1817.
The new year brought the regiment to more serious service in the field, namely, the Pindari War. These Pindaris in their early days had been merely the scavengers of the Mahratta armies; but they had been increasing in numbers and power in the south of Hindostan and the north of the Dekhan since 1811. Their most celebrated chiefs were two men named Kurreem and Cheettoo, who had been captured by Dowlat Rao Scindiah, but were released by him for a ransom in 1812. The Pindaris then came out as an independent body, and began incursions on a large scale. 1817. They invaded a country in bands of from one to four thousand men apiece, which on reaching the frontier broke up into parties of from two to five hundred. They earned little but their arms; they were admirably mounted, and thought nothing of marching fifty or sixty miles in a day. They lived, themselves and their horses, on plunder, and what they could not carry off they destroyed. In 1812 they were bold and strong enough to cross the Nerbuddha and invade the territory of the Rajah of Nagpore, and in 1813 they actually set fire to part of his capital. As they threatened further depredations in the Gaikwar’s territory, a force of 600 native infantry and three troops of the Seventeenth were sent to disperse them; and these repressive measures had a good effect for the time. By 1814 their numbers were reckoned at 27,000 men, “the best cavalry commanded by natives in India,” with 24 guns; and in the two following years they became more and more dangerous and troublesome. Holkar and Scindiah, being afraid of them, had both made an alliance with them, and encouraged them secretly. Moreover, the British Government was hampered in any attempt to put them down by an engagement with Scindiah, which prevented it from entering into any negotiations with the Rajpoots under Scindiah’s protection. Unless British troops could follow the Pindaris into Rajpoot territory it was of no use to advance against them, for the only way in which the Pindaris could be suppressed was by hunting them down to a man.
The capture of Bungapore in the Madras Presidency at last brought matters to a crisis. Lord Moira, the Governor-General, called upon Scindiah to disown the Pindaris and conclude a treaty with England. Scindiah signed it cheerfully on the 5th November 1816. That little farce over, he joined a general conspiracy of the Mahratta powers to overthrow British rule in India. The Peishwar and the Rajah of Nagpore, who had also recently signed treaties of alliance with England, together with Holkar were the principal leaders of the movement. Then the Governor-General bestirred himself in earnest. 1817. He collected the Bengal, Madras, and Central armies, and fairly surrounded the whole Pindari country, the Malwa in fact, with 80,000 men. Over and above these a force, under Sir W. Grant Keir, advanced from Bombay to block up one corner on the Bombay side. It was to this force that the Seventeenth was attached, joining it at Baroda.
The Baroda force under Sir W. Keir marched on the 6th December. On the second day’s march the rear-guard was attacked by a body of Bheels—a race which, though “diminutive and wretched looking,” were “active and capable of great fatigue,” as befitted a gang of professed thieves and robbers. They were driven off by a squadron of the Seventeenth under Colonel Stanhope himself, but at the cost of an officer, Cornet Marriott, and several men and horses wounded. Sergeant-Major Hampson received an arrow in the mouth from a Bheel archer. He calmly plucked the arrow out, drew his pistol, shot the Bheel, and then fell dead—choked by the flow of blood. This affair won the Seventeenth the thanks of the General in field orders.
Of the subsequent movements of the Seventeenth in the war I have found great difficulty, from the impossibility of getting at the original despatches, in obtaining any knowledge. The great battle of the campaign was fought against Holkar’s troops at Maheidpore on the 20th December. The Seventeenth was not present at the action, though Colonel Stanhope was thanked in orders and despatches for his service as D.Q.M.G., and though immediately after it the regiment was ordered off to reinforce Sir J. Malcolm’s division for the pursuit of Holkar. 1818. On the 23rd January 1818 a treaty was make with Holkar; and the war then resolved itself into a pursuit of the other members of the conspiracy, and in particular of the Pindaris. In fact the work of the Seventeenth was a foretaste of that which it was to experience in Central India forty years later; equally difficult to trace from the rapidity of the movements; equally hard to recount from the dearth of material and the separation of the regiment into detachments; above all equally hard on men and horses, perpetually harassed by long forced marches which led only to more forced marches for weeks and weeks together. 1818. I have only been able to gather that the men suffered not a little from the extraordinary changes of temperature, varying from 28½ to 110 degrees during the march; and that on a few odd occasions their services were such as to call down the special praise of the divisional commander. These commendations are the more valuable, inasmuch as petty, though brilliant actions were very common in Central India during the early months of 1818.
19th Jan.
The first of these in which we hear of the Seventeenth is an action at Mundapie, wherein four squadrons of the regiment surprised the Pindaris, and cut down 100 of them, with the loss of one private wounded. The gallantry and rapidity of the attack, by the testimony of the General, alone saved the Seventeenth from heavier casualties. We hear next of a detachment of the regiment engaged at the capture of Fort Pallee; 9th Feb. and next, at a more important affair, we find the whole of the Seventeenth fighting against the most renowned of the Pindari leaders, Cheettoo himself. The action recalls the history of the detachment which served under Tarleton in Carolina. March.It appears that Colonel Stanhope obtained information that a large body of Pindaris was within a forced march of him. He at once sent off a detachment in pursuit, which after a thirty mile march came upon the enemy, evidently by surprise, and cut down 200 of them. Cheettoo himself, conspicuous by his dress and black charger, narrowly escaped capture, and owed his safety only to the speed of his horse.[11] Captain Adams and Cornet Marriott, who had already distinguished themselves in the rear-guard action with the Bheels, were prominent on this occasion, and with the whole detachment received Sir W. Keir’s thanks in division orders. On the 14th March, when Sir W. Keir’s force was broken up, two officers of the Seventeenth, Colonel Stanhope and Captain Thompson, were selected by the General for special approbation and thanks.
1819.
After a short rest in cantonments the regiment, towards the end of the year, resumed the chase of the Pindaris. The new year found them marching into the province of Candeish, excepting a detachment of eighty-six convalescents who, on their recovery, joined Sir W. Keir’s force in Cutch. While there it must have experienced the frightful earthquake of June 1819, which destroyed most of the Cutch towns and killed thousands of natives. Of the general movements of the Seventeenth I have been unable to discover anything. It appears that before the end of the year the regiment was back again in cantonments, and that it moved up to Cutch again in May following, still engaged at the old work. 1820. Colonel Stanhope was then entrusted with a force of between five and six thousand men, destined, it was said, for the invasion of Scinde. After six months’ encampment between Bhooj and Mandivie, the Seventeenth returned to cantonments, and the force generally was broken up. Colonel Stanhope, with a few troops which he had retained, reduced the pirate fort of Dwarka, where Cornet Marriott (now promoted Lieutenant in the 67th Foot) was mortally wounded. He was acting as Brigade-Major to Colonel Stanhope at the time, the Seventeenth not being present at the engagement.
Two more years at the Kaira cantonments brought the regiment to the end of its first term of Indian service. It marched to Cambay in November, reached Bombay by water in December, and finally sailed for England on the 9th January 1823. It had landed at Calcutta, in 1808, 790 men strong; it had lost in fourteen years, from disease and climatic causes alone, exclusive of men invalided and killed in action, 26 officers and 796 men; it had received in India 929 men and officers. It went home, after leaving behind it volunteers for different regiments, under 200 strong of all ranks. Such were the effects of cholera,—for 1818 was a bad cholera year,—general ignorance of sanitary matters, and of English clothing in the Indian climate.