reptilian.
Maybe it was his hooded eyes, or perhaps it was just his air of silent
menace. But at least he could fight. Bappoo’s brother, the Rajah of
Berar, had fled before the battle at Assaye, but Bappoo, who had not
been present at Assaye, was no coward. Indeed, he could bite like a
serpent.
“The British walked into the cannon fire at Assaye,” Dodd growled, ‘and
there were fewer of them and we had more guns, but still they won.”
Bappoo patted his horse which had shied away from the sound of a nearby
cannon. It was a big, black Arab stallion, and its saddle was
encrusted with silver. Both horse and saddle had been gifts from an
Arabian sheik whose tribesmen sailed to India to serve in Bappoo’s own
regiment. They were mercenaries from the pitiless desert who called
themselves the Lions of Allah and they were reckoned to be the most
savage regiment in all India. The Lions of Allah were arrayed behind
Bappoo: a phalanx of dark-faced, white-robed warriors armed with
muskets and long, curved scimitars.
“You truly think we should fight them in front of our guns?” Bappoo
asked Dodd.
“Muskets will kill more of them than cannon will,” Dodd said. One of
the things he liked about Bappoo was that the man was willing to listen
to advice.
“Meet them halfway, sahib, thin the bastards out with musket fire, then
pull back to let the guns finish them with canister.
Better still, sahib, put the guns on the flank to rake them.”
“Too late to do that,” Bappoo said.
“Aye, well. Mebbe.” Dodd sniffed. Why the Indians stubbornly
insisted on putting guns in front of infantry, he did not know. Daft
idea, it was, but they would do it. He kept telling them to put their
cannon between the regiments, so that the gunners could slant their
fire across the face of the infantry, but Indian commanders reckoned
that the sight of guns directly in front heartened their men.
“But put some infantry out front, sahib,” he urged.
Bappoo thought about Dodd’s proposal. He did not much like the
Englishman who was a tall, ungainly and sullen man with long yellow
teeth and a sarcastic manner, but Bappoo suspected his advice was good.
The Prince had never fought the British before, but he was aware that
they were somehow different from the other enemies he had slaughtered
on a score of battlefields across western India. There was, he
understood, a stolid indifference to death in those red ranks that let
them march calmly into the fiercest cannonade. He had not seen it
happen, but he had heard about it from enough men to credit the
reports. Even so he found it hard to abandon the tried and tested
methods of battle. It would seem unnatural to advance his infantry in
front of the guns, and so render the artillery useless. He had
thirty-eight cannon, all of them heavier than anything the British had
yet deployed, and his gunners were as well trained as any in the world.
Thirty-eight heavy cannon could make a fine slaughter of advancing
infantry, yet if what Dodd said was true, then the red-coated ranks
would stoically endure the punishment and keep coming. Except some had
already run, which suggested they were nervous, so perhaps this was the
day when the gods would finally turn against the British.
“I saw two eagles this morning,” Bappoo told Dodd, ‘outlined against
the sun.”
So bloody what? Dodd thought. The Indians were great ones for
auguries, forever staring into pots of oil or consulting holy men or
worrying about the errant fall of a trembling leaf, but there was no
better augury for victory than the sight of an enemy running away
before they even reached the fight.
“I assume the eagles mean victory?” Dodd asked politely.
“They do,” Bappoo agreed. And the augury suggested the victory would
be his whatever tactics he used, which inclined him against trying
anything new. Besides, though Prince Manu Bappoo had never fought the
British, nor had the British ever faced the Lions of Allah in battle.
And the numbers were in Bappoo’s favour. He was barring the British