A regiment of tough, hard-drinking Europeans, several of them gentlemen whose debts or misbehaviour had led them to consider service in the ranks in 'Neill's Blue Caps' preferable to more public disgrace.

From The Great Mutiny by Christopher Hibbert. Page 203.

Havelock was quite as busy and just as frustrated as Neill, knowing that, in spite of all his efforts, his impatient critics were blaming him for being 'so slow in getting on to Cawnpore', complaining that Neill would not have been 'such a dawdler'. It was not until a week after his arrival at Allahabad that he felt able to move on, leaving Neill in command there and sending on a message to Renaud to halt where he was, to burn no more villages unless they were actually occupied by insurgents.20 And even then Havelock had not received all the summer clothing for which he had asked: most of his men as they marched out of the city in the stifling heat of the overcast afternoon of 7 July, watched by crowds of sullen, resentful Muslims, were still wearing their heavy woollen tunics. It was a pitifully small force - an assorted collection of about a thousand British troops from four different infantry regiments, less than 150 Sikhs, six guns, a detachment of native irregulars, and no more than twenty volunteer cavalry composed of officers whose regiments had mutinied, shopkeepers whose premises had been burned, and indigo-planters whose workmen had run away, 'in short of all who were willing to join'. All the force's forage caps, including the General's, were covered with white cotton to protect the neck, except those of the Madras Fusiliers, a regiment of tough, hard-drinking Europeans, several of them gentlemen whose debts or misbehaviour had led them to consider service in the ranks in 'Neill's Blue Caps' preferable to more public disgrace. The 'Blue Caps' and a few others carried the new Enfield rifle; the rest had to make do with muskets. Behind the column followed the inevitable, seemingly endless, straggling crowd of animals and carts, servants and camp-followers, both men and women, that always accompanied an Indian army on the march.