the Commander-in-Chief of British India. It was Napier's last
eccentricity of a military character. By the end of the year he
resigned the command of the army of India, and was succeeded by Sir
William Gomm, an old brother officer of Colin Campbell in the Ninth
in the Peninsula days.
In March, 1851, Lord Dalhousie visited Peshawur and discussed with
Sir Colin the policy to be adopted towards the troublesome and
turbulent tribes on the north-western border. Scarcely had the
Governor-General gone when news came in that a Momund tribe, of the
region north of Peshawur between the Swat and Cabul rivers, had
been raiding into British territory. Dalhousie left to Sir Colin
the decision whether to make signal reprisals or to adopt defensive
measures, and, as the result of the description of the wild and
rugged region sent him by Sir Colin after a reconnaissance he had
made, elected for the defensive as an experiment. It failed, for in
October the Momunds of Michni made an irruption upon some villages
within British territory. The Governor-General now decided on an
immediate resort to active measures, and Sir Colin was ordered to
inflict summary chastisement on the offending tribe. He marched
from Peshawur on October 25th with a force of all arms about
twelve hundred strong, and advanced to the confines of the Michni
territory. He did not hurry, because he desired that his political
officer should have opportunity to inform the inhabitants of the
conditions intended to be offered them; which were annexation of
the territory, exile for the irreconcilables, and the retention of
their lands by the cultivators on payment of revenue. Campbell's
humane view was that "to drive into the hills the whole population
of Michni, occupying some seven and twenty villages, could only
result in forcing them to prey on the plunder of the villages inside
the border." The villages and fortalices whose inhabitants were
implicated in the violation of British territory were destroyed under
a harmless fire maintained by the mountaineers; but, as Campbell
records, "while engaged in duties in which no soldier can take
pleasure no lives were lost on either side. God knows the rendering
homeless of two or three hundred families is a despicable task
enough, without adding loss of life to this severe punishment."
The British camp was more than once assailed by bodies of Momund
tribes, and one of those attacks was made by some five thousand
hillmen whom Sir Colin dispersed by shell fire. A fort was built and
garrisoned in the Michni country, and the field-force returned to
Peshawur in February, 1852. With the results it had accomplished the
Governor-General expressed his entire satisfaction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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