CHAPTER XIV

PEACE SERVICE IN INDIA AND ENGLAND, 1859–1879

[Sidenote: 1859.]

For some time after the execution of Tantia the Seventeenth was kept marching about from day to day; and it was not until the 13th May that it finally went into quarters at Morar (Gwalior), detaching one squadron under Captain Taylor to Jhansi. In both places the regiment suffered severely from sickness, and lost many officers and men--the result of the climate, bad accommodation, and the reaction after the campaign. [Sidenote: 1860.]On the 10th January 1860 it was ordered to Secunderabad, and proceeded thither by rapid marches under command of Major White. On the way it lost thirty-eight more men of cholera and other diseases, among them Veigh, the butcher of the Balaclava charge, whose end was decidedly tragic. The deaths on the march, of course, entailed the digging of graves for the dead, in which work Veigh, who was a strong man and a thirsty soul, always glad to earn a few extra rupees, was particularly zealous. One day when his task of grave-digging was complete he was suddenly struck down by cholera, and in a few hours was buried in the grave which he had made for another. It was his final distinction to have dug his own grave.

[Sidenote: 1860–64.]

The regiment now remained at Secunderabad for five years. There is little to be chronicled of this period except one or two small matters of dress. In April 1860 the peaks on the forage caps were discontinued, and in 1861 the regiment, for the first time in its life, was equipped with white helmets. These were made of leather, covered with white cloth, without plume or spike, [Sidenote: 1864.] and were the work of a saddler sergeant who had come to the regiment from the 12th Lancers.

On the 14th December 1864 the Seventeenth left Secunderabad, and after sixteen days’ march on foot arrived at Sholapore, whence it travelled by rail to Poona, and, after halting there till the 20th January 1865, reached Bombay, [Sidenote: 1865.] and embarked for England on the _Agamemnon_ on the 21st. During the eight years of its service in India it was recruited at various times to a total number of 48 officers and 404 men. Its losses from climatic causes and disease, through death and invaliding, amounted to 38 officers and 373 men, while 122 more men were left behind as volunteers to serve with other regiments in India.

In April the regiment landed at Tilbury, and on the 6th May marched to Colchester, where it was inspected in October by the Commander-in-Chief, its sometime Colonel. Colonel White, the Commanding Officer, was now the only officer remaining who had ridden through the action at Balaclava, Sir William Gordon having retired in 1864. [Sidenote: 1866.] In the following year Colonel White retired, and was succeeded by Colonel Drury Lowe, a name that will live long in the regiment. It was in this same year 1866, the year of the Austro-Prussian war, that the Seventeenth were first quartered at Aldershot.

[Sidenote: 1867.]

The year 1867 brings another name well known in the regiment on to the list of officers, this time not at the head of all, but at the foot of the cornets, that, namely, of John Brown, who held the adjutantcy from this time until 1878. Lieutenant-Colonel Brown (to give him his present rank) joined the Seventeenth as a band-boy in 1848. He rode the Balaclava charge as a trumpeter, and was brought to the ground close to the Russian battery, his horse’s off hind leg being carried away by a cannon shot, and his own thigh pierced by a rifle bullet. After several weeks in hospital he rejoined the regiment in the Crimea, and when the Seventeenth went out to Central India dropped the trumpet for the lance. He was one of Major White’s squadron at Barode, and from that time rose rapidly until he received his commission in 1867. For the present we need say no more than that he was Adjutant during Colonel Drury Lowe’s command of the regiment.

In August 1867 the regiment was quartered at Shorncliffe and Brighton, [Sidenote: 1868.] where it remained until May 1868, when, after two months’ stay at Woolwich, it was moved in August to Hounslow and Hampton Court. [Sidenote: 1869.] In the following year an experiment was tried which proved most successful, and has now been finally adopted, viz. the “squadron organisation.” The squadron became the unit, and the word Troop was abolished--abolished, that is to say, in hope rather than in deed; for words which have the sanction of two centuries of use are not so easily expunged. When troops of cavalry first came into existence in England they were at least sixty men strong; when they were first organised by Statute they were one hundred men strong. Squadrons, again, were not compounds, but fractions of troops. Be that as it may, however, the old word Troop was for the time abolished, though not for long, and that of Squadron took its place. The establishment of cornets was, therefore, reduced by four; four troop sergeant-majors became squadron quartermaster-sergeants; four farriers were reduced and four shoeing-smiths added; and an additional sergeant (fencing instructor) was also added to the establishment. Simultaneously eight corporals and twenty-three privates were reduced, bringing down the total strength from 588 to 553, while the number of horses (a more serious matter) sank from 363 to 344.

In 1869 also the white plume, which had been adopted in 1857, was done away with, and a black plume issued in its stead. The original plume of the regiment, as we have seen, was scarlet and white, but was arbitrarily altered, for all Lancer regiments alike, by King William IV., to black. The old mourning lace, adopted by John Hale, having been long since abandoned, the black plume might seem to be a means of prolonging its memory; but the prejudice of the regiment ran in favour of white (scarlet and white being apparently out of date), and after a year or two the white plume was restored.

In July of the same year the regiment marched to Edinburgh and Hamilton, and remained in Scotland for ten months. This was its first visit to North Britain since 1760, when Colonel John Hale himself was in command. [Sidenote: 1870.] In 1870, as in 1764, the regiment moved from Scotland to Ireland--history thus repeating itself (if any one took notice of it) with commendable accuracy.

On the 15th August 1870 the establishment of the regiment was increased--the men from 457 to 540, the horses from 300 to 350. For France and Germany just then were flying at each other’s throats, and even while the order was a-signing, were fighting the four days’ battle (August 14–18) around Metz. As the outcome of this war, we shall have shortly to mention a number of sweeping reforms in the army. Meanwhile let us note that the first change of 1870, ordered before the war (1st April), was a retrograde step--a reversion to the old troop organisation. A step further back would have retained the name of a troop with the strength of a squadron, as in the days of the Ironsides. But the Army knows little of its own history.

[Sidenote: 1871.]

With 1871 we enter on the first series of reforms, or let us call them changes, accomplished under the influence of the war of 1870.

First, the establishment of the regiment was fixed permanently at eight troops, after vacillating for more than a century between the minimum of six troops and the maximum of ten. Here, let us note, is a final break with the traditions of the great Civil War, when the six-troop organisation (each troop being 100 men strong) was first founded. Strictly speaking, the system of 1645 continued for some years later in the British regiments quartered in India; the Indian establishment consisting of six troops, while the other two formed a depôt in England; but this failing has now been remedied, and the old order is therefore wholly extinct.

Next, by Royal Warrant, the Purchase and Sale of Commissions in the Army were abolished. The system had existed for more than three hundred years, and had been threatened as far back as 1766.

[Sidenote: 1871.]

Next the “short service system”--six years’ service with the colours and six in the reserve--was introduced; and thereby the old British soldier of history was, for good or ill, extinguished. The Seventeenth felt the change little before 1876; and the British public hardly found it out before 1879. It may be worth while to note that both short service[14] and the territorial system were first suggested just about a century before they were introduced.

Lastly, on the 1st November the historic rank of Cornet was abolished. _Corneta_ or _cornette_ signifies the horn-shaped troop standard which (like the ensign in the infantry) gave its name alike to the officer who carried it and to the troop that served under it. The rank is gone and all its historic associations with it; and a generation is arising which will need to resort to a dictionary if it would understand what Walpole meant when he called Pitt “that terrible cornet of horse.” It is amusing to note that since the expurgation of the word Cornet no abiding name has been found for the rank of a junior subaltern of cavalry. Sub-lieutenants there have been and second lieutenants, sometimes both and sometimes neither, but nothing of permanence.

[Sidenote: 1872.]

The following year witnessed the death of another venerable institution, namely, of the “churns” carried by farriers. The name transports us to the days when farriers alone of cavalry men were dressed in blue and were armed with axes. The reintroduction of knee-boots, after an exile of sixty years, also revived, though in a different fashion, the memory of early days.

[Sidenote: 1873.]

The year 1873 likewise brought with it a reversion to primitive times in the shape of an order that greater attention should be paid to dismounted duty, the cavalry being now armed with the Snider carbine. This did not immediately affect the Seventeenth, which as yet possessed no carbines, but it was destined to do so before long. [Sidenote: 1875.] Two years later came another reform, this time in the matter of drill. The old system of standing pivots, or as it was called the “pivot system,” was abolished, and the “Evolutions” of 1759 lost their influence on cavalry drill for ever.

While all these changes were going forward the Seventeenth was quartered in Ireland, whither reform after reform pursued it across St. George’s Channel. Being in Ireland it was, of course, called in to aid the civil power (Mallow election, 1872) but was spared the trouble of dealing with any disturbance. [Sidenote: 1876.] In 1876 it was brought over to England for mobilisation with the 5th Army Corps. Having called attention to the disavowal or attempted disavowal of the words Troop and Cornet, one cannot do less than emphasise the introduction of the comparatively strange terms, Mobilisation and Army Corps, which here confront the regiment for the first time. The Seventeenth was encamped on Pointingdown Downs in Somerset for a few weeks, and was reviewed with the 5th Army Corps on the 22nd July. As it is unlikely that the Seventeenth Lancers will ever again form part of a 5th Army Corps (for it is not often that England is so rich in army-corps) it seems well to record so unique an experience in a not uneventful career.

In this same year the Lancers’ tunic was embellished with a plastron of the colour of the regimental facings,--a change which made the dress of the Seventeenth, by general admission, the smartest in the Army. The plastron being an essential feature in the uniform of the German Uhlan, is presumably imitated from Napoleon’s Polish Lancers. No one will quarrel with so smart a dress; but it is nevertheless a little curious that the whole world should go to Poland for its Lancer fashions. The lance may be called the oldest of cavalry weapons, at least it can demonstrably be traced back beyond the days of Alexander the Great; and its present vogue is simply a return, and a late return, to an old favourite. Its reputation as the queen of cavalry weapons is not one century, but many centuries old; and though it was for a time driven out of the field by firearms, it may be said never to have wanted champions. I have found the lance advocated, for instance, by a French military writer in 1748, and by an English colonel, Dalrymple, in 1761. In 1590 the best authorities swore by it.

[Sidenote: 1876.]

In 1876, likewise, came two more changes--the one temporary and the other permanent. The first was the issue of six carbines to every troop, a sign of a further change to come. The second was the appointment of the Duke of Cambridge to be Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment, which from henceforth is designated the “Duke of Cambridge’s Own.” In the early days of the Army it was customary on all occasions to insert the colonel’s name after the regimental number; and thus it has been easy to identify the 18th (Hale’s) Light Dragoons of 1759 with the present Seventeenth Lancers. The only colonels whose names enjoyed the distinction in the Seventeenth were Hale, Preston, and Gage. The Duke’s name is now permanently bound with that of the regiment, a connection whereof, we trust, he will ever have good reason to feel proud.

[Sidenote: 1877.]

After staying at Aldershot until August 1877, the Seventeenth marched north to Leeds and Preston. After some service in aid of the civil power, which brought it at Clitheroe in collision with a mob of cotton operatives on strike, [Sidenote: 1878.] it returned to Aldershot in July 1878. A month later Colonel Drury Lowe retired, and was succeeded by Colonel Gonne. The Adjutant, Lieutenant John Brown, also resigned, but remained with the regiment as paymaster with the rank of captain.

In 1878 a change was made in the armament of the Seventeenth which takes us back to the earliest days of the British army. Martini-Henry carbines were issued, and pistols returned into store. Carbines, of course, were no new thing in the regiment, though they had been unknown therein since they were withdrawn (weapons very different from the Martini) in 1823. The bound from the old flint-lock to the Martini is remarkable; but the abolition of the pistol is even more noteworthy, for the pistol was a direct survival from the days of the Ironsides. Quite unconsciously the five regiments of Lancers carried the armament of Cromwell’s troopers into the forty-first year of Queen Victoria. [Sidenote: 1878.] As a weapon the pistol had long been regarded as of no account: it was a muzzle loader to the last, and as but ten rounds annually were allowed to each man for practice therewith, it was hardly taken seriously as a weapon at all. Still the abandonment of the pistol, as a point of historical interest, deserves at least so much notice. Sergeant-majors, and trumpeters were now provided with revolvers, a change which was fated to have serious influence on the careers of two officers of the regiment.

This year saw England committed to two wars, in Afghanistan and in Zululand. It must now be told how the Seventeenth Lancers played a part in both of them.

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