The party assembled under the roof of the Residency included the Commander-in-Chief, of whom Sir Charles says: 'Sir Frederick Roberts knows India as no one else knows it, and knows the Indian Army as no one else has ever known it'; the Adjutant-General; the Quartermaster- General, who was Director of Military Intelligence; the Military Member of Council, General Chesney; and Sir Charles Elliott, the Member of Council for Public Works, who had charge of the strategic railways. With them were the Inspectors-General of Artillery and of Military Works, the Secretary of the Defence Commission, and the General in Command at Quetta, as well as his predecessor, who had not yet vacated the post.
He saw manoeuvres outside Quetta in the valleys that lead from the Afghan side, and he had the experience of riding up and down those stony hill slopes beside the Commander-in-Chief. He explored the Khojak tunnel, then under process of construction, running through 'a wall-like range which reminds one of the solitude of Sainte-Baume in Provence,' surveyed all the defences of Quetta, and then, while Lady Dilke went on by rail to Simla, he set out to ride, in company with Sir Frederick Roberts and Sir Robert Sandeman, from Harnai, through the Bori and Zhob Valleys, towards the Gomul Pass. On that journey he saw great gatherings of chiefs and tribesmen come in to meet and salute the representatives of British rule. He watched Sir Robert Sandeman parleying with the borderers, and was introduced to them as the statesman who had sanctioned the new road. These were regions beyond the reach of telegraph, where outposts maintained communications by a pigeon post, of which the mountain hawk took heavy toll; and each day's journey was a hard and heavy ride.
The ride continued for twelve days, through scorching sun by day and bitter cold at night; and every march brought its full portion of strange and beautiful sights. All the romance of border rule, outposts among robber tribes, order maintained through the agency of subsidized chiefs, were disclosed; and even when the conditions of travel changed, when a train took them from the Upper Indus to Nowshera and Peshawur, it brought to Sir Charles the opportunity of seeing what interested him no less than the wild tribal levies—namely, the pick of British regulars in India, both native and European.
The splendour and beauty of the pageant pleased the eye, and there was not lacking a dramatic interest. He had seen by Sir Frederick Roberts's side the mountain battle-ground where the day of Maiwand was avenged and British prestige restored; now he was present when Ayub Khan, the victor of Maiwand, voluntarily came forward to hold speech for the first time with the conqueror who so swiftly blotted out the Afghan's victory.
'On our way back (from India) we stayed at Cairo, and saw much of Sir Evelyn Baring, Riaz, Mustapha Fehmy, the Khedive, Tigrane, Yakoub Artin, and the other leading men. At Rome, as we passed through Italy, I made the acquaintance of many of my wife's friends, the most interesting of whom was, perhaps, Madame Minghetti, known to her friends as Donna Laura, and previously Princess Camporeale; and I obtained through Bonghi, whom we saw both at Naples and at Rome, an order to see Spezia—an order which was refused by the War Office, and granted by the Admiralty. The Admiral commanding the Fleet and the Préfet Maritime were both very kind, and I thoroughly saw the arsenal, fleet, and forts, with the two Admirals.'
In 1905 Sir Charles writes:
'On September 7th in the year 1891 I started for the French manoeuvres, to which I had been invited by Galliffet. By sending over my horses I was able to see the manoeuvres extremely well….
'The Marquis de Galliffet was an interesting figure, a soldier of the time of Louis XV., who, however, had thoroughly learned his modern work. There were 125,000 men in the field, but, looking back to my adventures, I am now more struck by the strange future of the friends I made than by the interest, great as it was, of the tactics. We had on the staff almost all those who afterwards became leading men in the Dreyfus case, on both sides of that affair. Saussier, the Generalissimo, had with him, to look after the foreign officers, Colonel (afterwards Sir) Reginald Talbot, Huehne' (German Military Attaché), 'and others—Maurice Weil (the Jew friend of Esterhazy), who was in the Rennes trial named by the defence as the real spy, though, I am convinced, innocent. We now know, of course, that Esterhazy should have been the villain of the play…. General Billot, afterwards Minister of War, was present, living with Saussier, as a spectator. Galliffet had under him nearly 120,000 men, but the skeleton enemy was commanded by General Boisdeffre, afterwards Chief of the Staff, and the leader of the clerical party in the Ministry of War, and friend, throughout the "affair," of Billot. General Brault, also afterwards Chief of the Staff, was in the manoeuvres Chief of the Staff to Galliffet. He, it will be remembered, also played his part in the "affair," as did Huehne, named above. On Galliffet's staff, besides General Brault, were Colonel Bailloud, also concerned in the Dreyfus case; Captain Picquart, afterwards the youngest Lieutenant-Colonel in the French army, a brilliant and most thoughtful military scholar, the hero of the Dreyfus case in its later aspects; the Comte d'Alsace, afterwards a deputy, and, although a clerical Conservative, a witness for Dreyfus; and Joseph Reinach, the real author of the virtual rehabilitation of Dreyfus. It was a singularly brilliant staff. Bailloud, it may be remembered, afterwards became Commander-in-Chief of the China Expedition.
'Of those who have not been named, in addition to the remarkable men who figured in the Dreyfus case, and among the few on this staff who were not concerned in it, were other interesting persons: the Prince d'Hénin, M. de la Guiche, and a man who was interesting, and figures largely in memoirs, Galliffet's bosom friend, the Marquis du Lau d'Allemans. "Old Du Lau," as he is generally called, was a rich bon vivant, with a big house in Paris, who throughout life has been a sort of perpetual "providence" to Galliffet, going with him everywhere, even to the Courts where Galliffet was a favourite guest. Reinach and Du Lau were not soldiers in the strict sense of the term, although members of Galliffet's staff. Maurice Weil, though a great military writer, was himself not a soldier, although on Saussier's headquarters staff in Paris and in the field. Weil and Reinach were both officers of the territorial army: Weil a Colonel of artillery, Reinach a Lieutenant of Chasseurs à Cheval. Du Lau was a dragoon Lieutenant of stupendous age—possibly an ex-Lieutenant, with the right to wear his uniform when out as a volunteer on service. I was walking with him one day in a village, when a small boy passing said to a companion "What a jolly old chap for a Lieutenant!" And it was strange indeed to see the long white hair of the old Marquis streaming from beneath his helmet. He was older, I think, than Galliffet, who was retiring, and who received during these manoeuvres the plain military medal, which is the joy of French hall-porters, but the highest distinction which can be conferred by the Republic on a General who is a member of the Supreme Council of War and at the top of the tree in the Legion of Honour. Joseph Reinach was, of course, young enough to be the son of old Du Lau, but since leaving the regular regiment of Chasseurs—in which he had done his service at Nancy, while Gyp (his future enemy and that of his race) was the reigning Nancy beauty—he had expanded in figure so that his sky-blue-and-silver and fine horse did not save him from comments by the children who had noted Du Lau's age. The Duc d'Aumale was also present on horseback as a spectator, but his official friends, and their friends, were forced to ignore him, as he had not yet made his peace with the Republic.
'As soon as I had joined Galliffet, I wrote to my wife: "Conduct of troops most orderly. It is now, of course, here, as it was already in 1870 with the Germans, that, the soldier being Guy Boys [Footnote: Guy Boys was Lady Dilke's nephew; Jim Haslett the ferryman at Dockett. Sir Charles was illustrating the fact that all classes serve together both in the ranks and as officers.] and Jim Haslett and all of us, and not a class apart, there is no 'military tone.' Discipline, nevertheless, seems perfect, but are the officers as good as the non-commissioned officers and the men? I doubt. Promotion from the ranks combined with special promotion to the highest ranks for birth of all nobles who have any brains at all is a combination which gives results inferior to either the Swiss democratic plan or the Prussian aristocratic. Perhaps a fifth of the officers are noble, but more than half the powerful officers are noble; and here we are with the sides commanded by the Prince d'Eckmühl and the Prince de Sartigues." (During the first days of the manoeuvres the four army corps and the two cavalry divisions were combined under Galliffet; half the army was commanded by General Davoust, who, of course, is the first of these two Princes; and Galliffet had for "second title" the name of his Provençal principality near Marseilles.) "You may say, 'The Generalissimo, sausage-maker, restores the balance.' But the real Generalissimo is Miribel, Aristo of the Aristos—for he is a poor noble of the South. Another of the army corps is commanded by a Breton, Kerhuel, and the other by a man of army descent for ever and ever, Négrier, son and nephew of Napoleonic Generals."'