Of the officers of the corps a description was given in Colonel Pearse’s letter, above quoted. It was written in 1775, and refers to the period now described. An extract from one written in 1772 contains a very graphic picture of a fast man of those days, specimens of whom long continued:—
“To be a gentleman you must learn to drink by all means—a man is honoured in proportion to the number of bottles he can drink: keep a dozen dogs, but in particular if you have not the least use for them and hate hunting and shooting. Four horses may barely suffice; but if you have eight, and seven of them are too vicious for the syce to feed, it will be much better.
“By no means let the horses be paid for; and have a palanquin covered with silver trappings—get 10,000 rupees in debt, but 20,000 would make you an honester man, especially if you are convinced that you will never have the power to pay. Endeavour to forget whatever you have learnt—ridicule learning of all sorts—despise all military knowledge—call duty a bore—encourage your men to laugh at orders—obey such as you like—make a joke of your commanding officer for giving those orders you do not like, and, if you obey them, let it be seen that it is merely to serve yourself.
“These few rules will make you an officer and a gentleman, and they are the first lessons which young men take when they arrive in this country.”
With officers of this stamp, and the class of men from whom the Company’s European troops were then recruited, we cannot suppose that much discipline existed. Drunkenness—the bane of the European soldier in India—was rife, and its natural consequences, disease and death, followed. To this cause, too, must be added the want of good barracks and internal economy, which of late years have gone far to remove the idea of the climates of India being deadly to the European constitution.
The lascars were employed in dragging and assisting the Europeans to work the guns; a detail also was detached with each infantry regiment, to assist in working the guns attached to it, for two 6–pounders formed part of the equipment of each battalion, and thirty sipahis were set apart for their service. These duties, with those of the park, would account for the number of lascars being so large in comparison with the establishment of the present day. They were in many respects native artillerymen, and in the subsequent successive changes from lascars to golundaz and back again, the change was often rather in name, and increase and decrease of pay, than of the men themselves.
They were a most efficient and useful body—a class on whom, perhaps, more of the hard work of the service and fewer of its substantial rewards have fallen than any other of the native army. At all times accompanying the European artillery, they have borne a part in every expedition which has left the shores of India. On land and on board ship, hard service has been their lot, and all who have been brought into contact with them join in testifying to the willingness, courage, and patience they have exhibited.
A large body of artificers was also at this time attached to the corps; these, with the quartermaster’s establishment, completed the regiment as to its personnel.
The matériel appears to have been as bad as possible. At this time Colonel Pearse complains that “the fuzees burnt from nineteen to forty-eight seconds, though of the same nature; the portfires were continually going out; the tubes would not burn; the powder was infamous; the cartridges were made conical, and, when necessary to prime with loose powder, a great quantity was required to fill the vacant cavity round the cartridge; the carriages flew to pieces with common firing in a week.” The contractor who furnished the carriages, and the laboratory in which the fuzees were made, appear to have been beyond his control: “I have no more to do with it than his Holiness at Rome,” are his words. The iron guns were all very indifferent: “two 12–pounders burst on the ramparts in 1770 in firing the morning and evening gun, and one 12–pounder on a rejoicing day, in firing salutes.”
It was under such circumstances that Colonel Pearse took command, and set himself to work to improve the state of the regiment. To weed the inefficient from the officers; to teach the remainder and the new-comers their duty; to introduce an efficient internal economy and discipline into the ranks, and to obtain a proper control over the matériel of the regiment, were his first duties. That his endeavours were in some degree successful may be gathered from his correspondence, for in 1772 he writes,—“Now I have got all the laboratory implements with me at practice, and am going to teach my officers what they never saw.” Steadily he pursued his object through difficulties and disappointments, and was rewarded, ere his death, by seeing the corps raised to a high state of discipline and efficiency. At a review of it by General Clavering in November, 1774, he expressed himself as delighted with the corps, and astonished at its performance, being superior to any thing he could have expected in India, and so much to his satisfaction, that Colonel Pearse, in a letter to an old friend, writes, “the performances at the review would not have been a disgrace to dear old Woolwich.”