Col Charles James Robarts

  General Notes:

an Indian arny cavalry officer with his own Irregular Cavalry Regiment "Robarts Horse" which became the 17th Bengal Cavalry.

The undermentioned gentlemen are admitted to the service, in conformity with their appointment by the Hon. the Court of Directors, as Cadets of Cavalry and Infantry, on this establishment. The Cadets are promoted to the rank of Cornet and Ensign, respectively, leaving the dates of their commissions for future adjustment:\emdash

Cavalry. \emdash Messrs. Roland Richardson, William Alexander, and Alfred Wrench, date of arrival at Fort William, 3d August, 1839. Messrs. Augustus Noel Cole, Frederick William Denne Lloyd, and William Fuller- ton, 3d August.

Infantry.\emdash Mr. Charles James Robarts, 2d August 1839.

The will of Colonel Charles James Robarts has been proved under £20,000 Oct 1873.

  Research Notes:

Colonel Charles James Robarts, who raised the regiment of Bengal Lancers in which I had the honor to serve, was not entirely typical of the Englishmenof post-Mutiny days in India (he had large independent means, for one thing), yet he was representative, I think, of those care-free days when Indian and British met on closer terms of intimacy than they do at present. Both races had then been close to realities. After the fight, the protagonists shook hands and appreciated each other's good qualities.

Robarts identified himself so closely with India that he had married an Afghan wife. The 17th Cavalry, which he raised in Meerut, in the autumn of 1858, came to be nicknamed "Robarts' Robbers" because he enlisted all kinds of wild and virile races from the Punjab and even from across the Afghan border. The tradition, as I heard it from men who served with him, was that he always had a handkerchief in one hand and a club in the other, to weep with the afflicted or to castigate delinquents.

Tradition also alleged, but wrongly, I feel sure, that he allowed his bungalow to be used as a storehouse for loot.

It is certain, however, that discipline was of a primitive kind during the period of his command. He hated any sort of dikk that is, unnecessary trouble or fuss and he never bothered his head about accounts. Apparently he paid his troopers what he thought they were worth, and irregularly. As to the horses, it was very difficult to know which were his own and which were Government's, for he kept them indiscriminately in his own stable or in the ranks.

This was possible because in the Indian Cavalry in those days a remarkable organization existed a relic from Moghul days known as the sillidar system, which was undoubtedly a cheap and efficient way of raising an army. A flat rate per trooper was paid to the Colonel, for which he provided all the men, horses, equipment and transport required; everything, in short, needed to make a fighting unit except rifles and ammunition. This rate was £2.2.0 a month, and was credited to a fund, known as the Chanda, from which horses, mules, camels, and saddlery were bought, as well as the grain and fodder required, leaving only a few shillings a month as the pay of the trooper.

The nineteen regiments of sillidar cavalry existing up to 1922 were recruited from specific areas. Indian officers and N.C.O/s brought men often their relations to the units in which they were serving, so that the regiment was like a large family.
The system was administered as a joint-stock company, of which the Colonel was the chairman. Regimental meetings (durbars) were held weekly, when the Colonel consulted the senior Indian officers as to how the money in the Chanda Fund should be spent. It was the men's money, and every trooper had a personal stake in the regiment. Alas, the sillidar system was too irregular to please "higher authority" and India lost the services of many gallant yeomen, who had been glad to enlist for the sake of izzat : the honour of being in a good regiment, rather than for the half-crown a month they received as pocket money after all deductions had been made.
Robarts had married a lady related to one of the Afghan ruling houses, who had a numerous retinue of maids and relations. In his bungalow he maintained, besides his family, guests, and household servants, a racing stable, a pack of hounds, peregrines and falcons for hawking, twenty regimental orderlies, and fifty or sixty horses. More than four hundred people fed from his kitchens.

"He was a Nawab and lived like one/* the old Indian officers of my regiment told me. (He was also a good Oriental scholar, however).

It was a jolly, friendly life this young Englishman must have led, in a thatched, mud-walled bungalow in the centre of an immense garden, containing a whole little world of its own.

Soon after dawn it comes to life. Falconers in padded gloves are gentling their charges, dog-boys are massaging the Rampuri hounds with oil, sleek Arab ponies are whinnying as they are strapped down by a couple of syces:, sikligars are sharpening hog-spears and harness, dirzies are sewing, bheesties with their waterskins are sprinkling the dusty flowers; and some mihrasis (for the Afghan princess must have her nautch music) are discussing the gossip of the bazaars.

Robarts comes out, in his top-boots and loose khaki shirt with a small Kabul turban twisted round his long black hair. He swings into his saddle; there is a bustle among the falconers and orderlies, and a cavalcade of hunters, long-dogs and hawks start for the parade ground, where the regiment is drawn up under command of the Adjutant.
As Robarts arrives, a trumpeter sounds "Carry lance!" Big, heavily-bearded Afghans are there, and stout Sikhs, and fierce Jats, Rohillas, Rajputs, men whose ancestors lived and died by fighting, and who hope to do the same themselves. The routine
of formal cavalry drill is not for them during these early post-Mutiny years. Many are veterans. All are good shots, and keen on mounted sports, such as tent pegging and bare-back wrestling.

"A fine day," says Robarts to his Adjutant, after inspecting the regiment. "You can dismiss the men. Anyone who wants can come.hunting with me."

Thirty sowars on swish-tailed country-bred mares of the famous Parrat stock, ridden on a spiked snaffle and a tight standing-martingale, come out to join Robarts. These men were the grandfathers of those I knew, who are now gray-beards themselves. The breed survives, and it is just as representative of India, and more influential, when we get back to realities, than the clerkly Indians we see in London or New York.

By nine o'clock the hunting party is back in the lines, having bagged a jackal and a couple of hares, Stables are already in full swing, for work began early and finished early in those days. Near the Horse Hospital, the Adjutant and some native officers are drinking green tea out of small cups, in the Turki fashion, Robarts joins them, and here the business of the regiment is transacted in public: very rarely at a desk, or in an office.

He deals with his men shrewdly, sympathetically, quickly; and speaks to them equally well in four languages Pushtu, Persian, Panjabi, and Urdu. He rarely signs his name. A Persian writer (the Naquib)stands behind him, holding a small piece of paper in the palm of his left hand and dipping his reed pen into an ink-bottle at his belt. He is a peripatetic reporter of the Colonel's words, and what the Colonel
says is often wise and witty.

Sometimes it is also prophetic. If Robarts' advice had been followed in 1855 there might have been no Mutiny. Who knows? He was already a distinguished soldier (with sixteen years* service, including the campaign in Afghanistan of 1840, and the
Sikh Campaign of 1848) when he predicted that the discontent of the sepoys would shake our Empire to its foundations. But John Company laughed at his fears, so in disgust he took his three years' furlough just at a time when his qualities as a cavalry
leader would have been invaluable. By doing so, he escaped the fate of the officers of his regiment (the 43rd Native Infantry) who were all murdered by their men.

That is an old, unhappy memory now. Robarts made India his permanent home and rarely wrote to his relatives in England. It is probable that he was happy with his Afghan wife, for he lived with her until his death fifteen years later, without returning to England.

What was she like? I often wanted to ask this question of a youth named Abdul Gyas, who was a descendant of and a squadron-writer in the regiment,when I joined it in Bannu, in 1907; but he was dying of consumption (we buried him the following winter) and somehow I missed the opportunity.

Robarts' photograph, which used to be in the mess of 17th Cavalry, shows him as a slight, active looking man in a loose coat and a flowing tie. No doubt the white ants have eaten the picture by now.

All physical traces of Robarts and his Afghan princess will soon vanish, if they have not already done so, but it is good to have recalled him out of the quick twilight of the country of his adoption,for he was a type of Englishman who made the Empire popular, and therefore possible. This is a point sometimes overlooked.

The British have failed in this, neglected that. True, but on the whole, and until recent years they have succeeded in making pax Britannica popular. And that is much. ¹⁸²