the Punjab, and Roberts became staff officer to its first commander, (Sir) Neville Bowles Chamberlain [q.v.], and to the latter's successor, John Nicholson [q.v.], who won his unbounded admiration and devotion. In June he joined the staff of the force on the ridge before Delhi, and there again during the last stage of the siege did double duty as a staff officer and battery officer. In the rough and tumble fighting around Delhi he had a number of narrow escapes, and was incapacitated for a month by a blow on his spine from a bullet, which was stopped from doing more deadly mischief by the leather pouch which he was wearing. Soon after the fall of Delhi he took part in the second relief of Lucknow under Sir Colin Campbell [q.v.], by whom he was chosen to guide the force attempting the relief from the Alumbagh to the Dilkusha palace. Roberts was then attached to the cavalry division of the force under (Sir) James Hope Grant [q.v.], and it was with it, in a cavalry charge at Khudaganj in January 1858, that he won the Victoria cross for saving the life of a sowar and capturing one of the mutineers' standards. He remained with Hope Grant, and served on the staff during the British siege of Lucknow, at which his great military contemporary, Major (afterwards Viscount) Wolseley, then commanding a company of the 90th Light Infantry, was also present. In April 1858 Roberts's health broke down, and he was succeeded in his staff appointment by the man whose place he was later to take as commander-in-chief of the British army. During a year of convalescence in England (1859) he met and married Miss Nora Henrietta Bews (died 1920), daughter of Captain John Bews, who had retired from the 73rd regiment. So began a married life of mutual devotion and comradeship.
Roberts returned to India in 1859 with his wife, and in the following year was promoted captain, receiving at the same time a brevet majority for his work in the Mutiny. In 1863 he had a short experience of active service on the North-West Frontier in the Umbeyla campaign against the Sitana fanatics, and five years later he went with Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Baron Napier of Magdala) [q.v.] to Abyssinia, as assistant quartermaster-general of the expeditionary force. He spent the campaign at the base, with the organization and control of which he was charged, and gained experience in the work of the quartermaster-general's department in which he was beginning to be recognized as an expert. As a reward for his services, Napier sent him to England with dispatches, and he was made a brevet lieutenant-colonel. In 1871 another of the perennial troubles of the Frontier resulted in an expedition against the Lushais. Here again the main problem was the organization of transport in a country presenting great natural difficulties; and for his work in overcoming them Roberts received the C.B. He had now made his name as a staff officer and was recognized as one of the leading figures in the quartermaster-general's department at the head-quarters of the army in India. In January 1875 he was promoted brevet colonel and became quartermaster-general with the temporary rank of major-general. In this position he came face to face with what was then one of the major problems of imperial defence. Russia's advance through Central Asia was continuous: she had seized Samarkand in 1868, occupied Khiva in 1873, and was making friendly advances to Shere Ali, the ameer of Afghanistan. The danger to India if Afghanistan became a dependency of Russia was obvious. The problem was how best to counter Russia's policy. One school maintained that the right answer was to make the Indus the northern frontier of India and to tell the Russians that any encroachment, territorial or political, in Afghanistan, would mean war with England. This policy would, it was argued, both relieve the Indian tax-payer and bring England's chief weapon, her sea power, into play. The other school argued that Afghanistan left without direct support would inevitably succumb to Russia, and that no pressure elsewhere would make India safe if Russia gained the control of the passes of the Himalaya. The policy of this school became known as the ‘forward’ policy and aimed at controlling the tribes and securing the passes. Roberts was from the first one of its foremost advocates. He gained the ear of Lord Lytton, who became viceroy in 1876, and of his successors; and the forward policy became, and still is, the defensive policy of India.
In March 1878 Roberts was appointed to the command of the Punjab frontier force, in which position he at once became one of the chief agents of the policy which he had advocated. A few months later the ameer refused to receive a political mission headed by Roberts's old chief and friend, Sir Neville Chamberlain, and welcomed the Russian envoy. Three columns were at once formed for the invasion of Afghanistan, one to move
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