Sahib

  87 Rait, Gough, II, p. 169.

  88 A. E. Clark Kennedy, A Victorian Soldier: His Life and Times (Cambridge: 1950), p. 64. The inscription above their grave in Multan Fort appears in G. W. De Rhé-Philipe and Miles Irving, Soldiers of the Raj (London: 1989), p. 130.

  89 Rait, Gough, II, p. 255.

  90 Casualties like this would have given the 24th the melancholy distinction of being amongst the hardest hit battalions on the First Day of the Somme in 1916.

  91 Rait, Gough, II, p. 301.

  92 Ursula Low (ed.), Fifty Years with John Company: From the Letters of General Sir John Low (London: 1936), p. 347.

  93 Quoted in Low, Fifty Years, p. 129.

  94 Colonel G. B. Malleson (ed.), Kaye’s and Malleson’s History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58 (London: 1888), I, p. 96.

  95 Anon, Observations on India (London: 1853), p. 149.

  96 Lunt (ed.), Sepoy to Subedar, pp. 165-6.

  97 Lunt (ed.), Sepoy to Subedar, p. 161.

  98 Popularised in the USA as the ‘Minnie rifle’, the weapon was a muzzle-loading percussion rifle firing a bullet patented by Claude-Etienne Minié and Gustave Delvigne. It was adopted in Britain for the .703 inch 1851 Pattern rifle-musket, itself superseded by the .577 1853 Pattern, the first rifle to bear the name ‘Enfield’. See Major E. G. B. Reynolds, The Lee-Enfield Rifle (London: 1960), p. 17.

  99 Saul David, The Indian Mutiny (London: 2002), p. 98. This admirable book stands head and shoulders above other popular works on the subject.

  100 The best account of the massacre is Andrew Ward’s Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (London: 1996).

  101 Quoted in James Hewett (ed.), Eyewitnesses to the Indian Mutiny (Reading: 1972), p. 122.

  102 Brevet Major O. H. S. G. Anson, With HM 9th Lancers during the Indian Mutiny (London: 1896), p. 201.

  103 David Bromfield (ed.), Lahore to Lucknow: The Indian Mutiny Journal of Arthur Moffat Lang (London: 1992), p. 121.

  104 Bahadur Shah was tried for rebellion, treason and murder by a military commission on 27 January 1858. He was found guilty on all counts but, in view of Hodson’s promise, he was exiled for life to Rangoon where he died in 1862.

  105 The issue remains contentious, with Indian historians tending to believe her assertion that she had no means of preventing the atrocity. See David, Mutiny, PP. 351-2.

  106 Moon, British Conquest, pp. 769-70.

  107 Woodruff, Guardians, p. 25.

  108 Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 (Oxford: 1986), p. 3.

  109 Major F. G. Cardew, Hodson’s Horse 1857-1922 (London: 1928), p. 264.

  110 Quoted in Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India (London: 1979), p. 84.

  111 Sir Walter Lawrence, The India We Served (London: 1928), p. 125.

  112 Ian Copland, The British Raj and the Indian Princes: Paramountcy in Western India, 1857-1930 (London: 1987), p. 5.

  113 Keay, India, p. 447.

  114 James, Raj, p. 309.

  115 Quoted in Woodruff, Guardians, p. 173.

  116 Woodruff, Guardians, p. 361.

  117 G. J. Alder, British India’s Northern Frontier 1865-95 (London: 1963), pp. 2-3.

  118 Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (London: 1899), p. 24.

  119 Churchill, Malakand, p. 13.

  II. The Troopships Bring Us

  1 Quoted in Moon, British Conquest, p. 804.

  2 Field Marshal Lord Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life (London: 1903), I, p. 14.

  3 Quoted in Wilson and Crowley, Infantry Regiments of Surrey, p. 30.

  4 Precise numbers remain uncertain. The soldiers were drafts for the 12th Lancers, and the 2nd, 6th, 12th, 43rd, 73rd, 74th and 91st Foot, bound for the Kaffir War in South Africa. Despite oft-repeated assertions, sadly some of the women and children were lost.

  5 John Fraser, Sixty Years in Uniform (London: 1939), p. 77.

  6 Wolseley, Story, I, pp. 8-9.

  7 Perkes Papers, National Army Museum, 7505-57.

  8 Diary of Lieutenant Charles Scott, National Army Museum, 8405-22.

  9 Papers of Lieutenant Kendall Coghill, National Army Museum, 7207-4-1.

  10 Scott Diary, National Army Museum, 8405-22.

  11 Quoted in Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India (London: 1938), p. 142.

  12 Field Marshal Lord Roberts, Forty-One Years in India (London: 1938), p. 2.

  13 Major Colin Robbins, ‘Overland to India: By Donkey’, in Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vo.l 78 (2000), p. 109.

  14 Quoted in Michael Edwardes, Bound to Exile (Newton Abbot: 1972), p. 9.

  15 Corneille, Journal, p. 26.

  16 Corneille, Journal, p. 27.

  17 James Lunt (ed.), Scarlet Lancer (London: 1964), pp. 119-20.

  18 Corneille, Journal, p. 25.

  19 Bayley, Reminiscences, pp. 203-4.

  20 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 26.

  21 Lieutenant General Sir Francis Tuker (ed.), The Chronicle of Private Henry Metcalfe (London: 1953), p. 16.

  22 Pat Hayward (ed.), Surgeon Henry’s Trifles (London: 1970), p. 101.

  23 Quoted in Kincaid, Social Life, p. 85.

  24 Frank Richards, Old Soldier Sahib (London: 1936), pp. 64-5.

  25 Callwell, Stray Recollections, I, p.60.

  26 Corneille, Journal, p. 28.

  27 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 9.

  28 Lieutenant Colonel W. Gordon-Alexander, Recollections of a Highland Subaltern (London: 1888), p. 12. The 93rd was initially bound for China but was diverted to Calcutta. The miscreants soon forgot about their threat, and proved ‘smart, good soldiers’ in action.

  29 Corneille, Journal, p. 30.

  30 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 9.

  31 Peter Quennell (ed.), The Memoirs of William Hickey (London: 1960), p. 90.

  32 Ian Gordon, Soldier of the Raj: The Life of Richard John Purvis, 1789-1868 (Barnsley: 1994), p. 51.

  33 George Elers, Memoirs of George Elers (London: 1903), p. 180. For the remarkable story of Colonel Kirkpatrick’s family see William Dalrymple, White Mughals (London: 2002).

  34 Quoted in Kincaid, Social Life, p. 84.

  35 Violet Dickinson (ed.), Miss Eden’s Letters (London: 1919), p. 260.

  36 Wolseley, Story, I, p. 16.

  37 Wolseley, Story, I, p. 19.

  38 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 7-8.

  39 Philip Meadows-Taylor, The Story of My Life (London: 1919), p. 16.

  40 John Shipp, The Paths of Glory (London: 1969), p. 36.

  41 Kincaid, Social Life, pp. 69-71.

  42 Hayward, Surgeon Henry’s Trifles, p. 104.

  43 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 11.

  44 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, p. 12.

  45 Wolseley, Story, I, pp. 238, 241-2.

  46 Lieutenant Colonel A. T. Allan, HM’s 81st, quoted in Thomas Carter, Curiosities of War and Military Studies (London: 1860), pp. 63-4.

  47 Leslie Southwick, The Price Guide to Antique Edged Weapons (Woodbridge, Suffolk: 1982), items 216 and 282. The two swords were valued at more than £20,000 in 1982.

  48 Alan Harfield, ‘The Loss of the Guildford’, in Durbar: Journal of the Indian Military Collectors’ Society, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1992, pp. 6-11.

  49 Lunt (ed.), Scarlet Lancer, p. 125.

  50 Forbes-Mitchell, Reminiscences, pp. 6-8.

  51 Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies, 2 vols, (New Delhi: 1995) II, p. 12.

  52 Quoted in Kincaid, British Social Life, p. 90.

  53 Lady MacGregor (ed.), The Life and Opinions of Maj Gen Sir Charles Metcalf MacGregor (London: 1888), I, p. 14.

  54 Quoted in Kincaid, British Social Life, p. 90.

  55 Jane Vansittart (ed.), From Minnie, with Love (London: 1974), p. 51. Maria Lydia Blane (always known as Minnie) was married to Captain Archie Wood and had three children but found Archie’s spendthrift ways and
the climate too much for her, and returned to England, pregnant and alone, in 1861. She later married happily.

  56 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 3.

  57 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, I, p. 15.

  58 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 27.

  59 Diary of Sergeant Richard Hardcastle RHA, British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Photo Mss Eur 332.

  60 Swinson and Scott (eds), Waterfield, p. 25.

  61 Sergeant Thomas Duckworth letter, National Army Museum 1990-06-391-1.

  62 Colonel Armine S. H. Mountain, Memoirs and Letters (London: 1857), p. 83.

  63 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 16-17.

  64 ‘Lieutenant Walter Campbell 1812-1871’, in Michael Brander (ed.), The Sword and the Pen (London: 1989), p. 69.

  65 Captain Innes Munro, Operations on the Coromandel Coast (London: 1789), p. 190.

  66 Corneille, Journal, pp. 48-50.

  67 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 18, 80.

  68 Shipp, Paths of Glory, p. 45.

  69 James Williams letters, National Army Museum 6404-74-17. Williams gives no rank or regimental designation, but seems to have been a junior officer.

  70 J. Martin Bladen Neill, Recollections of Four Years Service in the East (London: 1845), p. 23.

  71 Richards, Old Soldier, p. 73.

  72 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 570.

  73 John Dunlop, Mooltan (London: 1849), no page nos.

  74 Munro, Coromandel Coast, pp. 19-20.

  75 Clark Kennedy, Victorian Soldier, p. 43.

  76 Dunlop, Mooltan.

  77 Quoted in Leigh Maxwell, My God: Maiwand (London: 1979), p. 61.

  78 Quoted in Hector Bolitho, The Galloping Third (London: 1963), pp. 137-8.

  79 ‘Private Charles Goodward’, in Brander (ed.), Sword and Pen, pp. 97-8.

  80 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, P. 79.

  81 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 114. A bandy is a carriage or bullock cart.

  82 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 119-20.

  83 R. G. Wilberforce, An Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny (London: 1894), pp. 79-80.

  84 Captain Crawford McFall, With the Zhob Valley Field Force (London: 1891), p. 16.

  85 Tuker (ed.), Chronicle, pp. 16-17.

  86 Forbes-Mitchell, Reminiscences, pp. 29-30.

  87 Swinson and Scott (eds), Waterfield, p. 44.

  88 Richards, Old Soldier, pp. 112-13.

  89 Fraser, Forty Years, p. 113.

  90 Bayley, Reminiscences, p. 61.

  91 Wilberforce, Unrecorded Chapter, p. 81.

  92 Bancroft, From Recruit to Staff-Sergeant, p. 8.

  93 J. J. Cotton, List of Inscriptions on Tombs and Monuments in Madras, (Madras: 1905), p. 79.

  94 Fyler, History of the 50th, p. 241; De Rhe-Philipe and Irving, Soldiers of the Raj, p. 86.

  95 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 29.

  96 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 131-2.

  97 Bayley, Reminiscences, pp. 53-4.

  98 Munro, Coromandel Coast, p. 190.

  99 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 25-6.

  100 Ian Gordon, Soldier of the Raj, p. 67.

  101 Maj. Le Mesurier, Kandahar in 1880, (London: 1880), p. 14.

  102 Russell, Mutiny Diary, p. 34.

  103 Dickinson (ed.), Miss Eden’s Letters, P. 33.

  104 J. W. Sherer, Daily Life during the Indian Mutiny (London: 1898), p. 59.

  105 Charles John Griffiths, A Narrative of the Siege of Delhi (London: 1910), p. 60.

  106 Griffiths, Narrative, p. 136.

  107 Bancroft, From Recruit to Staff Sergeant, p. 11.

  108 Bayley, Reminiscences, pp. 99-100.

  109 Thomsett, Peshawar Column, pp. 55-6.

  110 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 136.

  111 Paper currency was uncommon, although notes were soon issued by three private banks, the Carnatic Bank (1788), the Madras Bank (1795), the Asiatic Bank (1804) and the Madras Government Bank (1806). Several major European banking houses collapsed in 1827-28 (dishing Henry Havelock’s prospects of buying promotion) creating a general disruption in credit across the whole of Bengal, and presenting a serious challenge to British legitimacy.

  112 Bessie Fenton, The Journal of Mrs Fenton 1826-1830 (London: 1901), p. 67.

  113 Violet Jacob, Diaries and Letters from India 1895-1900 (Edinburgh: 1990), pp. 21-2.

  114 Quoted in Pat Barr, The Memsahibs (London: 1976), p. 93.

  115 Richards, Old Soldier, p. 159.

  116 Morris and Winchester, Buildings of The Raj, p. 93.

  117 Fraser, Forty Years, p. 80.

  118 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 117.

  119 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 29-9.

  120 Elers, Memoirs, pp. 60-1.

  121 Quennell (ed.), William Hickey, pp. 190, 251-2.

  122 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 29.

  123 Russell, Mutiny Diary, p. 51.

  124 Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Mother-Lodge’, in Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, 1885-1932 (London: 1933), pp. 436-8.

  125 Lady Julia Selina (Thesiger) Inglis, The Siege of Lucknow (London: 1892), p. 34.

  126 L. R. Runtz Rees, A Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow (London: 1858), p. 41.

  127 See Edwardes, Bound to Exile, pp. 133-6.

  128 Anson, With HM 9th Lancers, pp. 231, 187.

  129 David Bromfield (ed.), Lahore to Lucknow, p. 127.

  130 T. A. Heathcote, The Indian Army: The Garrison of British Imperial India, 1822-1922 (Newton Abbot: 1974), P. 73.

  131 Heathcote, Indian Army, p. 74.

  132 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 63.

  133 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 60.

  134 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 136, 165.

  135 Richards, Old Soldier, p. 85.

  136 Low (ed.), Fifty Years, p. 155.

  137 Maria Germon, Journal of the Siege of Lucknow (London: no date), p. 123. Crannies was slang for clerks, and also a vulgar word for Eurasians. It is impossible to be sure which Mrs Germon meant in this instance, but interesting to see how one word had two meanings, both derisive.

  138 Fraser, Sixty Years, p. 119.

  139 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 66-7.

  140 Meadows-Taylor, Story of My Life, pp. 62-3.

  141 Bayley, Reminiscences, p. 72.

  142 Quoted in Edwardes, Bound to Exile, p. 32.

  143 Fane, Miss Fane, p. 60.

  144 Fane, Miss Fane, p. 235.

  145 Diskinson (ed.), Miss Eden’s Letters, pp. 280-1.

  146 Fanny Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque (Manchester: 2000), p. 32.

  147 F. A. Steel and G. Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook (London: 1904), pp. 54-5. The titles of some servants (and the wages of most) differed between the three presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras: in Bombay the khitmagar was termed the masaul and in Madras he became the matey.

  148 The agricultural wage in 1803, for example, was between 12 and 18 rupees (£1-2) a year; by 1837 it had grown to 27-48 rupees. However, this consistently remained the equivalent of 41b of grain a day.

  149 Fraser, Forty Years, p. 83.

  150 Russell, Mutiny Diary, pp. 9, 11.

  151 Thomsett, Peshawar Column, pp. 62-3.

  152 Yeats-Brown, Bengal Lancer, pp. 16-17.

  153 Quoted in Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith, Earl of Birkenhead, Rudyard Kipling (London: 1978), p.60.

  154 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 64.

  155 Swinson and Scott (eds), Waterfield, pp. 103-4.

  156 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 65.

  157 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 168.

  158 Fane, Miss Fane, p. 62.

  159 Barter, Siege of Delhi, p. 00.

  160 Elers Memoirs p. 88.

  161 Spear, Nabobs, p. 181.

  162 Colonel H. C. Wyllie, Neill’s Blue Caps (Aldershot: no date), p. 317.


  163 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 60.

  164 Bancroft, From Recruit to Staff Sergeant, p. 4.

  165 Barter, Siege of Delhi, p. 19.

  166 Hardcastle letters in British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Photo Eur 332.

  167 Richards, Old Soldier, p. 91.

  168 Hardcastle letters in British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Photo Eur 332.

  169 Pictures in Anglesey, Cavalry, II, facing pp. 252-3.

  170 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, p. 66.

  171 Bayley, Reminiscences, p. 76.

  172 Thomsett, Peshawar Column, pp. 114-15.

  173 McFall, Zhob Field Force, pp. 51, 53.

  174 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 104.

  175 Callwell, Stray Recollections, I, p. 147.

  176 Bayley, Reminiscences, p. 73.

  177 Gordon, Purvis, p. 85.

  178 Lt Col. F. A. Hayden, Historical Records of the 76th Hindoostan Regiment (Lichfield: no date), pp. 194-5.

  179 Sherer, Daily Life, p. 169.

  180 Le Mesurier, Kandahar, p. 136.

  181 Hayward, Surgeon Henry’s Trifles, p. 107.

  182 Maj. A. E. Wardrop, Modern Pig-Sticking (London: 1914), p. 11.

  183 Wardrop, Pig-Sticking, p. 130.

  184 Wardrop, Pig-Sticking, p. 98.

  185 Wardrop, Pig-Sticking, p. 146.

  186 Wardrop, Pig-Sticking, pp. 211, 17, 200.

  187 Yeats-Brown, Bengal Lancer, p. 7.

  188 Jacob, Diaries, p. 35.

  189 Germon, Journal, p. 45.

  190 Shipp, Paths of Glory, p. 131.

  191 Home, Service Memoirs, pp. 184-5.

  192 Wilberforce, Unrecorded Chapter, pp. 89-90.

  193 Le Mesurier, Kandahar, p. 12.

  194 Richards, Old Soldier, p. 103.

  195 Richards, Old Soldier, p. 133.

  196 Richards, Old Soldier, pp. 170-2.

  197 Meadows-Taylor, Story of My Life, p. 32.

  198 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 5.

  199 ‘Soldier bat’, in The Londoner: Journal of I/25th Battalion The London Regiment, February 1917, p. 69.

  200 Lawrence, India We Served, p. 27.

  201 Callwell, Stray Recollections, I, p. 255.

  202 Quoted in Anglesey, Cavalry, II, pp. 300-1.

  III. Bread and Salt

  1 Steel and Gardiner, Complete Indian Housekeeper, p. 43.

  2 Lutyens, The Lyttons, p. 41.

  3 Lutyens, The Lyttons, p. 43.

  4 Heathcote, Indian Army, p. 25.