Forty-one years in India: from subaltern to commander-in-chief

by Earl Frederick Sleigh Roberts Roberts

The Madras Army Each cold season I made long tours in order to acquaint myself with the needs and capabilities of the men of the Madras Army. I tried hard to discover in them those fighting qualities which had distinguished their forefathers during the wars of the last and the beginning of the present century. But long years of peace, and the security and prosperity attending it, had evidently had upon them, as they always seem to have on Asiatics, a softening and deteriorating effect; and I was forced to the conclusion that the ancient military spirit had died in them, as it had died in the ordinary Hindustani of Bengal and the Mahratta of Bombay, and that they could no longer with safety be pitted against warlike races, or employed outside the limits of southern India.

It was with extreme reluctance that I formed this opinion with regard to the successors of the old Coast Army, for which I had always entertained a great admiration. For the sake of the British officers belonging to the Madras Army, too, I was very loath to be convinced of its inferiority, for many of them were devoted to their regiments, and were justly proud of their traditions.

However, there was the army, and it was my business as its Commander-in-Chief to do all that I possibly could towards rendering it an efficient part of the war establishment of India.

Measures for improving the Madras Army Madrassies, as a rule, are more intelligent and better educated than the fighting races of northern India, and I therefore thought it could not be difficult to teach them the value of musketry, and make them excel in it. To this end, I encouraged rifle meetings and endeavoured to get General Officers to take an interest in musketry inspections, and to make those inspections instructive and entertaining to the men. I took to rifle-shooting myself, as did the officers on my personal [staff],[³] who were all good shots, and our team held its own in many exciting matches at the different rifle meetings.

THE THREE COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF IN INDIA
GENERAL SIR FREDERICK SLEIGH ROBERTS.
GENERAL SIR ARTHUR E. HARDINGE. GENERAL SIR DONALD MARTIN STEWART.

At that time the importance of musketry training was not so generally recognized as it is now, especially by the senior officers, who had all entered the service in the days of 'Brown Bess.' Some of them had failed to note the remarkable alteration which the change from the musket to the rifle necessitated in the system of musketry instruction, or to study the very different conditions under which we could hope to win battles in the present day, compared with those under which some of our most celebrated victories had been won. It required time and patience to inspire officers with a belief in the wonderful shooting power of the Martini-Henry rifle, and it was even more difficult to make them realize that the better the weapon, the greater the necessity for its being intelligently used.

I had great faith in the value of Camps of Exercise, and notwithstanding the difficulty of obtaining an annual grant to defray their cost, I managed each year, by taking advantage of the movement of troops in course of relief, to form small camps at the more important stations, and on one occasion was able to collect 9,000 men together in the neighbourhood of Bangalore, where the Commanders-in-Chief in India and of Bombay (Sir Donald Stewart and the Hon. Arthur Hardinge) were present—the first and last time that the 'three Chiefs' in India met together at a Camp of Exercise. The Sappers and Miners were a brilliant exception to the rest of the Madras Army, being indeed a most useful, efficient body of men, but as no increase to that branch was considered necessary, I obtained permission to convert two Infantry regiments into Pioneers on the model of the Pioneer Corps of the Bengal Army, which had always proved themselves so useful on service. Promotion amongst the British officers was accelerated, recruits were not allowed to marry, or, if married, to have their wives with them, and many other minor changes were made which did much towards improving the efficiency of the Native portion of the Madras Army; and I hope I was able to increase the comfort and well-being of the British portion also by relaxing irksome and useless restrictions, and by impressing upon commanding officers the advisability of not punishing young soldiers with the extreme severity which had hitherto been considered necessary.

I had been unpleasantly struck by the frequent Courts-Martial on the younger soldiers, and by the disproportionate number of these lads to be met with in the military prisons. Even when the prisoners happened to be of some length of service, I usually found that they had undergone previous imprisonments, and had been severely punished within a short time of their enlistment. I urged that, in the first two or three years of a soldier's service, every allowance should be made for youth and inexperience, and that during that time faults should, whenever practicable, be dealt with summarily, and not visited with the heavier punishment which a Court-Martial sentence necessarily carries with it, and I pointed out that this procedure might receive a wider application, and become a guiding principle in the treatment of soldiers generally. I suggested that all men in possession of a good-conduct badge, or who had had no entry in their company defaulter sheets for one year, should be granted certain privileges, such as receiving the fullest indulgence in the grant of passes, consistent with the requirements of health, duty, and discipline, and being excused attendance at all roll-calls (including meals), except perhaps at tattoo. I had often remarked that those corps in which indulgences were most freely given contained the largest number of well-behaved men, and I had been assured that such indulgences were seldom abused, and that, while they were greatly appreciated by those who received them, they acted as an incentive to less well conducted men to try and redeem their characters.