall of rock which forbids access to Afghanistan
from the plains of India.[229] This natural rampart is pierced by
the Khyber Pass--a dark and gloomy gorge, winding its way between
high mountains which so nearly approach each other that in places
their rugged sides are only ten or twelve feet apart. Through this
defile, one of the most difficult in the world, runs the track which
for centuries has been the highway of commerce between Central Asia
and Hindustan. In the middle of the pass the mountains, suddenly
receding, form a plain, where the battalion spent the next ten
months in discharging the useful but unattractive duties which
fall to the lot of line of communication troops. They had to hold
Lundi Kotal and Ali Musjid; to provide escorts for convoys through
the pass, and to piquet the neighbouring hills. The guards were
numerous, for the local tribesmen were expert thieves, to whom every
British rifle was worth its weight in rupees; and notwithstanding
the vigilance of the sentries in the sangars round the camp, Afridi
robbers succeeded in abstracting a few firearms from the tents in
which the men were sleeping. A good many non-commissioned officers
and privates were lucky enough to escape from the drudgery of this
existence by obtaining employment as signallers on the Kabul-Peshawar
line, where from constant practice they became experts with flag and
heliograph. During the summer there was a sharp outbreak of cholera
in the battalion, which cost the lives of Quartermaster R. Barrett
and sixty of the other ranks.[230] “It came up from India in the
most curious way, right along the signallers’ posts. We heard of it
first at Jumrood; a few days afterwards a man in the first post was
taken ill; a few days more and the second post was attacked, though
there appeared to be no communication possible (except by heliograph)
between the posts, and it gradually kept on till it reached the
regiment. We knew it was coming; we could not move, and I think,”
writes an officer, “that it showed the staunchness of the Royal
Irish that they never went to pieces at all.” To keep up the spirits
of the men and give them some amusement the officers rigged up a
gymnasium and laid out a polo-ground and racecourse, where regimental
gymkhanas were often held.
[Illustration: THE AFGHANISTAN, EGYPT (1882) AND NILE CROSS AT
CLONMEL.]
Although the first battalion was not actively engaged in the Afghan
war, the officers and men who served in the Khyber Pass received the
medal, and the regiment was permitted to add the words “Afghanistan
1879-80” to its battle honours. At the end of the campaign in 1881
the Royal Irish returned to India, and for the next two years and a
half oscillated between the great cantonment of Rawal Pindi and the
hill station of Kuldurrah. On May 23, 1882, when Lieutenant-Colonel
M. MacGregor’s term of command expired, he was succeeded by
Lieutenant-Colonel H. Shaw, V.C., and in July of the same year the
death of Lieutenant-General Edwards broke one of the few links still
connecting the XVIIIth with its campaigns in the middle of the
nineteenth century. He died full of years and honours, respected and
admired not only by the regiment with which he had passed the best
years of his life, but by every officer and man with whom he had
served during his long career.[231] Lieutenant-General and Honorary
General Sir Alexander Macdonnell, K.C.B., was appointed to replace
him as Colonel.[232] A few weeks after the Royal Irish lost their
Colonel, the second battalion sailed from England for Egypt to
take part in the campaign described in the next chapter. The first
battalion continued to serve in India until August, 1884, when in
its turn it was summoned to Egypt as one of the corps selected for
the attempt to rescue General Gordon from the dangers besetting him
at Khartoum. The account of the doings of the first battalion in the
Nile Expedition will be found in chapter xii.