[Forty-one years in India by Frederick Sleigh Roberts]@TWC D-Link bookForty-one years in India CHAPTER XXXIV 20/20
The order limiting the tenure of employment on the staff in the same grade to five years was also now introduced, which entailed my good friend Arthur Becher vacating the Quartermaster-Generalship, after having held it for eleven years. He was succeeded by Colonel Paton, with Lumsden as his deputy, and Charles Johnson (brother of Edwin Johnson) and myself as assistants in the Department. [Footnote 1: Under the Regular system, which was modelled on the Royal Army organization, each regiment of Native Cavalry had 22, and each regiment of Native Infantry 25 British officers, who rose to the higher grades by seniority.
From this establishment officers were taken, without being seconded, for the multifarious extra-regimental duties on which the Indian Army was, and is still, employed, viz., Staff, Civil, Political, Commissariat, Pay, Public Works, Stud, and Survey.
With the Irregular system this was no longer possible, although the number of British officers with each corps was (after the Mutiny) increased from 3 to 9 with a Cavalry, and 3 to 8 with an Infantry regiment.] [Footnote 2: Captain after twelve years,[*] Major after twenty years, and Lieutenant-Colonel after twenty-six years.] [Footnote * to Footnote 2: Since reduced to eleven years.] [Footnote 3: The late Sir Bartle Frere, Bart, G.C.B., G.C.S.I.] [Footnote 4: The fever-giving tract of country at the foot of the Himalayas.] [Footnote 5: Native string bed.] [Footnote 6: 'Your force of Artillery will enable us to dispose of Delhi with certainty.
I therefore beg that you will detach one European Infantry regiment and a small force of European Cavalry to the south of Delhi, without keeping them for operations there, so that Aligarh may be recovered and Cawnpore relieved immediately.'] [Footnote 7: After the capture of Kalpi in May, 1858, Sir Hugh Rose, worn out with fatigue and successive sunstrokes, was advised by his medical officer to return at once to Bombay; his leave had been granted, and his successor (Brigadier-General Napier) had been appointed, when intelligence reached him to the effect that the rebel army, under Tantia Topi and the Rani of Jhansi, had been joined by the whole of Sindhia's troops and were in possession of the fort of Gwalior with its well-supplied arsenal.
Sir Hugh Rose at once cancelled his leave, pushed on to Gwalior, and by the 30th of June had re-captured all Sindhia's guns and placed him again in possession of his capital.] [Footnote 8: The late General Sir Edmund Haythorne, K.C.B.] * * * * *.
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