The Press. — London, England, 1858-02-06 00:00:00

.4110 , 1858. ••• • to some 30,000 men. Their commissariat • WaR lamentably inefficient His greatest trouble appears to be a " deficiency of grain." 11 0 never could get too much grain fur men or fodder for his bullocks. Soon after joining he writes : There was not a grain of rice to be got in the bazaar at Arcct, and, after bullying and writing day and night, I hav e got plenty in my camp, and have been able to go on for a fortnight without drawing upon the public stores, contrary to the expectation of everybody, and without putting the public to the expense of a single shilling. This I shall continue to do as long as the army may remain here. r asked for assistance, and he sent me two Company's offi cers ; one of them, a brother of —, eo stupid that f can make no use of him, and the other such a rascal that half of my occupation consists in watching him, lest under the authority of my name be should play tricks in the country. At all events, they are not my personal staff; they have their own duties, and can't assist me in doing mine; and if they had not, I cannot trust them even to copy a letter for me, as they would reveal its contents. Besides this, they neither of them understand one syllable of th e l aw guage ; have never been even in a camp, much less on service ; and I may say of them, as I do of —, that they are an incumbrance. The army now forming was under the coin. mand of General Harris. Lord Mornington at this period came down to Madras and pro posed to come up to camp. The colonel expressed objections to the presence in the camp of the Governor-General during active operations were freely in a letter dated Camp, Vellore, 29th January, 1799 : My Dear Mornington,—l have just received a letter from Henry, in which he has desired that I should give you my opinion respecting the propriety and utility of your joining the army and accompanying it during the campaign. I am entirely ignorant of the objects which you may have in view in coining, which may certainly counter balance the objections I have to the measure; but it tip pears to me that your presence in camp, instead of giving confidence to the general, would in fact deprive him of the command of the army, and that scene would be acted over again, probably in the presence of the enemy, which, to my annoyance, I have so often witnessed at Madras. Every thing which the general might think necessary will be thwarted and canvassed, not by you probably, but by those whom you will naturally wish to consult; the general's own staff, and the principal officers of his army, who ought to think of nothing excepting how his orders are to be carried into execution, instead of their propriety, and in what manner they shall thwart them if they should not approve of them. All I can say upon the subject is, that if I were in General Harris's situation, and you joined the army, I should quit it. In my opinion be is at present awkwardly situated, and he will require all the powers which can be given to him to keep in order the officers aho will be in his army. Your presence will diminish his powers, at the same that as it is impossible you can know anything of military matters, your powers will not answer the purpose, which even those which he has at present may, if you or Lord Clive are not in the army. This letter is a curious example of the impor tance he attached to the personal responsibi lity of an ocer. He never shrunk - sonal responsibility himself, but from then ho demanded that power should accompany responsibility. Neither was Lord ClivP to come into camp. " Lord Clive," he writes, " ought to be kept at " Madras; and I know of no method of doing " that so likely to succeed as your giving " him some occupation there." Of the abilities of Lord Clive he had no very high opinion. "He is," he writes (1791), a mild, mode " rate man, remarkably reserved, having " a bad delivery, and apparently a heavy " understanding. He certainly has been " unaccustomed to consider questions of " the magnitude of that uow before him, but " I doubt whether he is so dull as he appears, " or as people here imagine he is ": The truth is, he does not want talents, but he is very diffident of himself; and now that he has begun to find out that there is no conjuration in transacting the business of Government, he improves daily, takes more upon him self, and will very shortly have less confidence and reliance than he must have at present upon the opinions and abilities of those who have long done the business of the country. The campaign opened early in March, 1799, by the attack of l'ippoo upon Sedaseer ; on the 9th he was attacked in turn by General Stewart with the Bombay army, and beaten. On that thy Colonel Wellesley writes in high spirits. The allusion to Sir John Malcolm is charac teristic of both'— We are going on well ; have got Oodeadroog, Batin gerry, Anchittydroog, and Neilgherry. About thirty thousand brtnjarries are with the army. You have read Durnourier's account of his organising the Poles; I am employed in a business of muoh the same kind. My Pules light too, and that not badly, 1 assure you; and if 1 can give them some pm* to distinguialt THE PRESS, FEBRUARY 6, An old gun or two and a few rounds of ammunition might be put in each, and in time of war it might be ad visable to hire a few matchlock peons for their defence. " No danger," he adds (and here his opinion of mud forts is worth quoting), " can result " from their weakness, as if the enemy in " force were to take possession of them all, " there would be no difficulty in getting them " agsin. I never saw a mud fort worth any " thing excepting against cavalry." Secondly, ho recommends the villages to be inclosed with bound hedges and gateways : Where the main body of the army marches, where strong detachment of good cavalry with cannon or of infantry goes, the bound hedge will be no defence ; but as nine parts in ten of the native armies are looties or bad cavalry, as these do nearly all the mischief, and they can not penetrate the hedge, I am of opinion that they ought to be made, particularly as, if all the villages are open, and the inhabitants fly to the bills, all the villages will be burnt or otherwise destroyed. But the most efficient defence, he declares, against marauders is, after all, an organised guerilla corps : _ _ A small corps of infantry, lightly armed and accoutred, ' with three or four piecesof light artillery, to be used as occasion might require, togethe• with the garrisons in the hill forts, under active and merciless partisans, would do more towards defending the Barahinahal and its inhabi• tants against looties than a large army. That this recommendation is based on sound and practical experience we see in the vain efforts we make by our heavy columns of Europeans to suppress the bands of marauders now desolating Central and Western Colonel Wellesley also drew up most able minutes upon the policy of supplying the Nizam with a contingent of our own, which should replace a dangerous element then at the Nizam's disposal—viz , 14,000 natives dis ciplined by French officers—and which views wore carried out with complete success. Affairs became more complicated, and Arthur Wellesley's active mind was fully employed drawing up matured plans of attack and defence, and making every possible pre paration for• the provision of stores and trans port for the army. No colonel ever took so much care of his men, or exhibited such forethought and eoonomy in providing not only for their individual wants, but in their general efficiency offering a practical example to the whole army. Lord Moruington about this time, 1798, despatched Colonel Wellesley to Madras to organise the commissariat for the approaching campaign. Arthur Wellesley undertook the duty with all the vigour and energy to be ex pected from him. In his indefatigable exer tions to supply the army with stores and transport, he found the " Rules of the Ser vice" to be prolific in impediments. No man more respected the rules of the service, and he submitted with patience to all their ob structions, though he never neglected an opportunity to bring them into " working order." He writes to his brother, 31st Oct., 1798, from Madras : The spirit of all the public and private letters has been to make preparations. If there are no bullocks, or not a sufficiency ot them. there is no effectual preparation ; and u nothing can procure them when they will be wanted excepting making the advances immediately, I have urged the propriety ot doing so, and of adhering to the spirit rather than to the letter of orders which evidently must have been written when the Government of Bengal were not aware of the methods in which bullocks can be procured n this country. " I have likewise prevailed upon Lord Clive," he adds, " to appoint a commissary of stores, and " I think he will appoint a commissary of grain " and provisions. Matters will then be " brought into some shape, and we shall know " what we are about, instead of trusting to " the vague calculations of a parcel of block " heads, who know nothing, and have no " data." Six days later he writes in high spirits that the advances for 40,000 bul locks have been made, and everything was " going on well." We shall not follow him throughout the approaching campaign. " The plot thickens," he writes on the 28th of December, and on the Ist of January, 1799, entreats his brother to send all his things as soon as he can, "particularly my potatoes." He left Madras for the camp at Wallajah- Nuggiir, to take command of the Nizain's con tingent, consisting of " four rapscallion Latta " lions of infantry, tho 3:lrd Rogiment, six " battalions of sepoys, and 10,000 cavalry," trliiuh with estop followers ikwl all ftunouiltO4 Yittratare. Supplementary Despatches and Memoranda of Field Marshal Arthur Duke of Wellington, K.G. India, 1797-1805. Edited by his Son, the Duke of Wellington. Vol. I. London: Murray. THE military exploits and the political life of the Great Duke have been so fully and fairly treated, that another work relating to any period of his illustrious career would seem at first sight superfluous. There never lived a man whose motives and actions and whose feelings and views have been laid so open to public scrutiny, and whose character has been so severely tested, as the Duke of Wellington. But the public interest in all that relates to him is far from being satiated. Every anec dote which bears directly or relatively upon the habits or opinions of "the Duke " is eagerly sought after and carefully treasured. It is known, also, that many valuable memoranda which have yet to see the light lay stored in Apeley-house. We apprehend, therefore, that the public will be gratified with the appear ance of these documents, " derived from sources of the highest value," as throwing much light upon the important events which took place in India during the period between 1797 and 1805, as well as affording us " lessons " of practical wisdom for guidance in war and " peace applicable to moat times and circum " stances." When Colonel Wellesley—or Wesley, as he then spelt his name—arrived in India, the peace ful government of Sir John Shore was drawing to a close, and the fourth and last Mysore war was about to he beque i•hed to his successor, Lord Mornington. Tipi , )n Saib, early in 1798, concluded an alliance otionsive and defensive with France, the main object of which was to be the expulsion of the English from India This was first made known to us by a procla mation from the French Governor of the Mauritius; and though Lord Mornington treated it at first with derision, the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon aroused his suspicions. The foresight of the Colonel of the 33rd had detected the coming storm. " There is not a " doubt," he writes, in his observations upon Lord Mornington s minute on the question, " but that Tippoo offered to conclude, and " that he, in fact, has concluded with that " Government, an alliance offensive and defen " sive against the British nation, and that " the immediate object of that alliance is to " drive us out of India." Lord Mornington, mainly upon the advice of Colonel) Wellesley, began to prepare for war. He demanded ex planations of Tippoo, and desired Colonel Wellesley to draw up a memorandum respect ing the collecting au army iu the Barahrnahal preparatory to an attack upon Mysore. Then it was that a fertile genius and prac tical mind gave evidence of the groat abilities of Arthur Wellesley. He drew up masterly memorandums upon aggressive and defensive wars, exhibiting in the right application of resources to every emergency such profound forethought as marked him a man of no mean Capacity, and of great powers of strategic com bination. Passages in this memorandum apply so well to the species of guerilla warfare now carried on in Central India and the Duab that we shall offer no excuse fur extracting them. Colonel Wellesley is considering the irruption into the Barahmalial of a body of loottes , These operations are usually carried on by barbarously bad cavalry, who carry with them the provisions they may want until they can live by their plunder. The greatest injury they do is driving off the cattle and inhabitants, and generally they encourage these last to erect themselves into a body of the same kind, who plunder either their own district or that of their neighbours. Their numbers in. crease in proportion to the length of time they remain in the country, and to the want of means of defence. If there were a fortress at every tenth mile, this evil would not be entirely prevented, and would not be so in any degree unless these had strong garrisons who would patrol the country. The inhabitants and cattle might take shelter in them and in their immediate neighbourhood ; but still the business of the country must be at a stand when such a tome as I have desoribed invades it. As the best defenoe against the looties, he recommends, first, than wherever there is a MO fort it Ouuld be put iu repair