LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

OUR LNDIAN WARS.

(TO THE EDITOR OF THE"SPECTATOR.")

have been reading again, with much interest, your admir- able article on our Military position in India, published in your issue of the 23rd December. It occurred to me, when I first read it, that some one far more capable than myself would pursue the subject, and illustrate our present and former military strength, in contrast with the position of the formerly existing native princes and people of India and the present, more fully than from the nature of the article referred to, you were able to do ; but as yet I have seen nothing further on the subject, and I am therefore bold enough so submit a few observations, with which you can deal as it seems best.

I have not seen Lord Napier's Report, but from what I gather of it from your article, and from the inquiries made of me by friends whether another rebellion or mutiny is not imminent, I imagine it must be of an alarmist character ; and thus I can easily understand that in the minds of many timid persons it may have produced considerable uneasiness ; and I am as much at a loss as yourself to understand why it should have been written, or if written, published. Has any new political combination been ffiscovered in India? Are we really alarmed by the Nepalese, by the Punjab, by Hyderabad, by Scindia or Holkar, or by the thousands, or hundreds of thousands, if he pleases, of Mussul- Elan fanatics whom Dr. W. W. Hunter in his recent work has conjured up to affright us? And before these unsubstantial phantoms, have we straightway forgotten those portions of our Indian history which record the result of struggles between English and native powers, which in no single instance have ever varied ? If those who fear now have forgotten the past events, and see only a future of dread and apprehension, let me briefly recall a few of them to public recollection, and let them be contrasted with Lord Napier's gloomy anticipations.

1. At the battle of Plassey, 23rd June, 1757, Clive, with 900 Europeans, soldiers, sailors, and marines, with 2,100 native Sepoys and eight light field-pieces, defeated and put to flight the army of Nawab Suraj-ood-doula, which was 50,000 strong, with a numerous and powerful artillery, which he captured. Nor was that native army one whit inferior to any ordinary native army of the present time. Indeed, I believe it to have been superior in many points of view, aud most particularly because native armies had never before been beaten by us, and possessed a prestige they then lost, and have never regained.

2. On July 19, 1763, a British force of 650 Europeans and 1,200 natives met Meer Cassim's army, upwards of 30,000 strong, -at Cutwah, and defeated it. On this occasion the native army had been drilled and disciplined by Europeans, and had excellent artillery. It rallied at Gheria, where on August 2 it was again attacked and defeated by the same British force, with the loss of its guns, and pursued to 0 wda Nulls, where, largely reinforced, it had taken up a strong position, with 100 guns. Here it was again defeated, though on this occasion 60,000 strong, by 3,000 Eng- lishmen and native Sepoys combined, and all the guns captured. ln the ensuing year, 1764, the Vizier of Oude and Meer Cassim took up a strong position near Buxar, with 30,000 picked troops and 130 guns, and was attacked and utterly defeated by Munro, with 857 English—all there were-5,297 Sepoys recently tainted by mutiny, 918 native cavalry, and 20 field-pieces. In this great action the whole of the enemy's guns were taken, though manned by disciplined artillerymen. Our officers were not afraid of long odds in those days, and I pray you, or any reader of this letter, to notice the small number of English who were led, with unswerving -confidence, against the native hosts.

3. I need hardly give details of the war with Tippoo Sultan, nor of its brilliant close in the capture of Seringapatam, May 3, 1798. Yet at that period the Mahrattas (the Peshwah, Sindia, and Holkar) were wavering, if not actually hostile, and their forces amounted in the aggregate to 300,000 good troops, with more than five hundred guns. Yet we did not flinch from the trial, and I ask is that great crisis forgotten ?

4. The Mahratta powers were not long in showing their real disposition, and the first Mahratta war commenced on Sept. 23, 1803. Sindia's noble army of 16,000 of De Boigne's disciplined infantry, a host of irregulars, and 20,000 cavalry, with 98 superb guns, far superior to our own, were defeated at Assaye by General Wellesley (the Duke of Wellington), whose army of all kinds barely reached 4,500 men, and of which only the 19th Dragoons, the 74th Highlanders, and some Artillery were English soldiers. In this action Sindia's disciplined battalions fought desperately, and left 12,000 dead on the field, with their 98 guns, which they would neither surrender nor leave.

And in the same campaign was not Lord Lake equally trium- phant against Sindia's disciplined forces in Hindustan ? With a weak army, and one English regiment—the 761k—he beat the enemy at Agra, on October 10, 1803, taking all their guns ; and again at the bloody battle of Laswarree, on the 1st November, where he took 71 more of the famous French guns.

5. There was a memorable action, too, at Poona, on the 5th November, 1817, when 800 English, and 2,000 native Sepoys de- feated the Peshwah's army of 26,000, with 14 guns. Nor did the Mahratta disciplined battalions fare better at Maharaj poor on 29th December, 1843, when they were defeated by Sir Hugh Gough, with the loss of 56 splendid guns ; or at Punniar, on the same day, when General Grey took 40 guns from 12,000 of the same troops.

6. Are the results in Sind to be held of no account, when, on February 17, 1843, Sir Charles Napier, with a force under 2,000 strong in action, and but one English regiment, the 22nd Foot, defeated, at Meeanee, the valiant Belooehees, 30,000 to 35,000 strong, who left six thousand dead on the field and their guns? Or again, on March 24, when the Ameer Shere Mahomed's army of twenty thousand was defeated at Dubba, with the loss of 5,000 killed,—for there were no wounded ! Yet these Beloochees were warriors before whom natives of India have always quailed.

7. Need I go on to the great Sikh war, and the hard-fought actions of Moodkee, Ferozsheher, and Sobraon, where the sudden onset of the finest, braved, and best-disciplined native army that India had ever produced was defeated, shattered, and disor- ganized in a single campaign, and its 250 guns, the admira- tion of all that saw them, were marched down to Calcutta ? Or need I mention the second Sikh war, which completed the destruction of the old Bhalsa Army, and captured at Goojerat the last fifty-three guns which had remained to it ? When our Army was retiring from Afghanistan, and a camp was formed at Ferozepoor, had we not the Sikhs, then unbroken, in our rear, the Gwalior forces in our front, neither hardly controllable, and the Nepalese on our flank? Was not this one of the most serious crises in our history ? And yet were 60,000 English troops for India ever thought of for a moment ?

Here I may end my roll of great crises and victories won within the confines of India, leaving all without them unnoticed, and the countless number of smaller affairs, which with very few excep- tions, and those under peculiar circumstances, as General Mathews' surrender of Bednore, Baillie's defeat, Monson's retreat, and such- like mishaps, are all of the same triumphant character. You, Sir, have touched upon the Sepoy Mutiny and its result, therefore I need not follow it. We had against us 100,000 of our own native troops, with most of our guns and materiel of war, and how they fared in the sequel we all remember ; yet we had only 18,000 English troops in India to bear the brunt of the crisis, and these, too, widely dispersed.

I have written the foregoing, not with any design of boast- ing, not with any idea of vain-glory ; but to prove, I hope, that with comparatively mere handfuls of English troops, combined with natives, we have as yet utterly defeated and broken every attempt of every native army in India to keep the field even for a limited period ; and that in no single instance—except Tippoo and the Mahrattas, both unavoidable, for many valid reasons, and the distances which had to be traversed,— was a second campaign necessary.

Why, then, should we fear now ? and who are there throughout the length and breadth of the land of whom we are to be afraid? Are they the peasant-fanatics of Bengal, the Wahabees of whom Dr. Hunter tells us ? or their fellow-fanatics of Arcot, Vellore, and the South ?—men without arms, except the swords or matchlocks which they may have buried,—men without leaders, without organization in any shape, and without money to maintain themselves for a day, except by the cakes or rice they might bring from their homes, or the plunder of their fellow-countrymen. The Punjab, which we have dis- armed and rendered helpless, or Oude, which is in the same cate- gory? the Nepalese, who, taught one sharp lesson, have been our good friends in troubled times? The native Princes of India?

Well, I will come to them presently, and will, I hope, be able to show the timid readers of Lord Napier's minute what they are also. But meanwhile, pray consider what we are now.

We have 60,000 English troops in India, the same good stuff, as far as men are concerned, that won the battles I have enume- rated. Sixty thousand I—better men, physically, than the veterans of Clive, Munro, Lake, or Wellesley, because better housed,

better fed, better drilled, better dressed, and more lightly accoutred, and a hundred to one better armed, with breech-loading Solders, than our brave old soldiers were with the flint-and-steel "Brown Bess." We have the finest artillery that science can devise, whether siege or field, and no Native artillery whatever. There is not one native fortress in India which could now stand a siege,— no, not one! The best that existed are now in our own hands, or have been taken, blown up, or otherwise dismantled and rendered untenable ; and even in their best days, except Bhurtpore and Seringapatam, which of the thousands that exist ever made a serious or protracted resistance ? Where in the darkest days of the Mutiny we had ONE English soldier, now we have THREE ready to act on a day's notice. We have better means of communication, though not yet as perfect as they will be, and in the Sikhs we have secured a better class of men for work in the field and in action than the old Oude Sepoys ever were ; and yet with the latter, the hardy little Mahrattas, and South countrymen, and a compara- tively mere handful of English soldiers, we won India against all seeming preponderance of enormous native armies, however highly disciplined, as some portions of them undoubtedly were.

Then we have disarmed the native population of our own territories, and men now unused to carry arms forget much how to use them. I do not mean to assert that in the disarmament of the British province of India we have gathered up all the weapons possessed by the people ; and I have no doubt that many an old matchlock or sword ; perhaps also some honeycombed guns, are concealed or buried ; but this need not alarm even the most timid or cautious. Armies such as would be required to cope with us in any future struggle (admitting that, for the sake of argument, to be in any degree possible) would be useless with such weapons ; they could not either be raised in a day or in a year. No hostile assembly of even 500 armed men could take place without being instantly suppressed, of which the recent Kooka insurrection near Loo- diana is a notable instance in point ; and could anything short of an attempt to rival ourselves in the field have, in any point of view, military or political, the very slightest chance of success ? For all who know them can as surely estimate the worth or worthlessness of native levies (however valiant their individual members may be), when they come face to face with English armies in the field, as I can who write this. To my own perception, so far from increasing the English force in India, it might at the present time be decreased by 10,000 men, and 50,000 instead of 60,000 British troops be retained as the garrison of India. This, while it would relieve the finances of India of some of the present strain upon them, would be more than double the amount of any former strength, even when the greatest and most perilous combinations existed against us. If I had the statistics of former years at my present command, I would show what was thought to be, and was proved to be, suffi- cient for the conquest of India, in almost absurd contrast with the 60,000 men who are considered necessary for its retention ; but I think and hope that my slight record of battles will lead your readers to their own conclusions on the subject.—I am, Sir, &c.,

MEADOWS TAYLOR, C.S.I.

Old Court, Harold's Cross, Dublin, January 21, 1872.