Revolution to Regency#1: The Armed Forces of Mysore part 3

Part 3: The army on the march. 

All Indian armies of the 18th and early 19th centuries were fairly similar –even those of the East India Company. Perhaps the best way to describe them would be to say that they were like swarms of locusts devouring everything along their path. This was partly due to the nature of the supply system and partly due to that of the Indian sepoy or warrior who refused to leave his wife and family behind, which led to the need for transport not just for the army but for its’ dependents too. The situation was even worse amongst the cavalry, both regular and irregular, for an Indian horseman saw himself as being a breed apart and above the work of caring for his mount(s) so it was normal practise for each cavalryman to be accompanied by a syce (groom) and at least 1 grass cutter along with the usual bhisties (water carriers) cooks etc. it has been estimated that for every man under arms, there would be five of six non-combatants. 

Illustration 12: The army on the march

The writer of “Narrative Sketches of the Conquest of Mysore.” Tells us:- 

"The cavalry, especially the native corps, necessarily bring along with them a vast number of attendant: every trooper, besides his family, has a grass-cutter attached to him; for the grass is in this country dug up by the roots, being washed from the sand and dried in a net; and it is a sufficient day's work for one person to root out twenty-four hours' food for a single horse. Each troop is also furnished with a large copper kettle for boiling the gram or beans for the horses, as it is reckoned unwholesome to let them have it raw. A quantity of this grain, sufficient to serve the regiment for a certain time, must also be conveyed upon bullocks, allowing each ox to carry about a month's store for a single horse.” 

There was a great lack of any organised commissary in Indian armies on the march. All armies were supplied by Brinjaries – itinerant grain sellers who travelled in large groups, often thousands strong with their wares carried on the backs of draught bullocks. They could be present on an ad-hoc basis as private agents working for profit, as transport agents for a campaign, paid in advance for their wares by the army commanders or hired for a set period buying their own grain and selling it on. An army was very much a commercial enterprise with the brinjaries – a sort of Indian white van man- at the heart of the whole system, which the leaders saw as a means of raising revenue to help keep the army in the field. The lack of commissaries was remedied by bazaars in which anything required by the army from a stirrup leather to a lady of easy virtue could be bought. Each senior commander had their own bazaar which would be set up in front of their own tent and standard. The bazaar was a well run cash-cow for the leaders and ruler. First of all there was a palputtee (tent tax) levied upon all the shops of the bazaar, according to their ostensible means. The palputtee in four Mahratta bazaars was estimated at the following sums:- Duolut-gunj 3,000 rupees, Danuwulee 3,000 rupees, Chuonree 2,000 rupees, Surrafa 6,000 rupees. Similar sums would be raised in Mysorean bazaars.. Although this description from “Narrative Sketches of the Conquest of Mysore.”is actually about the British or EIC army, it still holds good for that of Mysore:- "A bazar is also an indispensable appendage to an Eastern army: it consists of a whole camp of native sutlers, they provide and sell to the best advantage all those necessaries of life, 'which it would be highly inconvenient for the soldiers to carry about with them ; such as curry-stuffs, tobacco, rice for the superfluities of the army, meat, cotton-cloth, gram for the officers horses in short, they furnish out an excellent market, where one may get anything at a certain price. " In addition to the superabundant multitude of attendants already described, every Sepoy in the army carries with him to camp his whole family, be they ever so numerous, who live upon his pay and allowances of rice from the Company. This practice, when properly considered, is really justifiable in them, for an Asiatic must have his wife, whatever may be his circumstances; nor is it customary upon any occasion for man and wife to be separated. The wife shares the hardships of war with her husband in the most cheerful manner, let them be ever so perilous, and follows him wheresoever he goes.” Besides the bazaars, there were also daily fairs (except Friday), at a particular spot in the camp, which were called Goodurees, or Nukas. Cattle of all kinds, arms and old clothes, were sold at them; and the purchasers paid a duty of six and a quarter per cent, upon the price. Strangers who bring goods to the camp generally put up at the tent of some established merchant, who accommodated them, and disposed of their goods, receiving a commission of six and a quarter per cent of the sale price for his trouble. Similarly, taxes were levied on any goods sold within the bazaar or grain sold by the brinjaries. In “Letters from a Mahratta Camp” Thomas Duer Brougton gives us a wonderful description of the design of a camp, which although of a Mahratta army would have been no different in a Mysorean army:- “On marching days, the Beenee Wala, or quarter-master general, moves off at an early hour; and upon reaching the ground where the army is to encamp, he plants a small white flag, to mark the spot where the tents of the Muha Raj (the title by which any Hindoo prince is commonly designated), are to be pitched; and which collectively are termed the Deooree. The flags of the different Bazars, or markets, are then fixed as they arrive; always in the same relative situation to each other, and generally in as straight a line as the ground will admit of. The shops, called Dokans, are pitched in two lines running parallel to each other; and thus form one grand street from the front to the rear of the army. This street often extends from three to four miles; the Deooree being situated about three-fourths of the whole length from the front, having only the market called the Chuoree Bazar in its rear. The different chiefs encamp to the right and left of the principal street; generally, however, in the neighbourhood of some particular Bazar. Their respective encampments are made without the smallest attention to regularity, cleanliness or convenience: men, horses, camels, and bullocks are all jumbled together in a mass ; which mass is surrounded on all sides by others of a similar nature, in a continued series of comfortless confusion. This forms what is termed the Bura Lushkur, or main army; and is generally about as many hundred yards in breadth, that is from flank to flank, as it is miles in length from front to rear ; thus exactly reversing the order of encampment which obtains in the disciplined armies of Europe. The shops, which compose the Bazars, are mostly formed of blankets or coarse cloth stretched over a bamboo, or some other stick for a ridge pole, supported at either end by a forked stick fixed in the ground. These habitations are called Pals; and are of all sizes, from three to eight or nine feet high, and proportionally wide and long according to the circumstances of the owner. Under these miserable coverings not only are the goods exposed for sale, but the family of the shopkeeper resides throughout the year and for many years together. The wealthiest merchants of the Bazars use these Pals; but the military men, and others attached to the camp, generally possess a dwelling of somewhat a more comfortable description, regularly made of two or three folds of cloth in thickness, closed at one end, and having a flap to keep out the wind and rain at the opposite one: these are dignified with the name of Ruotees, and come nearer to our ideas of a tent. The Ruotees, like the Pals, are of all descriptions and size; and m st of the chiefs of the highest rank inhabit them. I do not believe that there are, throughout the camp, ten tents fashioned like our European marquees, even including those of the Muha Raj himself. Much is made of the lack of cleanliness by writers of the period. Broughton says:- 

“Our station is in the rear of the whole; and we generally contrive to keep at the distance of about a mile from the army; their disgusting want of cleanliness rendering them most disagreeable neighbours. It is impossible to take a ride in the vicinity of the great camp without being poisoned by the stench arising from the carcases of horses, bullocks and camels, which no one takes the trouble to remove, and a variety of other nuisances.” 

 Forbes writes:-

 “The number and variety of cattle necessarily attendant on an Asiatic army is astonishing; the expense of feeding these animals, as also the difficulty of procuring provender, is very great; and their distress for water in a parched country and sultry climate, often fatal. Exclusive of the Mahratta cavalry trained to war, were many thousand horses belonging to the camp-followers; the bazaar alone required twenty thousand bullocks to convey the commodities of the shopkeepers, besides a number of small horses and asses. Some thousand camels were employed to carry the tents and baggage; but the elephants, proud of their distinguished elevation, were appropriated to some honourable service, or, covered with caparisons of embroidered velvets and scarlet cloth, decorated with gold and silver fringe, were destined to carry the houdahs of Ragobah and his chief officers.”

Useful these animals might be for transport and other services but their feeding was not the only problem they confronted the army with. There was no separate place for herding and stabling them, and sometimes lack of care and underfeeding told so heavily on their health that they proved a source of disease. Broughton says that :- 

 “The men in the Maratha army often lived pell-mell with their mounts, and this unsanitary condition sometimes led to the outbreak of epidemic when the distress of the poor sufferers knew no bounds. For although the camp was well supplied with druggists and quacks, there were but few qualified physicians, and hospital arrangements were either unknown or deemed unnecessary.” 

 The reliance on brinjarries and foragers in the immediate vicinity of the army led to a situation where, unless the army kept moving, the worse conditions within camp became. Prime areas of grazing would be claimed by groups of horsemen who would fight or chase off anyone who tried to take any of it as fodder for their own animals. The longer the army stayed in one place, the further the foragers were forced to go from the camp and the harder it became to find fodder for the livestock and even thatch from village houses was taken with the looties, kazakhs and pindarees stealing anything movable, slaughtering the locals and burning their homes. The survivors would begin to starve along with their tormentors and it mattered little whether the army belonged to an enemy or their own state unless the headman could raise enough money to buy off its’ leader. Although the army could move rapidly at times, this meant sending on the cavalry and infantry ahead of the baggage train -a risky tactic as it left the advance force without supplies of food and ammunition and also put the baggage train at risk of capture or destruction from enemy cavalry. Haider and Tipu Sultan kept their troops in exceptional order, and what they did could not be done by other native armies. In 1781 Haider marched one hundred miles in two days and a half using forced marches by cavalry and infantry alone, and in November 1790 Tipu’s entire army marched sixty three miles in two days. These achievements though were purely short term and unsustainable over longer periods. Normal practise was for the army to stay together marching at the rate of the slowest units, namely the baggage train and the jinsee (artillery park). The average rate of march was 7.8 miles per day It was usual for the artillery park to lead the way whilst on the march, partly because its’ rate of travel was so slow and partly to allow it to traverse bad roads before they became churned up by the following hordes. Artillery was very important to the various Indian armies who saw the guns-the bigger the better, as sources of prestige and no matter how much they held the army up or how many times they got bogged down, they would not be abandoned, regardless of how little value they were on the field of battle. After the artillery would come the bulk of the cavalry followed by the Sultan or whoever was in charge of the army and his staff, who, in turn was followed by the baggage train with the infantry bringing up the rear. The whole formation would be surrounded by clouds of irregular horsemen acting as scouts and screens against attack. Tipu was quite capable of ordering troops to travel light and fast when necessary. In a letter to his brother he writes:-

 "To BURHANUDDEEN; dated 26th Wasaaey. (25th September) Four Kushoons have likewise been dispatched [to you] with Ghazy Khan (the principal Pindari commander in Tipoo Sultan's employ.) You must leave all the women and other rubbish, (emphasis is in the translation if not the original letter) together with the superfluous baggage belonging to your army, at Unwutti, and crossing the river with the above-mentioned [Ghazy Khan], repair directly to the Presence, instead of halting [as directed by our letter of yesterday), at the distance of six or seven coss from the victorious army. You will bring on with you, however, your light baggage, as well as all your warlike apparatus, with the exception of one of your three great guns. This, with whatever spare wheels you may have, you must leave with your heavy baggage: with which, such of your bullocks as are in bad condition must, likewise, remain. The two Lumchurs (the translator takes the Lumchur to have been a long gun, calculated for distant cannonading) are to accompany you.” 

Which perhaps tells us as much about Tipu's attitudes towards women as about the need to travel light. Where possible, the army would only march in the dry season as the monsoon rains turned many of the rivers from narrow channels with wide sandy flats on either side into raging, swollen torrents that were almost impossible to cross. If it was necessary to cross a river and there were no fords, either bridges of boats were built or boats consisting of sewn skins over a bamboo frame, rather like a large, elongated coracle, were made and the army ferried across. A good commander would ensure that teams of lascars and sappers would be sent ahead to prepare boats ready for the army’s arrival. Finally, there was the problem caused by the excesses of baggage that officers believed their status and comfort deserved and required, again from “Narrative Sketches of the Conquest of Mysore.” about the British or EIC army but still relevant:- 

“Thus every officer in the line equips himself according to his abilities and rank ; and thus usually accompanied is the march of an army in India; but it by no means follow, that the captors of Seringapatam attended to all this kind of preparation for personal convenience. Apologies, however, are to be made for carrying such an ample stock into the held: no supplies of any kind are to be found in the country towns through which the army marches, as in Europe ; for. whenever an Indian war breaks out, the villages are instantly desolated, so that there is scarcely a chance of making the smallest acquisition toward tbe comforts, or even the necessaries of life, from the beginning to the end of a campaign.”

Illustration 13: Merchants