[CHAPTER XXV]
BATTLE HONOURS FOR OPERATIONS ON THE NORTH-WEST INDIAN FRONTIER, 1895-1897
Defence of Chitral—Chitral—Malakand—Samana—Punjab Frontier—Tirah.
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Defence of Chitral, 1895.
This battle honour is borne by one regiment—the 14th Prince of Wales's Own Ferozepore Sikhs.
It commemorates one of those gallant but little-remembered occurrences where a handful of British officers, at the head of sepoys no less brave than themselves, have upheld the honour of our flag against overwhelming odds, and thus belied the oft-repeated cry of the decadence of the present generation of Englishmen. There are few episodes in our military history which can vie with the defence of Chitral, none which excel it in sublime heroism.
A few words are necessary in retrospect. Chitral is a small State perched up in the almost inaccessible Himalayas, on the main route between Hindustan and the Pamirs. In the year 1876 the ruler of this State, which hitherto had been independent, placed himself under the protection of the Maharajah of Kashmir, and so became one of our vassals.
Matters marched smoothly for some years, but in the early part of 1895 intertribal disputes arose, the ruler was murdered, and his throne seized by a usurper, who possessed the support of all the neighbouring clans, and was, it was shrewdly suspected, receiving the moral, if not the material, support of the Amir of Afghanistan. The Chief Political Agent in those regions was Surgeon-Major George Robertson, a medical officer who had studied the languages and customs of the Upper Himalayan tribes, and who was trusted as implicitly by them as by our own Government. He hurried from his headquarters at Gilgit to Chitral in the hope of allaying the excitement, but he found himself in the face of a determined effort on the part of the usurper and his supporters—all fanatical Moslems—to free themselves from the yoke of the Kafir. All that Robertson could do was to throw himself into the little native fort of Chitral, and there to hold out until help arrived from India. The few scattered garrisons in the Upper Himalayas were isolated, and all were in equal danger. In one case a detachment of Sikhs was practically annihilated, its surviving officers being taken prisoners.
Robertson had with him in Chitral five young officers, a company of the 14th Sikhs, numbering 88 men, and 300 Kashmiri levies—these last all untrained in the use of the rifle with which they were armed. The story of the defence of Chitral has been told in all too modest language by one of the principal actors, and I can cordially recommend "The Story of a Minor Siege," by Sir George Robertson, to the attention of those who talk of the deterioration of our race. For seven long weeks did that heroic garrison hold out, and when at last relieved, the relief was effected by a force entirely composed of native soldiers—the 32nd Pioneers—who, under their indomitable Colonel, had traversed the gigantic passes of the Himalayas, swept aside all opposition, and shown the world that the Indian army contains in its midst, men who are not to be equalled by any soldiers in the world.