The army being now formed and complete, with every requisite for a long campaign, I put the implements of my office in lashing order. My post of baggage-master being a situation which is, I believe, peculiar to India, it may not be improper to state its duties, &c. He is a staff-officer, and, when not employed in his particular department, is attached to the suite of the commander of the division, as much as the commissary-general, quartermaster-general, or any other staff-officer of the division. On the line of march, he is held entirely responsible that neither men nor baggage precede the column of march, and that they are on their proper flank, which is regulated by the general orders of the day. If the reader recollect what I before stated, that he may safely calculate ten followers in a Bengal army to every fighting man, and when he is informed that, according to calculations made in our camp, including the several native contingents we had with us, our followers were not less in number than eighty thousand, men, women, and children, some thirty thousand of whom followed the army for what they could pick up, by fair means or otherwise, my situation cannot be supposed to have been a sinecure. It was truly one of great labour and activity. I had twenty men belonging to a corps of local horse. These men were provided with long whips, and placed at my disposal. To attempt to talk the numberless camp-followers into obedience was quite out of the question; and, therefore, these whips were for the purpose of lashing them into something like discipline. To the great number of human beings I have spoken of must be added fifty elephants, six hundred camels, five thousand bullocks, five thousand horses, one thousand ponies, two hundred goats, two hundred sheep, fifty ruts, one hundred palanquins, one hundred dogs, and one hundred hackeries, or carts: presenting the following total:-- Fighting men 8,000 Camp-followers 80,000 Elephants 50 Camels 600 Bullocks, horses, and tattoos 11,000 Goats, sheep, and dogs 500 Palanquins, hackeries, and ruts 250 Total. 100,400 One hundred thousand four hundred were thus under my command, for the movements of the whole of whom, men, animals, and vehicles (except fighting men), I was responsible; and I am sure the reader will not class me amongst cruel men if I was obliged to use the whip, where obduracy and contempt of orders were frequent.