THE ARMY IN INDIA: (a) THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, ITS RISE—1600–1825

It was not until the year 1600 that the attention of English merchants was seriously turned to India. Long before that, Portugal first, then its conqueror, Spain, next the Dutch, and finally the French, had gained a footing in Hindustan, and with factories had established trade. The beginnings were small enough. Surat near Bombay and Bantam in Java were first occupied by us, and in 1640 a footing was obtained on the mainland, and Madras came into being. This replaced Bantam, as the cession of Bombay did Surat. Similarly, a factory, higher up the Hooghley, was transferred to Fort-William, around which grew up Calcutta. By 1708 the various rival companies which had been formed were united under one head; and while the privileges of the Company were continually renewed and extended, the foreign opposition of our rivals in India, save France established at Chandernagore and Pondicherry on the Madras side, gradually died away and disappeared.

In 1744 the two opposing forces came into active antagonism. On the French side, Dupleix, already at the head of the French “Raj,” a man of considerable ability, had gained enormous influence over the factions that made up the Mogul empire. He, with Labourdonnais, from Mauritius, had even captured, and held to ransom, Madras; while, by fighting and diplomacy, the French completely controlled the policy of the Carnatic and Deccan.

But rising into note on the opposing side was Robert265 Clive; who, after defeating the French and their allies at Arcot and Conjeveram, raised the siege of Trichinopoly. Both French leaders had failed, and both died in France in suffering and comparative poverty; but Clive, after a journey home, returned to India, to find that Surajah Dowlah, Nabob of Bengal, had captured Calcutta and caused the death of the majority of the survivors by their imprisonment in the “Black Hole.”

The intricate, and not very creditable, diplomacy that ensued culminated in the battle of Plassy, notorious as being won against extraordinary odds, and as leading directly to the destruction of the French power in India.

The European, or at first largely half-caste army employed there was not numerous. The remains of the garrison that had been sent to take possession of the Bombay dowry formed the nucleus of the “Bombay Regiment,” which became the Bengal Fusiliers, or “Old Toughs,” and is now the 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers. They behaved gallantly in the early fighting at Cuddalore and Davicottah, but did not come on the strength of the home army until 1858. In 1754 the first true European regiment, the 39th, was despatched to hold Madras. For this it is distinguished by the motto “Primus in Indis.” It is most curious to note, therefore, in all these early efforts at dominion in India, the Madras Sepoy took a most important part, and behaved manfully.

Two smaller “affairs,” the capture of Fort Hooghley and Chandernagore, preceded the more important battle of Plassy, where the Indian army numbered 50,000 infantry, 20,000 cavalry, and 50 guns, and met Clive in the “groves of Plassy,” with a force roughly estimated at 1000 Europeans, namely, the 39th, the 1st Bengal and 1st Bombay Fusiliers (now the 1st Battalion Royal Munster and 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers), with 2000 Sepoys and 8 six-pounders, with 2 howitzers. The battle lasted from the 22nd till the morning of the 23rd June, and resulted in the dispersion of the enemy with a loss in killed and wounded on the British side of but seventy-two men. But though far reaching in its results, it,266 however decisive, cannot be classed among the great battles of history. The insignificant numbers of Clive’s army on the one side, the treachery displayed by most of the great chieftains of Surajah Dowlah, even the small cost of the victory, show that the fighting itself could not have been severe. But for the disloyalty of Mir Jafar and others, the British army must have been driven into the river they had crossed in order to engage the enemy. Had this been otherwise, the history of India might have been differently written. As it was, the moral effect was great. It was the first real military footing the British had in the Indian Peninsula. “It was Plassy which forced her to become one of the main factors in the settlement of the burning Eastern Question; Plassy which necessitated the conquest and colonisation of the Cape of Good Hope, of the Mauritius, and the protectorship over Egypt.”

By 1761, therefore, the French power was but a name; and, reinforced now from home by three more battalions, of which the 79th was one, the British defeated the French at Wandewash, where only European troops were engaged on the British side. There the old 79th behaved magnificently; and later on, the war led to the addition of the names of Buxar and Carnatic (as well as that of Plassy) to the colours of the 103rd.
Outline Map of INDIA.

If Plassy had been the turning-point in the early days of British effort at conquest, so Wandewash showed the natives the fighting strength of other foreign aspirants for political power in India besides France, and led as directly to the expulsion of the French from the Indian Peninsula, as did the capture of Quebec settle for ever the rivalry for supreme power in North America. With this victory the fear of British power among the natives arose and strengthened. During all this time, the power of the East India Company had been gradually extending, and in 1773 was appointed the first Governor-General of India, Warren Hastings. Meanwhile, as the years crept on, a new native state was rising, that would also seek by a French alliance to check the political advance of Great Britain in India.267 Hyder Ali, a Mahometan chieftain in the army of Mysore, had succeeded in establishing himself on the throne of his Hindu predecessor. Commanding an irregular army estimated at 150,000 men, he was disposed to be threatening; and on the principle of divide et impera, Hastings proposed to play off, by alliance, the Deccan and Oudh against this new disturbing element, which was fast spreading its influence over Western and Northern India. In 1780 the chance arose. Hyder took the offensive, defeated and massacred the small army under Colonel Baillie at Conjeveram, and attacked Madras, but he was checked finally by Sir Eyre Coote, and in 1783 the general peace put an end to hostilities, though not for long, and though Hyder himself was dead.

By this time the European army had slightly increased. To the troops already there had been added the 71st (then the 73rd), the 72nd (then the 78th), and the old 73rd, and a second battalion of the 42nd; and these had furnished the backbone of the resistance against Hyder Ali’s son Tippoo Saib.

There was hard fighting at Mangalore, which gained for the 73rd the honour of bearing the name on its colours for bravery during the seven months of a dreadful siege; and against the French at Cuddalore, where Colonel Wagenheim of the 15th Hanoverian Regiment made prisoner a young French sergeant, and, struck by his appearance, personally directed his wounds to be dressed. Many years after, when the victorious French, under Marshal Bernadotte, entered Hanover, Wagenheim, by that time an aged general, attended his levée. Bernadotte asked him if he recollected the wounded French sergeant to whom he had been so kind at Cuddalore. The general replied in the affirmative. “That young sergeant,” replied the future king of Sweden, “was the person who has now the honour to address you, and who rejoices in having this public opportunity of acknowledging his debt of gratitude to General Wagenheim.”

Here also were engaged some 300 marines under Major Monson, and in the ranks of his command served a certain Hannah Snell. “She behaved with conspicuous courage,268 and received a ball in the groin, which she herself extracted two days afterwards. Eleven other wounds in both legs rendered her removal to the hospital at Cuddalore absolutely necessary, and, having returned home, her sex was not discovered until she obtained her discharge. She afterwards wore the marine dress, and, having presented a petition to H.R.H. the Duke of Cumberland, obtained a pension of ￡30 a year for life.”

For a time hostilities languished, but they were resumed against the Mysoreans in 1789, when Cannanore was taken; and finally, in 1792, Tippoo’s capital, Seringapatam, fell, and his two sons were left as hostages for the fulfilment of the treaty of peace that followed.

All this led to increased interest in Indian affairs by the home Government, and a corresponding increase in the number of European troops employed. In India there were by now the 23rd Light Dragoons, a regiment of Hanoverians, the 74th, 75th, 76th, and 77th Regiments of the line, together with the 98th, and the European Regiments of the East India Company; so that in 1784 the white troops numbered nearly 18,000 men. Hostilities recommenced in 1799 with Tippoo, and this time finally. With all his savage cruelty, he was a man of some military genius, as far as his education went. He does not seem to have lacked personal bravery; and notwithstanding the want of communication with England, he watched with interest the contests his British enemy in India was waging elsewhere. He corresponded with the French authorities in Mauritius; therefore, in 1797, with a view to a French alliance, he entered into negotiations with the Nizam and the Ameer of Afghanistan to help him, as Mahometans, against the “Feringhi” foe. But the Governor-General, Lord Mornington, was not prepared to wait till the war-clouds had fully gathered.

Warning Tippoo first, he assembled an army against him. The Bombay troops, under Stuart, were despatched to the Coromandel coast; at Malavelly, the Madras army under Haes, composed of Sepoys stiffened by the 33rd Regiment, at that time under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel269 Arthur Wellesley, won a victory; and finally, after a brief siege, Seringapatam was carried by storm. Here the flank companies of the 12th, 33rd, 73rd, and 74th gallantly led the way, supported by the 12th and 75th, some 1200 native infantry, and 1000 British and 1800 native cavalry; a force which, with 60 field and 40 siege guns and their crews, numbered nearly 22,000 men. Two other armies co-operated more or less with the above; the one the troops of the Nizam, with some Sepoys, under Wellesley, the other under Stuart, formed of Sepoys and 1600 Europeans, including the old 103rd. The attack on Seringapatam was made at night, and fiercely resisted, war rockets being freely used by the defenders. But the British troops were not to be denied. The place was carried with much slaughter, and Tippoo fell, sword in hand, in the gateway of his capital, surrounded by his faithful followers, of whose dead bodies there lay seventy “in a space 4 yards wide by 12 long.”

It was to Sir David Baird that the chief credit of the assault was due, but none the less he was superseded in the government of the city by Colonel Wellesley, the brother of the Governor-General. “And thus, before the sweat was dry on my brow, I was superseded by an inferior officer.” These are his own words. But he lived to do distinguished work later, in Egypt, whither Wellesley was to have gone also, had not fever checked him.

Thus the whole kingdom of Mysore was practically added to the increasing empire of Great Britain, but brought her into hostile contact with the empire of the Mahrattas. This was founded by Sivagi in the previous century, and extended from Delhi to a tributary of the Krishna, and from Gujerat to the Bay of Bengal. Its leading chieftains were, speaking generally, the Peishwa at Poona, the Rajah of Berar, Scindia in the Northern Deccan, Holkar about Malwa, and the Guikowar about Gujerat. Touching these were the tributary state of the Nizam, the conquered Mysore, and the rest of the Carnatic and other territories that had succumbed to the growing land-hunger of the British Company.

270 The former governor of Seringapatam, now Lord Wellesley, was Governor-General of India. The perpetual antagonism of the native rulers among themselves gave him the same opportunity of assisting the one against the other as had fallen to his predecessors. He availed himself of the political chance as they had, but not to the same extent. There was a greater knowledge arising of Indian affairs, due possibly to the former action of Warren Hastings, and the prominency his impeachment by Burke in the House of Commons had given to these matters, and possibly also a growing popular interest in the political conduct of our rule in the great peninsula.

There was still the danger of French intervention and assistance. France, in thos............