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INTRODUCTION
To Lumsden’s Horse belongs the high honour of having
represented all India in a movement the magnitude and far-reaching
effects of which we are only beginning to appreciate. While the stubborn
struggle for supremacy in South Africa lasted, no true sons of the
Empire allowed themselves to count the cost. Some were prepared to pay
it in blood, others in. treasure, to make success certain, and none
allowed himself to harbour even the shadow of a thought that failure,
with all its inevitable disasters, could befall us so long as the Mother
Country and her offshoots held together. At the outset only those
blessed with exceptional foresight could have believed in the
completeness of a federation the elements of which were bound together
by no other ties than sentiment. Selfish interests were merged in
combined efforts for the common weal, and, while the necessity for
action lasted, few cared to reckon the price they were paying for an
idea.
Even the long-looked-for advent of Peace has hardly
brought home to us a knowledge of all that War in South Africa meant,
not only in a military sense, but also in its greater imperial
significance. The men who fought and bled for the noble sentiment of
British brotherhood never dreamed that they were doing more than duty
demanded, though they had perhaps given up every chance of success in
life to answer the call of patriotism; and among those who stayed at
home there are millions untouched by the bitterness of personal
bereavement who can have no conception of the sacrifices that were made
to keep our Empire whole. Casualty lists, with all their details of
killed and wounded, do not tell half the story. To know it all we must
dig deep into the private records of every contingent, British and
Colonial, that volunteered for active service, and deeper still to
fathom the motives of men who, when their country seemed to need them,
threw aside all other considerations and rallied to her standard.
Continental critics may sneer at us for making much of
this idea, but none know better than they do the difference between
loyalty expressed in such a noble form and the mere instinct of
self-preservation that too often passes current for patriotism. They
tell us that it is every citizen’s duty to be a soldier and every
soldier’s duty to die, if necessary, for his country, but when they see
self-governing nations from every quarter of the world coming into line
by their own free will and all welded together by one sentiment, they
have no better name for it than lust of empire. Nevertheless, they know
it for what it is, a thing of which they had previously no conception,
and they recognise in the impulses that led to this mighty manifestation
the secret of Great Britain’s world-wide power. Let envious rivals say
what they will. Let them magnify our reverses and minimise our triumphs,
if the process pleases them. In spite of everything, the South African
War stands a great epoch of an age that will some day come to be
reckoned among the greatest in British History, and all who have helped
towards the shaping of events at this memorable time can at least claim
to have earned the gratitude of posterity.
And India may well be proud of her share in the work.
Measured by the mere number of men whom she sent to the war, her
contribution seems perhaps comparatively small; but when we remember the
sources from which that contingent was drawn, the munificence of gifts
from Europeans and natives alike for its equipment and maintenance, and
all the sacrifices that war service involved for every member of the
little force, we cannot but admire the spirit that called it into being.
A great crisis was not necessary to convince us that British residents
in India would fight, if called upon, with all the valour that
distinguished Outram’s Volunteers of old. Few, however, would have been
bold enough to predict that for any conceivable cause hundreds of men
would readily relinquish all that they had struggled for, give up the
fruits of half a life’s labour, and calmly face the certainty of
irreparable losses, without asking for anything in return except the
opportunity of serving their country on a soldier’s meagre pay. Still
less could anybody have imagined that a time might come when Indian
natives, debarred from the chance of proving their loyalty by personal
service, would give without stint towards a fund for equipping a force
to fight in a distant land against the enemies of the British Raj. If
Indian princes had been permitted to raise troops for the war in South
Africa, our Eastern contingent would have numbered thousands instead of
hundreds. What natives were not allowed to give in men they gave in cash
and in substance, according to their means, thereby showing that they
were with us in a desire to defend the Empire against any assailant. In
reality this meant more than an offer of armed forces, and to that
extent it was worthy to rank with the self-sacrifice of Anglo-Indians
who gave personal service, and thereby took upon themselves a burden the
weight of which cannot be readily estimated. It must not be forgotten
that raising a corps of Volunteers in India is a very different matter
from the enrolment of a similar force at home, or wherever there are
dense populations and ‘leisured classes’ to be drawn upon. There are no
idle men in India, everyone having gone there to fill an appointment and
earn his livelihood. When the call came, therefore, it could only be
answered by sacrifices or not at all, and nobody is more conscious of
this fact than the man whose laconic appeal for Volunteers brought three
or four times more offers than he could possibly accept. In his opinion
‘the men who vacated appointments worth from 300 to 500 rupees a month
and went to fight for their country on 1s. 2p. a day have given a much
larger contribution to the War Fund than they could afford.’ As an
instance he mentions three members of the medical profession, Doctors
Charteris, Moorhouse, and Woollright, each of whom threw up a lucrative
practice and joined the ranks as a trooper. These are not exceptional
but simply typical cases. Scores of other men gave up equally
remunerative appointments with the same noble unselfishness to enrol
themselves in Lumsden’s Horse.
To Colonel Lumsden alone belongs the honour of having
evoked this splendid manifestation of patriotic feeling. The idea of
forming a corps of Indian Volunteers was his; and though similar
thoughts may have been in many minds at the same moment, nobody had
given a practical turn to them until his message—electric in every
sense—startled all Anglo-Indians into active and cordial co-operation.
How all that came about will be told with fuller circumstances in its
proper place, but some reference must be made here to the man whose firm
faith in the patriotism and soldierly qualities of Indian Volunteers led
him to the inception of a scheme which events have so abundantly
justified.
Lieutenant-Colonel Dugald McTavish Lumsden, C.B., needs
no introduction to the East, where the best, and perhaps the happiest,
years of his life have been spent. Without some details concerning him,
however, completeness could not be claimed for any record of the corps
which is now identified with his name. The eldest son of the late Mr.
James Lumsden, of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, he was born in 1851. At the
age of twenty-two he obtained an appointment on the Borelli Tea Estate,
in the Tezpur District of Assam, and sailed for India. Consciously or
unconsciously, he must have taken with him some military ambitions
imbibed through intimate association with leaders of the Volunteer
movement in Scotland. At any rate, he soon became known as a keen
Volunteer in the land of his adoption, and when in 1887 the Durrung
Mounted Rifles was formed, he was given a captaincy. A year later that
corps lost its identity, as other local units did, in the territorial
title of Assam Valley Light Horse, with Colonel Buckingham, C.I.E., as
commandant, while Captain Lumsden got his majority and took command of F
Squadron in the Durrung District. Subsequently he commanded the regiment
for a time, and, though he left India in 1893, he did not lose touch
with his old comrades. Every year he returned to spend the cold weather
among his friends in Assam, showing always undiminished interest in the
welfare of his old regiment. Thus, when the time came for a call to
active service, he had no sort of doubt what the response would be from
the hardy, sport-loving planters of Northern Bengal. Himself an
enthusiastic and
first-rate shot, he knew how to value the qualities that are developed
in hunting and stalking wild game. And his experience of Indian
Volunteers was not confined to his own district. He knew every corps in
Bengal by reputation, and could thus gauge with an approach to accuracy
the numbers on which he would be able to draw for the formation of an
Indian contingent. Much travel in many lands had also made him a good
judge of men, as evidenced by the first thing he did when the idea of
calling upon India to take up her share of the Imperial burden came to
him.
At that time he was travelling in Australia, and had no
means of knowing how deeply the feelings of British residents and
natives of the East had been stirred by news of the reverses to our arms
in South Africa. The dark days of Stormberg and Magersfontein had thrown
their shadow over Australia as over England, chilling the hearts of
people who until then had refused to believe that British troops could
be baulked by any foes, notwithstanding the stern lesson of Ladysmith’s
investment. Through that darkness they were groping sullenly towards the
light, and wondering what national sacrifices would have to be made
before the humiliation could be wiped out. It is in such moments of
emergency that natural leaders come to the front. Among the few in
England or the Colonies who realised the military value of Volunteers
was Colonel Lumsden. Though thousands of miles away from the scenes of
early associations, his thoughts turned at once to the bold riders and
skilful marksmen with whom he had so often shared the exciting incidents
of the chase. He made up his mind at once that the planters, on whose
spirit he could rely, were the very men wanted for South African
fighting. On the parade ground they might not be all that soldiers whose
minds are fettered by rules and traditions would desire, but he knew how
long days of exercise in the open air at their ordinary avocations,
varied by polo, pig-sticking, and big-game hunting, had toughened their
fibre and hardened their nerves. He could count on every one of them
also for keen intelligence, which he rightly regarded as more important
than mere obedience to orders, where every man might be called upon to
think and act for himself. Colonel Lumsden would be the last to
depreciate Regular soldiers, or undervalue their discipline, but
experience had taught him that men who can exercise self-restraint and
develop powers of endurance for the mere pleasure of excelling in manly
sports, adapt themselves readily enough to military duties. To them, at
any rate, the prospect of hardships or privations would be no deterrent,
the imminence of danger only an additional incentive. On December 15,
1899 — a day to be afterwards borne in mournful memory—Colonel Lumsden
made up his mind that the time for action had come to every Briton who
could see his way to giving the Mother Country a helpful hand. He cabled
at once to his friend Sir Patrick Playfair in Calcutta his proposal to
raise a corps of European Mounted Infantry for service in South Africa,
and backed it with an offer, not only to take the field himself, but to
contribute a princely sum in aid of a fund for equipping any force the
Government might sanction. Then, without waiting to know whether his
sendees had been accepted, he took passage by the next steamer for
India.
The History of
Lumsden's Horse
A complete record of the corps from its foundation to its disbandment
edited by Henry H. S. Pearse, War Correspondent (1903) (pdf) |
