The
Indian Army forms, perhaps, the most extraordinary spectacle on which the eye
of the philosopher has ever rested. Composed almost exclusively of natives,
none of whom are ever permitted to rise to offices of rank or trust, it has
ensured to England, for not less than seventy years, the undisputed sovereignty
over a tract of country incalculably more extensive than herself, and divided
from her by the distance of half the globe. Nor is it alone by preserving peace
at home, and supporting a handful of strangers in the dominion which they there
exercise, that the Indian Army has established for itself an illustrious name:
whenever they have been employed in the field—whether against foreign or domestic
enemies—whether against Asiatics or Europeans,— the Sepoys have done their
duty, if not with the daring recklessness which characterises British soldiers,
at all events with steadiness, with patience, and with courage.
Such a body
deserves, if ever an armed body did, that its merits should not pass unnoticed,
and that they who benefit by its devotion and its truth should at least give to
it the recompense of well-earned praise.
There
is nothing in the records of ancient or modern times more remarkable than the
rise of the Indian Army. It has been, if we may so express ourselves, the
growth of a day. It sprang up all at once from the seed to absolute maturity.
For
many long years after the trade with India had been opened, and the Copany had
established factories at different points along the coast, the Indian Army had
positively no existence. A few peons, armed, according to the custom of the
country, with swords and circular shields, were the only species of guards
which the factories admitted; and these never ventured to oppose themselves to
the encroachments of the local authorities, however flagrant and however
unjustifiable.
The fact, indeed, is that when the English merchants first
established themselves in the ports of Hindustan, they did not dream of the
possibility of founding anything like an empire in a country thickly peopled,
highly civilized, and accustomed to the working of regular governments. They
were content to receive protection—they never thought of being able to afford
it; and so long as the native princes permitted them to trade, their ambition
soared no higher. The excessive caution with which they departed from this
system is very striking, and we will endeavour to give of it a sort of
bird's-eye view.
On the 2nd of May, 1601, Captain Lancaster's renowned
squadron sailed from Torbay. After touching at Acheen, in Sumatra, and trading
there—after capturing in the Straits of Malacca a rich Portuguese ship, and
receiving from the Moluccas large quantities of spices, Lancaster steered for
Java, where, in Bantam, the first factory was established over which an English
merchant had ever presided in those seas. This was in 1602. In 1612 we find new
factories erected at Surat, Ahmedabad, Cambaya, and Goja. As these increased in
wealth and importance, they drew towards themselves the notice not only of the native
princes but of European rivals, who, sometimes by force, hut much more
frequently by intrigue, endeavoured to ruin them. Against direct hostility,
however, the English were content to guard themselves by appealing to the
Nabobs and Naigs on shore; while at sea their ships maintained, as they best
could, a struggle with their assailants.
But
this state of things could not last for ever. Their rivals, especially the
Dutch, gathered strength from day to day: they built forts, they sent out
bodies of troops, and began to wage war with the powers around them. They
conceived that they must in some sort follow the example, not indeed in
commencing hostilities with the princes under whose protection they dwelt, but
by assuming such an attitude as might overawe the Europeans, and hinder them
from acting towards themselves on the offensive.
In 1626, when displays of hostile intentions had become, on
the part of the Dutch, more than ever frequent, and the condition of India, torn
by civil wars, chanced to be peculiarly forlorn, the English merchants judged
it expedient to apply to the soubahdars of the different provinces in which
they were settled, for permission to enclose their factories with
fortifications. Some time elapsed ere the desired sanction was obtained; and
when it did reach them, they were too poor and too feeble everywhere to avail
themselves of it; but at Armagon, on the Coromandel coast, a fort was erected
in 1628, which mounted twelve pieces of cannon.
The garrison of that fort—the
nucleus as it may be called of the Indian Army—consisted of twenty-three
soldiers,—Europeans hired by the chief of the factory, and of course subject to
no species of military law; for the idea of establishing an armed force in the
East had never occurred to any of the home authorities, and no provision could
of course be made for its management. There it was, however, the
foundation-stone of the hosts which now keep in subjection a population of one
hundred millions of souls—a gallant army of twenty three burgher-guards, of
which the chief of the factory was the commandant.