Charles Boswell Norman

“ It is to their colours that men look as the emblems of their regimental history, and on those colours are—or should be—emblazoned the names of all historic battles in which the regiment has been engaged. A soldier knows—or ought to know—the history of his own regiment, but the moment arrives when his curiosity is piqued, and he wishes to learn something about a corps which has fought side by side with his own. Perchance curiosity may be excited as to the reason why Copenhagen appears on the appointments of the Rifle Brigade, and Arabia on the colours of the York and Lancaster ”

“ Just as in the South of India the rulers of the Carnatic and of Mysore were the bitter foes of the English settlement at Madras, so at Calcutta we had against us Surajah Dowlah, the ruler of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa—a nominal Viceroy of the Mogul Emperor—straining every nerve to wrest from us the territories on which our factories were built. The tragedy of the Black Hole of Calcutta is familiar to every schoolboy. ”

“ Many women and children died from want of the bare necessaries of life; more than one babe was shot in its mother's arms, and more than one woman fell a victim to the bullets of our foes. For a long eighty-seven days did the siege last, and then the little band under Havelock forced its way through the many thousands of the besieging force, and brought the welcome reinforcement of British bayonets to the beleaguered garrison. The figures below tell the sad tale of the severe losses which were endured by the heroic garrison of Lucknow:
Casualties in the Defence of Lucknow. ”

“ There are few names amongst these battle honours around which stories of equal gallantry have not been woven. The memory of those deeds which men have dared, and in daring which they have gone forth to certain death, is the heritage not merely of those who serve under the colours, but of every man and woman of our race: Hardinge, rallying the men round the colours of the 57th at Albuera, with the now historic words, "Die hard, my men, die hard!"—a title that has clung to the regiment to this day. ”

“ When Reshire and Hafir find a place on our colours, surely room might be found for Schellenberg and Douai, for Menin, Nepaul, and Umbeyla. Minorca and its gallant defence might be embroidered side by side with Tarifa, El-bodon and Lerena with Sahagun, Ramnuggur with Aliwal, and Barcelona with St. Sebastian.
The names on our colours do indeed testify to our "far-flung battle-line." From Niagara to Pekin, from Copenhagen to the Cape of Good Hope, the British soldier has fought, and bled, and conquered. To record all the gallant deeds of the British army would be impossible. ”

“ Casualties at the Siege and Assault of Delhi, May to September, 1857.
Note.—I regret that I have been unable to trace the losses in those three fine regiments, now the 21st, 22nd, and 25th Cavalry.
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The story of the siege and the assault is an epic which will remain a monument of the heroism of our troops, British and native, to all time. Those who stand on that famous ridge and gaze at the stupendous walls before them, must wonder, as I have wondered, at the audacity which conceived and the gallantry which achieved such a feat of arms. ”

“ The Guards, with their usual dash, at once stormed the French redoubts, which they carried at the point of the bayonet, capturing twelve guns, one stand of colours, and close on 100 prisoners. The action was one of those isolated affairs which had no bearing on the campaign, but merely serve to show the superior stamina and discipline of the Brigade of Guards. Taking into consideration the strength of the force engaged, the casualties were undoubtedly heavy. ”

“ There were complaints of the stamp of recruits two centuries ago, as there are to-day. "The men you send me," wrote Grey from Martinique, "are not fit to bear arms." "I know not which are worse, officers or men," wrote Moore. "Send me men, not boys," wrote Sir Colin Campbell from India. Yet the boys who were not fit to bear arms captured the West Indies from the French; the worthless officers and men traversed Spain and held Napoleon's veterans in check at Corunna while their leader lay dying; and the boys in Sir Colin's regiments helped to restore peace in India. ”

“ The din of battle was music in the ears of the war-worn Governor-General, and he blithely accompanied the army. On the 17th the Ludhiana division joined that of Umballa, and on the 18th the Sikhs and British met at Moodkee. Our troops had covered 150 miles in seven days, and, as Sir Charles Gough puts it in terse and soldier-like language, "wearied with long and incessant [276] marching, the troops were enjoying a well-earned rest, when reports came in from the cavalry patrols that a large force of Sikhs was advancing upon them." ”

“ On April 6 Forde learnt that a force of 40,000 natives, under Salabad Jung, was advancing to the relief of Conflans, and he determined on storming at once. His position was full of difficulty: in front a formidable work, with a garrison exceeding his own force in number, his land communications threatened by a Franco-native army 40,000 strong, and an empty treasure-chest. A weaker man would have taken advantage of the presence of the fleet, contented himself with his own marvellous success at Condore, and embarked his little army for Bengal. ”

“ Ireland is now an integral portion of the British Empire, and Irish soldiers have in all our campaigns fought with stubborn determination on our side. So, too, the Royal Irish covered itself with glory on this day, as it has ever done when fighting for us. At the same time, it is worthy of note that the fiercest of our opponents at Blenheim were [18] the regiments of the Irish Brigade in the pay of the King of France.
Marlborough now retraced his steps to the Low Countries, and once more prepared to oppose the French in the field and the Dutch in the Council. ”

“ It is difficult to understand why the troops which took part in the expedition to Copenhagen in 1807 should be denied the battle honour conferred on the Berkshires and Rifle Brigade for their services as Marines in the expedition of 1801. In neither case were the losses severe, but the later expedition was in no way less successful than the former. The attitude of the Danes and the fear that their fine fleet would fall into the hands of the French led the Ministry of the day to assemble a powerful fleet and a by no means inconsiderable army in order to carry out their policy. ”

“ At the close of the war with France the garrison was withdrawn. With the advent of steam it became evident that the real route to India would be by the Red Sea, and the value of Aden as a coaling-station was borne on the minds of the Government of our great dependency. Commodore Haines, of the Indian Marine, an officer of exceptional attainments, was entrusted with the task of carrying on the necessary negotiations with the Arab ruler of Aden, and in the year 1835, in return for a cash subsidy and a promise of British protection, we became virtual rulers of the place. ”

“ The hostilities with the Amirs of Scinde were the direct but inevitable result of the first Afghan War. With some difficulty we had succeeded in obtaining the consent of some of the Amirs to the passage of the Bombay column of the army of Afghanistan through their country; but the people themselves were very averse to this concession. It was laying them open to future annexation, as they wisely conjectured. The passage of our convoys through their territories was an irresistible attraction to Baluch [267] marauders, and, not content with robbery, they cut up stragglers with impunity. ”

“ Every regiment that served on the line of communications in Afghanistan or in South Africa has been granted a battle honour. The regiments which maintained peace in the Punjab, which disarmed mutinous soldiery, which hunted down rebels in Lower India, have been denied all share in the distinctions granted for the Mutiny. ”

“ In some cases certain corps have been singled out for honour; others which bore an equal share in the same day's doings have been denied the privilege of assuming the battle honour. In some campaigns every skirmish has been handed down to posterity; in others one word has covered long years of fighting. Mysore, with its one honour, and Persia, with four, are cases in point. In some instances honours have been refused on the plea that the headquarters of the regiment was not present in the action; in others the honour has been granted when but a single troop or company has shared in the fight. ”

“ So long as the fighting races of India show the devotion to their officers and their loyalty to the Crown they have ever shown, we may smile at the frothy vapourings of the over-educated Bengalis, who have never furnished a single man for the defence of the country which they wish to emancipate from our rule. We read in the story of Chitral how the water-carrier, with his jaw smashed by a bullet, insisted as soon as his wound was dressed in taking more water to his Sikhs in the fighting-line. ”

“ It is true that in the campaign in Egypt a small body of Canadian Voyageurs had volunteered for service up the Nile, and that the Government of New South Wales had despatched a contingent to our assistance at Suakin in 1885; but during the war in South Africa contingents were despatched from all our dominions beyond the seas. Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, and Tasmania all had their forces in the field; whilst in the regiments of Yeomanry were to be found men drawn from all ranks of society and from all parts of our Empire—from the islands of the West Indies to Hong-Kong. ”

“ A number of independent columns were so engaged, but the brunt of the fighting fell on the troops under that dashing leader Sir Hugh Rose, afterwards Lord Strathnairn. The capture of Kotah, Jhansi, Calpee, and Gwalior all bear witness to the heroism of our troops and to the sufferings they endured during that terrible hot-weather campaign of 1858, when men died of cholera and of sunstroke by hundreds, and when the survivors struggled on manfully to retain our hold on Hindustan. ”

“ Three times have we captured the West India Islands; twice have our troops taken the Cape of Good Hope; three times have our armies marched from sea to sea in Spain; and there are few towns of importance in the Low Countries which have not been captured more than once by British troops. Conquests have been restored at the conclusion of a war in the full knowledge that on the outbreak of fresh hostilities those same conquests would have to be freshly undertaken and more lives sacrificed. ”

“ In 1612 our first troubles arose with the Portuguese, whom we defeated at Surat, and since then no question of their supremacy has arisen. Fifty years later the French had firmly established themselves at Masulipatam and Pondicherry, on the south-east coast, [50] as well as at Chandernagore, a few miles above Calcutta, and for the next 150 years the rivalry between France and England was the cause of much strife. The policy of the French was to stand well in with the native rulers, to organize their armies on a European model, and so, with their aid, to drive the English out of India. ”

“ Hateful though war be, few are the wars we have waged that have not ultimately brought peace and prosperity in their train, and there are still fewer names on our colours from which other lessons than those of tactics and strategy may not be learnt.
"England expects that every man will do his duty" was the last signal of the immortal Nelson—one which he kept flying to the end. ”

“ Some of the noblest feats of arms have been achieved by a few British officers at the head of a handful of Indian troops. At Mangalore and at Lucknow the sepoy regiments fought no less gallantly than the British corps which bear the same battle honour. The despatches of Colonel Campbell and of Sir John Inglis bear testimony to this fact; but at Seedaseer, Saugor, and Seetabuldee, at Corygaum, Arrah, and Kahun, and last, but by no means least, at Chitral, the sepoys had no British soldier to stiffen the defence. ”

“ It was thoroughly realized that we had a foe well worthy of our steel. The Afridis were well armed, and they counted some thousands of men who had been through the mill of discipline in our own regiments. Many of the very best regiments of the Indian army contained a large number of Afridis, and though these men have never hesitated to fight bravely against their own co-religionists in our border wars and in Afghanistan, there was more than a possibility that their loyalty would be too severely tried were we to employ them against their own fellow-tribesmen. ”

“ I give these few instances to show how regiments will be affected by the strict application of the ruling of General Ewart's Committee.
The halo that surrounds the name of the great Duke of Wellington has led many to suppose that the battles fought in the Peninsula were combats of giants. When we come down to hard facts, and study the casualty returns, and then reflect on the result of many of these actions which are inscribed on our colours, it is clear that they can hardly be described as "having by their results left their mark on history." ”

“ In a very few short years there will be no wearers of the Mutiny Medal left. Whilst the men by their clasps showed the share they took in the operations, the regiments bear no distinctive mark showing the part they played. The Somerset Light Infantry and the 12th Khelat-i-Ghilzai Regiment are authorized to bear a mural crown as a distinctive honour for their defence of Jelalabad and Khelat-i-Ghilzai; the 16th Lucknow Regiment wears a battlemented gateway, to connect it with the memorable defence of the Residency; the 45th Sikhs bear the words "Defence of Arrah" ”

“ Spasmodic outbursts of anti-British fanaticism culminated in the murder of two English officers at Multan, and in the early summer of 1848 it was clear that we must be prepared to conquer and to administer the Punjab. Multan was in the hands of men opposed, not only to the British, but also to the nominal rulers of the kingdom (the Council of Regency) , and a British force, under General Whish, was despatched to retake the fortress. This was composed of two troops of horse artillery and a siege-train manned by four companies of English gunners. ”

“ The Commander-in-Chief determined to renew it on the morrow, and the Governor-General, who felt that the fate of India hung in the balance, was equally firm in his resolve to support the Chief. "Better that our bones should bleach honourably on the field of battle than retire," was the response to a suggestion to fall back.
When dawn broke on the 22nd it was found that Sir Harry Smith, who had clung to the village of Ferozeshah during the night, had effected a junction with the division under Littler, and that both divisions were now in front of the extreme right of the Sikh position. ”

“ He commanded a regiment in China in the war of 1842, a brigade in the Punjab Campaign of 1849, was in chief command in many of the early expeditions on the Punjab frontier, and was one of the very few General Officers who emerged from the Crimean War with enhanced credit. The vast majority of the reinforcements despatched from England for the suppression of the Mutiny had served in the Crimea, and to them the name of Colin Campbell was that of a man who could lead and whom they were proud to follow. ”

“ Throughout the wars with Napoleon, Austria, Prussia, and Russia received large sums to enable them to keep their armies in the field. It was not only the King's German Legion which was paid with English gold, but the Prussian army also; and when the Germans taunt the British army with being an army of mercenaries, it would be well for them to study the financial conditions under which they fought in the wars with France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ”

“ India was a country in which we could take no risks; we were always fighting, as it were, with our backs to the wall, for there was no Suez Canal, nor were there fast steamships to pour reinforcements into the country when necessary. Lord Lake therefore assembled practically the whole of his available army, and advanced simultaneously from the north, south, east, and west. ”

“ On June 23 Clive found himself face to face with Surajah Dowlah's army at Plassey, a town on the River Hooghly, about 100 miles due north of Calcutta. The odds were hopelessly unequal—Clive with 3,000 men and ten light field-guns on the one side; Surajah Dowlah with 55,000 men, of whom 15,000 were cavalry, and fifty guns of all calibres on the other. Had Englishmen ever been in the habit of counting the odds, the Indian Empire would never have been ours. Neither Clive nor Coote were men to quail before difficulties. ”

“ In the event of our being at war with those nations which had possessions in the West Indies, the islands formed convenient bases for operations against our North American Colonies, as well as harbours of refuge for the innumerable privateers which preyed upon our commerce. When war unhappily broke out between our Colonies and the Mother-Country, it became more than ever a matter of paramount necessity that no Power but ourselves should hold possession of these islands. ”

“ Holkar's army far outnumbered the English in cavalry, as well as in guns. We captured no less than sixty-five of the latter. The Holkar force had the reputation of being well trained. For many years the Maharajah had availed himself of the services of English and French instructors, but on the outbreak of hostilities he had foully murdered all the English in his employ, and their absence, no doubt, shook the confidence of the men, who for so long had been accustomed to European leadership. ”