Hul! Hul! by Peter Stanley ;

Author:Peter Stanley ;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 1)
Published: 2022-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

5

KARTIK (OCTOBER)

George Lloyd had largely closed down active campaigning in August and in Bhaugulpore saw a great reduction in conflict, though perhaps not because of the decisions of Company officers, but from the orders and actions of Santal leaders. Alfred Bidwell, collating reports from across the district described the ‘totally different character of the present outrages from what prevailed a month ago’. ‘Outrages’ still occurred—notably in Bhaugulpore district’s southern purgunnahs of Belputteh and Hendweh, but the district’s ‘Abstract of Police Reports’ seemed optimistic. While in some thannahs ‘Santals were collected … ready to plunder’, in more areas the reports read ‘no accounts of Sonthals in this Thannah’. In one place ‘the Sonthals are returned … and settling down in their own villages’; in another ‘some are seen about but meddle with no one’; and ‘a number of Sonthals came in to make submission’. This gave Lloyd a stable base from which to eventually launch his operation.1 In the meantime, the focus of conflict moved again, to western Beerbhoom.

‘Great execution’: fighting in western Beerbhoom

While the balance of the campaign was shifting to western Beerbhoom, not all Company officers recognised how the campaign was changing. Lieutenant-Colonel George Burney still kept a strong garrison in Sooree, now 50 miles behind the new front, to James Ward’s frustration: ‘I really do not know what is to be done’, he confessed to William Grey, and continued to complain about Burney’s timidity and obstruction.2 This was no mere spat over precedence: for a week in late September, Burney in fact commanded the Company’s forces in Beerbhoom, while Bird was sick. Despite the quiet, Burney continued to worry that he had too few men. Bird sought to soothe his fears: ‘I do not think it likely that the Sonthals will attack Sooree’, he wrote, but Burney would not be reassured.3 James Ward, who argued with him about leaving outlying detachments unsupported, damned Burney in letters to Grey, deploring his ‘panic’ and reiterating that ‘my request [to send troops to Afzulpore] was most urgent’ and that not doing so, and in fact sending a company southwards to Doobrajpore, away from danger, had been ‘positively useless’.4 The wonder was that Burney was not removed to a less crucial post. Company authorities often inconsistently tolerated dysfunctional incompetence rather than take difficult decisions.

In the light of Burney’s timidity, Bird’s force’s effectiveness depended upon its staff. Just as Lloyd’s force depended upon Shute and Sherwill, a constant presence in the southern force’s records is Captain Benjamin Parrott, chosen by Louis Bird to act as his brigade-major. Parrott had at first served with his company of the 37th—his last act before joining Bird’s headquarters had been to lead his detachment in a patrol across the Adye river, as far as Afzulpore, a name with which he would become familiar when collating and recording the reports from Bird’s force in coming months. He appears to have had a volatile temper—his Record of Service details only that he had become entangled in a feud with

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