Introduction

We are still too close to the actual events for an unbiased judgement to be made on British rule in India. When in due course such a judgement can be made, one aspect of British rule is certain to surprise historians. This is that so vast a country, containing so many warlike people, could have been conquered by so few soldiers, and thereafter have been held in subjection by a military garrison composed chiefly of natives of the country. Indeed, the chief danger to the continuance of British rule lay in the spreading of disaffection in the native army, as was noted by Sir Thomas Munro, Governor of the Madras Presidency from 1820 to 1827. '... The spirit of independence will spring up in this army long before it is ever thought of among the people,' he wrote. 'The army will not wait for the slow operation of the instruction of the people, and the growth of liberty among them, but will hasten to execute their own measures for the overthrow of the Government.' The native army was in fact the key to British security, and the accuracy of Munro's prediction was proved correct thirty years later when the Bengal Native Army rose in revolt; had the Madras and Bombay Armies thrown in their lot with Bengal, all India would almost certainly have been lost.

The British went to India to trade—not to conquer. The Honourable East India Company traced its origins to the charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1599, to 'the Governor and Company of the Merchants of London, trading unto the East Indies'. The Company's first factory, or trading settlement, was established in 1612 at Surat, on the west coast of India, and in 1640 another settlement was established at Madras on the east coast. In that same year the first expedition was sent to Bengal, and was so well received by the Nawab of Bengal that the Company decided to establish a trading post on the river Hooghly, which has since grown into the great city of Calcutta. Bombay, which came into British possession as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, was ceded by Charles II to the Company in 1668.

The Company, during its early years in India, did its utmost to avoid becoming embroiled in the affairs of the various Indian potentates from whom it had received concessions to trade. Its attitude towards military expenditure did not differ from any other commercial enterprise's. War was basically unprofitable and hindered economic growth, and therefore the Company's servants were strictly charged to confine themselves to commerce. However, this was not as easy for the men on the spot as it was for their masters in London. The fact that the hinterland was seldom at peace, the various rajahs and nawabs warring continually with each other, forced the Company to take steps to defend their settlements against attack. Fort St George was built at Madras, Fort William at Calcutta, and permission was reluctantly given for the recruitment of small numbers of European soldiers and half-caste Portuguese, known as Topasses, who provided guards and escorts on ceremonial occasions, and acted as a police force within the settlements' boundaries. Their military value was negligible.

It was, however, the struggle between the British and French for the control of southern India and Bengal that compelled the Company to revise its military policy at the expense of its profits. War broke out between the two countries in 1744, and the French captured Fort St George after only four days' siege. The principal reason for the French success was the lack of an adequate force with which to oppose them, the Company preferring to economize in soldiers and to rely instead on its Indian allies. But when help was needed the allies were found wanting. Having reduced Fort St George, the French then moved farther south to Fort St David which was weakly defended. The garrison consisted of about 200 Europeans and 100 Topasses, together with some ill-equipped levies. Energetic efforts were made to raise and equip 2,000 Indian irregulars under their own officers but led by European commanders. It was from this disorderly mob that the senior regiments of the Company's Madras Native Army traced their descent. This force would certainly not have been strong enough to withstand the French but the Nawab of Arcot intervened on the side of the Company and the French withdrew. When the assault was renewed, in 1747, the arrival of a British fleet bringing reinforcements saved the day.

Among those reinforcements was a certain Major Stringer Lawrence, later to be known as the 'Father of the Indian Army'. A portrait of this stout and rubicund officer hangs in Fort St George, and one wonders how he managed to endure the hot and humid climate of Madras in his thick scarlet coat, tight-fitting waistcoat and breeches, not to mention his wig. Lawrence can claim the credit for being the first British officer to form native or sepoy regiments on the European model. He provided them with British officers and non-commissioned officers, and a proper code of pay and discipline, as well as ensuring that in discipline and training they were fit to take their place alongside European battalions in the field. The Hindi word sepoy is derived from the Persian sipahi, meaning soldier, and the East India Company's Indian regiments were always referred to as native, or sepoy, until 1885, when the word native, which the events of the Mutiny had somehow made derogatory, was dropped. Sepoy went out of use some time later.

Robert Clive, who had originally gone out to India as a civilian 'writer' in the Company's service, soon discovered his military talents in the wars against the French and he became Lawrence's ablest lieutenant. When he was sent from Madras at the end of 1756 to restore the Company's fortunes in Bengal, he emulated Lawrence's example by raising a battalion of carefully selected sepoys, clothing them on the British pattern, and appointing a British officer to instruct and command them. This, the earliest Bengal Native regiment, was known for many years as the Lal Paltan (the Red Regiment) from the colour of its tunics, but later it went by the name of Gillis-ki-Paltan from Captain Primrose Galliez who commanded it for many years. It was the 1st Bengal Native Infantry (1st BNI) when it mutinied at Cawnpore in 1857, and was thereafter disbanded. The word paltan is derived from the English platoon, which is itself a corruption of the French peloton. In Indian terms it came to mean a regiment, or battalion, of infantry, while rissalah denoted a troop or regiment of horse.

Many years were to pass before the Company's Native Army was established on regular lines but from the first it was divided between the Presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. The different circumstances existing in each Presidency resulted in each Presidency Army being virtually autonomous under its own Commander-in-Chief, although the Governor-General in Calcutta, who was also Commander-in-Chief until 1833, exercised supreme control. At first the main expansion of the Company's territories took place in the south, involving the Madras, or 'Coast', Army, and the Bombay Army to a lesser extent. However, as the Company's control over southern India was consolidated with the defeat of Tippu Sultan towards the end of the eighteenth century, the centre of interest moved first to the Deccan and Central India, and then towards Sind, the Punjab, and the North-West. The Bengal Native Army then became the largest and most important of the Presidency Armies, and its Commander-in-Chief took precedence over his Madras and Bombay colleagues as Commander-in-Chief in India. This situation lasted until 1895 when the offices of Commander-in-Chief of the Madras and Bombay Armies were abolished and all the troops in India were placed under the direct command of the Commander-in-Chief in India, and under the control of the Government of India.

The Company had from its earliest days in India maintained an establishment of European troops. These were originally recruited from various nationalities, of which the Germans proved the steadiest; by the beginning of the eighteenth century the composition was mainly British. The 1st Bombay European Regiment was the senior of the Company's European regiments, and Clive formed the Bengal European Regiment in 1756. This regiment ended its existence in 1922 as the Royal Munster Fusiliers, while the British Army's link with the East India Company's Army has ended even more recently with the disappearance of the Durham Light Infantry from the Army List. The second battalion of that very distinguished regiment was descended from the 2nd Bombay European Regiment. All these European regiments had distinguished records, but the Bengal Horse Artillery was probably the corps d'élite of the Company's European troops and had nothing to fear by comparison with the Royal, or King's, Troops. The latter were provided by the British Government at the Company's expense and were costly to maintain. The Company therefore endeavoured to keep their numbers to a minimum and in 1824, for example, there were only four British cavalry regiments and seventeen infantry battalions in India. This amounted to less than 30,000 men, and they were widely dispersed throughout the sub-continent. In that same year the Bengal Native Army alone contained sixty-nine infantry battalions, and the strength of the three Presidency Armies amounted to upwards of 200,000. For the security of its possessions in India, and for their further extension, the Company relied mainly on its sepoy regiments.

Although the organization of these regiments was slightly different in each Presidency, depending on the types of sepoys enlisted and the whims of the individual Commanders-in-Chief, there was not a great deal of difference between a Madras, Bombay, and Bengal battalion. There were twenty-three British officers in each battalion establishment, but there would seldom be more than nine or ten present at any one time; the remainder would be absent on the staff, on leave, or in other kinds of military and civilian employment. These officers held the Company's, not the King's, commission, and there was bitter rivalry between the Company's officers and those officers of the British Army serving in India; nor was this rivalry diminished by the fact that the Commanders-in-Chief of the Presidency Armies were usually found from the British Army. In each battalion there was a small cadre of a dozen or so British non-commissioned officers, who had either enlisted directly into the Company's European regiments, or who had transferred to them from the British Army.

The remainder of the battalion was composed of the natives of India, amounting in all to about 1,000 men, but strengths tended to fluctuate in accordance with the Company's financial policies. There were from eight to ten companies in each battalion, nominally commanded by a British officer, but often a native officer would be in command. The Grenadier and Light companies consisted of picked men, and it was not unusual to form 'Flank' battalions from the Grenadier or Light companies of several regiments in order to provide a stiffening for some particular operation or campaign. Since there were few British officers present with a battalion at any one time, most of the administration and training was carried out by the native officers. The senior of these in an infantry battalion was the Subedar-Major (Rissaldar-Major in the cavalry). There were ten Subedars in each battalion, one per company, and rather fewer Rissaldars in a cavalry regiment. The junior native officers were called Jemadars and normally commanded platoons. This name has now been dropped in the Indian Army and Naib-Subedar has been substituted; the word jemadar is also used to describe a sweeper, of menial caste, and it was never a popular title. Sergeants were called Havildars, and Corporals were Naiks.

Each Presidency Army recruited mainly from within the borders of its Presidency, but all three armies recruited from other areas as well. It is wrong to assume that the Bengal Army was mainly composed of Bengalis, as has sometimes been suggested in the correspondence columns of Indian newspapers; comparatively few Bengalis were in fact enlisted, as much on account of the Bengalis' reluctance to enlist as for any other reason. The bulk of the Bengal Army was recruited from Oudh, in what is now Uttar Pradesh, and from Bihar. Both Hindus and Mahommedans were enlisted, although high-caste Hindus made up the majority. The Bombay Army also recruited quite large numbers of Purbias (men from the east), which was the general name for men, and particularly for Brahmin and Rajput soldiers, from Oudh and UP. These sturdy peasants made smart soldiers but religious scruples, due to their high caste, made them difficult to handle at times. They had, for example, an aversion for serving beyond the sea, or even beyond the river Indus, or in Sind. The Madras and Bombay Armies, containing as they did a much smaller proportion of high-caste Hindus, gave much less trouble, and were relatively unaffected by the Mutiny in 1857.

The profession of arms was, and still is, a very honourable one in India. Therefore there was never any shortage of recruits. But promotion was slow, because discharge was seldom requested, and a man might expect to serve thirty or forty years before he became a native officer. Promotion was equally slow for the Company's British officers, and Colonels of over sixty, and Generals of over seventy, were not uncommon. Long service in the trying climate of India, without any of the amenities that today make it bearable for the European, must inevitably have sapped both physique and mental faculties. Training was mostly restricted to the parade ground and the musketry range; manoeuvres involving more than a few companies hardly ever took place; battalions were often split up into small detachments over wide areas, escorting treasure, acting as police, and so on. It was on the whole a dull and stultifying existence, in which home leaves were few and far between, and some British officers spent thirty years in India without returning to England. British officers with any ambition soon tired of regimental duty and sought alternative employment of which there was plenty to be had. Those with a gift for languages joined the Political Department, the high road to advancement in the Company's service, while others joined the Public Works Department, Customs and Excise, or other civil departments. Those who were content to remain at regimental duty can hardly be blamed if they became fossilised by the dull routine of cantonment life, but by no means all the Company's officers come into this category. Some of them managed to retain their vigour and keenness, and had a remarkable hold over their men.

By today's standards the Company's soldiers were ill-trained and inefficient, and yet they were incomparably superior to the undisciplined Indian levies which took the field against them. In particular, the superior handling of the Company's artillery more often than not guaranteed the victory, and the nearest the British ever came to defeat in India was against the Sikhs, whose artillery was equally well-trained and well-served. When one remembers that battles in those days were fought at close quarters, often reduced to the hundred yards or so that a musket ball would carry, it is not difficult to visualize the devastating effect of a discharge of grapeshot delivered at point-blank range. It needed highly disciplined troops to stand up to such fire, and to the bayonet charge that invariably followed through the billowing cannon smoke, and few of the Company's enemies were capable of doing this. Usually they left the field as fast as their legs, or their horses, could carry them.

The author of these memoirs took part in no less than seven major campaigns in the course of his forty-eight years' service, and this gives us some idea of the amount of fighting that took place before the British consolidated their rule over India. Most of these campaigns were internal and were fought to establish British predominance in the sub-continent. The wars against the Gurkhas in Nepal, the Pindaris and the Mahrattas in central India, and against the Sikhs in the Punjab, were all part and parcel of the extension of the East India Company's rule until it embraced the whole of India. The fighting that followed the Mutiny of the Bengal Native Army in 1857 comes into a slightly different category since it was, from the British point of view, basically an internal security operation and would doubtless be described as a counter-insurgency operation today. However, the campaign in Afghanistan from 1838 to 1842 was an entirely different campaign from all the others in which Sita Ram took part, and for this reason it requires some explanation here.

From times immemorial the classic invasion route into India has lain through the passes in the north-west, and indeed it was only as recently as 1962 that the Indian Government was made uncomfortably aware that there were also other invasion routes in the north and north-east. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 caused great alarm in Calcutta, where the Governor-General and his Council believed that it presaged an overland invasion of India via Persia and Afghanistan. The alarm petered out with the return of Napoleon to France in 1799 but it revived again later. This time it was the Russians who seemed to be menacing Britain's empire in India. They had defeated the Persians in 1827 and had begun to thrust out into Central Asia. Both the British and the Russians endeavoured to establish their influence in Persia, and with a variety of other Central Asian potentates, such as the Amir of Bokhara, and the activities of their agents in these areas was described by Captain Arthur Conolly, who was one of the British agents, as the 'Great Game'.

Russophobia was rampant in Calcutta by 1830 and there were many in London who also suffered from the complaint. It was believed that Russia had ambitions to extend her rule across Central Asia to embrace Afghanistan, and that once her frontier lay along the Hindu Kush an invasion of India was inevitable. The men who believed this were not irresponsible scaremongers but sober-minded statesmen, politicians, and civil servants, and they concluded that the British must establish their influence in Afghanistan before the Russians could get there. This could be done in one of two ways: either Afghanistan could be annexed and administered as a possession of the Crown, or a ruler who was friendly with the British could be established on the throne and be supported by British subsidies.

It so happened that at the time there was an Afghan king living in exile in the Company's territories in India. He was Shah Shujah-ul-Mulk who had been driven from his throne in 1809. Anarchy had followed his departure and ten years were to pass before Dost Mahommed emerged as the strong man of Afghanistan. Even Dost Mahommed, however, could not claim to control the whole of Afghanistan, and moreover he was engaged in a deadly feud with Maharajah Runjeet Singh of the Punjab, who was the Company's ally. Despite the advice of Captain Alexander Burnes, who led a mission to Kabul in 1837, that the British should support Dost Mahommed on condition he guaranteed to have no truck with the Russians, opinion in the Governor-General's Council was inclined to favour the cause of Shah Shujah-ul-Mulk. A treaty was entered into with the latter, as well as with Maharajah Runjeet Singh, whereby Shah Shujah was to be restored to the throne. The British hoped that most of the military support for Shah Shujah would be provided by the Sikhs, but Runjeet Singh was far too wise to allow his soldiers to become embroiled in the mountains of Afghanistan. It therefore became necessary to provide a British expeditionary force to escort Shah Shujah to Kabul and restore him to the throne. Once this had been done, the British intended to withdraw, leaving Shah Shujah to be protected by his own troops which had been raised and equipped in India. Thus the First Afghan War, misconceived from the outset, started as a military promenade and ended in a military disaster.

Sita Ram's account of this campaign, and of the other campaigns in which he participated, provides an excellent example of the attitude of the Indian sepoys towards their master, the great Company Bahadur, and the British officers who led them. When all was going well they considered themselves to be invincible, but once things began to go wrong, they became first bewildered and then dispirited. They found it hard to comprehend that the English were as fallible as other men, and they soon lost confidence in their leaders and themselves. An army of mercenaries, as the Bengal Native Army was, needs to be successful for most of the time, if not for all of the time, and there can be no doubt that the disastrous campaign in Afghanistan played an important part in damaging the sepoys' trust in their British officers. That Sita Ram appears to have retained that trust until the end of his long service is one of the most remarkable aspects of these memoirs, and it redounds greatly to his credit. Loyalty is after all one of the principal requirements of a soldier, and is second only to courage.