Sir Charles Napier

CHAPTER XI

THE ADMINISTRATION OF SCINDE

Scinde subdued in the open field, there still remained great work to be done – work which tasks to a far larger degree the talent of man than any feat of arms in war can do. War at best is but a pulling down, often a very necessary operation, but all the same only the preliminary step of clearing the ground for some better edifice.

For better, for worse, Scinde was now British, and Napier set at once to work to consolidate his conquest, and secure to the conquered province the best administration of justice he could devise for it. A terrible misfortune came, however, to retard all plans for improvement. Early in the autumn pestilence laid low almost the entire army of the Indus. A slow and wasting form of fever broke out among both English and Indian soldiers, and equally struck down the natives of Scinde. In the camp at Hyderabad twenty-eight hundred men were down together. At Kurachee the Twenty-Eighth Regiment could only muster about forty men fit for service out of the entire battalion. At Sukkur, in Northern Scinde, sixteen hundred were in hospital. There were only a few doctors to look after this army of sick. Out of three cavalry regiments, only a hundred men could mount their horses. People shook their heads gloomily, and Scinde became known far and wide as the Unhappy Valley. Amid all this misery, while "the land in its length and breadth was an hospital," as Napier described it, we find him never giving in for a moment, working at his plans for justice, repression of outrage, irrigation, roads, bridges, moles, harbours, and embankments as though he was enjoying the health-giving breezes of the Cephalonian mountains. Wonderful now to read are the plans and visions of the future that then floated before his mind. "Suez, Bombay, and Kurachee will hit Calcutta hard before twenty years pass," he writes, "but Bombay will beat Kurachee, and be the Liverpool if not the London of India." Nor has the pestilence stilled in his heart dreams of further conquest. "How easily, were I absolute," he says, "could I conquer all these countries and make Kurachee the capital. With the Bombay soldiers of Meanee and Hyderabad I could walk through all the lands. I would raise Beloochee regiments, pass the Bolan in a turban, and spread rumours of a dream and the prophet. Pleasant would be the banks of the Helmund to the host of Mahomedans who would follow any conqueror." So passed the winter of 1844. Before the cool season was over, the troops had regained comparative health, and were better able to face the terrible summer. May and June came, as usual bringing sunstroke, disease, and death in their train, but for Napier the hot season of 1844 had something worse in store. His Chief, Lord Ellenborough, was suddenly recalled by the East India Directors. This was a regular knock-down blow, for while Lord Ellenborough was Viceroy of India Charles Napier could count upon an unvarying support; he fought, as it were, with his back to a wall. Now the wall was gone, and henceforth it seemed that the circle of his enemies would be complete. "I see but one advantage in the unfortunate recall of Lord Ellenborough," he writes; "it will oblige the Government to destroy a Mercantile Republic which has arisen in the midst of the British Monarchy." The prophecy was not to be fulfilled for thirteen years, when the terrible mutiny of 1857 – so often predicted by Napier, and laughed at by his enemies – came like an avalanche to sweep before it every vestige of the famous Association.

What life in Scinde meant to Napier in this hot season of 1844 we gather from a letter written in June to his brother. "The Bengal troops at Shikarpoor are in open mutiny," he writes, "and I am covered with boils, that have for three weeks kept me in pain and eight days in bed. This, with the heat and an attack of fever, has made me too weak to go to Shikarpoor, for the sun is fierce up the river; many have been struck down by it last week, and it would be difficult for me to bear a second rap. Still I would risk it, but that a storm seems brewing at Mooltan, and this extraordinary change of governors will not dispel it. To me also it appears doubtful, if the Sikhs pour sixty or seventy thousand men over the Sutlej, whether Gough has means to pull them up. I am therefore nursing myself to be able to bolt northwards when we can act, which is impossible now – three days under canvas would kill half the Europeans." If Napier's reputation for foresight stood alone upon the above letter, it would suffice to place him at the top of the far-seeing leaders of his day. In the midst of all his sickness and discomfort he accurately forecast the history of the coming years in India. The intense activity of the man's mind is never more apparent than during this terrible season, which prostrates thousands of younger men. His letters teem with brilliant bits of thought on government, war, justice, society, politics, taxation, – nothing comes amiss to him. Here, for example, is a bit on war worth whole volumes of the stuff usually written about it. "The man who leads an army cannot succeed unless his whole mind is thrown into his work, any more than an actor can act unless he feels his part as if he was the man he represents. It is not saying 'Come and go' that wins battles; you must make the men you lead come and go with a will to their work of death. The man who either cannot or will not do this, but goes to war snivelling about virtue and unrighteousness, will be left on the field of battle to fight for himself." Here again is a little chapter on Indian government. "The Indian system seems to be the crushing of the native plebeian and supporting the aristocrat who, reason and facts tell us, is our deadly enemy. He always must be, for we step into his place. The ryot is ruined by us, though willing to be our friend. Yet he is the man to whom we must trust for keeping India – and the only one who can take it from us, if we ill-use him, for then he joins his hated natural chief. English and Indian may be amalgamated by just and equal laws – until we are no longer strangers. The final result of our Indian conquests no man can predict, but if we take the people by the hand we may count on ruling India for ages. Justice – rigid justice, even severe justice – will work miracles. India is safe if so ruled, but such deeds are done as make me wonder that we hold it a year."

As the cool season of 1844-45 drew on, Napier set out on an expedition against the hill tribes of Northern Scinde. Hitherto these wild clansmen had had things pretty much their own way; in true Highland fashion they were wont to sweep down upon the villages of the plain, killing men, carrying off women and cattle, looting and devastating as they went. Hard to catch were these Beloochee freebooters, for their wiry little horses carried the riders quickly out of reach into some fastness where pursuit, except in strength and with supplies for man and beast, was hopeless. The hills which harboured these raiders ran along the entire western frontier of Scinde, from the sea to the Bolan Pass. North of that famous entrance to Afghanistan they curved to the east, approaching the Indus not far from the point where that stream received the five rivers of the Punjaub. Here, spreading out into a labyrinth of crag, defile, and mountain, they formed a succession of natural fortresses, the approaches to which were unknown to the outer world. This great fastness, known as the Cutchee Hills, was distant from Kurachee more than three hundred miles. Leaving Kurachee in the middle of November and following a road which skirted a fringe of hills lying west of the Indus, Napier reached his northern frontier after a month's march. It was a pleasant change to get away from the sickly cantonments into the desert and the hills, where the pure air, now cooled by the winter nights, brought back health and strength to the little column. How thoroughly the toil- and heat-worn soldier enjoyed this long march we gather from his letters.

My march is a picturesque one (he writes). At this moment behind me is my Mogul guard, some two hundred cavalry, with their splendid Asiatic dress, and the sun's horizontal rays glancing with coruscations of light along their bright sword-blades. Behind them are three hundred infantry – the old bronzed soldiers of the Thirteenth Regiment – the defenders of Jellalabad, veterans of battle. So are the cavalry, for they charged at Meanee and Hyderabad, where their scarlet turbans were seen sweeping through the smoke – by their colour seeming to announce the bloody work they were at. On these picturesque horsemen the sun is gleaming, while the Lukkee hills are casting their long shades and the Kurta range reflects from its crowning rock the broad beautiful lights. Below me are hundreds of loaded camels with guards and drivers, rude grotesque people, all slowly winding among the hills. Such is royal life here, for it is grand and kingly to ride through the land that we have conquered, with the men who fought. Yet, what is it all? Were I a real king there would be something in it – but a mere copper captain!

A fine picture of martial life in the East all the same, and when we contrast it with a little bit of his experience a couple of days later, we get the far-apart limits which held between them the nature of the man. He is now writing from Schwan, where he has delayed his march two days for the purpose of seeing justice done to the poor cultivators and fishermen of that place.

November 30th.– Still at Schwan, having halted to find out the truth. The poor people came to me with earnest prayers, – they never come without cause, – but they are such liars and so bad at explaining, that were their language understood by me it would be hard to reach facts. Yet, knowing well that at the bottom there is gospel, that no set of poor wretches ever complain without a foundation, here will I stay until the truth comes out, and relief be given. On all these occasions my plan is a most unjust one, for against all evidence I decide in favour of the poor, and argue against the argument of the Government people as long as I can. When borne down by proofs 'irrefragable,' like Alexander, I cut the knot and give an atrocious verdict against 'clearest proof.' My formula is this: punish the Government servants first, and inquire about the right and wrong when there is time. This is the way to prevent tyranny, to make the people happy, and to render public servants honest. If the complaint is that they cheat Government, oh! that is another question; then have fair trials and leniency. We are all weak when temptation is strong.

Pity is it to lose a word of this ruler, who rules in fashion so different from the law-giving of the usual bigwig. But space denies us longer leave to delve in this rich mine of justice. It is a fine picture – one that the world does not see enough of – this victorious old soldier riding through the conquered land intent on justice, sparing himself nothing to lift up the poor, to free the toiler, to unbind the slave. A strong man, terrible only to the unjust, spreading everywhere the one grand law of his life – "A privileged class cannot be permitted." With him the quibbler, the doctrinaire, the political economist, has no place. "Well did Napoleon say," he writes, "that the doctrinaire and the political economist would ruin the most flourishing kingdom in ten years. Well, they have no place yet in Scinde; there are no Whig poor-laws here. Oh, it is glorious thus to crush Scindian Whiggism! and don't I grind it till my heart dances? The poor fishermen who are now making their lying howls of complaint at the door of my tent are right, though I can't yet find the truth in the midst of their falsehoods." But he stops by the shore of Lake Manchur until the truth is found out; and then we read: "Marched this morning, having penetrated the mystery. The collector has without my knowledge raised the taxation 40 per cent on the very poorest class of the population. He is an amiable man, and so religious that he would not cough on a Sunday, yet he has done a deed of such cruelty as is enough to raise an insurrection. This discovery of oppression is alone sufficient to repay the trouble of my journey." A despot, you will say, reader, is this soldier judge, thus

Yes, a despot truly, and one who, if history had held more of them, we might to-day have known a good deal less about human misery than we do. And now with your permission we will proceed into the Cutchee Hills.

Napier reached Sukkur in the week preceding Christmas 1844. It had been the base from whence he had moved to attack the Ameers two years earlier. It was now to be his base against the hill tribes of Cutchee. At the head of a confederacy of clans stood Beja Khan Doomkee, an old and redoubtable warrior, strong in the inaccessible nature of his mountains, strong, too, in being able to throw the glamour of Islam over his raids and ravages, and stronger still in the bravery and determination of the men whose creed of plunder was strangely coupled with the old heroic virtues of that great Arab race from which they sprang. How was this stout old robber with his eight or ten thousand fighting men to be worsted? By the exact opposite of the ordinary rules of war for civilised opponents: by dispersing the columns of attack, while making each strong enough for separate resistance, he would force the clansmen to mass together; the very ruggedness and aridity which made their hills so formidable to an enemy would thus be turned against themselves. Napier's columns, fed from their bases on the Indus, would advance cautiously into the labyrinth; the hill-men, forced together in masses, would eat out their supplies; the same walls of rock which kept out an enemy would now keep in the assembled tribes.

Before setting his columns in motion from the Indus, Napier adopted many devices to lull the clans into a fancied security. The fever still clung to his soldiers, and so deadly was its nature that nearly the whole of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders perished at Sukkur. But even this terrible disaster was turned to account by the inexhaustible resource of the commander. He sent messages to the Khan of Khelat that the sickness of his soldiers and his own debility were so great that he could not move against the tribes. These messages were designed to reach Beja Khan. They did reach him, and emboldened by the news the hill-men remained with their flocks and herds on the level and comparatively fertile country where the desert first merges into the foot-hills of Cutchee. Then Napier, suddenly launching his force in three columns, dashed into this borderland by forced marches, surprised the tribes, captured thousands of their cattle and most of their grain supplies, and forcing them back into the mountains, sat down himself at the gates or passes leading into the fastness to await the arrival of his guns, infantry, and commissariat. It took some days before his columns were ready to enter the defiles, and then the real mountain warfare began. Very strange work it was; full of necessities of sudden change, of ceaseless activity, of prolonged exertion, climbing of rocks, boring for water, meeting each day's difficulty by some fresh combination, some new expedient. A war where set rules did not apply, where the savage had to be encountered by equal instinct and wider comprehension, but where, nevertheless, the sharpest foresight was as essential to success as though the theatre of the struggle had been on the soldier-trodden plains of Europe. Broadly speaking, the plan of campaign was this. He would enter the hills with four columns, one of which, his own, would be the real fighting one; the other three would act as stoppers of the main passes leading out of the mountains. Somewhere in the centre of the cluster of fastnesses there was a kernel fastness called Truckee. It was a famous spot in the robber legends of middle Asia, a kind of circular basin having a wall of perpendicular rock six hundred feet high all round it, with cleft entrance only at two places, one opening north, the other south. The object of Napier's strategy was to compel the hill-men to enter this central stronghold, for if once there, they were at his mercy. But before he could force them into this final refuge he had to learn for himself the paths and passes of the entire region, finding out where there was water, securing each pass behind him before he made a step forward in advance.