The Nineteenth and Their Times. J. Biddulph
disapproved of by Warren Hastings.
In a letter, dated 6th September 1783, addressed to the Court of Directors, the Select Committee of the Madras Council states that Sir John Burgoyne’s regiment, being reported fit for service, had been ordered to take the field. But the regiment did not move from San Thomé. The Council desired to send the regiment into the field without Burgoyne. On the latter notifying his intention of accompanying his regiment, under orders from General Stuart, the move was countermanded. The incident was part of the fast ripening quarrel between the Civil Government and the King’s officers, which must be mentioned on account of the serious results it had on the fortunes of the Colonel of the 23rd Light Dragoons.
From the time of their first military establishment in India, the Company had always evinced great distrust of their military officers, a feeling that was not without some justification in view of the character of the adventurers, who at first took service with the Company. The Company’s troops on their part were under the influence of the feeling, prevalent in England, that the exercise of sovereign rights by a company of merchants was derogatory to the dignity of the Crown. Hence it arose that the Company’s officers were less deferential to the authority of the Company, than they should have been, while the Company became more exacting of the respect due to them, and made it their policy to keep down the army, in numbers, in rank, and in authority. This feeling of jealousy became intensified when the services of King’s troops were placed at the disposal of the Company; and many quarrels detrimental to the public service ensued. At the time we are treating of, the King’s troops in India were the mainstay of the Company’s power. The Company was under stringent engagements to pay them regularly, instead of allowing their pay to fall into arrears, as was always the case with their own troops. They were to be commanded as far as possible by King’s officers only, and the Commander in Chief at each Presidency was appointed by the Crown. Every King’s officer, whatever the date of his commission, took rank above all Company’s officers holding similar commissions, and every field officer of King’s troops, while in India, was given a step of Brevet rank above his regimental rank. This naturally caused some ill feeling between the King’s and Company’s officers. The arrangement had first been made when there was only a single battalion of King’s troops in India. As the number of King’s troops increased, the extra rank given to the officers became a very serious grievance to the Company’s officers, which was further aggravated by the Company’s policy of maintaining a very small number of field officers, and of having their regiments commanded by Captains. The instructions for avoiding disputes with the Company’s officers, that were issued to Sir John Burgoyne, before sailing from England, had been a stereotyped formula of orders for all officers sent with troops to India for more than twenty years past: but such admonitions were of little use under conditions that made friction inevitable.
The Madras Government was possessed at that time of a perverse spirit, that led them into all kinds of extravagancies and never ending quarrels. The Members of the Council fought amongst themselves; they evaded or disobeyed the orders of the Court of Directors, and ignored the authority of the Governor General. Individually, they commanded little respect. Collectively, they mismanaged everything. They interfered in military matters, that in a time of war were peculiarly in the province of the chief military authority; and they frittered away the forces at their disposal in ill-conceived and badly equipped expeditions that frequently ended in disaster. Finally, they quarrelled with everybody who was not immediately under their orders, and wrote long winded complaints to the Court of Directors and to Bengal, instead of doing their best under the trying circumstances of the time. The King’s officers on their side were also difficult to deal with. They asserted their right to direct how and where the King’s troops should be employed, and, in other respects, claimed an independence of the Civil Government incompatible with public interests. In 1780, when the Commander in Chief, Sir Eyre Coote, had been sent down from Bengal, after the disaster to Colonel Baillie’s army, he was furnished with orders for the suspension of the acting Governor, Mr. Whitehill, against whom the gravest charges had been made, and he was specially invested with powers that to a great extent made him independent of the Madras Council, including the exclusive direction of the treasure transmitted for the prosecution of the war. The temporary grant of such powers was necessary under existing circumstances, but was none the less resented by the Madras Council; though there was little active opposition till the assumption of the Governorship by Lord Macartney in June 1781. The Council complained that more was not accomplished, Sir Eyre Coote complained that his troops were sent into the field without supplies; the Council sent an expedition against the Dutch settlements, without consulting the General, and an open rupture occurred, in which the Admiral took part, in consequence of dispatches addressed to both Commanders being opened by the Resident at Tanjore. At this stage of the quarrel, Sir Eyre Coote’s health forced him to leave for Bengal. The command devolved on Major General Stuart, and the quarrel went on worse than ever.
Lord Macartney at once assumed the direction of the campaign, and made himself ridiculous by forcing Stuart to destroy three of his own forts, the preservation of which was anxiously desired by Sir Eyre Coote. Stuart, on his side, claimed the right of exercising the special powers that had been conferred on Sir Eyre Coote. Stuart’s position was a peculiar one. While on the King’s half pay list, in 1775, his services were lent to the Company, who conferred on him the rank of Brigadier General. In October 1781, the Crown gave him the commission of Major General in India, and, three months later, his commission was antedated. His position, however, differed from that of other General Officers, in that he was not borne on the strength of any regiment, and his status in England was only that of a half pay Colonel. He had done good service already in the campaign against Hyder, in which he had lost a leg by a cannon shot.
In December 1782, Stuart withdrew the garrison of Masulipatam for service elsewhere, without consulting the Government, and at once both parties entered into a paper war, that absorbed all the energies that should have been devoted to the war with Tippoo and the French. Each party bombarded the other with notes and minutes, that continued to be exchanged after the army had taken the field for Cuddalore, and the Council wrote to London and Calcutta in the gloomiest terms, expressing their fears of General Stuart’s designs.[10] In neither quarter did they elicit any sympathy. In terms of measured sarcasm Warren Hastings pointed out that their “collected mass of complaint and invective” was directed in turn against every single British authority in India except themselves, including the Naval Commander in Chief, as well as against the Nawab of Arcot and his ministers.
The Madras Government had become contemptible alike in the eyes of friends and enemies, and it was impossible to work with them. Lost to all sense of public duty, they formed the project of refusing to place the troops under command of Sir Eyre Coote on his return in April. Sir Eyre Coote was, on this occasion, nominated by the Bengal Government to take the command of all the troops on the Coast, except the garrison actually required at Madras. Not an unreasonable arrangement, as Sir Eyre Coote was Commander in Chief in India, and the Madras Government was dependent for money on Bengal. The Madras Government sent peremptory orders for Stuart to hasten his march, in order that the troops might be far distant when Sir E. Coote arrived, and passed a resolution that he should not have the command. A letter addressed by the Madras Council to Sir Eyre Coote when he was dying, drew down upon them a censure from Warren Hastings that was calculated to penetrate the most pachydermatous self-conceit, but it had apparently no effect on Lord Macartney and his Council. Even before Sir Eyre Coote’s death, the feeling of Lord Macartney and the Council against the King’s officers was shown by a minute of the Council, at the time of the preparation of the army for the siege of Cuddalore, wherein an attempt was made to deprive the Generals bearing the King’s commission of any employment in the field. In it, an endeavour was made to elicit from Major General Stuart an opinion that the public interests would be best served by leaving those officers, five in number, in garrison. This idea was resisted by Stuart, and Major General Bruce was sent with the army to Cuddalore. The frigate that conveyed the news of the cessation of hostilities with France, to the army before Cuddalore, brought also peremptory orders to Stuart to embark at once for Madras, to answer charges of misconduct. Bruce was forced by ill health to return a few days later.
The command of the force in the field then devolved temporarily on Colonel Gordon, till Sir John Burgoyne took command of the returning army on 13th August. But Sir John