Sahib
5 Rait, Gough, II, p. 29.
6 Munro, Coromandel Coast, p. 320.
7 Shipp, Paths of Glory, p. 78.
8 Lunt (ed.), Scarlet Lancer, p. 152.
9 Barter, Siege of Delhi, p. 115.
10 Richard Hardcastle correspondence in British Library Oriental and India Office Collections.
11 Quoted in Bruce, Six Battles, p. 299.
12 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 28.
13 Fane, Miss Fane, p. 118.
14 Quoted in Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, p. 75.
15 Quoted in T. A. Heathcote, The Military in British India (Manchester: 1995), P. 183.
16 Richards, Old Soldier, pp. 76-7.
17 Quoted in Leonard Moseley, Curzon (London: 1960), p. 98.
18 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, pp. 216, 220.
19 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, p. 221.
20 Quoted in Heathcote, Military in British India, p. 182.
21 Gordon, Purvis, p. 85.
22 Clark Kennedy, Victorian Soldier, p. 41.
23 Clark Kennedy, Victorian Soldier, p. 73.
24 Low (ed.), Fifty Years, pp. 47-8.
25 Low (ed.), Fifty Years, p. 120. But not quite enough good: young Deas was killed in the First Afghan War.
26 Low (ed.), Fifty Years, p. 348.
27 Here I follow Heathcote, Indian Army, p. 27.
28 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, pp. 61, 63.
29 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 64.
30 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, I, p. 90.
31 Quoted Heathcote, Indian Army, p. 28.
32 Churchill, Malakand Field Force, p. 5.
33 Brig. Gen. J. H. Morgan, Leaves from a Field Note Book (London: 1916), p. 84.
34 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 213.
35 Olaf Caroe, The Pathans (London: 1965), p. 8.
36 Woodruff, Guardians, p. 292.
37 Lieutenant W. G. L. Benyon, With Kelly to Chitral (London: 1896), p. 72. Lieutenant Kelly’s prophecy was correct: all those in the force received the India Medal 1895-1902 with the bar ‘Relief of Chitral’.
38 Sherer, Daily Life, pp. 49-50.
39 Forrest (ed.), Chamberlain, p. 247.
40 Quoted in Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 6.
41 Forrest (ed.), Chamberlain, p. 247.
42 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 169.
43 http://www.expressindia.com/ie/ daily200000517/ina17003/html
44 Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 75.
45 Quoted in Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 206.
46 Michael Edwardes, Bound to Exile (Newton Abbot: 1972), p. 100.
47 Quoted in Moon, British Conquest, p. 753.
48 Quoted in Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 56.
49 Wilberforce, Unrecorded Chapter, pp. 25-6.
50 Lawrence, India We Served, p. 164.
51 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 76.
52 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 33.
53 Colonel A. R. D. Mackenzie, Mutiny Memoirs (Allahabad: 1892), pp. 84-5.
54 Wilberforce, Unrecorded Chapter, p. 25.
55 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 276.
56 Bromfield (ed.), Lahore to Lucknow, p. 65.
57 Roberts, Forty-One Years, pp. 130, 132.
58 Forrest (ed.), Chamberlain, p. 373.
59 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 284.
60 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 61.
61 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 268.
62 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 287.
63 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 337. By then the 1st Bombay European Fusiliers, which Daly had joined in 1840, had been taken into the British army as the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
64 Low (ed.), Fifty Years, pp. 374-5.
65 Holman, Sikander Sahib, p. 242.
66 Diver, Unsung, p. 225. The officer concerned was a young engineer on a public works project.
67 Cotton, List of Inscriptions, pp. 97-8. The old garrison cemetery at Seringapatam lies not far from Tipu’s fortress, behind a little hotel. Its gate is permanently shut, but can be scaled without difficulty even by middle-aged historians. There is an extraordinary poignancy to the tombs, which are mostly from the early 1800s and surrounded by undergrowth.
68 For an account of the regiment see René Chartrand and Patrice Courcelle, Emigre and Foreign Troops in British Service (2) 1803-15 (Oxford: 2000), pp. 24-33.
69 Taken by the 39th’s successor the Dorsetshire Regiment, and then by the amalgamated Devon and Dorsets. Flowers’ Marine Battalion had served in India from 1748, but this was a composite ‘battalion of detachments’ and the 39th therefore deserves its honour. See Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. 78, p. 299.
70 Donald Breeze Mendham Huffer, ‘The Infantry Officers of the Line of the British Army’, Unpublished PhD thesis, Birmingham University, 1995, PP. 245-6.
71 The 14th, 17th, 75th and 103rd all had Bengal tigers amongst their badges, and the 33rd, 78th and 94th Foot an elephant: all commemorated long and distinguished service in India.
72 Richards, Old Soldier, pp. 335-6.
73 Some regiments, like the Rifle Brigade and the Fusiliers, had always preferred the designation second lieutenant to that of ensign. The rank became universal, in 1872, as the junior commissioned rank in all arms. This did not stop some cavalry regiments, as late as the 1990s, from styling their second lieutenants as cornets.
74 Lieutenant Colonel H. W. C. Sandys, The Military Engineer in India (Chatham: 1935), II, p. vii.
75 Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, pp. 414-15.
76 Shipp, Paths of Glory, p. 3.
77 Swinson and Scott (eds), Waterfield, pp. 4-5.
78 John Fraser, Sixty Years in Uniform (London: 1939), pp. 40-1.
79 John Curtis, The British Army in the American Revolution (Yale: 1926), p. 164.
80 Elers, Memoirs, pp. 95-6.
81 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, p. 207.
82 Forbes-Mitchell, Reminiscences, pp. 136-7.
83 Elers, Memoirs, pp. 121-2.
84 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, p. 225.
85 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, I, p. 118.
86 Pennycuick Papers, private collection.
87 Carter in Mss Eur E262.
88 Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 17.
89 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, I, p. 385.
90 Rex Whitworth (ed.), Gunner at Large (London: 1988), pp. 110, 124. The captain lieutenant was the battalion’s senior lieutenant, commanding the company or troop which the colonel of the regiment notionally commanded and for which he drew the captain’s pay. The practice and the rank alike disappeared at the end of the eighteenth century. Lieutenant-fireworker was then the junior commissioned rank in the Royal Artillery.
91 See Huffer’s penetrating analysis in Infantry Officers, pp. 353-6.
92 ‘Lieutenant Walter Campbell’, Brander (ed.), Sword and Pen (London: 1989), p. 69.
93 Pearse, East Surrey Regiment, P. 337.
94 Bayley, Reminiscences, pp. 52-3.
95 Fraser, Sixty Years, p. 133.
96 Peter Stanley, White Mutiny (New York: 1998), p. 17.
97 Bancroft, Recruit to Staff Sergeant, pp. 28-9.
98 Carter in Mss Eur E262.
99 Perkes Papers, National Army Museum.
100 Papers of Lawrence Halloran, National Army Museum 199 9075 101.
101 Papers of Captain John Lyons, National Army Museum 8311-76.
102 De Rhé-Philipe and Irving, Soldiers of the Raj, p. 73.
103 De Rhé-Philipe and Irving, Soldiers of the Raj, p. 91.
104 Diary of George Carter, Oriental and India Office Collection of the British Library, Mss Eur E262.
105 Heathcote, Indian Army, p. 122.
106 Quennell (ed.), William Hickey, p. 312.
107 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, pp. 231-2.
108 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 65-6.
109 Wolseley, Story, I, p. 285.
110 Low (ed.), Fifty Years, p. 211.
111 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 217.
112 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, I, p. 71.
113 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 63.
114 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 219.
115 Bromfield (ed.), Lahore to Lucknow, p. 138.
116 Capt. E. E. Cox to Col. York, 8 August 1858, Cox Papers, private collection.
117 Quoted in David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj (London: 1994), p. 104.
118 Heathcote, Indian Army p. 122.
119 Elers, Memoirs, p. 54.
120 Michael Stigger, ‘Recruiting for rank in 1764, 1804 and 1857’, in Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, No. 70, 1992.
121 Quennell (ed.), William Hickey, P. 99.
122 Quennell (ed.), William Hickey, p. 99.
123 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, p. 206.
124 Cotton, List of Inscriptions, p. 347.
125 Holwell, Sikander Sahib, p. 215.
126 Forrest (ed.), Chamberlain, p. 9.
127 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, II, pp. 53, 69.
128 Gordon, Soldier of the Raj, p. 51.
129 Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. 69, 1991, pp. 59-61.
130 Heathcote, Indian Army, p. 123.
131 Low (ed.), Fifty Years, p. 147.
132 Wolseley, Story, I, p. 24.
133 Captain George Rybot Papers, National Army Museum 7907-99: Captain Willoughby Brassey Papers, National Army Museum 6807-459.
134 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, II, p. 99.
135 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 179.
136 Brassey Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
137 Quoted in Stanley, White Mutiny, p. 274.
138 In 1860 and 1881 the infantry titles were as follows:
1860
101st Royal
Bengal Fusiliers
102nd Royal
Madras Fusiliers
103rd Royal
Bombay Fusiliers
104th Bengal
Fusiliers
105th Madras
Light Infantry
106th Bombay
Light Infantry
107th Bengal
Infantry
108th Madras
Infantry
Fusiliers
109th Bombay
Infantry
1881
1st Bn Royal
Munster Fusiliers
1st Bn Royal
Dublin Fusiliers
2nd Bn Royal
Dublin Fusiliers
2nd Bn Royal
Munster Fusiliers
2nd Bn King’s
Own Yorkshire LI
2nd Bn Durham
LI
2nd Bn Royal
Sussex Regiment
2nd Bn Royal
Inniskilling
2nd Bn Leinster
Regiment
139 Richards, Old Soldier, pp. 86-7.
140 Though, as purchase had just over ten years to run, not all potential British cavalry and infantry officers were yet trained at Sandhurst.
141 Quoted in Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 115.
142 Lawrence, India We Served, p. 66.
143 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, pp. 140-1.
144 Rundrangshu Mukherjee, ‘“Satan Let Loose upon the Earth”: The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857’, in Past and Present, No. 128, August 1990, p. 99.
145 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, I, p. 53.
146 Omissi, Sepoy, p. 3.
147 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 499.
148 Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, p. 295.
149 Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour (London: 1974), p. 108.
150 Lunt (ed.), Sepoy to Subedar, p. 4.
151 Lunt (ed.), Sepoy to Subedar, p. 168.
152 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 67.
153 As non-commissioned ranks proliferated in the British army, so Indian ranks developed to catch up, with colour-havildar for colour sergeant and company havildar- major for company sergeant major.
154 The rank of ressaidar disappeared in the late nineteenth century.
155 F. Yeats-Brown, Bengal Lancer (London: 1930), pp. 19-20.
156 Brevet Major J. A. Bayley, Reminiscences of School and Army Life 1839-1859 (London: 1875), p. 76.
157 Bancroft, From Recruit to Staff Sergeant, p. 80.
158 ‘Journal of Sergeant Major George Carter’, in British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Mss Eur E262.
159 The value of the rupee altered little between 1750 and 1914, and for the first century of the period covered here it remained very stable at approximately 10 rupees to £1 Sterling. In 1893 the exchange rate was arbitrarily fixed at 1 rupee to 1 shilling and 4 pence, and in 1899, 15 rupees were worth £1. In 1903 Yule and Burnell noted that ‘a crore of rupees was for many years almost the exact equivalent of a million sterling. It had once been a good deal more, and has now for some years been a good deal less’ (see Hobson-Jobson, p. 276).
160 Heathcote, Indian Army, pp. 127-30.
161 ‘Lieutenant Walter Campbell’, in Brander (ed.), Sword and Pen, p. 70.
162 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 29.
163 Bessie Fenton, The Journal of Mrs Fenton 1826-1830 (London: 1901), p. 70.
164 Gordon, Purvis, p. 16.
165 Gordon, Purvis, p. 78.
166 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 19-20.
167 Gordon, Purvis, pp. 81-2.
168 Gordon, Purvis, p. 87.
169 Fenton, Journal, p. 70.
170 Gordon, Purvis, pp. 75-6.
171 Parkes, Wanderings, p. 43.
172 Le Mesurier, Kandahar in 1880, p. 2.
173 MacGregor (ed.), Life and Opinions, II, pp. 187, 189, 198.
174 Marsham (ed.), Havelock, p. 162.
175 ‘Lieutenant Walter Campbell’, in Brander, Sword and Pen, p. 79.
176 Corneille, Journal, p. 81.
177 Gordon, Purvis, p. 101.
178 Germon, Journal, pp. 29-30. A seer had many local definitions, but the Indian Weights and Measures Capacity Act of 1872 attempted to fix it at 2.2 lbs.
179 Mason, Matter of Honour, p. 237.
180 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 657.
181 Corneille, Journal, p. 138.
182 Wood, Gunner at Large, p. 105.
183 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 71.
184 ‘Lieutenant John Pester’, in Brander, Sword and Pen, p. 17.
185 Letter of 22 November 1839 in Pennycuick Papers, private collection.
186 Mason, Matter of Honour, p. 206.
187 Hardcastle correspondence in British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Photo Mss Eur 332.
188 Forbes-Mitchell, Reminiscences, pp. 228-9.
189 Elers, Memoirs, p. 98.
190 Elers, Memoirs, pp. 99-100.
191 Shipp, Paths of Glory, p. 151.
192 Documents relating to the distribution of prize-money in consequence of hostilities against the Pindarees and certain Maharatta Powers, bound as three volumes, private collection, Vol III, p. 228. A kutchery (more usually cutcherry) is ‘an office of administration, a court-house’.
193 Russell, Mutiny Diary pp. 102-3, 121.
194 Muter, My Recollections, pp. 136-40.
195 Vibart, Sepoy Mutiny pp. 151-2.
196 Germon, Journal, p. 102.
197 Quoted in Clark Kennedy, Victorian Soldier, p. 64.
198 Swinson and Scott (eds), Waterfield, pp. 105.
199 Anglesey (ed.), Pearman’s Memoirs, pp. 106-8.
200 Wolseley, Story I, pp. 340-1.
IV. The Smoke of the Fusillade
1 Captain H. L. Nevil, North-West Frontier (London: 1912), p. 18.
2 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 95.
3 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 70.
4 Moon, British Conquest, p. 823.
5 ‘Lieutenant John Pester’, in Brander (ed.), Sword and Pen, p. 1.
6 ‘Lieutenant John Pester’, in Brander (ed.), Sword and Pen, pp. 2-3.
7 Lawrence, India We Ruled, p. 65.
8 Lt C
ol. J. Gurwood, Selections from the Dispatches and General Orders of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington (London: 1841), p. 43. Horses are notoriously susceptible to contracting colic, a potentially fatal form of equine indigestion, if their diet is changed. A garce was a cubic measure widely used on the Madras coast. By some measures it was equivalent to 10,800 lbs but there were wide local variations.
9 Wolseley, Story, I, p. 350.
10 See A. W. Lawrence (ed.), Captives of Tipu: Survivors’ Narratives (London: 1929).
11 Captain John Williams, The Bengal Native Infantry (London: 1817), pp. 306-7.
12 Russell, Mutiny Diary, p. 67.
13 Bancroft, From Recruit to Staff Sergeant, p. 54.
14 Letter from an unknown cavalry officer in Antony S. Bennell, The Maratha War Papers of Arthur Wellesley (London: 1998), pp. 288-90. The 19th fought prodigiously well, losing their commanding officer, Colonel Patrick Maxwell, who commanded Wellesley’s cavalry that day.
15 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 36.
16 Quoted in Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, p. 65.
17 Bromfield (ed.), Lahore to Lucknow, p. 60.
18 Home, Service Memoirs, p. 109.
19 Griffiths, Narrative, p. 35.
20 Mackenzie, Mutiny Memoirs, pp. 201-2.
21 Bromfield (ed.), Lahore to Lucknow, p. 127.
22 Jacob, Diaries, pp. 24-5.
23 Quoted in Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, p. 16.
24 Benyon, With Kelly to Chitral, pp. 38, 43.
25 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 334.
26 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, pp. 69, 137-8.
27 Hervey, Soldier of the Company, p. 112.
28 Sherer, Daily Life, p. 142.
29 Quoted in Anglesey, Cavalry I, p. 274.
30 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 125.
31 Wolseley, Story I, p. 371.
32 Anson, With HM 9th Lancers, p. 226.
33 Daly (ed.), Memoirs, p. 215.
34 Quoted in Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 (Oxford: 1986), p. 82.
35 General Sir Ian Hamilton, Listening for the Drums (London: 1944), pp. 125-6.
36 Yeats-Brown, Bengal Lancer, p. 15.
37 Quoted in Holman, Sikander Sahib, p. 182.
38 Roberts, Forty-One Years, p. 183.
39 Stokes, Peasant Armed, p. 98.
40 Quoted in C. Grey, European Adventurers in Northern India (Lahore: 1929), p. 312.
41 Quoted in H. G. Keene, Hindustan under the Free Lances (Shannon: 1972), p. 80.
42 Quoted in Grey, European Adventurers, p. 60. O’Brien’s real name may have been Matthew Heaney.
43 Quoted in Grey, European Adventurers, p. 71.
44 Quoted in Grey, European Adventurers, p. 71.