The year of the mutiny, 1857, witnessed the completion of the military arrangement planned in 1856, and the organisation of others arising out of the complicated state of affairs in Persia, China, and India. About the middle of February, the second division of the army intended for the Persian expedition left Bombay, making, with the first division, a force of about 12,000 men under the command of Sir James Outram. About 4000 of that number were European troops.[[36]] Viscount Canning, speculating on the probability that a third division would be needed, pointed out that India could not possibly supply it; and that it would be necessary that the home government should send out, not only the four regiments already agreed on, but three others in addition, and that the 10th and 29th regiments should not return to Europe so early as had been planned. There was another complication, arising out of the Chinese war; the 82d and 90th foot, intended to replace the two regiments withdrawn from India during the Crimean war, were now despatched to the Chinese seas instead of to India; and the directors had to make application for two others. Early in May, before any troubles in India were known to the authorities in London, it was arranged that the plan of 1856 should be renewed—two Queen’s regiments to be sent out to replace those withdrawn for the Crimean war; and two others to relieve the 10th and 29th—bringing the royal infantry in India to the usual number of twenty-four regiments. Of these four regiments, two were to proceed to Calcutta, one to Madras, and one to Kurachee. They were to consist of the 7th Fusiliers, the 88th and 90th foot, and the 3d battalion of the Rifle Brigade. It was also planned that the 2d and 3d Dragoons should go out to India to relieve the 9th Lancers and 14th Dragoons. Furthermore, it was arranged that these six regiments should take their departure from England in June and July, so as to arrive in India at a favourable season of the year; and that with them should go out drafts from Chatham, in number sufficient to complete the regiments already in India up to their regular established strength. So far as concerned Persia, the proposed third division was not necessary; the Shah assented to terms which—fortunately for British India—not only rendered this increased force unnecessary, but set free the two divisions already sent.
Such was the state of the European element in the Indian army at, and some time before, the commencement of the mutiny. It was on the 27th of June, we have said, that the bad news from Meerut reached London. Two days afterwards, the Court of Directors ordered officers at home on furlough or sick-leave to return to their regiments forthwith, so far as health would permit. They also made a requisition to the government for four full regiments of infantry, in addition to those already decided on; to be returned, or replaced by other four, when the mutiny should be ended. On the 1st of July—shewing thereby the importance attached to the subject—the government announced, not only its acquiescence in the demand, but the numbers or designations of the regiments marked out—namely, the 19th, 38th, and 79th foot, and the 1st battalion of the 1st foot. It was also agreed to that the four regiments intended to have been relieved—namely, the 10th and 29th foot, and the 9th and 14th Dragoons—should not be relieved at present, but that, on the contrary, drafts should go out to reinforce them. Another mail arrived, making known further disasters; whereupon the directors on the 14th of July made another application to government for six more regiments of infantry, and eight companies of royal artillery—the artillerymen to be sent out from England, the horses from the Cape of Good Hope, and the guns and ammunition to be provided in India itself. Two days afterwards—so urgent did the necessity appear—the government named the six regiments which should be sent out in compliance with this requisition—namely, the 20th, 34th, 42d, 54th, and 97th foot, and the 2d battalion of the Rifle Brigade; together with two troops of horse-artillery, and six companies of royal (foot) artillery.
Summing up all these arrangements, therefore, we find the following result: Two regiments of royal infantry—7th Fusiliers and 88th foot—were to go to India, to replace two borrowed or withdrawn from the Company in 1854; two others—the 90th foot and the 3d battalion of the Rifle Brigade—to relieve the 10th and 29th foot, and two regiments of cavalry—the 2d and 3d Dragoons—to relieve the 9th Lancers and 14th Dragoons, but the four relieved regiments not to return till the mutiny should be quelled; four regiments of infantry—the 19th, 38th, and 79th foot, and the 1st battalion of the 1st foot—to go out in consequence of the bad news received from India at the end of June; six regiments of infantry—the 20th, 34th, 42d, 54th, 97th, and 2d battalion of the Rifle Brigade—together with several troops and companies of artillery, were to go out in consequence of the still more disastrous news received in the middle of July; drafts were to go out to bring up to the full strength the whole of the Queen’s regiments in India; and, lastly, recruits were to go out, to bring up to the full complement the whole of the European regiments belonging to the Company. These various augmentations to the strength of armed Europeans in India amounted to little less than twenty-four thousand men, all placed under orders by the middle of July.
Various discussions bearing on the military arrangements for India, took place in the two houses of parliament. Lord Ellenborough frequently recommended the embodiment of the militia and the calling out of the yeomanry, in order that England might not be left defenceless by sending a very strong royal army to India. The Earl of Hardwicke suggested that all the troops at Aldershott camp, about sixteen thousand in number, should at once be sent off to India. These, and other members of both Houses, insisted on the perilous position of India; whereas the ministers, in their speeches if not in their proceedings, treated the mutiny as of no very serious importance. Differences of opinion existed to a most remarkable extent; but the president of the Board of Control, Mr Vernon Smith, subjected himself at a later period to very severe criticism, on account of the boldness of the assertions made, or the extent of the ignorance displayed, in the earlier stages of the mutiny. When the news from Meerut and Delhi arrived, he said in the House of Commons: ‘I hope that the House will not be carried away by any notion that we exaggerate the danger because we have determined upon sending out these troops. It is a measure of security alone with respect to the danger to be apprehended. I cannot agree with the right honourable gentleman (Mr Disraeli) that our Indian empire is imperiled by the present disaster. I say that our Indian empire is not imperiled; and I hope that in a short time the disaster, dismal as it is, will be effectually suppressed by the force already in that country.... Luckily the outrage has taken place at Delhi; because it is notorious that that place may be easily surrounded; so that if we could not reduce it by force, we could by famine.... Unfortunately, the mail left on the 28th of May; and I cannot, therefore, apprise the House that the fort of Delhi has been razed to the ground; but I hope that ample retribution has by this time been inflicted on the mutineers.’ That other persons, military as well as civil, felt the mutiny to be a wholly unexpected phenomenon, is true; but this minister obviously erred by his positive assertions; his idea of ‘easily surrounding’ a walled city seven miles in circuit was preposterous; and there was displayed an unpardonable ignorance of the state of the armies in that country in the further assertion that ‘there are troops in India equal to any emergency.’
A question of singular interest and of great importance arose—how should the reinforcements of troops be sent to India? But before entering on this, it will be well to notice the arrangements made for providing a commander for them when they should reach their destination. As soon as it was known in London, early in July, that General Anson was dead, the government appointed Sir Colin Campbell as his successor. The provisional appointment of Sir Patrick Grant as commander of the forces in India was approved as a judicious step on the part of the Calcutta government; but, rightly or wrongly, the permanent appointment to that high office had come to be considered a ministerial privilege in London; and thus Sir Colin was sent out to supersede Sir Patrick. Fortunately, the general selected carried with him the trust and admiration of all parties. For a time, it is true, there was a disposition to foster a Campbell party and a Grant party among newspaper writers. One would contend that Sir Colin, though a brave and good soldier, and without a superior in command of a brigade, had nevertheless been without opportunity of shewing those powers of combination necessary for the suppression of a wide-spread mutiny, perhaps the reconquest of an immense empire; whereas Sir Patrick was just the man for the occasion, possessing the very experience, temper, and other qualities for dealing with the native soldiers. On the other hand, it was contended that Campbell was something more than a mere general of brigade, having successfully commanded masses of troops equal in extent to armies during the Punjaub war; whereas Grant, being by professional education and military sympathies a Bengal officer—although afterwards commander at Madras—had imbibed that general leaning towards the sepoys which rendered such officers unfit to deal sternly with them in time of disaffection. Happily, this controversy soon came to an end; Sir Colin was pronounced by the public verdict to be the right man, without any disparagement to Sir Patrick; and it was judiciously suggested by the Earl of Ellenborough that the last-named general might, with great advantage to the state, be made a military member of the supreme council at Calcutta, to advise the governor-general on army and military subjects. The nation recognised in Sir Colin the soldierly promptness which had distinguished Wellington and Napier, and which he illustrated in the following way: On the morning of Saturday the 11th of July, the news of General Anson’s death reached London; at two o’clock on the same day a cabinet council was held; immediately after the council an interview took place between the minister of war and the commander of the forces; consequent on this interview, Sir Colin Campbell was offered the post of commander-in-chief in India; he accepted it; he was asked how soon he could take his departure; his reply was ‘To-morrow;’ and, true to his word, he left England on the Sunday evening—taking very little with him but the clothes on his back. Men felt that there would be no unnecessary amount of ‘circumlocution’ in the proceedings of such a general—a veteran who had been an officer in the army forty-nine years; and who, during that long period, had served in the Walcheren expedition; then in the Peninsular battles and sieges of Vimieira, Corunna, Barossa, Vitoria, San Sebastian, and Bidassoa; then in North America; then in the West Indies; then in the first Chinese war; then in the second Sikh war; and lastly in the Crimea.
Sir Colin Campbell, as a passenger remarkably free from luggage and baggage of every kind, was able to take advantage of the quickest route to India—by rail to Folkestone, steam to Boulogne, rail to Marseille, steam to Alexandria, rail and other means to Suez, and thence steam to Calcutta. Whether the troops could take advantage of this or any other kind of swift conveyance, was a question whereon public authorities and public advisers soon found themselves at variance. There were four projects—to proceed through France to Alexandria and Suez; to reach Alexandria by sea from Southampton; to steam from England to Calcutta round the Cape of Good Hope; and to take this last-named route by sailing-ships instead of steamers. A few words may usefully be said on each of these four plans.
As the overland route through France is the quickest, some advisers urged that it would therefore be the best; but this was by no means a necessary inference. It would require an immense amount of changing and shifting. Thrice would the men of the various regiments have to enter railway-trains—at London or some other English station, at Boulogne, and at Alexandria—perhaps also a fourth time at Paris; thrice would they have to leave railway-trains—at Folkestone, at Marseille, and at Cairo or some other place in Egypt; thrice would they have to embark in steamers—at Folkestone, at Marseille, and at Suez; and thrice would they have to disembark—at Boulogne, at Alexandria, and at Calcutta. The difficulties incidental to these many changes would be very great, although of course not insuperable. There would, in addition, be involved a delicate international question touching the passage of large bodies of troops through the territories of another sovereign. The Emperor of France, at a time of friendly alliance, would possibly have given the requisite permission; but other considerations would also have weight; and it is, on the whole, not surprising that the route through France was left unattempted.
It does not follow, however, from difficulties in the French route, that the sea-route to Alexandria would be unavailable; on the contrary, that mode of transit found many advocates. The distance from Southampton to Alexandria is about three thousand miles; and this distance could obviously be traversed, in a number of days easy of estimate, by a steamer requiring no transhipment of cargo. Another steamer would make the voyage from Suez to Calcutta; and an overland passage through Egypt would complete the route. This is a much shorter route to Calcutta than that viâ the Cape of Good Hope, in the ratio of about eight thousand miles to twelve thousand; it is adopted for the heavy portion of the India mail; and many persons thought it might well be adopted also for the transmission of troops. The ministers in parliament, however, explained their reasons for objecting to this route. These objections referred principally to steamers and coal, of which there were no more in the Indian seas than were necessary for the mail service. The matter was argued thus: The first mail from England, after the news of the mutiny, left on the 10th of July; it would reach Bombay about the 10th of August; a return mail would start from Bombay on the 16th of August, describing the arrangements made for receiving at Suez any troops sent by the Egyptian route; that letter would reach London about the 16th of September; and if troops were sent off immediately, with everything prepared, they could not have reached India till towards the end of October—four months after the receipt of the first disastrous news from Meerut. A vessel by the Cape route, if sent off at once, would reach as soon. This argument depended wholly on the assumption that it would be necessary to spend three months in sending and receiving messages, before the troops could safely be started off from Southampton to Alexandria. Some of those who differed from the government on this point admitted that only a small number of troops could be conveyed by this route, owing to the unfinished state of the land-conveyance from Alexandria to Suez.[[37]] The thirty miles of sandy desert to be traversed, either by marching or in vehicles, would necessarily entail much difficulty and confusion if the number of troops were large, especially as neither the isthmus nor its railway belonged to England. Then, again, there are questions concerning calms, storms, monsoons, trade-winds, shoals, and coral reefs, which were warmly discussed by the advocates of different systems; some of whom contended that the Red Sea cannot safely be depended on by ship-loads of troops during the second half of the year; while others argued that the dangers of the route are very slight. On the one side, it was represented that, by adopting the Suez route, there would be many changes in the modes of travel, many sources of confusion wherever those changes were made, many uncertainties whether there would be steamers ready at Suez, many doubts about the supply of coal at Aden and elsewhere, many perils of wreck in and near the Red Sea, much deterioration of health to the troops during the hot weather in that region, and much embarrassment felt by Viscount Canning if the troops came to him faster than he could transfer them up the country. Certain of these government doubts were afterwards admitted to be well founded; others were shewn to be erroneous; and though a few regiments were sent by the Suez route later in the year, it became pretty generally admitted, that if only one or two regiments had taken that route early in July, the benefit to India would have been very great, and the difficulties not more than might have been easily conquered.
Next for consideration was the Cape route. Those who admitted that the overland journey was suited only for a small body of troops, and not for an army of thirty thousand men, had yet to settle whether sailing-ships or steamers were best fitted for this service. In some quarters it was urged: ‘Employ our screw war-steamers; we are at peace in Europe, and can send our soldiers quickly by this means to India, without the expense of chartering steamers belonging to companies or private persons. If sufficient bounties are offered, in one week we could obtain seamen enough to man twenty war-steamers. Take the main and lower-deck guns out of the ships; place fifteen hundred troops in each of the large screw line-of-battle ships; and man each ship with half the war complement, the soldiers themselves serving as marines.’ To this it was replied that line-of-battle ships would be dearer rather than cheaper than chartered vessels, because they could not lessen the charge by back-cargoes. Sir Charles Napier contended, moreover, that screw war-steamers could not be fitted out as troop-ships in less than three months after the order was given; and that great difficulty would be found in raising men for them. The government was influenced by these or similar considerations; for no troops were sent out in war-vessels—possibly owing to a prudential wish to keep all war-ships ready for warlike exigencies.
There remained, lastly, the question whether, the Cape route being adopted, it would be better to hire steam-ships or sailing-ships for conveying troops to India. Eager inquiries on this question were made in parliament soon after the news of the outbreak arrived. The ministers, in reference to the superiority of steamers over sailing-ships, stated that, from the difficulty in procuring steamers of the requisite kind, and the delay caused by the number of intermediate points at which they would have to touch for coal, steamers would probably not reach the Indian ports more quickly than sailing-ships. Lord Ellenborough admitted that, when he was in India, sailing-vessels were found better than steamers for India voyages in the autumnal half of the year; but this left untouched the important improvements effected in steam-navigation during the intervening period of fourteen years. The battle was much contested. Sir Charles Wood, First Lord of the Admiralty, pointed out that fast sailing-ships often went from England to Calcutta in 90 to 100 days; that auxiliary screws had been known to take from 90 to 120 days; and therefore that we were not certain of quicker voyages by steam than by sail, even (which was doubtful) if coal enough were procurable at the Cape. This roused the advocates of steaming, who complained that the minister had compared quick sailing-ships with slow steamers. Mr Lindsey asserted that the average duration of twenty-two sail-voyages was 132 days; and that the steam-average would not exceed 94 days. Another authority averred that the average of ninety-eight sail-voyages was 130 days; and that of seven screw-steam voyages, 93 days.