To and from the battle of Miani

In his letter to Ellenborough on 17 October, Napier reported that troops belonging to the Amirs were increasingly well-coordinated and were arranged against his army. ¹ Meanwhile, both General England at Quetta and Governor Arthur in Bombay (Arthur was Napier’s superior) were led to conclude from various intelligence sources that the Amirs were spoiling for a fight. ² James Outram had a different view. By the time of his long 1845 book on Sind – an indictment of Napier’s behaviour in precipitating the war – Outram insisted that the body Sindhi troops had assembled together only because of internal squabbles among the Amirs themselves; and having been brought together in that way they could never be used against the British in the way both Napier and Ellenborough feared. Anyone who understood ‘the Oriental character’, Outram said, would recognize that eastern armies ‘are little better than a multitudinous rabble’ and could never pose a threat. ³