Dean Mahomet as Bengal Army Officer (1781–82)

With the promotion of his patron, Baker, Dean Mahomet entered a new phase of his career, as an official provisioner and then subaltern officer in the Bengal Army. In January 1781, Baker's seniority garnered him a promotion to Captain and command of one of the two sepoy battalions in Major William Roberts's Thirtieth Infantry Regiment in the Second Brigade, then stationed up the Ganges at Cawnpur.^[41] This promotion came despite Baker's recent conviction by court-martial for insubordination, brought against him by his commanding officer—an event which Dean Mahomet refrained from mentioning in Travels.^[42] As Baker marched to Cawnpur, he took command of a detachment of two companies of sepoys and two companies of Europeans (some four hundred men) also going in the same direction. He used his newly acquired patronage to appoint Dean Mahomet as market master to supply this detachment by collecting provisions from the territories through which they passed. Local resistance to the depredations of Bengal Army sepoys led to Dean Mahomet's narrow escape from death at the hands of a hostile peasantry.

After taking command of his new battalion at Cawnpur, Baker again exercised his patronage by arranging to have Dean Mahomet appointed jemadar (ensign) in one of its elite grenadier companies under his command. This appointment, however, violated the Bengal Army's formal regulations for such appointments, since Dean Mahomet lacked the necessary seniority. The irregularity of his appointment may have made Dean Mahomet feel reticent about command of this grenadier company. Further, he was much shorter (about five feet tall) than the men he commanded, who were selected for their imposing height (closer to six feet). Nonetheless, Dean Mahomet took command, although he never mentioned any of his men or other Indian officers in Travels. As was customary, Dean Mahomet had personally to pay a gratuity of half a month's salary to Major Roberts, commanding the Regiment, for confirmation of his appointment.

As officers in a sepoy regiment, Dean Mahomet and Baker engaged in far more combat than they had during their dozen years with a European regiment. Further, by 1781, the Company's financial situation had become particularly precarious. Its military expansion and extremely costly wars against the Marathas and Mysore had drained its treasury. Governor-General Hastings (1772–85) sought to extract money from the Company's enemies and thus prevent bankruptcy and placate the British Parliament and Company's Directors.

Almost immediately after Dean Mahomet's appointment as officer, his Regiment joined the expedition under Colonel Morgan to drive the Marathas out of the Kalpi region, just south of the Jamuna River, and collect the region's revenues for the Company.^[43] In April 1781, Morgan attacked Kalpi fort and expelled the Maratha garrison. He then demanded that the local administration pay the Company the tribute it had previously submitted to the Marathas. When the Maratha negotiator sought to prevaricate until his force could fully collect that season's harvest, Morgan launched a preemptive strike (including Dean Mahomet's company) against the Maratha force of some two thousand cavalry. The Marathas withdrew with no loss on either side.

In addition to using the Bengal Army for fiscal and territorial gains at the expense of its enemies, Hastings also used military threats to extract money from its allies: the rulers of Benares and Awadh. In the fall of 1781, Hastings ordered Dean Mahomet's battalion to the Awadh capital, Lucknow, where he intended to visit and thus put pressure on the Awadh ruler for more funds. Meantime, Hastings personally visited Benares to force that Raja to contribute more to the Company. Immediately after having reached Lucknow, however, Dean Mahomet's battalion received a desperate message from Hastings ordering it to rush to Benares and rescue him.

Raja Chayt Singh (r. 1770–81, d. 1810) of Benares had been a subsidiary ally of the Company since 1775. By treaty, the Raja promised to pay Rupees 2,340,249 annually to the Company, and to maintain troops ready to assist its army. In 1778–79, the Company unilaterally increased its demands, asserting that the Raja, as the Company's “feudal vassal,” was obliged to provide as much cash and military support as his overlord needed. For some time, Chayt Singh had argued that these enhanced demands exceeded what the extant treaties required, and that he could not afford to meet them in any case. After Hastings arrived at Benares in August 1781, he had upped the pressure on Chayt Singh by ordering two companies of sepoys to arrest him. Chayt Singh's loyal troops assembled to release him and slaughtered the Company's sepoys. By an oversight on the part of their British officers, these sepoys had not been issued ammunition; 174 sepoys and their British officers were killed or severely wounded.^[44] When open warfare broke out, Hastings himself nearly fell into Chayt Singh's hands and had to retreat while issuing frantic orders for all the Company's troops in the region to assemble for his rescue. Another ill-conceived Company attack led to another massacre of sepoys, French “Rangers” in the Company's service, and their officers. This second defeat forced Hastings to flee for his life. Dean Mahomet's battalion marched rapidly from Lucknow, while other Company troops escorted Rupees 50,000 (borrowed from the Awadh ruler) in order to pay the Company's troops their long overdue salaries.

After Dean Mahomet's company arrived at Benares on September 13, he took a leading part in the attack on Patita fort. Hastings described this fort as: “much stronger, and the approach more hazardous, than he had expected…a small square house of stone, itself fortified with four round towers, and enclosed with a high rampart, and a ditch, which is in most parts broad and deep.”^[45] Grenadier companies of the Thirty-Fifth and Thirtieth Regiments—including Dean Mahomet's company—assembled into a shock force which successfully stormed the fortress, at their loss of twenty-one casualties.^[46] In his report, Hastings especially commended the grenadiers and their British commander, Captain Lane. Dean Mahomet modestly highlighted Baker's service in this battle rather than his own.

Following this action, Dean Mahomet and Baker took on the task of commandeering much needed supplies from the hostile countryside for the Company forces pursuing Chayt Singh's remaining army. After Major Popham drove Chayt Singh into exile, he negotiated a surrender of the virtually impregnable fortress of Bijigarh in November. When this fortress fell, Popham interpreted a private letter from Hastings to mean that he could divide Chayt Singh's vast treasure among his troops “on the drum-head” (i.e., immediately, on the spot). Since this treasure amounted to some Rupees 4,000,000 (£400,000) cash plus much jewelry, and since the whole purpose of Hastings's journey was to extract funds from Chayt Singh for the Company's official use, this summary distribution led to considerable acrimony within the Company. Popham himself took Rupees 294,000 while each British Captain received Rupees 22,478 and even sepoys received Rupees 50 each.^[47] Despite their protests, neither Dean Mahomet nor Baker received anything since their units were not present at the time Bijigarh surrendered.^[48] The Company, on its part, demanded that all the prize money be returned, and instituted court-martial proceedings and civil suits against those officers who refused to comply.^[49]

In Dean Mahomet's final series of operations as part of the Bengal Army, he helped suppress insurrection in the Benares countryside. After expelling Raja Chayt Singh, the Company installed his infant nephew in his place under the guidance of a Regent, but with the reduced status of zamindar (landholder) rather than ruler. The Company also raised its demand on Benares to Rupees 4,000,000 annually. It further placed the civil and judicial administration under the supervision of its Resident political agent.^[50] This divided authority led to tension and mutual recriminations. Baker and Dean Mahomet's battalion had orders to impose this new government's authority on the villagers in the region, who resisted it. In particular, Baker and Dean Mahomet's battalion undertook punitive expeditions into the countryside around Ghazipur and Jaunpur. Dean Mahomet mentioned his promotion to subadar during this service in Benares.^[51] Nevertheless, the brutality of these expeditions seems to have inspired him to elegiac poetry about the tragic waste of war.

Subsequently, Dean Mahomet abruptly recorded that he and Baker decided to resign from the Army and move to Ireland. Behind this cryptic statement lies much that illuminates both Dean Mahomet's own possible divided loyalties and also the hostility between the Bengal Army and the Indian countryside. Although Dean Mahomet did not mention it, Baker's resignation eventuated from accusations against him by villagers that he had extorted money from them. Governor-General Hastings had ordered Baker to arrest three alleged murderers of a Brahmin named Dharma Dube, early in 1782. The Benares Regent complained to Governor-General Hastings that, instead, Baker had seized an entire village and held it for ransom.^[52] Hastings thus ordered Baker recalled from active duty in disgrace in July 1782. Although the Company's Resident in Benares investigated and declared Baker not guilty of these accusations, Baker resigned from his command of a battalion in the Thirtieth Regiment in October 1782. He may also have given notice that he intended formally to resign from the Army; the rules of service required a year's advance notice.

On his part, Dean Mahomet had come to find his career in the Bengal Army disagreeable, particularly in contrast to accompanying Baker into a new life in Ireland. Dean Mahomet's defense of the deposed Raja Chayt Singh and his obvious pain at the destruction and suffering inflicted by the Bengal Army on the Indian countryside—necessary to impose order as they might have been in his eyes—may suggest his mixed feelings about his position in that army. His explicit reasons for resigning his commission were his own “desire of seeing that part of the world” and conviction “that I should suffer much uneasiness of mind, in the absence of my best friend,” Baker (Letter XXXV).