The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-24 00:00:00

THE 12\1)1,1N A 1;1111'.

The Indian army grew with the Presidencies, and
the Presidencies spread from small factories on the
coast till they virtually swallowed up the whole
Peninsula from the Khyber Pass to Cape Comorin.
The factories being three—Calcutta, Madras, and
Bombay, the armies became three ; and as the
factories were the property of a company, the ex-
traordinary spectacle was presented of a body of
English merchants ruling the Empire of the Mo-
guls. The history of British India is one of those
singular phases which could only occur to the An-
glo-Saxon race or the Dutch—an imperium in inr-
perio, which created anomalies and contradictions
impossible with any other people. The Hon. East
India Company was annihilated by the Mutiny,
and the army has ever since been in a transition
state. In the time of " John Company" that mar-
vel and myth to the native mind, the three armies
(for that of each Presidency was distinct), were
modelled after the pattern of her Majesty's force.
The Sepoys were turned into marching regiments,
with red coats, white trowsers, and ammunition
boots. They were formed into companies, and
numbered off into regiments, with their colonel,
major, captains, and subalterns, precisely as Eng-
lish regiments. The cavalry with regulation sad-
dles, but dressed in grey, became Lancers or Hus-
sars ; and thus the British giving way to their inve-
terate habit of forming everything on their own
model spoiled tine irregular troops, and turned hand-
some men into scarecrows. The Bengal army be-
came a vast machine after British conquest had
rolled up to Peshawur, some 1,800 miles from the
fort at Calcutta. It was recruited mainly in Oude,
ind in Rohilcund from the highest caste; to whom
even the shadow of the colonel falling on their food
was a degradation, and they would not have
touched the plate from which a Christian ate. The
spectacle was here presented of the ruling race
coming into contact with the subjeci, race on terms
so strange. When an officer passed, sentinels pre-
sented arms, guards turned out, men sprang to at-
tention, and everywhere he was saluted; yet these
men held him to be a " defiled" being, a pig-eating,
worse still ! a cow-eating, wine-drinking, impure
creature. When her Majesty's troops came to act in
conjunction with the native regiments the English
pride of race forcibly displayed itself. The Sepoy
regiment was treated with the most supercilious
contempt—a contempt deeply felt and bitterly re-
sented by the English Indian officer. Perhaps in this
fact, as much as in any other, is to be found the cause
of the mutiny. It became a habit with the Bengal
officer to assert the superiority of his men, till even-
tually it became the creed of the Company's armies,
although it was rudely shaken when the Sepoy was
brought into contact with the old Khalsa troops
of Itunjeet Singh, and recoiled in dismay from the
trained infantry and well-served guns of perhaps
the bravest army ever created from Asiatic; material.
Young officers imbibed something of this contempt
on hearing the story of the demoralization after
Ferozeshah, when a Governor-General had to mass
the British regiments for the final attack, when the
destinies of India were perhaps decided by the
treachery to his people of a Seikh chieftain ;
after Chillianwallah, when night closed on an
Anglo-Indian army in inextricable confusion, and
some of its best brigades in flight. But this only
made the old Bengal officer adhere the more tena-
ciously to his doctrine ; and it was so generally
asserted that the Empire had beau won by the
Sepoy, despatches so teemed with his praises, that
it need cause little surprise that he believed himself
to be the master, and acted in accordance with the
notion. Of course discipline suffered, and to such
an extent that the Bengal Sepoy created the greatest
alarm in the mind of the rulers, who found they
possessed an instrument of which they could not get
rid, and which might be most readily used against
themselves. Whether the Sepoy army did or did
not win India for the British, one thing is certain,
that it finished off its own creator in John Com-
pany, and at the same time happily relieved society
of itself, proving that it was in truth the poor thing
it was said to be by her Majesty's regiments, and
which was so indignantly denied by its own officers.
The system of promotion was strictly by seniority,
but the regiments being used as mere depots from
which to supply the numberless officers required by
the country independent of the Civil Service, the
best were generally withdrawn, and their career
ceased to be that of a soldier. Most of the regi-
mental officers were constructing roads, surveying
districts, assessing and collecting taxes, meting out
justice as cantonment magistrates, laying down
the law at protected courts, controlling wild tribes
on the frontiers, or, commanding as wild tribes
gathered in their native array, and designated
Irregulars in the Indian Army. These latter were
the genuine Indian troops ; and admirable soldiers
they have often proved themselves when led by a
dashing young Englishman who thoroughly under-
stood their character and language. It was in
handling such levies that Sir Herbert Ed wardes
rose to renown ; with whom Nicholson and Hod-
son died ; and others, whose names are familiar as
"household words" in India, are associated. Gene-
rally these troops are cavalry, but when they are
infantry they assume too much the former type, al-
though the old dress disappeared, at least in Bengal
with the Sepoy mutiny. The army of Bombay,
with a few isolated outbreaks, remained faithful,
watching events, in a shaky and dangerous state ;
while the Madrassie, who had little sympathy with
his northern brethren, continued staunch. These
two armies, then, on the whole, are intact ; but a
great change has been wrought in the mode in
which they are officered. Nearly all on the Army
List in each Presidency have been formed into a
Staff Corps, from which the Government appoint to
every vacant office ; and the number to each regi-
ment is now not a fourth of that formerly borne on
the list. The promotion is by length of service—
rising from grade to grade after stated periods.
Twenty-one years' service in India entitles to a re-
tirement on a fixed pension, which is increased on
a lengthened term. Furlough to Europe is allowed
for twenty months on liberal regulations ; and the
pay of every grade is the highest known to
armies. It is difficult to ascertain the strength in
their transition state of any of the Indian Armies,
but mere especially that of Bengal, which is mainly
affected by the revolt. The regular line is now
composed of 19 regiments of native cavalry, 45 of
native infantry, 5 Goorkha regiments, and other
local organizations. Indeed, the strength of some
ipf these form in themselves a small army, such as
the Punjauh Frontier force, consisting of artillery
and engineers, 5 regiments of cavalry, 4 of Seikh
infantry, 6 of Punjaub infantry, and a very fine
regiment in itself composed of cavalry and infantry
called a guide corps. On a much smaller scale is
the Central India force, and these, in a more or less
regular organization, are scattered over the country,
the tendency being to create them, which the Go-
vernment has to resist. There are now 8 cavalry
and 52 native infantry regiments in Madras, and
3 cavalry and 31 native infantry, in Bombay, in-

&pendent of irregular corps. These are the purely
native troops, the European being now wholly
icomprised in the regular British army, of which we
estimate in round numbers nearly half to be
in India. A Commander-in-Chief sways in
each Presidency, and although the officer at
f Ile head of the Bengal Army is termed the
Commander-in-Chief in India, he has, in truth,
little or no power beyond the limits of Bengal.
In the days of the Company, herNlajesty's regiments
regarded themselves as a separate caste, as sojourn-
ers in an uncouth land, and they tried to make
up :by contempt of their brethren in the Indian
army—the mere servants of a mercantile company
—for their exclusion from the good things which
fell so lavishly to the share of what they called the
Bkck" officers. The mutiny, however, turned
these " black officers" into Queen's soldiers ; but
while demolishing that distinction it opened Indian
appointments to the officer,of the British regiment.
All the white troops, of whom the Company had
nine regiments, together with a strong force of
horse and foot artillery, were transferred bodily to
the Queen's army—the engineers and artillery
being amalgamated into the corresponding corps in
England. Although the artillery of the Indian
army may not have assumed so fine an appearance
as in the British army, in war and for actual ser-
vice, if anywhere equaled it was certainly not ex-
celled. Indeed the departments in India which qualify
an army for field service were kept in a working order,
which enabled the Government at any moment to
put its hand on an effective force. The old term
for all the cantonments was " Camp ;" and the
force was so constituted that at a day's notice its
dwellings of barracks and bazaars changed to can-
vass, and five miles of road would be lumbered up
with long strings of camels and other baggage
animals. A portion of every officer's pay was
termed " tentage ;" and it was the business of an
Inspecting-General to ascertain not only that the
regiment was complete in its appointments for the
field, but that every officer was also thus equipped.
But it is the fashion to give undue credit to Indian
officials for this. The very nature of the tenure on
which the country is held is this readiness for the
field, and when the force is in movement its power
is immense, for while it passes through a land ruled
by its Government, all the resources of the soil are
at the disposal of the commanders, who are un-
shackled by considerations which must hamper the
movement of troops in Europe and America; but,
taking this into consideration, enough remains to
justify the assertion that no army in the world is
equally prepared for immediate action as that of
of India, nor need we add. better prepared.--A nglo-
American Times.