Twelve Years Of A Soldier's Life In India Part 15

KUSSOWLEE, _May 4th, 1851_.

Your budget of letters reached me on the 2d. It is very pleasant to receive these warm greetings, and it refreshes me when bothered, or overworked, or feverish, or disgusted.

I look forward to a visit to England and _home_ with a pleasure which nothing but six years of exile can give.

The Governor-General has at last advanced me to the higher grade of "a.s.sistants" to Commissioners. The immediate advantage is an increase of pay,--the real benefit, that it brings me nearer the main step of a Deputy Commissioner in charge of a district. It is satisfactory, not the less so that it was extorted from him by the unanimity of my official superiors in pressing the point upon him, Mr.

Edmonstone having commenced attacking him in my favor before I had been under him four months. I am not in love with the kind of employment,--I long with no common earnestness for the more military duties of my old friends the "Guides;" but I am not therefore insensible to the advantages of doing well in this line of work. Ambition alone would dictate this, for my success in this civil business (which is considered the highest and most arduous branch of the public service) almost insures my getting on in any other hereafter.

_To Rev. E. Harland._

KUSSOWLEE, _June 11th, 1851_.

I fancy the change is as great in myself as in either. The old visions of boyhood have given place to the vehement aspirations of a military career and the interests of a larger ambition. I thirst now not for the calm pleasures of a country life, the charms of society, or a career of ease and comfort, but for the maddening excitement of war, the keen contest of wits involved in dealing with wilder men, and the exercise of power over the many by force of the will of the individual. Nor am I, I hope, insensible to the vast field for good and for usefulness which these vast provinces offer to our energies, and to the high importance of the trust committed to our charge.

_To his Father._

KUSSOWLEE, _Oct 20th, 1851_.

I am much stronger now, and improving rapidly. By the end of next summer I hope to be as strong as I ever hope to be again. That I shall ever again be able to row from Cambridge to Ely in two hours and ten minutes, to run a mile in five minutes, or to walk from Skye (or Kyle Hatren Ferry) to Inverness in thirty hours, is not to be expected, or perhaps desired. But I have every hope that in the event of another war I may be able to endure fatigue and exposure as freely as in 1848. One is oftener called upon to ride than to walk long distances in India. In 1848, I could ride one hundred miles in ten hours, fully accoutred, and I don't care how soon (saving your presence!) the necessity arises again! I have no doubt that matrimony will do me a power of good, and that I shall be not only better, but happier and more care-less than hitherto.

I have been deeply grieved and affected by the death, two days ago, of Colonel Bradshaw, of the 60th Rifles. He will be a sad loss, not only to his regiment, but to the army and the country. He was the _beau ideal_ of an English soldier and gentleman, and would have earned himself a name as a General had he been spared. A finer and n.o.bler spirit there was not in the army. I feel it as a deep personal loss, for he won my esteem and regard in no common degree.

CHAPTER VII.

MARRIAGE.--COMMAND OF THE GUIDES.--FRONTIER WARFARE.--MURDaN.

On the 5th of January, 1852, Lieut. Hodson was married, at the Cathedral, Calcutta, to Susan, daughter of Capt. C. Henry, R. N., and widow of John Mitford, Esq., of Exbury, Hants. By the first week in March he had resumed his duties at Kussowlee as a.s.sistant Commissioner. On the breaking out of the war with Burmah he expected to rejoin his regiment, (the First Bengal European Fusileers,) which had been ordered for service there, but in August he writes from Kussowlee:--

My regiment is on its way down the Ganges to Calcutta, to take part in the war, but the Burmese have proved so very unformidable an enemy this time, that only half the intended force is to be sent on from Calcutta; the rest being held in reserve. Under these circ.u.mstances, and in the expectation that the war will very speedily be brought to a close, the Governor-General has determined not to allow officers on civil employment to join their regiments in the usual manner. I am thus spared what would have been a very fatiguing and expensive trip, with very little hope of seeing any fighting.

It was not long, however, before an opportunity of seeing active service presented itself, and in a way, of all others, most to his taste. His heart had all along been with his old corps, "the Guides,"

as his letters show. He had taken an active share in raising and training them originally, and, as second in command during the Punjaub campaign of 1848-9, had contributed in no small degree to gain for the Corps that reputation which it has recently so n.o.bly sustained before Delhi.

The command was now vacant, and was offered to him; but I must let him speak for himself:--

KUSSOWLEE, _Sept. 23d, 1852_.

Lumsden, my old Commandant in the Guides, goes to England next month, and the Governor-General has given me the command which I have coveted so long. It is immense good fortune in every way, both as regards income and distinction. It is accounted the most honorable and arduous command on the frontier, and fills the public eye, as the papers say, more than any other.

This at the end of seven years' service is a great thing, especially on such a frontier as Peshawur, at the mouth of the Kyber Pa.s.s. You will agree with me in rejoicing at the opportunities for distinction thus offered to me.

Mr. Thomason writes thus: "I congratulate you very sincerely on the fine prospect that is open to you, and trust that you will have many opportunities of showing what the Guides can do under your leaders.h.i.+p. I have never ceased to reproach myself for advising you to leave the Corps, but now that you have the command, you will be all the better for the dose of civilianism that has been intermediately administered to you."

KUSSOWLEE, _Oct. 7th, 1852_.

Here I am, still, but hoping to take wing for Peshawur in a few days. It is only 500 miles; and, as there are no railways, and only nominal roads, and five vast rivers to cross, you may suppose that the journey is not one of a few hours' lounge.

I am most gratified by the appointment to the command of the Guides, and more so by the way in which it was given me, and the manner of my selection from amidst a crowd of aspirants.

It is no small thing for a subaltern to be raised to the command of a battalion of infantry and a squadron and a half of cavalry, with four English officers under him! I am supposed to be the luckiest man of my time. I have already had an offer from the Military Secretary to the Board of Administration to exchange appointments with him, although I should gain, and he would lose 200_l._ a year by the "swop;"

but I would not listen to him; I prefer the saddle to the desk, the frontier to a respectable, wheel-going, dinner-giving, dressy life at the capital; and--ambition to money!

But though his "instincts were so entirely military," (to use his own words,) this did not prevent his discharging his civil duties in a manner that called forth the highest eulogium from his superiors, as the subjoined letter from Mr. Edmonstone, now Secretary to Government at Calcutta, will testify:--

"KUSSOWLEE, _Oct. 12th, 1852_.

"MY DEAR HODSON,--I am a bad hand at talking, and could not say what I wished, but I would not have you go away without thanking you heartily for the support and a.s.sistance which you have always given me in all matters, whether big or little, since you joined me, now twenty months and more ago.

I have in my civil and criminal reports for the past year recorded my sense of your services, and your official merits, but our connection has been peculiar, and your position has been one which few would have filled either so efficiently or so agreeably to all parties. You have afforded me the greatest aid in the most irksome part of my duty, and have always with the utmost readiness undertaken anything, no matter what, that I asked you to dispose of, and I owe you more on this account than a mere official acknowledgment can repay adequately. I hope that though your present appointment will give you more congenial duties and better pay, you will never have occasion to look back to the time you have pa.s.sed here with regret; and I hope too that all your antic.i.p.ations of pleasure and pride, in commanding the Corps which you had a chief hand in forming, may be realized.

"Believe me to be, with much regard, "Yours very sincerely, "G. F. EDMONSTONE."

CAMP IN HUZaRA, _Dec. 16th, 1852_.

I took command of the Guides on the 1st November, and twenty-four hours afterwards marched "on service" to this country, which is on the eastern or left bank of the Indus, above the parallel of Attok. We are now in an elevated valley, surrounded by snowy mountains, and mighty cold it is, too, at night. We have come about 125 miles from Peshawur, and having marched up the hill, are patiently expecting the order to march down again. We have everything necessary for a pretty little mountain campaign but an enemy. This is usually a _sine qua non_ in warfare, but not so now. Then we have to take a fort, only it has ceased to exist months ago; and to reinstate an Indian ally in territories from which he was expelled by some neighbors, only he wont be reinstated at any price.

My regiment consists of five English officers, including a surgeon, Dr. Lyell, a very clever man. Then I have 300 horse, including native officers, and 550 foot, or 850 men in all, divided into three troops and six companies,[15] the latter armed as riflemen. My power is somewhat despotic, as I have authority to enlist or dismiss from the service, flog or imprison, degrade or promote any one, from the native officers downwards, always remembering that an abuse of power might lose me the whole. This sort of chiefdom is necessary with a wild sort of gentry of various races and speeches, gathered from the snows of the Hindoo Koosh and the Himalaya, to the plains of Scinde and Hindostan, all of whom are more quick at blows than at words, and more careless of human life than you could possibly understand in England by any description. I am likely to have civil charge as well as military command of the Euzofzai district, comprising that portion of the great Peshawur valley which lies between the Cabul River and the Indus. So you see I am not likely to eat the bread of idleness at least. I will tell you more of my peculiar duties when I have more experience of their scope and bent.... I am, I should say, the most fortunate man in the service, considering my standing. The other candidates were all field-officers of some standing.

Our good friend and guest, Captain Powys, of the 60th, who has spent the first six months of our married life under our roof, is on the way to England. He will see you very soon, and give you a better account of us than you could hope for from any one else.

Notwithstanding all appearance to the contrary at its opening, the campaign lasted seven weeks, and supplied plenty of fighting. It was afterwards characterized by my brother as the hardest piece of service he had yet seen. One engagement lasted from sunrise to sunset. He had thus an opportunity of displaying his usual gallantry and coolness, and showing how well he could handle his "Guides" in mountain warfare.

They suffered much from cold, as the ground was covered with snow for a part of the time, and from want of supplies.

Colonel (now Sir R.) Napier, speaking afterwards of this expedition, said:--

"Your brother's unfailing fun and spirits, which seemed only raised by what we had to go through, kept us all alive and merry, so that we looked back upon it afterwards as a party of pleasure, and thought we had never enjoyed anything more."

In reply to congratulations on his appointment, my brother wrote from--

PESHAWUR, _March 13th, 1853_.

I have certainly been very fortunate indeed, and only hope that I may be enabled to acquit myself of the trust well and honorably, both in the field and in the more political portion of my duties. It was a good thing that I had the opportunity of leading the regiment into action so soon after getting the command, and that the brunt of the whole should have fallen upon us, as it placed the older men and myself once more on our old footing of confidence in one another, and introduced me to the younger hands as their leader when they needed one. Susie says she told you all about it; I need therefore only add that it was the hardest piece of service, while it lasted, I have yet seen with the Guides, both as regards the actual fighting, the difficulties of the ground, (a rugged mountain, 7,000 feet high, and densely wooded,) and the exposure. You will see little or no mention of it publicly, it being the policy of Government to make everything appear as quiet as possible on this frontier, and to blazon the war on the eastern side of the empire (some 2,000 miles away) as much as they can. I am, as you justly imagined, to be employed both civilly and in a military capacity,--at least, it is under discussion.

I was asked to take charge of the wild district of "Euzofzai," (forming a large portion of the Peshawur province,) where the Guides will ordinarily be stationed. I refused to do so unless I had the exclusive civil charge in all departments, magisterial, financial, and judicial, instead of in the former only, as proposed, and I fancy they will give in to my reasons. I shall then be military chief, and civil governor, too, as far as that part of the valley is concerned, and shall have enough on my hands, as you may suppose. In the mean time, I shall have the superintendence of the building of a fort to contain us all,--not such a fortress as Coblentz, or those on the Belgian frontier, but a mud structure, which answers all the purposes we require at a very, very small cost.

PESHAWUR, _April 30th, 1853_.

I am sorry to say my wife is ordered to the hills, and we shall again be separated for five or six months. My own destination for the hot season is uncertain, but I expect to be either here, or on the banks of the Indus.