Each cold season I made long tours in order to acquaint myself with the needs and capabilities of the men of the Madras Army.  I tried hard to discover in them those fighting qualities which had distinguished their forefathers during the wars of the last and the beginning of the present century.  But long years of peace, and the security and prosperity attending it, had evidently had upon them, as they always seem to have on Asiatics, a softening and deteriorating effect; and I was forced to the conclusion that the ancient military spirit had died in them, as it had died in the ordinary Hindustani of Bengal and the Mahratta of Bombay, and that they could no longer with safety be pitted against warlike races, or employed outside the limits of southern India.

It was with extreme reluctance that I formed this opinion with regard to the successors of the old Coast Army, for which I had always entertained a great admiration.  For the sake of the British officers belonging to the Madras Army, too, I was very loath to be convinced of its inferiority, for many of them were devoted to their regiments, and were justly proud of their traditions.

However, there was the army, and it was my business as its Commander-in-Chief to do all that I possibly could towards rendering it an efficient part of the war establishment of India.

Madrassies, as a rule, are more intelligent and better educated than the fighting races of northern India, and I therefore thought it could not be difficult to teach them the value of musketry, and make them excel in it.  To this end, I encouraged rifle meetings and endeavoured to get General Officers to take an interest in musketry inspections, and to make those inspections instructive and entertaining to the men.  I took to rifle-shooting myself, as did the officers on my personal staff,[3] who were all good shots, and our team held its own in many exciting matches at the different rifle meetings.

At that time the importance of musketry training was not so generally recognized as it is now, especially by the senior officers, who had all entered the service in the days of ‘Brown Bess.’  Some of them had failed to note the remarkable alteration which the change from the musket to the rifle necessitated in the system of musketry instruction, or to study the very different conditions under which we could hope to win battles in the present day, compared with those under which some of our most celebrated victories had been won.  It required time and patience to inspire officers with a belief in the wonderful shooting power of the Martini-Henry rifle, and it was even more difficult to make them realize that the better the weapon, the greater the necessity for its being intelligently used.