Kitabı oku: «Sir Charles Napier», sayfa 10

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

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.