CHAPTER I.
[1841-1842.]
Efforts at Retrieval—Close of Lord Auckland’s Administration—Embarrassments of his Position—Opinions of Sir Jasper Nicolls—Efforts of Mr. George Clerk—Despatch of the First Brigade—Appointment of General Pollock—Despatch of the Second Brigade—Expected Arrival of Lord Ellenborough—Further Embarrassments.
At this time the Governor-General and his family were resident at Calcutta. The period of Lord Auckland’s tenure of the vice-regal office was drawing to a close. He was awaiting the arrival of his successor. It had seemed to him, as the heavy periodical rains began slowly to give place to the cool weather of the early winter, that there was nothing to overshadow the closing scenes of his administration, and to vex his spirit with misgivings and regrets during the monotonous months of the homeward voyage. The three first weeks of October brought him only cheering intelligence from the countries beyond the Indus. The Envoy continued to report, with confidence, the increasing tranquillity of Afghanistan. The Douranee insurrection seemed to have been suppressed, and there was nothing stirring in the neighbourhood of Caubul to create anxiety and alarm.
But November set in gloomy and threatening. The clouds were gathering in the distance. It now seemed to Lord Auckland that his administration was doomed to close in storm and convulsion. Intelligence of the Ghilzye outbreak arrived. It was plain that the passes were sealed, for there were no tidings from Caubul. There might be rebellion and disaster at the capital; our communications were in the hands of the enemy; and all that was known at Calcutta was that Sale’s brigade had been fighting its way downwards, and had lost many men and some officers in skirmishes with the Ghilzye tribes, which had seemingly been productive of no important results. There was something in all this very perplexing and embarrassing. Painful doubts and apprehensions began to disturb the mind of the Governor-General. It seemed to be the beginning of the end.
Never was authentic intelligence from Caubul looked for with so much eager anxiety as throughout the month of November. When tidings came at last—only too faithful in their details of disaster—they came in a dubious, unauthoritative shape, and, for a time, were received with incredulity. At the end of the third week of November, letters from Meerut, Kurnaul, and other stations in the upper provinces of Hindostan, announced that reports had crossed the frontier to the effect that there had been a general rising at Caubul, that the city had been fired, and that Sir Alexander Burnes had been killed. Letters to this effect reached the offices of the public journals, but no intelligence had been received at Government House, and a hope was expressed in official quarters that the stories in circulation were exaggerated native rumours. But, a day or two afterwards, the same stories were repeated in letters from Mr. George Clerk, the Governor-General’s agent on the north-western frontier, and from Captain Mackeson at Peshawur; and the intelligence came coupled with urgent requisitions for the despatch of reinforcements to Afghanistan.
Though no authentic tidings had been received from Caubul, the advices from our political functionaries, on the intermediate line of country, were of a character not to be questioned; and Lord Auckland, who a day or two before had received letters from Sir William Macnaghten, assuring him that the disturbances were at an end, awoke to the startling truth that all Caubul was in a blaze, and the supremacy of the Suddozye Princes and their foreign supporters threatened by a general outburst of national indignation. Afghanistan—serene and prosperous Afghanistan—with its popular government and its grateful people, was in arms against its deliverers. Suddenly the tranquillity of that doomed country, boasted of in Caubul and credited in Calcutta, was found to be a great delusion. Across the whole length and breadth of the land the history of that gigantic lie was written in characters of blood. It was now too deplorably manifest that, although a British army had crossed the Indus and cantoned itself at Caubul and Candahar, the Afghans were Afghans still; still a nation of fierce Mahomedans, of hardy warriors, of independent mountaineers; still a people not to be dragooned into peace, or awed into submission, by a scattering of foreign bayonets and the pageantry of a puppet king.
The blow fell heavily upon Lord Auckland. An amiable gentleman and a well-intentioned statesman, he had made for himself many friends; and, perhaps, there was not in all Calcutta at that time, even amongst the most strenuous opponents of the policy which had resulted in so much misery and disgrace, one who did not now grieve for the sufferings of him whose errors had been so severely visited. Had it fallen at any other time, it would not have been so acutely felt. But it came upon him at the close of his reign, when he could do nothing to restore the brilliancy of his tarnished reputation. He had expected to embark for England, a happy man and a successful ruler. He had, as he thought, conquered and tranquillised Afghanistan. For the former exploit he had been created an earl; and the latter would have entitled him to the honour. It is true that he had drained the treasury of India; but he believed that he was about to hand over no embryo war to his successor, and that, therefore, the treasury would soon replenish itself. The prospect was sufficiently cheering, and he was eager to depart; but the old year wore to a close, and found Lord Auckland pacing, with a troubled countenance, the spacious apartments of Government House—found him the most luckless of rulers and the most miserable of men.
Never was statesman so cast down; never was statesman so perplexed and bewildered. The month of December was one of painful anxiety; of boding fear; of embarrassing uncertainty. There was no official information from Caubul. The private accounts received from Jellalabad and Peshawur, always brief, often vague and conflicting, excited the worst apprehensions without dispelling much of the public ignorance. In this conjuncture, government were helpless. The Caubul force, cut off from all support, could by no possibility be rescued. The utmost vigour and determination—the highest wisdom and sagacity—could avail nothing at such a time. The scales had fallen from the eyes of the Governor-General only to show him the utter hopelessness of the case. In this terrible emergency he seems to have perceived, for the first time, the madness of posting a detached force in a foreign country, hundreds of miles from our own frontier, cut off from all support by rugged mountains and impenetrable defiles. Before a single brigade could be pushed on to the relief of the beleaguered force, the whole army might be annihilated. Clearly Lord Auckland now beheld the inherent viciousness of the original policy of the war, and, in sorrow and humiliation, began to bethink himself of the propriety of abandoning it.
What Lord Auckland now wrote publicly on this subject is on record; what he wrote privately is known to a few. That the Governor-General, in this terrible conjuncture, succumbed to the blow which had fallen upon him; that his energies did not rise with the occasion, but that the feebleness of paralysis was conspicuous in all that he did, has often been asserted and never confidently denied. But it may be doubted whether his feelings or his conduct at this time have ever been fairly judged or clearly understood. The truth is, that he had originally committed himself to a course of policy which never had his cordial approbation, and his after-efforts to uphold which he inwardly regarded as so many attempts to make the worse appear the better reason. It is plain that, very soon after the occupation of Caubul had for a time brought the Afghan campaign to a close, the Governor-General began to entertain very painful doubts and misgivings; and that, although he by no means anticipated the sudden and disastrous fall of the whole edifice he had raised, he had, long before the close of 1841, repented of his own infirmity of purpose, in giving way to the counsels of others; and had begun to doubt whether we had succeeded in the great object of the war—the establishment of such a friendly power in Afghanistan as would secure us against western aggression. He must have seen, too—for he was, in the main, a just and an honest man—that the policy, which he had sanctioned, cradled in injustice as it was, was continually perpetuating injustice; and he must have heard the wrongs of the Afghan chiefs and the Afghan nation eternally crying out to him for redress. Macnaghten complained that Lord Auckland and Mr. Colvin were too ready to believe all the stories of the unpopularity of the government and discontent of the chiefs and the people, which reached them through obscure channels of information; though those channels of information were the local newspapers, whose informants were generally officers of rank and character. But in spite of the Envoy’s assurances and denials, Lord Auckland had begun to suspect that there was something rotten at the core of our Afghan policy; and something pre-eminently defective in the administrative conduct of those to whom its working out had been entrusted. He did not, in the autumn of 1841, believe that any sudden and overwhelming storm would cloud the last days of his Indian government; but he had begun to encourage the belief that he had made a fatal mistake, and that, sooner or later, the real character of his Afghan policy would be revealed to the world.
But there was something more than his own doubts and misgivings to be considered. Lord Auckland knew that the connexion he had established in Afghanistan was distasteful in the extreme to the East India Company. There was good reason for this. The necessity of sustaining Shah Soojah on the throne of Caubul had drained the financial resources of the Company to the dregs, and was entailing upon them liabilities which, if not speedily retrenched, they might have found it impossible to discharge. The injustice of the occupation of Afghanistan was not confined to the people of that country. A grievous injustice was being inflicted upon the people of India, the internal improvement of which was obstructed, to maintain the incapable Suddozye in the country from which he had been cast out by his offended people. No man knew this better, or deplored it more deeply, than Lord Auckland himself. The opinions of the East India Company upon this subject had been well known from the very commencement of the war. But the Court of Directors had no constitutional authority to suspend the operations which they had not been called upon to sanction, and only so far as they were represented in the Secret Committee had they any influence in the Councils which shaped our measures in Afghanistan. But no one knew better than Lord Auckland that there was scarcely one of the twenty-four Directors’ rooms in the Great Parliament of Leadenhall-street in which the continued occupation of the country beyond the Indus was not a subject of perpetual complaint.
And when he turned his thoughts from Leadenhall-street to Downing-street, it appeared to him that there were still weightier reasons for the abandonment of our ill-omened connexion with the countries beyond the Indus. The Whigs had sent him to India; the Conservatives were now in office. At the end of August the Melbourne ministry had resigned; and Peel was now at the head of the cabinet. It was known that the Conservative party either were, or made a show of being, radically opposed to the Afghan policy of the government which they had displaced. It was natural, therefore, that Lord Auckland, who was now awaiting the arrival of his successor, should have shrunk from committing him to any extensive measures for the recovery of our position in Afghanistan, which, in all probability, he would not be disposed to carry out. Whatever amount of energy the old ruler might now throw into the work before him, it was certain that he would only be able to commence what he must leave to his successor to complete. To have handed over to the new Governor-General the outline of a political scheme, just sufficiently worked out in its details to render its abandonment impossible, would have been to embarrass and hamper him, at the outset of his career, in a manner that would have perplexed the new ruler in the extreme, and jeopardised the interests of the empire. He believed that the policy of the Conservatives was nearly identical with that of the East India Company, and that they would eagerly take advantage of the present crisis to sever our connexion with the countries beyond the Indus, and to declare the failure of the original scheme propounded in the Simlah manifesto of 1838.
It is right that Lord Auckland should have ample credit for suffering these important considerations to exercise their due influence over his counsels. It is right, too, that it should be clearly recognised how great was the moral courage it demanded, either practically to declare by himself, or to leave to others to declare, the utter failure of a great political scheme for which he was responsible to his country, and with which, from generation to generation, his name will be indissolubly associated in history. But when all this has been said, there still remains to be recorded the humiliating fact that a great crisis suddenly arose, and Lord Auckland was not equal to it. He had begun to doubt the justice and expediency of the policy of 1838. And these doubts, added to his knowledge of the views of the Home governments, forced upon him the conviction that it had now become his duty to direct all his efforts to the one object of withdrawing our beleaguered garrisons in safety to Hindostan. But he seems, in the bewilderment and perplexity which followed the stunning blow that had descended so suddenly upon him, to have forgotten that there are in the lives of nations, as of men, great and imminent conjunctures, which not only sanction, but demand a departure from ordinary rules of conduct and principles of statesmanship. Such a conjuncture had now arisen; and, important as were all the considerations recapitulated above, they should have given place in his mind to the one paramount desire of demonstrating to all the nations of the East the invincibility of British arms. Neither the wishes of the East India Company nor the opinions of the Conservative government had been declared in the face of a great disaster. The withdrawal of the British army from Afghanistan might, and I believe would, have been a measure of sound policy; but only if the time and manner of withdrawal had been well chosen. It could never have been sound policy to withdraw under the pressure of an overwhelming defeat. To retire from Afghanistan was one thing; to be driven out of it was another. A frank avowal of error, calmly and deliberately enunciated, under no pressure of immediate danger or insurmountable difficulty, would have denoted only conscious strength. It would have been the dignified self-negation of a powerful state daring to be just to others and true to itself. But to abandon the country, precipitately and confusedly, under the pressure of disaster and defeat, would have been a miserable confession of weakness that might have shaken to its very foundation the British Empire in the East.
And such a confession of weakness Lord Auckland was inclined to make. He seemed to reel and stagger under the blow—to be paralysed and enfeebled by the disasters that had overtaken him. His correspondence at this time betokened such painful prostration, that some to whom he wrote destroyed, in pity, all traces of these humiliating revelations. It was vaguely rumoured, too, how, in bitterness of spirit, he spent long hours pacing by day the spacious verandahs of Government House; or, by night, cooling his fevered brow on the grass-plots in front of it, accompanied by some member of his household endeared to him by ties of blood. The curse brooded over him, as it was brooding over Elphinstone and Macnaghten, darkening his vision, clouding his judgment, prostrating his energies—turning everything to feebleness and folly. New tidings of disaster—misfortune treading on the heels of misfortune—came flooding in from beyond the Indus; and the chief ruler of the land, with a great army at his call, thought only of extrication and retreat; thought of bringing back, instead of pushing forward, our troops; of abandoning, instead of regaining, our position. Fascinated, as it were, by the great calamity, his eyes were rivetted on the little line of country between Caubul and Peshawur; and he did not see, in his eagerness to rescue small detachments from danger, and to escape the immediate recurrence of new disasters in Afghanistan, that the question now to be solved was one of far greater scope and significance—that it was not so much whether Afghanistan were to be occupied, as whether India were to be retained. But there were old and experienced politicians, well acquainted with the temper of the chiefs and the people of India and the countries beyond, who believed that any manifestation of weakness, in this conjuncture, would have endangered the security of our position in India; and that, therefore, cost what it might, a blow must be struck for the recovery of our military supremacy in the countries beyond the Indus.
But from the very first Lord Auckland began to despond, and steadfastly set his face against any measures of military re-establishment. When, on the 25th of November, he received from Mr. Clerk and Captain Mackeson intelligence which confirmed the newspaper accounts received two days before, and read the pressing requisitions of those officers for the despatch of more troops to the frontier, he wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, who was then journeying through the Upper Provinces of India: “It is not clear to me how the march of a brigade can by possibility have any influence upon the events which it is supposed may be passing at Caubul.... They may be at Jellalabad in February, and could not march onwards to Caubul before April.... It may be well, perhaps, that two or three regiments should be assembled at Peshawur.... I wish the requisition had been made with less trepidation.” Again, on the 1st of December, he wrote to the same officer: “It seems to me that we are not to think of marching fresh armies for the re-conquest of that which we are likely to lose.... The difficulty will not be one of fighting and gaining victories, but of supplies, of movements, and of carriage.... The troops in Afghanistan are sufficiently numerous. They would but be encumbered by greater numbers, and reinforcements could not arrive before the crisis will have passed. If the end is to be disastrous, they would but increase the extent of the disaster.” On the following day he again wrote to Sir Jasper Nicolls, setting forth the views of government, to the effect—“1st. That we should not fit out large armaments for re-conquest—such an enterprise would be beyond our means. 2nd. That even for succours the season is unfavourable and impracticable, and months must pass before it could be attempted. 3rdly. That if aid can be given, the officer in command should not be prohibited from seizing the opportunity of affording it. I fear,” added the Governor-General in this letter, “that safety to the force at Caubul can only come from itself.” On the 5th he wrote to the same correspondent, that “we should stand fast and gather strength at Peshawur”—on the Sutlej, and on the Indus. “Our power,” he said, “of giving succour is extremely limited, and if it come at all, it can only come tardily.... We must look on an advance from Jellalabad for some months as utterly out of the question. An advance even to Jellalabad could only be to give security to Sale, and with the aid of the Sikhs, one brigade, with artillery, should be sufficient. If all should be lost at Caubul we will not encounter new hazards for re-conquest.”[1] On the 9th of December he wrote, still more emphatically: “The present state of affairs, whether its issue be fortunate or disastrous, is more likely to lead within a few months to the withdrawal of troops to our frontiers than to the employment of larger means beyond it.” A week afterwards he wrote, still to the Commander-in-Chief: “We must know more before we can decide anything, or lay down any large scheme of measures.... There are already more regiments beyond the frontier than we can feed or easily pay.... You know I would not be too profuse in sending strength forward.”[2] What Lord Auckland’s intentions were at this time may be gathered from these letters. He thought only of saving all that could be saved; and of escaping out of Afghanistan with the least possible delay.
The Commander-in-Chief to whom these letters were addressed was, as has been said, at this time on his way through the Upper Provinces of India. Sir Jasper Nicolls had been consistently opposed to the entire scheme of Afghan invasion, and had with rare prescience and sagacity foretold the disastrous downfall of a policy based upon a foundation of such complicated error. He had spent his life in the camp; but his public minutes, as well as his private letters and journals, written throughout the years 1840-41, indicate a larger amount of political sagacity than we find displayed in the expressed opinions of his official contemporaries, to whom statesmanship was the profession and practice of their lives. He had all along protested against the withdrawal of our troops from their legitimate uses in the British Provinces, and urged that it was necessary either so to increase the Indian army as to enable the government to keep up an adequate force in Afghanistan without weakening the defences of Hindostan, or to withdraw the British troops altogether from the countries beyond the Indus. It was now his opinion—an opinion in which the Governor-General participated—that, inasmuch as the Indian army, largely indented upon as it was for service beyond the frontier, was greatly below the right athletic strength, it would be impossible to pour strong reinforcements into Afghanistan without weakening the British Provinces in such a manner as to provoke both external aggression and internal revolt.[3] But supineness, in such a conjuncture, was more likely to have provoked aggression than activity, although the latter might have denuded India of some of its best troops. Macnaghten told Runjeet Singh, in the summer of 1838, that the military resources of the British-Indian Government were such that 200,000 soldiers might at any time be brought into the field to resist simultaneous aggression from all the four sides of India; and although this may have been only an approximation to the sober truth, it is certain that, if the dispatch of a couple of brigades to Jellalabad, and subsequently to Caubul, would have jeopardised the security of India, the military resources of the government must have been in a very depressed state. When Sir Jasper Nicolls, meeting the flood of intelligence from beyond the Indus, as he advanced through the Upper Provinces of India, recorded, in letters to the Governor-General, his belief that it would be unwise to prosecute another war in support of the Suddozye provinces,[4] he expressed only the sound opinion of a sagacious politician. But he seems to have forgotten that there was something more than the restoration of the Suddozye dynasty to be accomplished—there was the restoration of the military supremacy of Great Britain in Central Asia to be achieved; and whatever may have been the scruples of the statesman, in such a crisis as this, the soldier ought not to have hesitated for a moment.
But whilst such were the opinions of the Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief, there were other functionaries nearer to the scene of action at the time, whose feelings prompted, and whose judgment dictated, a more energetic course of procedure. Among these were Mr. Robertson, the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, and Mr. George Clerk, the Governor-General’s Agent on the North-Western Frontier. Both of these able and experienced officers recognised the paramount necessity of pushing on troops to Peshawur with the utmost possible despatch. On the latter devolved, in the first instance, the responsibility of moving forward the regiments which were in readiness to proceed for the periodical relief of the troops in Afghanistan,[5] as well as a regiment which was in orders for Sindh.[6] On the 16th of November, he addressed letters to Colonel Wild, the commanding officer at Ferozepore, and Colonel Rich, who commanded at Loodhianah, urging them to send on to Peshawur, as speedily as possible, the regiments named in the margin.[7] In compliance with these requisitions, the 64th Regiment crossed the Sutlej on the 18th of November and the 60th on the 20th of November. The 53rd, which was accompanied by the 30th Regiment,[8] crossed the river on the 26th.
Having expedited the movement of these regiments, Mr. Clerk began to make preparations for the despatch of another brigade to Peshawur, and addressed General Boyd, who at that time commanded the Sirhind division, on the subject. At the same time, he addressed urgent letters to the Court of Lahore, apprising them of the intended march of the regiments through the Punjaub—calling on them to supply boats for the passage of the river—and suggesting to the Maharajah that he should “cause the immediate march of his son, Koonwur Pertab Singh, on Peshawur, with 5000 of their best troops from the neighbouring district of Chuck Huzara.” Captain Mackeson had before applied to the Sikh authorities at Peshawur for 6000 men to march on Jellalabad; but had been told by General Avitabile that he had few troops at Peshawur, and that he required them all for the protection of the Sikh territory.
Lord Auckland, however, was strongly of opinion that the second brigade, which was to comprise her Majesty’s 9th Foot, the 10th Light (Native) Cavalry, and a troop of Horse Artillery, ought not to be moved forward. “We do not now,” wrote the Governor-General in Council, on the 3rd of December, “desire to send a second brigade in advance, for we do not conceive it to be called for, for the objects of support and assistance which we contemplate; and we think it inexpedient to despatch any greater number of troops than be absolutely necessary from our own provinces.” And two days afterwards he wrote privately to the Commander-in-Chief: “I heartily hope that the second brigade may not have been sent.” He could not, he added, “see of what service it could be at present. One brigade, with the artillery which you purpose sending, should be sufficient to force the Khybur pass; and ten brigades could not, at this season of the year, force the passes to Caubul.”
But the “one brigade with artillery” never went to Peshawur. The Native Infantry crossed the Punjaub under the command of Brigadier Wild. Some artillerymen went with them;[9] but there was no Artillery, for there were no guns. It was expected, however, that the Sikhs would supply the ordnance which the British had left out of the account. “You have not at present any guns,” wrote the Head-Quarters’ Staff to Brigadier Wild, “but you have artillerymen, sappers and miners, and officers of both corps. His Excellency is not aware of any difficulty likely to prevent your being accommodated by the Sikh Governor-General, Avitabile, with four or six pieces; and you will solicit such aid, when necessary, through Captain Mackeson.” But when Brigadier Wild reached Peshawur, a day or two before the close of the year, he found that difficulties had arisen to prevent the preparation of the expected Sikh guns for service. The artillerymen were disinclined to hand them over to the British; and though great doubts were entertained as to whether they were in reality worth anything, it was hard to compass a loan of the suspected pieces. And so Brigadier Wild, urged as he was from all quarters to push on to Jellalabad, with the provisions, treasure, and ammunition he was to escort thither, sate down quietly at Peshawur, whilst Captains Mackeson and Lawrence were endeavouring to overcome the coyness of the Sikh artillerymen; and began to apprehend that his march would be delayed until some field-pieces were sent to him from India.
His suspense, however, was of not very long duration. On the 3rd of January, four rickety guns were handed over to the British officers; but not without a show of resistance on the part of the Sikh artillerymen. On the following day, one of the limbers went to pieces under trial; and then it had to be replaced. Other difficulties, too, met Wild at Peshawur. His camel-men were playing the old game of desertion. The Afreedi Maliks had not yet been bribed into submission by Mackeson; and the loyalty of our Sikh allies was so doubtful, that they were just as likely, on Wild’s brigade entering the Khybur, to attack him in rear as to keep the pass open for him. All these elements of delay were greatly to be lamented. There was a forward feeling among the Sepoys which might have been checked. They were eager to advance when they reached Peshawur; and their enthusiasm was little likely to be increased by days of inactivity in a sickly camp, exposed to the contaminating influences of the Sikh soldiery, who, always dreading the deep passes of the Khybur, now purposely exaggerated its terrors, and endeavoured by other means to raise the fears, to excite the prejudices of the Sepoys, and to shake their fidelity to the government which they served.
In the mean while active preparations for the despatch of further reinforcements to Peshawur were going on in the North-Western Provinces of India. Lord Auckland could not readily bring himself to recognise the expediency of sending forward a second brigade: but Mr. Clerk had taken the initiative, and the Governor-General was unwilling to disturb any arrangements which already were being brought into effect. The 9th Foot had been ordered to hold itself in readiness, and another regiment, the 26th Native Infantry, was to be sent with it, accompanied by some irregular horse, and a scanty supply of artillery.[10] The Commander-in-Chief was “not prepared” for this demand, and the Governor-General in Council thought it “undesirable” to send more troops in advance. But it was obvious to the authorities on the north-western frontier that the state of affairs in Afghanistan was becoming every day more critical; and that it was expedient to concentrate the utmost available strength on the frontier of Afghanistan. Towards the end of the year, the Governor-General having expressed a strong opinion regarding the necessity of attaching some regular horse to the brigade, the 10th Cavalry were ordered to proceed under Brigadier M’Caskill (of the 9th Foot), who, as senior officer, took command of the force; and on the 4th of January the brigade, consisting of 3034 fighting men, crossed the Sutlej on its way to Peshawur.
To command the body of troops now assembling for service beyond the frontier, it became necessary to select an officer of good military repute and unquestionable energy and activity, combined with a cool judgment and a sound discretion. Sir Jasper Nicolls had, in the month of November, when the despatch of a Queen’s regiment to Peshawur was first contemplated, pointed to Sir Edmund Williams, as a general officer well fitted for such command. But to the Governor-General it appeared expedient to place an experienced officer of the Company’s service at the head of affairs, and Sir Edmund Williams was a general of the royal army, who had served but two years in India at the time of the Caubul outbreak, and who knew as little of the Sepoy army as he did of the politics of Afghanistan. Lord Auckland had made his election. In Major-General Lumley, the adjutant-general of the army, he thought that he saw all the qualifications which it behoved the commander of such an army to possess. But there was one thing that Lumley wanted; he wanted physical health and strength. When the Governor-General sent up the nomination to head-quarters, the Commander-in-Chief at once replied that Lumley could not take the command; and again Nicolls recommended the appointment of Sir Edmund Williams. Indeed, he had determined on sending for that officer to his camp, and arming him at once with instructions; but subsequent letters from Calcutta made it only too plain that the appointment would be extremely distasteful to the Supreme Government; and so the intention was abandoned. General Lumley was at head-quarters. The Commander-in-Chief sent for him to his tent, placed in his hand a letter his Excellency had just received from the Governor-General relative to Lumley’s employment beyond the frontier, and called upon him for his final decision. The General was willing to cross the Indus; but, doubtful of his physical ability to undertake so onerous a duty, placed the decision of the question in the hands of his medical advisers, who at once declared that he was totally unequal to meet “the required exertion and exposure” demanded by such a campaign.
The Commander-in-Chief at once determined to nominate another Company’s officer to the command of the troops proceeding to Peshawur. His choice then fell upon General George Pollock, who commanded the garrison of Agra.—Receiving his military education at the Woolwich Academy, this officer had entered the Indian army as a lieutenant of artillery in the year 1803, when Lake and Wellesley were in the field, and all India was watching, with eager expectancy, the movements of the grand armies which, by victory after victory, were breaking down the power of the Mahrattas. At the storm and capture of Dieg, in 1803, young Pollock was present; and in 1805, during the gallant but unsuccessful attempts of the British army to carry Bhurtpore by assault, he was busy in the trenches. At the close of the same year he was selected by Lord Lake to command the artillery with the detachment under Colonel Ball, sent in pursuit of Holkar. From this time he held different regimental staff appointments up to the year 1817, when, in command of the artillery with General Wood’s force, he took part in the stirring scenes of the Nepaul war. In 1818 he was appointed Brigade-Major; and subsequently, on the creation of that appointment, held the Assistant-Adjutant-Generalship of Artillery up to the year 1824, when, having attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, he volunteered to join the army which was assembling for the prosecution of the Burmese war, and was nominated by Sir Edward Paget to command the Bengal Artillery attached to the force under Sir Archibald Campbell, proceeding to Rangoon. For his services during the war he received the decoration of the Companionship of the Bath. From this time, except during an interval of some three years spent in England for the recovery of his health, he held different regimental and brigade commands, until, at the close of 1841, being then Major-General, in command of the garrison of Agra, he was selected by Sir Jasper Nicolls to take command of the troops proceeding to Peshawur, and ordered at once to proceed to the frontier by dawk.
The appointment of General Pollock gave the greatest satisfaction to the Supreme Government, and not even a murmur of disapprobation arose from the general body of the army. The nomination of this old and distinguished Company’s officer was believed to be free from the corruption of aristocratic influence and the taint of personal favouritism. It was felt, that in this case at least, the selection had been made solely on the ground of individual merit. And the merit which was thus rewarded was of the most modest and unostentatious character. There was not, perhaps, in the whole Indian army a man of more unassuming manners and a more retiring disposition: there was not one less likely to have sought notoriety for its own sake, or to have put himself forward in an effort to obtain it. Pollock’s merits did not lie upon the surface. He was not what is called a “dashing officer;” he shrunk from anything like personal display, and never appealed to the vulgar weaknesses of an unreflecting community. But beneath a most unassuming exterior there lay a fund of good sense, of innate sagacity, of quiet firmness and collectedness. He was equable and temperate. He was thoroughly conscientious. If he was looked upon by the Indian Government as a safe man, it was not merely because he always exercised a calm and dispassionate judgment, but because he was actuated in all that he did by the purest motives, and sustained by the highest principles. He was essentially an honest man. There was a directness of purpose about him which won the confidence of all with whom he was associated. They saw that his one paramount desire was a desire to do his duty to his country by consulting, in every way, the welfare and the honour of the troops under his command; and they knew that they would never be sacrificed, either on the one hand by the rash ambition, or on the other by the feebleness and indecision, of their leader. The force now to be despatched to the frontier of Afghanistan required the superintendence and control of an officer equally cool and firm, temperate and decided; and, perhaps, in the whole range of the Indian army, the Government could not have found one in whom these qualities were more eminently combined than in the character of General Pollock.
Hastening to place himself at the head of his men, Pollock left Agra, and proceeded by dawk to the frontier. The second brigade was then making its way through the Punjaub, under General M’Caskill; and the authorities in the North-Western Provinces were exerting themselves to push on further reinforcements to Peshawur.
On the 22d of January, the Commander-in-Chief and Mr. George Clerk met at Thanesur, some two marches distant from Kurnaul. They had received the melancholy tidings of the destruction of the Caubul force; and they took counsel together regarding the measures to be pursued in consequence of this gigantic calamity. Very different were the views of these two functionaries. To Sir Jasper Nicolls it appeared that the destruction of the Caubul force afforded no reason for the advance of further reinforcements; but rather seemed to indicate the expediency of a retrograde movement on the part of all the remaining troops beyond the Indus. It was his opinion—an opinion to some extent shared by the Supreme Government—that the retention of Jellalabad being no longer necessary to support the Caubul army, or to assist its retreat, the withdrawal of the garrison to Peshawur had become primarily expedient; and that, as the re-conquest and re-occupation of Afghanistan were not under any circumstances to be recommended, it was desirable that, after the safety of Sale’s brigade had been secured, the whole force should return to Hindostan. But Mr. Clerk was all for a forward movement. He argued that the safety and the honour of the British nation demanded that we should hold our own at Jellalabad, until the garrison, reinforced by fresh troops from the provinces of India, could march upon Caubul, in conjunction with the Candahar force moving from the westward, chastise the enemy on the theatre of their recent successes, and then withdraw altogether from Afghanistan “with dignity and undiminished honour.”[11] It was gall and wormwood to George Clerk to think for a moment of leaving the Afghans, flushed with success, to revel in the humiliation of the British Government, and to boast of the destruction of a British army. Emphatically he dwelt on the disgrace of inactivity in such a crisis; and emphatically he dwelt upon the danger. Coolly and quietly, as one whose ordinary serenity was not to be disturbed by any accidental convulsions, Sir Jasper Nicolls set forth in reply that the return of so many regiments to the provinces, and the vast reduction of expenditure that would attend it, would place the government in such a position of strength as would enable it summarily to chastise any neighbouring state that might presume upon our recent misfortunes to show a hostile front against us. The demand for more troops he would have resisted altogether; but the urgency of George Clerk was not to be withstood, and two more regiments—the 6th and 55th Native Infantry—were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to proceed to Peshawur. But when Clerk asked for a detachment of British dragoons, Nicolls peremptorily resisted the demand, and referred the question to the Supreme Government.[12] Before the reference reached Calcutta, the Supreme Government had received intelligence of the massacre of Elphinstone’s army; and wrote back to the Commander-in-Chief that it was essentially necessary that a commanding force should assemble at Peshawur—that it was particularly important that the force should be effective in cavalry and artillery, and that at all events two squadrons of European dragoons should be pushed on to Peshawur. The 1st Regiment of Native Cavalry and a troop of Horse-Artillery were subsequently added to the third brigade.
In the meanwhile increasing care and anxiety were brooding over Government House. Gloomily the new year dawned upon its inmates. And there was not in that great palaced city, or in any one of the smaller stations and cantonments of India, an Englishman whose heart did not beat, and whose hand did not tremble with anxiety, for the fate of the Caubul force, when he opened the letters or papers which brought him intelligence from beyond the frontier. No one who dwelt in any part of India during the early months of 1842, will ever forget the anxious faces and thick voices with which tidings were sought; questions and opinions interchanged; hopes and fears expressed; rumours sifted; probabilities weighed; and how, as the tragedy deepened in solemn interest, even the most timid and desponding felt that the ascertained reality far exceeded in misery and horror all that their excited imaginations had darkly foretold. There was a weight in the social atmosphere, as of dense superincumbent thunder-clouds. The festivities of the cold season were arrested; gaiety and hospitality were not. There were few families in the country which did not sicken with apprehension for the fate of some beloved relative or friend, whilst unconnected men, in whom the national overlaid the personal feeling, in this conjuncture, sighed over the tarnished reputation of their country, and burned to avenge the murder of their countrymen and the insults that had been heaped upon the nation.
It would be pleasant to record that, in this great and melancholy crisis, the public looked up with confidence and assurance to the statesman upon whom was now thrown the responsibility of extricating from the quickset of danger and difficulty that environed them, the imperilled affairs of the British Indian Empire. But history can give currency to no such fiction. As time advanced it became more and more painfully evident that Lord Auckland was reeling and staggering beneath the blow that had descended upon him. He appeared to be unable to decide upon any consistent plan of action. At one time he seems to have contemplated the withdrawal of the Jellalabad garrison to Peshawur, leaving it to fight its own way through the pass; at another, he seems to have been fully impressed with the necessity of retaining the former post, if only for the protection of the Caubul force; then he talked, as I have shown, of concentrating a large army at Peshawur, and almost immediately afterwards began to think that it would be more expedient to have our advanced post at Ferozepore. There was only one point on which he seems clearly to have made up his mind. He was resolute not to recommend a forward movement for the re-occupation of Caubul. He believed that any such attempt would be attended with disaster and disgrace; and he considered that it became him, on the eve of departure, as he was, not to embarrass his successor by inextricably pledging the Government to measures which the new Viceroy might consider “rash, impolitic, and ruinous.”
On the 30th of January, the worst fears of the Government were confirmed. An express arrived from Mr. Clerk, setting forth, on the authority of letters received from Macgregor at Jellalabad, that the Caubul force had been utterly destroyed. Some vague rumours of this crowning disaster had obtained currency in Calcutta a day or two before; and now the terrible apprehensions of the public were found to have been only the presages of actual truth. The immediate effect of this astounding intelligence upon the conduct of Government was to rouse the Governor-General into something like a temporary demonstration of vigour. He issued a proclamation declaring that he considered the calamity that had overtaken the British arms only “as a new occasion for displaying the stability and vigour of the British power, and the admirable spirit and valour of the British-Indian army.” But it was little more than a spasm of energy. The ink with which this notification was written was hardly dry, before the Governor-General in Council wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, that Jellalabad was not a place which he desired to be kept at all hazards, and after succour should have been given to Sir R. Sale’s brigade then, and relief should have been given to parties arriving from Caubul, the Governor-General in Council would wish General Pollock, rather than run extreme risks in that position, to arrange for the withdrawal of it, and the assembling of his force at or near Peshawur.[13]
As time advanced, the retrograde tendencies of Lord Auckland’s determination became more and more apparent. On the 10th of February, the Governor-General in Council wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, instructing him to inform General Pollock that, “as the main inducement for the maintenance of a post at Jellalabad—namely, that of being a point of support to any of our troops escaping from Caubul—having now unhappily passed away, it is the object of the Government that he should, unless any unforeseen contingency should give a decidedly favourable turn to affairs, confine himself to measures for withdrawing the Jellalabad garrison in safety to Peshawur, and there for the present, holding together all the troops under his orders in a secure position, removed from collision with the Sikh forces or subjects.” And on the same day, Mr. Maddock, the chief secretary, under instructions from the Supreme Government, wrote to Mr. Clerk that “it would be highly desirable that when Jellalabad was no longer held by us, our detachments, which have been moved forward in support to meet a present emergency, should be brought gradually back to their cantonments, in order that any ulterior operations that may be determined upon for another advance beyond the Indus (and that towards the Khybur and Jellalabad is probably not the one to which preference would be given) may be undertaken after full preparation, with a complete equipment, and in fresh and well-organised strength.”[14]
Lord Auckland had been startled by the astounding intelligence of the massacre of Elphinstone’s army into an ebullition of energy by no means in accordance with the previous tenor of the measures which he had initiated, and not more in accordance with those which were about to emanate from him. After the first paroxysm of horror and indignation was over, he began again to settle down quietly in the conviction that it was best to do as little as possible on the other side of the Indus, lest worse misfortunes should descend upon us, and the attempt to recover our lost reputation should result only in further disgrace.
By this time the doubts of those who had speculated on the subject of the succession to the Governor-Generalship had been set at rest by the arrival of the Overland Mail. The despatches received in December announced that the choice of the home ministry had fallen upon one of their own body; and that the East India Company had ratified the choice. Lord Ellenborough, who had before filled and was now filling the office of President of the Board of Control, had been appointed Viceroy of India. The question of the succession had been canvassed with more than common eagerness, and its solution looked forward to with unusual interest. When the intelligence at last arrived it took the majority by surprise. The probability of the appointment of Lord Ellenborough had not been entertained. Sir James Graham, Lord Heytesbury, Lord Lichfield—nay, even Lord Lyndhurst, had been named; but speculation had not busied itself with the name of Lord Ellenborough.
But the intelligence, though unexpected, was not unwelcome. It was, indeed, received with universal satisfaction. The Press, with one accord, spoke of the appointment with approbation; and the public confirmed the verdict of the Press. All parties were alike sanguine—all prepared to look for good in the new Governor-General. There is not a community on the face of the earth less influenced by the spirit of faction, than the community of British India. To support, or to oppose the measures of a Governor, simply because he is a Whig or a Tory, is an excess of active prejudice wholly unknown in India. There are no political parties, and there is no party Press to play out such a game as this. Public men are judged, not by what they belong to, but by what belongs to them; and thus was Lord Ellenborough judged. Whig and Tory alike hailed the appointment: for the new Governor-General was held in some degree of estimation as one who had made India his study, and cherished a laudable interest in its welfare. He was believed to be possessed of more than average talent; to be assiduous in his attention to business; and rather an able man of detail than a statesman of very brilliant promise. They, who thought most about the matter, anticipated that he would make a good, steady, peace-governor; that he would apply himself devotedly to the task of improving the internal administration of the country; and by a steady and consistent course of policy soon disengage the country from the pressure of financial embarrassment which had long sate so heavily upon it. They knew little and cared less about the personal eccentricities which in England had been imputed to him. Neither the Press nor the Public concerned itself about these manifestations of the outer man. They thought of the newly appointed Governor-General as an able and laborious man of business, with a more than common knowledge of the history of India and the details of its administration. They knew that not only had his occupancy, for many years, of the chief seat at the India Board, rendered him familiar with the workings of the Indian Government; but that, on every occasion, when Indian affairs had been discussed in the House of Lords, in power or out of power, he had taken a prominent part in the debates. In 1833, when the provisions of the existing charter were under the consideration of Parliament, he had distinguished himself as one of the ablest, but most moderate opponents of certain of its clauses, contending in favour of the diminution of the powers of the Indian Governors by the imposition of the wholesome control of Council; and earnestly protesting against the perilous evil of leaving too much to the unbridled passions or the erratic caprice of a single man. In later days, he had denounced the war in Afghanistan, in fitting terms of severe censure; and all things combined to render the Indian public hopeful of a good, steady, peaceful administration. Conservative exchanged congratulations with Liberal on the cheering prospects, now opening out before them, of many years of peaceful government and financial prosperity. Lord Ellenborough was believed to be a moderate statesman—somewhat too liberal for the Tories of the ministerial camp, but not for the modified conservatism of India, where every man is more or less a Reformer; and as a moderate statesman all men were prepared to welcome him.
In October, 1841, he was elected to fill the office of Governor-General; and on the 4th of the following month, he attended the usual complimentary dinner, given, on such occasions, by the Court of Directors. The report of that dinner, which reached India simultaneously with the intelligence of Lord Ellenborough’s appointment, had a natural tendency to increase the confidence, engendered by his Lordship’s previous history, in the judgment and moderation of the new Governor-General. On returning thanks, after his health had been drunk, Lord Ellenborough, at that farewell dinner, on the 4th of November, 1841, made a most emphatic declaration of his intentions to govern India upon peace principles; he abjured all thoughts of a warlike, aggressive policy; and declared his settled determination, on assuming the reins of government, to direct all the energies of his mind towards the due cultivation of the arts of peace; to emulate the magnificent benevolence of the Mahomedan conquerors; to elevate and improve the condition of the generous and mighty people of India. He spoke, it is true, in ignorance of the terrible disasters which soon afterwards cast a pall over the land; but there was in the speech so clear and explicit an exposition of what were supposed to be fixed principles, that the Public could not but rejoice over a declaration which promised so much eventual benefit to the people of the soil. They looked forward to the advent of the new Governor-General as to that of a man who, at the earliest possible moment consistent with the dignity of our position, would sever at a blow our ill-fated connexion with Afghanistan, and devote the remaining years of his administration to the practical development of those high principles which he had so enthusiastically professed.
It is probable that the nomination of Lord Ellenborough increased the embarrassments of Lord Auckland, and strengthened him in his resolution to suspend, as far as possible, all retributive measures until the arrival of his successor. There was no public man in England whose opinions, regarding the justice and policy of the war in Afghanistan, had been more emphatically expressed than those of the Governor-General elect. Lord Auckland knew that he was to be succeeded by a statesman who had pronounced the war to be a blunder and a crime; and there was a strong conviction within him that Lord Ellenborough would be eager to withdraw every British soldier from Afghanistan, and to sever at once a connexion which had been attended with so much disaster and disgrace. As the responsible author of the war, this demanded from him no small amount of moral courage. It was, indeed, to court a reversal of the policy which he had originated, and to place the power of a sweeping practical condemnation in the hands of a political rival. If the conduct of Lord Auckland, at this time, were wanting in energy and decision, it was by no means wanting in honesty. He saw that he had committed a blunder of enormous magnitude, and he left it to a statesman of a rival party, and an opposite faith, to pronounce sentence upon it.
But it was not permitted to Lord Auckland so to suspend the progress of events, as to enable him to hand over to his successor only the chart of a virgin campaign, to be accepted or rejected by the new ruler, as might seem fit to him, on taking up the reins of office. It was decreed that his administration should set amidst the clouds of continued disaster. There was nothing but failure to be written down in the concluding chapter of his unfortunate reign. Scarcely had he risen up from the prostration that followed the first stunning effects of the dire intelligence of the massacre in the Caubul passes, when there came from Peshawur tidings that the brigade under Colonel Wild had been disastrously beaten in the Khybur Pass. The first scene of the new, like the last of the old campaign, was a great calamity; and Lord Auckland, now more than ever dispirited and dejected, earnestly longed for the day when it would be vouchsafed to him to close his portfolio, and to turn his back for ever upon a country where sloughs of difficulty and thickets of danger seemed to cover the whole expanse.