──────────┼──────────┼──────────────────────┼────────────────────── 〃 │Tindals. │ 56│ 200 ──────────┼──────────┼──────────────────────┼────────────────────── 〃 │Privates. │ 2800│ 2350 ──────────┴──────────┴──────────────────────┴────────────────────── Of the officers of the corps a description was given in Colonel Pearse’s letter, above quoted. It was written in 1775, and refers to the period now described. An extract from one written in 1772 contains a very graphic picture of a _fast_ man of those days, specimens of whom long continued:— “To be a gentleman you must learn to drink by all means—a man is honoured in proportion to the number of bottles he can drink: keep a dozen dogs, but in particular if you have not the least use for them and hate hunting and shooting. Four horses may barely suffice; but if you have eight, and seven of them are too vicious for the syce to feed, it will be much better. “By no means let the horses be paid for; and have a palanquin covered with silver trappings—get 10,000 rupees in debt, but 20,000 would make you an honester man, especially if you are convinced that you will never have the power to pay. Endeavour to forget whatever you have learnt—ridicule learning of all sorts—despise all military knowledge—call duty a bore—encourage your men to laugh at orders—obey such as you like—make a joke of your commanding officer for giving those orders you do not like, and, if you obey them, let it be seen that it is merely to serve yourself. “These few rules will make you an officer and a gentleman, and they are the first lessons which young men take when they arrive in this country.” With officers of this stamp, and the class of men from whom the Company’s European troops were then recruited, we cannot suppose that much discipline existed. Drunkenness—the bane of the European soldier in India—was rife, and its natural consequences, disease and death, followed. To this cause, too, must be added the want of good barracks and internal economy, which of late years have gone far to remove the idea of the climates of India being deadly to the European constitution. The lascars were employed in dragging and assisting the Europeans to work the guns; a detail also was detached with each infantry regiment, to assist in working the guns attached to it, for two 6–pounders formed part of the equipment of each battalion, and thirty sipahis were set apart for their service. These duties, with those of the park, would account for the number of lascars being so large in comparison with the establishment of the present day. They were in many respects native artillerymen, and in the subsequent successive changes from lascars to golundaz and back again, the change was often rather in name, and increase and decrease of pay, than of the men themselves.