Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c51.s2: § 2. The European military system—why it ultimately failed under the Indian princes
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c51.s2
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§ 2. The European military system—why it ultimately failed under the Indian princes
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The superiority of the campoo over the indigenous troops in the actual clash of arms is obvious; but the new system had serious defects, which ultimately led to its failure in India. Many of these defects were noted by contemporary observers, like Thomas Munro and Arthur Wellesley. The root of the matter has been thus briefly put by Sir Alfred Lyall in his *Rise of the British Dominion in India*: “The armament and tactics of civilized nations imply high proficiency in the art of war, abundant supply of costly material, and a strong reserve of well-trained officers; they cannot be hurriedly adopted by an Indian chief whose people are totally unaccustomed to such inventions. Moreover, in proportion as the Marathas adopted the armament and tactics of European warfare, they lost the advantage that comes out of unanimity of national, religious, or tribal sentiment. The new system required professional soldiers, who must be enlisted wherever they could be found; and especially it needed foreign officers.” (2nd ed. p. 198.)
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The rock on which the campoo system broke hopelessly, was its cost. Its soldiers, whether musketeers or gunners, could be made efficient only after a long period of training in cantonments, and their skill and discipline could be kept unimpaired only by means of frequent exercises ever after. The Maratha horse, on the other hand, did not need any such elaborate education; their skill in arms and horsemanship often came from village exercises like school games or hunting and therefore did not interfere with their family profession of tillage.
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Next, fire-arms and munitions are a heavy and recurring charge; a costly transport and supply service has to be maintained for regular troops, who cannot live on the country, as dispersal for foraging would destroy the cohesion and prompt obedience which form the essence of campoo tactics in war. Hence, the campoo had to be paid much higher salaries and paid much more punctually than the light horse, who were always, kept in arrears of pay, sometimes for as long as three years, even by Mahādji Sindhia.
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The infantry of the campoo were almost exclusively men of Oudh, Rohilkhand, and the Doab, and the artillerymen were Upper Indian Muslims and Buxari Hindus, with a large proportion of Telegus and Goanese Christians. Thus, being foreigners in Rajputana and the Maratha dominions, they had to be attracted by a higher pay than the local fauj; they could not eke out their pay by plundering as the light cavalry did. The favour shown to them in the form of higher salaries and more regular payment, produced the bitterest jealousy in the hearts of the fauj, which the campoo repaid with contempt for the fauj as a mere rabble of armed rustics.
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We find evidence of this friction as early as the Maratha campaign of Panipat in 1760-61.
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The introduction of the campoo broke the homogeneity of the armies of the Indian princes who employed them. This foreign and favoured class stood proudly aloof from the local troops, and the latter retorted by throwing the brunt of the fighting on this corps and standing idly in the rear till all was over except the plundering of a defeated enemy. Hence, in its hour of need, the campoo never got the least help from the fauj. This was glaringly illustrated at Assaye and many other battles. The campoo knew that it must win or perish alone without the least hope of support from its comrades of the old type under the same flag.
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Worst of all, the employment of the campoo side by side with them took the heart out of the indigenous Indian soldiers. A hundred clashes between the two systems since the 24th of September, 1676, when Francois Martin had stormed the fort of Valdaour with only 42 Frenchmen and 60 locally levied sepoys, against tenfold odds, had convinced our indigenous type of soldier that it was suicide for him to advance against a campoo unless he was given equal fire support on his own side. The lesson was burnt into the memory of the Peshwā's generals as they watched the devastating effect of Tipu Sultān's French-worked artillery in the campaign of 1786. At Mertā (10 Sept. 1790) De Boigne gave the classic example of the superiority of science over muscles.*
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The inferiority complex thus bred in our old style of soldiers made them useless for retrieving the day when it began to go against them, in a well-contested field. As soon as the trained infantry and gunners on their side were shaken or turned back, the cry ran through the mass of indigenous cavalry in the wings and the rear, that the campoo was broken (paltan bar bād zhālā, campoo budilā), and it became impossible to rally the rest of the army. The British Indian army broke up hopelessly when the cry arose in the sepy ranks, "The whites are fleeing" (*gorā bhāgā hai.*)
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∗ Valdaour (Mémoires de F. Martin, ii. 56). Tipu (Khare, Lekh Sangrah, viii. 3030, 3042).
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An incurable cause of weakness in the campoo was its officer class. They were all foreigners, as the ignorant fighting castes of India could produce no leader capable of learning the European system of war. These foreign officers were not the regular servants of any European State, who would have been men chosen for intelligence and character and bound by a sense of responsibility to their Home Government (like the 200 officers sent out by Napoleon in Decaen's ships in 1803.) They were most of them typical mercenaries, deserters, sweepings of their country's armies, and the dregs of their society. These adventurers held the European soldier's belief that East of Suez the Ten Commandments did not exist. Their dissipated habits and unruly character made them a terror to the country where they operated and an ever-present anxiety to the General who hired them.*
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The campoo was reliable and loyal only under an ever-vigilant, strong, but sympathetic leader and liberal paymaster like De Boigne. All the other campoos had the usual vices of the condottieri of mediaeval Italy. The extraordinary efficiency of De Boigne's brigades was due to certain causes peculiar to it. Their organizer and head was a man of superior education, varied experience, and lofty character; he kept his men and officers joined together and submissive to discipline because he paid them high salaries without default, as he had secured an assured and regular income adequate for his needs from a territorial grant which he administered personally; he chose as far as possible pureborn European officers and gun-layers, in preference to the mestizzoes and black Christians of Goa who commanded other campoos; he was popular with the English, because being a Savoyard he did not share Perron’s French antipathy to the English, and thus he received help from his many friends in the British Indian services and modelled his corps in equipment and arms on the East India Company’s Bengal army; he had his own arsenal and gun-factory under European supervision.
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∗ "The General (De Boigne) told me that his chief difficulty now was in managing his European officers; in giving them authority enough to be useful, but not enough to be dangerous; in conciliating their attachment while keeping them at a proper distance; in establishing due limits to their intrigues; and in disconcerting without exposing their ambition". 11 Dec. 1794, Thomas Twining, *Travels in India*, p. 283). Faqir Khairuddin alleges a conspiracy by his Major, an Englishman named Hunter or Taylor, to murder De Boigne. (*Ibratnāmah*, iii. 245).