Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c51.s2.10

v4.c51.s2.10

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.*