Sir Charles Napier

There are no revolvers yet, no breechloading arms, nothing but the sword for the officer and the flint musket and bayonet for the men; and fighting means something more than shoving cartridges in at one end of a tube and blowing them out at the other, twenty to the minute, by the simple action of pulling a finger. "At Meanee," says M'Murdo, "the muskets of the men often ceased to go off, from the pans becoming clogged with powder, and then you would see soldiers, taking advantage of a momentary lull in the onslaught, wiping out the priming pans with a piece of rag, or fixing a new flint in the hammer." Sometimes these manifold inducements to old "brown Bess" to continue work have to be suspended in order to receive on levelled bayonets a wild Beloochee rush, and then frequently could be seen the spectacle of men impaled upon the steel, still hacking down the enemy they had been able to reach only in death.

This desperate battle has continued for three hours, when for the first time the Beloochees show symptoms of defeat. The moment has in fact come which in every fight marks the turn of the tide of conflict, and quick as thought Napier seizes its arrival. His staff officers fly to the left carrying orders to the Scinde Horse and the Bengal Cavalry to penetrate at all hazards through the right of the enemy's line, and fall upon his rear. The orders are well obeyed, and soon the red turbans of Jacob's Horse and the Bengal Cavalry are seen streaming through the Fullalee, and, mounting the opposite slope where the Beloochee camp is pitched, they capture guns, camp, standards, and all the varied insignia of Eastern war. The battle of Meanee is won. Then, beginning with the Twenty-Second, there went up a great cheer of victory. How those Tipperary throats poured forth their triumph, as bounding forward, the men so long assailed became assailants, and driving down the now slippery incline they bore back in quickening movement the wavering mass of swordsmen! Perhaps there was something in that Irish cheer that told the old General there was the note of love as well as of pride in the ring. Why not? Had he not always stood up for them and for their land? Had not their detractors ever been his enemies? Had not he dammed back the tide of his own success in life by championing their unfashionable cause? Soldiers catch quickly thoughts and facts that come to other men through study and reflection. They were proud of him, they loved him, and for more than half a century their valour and their misfortunes had touched the springs of admiration and sorrow in his heart. How he valued these cheers on the field of Meanee his journal of the following day tells. "The Twenty-Second gave me three cheers after the fight, and one during it," he writes. "Her Majesty has no honour to give that can equal that." What a leader! What soldiers!

CHAPTER X

THE MORROW OF MEANEE – THE ACTION AT DUBBA

Exhausted by the prolonged strain of mind and body – "ready to drop," he tells us, "from the fatigue of one constant cheer" – Napier lay down in his cloak that night in the midst of the dead and dying. Terrible had been the slaughter. More than twelve hundred dead lay in the dry bed of the river immediately in front of where the British line had fought. The woods and surrounding ground held a vast number of bodies. It is estimated that not less than six or seven thousand Beloochees perished in the battle. On our own side the loss, though severe, was slight compared with that of the enemy. About two hundred and seventy of all ranks had been killed and wounded – more than one-seventh of the total number engaged. Of these, nineteen were officers – a third of the number on the ground. These figures give us a good measure of the fierce nature of the struggle, and of the bravery displayed on both sides; but the true lesson of such heroism was not noticed at the time, or rather was kept steadily out of sight by all save a few men, and that lesson was this, that good and courageous leadership means brave and victorious soldiers, and that bad leadership means cowardice and defeat. It was but a year before this day of heroes at Meanee that there had been whole days and weeks of cowardice at Cabul. Infantry, cavalry, artillery; arms, powder, and shot – all the same, yet all the difference between victory and defeat, between honour and dishonour in the two results. It was this fact above every other that caused the display of envious enmity from so many quarters towards Napier and his victory; the contrast was too glaring, the youngest soldier in the ranks could read it. But a year ago the world had beheld the most dishonourable and inglorious chapter of our military history enacted near the head waters of this same Indus river, and here, now, another hand playing the game with the self-same cards had won it against greater odds and braver enemies.

But if it was unpleasant in England to find the lesson of victory taught so well by one who had ever opposed privilege, whether it called itself Whig or Tory, still more disagreeable was it to certain classes in India to find the man who had already, during his brief sojourn in the East, vehemently assailed the most cherished abuses of Indian misgovernment all at once the victor of a desperate battle. What was to be done in the circumstances? They dared not depreciate the valour of the troops or the desperate bravery they had overcome, but it was possible for them to denounce the victorious old general. He had few friends among the rulers. He had too frequently told them what he thought of them. He had so often applied the salt of his satire to the great leech called favouritism, that now his detractors were sure of finding an audience ready to applaud when they launched the envenomed shaft, and spoke of the "ferocity and blood-thirstiness" of the old chief, and did what they could to lessen his glory, – that chief who wrote in his journal how he had covered an enemy who had come too close to him with his pistol, "but did not shoot, having great repugnance to kill with my own hand unless attacked!"

It is a sorry story, and one we will gladly pass on from with this observation. It would have been better had Napier treated the whole host of his attackers, Indian editors and Indian civilians, English peers and English pressmen, with silent contempt. The very virulence of their denunciation was as quicksilver poured upon the glass of their envy. He could see his own greatness all the better, and measure the shallowness of the medium that revealed it to him. But there was one thing that the detractors could not do; they could not hide from the soldiers of England or India, or from the people of the United Kingdom, that this battle of Meanee had been a victory with the old ring in it. Right up comes the little army; no hesitation, no false movements; right thrown forward because the Irish are there; left thrown back because the enemy's guns are there; then a hand-to-hand fight for three hours in which the old leader is ever out in front waving his hat, cheering with his shrill voice, getting his hair singed with the closeness of guns going off under his nose. No, they cannot blacken that picture, for every man in the little army has seen it during these three hours, and under its influence the very camp-followers have become daring soldiers. "I bring to your notice," writes the officer commanding the artillery, "the names of three native gun-lascars, who displayed the greatest bravery in dragging the guns up to the edge of the bank, level with the Twenty-Second line. I would not venture to do so had they not been mere followers, entitled to no pension to themselves or reward to their families had they fallen." Such is the force of a general's example.

Before night closed on the field the fruits of the victory were apparent. Six Ameers of Scinde came in and surrendered themselves prisoners of war, bringing with them the keys of Hyderabad, whose tall towers were visible against the horizon five miles to the south. Then Napier lay down to sleep, and so sound was his rest that when there is a false alarm among the camp-followers towards morning they cannot rouse him. Next morning he writes his despatches and tells the story of the fight in short and vivid language. He does not forget the man in the ranks, and for the first time in the history of our wars the private soldier is personally named for his bravery. What a levelling general this is! Yesterday he was levelling his enemies; now to-day he is levelling his friends. They will not like it at home, he thinks. Well, he cannot help that; they will have to like it some day, and the sooner they begin to learn the better, so off goes the names of Drummer Martin Delaney, and full Private James O'Neill, and Havildar Thackoor Ram, and Subadar Eman Beet, and Trooper Mootee Sing, and many others.

Having buried his dead, rested his living, and sent off his despatches, Napier moved his little army to Hyderabad, hoisted the British flag on the great tower of the fortress, and put his force in camp four miles farther west on the Indus. He was still far from the end of hostilities. He had defeated over thirty thousand Beloochees at Meanee, but there were fifteen thousand more who had not reached the field of battle that day, and these now formed a rallying-point for the bands which had withdrawn from that stubborn fight beaten but not routed. Shere Mahomet, Ameer of Meerpoor, the leader of this force – the only real fighting man among the Scindian princes – had still to be reckoned with, and that reckoning was in no degree rendered easier by the fact that since Meanee, the real weakness of the British in numbers had become known to the whole world of Scinde. Everybody had seen the slender column that had taken possession of Hyderabad, and was now entrenched on the left bank of the Indus four miles from the city. Let the Lion of Meerpoor bide his time, gather all the Beloochee clansmen, and when the sun once more hung straight over the Scindian desert fall on the Feringhee. It was a pretty plan, and no doubt might have had fair chance of at least a temporary success had it been played against a less experienced enemy than this old war-dog now entrenched upon the Indus. For him two things were necessary. First, he must obtain reinforcements for his army; second, he must draw the Lion closer to his camp. When the time comes for making another spring it will not do to go seeking this Scindian chief afar off, in deserts that are glowing like live coals in the midsummer sun. So two lines of policy are pursued by Napier. He sends up and down the Indus for every man and gun he hopes to lay hands on, and he spreads abroad in Hyderabad the story of his own weakness. The Lion, scared by Meanee, had fallen back towards his deserts; now, lured by these accounts of paucity of numbers, sickness, etc., he draws forward again, until he is only six miles beyond Hyderabad and within one march of the Indus. It was now the middle of March; the reinforcements are approaching. Stack with fifteen hundred men and five guns is only five marches distant to the north. The Lion can strike at Stack before he joins Napier, but on his side Sir Charles is watchful. If the Lion moves to fall on Stack, he, Napier, will make a spring at the Lion's flank. It is a pretty game, but one of course only possible to play in war with a half-savage enemy. On March 22nd Stack is passing Meanee. The Lion makes a weak attempt to gobble up his fifteen hundred men, but Napier has sent out a strong force of cavalry and guns to help his lieutenant, and Stack gets safely in on the 22nd. On the same day boats arrive from north and south with more reinforcements and supplies, and on the following everything is ready for the attack on the Lion, who is just nine miles distant, entrenched up to his eyes and tail in woods, nullahs, and villages at Dubba, five miles from Hyderabad.

Napier has five thousand men all told, the Lion has five-and-twenty thousand. The odds are long, but longer ones had been faced at Meanee, and the Tipperary men are still at the head of the column, and neither they nor their general have the slightest doubt about the result. The army marches before daybreak, and the morning is yet young when it is in sight of the enemy. The Lion is lying low, well hidden in his nullahs of which he has a double line, one flank resting on the village of Dubba and the old Fullalee channel, the other well screened by wood. He has eleven guns in front of Dubba. The British column now forms line as at Meanee, but this time the Twenty-Second take the left, opposite the fortified village and the battery, because there will be the thick of the fight. The advance is again to be in échelon of battalions, the Twenty-Second leading. When all is ready, the guns, of which Napier has nineteen, open on the Beloochee position, then the Twenty-Second lead straight upon Dubba. Into the nullah, through the nullah, out of the nullah, right through the double line of entrenchments goes this "ever-glorious regiment," strewing the ground with enemies, and leaving more than a third of its own numbers down too. The fighting here and at the village of Dubba is very stubborn, for at this point the brave African chief Hoche Mahomet has taken his stand, and the fierce valour – which forty years later we are to know more about – marks his presence. But Meanee has taken the steel out of the Beloochee swordsmen, and the whole position is soon in our hands. This time Napier is strong in cavalry, and a vigorous pursuit followed the broken bands as they retreated towards Meerpoor. In this fight at Dubba as at Meanee Napier has many escapes. A bullet breaks the hilt of his sword; the orderly riding behind him has his horse disabled with a sword-cut; as they gain the village a magazine blows up in the midst of them; but the General is not touched. As usual he is in the very thick of the fighting, cheered everywhere by the soldiers. They are all young enough to be his children, but they watch him as a lioness would watch her last remaining cub, Private Tim Kelly constituting himself as special protector, and bayoneting every Beloochee that comes near his child. Six months later we find Napier has not forgotten these splendid soldiers. Writing to the Governor-General and thanking him for the promise of a medal for the battles, he thus speaks of his men: "Now I can wear my Grand Cross at ease, but while my officers and men received nothing my Ribbon sat uncomfortably on my shoulder. Now I can meet Corporal Tim Kelly and Delaney the bugler without a blush." And then comes a bit which deserves record so long as history tells of heroism. Here it is: "I find that twelve wounded men of the Twenty-Second concealed their wounds at Dubba, thinking there would be another fight. They were discovered by a long hot march which they could not complete, and when they fell they had to own the truth. Two of them had been shot clean through both legs. How is it possible to defeat British troops? It was for the Duke of York to discover that!"

From the field of Dubba the victors pressed on to finish the war. Two days after the fight the infantry are twenty, and the cavalry forty, miles from the scene of battle. The Lion's capital, Meerpoor, was occupied on March 26th, his desert fort at Omercote surrendered on April 4th. The war was practically over. "This completes the conquest of Scinde," writes Napier when he hears that Omercote is his; "every place is in my possession, and, thank God, I have done with war! Never again am I likely to see another shot fired in anger. Now I shall work at Scinde as in Cephalonia to do good, to create, to improve, to end destruction, to raise up order." So he hoped; but it was not to be as he thought. Peace was yet some months distant, and even when it came with Beloochee on the Indus, a warfare of words and pens with a whole host of enemies at home and in India was to embitter the remaining future of the conqueror's life. The Lion got clear away from Dubba, and by the middle of May he had again rallied to his standard some ten thousand men. He was now fifty miles north of Hyderabad, on the line Napier had followed when moving from Sukkur to Meanee. The heat was at its worst. No one who has not felt the power of the sun in lands where the desert acts as a vast fire-brick to scorch life to a cinder can realise this terrible temperature. One only chance remains for European life under such conditions – it is entire abstinence from alcoholic drink. In Scinde as in other parts of India alcohol was plentiful, and the loss among the soldiers was proportionally great. In the end of May Napier moved once more against the Lion. Two other columns were also directed from north and east against him. Thus between the three advancing forces and the Indus it was hoped he might be crushed. Despite terrific heat and an inundation now at its height, these columns gradually drew to their object; but there was no real fight now left in the Beloochee clansmen; Roberts near Schwan, and Jacob at Shadadpoor, defeated his soldiers with ease, and the Lion became a fugitive in the foot-hills of Beloochistan. It was full time for hostilities to cease. On June 14th Napier's column reached Nusserpoor, some ten or twelve miles east of Meanee; his men were dropping by scores; the air seemed to be on fire. Suddenly through this furnace-heated atmosphere came the distant sound of cannon. It was the last echo of the war; Jacob was fighting the Lion twenty miles to the north. When mid-day arrived the heat grew more intense. In one hour forty-three European soldiers were down with sunstroke, and before evening they were all dead. One more had to fall before the terrible day was over. It was the General. He was sitting writing in his tent, and had just written: "Our lives are on the simmer now, and will soon boil; the natives cannot stand it; and I have been obliged to take my poor horse, Red Rover, into my tent, where he lies down exhausted, and makes me very hot. I did not bring a thermometer – what use would it be to lobster boiling alive?" Then he fell struck by heat apoplexy. Fortunately the doctors were near, all the restoratives were quickly applied, and life was saved. As they were tying up his arm after bleeding, a horseman came galloping to the tent. He carried a despatch from Jacob announcing the final victory over Shere Mahomet. What effect the news had on the prostrate old soldier we learn from the journal ten days later, when he is able again to write an entry. "Jacob's message roused me from my lethargy as much as the bleeding; it relieved my mind, for then I knew my plans had succeeded, and the Beloochee had found that his deserts and his fierce sun could not stop me. We lost many men by heat; but all must die some time, and no time better than when giving an enemy a lesson."

They brought him back to Hyderabad, and the wonderful constitution, tempered and twisted into birdcage wire by years of temperance and labour, again asserted itself, and within a fortnight of the blow of the sun he comes up smiling to the hundred cares of war and government, and to the still more wearing worries of assault from open and concealed enemies in England and India. For a long time he is very weak. All the reaction of these four anxious months, all the waste of life-power which war brings with it, now capped by sunstroke, and still further accentuated by calumny and ill-natured criticism, are too much for him, and it seems that he must soon lay his bones in the sands of Scinde. "Even to mount my horse," he writes, "is an exertion. I, who ten years ago did not know what fatigue was, and who even a few months ago at Poonah knocked off fifty-four miles in the heat, am now distressed by four miles! This last illness has floored me, and even my mind has lost its energy; yet it is good to die in harness." These forebodings were not to be verified. The long Scindian summer wore away, and with the end of August cooler weather began to dawn on the Unhappy Valley. Gradually we find the old tone coming back into the journal, the old ring into the letters. He has a hundred plans for the improvement of Scinde and the happiness of its people. He will chain the Indus in its channel, cut canals for irrigation, lessen the taxes, lighten the lot of the labourer, curb the power of the chiefs – in fine, make a Happy Valley out of this long dreary, dusty, sun-baked land. Alas! it was only a pleasant dream. The man who would do all this must be something more than a governor reporting home by every mail, and called upon to reply to every silly question which ignorance, prompted by mammon or malice, may dictate. One thing he is determined upon. He will give the labourer justice, cost what it may. He has caught two tax-collectors riding roughshod over the peasants. "I will make," he writes, "such an example of them as shall show the poor people my resolution to protect them. Yes, I will make this land happy if life is left me for a year. I shall have no more Beloochees to kill. Battle! victory! spirit-stirring sounds in the bosom of society; but to me – O God, how my spirit rejects them! Not one feeling of joy or exultation entered my head at Meanee or Dubba – all was agony. I can use no better word. To win was the least bloody thing to be done, and was my work for the day; but with it came anxiety, pain of heart, disgust, and a longing never to have quitted Celbridge; to have passed my life in the 'round field,' and in the 'devil's acre,' and under the yew trees on the terrace amongst the sparrows – these were the feelings that flashed in my head after the battles." And then he goes on to speak his thoughts upon government and justice, and very noticeable thoughts they are too – never more worthy of attention than to-day. "People think," he writes, "and justly sometimes, that to execute the law is the great thing; they fancy this to be justice. Cast away details, good man, and take what the people call justice, not what the laws call justice, and execute that. Both legal and popular justice have their evils, but assuredly the people's justice is a thousand times nearer to God's justice. Justice must go with the people, not against the people; that is the way to govern nations, and not by square and compass." Very old words these, rung so often in the ears of rulers that they have long ago forgotten their import, until all at once their truth is brought home to heart again by the loss of a crown or the revolt of a colony.

Now arrived from England the list of honours and rewards for the victories. Immediately upon the receipt of the news of Meanee Lord Ellenborough had appointed Napier Governor of Scinde, with fullest powers. The Gazette made him only a Grand Cross of the Bath. Peerages had been bestowed for very small fractions of victory in Afghanistan; but for these real triumphs in Scinde there was to be no such reward, and it was better that it should have been so. The gold of Napier's nature did not want the stamp of mere rank; perhaps it would not carry the alloy which the modern mint finds necessary for the operation. But although the reward of the victor was thus carefully limited, it was quite sufficient to call forth many open expressions of ill-will, and still more numerous secret assaults of envious antagonists. Unfortunately for Napier, these he could not meet with silent contempt. The noble nature of the man could accept neglect with stoical indifference; but the fighting nature of the soldier could not brook the stings of political or journalistic cavillers. And it must be acknowledged these last were enough to rouse the lion of St. Mark himself, even had that celebrated animal imbibed from his master his full share of virtues. Everything was cavilled at; motive, action, and result were attacked, and from the highest Director of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street to the most insignificant editor of an Indian newspaper in the service of the civilian interest in Bombay or Calcutta, came the stinging flight of query, innuendo, or direct condemnation. The reason for much of this animosity was not hard to find. Napier had dared to tell unpalatable truths about the impoverishment of India through the horde of locusts who, under the name of Government, had settled upon it. The man who could tell the Directors of the East India Company that their military policy tended to the mutiny of their soldiers, and their civil system was a huge source of Indian spoliation, was not likely to find much favour with the richest and most powerful, and, it may be added, the most commercial company the world has ever seen; nor was he likely to be a persona grata with the officials who administered the affairs of that gigantic corporation. This is the true key to solve the now perplexing question of the antagonism encountered by Charles Napier from the moment of his success at Meanee to the end of his life. The pride of aristocratic privilege in high place is a dangerous thing to touch; but the pride of the plutocratic Solomon in his right to reap the labour of those who toil and spin is a thousand times a more venturesome thing to trench upon. Added to these causes for negative recognition of brilliant service, and positive condemnation from many quarters, there was a political state of things which influenced the opinion of the moment. Lord Ellenborough was not popular. The Whig policy of action beyond the Indian frontier had been most disastrous. The contrast between it and the campaign on the Indus was painfully apparent. It was like some long day of storm and gloom which had closed in a glorious sunset; and while the morning and mid-day of tempest had been Whig, the evening glory had come under a Tory administration. In reading the history of all these squabbles now, the chief regret we experience is that Napier should have bothered himself with their presence. Indeed, in his moments of calm reflection he appears to have rated them at their true worth. "Honours!" he writes about this time; "I have had honour sufficient in both battles. At Meanee, when we forced the Fullalee, the Twenty-Second, seeing me at their head, gave me three cheers louder than all the firing. And at Dubba, when I returned nearly alone from the pursuit with the cavalry, the whole Line gave me three cheers. One wants nothing more than the praise of men who know how to judge movements."

With these soldiers indeed, officers and men, his popularity was unbounded. They knew the truth. Many among them had seen to their cost the fruits of bad leadership in Cabul, and had learnt to value the truth of the old Greek proverb, which declared that "a herd of deer led by a lion was more formidable to the enemy than a herd of lions led by a deer." And they knew that though this small, spare, eagle-beaked and falcon-eyed leader worked them till they dropped beneath the fierce sun of Scinde, there was no heat of sun or fatigue of march or press of battle which he did not take his lion's share of. Even when now, in this autumn of 1843, an enemy more formidable to soldiers attacked them, when the deadliest fever stalked through the rough camps along the Indus, and the graveyards grew as the ranks thinned, no murmur rose from the rank and file, but silently the fate was accepted which sent hundreds of them to an inglorious death. Here and there through the journals we come on entries that tell more powerfully than any record of figures could do what this mortality must have been. "Alas!" we read only a few months after Meanee, "these two brave soldiers, Kelly and Delaney of the Twenty-Second, are dead. They fought by my side, Kelly at Dubba and Delaney at Meanee. Three times, when I thought the Twenty-Second could not stand the furious rush of the swordsmen, Delaney sounded the advance, and each time the line made a pace or two nearer to the enemy." Difficult now is it for us to believe that at this time, when the soldiers of the army of Scinde were dying by hundreds in hospital, they were denied the last consolations of their religion. "There is no Catholic clergyman here," writes Napier in October, 1843. "The Mussulman and the Hindoo have their teachers; the Christian has none. The Catholic clergyman is more required than the Protestant, because Catholics are more dependent upon their clergy for religious consolation than the Protestants are; and the Catholic soldier dies in great distress if he has not a clergyman to administer to him. But, exclusive of all other reasons, I can hardly believe that a Christian government will refuse his pastor to the soldier serving in a climate where death is so rife, and the buoyant spirit of man is crushed by the debilitating effects of disease and heat. I cannot believe that such a government will allow Mammon to cross the path of our Saviour, to stand between the soldier and his God, and let his drooping mind thirst in vain for the support which his Church ought to afford." No wonder that the Governor who could, in such glowing words, rebuke the greed of his governors and champion the cause of the lowly should find few friends in high place; that the reward of rank, given before and since for such trivial result or such maculated victory, should have been denied to the brilliant victor of Meanee and conqueror of Scinde; that the thanks of Parliament should have been delayed till the greater part of the army thanked was in its grave; and that the leader of that army should find himself and his victories the objects of all the secret shafts and mysterious machinery which wealth, power, and malevolent envy could set in motion against him.

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

Riding forth redressing human wrong.

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.

It was early January when the advance began. March had come before the last move was played on the rugged chessboard, and Beja Khan and his men were safe in Truckee. During all that interval the Commander's spirit never seems to have flagged for a moment. Scattered through his journal we find many instances of his having to find mental spirits for his followers as well as for himself. There had been numerous prophecies of failure from many quarters. "It was a wild-goose chase" – "Beja Khan was too old and wary a bird to be caught" – "Beware of the mountain passes," – so ran the chorus of foreboding; and whenever a check occurred or a delay had to be made for supplies, from these prophets of disaster could be heard the inevitable "I told you so." That terrible croak in war which half tells that the wish to retire is at least stepfather to the thought of failure. Here is a little journal-picture which has a good deal of future history in it. "February 6th.– Waiting for provisions; this delay is bad. Simpson is in the dismals, so am I, but that won't feed us." Simpson belonged to that large class of excellent officers who just want one thing to be good chiefs. Ten and a half years later Simpson, still in the dismals, sat looking at his men falling back, baffled, from the Russian Redan at Sebastopol. Perhaps had Napier been there he would have been baffled too. It may be so, but in that case I think they would have had to seek him under the muzzles of the Russian guns.

Scared by the passes through which the convoys had to move, the camel-drivers had deserted with five hundred camels, leaving the column without food; but Napier was equal to the emergency. Dismounting half his fighting camel-corps he turned that Goliah of war, Fitzgerald, into a commissariat man for the moment, sent him back for flour, and six days later has forty-four thousand pounds of bread-stuff in his camp. How terribly anxious are these moments when a commander finds himself and his troops at the end of his food-tether no one but a commander of troops can ever know. It is such moments that lay bare the bed-rock of human nature, and show at once what stuff it is made of – granite, or mere sandstone that the rush of events will wash away in the twinkling of an eye. What stuff formed this bed-rock of Charles Napier's nature one anecdote will suffice to show. During the two years that he has now been at war in Scinde, fighting foes and so-called friends, fighting disease, sun, distance, old age, and bodily weakness, he has never ceased to send to his two girls left behind at Poonah, in Bombay, quires of foolscap paper with sums in arithmetic, questions in grammar, and lessons in geography duly set out for answer. While he is Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Scinde he is acting governess to his children fifteen hundred miles away in Bombay. The only other instance of similar mental power that I know of is to be found in the directions for the internal improvement of France, and the embellishment of her towns and cities, sent by Napoleon from the snowy bivouacs of the Baltic provinces and the slaughters of Heilsbronn and Eylau. Of course it was to be expected that the desertion of the camel-transport, and the attacks of the robbers upon the line of communications which preceded the flight of the camel-men, should have increased to a dangerous extent the forebodings of failure. Napier is furious. "I am fairly put to my trumps by this desertion," he writes. "Well, exertion must augment. I will use the camel-corps, and dismount half my cavalry, if need be. I will eat my horse, Red Rover, sooner than flinch before these robber tribes. My people murmur, but they only make my foot go deeper into the ground."

How lightly the eye scans such passages, and yet beneath them lies the whole secret of success in war. "How easy then it must be," I think I hear some reader say. "You have only to stick your heels in the sand, cry out, 'I won't go back,' and the game is yours." Not so fast, good friend. Blondin's crossing the chasm of Niagara was very easy to Blondin, but woe betide the other man who ventured to try it. There were generals even in our own time who thought they could copy Napier's method of war, but what a terrible mess they made of it! The thing is indeed very easy when you know how to do it, but that little secret is only to be learned through long years of study and experience, and even then it is only to be mastered by a select few. Make no mistake about it, good reader. History is right when she walks behind great soldiers noting their deeds. They are the rarest human products which she meets with.

When Beja Khan and his confederate sirdars found themselves shut up within the walls of Truckee they gave up the game and asked permission to surrender. Leave was granted, and on March 9th they came out and laid their swords at Napier's feet. With all their love of plunder they were very splendid warriors, these Doomkee, Bhoogtee, and Jackranee chiefs and clansmen, holding notions of the honour of arms which more civilised soldiers would do well to follow. Here is one such notion. When Charles Napier stood before the southern cleft or pass which gave entrance to Truckee, another column under Beatson blocked the northern gate of the stronghold. Although the two passes were only distant from each other in a straight line across the labyrinth some half-dozen miles, they were one or more days' journey asunder by the circuitous road round the flank of the mountain rampart. One column therefore knew nothing of the other's proceedings. While waiting thus opposite the northern entrance Beatson determined to reconnoitre the interior of the vast chasm by scaling the exterior wall of rock. For this purpose a part of the old Thirteenth, veterans of Jellalabad, was sent up the mountain; the ascent, long and arduous, was all but completed when it was observed from below that the flat top of the rock held a strong force of the enemy, entrenched behind a breastwork of stones. The ascending body of the Thirteenth numbered only sixteen men, the enemy on the summit was over sixty. In vain the officer who made this discovery tried to warn the climbers of the dangers so close above them, but which they could not see; his signs were mistaken by the men for fresh incentives to advance, and they pushed on towards the top instead of retracing their steps to the bottom. As the small party of eleven men gained the summit they were greeted by a matchlock volley from the low breastwork in front, followed by the charge of some seventy Beloochees, sword in hand. The odds were desperate; the Thirteenth men were blown by the steep ascent; the ground on which they stood was a dizzy ledge, faced by the stone breastwork and flanked by tremendous precipices. No man flinched; fighting with desperate valour they fell on that terrible but glorious stage, in sight of their comrades below, who were unable to give them help. Six out of the eleven fell at once; five others, four of them wounded, were pushed over the rocks, rolling down upon their half-dozen comrades who had not yet gained the summit. How hard they fought and died one incident will tell. Private John Maloney, fighting amid a press of enemies, and seeing two comrades, Burke and Rohan, down in the melée, discharged two muskets into the breast of a Beloochee, and ran another through with his bayonet. The Beloochee had strength and courage to unfix the bayonet, draw it from his body, and stab Maloney with his own weapon before he himself fell dead upon the rock. Maloney, although severely wounded, made good his retreat and brought off his two comrades. So much for the fighting on both sides. Now for the chivalry of those hill-men. When a chief fell bravely in battle it was an old custom among the clans to tie a red or green thread around his right or left wrist, the red thread on the right wrist being the mark of highest valour. Well, when that evening the bodies of the six slain soldiers were found at the foot of the rocks, rolled over from the top by the Beloochee garrison above, each body had a red thread, not on one wrist, but on both.[4 - It should be unnecessary to remind my readers of the fine poem in which Sir Francis Doyle, whose heart always went out to knightly deeds, has commemorated this incident, —The Red Thread of Honour.]

The expedition against the hill tribes was over, but larger warfare was at hand. North of Scinde a vast region of unrest lay simmering in strife. Runjeet Singh was dead, and the great army he had called into being was rapidly pushing the country to the brink of the precipice of war. Napier had long predicted the Punjaub war, but his warnings had been lightly listened to, and when in December, 1846, the Sikhs suddenly threw a large force across the Sutlej, they found a British army cantoned far in front of its magazines, unprovided with the essentials of a campaign – reserve ammunition and transport – able to fight, indeed, with all the vehemence of its old traditions, but lacking that leadership which, by power of forecast and preparation, draws from the courage of the soldier the utmost result of victory.

Between December, 1846, and February, 1847, four sanguinary actions were fought on the banks of the Sutlej – the Sikh soldiery were brave and devoted warriors, but of their leaders the most influential were large recipients of English gold, and the remainder were ignorant of all the rules of war. Nevertheless the bravery of the common soldiers made the campaign more than once doubtful, and it was only in the final conflict at Sobraon on February 10th, 1847, that the campaign was decided. Meanwhile, the steps which Napier had long foreseen as necessary in Scinde, but in the timely execution of which he had been constantly thwarted by higher authority, were ordered to be taken with all despatch. Moodkee and Ferozeshah had suddenly revealed the strength of the Sikh army, and Scinde was looked to in the hour of anxiety for aid against this powerful enemy. With what extraordinary rapidity Napier assembled his army at Roree for a forward movement towards the Punjaub has long passed from the recollection of men. On December 24th the order reached him at Kurachee. Forty-two days later, a most compact fighting force of fifteen thousand men, fifty-four field guns, and a siege-train stood ready, the whole complete for a six months' campaign; so complete indeed in power of movement, capacity for sustained effort, and full possession of all the requisites of war that it might, as an offensive force, be reckoned at twice its actual numbers. Organisation, transport system, and equipment are the wheels of war – without them the best army is but a muzzled bulldog tied to a short chain.

But this admirable force was not to be used. The battle of Sobraon was the prelude to a patched-up peace, which divided the Sikh State, depleted the Sikh treasury, but left intact the Sikh army. The generalship on the Sutlej had been indifferent; the policy that followed the campaign was still larger marked by want of foresight. Napier, ordered to leave his army at Bahawalpore, had proceeded alone to Lahore to advise and assist the negotiations for peace. He joined Hardinge, Gough, and Smith in the Sikh capital, receiving a tremendous ovation from the troops and a cordial welcome from the three chiefs, who, if they were not brilliant generals, were chivalrous and gallant soldiers. It must have been a fine sight these four old warriors of the Peninsula going in state to the palace of the Maharajah at Lahore. Napier, though keen to catch the errors of the campaign, has nothing but honour and regard for his brother-generals. "Gough is a glorious old fellow," he writes; "brave as ten lions, each with two sets of teeth and two tails." "Harry Smith did his work well." And of Hardinge's answer to those who urged him to retreat during the night after the first day's carnage at Ferozeshah – "No, we will abide the break of day, and then either sweep all before us or die honourably" – he cannot say too much; but all this does not blind him to the waste of human life that want of foresight had caused. "We have beaten the Sikhs in every action," he writes, "with our glorious, most glorious soldiers, but thousands of those brave men have bit the dust who ought now to be standing sword in hand victorious at the gates of Lahore." "Do you recollect saying to me," he asks his brother, "'Our soldiers will fight any general through his blunders'? Well, now, judge your own prophecy." Finally, all the foresight of the man's mind comes out in these prophetic words, written when the war had just closed, "This tragedy must be reacted a year or two hence; we shall have another war." Chillianwallah and Goojerat had yet to be.

Back to Scinde again to take up the old labour of civil administration, and work out to practical solution a hundred problems of justice, commerce, land-tenure, agriculture, and taxation, – in fine, to build upon the space cleared by war the stately edifice of a wise and beneficent human government, keeping always in view certain fundamental rules of honesty, truth, justice, and wisdom, learned long years before in Ireland at his father's side.

Napier's system of rule was after all a very old one. It went back before ever a political economist set pen to paper. Anybody who will turn to the pages of Massinger will find it set forth clearly enough at the time King and Parliament were coming to loggerheads over certain things called Prerogative and Privilege – words which, if the weal of the soil-tiller be forgotten, are only empty and meaningless balderdash. Here are the men whose goods are lawful prize in the philosophy of the old dramatist —

The cormorant that lives in expectation
Of a long wished-for dearth, and smiling grinds
The faces of the poor;
The grand encloser of the Commons for
His private profit or delight;
The usurer,
Greedy at his own price to make a purchase,
Taking advantage upon bond or mortgage
From a prodigal —
These you may grind to powder.

And now these are they who should be spared and shielded:

The scholar,
Whose wealth lies in their heads and not their pockets;
Soldiers that have bled in their country's service;
The rent-rack'd farmer, needy market-folk;
The sweaty labourer, carriers that transport
The goods of other men – are privileged;
But above all let none presume to offer
Violence to women, for our king hath sworn
Who that way's a delinquent, without mercy
Swings for it, by martial law.

Here we have the pith and essence of Napier's government in Scinde, very simple, and probably containing more law-giving wisdom than half the black-lettered statutes made and provided since Massinger wrote them down two hundred and fifty years ago.