Part 69 (1/2)

16. Desertions are frequent among the regiments recruited on the Afghan frontier. These regiments did not exist in the author's day.

17. An ordinance issued in France so late as 1778 required that a man should produce proof of four quarterings of n.o.bility before he could get a commission in the army. [W. H. S.]

18. '_Est et alia causa, cur attenuatae sint legiones_,' says Vegetius. 'Magnus in illis labor est militandi, graviora arma, sera munera, severior disciplila. Quod vitantes plerique, in auxiliis festinant militiae sacramenta percipere, ubi et minor sudor, et maturiora sunt premia.' Lib._ II. _cap._ 3. [W. H. S.] Vegetius, according to Gibbon and his most recent editor (_recensuit Carolus Lang. Editio altera. Lipsiae, Teubner_, 1885), flourished during the reign of Valentinian III (A.D. 425-55). His 'Soldier's Pocket-book'

is ent.i.tled 'Flavi Vegeti Renati Epitoma Rei Militaris'.

'Montesquieu thought that 'the Government had better have stuck to the old practice of slitting noses and cutting off ears, since the French soldiers, like the Roman dandies under Pompey, must necessarily have a greater dread of a disfigured face than of death.

It did not occur to him that France could retain her soldiers by other and better motives. See _Spirit of Laws_, book vi, chap. 12.

See _Necker on the Finances_, vol. ii, chap. 5; vol. iii, chap. 34. A day-labourer on the roads got fifteen sous a day; and a French soldier only six, at the very time that the mortality of an army of forty thousand men sent to the colonies was annually 13,333, or about one in three. In our native army the sepoy gets about double the wages of an ordinary day-labourer; and his duties, when well done, involve just enough of exercise to keep him in health. The casualties are perhaps about one in a hundred. [W. H. S.]

20. Just precisely what the French soldiers were after the revolution had purged France of all 'the perilous stuff that weighed upon the heart' of its people. Gibbon, in considering the chance of the civilized nations of Europe ever being again overrun by the barbarians from the North, as in the time of the Romans, says: 'If a savage conqueror should issue from the deserts of Tartary, he must repeatedly vanquish the robust peasantry of Russia, the numerous armies of Germany, the gallant n.o.bles of France, and the intrepid free men of Britain.' Never was a more just, yet more unintended satire upon the state of a country. Russia was to depend upon her 'robust peasantry'; Germany upon her 'numerous armies'; England upon her 'intrepid free men'; and poor France upon her 'gallant n.o.bles'

alone; because, unhappily, no other part of her vast population was then ever thought of. When the hour of trial came, those pampered n.o.bles who had no feeling in common with the people were shaken off'

like dew-drops from the lion's mane'; and the hitherto spurned peasantry of France, under the guidance and auspices of men who understood and appreciated them, astonished the world with their powers. [W. H. S.]

21. The allusion is to the now half-forgotten war with the United States in the years 1812-14, during the course of which the English captured the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, and the Americans gained some unexpected naval victories.

22. The author has already denounced the practice of impressment, _ante_, chapter 26, note 27.

23. 'to' in the original edition.

24. See McCulloch, _Pol. Econ._, p. 235, 1st ed., Edinburgh, 1825.

[W. H. S.]

25. Many German princes adopted the discipline of Frederick in their little petty states, without exactly knowing why or wherefore. The Prince of Darmstadt conceived a great pa.s.sion for the military art; and when the weather would not permit him to worry his little army of five thousand men in the open air, he had them worried for his amus.e.m.e.nt under sheds. But he was soon obliged to build a wall round the town in which he drilled his soldiers for the sole purpose of preventing their running away--round this wall he had a regular chain of sentries to fire at the deserters. Mr. Moore thought that the discontent in this little band was greater than in the Prussian army, inasmuch as the soldiers saw no object but the prince's amus.e.m.e.nt. A fight, or the prospect of a fight, would have been a feast to them.

[W. H. S.] It is hardly necessary to observe that the modern system of drill is widely different.

26. Speaking of the question whether recruits drawn from the country or the towns are best, Vegetius says: '_De qua parte numquam credo potuisse dubitari, aptiorem armis rusticam plebem, quae sub divo et in labore nutritur; solis patiens; umbrae negligens; balnearum nescia; delictarurum ignara; simplicis animi; parvo contenta; duratis ad omnem laborem membris; cui gestara ferrum, fossam ducere, onus ferre, consuetudo de rare est.' (De Re Militari_, Lib. i, cap. 3.) [W. H. S.] The pa.s.sage quoted is disfigured by many misprints in the original edition.

27. As the Madras sepoys do.

28. The writing of the bulk of this work was completed in 1839. These concluding supplementary chapters on the Bengal army seem to have been written a little later, perhaps in 1841, the year in which they were first printed. The publication of the complete work took place in 1844. The Mutiny broke out in 1857, and proved that the fidelity of the sepoys could not be so easily a.s.sured as the author supposed.

29. I believe the native army to be better now than it ever was-- better in its disposition and in its organization. The men have now a better feeling of a.s.surance than they formerly had that all their rights will be secured to them by their European officers that all those officers are men of honour, though they have not all of them the same fellow feeling that their officers had with them in former days. This is because they have not the same opportunity of seeing their courage and fidelity tried in the same scenes of common danger.

Go to Afghanistan and China, and you will find the feeling between officers and men as fine as ever it was in days of yore, whatever it may be at our large and gay stations, where they see so little of each other. [W. H. S.] The author's reputation for sagacity and discernment could not be made to rest upon the above remarks. His judgement was led astray by his lifelong a.s.sociation with and affection for the native troops. Lord William Bentinck took a far juster view of the situation, and understood far better the real nature of the ties which bind the native army to its masters. His admirable minute dated 13th March, 1835, published for the first time in Mr. D. Boulger's well-written little book (_Lord William Bentinck_, 'Rulers of India', pp. 177-201), is still worthy of study.

As a corrective to the author's too effusive sentiment, some brief pa.s.sages from the Governor-General's minute may be quoted. 'In considering the question of internal danger,' he observes, 'those officers most conversant with Indian affairs who were examined before the Parliamentary Committee apprehend no danger to our dominion as long as we are a.s.sured of the fidelity of our native troops. To this opinion I entirely subscribe. But others again view in the native army itself the source of our greatest peril. In all ages the military body has been often the prime cause, but generally the instrument, of all revolutions; and proverbial almost as is the fidelity of the native soldier to the chief whom he serves, more especially when he is justly and kindly treated, still we cannot be blind to the fact that many of those ties which bind other armies to their allegiance are totally wanting in this. Here is no patriotism, no community of feeling as to religion or birthplace, no influencing attachment from high considerations, or great honours and rewards.

Our native army also is extremely ignorant, capable of the strongest religions excitement, and very sensitive to disrespect to their persona or infringement of their customs. . . . In the native army alone rests our internal danger, and this danger may involve our complete subversion. . . .

'All these facts and opinions seem to me to establish incontrovertibly that a large proportion of European troops is necessary for our security under all circ.u.mstances of peace and war.

'I believe the sepoys have never been so good as they were in the earliest part of our career; none superior to those under De Boigne.

. . I fearlessly p.r.o.nounce the Indian army to be the least efficient and most expensive in the world.'

The events of 1857-9 proved the truth of Lord William Bentinck's wise words. The native army is no longer inefficient as a whole, though certain sections of it may still be so, but the less that is said about the supposed affection of mercenary troops for a foreign government, the better.