CHAPTER III.
[January-April: 1842.]
The Captivity—Surrender of the Married Families—Their Journey to Tezeen—Proceed to Tugree—Interviews between Pottinger and Akbar Khan—Removal to Budeeabad—Prison Life—Removal to Zanda—Death of General Elphinstone.
Few were the letters which Mackenzie brought from his fellow-captives to their friends at Jellalabad. There may have been state reasons for the secrecy which enveloped his movements; but to all parties the disappointment was great. Every one at Jellalabad was eager for intelligence regarding the incidents which had befallen the little band of prisoners, and for particulars of all the daily environments of their captive state. All through the camp ran eager inquiries; and little by little the much-coveted information began to radiate from the General’s tent, and to diffuse itself in more remote quarters. What was then told in mere outline may here be given more in detail.
It was on the 9th of January that the married families were made over to the protection of Mahomed Akbar Khan. The following day was spent by them in a small fort, where they found Pottinger, Lawrence, and Mackenzie, who had been surrendered as hostages at Boot-Khak. Rude as was the accommodation, and untempting as was the fare, that were here offered them, after the miseries and privations of the retreat through the snowy passes, the “small dark hovels” in which they were crowded together were a very palace, and the “greasy palao” in which they dipped their fingers was regal fare. They slept that night on the bare ground—but there was a roof between them and the open sky; and they thought little of the smoke, which almost suffocated them, whilst in the enjoyment of the reviving warmth of a wood fire.[179]
On the morning of the 11th, through scenes of unexampled horror, the party of captives were conducted to the Tezeen fort. The road was strewn with the stark bodies of the mangled dead. Here and there little groups of wretched camp-followers, starving, frost-bitten, many of them in a state of gibbering idiocy, were to be seen cowering in the snow; or solitary men, perhaps wounded and naked, were creeping out of their hiding-places, in an extremity of mortal suffering and fear. The sickening smell of death rose from the bloody corpses through which our English ladies guided their horses, striving not to tread upon the bodies, or in their camel-panniers jolted and stumbled over the obstructing carrion. Happy were they all, when, about the hour of evening prayer, that dreadful journey was at an end, and the fort of Tezeen appeared in sight. There they were hospitably received—and there another captive was added to their number. Lieutenant Melville, of the 54th Native Infantry, who had been wounded on the retreat, and whose wounds had been bound up by the hand of Akbar Khan himself, was waiting their arrival in the fort.
On the following day they were carried to Seh-Baba; and the same dreadful scenes of carnage sickened them as they went along. On the march another prisoner, and a welcome one, was added to the party—one whom the sick and wounded had much wanted—a medical officer, Dr. Macgrath. On the 13th, partly over remote mountain paths, so precipitous that the camels could scarcely keep their footing, and partly along the bloody track of our slaughtered army, the captive band were escorted to Jugdulluck. Here three ragged tents had been pitched for their reception. Here they found General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton, and Captain Johnson, who had been claimed as hostages by Akbar Khan; and here they learnt that all the soldiers and camp-followers who had left Caubul, with the exception of this little handful of prisoners, had, in all probability, been annihilated on the march.
Next morning they resumed their journey—the General, the Brigadier, and Captain Johnson, accompanied by Akbar Khan, bringing up the rear. A more rugged and difficult road had seldom been travelled over. The ascents and descents were seemingly impracticable; it made the travellers giddy to look at them. The road was “one continuation of rocks and stones, over which the camels with the greatest difficulty scrambled” with their burdens.[180] At night they bivouacked on the banks of the Punshuhur river. There were no tents, no shelter of any kind for the ladies. So they rolled themselves up in their warmest garments, laid their heads upon their saddles, and composed themselves, as best they could, to sleep.
Early in the morning of the 15th of January, they crossed the deep and rapid fords of the Punshuhur river. The passage was not accomplished without difficulty and danger; but the active kindness of the Afghan Sirdars availed to escort the party over in safety.[181] A bitterly cold wind was blowing as they passed; and a few followers and cattle were lost. Proceeding then in a north-easterly direction, they made their way over a barren, inhospitable country, where neither grass nor water was to be seen, into the fertile valley of Lughman; and halted in the vicinity of the Tugree fort. The following day was the Sabbath. A day’s halt had been determined upon; and it fell, by a happy accident, on the Christian’s day of rest. A Bible and Prayer-book had been “picked up on the field at Boot-Khak;” and the service of the Church of England was read to the little band of prisoners. It is easy to imagine with what deep emotion they must have joined in the prayer beseeching the Almighty to have mercy “upon all prisoners and captives.”
On the morning of the 17th, they were again upon the move.[182] Tugree is only thirty miles distant from Jellalabad; and up to this time a faint hope had been encouraged by the captives that they were to be escorted to that place. But now an order came for them “to prepare for a march higher up the valley,” and in a different direction. It was now found that their destination was the fort of Budeeabad. This was to be their resting-place. It had been recently erected; and was the property of Mahomed Shah Khan, the father-in-law of the Sirdar. Five rooms, composing two sides of an inner square, or citadel, were allotted to the British prisoners. The buildings were “intended for the chief and his favourite wife,”[183] and it may therefore be presumed that they afforded the best accommodation in the place. The party consisted of nine ladies, twenty gentlemen, and fourteen children. Seventeen European soldiers, two European women, and a child, were located in another part of the fort.
On that night of the 17th of January, Pottinger and Akbar Khan were in close and earnest conversation. The Sirdar entered on the subject of his father’s release; and asked the English officer if he would guarantee an interchange of prisoners and the evacuation of Jellalabad. Pottinger could only answer that he was a prisoner and powerless; and could give no promises with any certainty of their being performed. But he undertook to write to Macgregor on the subject; and to urge him to lay the wishes of the Sirdar before the Supreme Government.[184] It appeared to Pottinger that no more expedient course could be adopted than that involving a general interchange of prisoners and the restoration of the country to Dost Mahomed Khan.
Ostensibly for the purpose of proceeding southward for the reduction of Jellalabad, Akbar Khan took his departure on the following day; and the captives began to settle down into the monotony of prison-life. In this place they continued to reside for nearly three months. The incidents of captivity, during this period, were not many, or very memorable. Here for the first time, after the lapse of a fortnight, they were able to change their clothes.[185] Clean linen was very scarce; and the nice sensibilities of delicate English ladies were outraged by the appearance of nauseous vermin. The food that was served out to them was not of the most luxurious description. It consisted of rice, mutton, and thick cakes of unleavened dough, prepared by the Afghan cooks in a manner little relished by English palates.[186] Captain Lawrence acted as the steward of the captive party, and divided the supplies, whether they were the daily food of the prisoners, or parcels of clothes, money,[187] and other equally acceptable presents sent them either by their Afghan captors or their friends at Jellalabad.
There was nothing very painful in the outward circumstances of their captivity, except the unmitigated dirt, which the cleanly habits of the English in India must have rendered peculiarly offensive. They were not suffered to wander far from their prison-house; but within its walls they found both occupation and amusement, and the time passed at Budeeabad is not now, in the retrospect, the saddest of their lives. They had among them a few books; some had been brought for sale by natives of the country, who had picked them up on the road traversed by the army on its retreat; others had been forwarded by friends at Jellalabad. Now and then a stray newspaper came in from that place. It is hard to say how greedily its contents were devoured, and how eagerly they were discussed. Sometimes letters were received from below; there was a good deal of cypher correspondence between the prisoners and Sale’s garrison,[188] and many long letters were written to friends in India or in England, to be despatched when opportunity might offer. Then there were amongst them two or three packs of old playing cards—dirty and limp, but not the less serviceable for these conventional defects. Some rude backgammon and draft boards had been constructed for prison service; and there was quite enough elasticity of spirits left among the captives to render them not disinclined for more active and boisterous sports. They played at “hop-scotch;” they played at “blind-man’s buff.” A favourite game among them was the latter; and when some ten or fifteen healthy and cheerful little boys and girls joined in the sport, the mirth ran fast and furious. A Christmas party in old England seldom sees madder gambols than these—seldom has the heart’s laughter risen more freely from a band of merrier children than those who romped with their elders in prison at Budeeabad. But from those elders were seldom absent the memory of the harrowing past, painful apprehensions regarding the future, and, above all, a depressing sense of the national humiliation.
The Sabbaths were always kept holy. Every Sunday saw the little party of Christian prisoners assembled for the worship of their God. Sometimes in the open air, sometimes in tents, in huts, or any other place available for the purpose, Sunday after Sunday, the Church Service was read to as devout a band of worshippers as ever assembled to render thanks to the Almighty, and to implore the continuance of His mercies. Nor were these observances lost upon their guards. Wild and savage as were their keepers, they seemed to respect the Christians’ day of rest. There was more decorum in their demeanour, more courtesy in their manner, than on the working-days of the week. An atmosphere of peace and rest seemed to envelop them on that sacred day. Some, who had saved little else, had saved their Bibles, and every evening little knots of captives might have been heard in their cells, lifting up the voice of prayer, and reading to one another God’s blessed promises to the heavy-laden and the afflicted.
On the 23rd of January, Akbar Khan, accompanied by Sooltan Jan, returned to Budeeabad. The object of his visit was to induce Pottinger to write to Macgregor at Jellalabad, stating the terms on which the Sirdar was willing to treat with the British for the release of the prisoners. The letter was duly written;[189] but Pottinger repeated that he had no hope of the surrender of Jellalabad; and added that he advised the Sirdar not to attack it lest a war should be commenced of which it was difficult to see the end. Pottinger believed that the Sirdar was sincere in his expressions of a desire to establish friendly relations with the British. “But,” he added, “he has been brought up in the midst of treachery, and does not know how to trust; and I regret that our own conduct in this country has put our government’s faith on a par with themselves. Our defeat, though sufficiently galling to a soldier, really loses its sting when the taunts of our broken promises, which we know to be true, are thrown in our teeth by men who know the truth only by name.”[190]
About the middle of the month of February the captive party was increased by the arrival of Major Griffiths and Captain Souter; and a few days afterwards, the same terrific earthquake which had shaken down the ramparts of Jellalabad made the walls of their prison-house reel and totter, and levelled a portion of the fort with the dust. For many days lesser shocks of earthquake kept the people in a continued state of alarm. The prisoners slept in the open court-yard, which was filled with their beds; and all kinds of rude awnings were thrown up to secure a little privacy. The cold was intense, and the heavy dews saturated the bedding like rain. No lives were sacrificed within the fort by this great convulsion of nature; but narrow was the escape of Lady Sale, Brigadier Shelton, Captain Mackenzie, Mr. Eyre, and General Elphinstone. The first four were on the house-top when the shock commenced; and had scarcely time to secure a footing on a safer spot when the roof fell in with a crash. The poor old General was bed-ridden. His sufferings had been every day increasing. He had been wounded on the retreat. His constitutional infirmities had been aggravated both by the external hardships to which he had been subjected, and the corroding anxieties which had preyed upon his mind. It was plain to all that his end was approaching. But he bore his accumulated sufferings with heroic fortitude; and the warmest sympathies of his fellow-captives were with him. Unable to bestir himself, when the walls of the fort were shaken by the earthquake, he was for a little time in imminent peril; but a soldier of the 44th, named Moore, who had acted as the General’s personal attendant, rushed into the room and carried off the attenuated old man in his arms. “The poor General,” says Eyre, who records this incident, “was greatly beloved by the soldiery, of whom there were few who would not have acted in a similar manner to save his life.”
The month of March passed quietly over the heads of the captives. There was little to mark the monotony of prison-life. Good and bad tidings came in by turns. All sorts of rumours were in circulation, and all were volubly discussed. About the middle of the month, the Nazir, or steward, in charge of the prisoners, announced that Mahomed Shah Khan was willing to release them all for two lakhs of rupees. The proposition was made to Captain Johnson, who convened a meeting of the gentlemen. The offer was a tempting one, and it might have been accepted; but Pottinger protested against it. He was unwilling to aid the enemy with money without the express sanction of his Government. So the question was referred to Captain Macgregor; and in the mean while the perils which beset their position began to thicken around them. Akbar Khan about this time was wounded by the accidental discharge of a matchlock in the hands of one of his attendants; and it was generally believed throughout the country that Macgregor had bribed the man to assassinate the Sirdar. Had the wound proved mortal, there was at least a possibility of all the prisoners being massacred in revenge.
April came;[191] and at the end of the first week arrived the glorious tidings of Sale’s victory over Akbar Khan on the plain of Jellalabad. Somewhat confusedly was the story told at first. It was said that the Sirdar had been killed in the action; and that Mahomed Shah Khan had also fallen. It was a day of intense excitement—of painful speculation and suspense. Some thought that Sale would push on to their rescue—others, that the Sirdar, if alive, would condemn them to death in revenge for his discomfiture; or that, if he had fallen, they would be massacred by their guards.[192] Another day—and another of doubt and anxiety followed. The captives watched, with deep and fearful interest, the deportment of their keepers, who were seen grouping together and conversing in low mysterious whispers. “A frightful stillness appeared to prevail.”[193] Then came terrible rumours to the effect that the captives were to be massacred at sunset. They had been disarmed; they had neither swords nor pistols—no means of resistance were within their reach. They could only submit to be slaughtered like sheep in the shambles. But at sunset their fears were dissipated. Mahomed Shah Khan arrived with a large party of followers. He went among the prisoners with frank cordiality—civilly shook hands with them all—and then sate down and entered into conversation with them. It was necessary, he said, that they should be removed from Budeeabad; and that they should commence their march on the following morning. Not a hint fell from him regarding their future destination, and none were inclined to question him. He slept that night in the fort; and the prisoners began to make preparations for the morrow’s march. This was no difficult matter. “All my worldly goods,” wrote Captain Johnson, “might be stowed away in a towel.”
Morning dawned; and Mahomed Shah Khan busied himself in the work of plunder.[194] There was still some valuable property clinging to the unhappy captives. They who had nothing else had good horses. Lady Macnaghten had jewels and rich shawls. The Ghilzye chief helped himself freely. Then, utterly ignorant of the direction in which they were to proceed, the anxious captives started for their new prison-house. Four camels, with litters, were assigned to the ladies and such of the gentlemen as sickness prevented from mounting the ponies which had been parcelled out amongst them. A guard of fifty Afghans, horse and foot, escorted the little band of prisoners on their mysterious march. The European soldiers were left behind.
They had not proceeded many miles, when two or three horsemen galloped up, and the party of captives were suddenly ordered to halt. Tidings had come, it was said, to the effect that Pollock had been beaten back in the Khybur Pass, with the loss of his guns, his treasure, and half his force. Confident of the truth of this atrocious story, the Afghans of the guard broke out into loud exultation, and the English officers, reluctant as they were to believe it, were overborne at last by the confidence of their escort and compelled to credit the distressing news. False as was the report, it was not ineffective. The prisoners were carried back to Budeeabad. With heavy hearts and sad countenances they returned to their old prison-house, thinking of the new disasters which had overtaken their unhappy country. But their hearts were soon re-animated, and their faces soon brightened up, by the news which greeted them at Budeeabad. Pollock had not been beaten back; but had forced the Khybur Pass, and was marching triumphantly upon Jellalabad. Again, therefore, the captive party were ordered to resume their interrupted march; and on the following morning again they started.
Proceeding for about ten miles, “through a bleak and barren country,” they came upon a patch of cultivated ground—which smiled up in the faces of the prisoners like an oasis in the desert.[195] Crossing the river, they overtook Akbar Khan, sitting in a palanquin, his arm in a sling, looking pale, haggard, and dejected, as one whose fortunes were not on the ascendant. They saluted the Sirdar, passed on, and halted at a short distance from him. The bivouac was a comfortless one. Strictly guarded and insufficiently sheltered, they passed the night in dreary discomfort. Rain fell, and under the scanty tents there was not room for the bedding of the captives. The next day was one of equal misery—there was scarcely any food either for man or beast. On the morning of the 13th a distressing rumour was current among them. It was said that the married families were to be carried off in one direction, and the other captives in another. The scarcity was so great—it was so difficult to subsist them all on one spot—that it was necessary to divide the party. This was not to be submitted to without an effort to obtain the rescision of the obnoxious order. Lawrence went to the Sirdar, and implored him to suffer them all to remain together, and to share the same fate. The Sirdar relented; and they all resumed their march together.
Their route lay over barren hills and through narrow stoney valleys. Every now and then little patches of cultivation sparkled up in the arid waste. There was little or no food to be obtained. A few almonds and raisins, or other dried fruits, sufficed to appease the hunger of the captives, whilst their horses were reduced to skeletons. The heat was intense. The burning sun scorched the faces of the European travellers, and peeled off the white skin. The journey was a long and painful one, up a steep ascent almost along the whole line of march. The prisoners knew not whither they were going; and it seemed that Akbar Khan did not know where to take them. Some of the captives were suffering severely. The bad roads and the vicissitudes of the climate, for heavy rains followed the parching sun, tried them as in a furnace. General Elphinstone was dying. Lady Macnaghten and Lady Sale were sick. When Akbar Khan was made aware of the latter fact, he took compassion on the English ladies. He was still weak, and suffering from the effects of his wound; but he gave up the palanquin, or litter in which he had been carried, for their use; and rode on horseback to the end of the march.
This was on the 19th of April. On the evening of that day the prisoners reached Tezeen, and were conducted to a fort belonging to a petty Ghilzye chief, in which were all the wives and women of Mahomed Shah Khan. There they remained, poorly accommodated and scantily fed, until the 22nd,[196] when, with the exception of General Elphinstone and two or three other invalids, they were all carried off in the direction of the hills, up a gradual ascent of many thousands of feet, to a place called Zanda. There they halted for some weeks, and in the mean while Captain Mackenzie was despatched in disguise to Pollock’s camp at Jellalabad; and General Elphinstone died.
By his fellow-captives his dissolution had long been anticipated, and was now hardly deplored. Death brought him a merciful release from an accumulation of mortal sufferings. Incessant pain of body and anguish of mind had long been his portion. He felt acutely the humiliating position into which it had pleased Providence to cast him, and neither hoped nor wished to live to face his countrymen in the cantonments of Hindostan, or in the streets of that great western metropolis which he ought never to have quitted. They who watched beside the poor old man, during the painful close of his life, bear testimony, in touching language, to the Christian fortitude with which he bore his sufferings, and the Christian charity with which he spoke of others, under all the burdens which pressed upon him. The hardships to which he had been subjected on the march from one prison-house to another had, perhaps, accelerated the crisis which was hanging over him; but he had long been passing away to his rest, and they, who loved him most, scarcely desired to arrest the progress of the maladies which were so surely destroying him. He left on record a statement of all the circumstances of our disasters—a statement which I have freely quoted in a preceding part of my narrative—but even with this statement in his hand, he could not have faced his countrymen without bringing down upon himself a verdict of condemnation. After all that has been written of his deficiencies at Caubul, it may seem a startling inconsistency to say that he was a brave and high-minded gentleman. He was so esteemed before, in an evil hour for his own and his country’s reputation, he was ordered to carry his infirmities across the Indus; and in spite of all the humiliating circumstances of our discomfiture at Caubul, posterity may so esteem him. Not upon him, but upon those who are responsible for his appointment to high military command at such a time and in such a place—first, upon those who sent him to India; secondly, and chiefly, upon those who sent him to Afghanistan—must we fix the shame of this great miscarriage. When he consented to leave the quiet enjoyment of an honoured old age at home, to carry his good fame and his broken constitution to a distant Indian Presidency, he committed a fatal error, for which he made terrible atonement. But there are few who will not pity rather than condemn the man, who found himself suddenly, with all his weakness upon him, in a sea of difficulty which demanded almost superhuman strength to buffet through it. In these pages he has appeared only as the military leader—as one who, in the hour of danger, was tried and found wanting. His fine social qualities cannot be accepted as a set-off to his military deficiencies. It is not to be pleaded in answer to the charge of having sacrificed an army at Caubul, that he was an agreeable gentleman in private life, that he was always ready with an anecdote and told it well, and that it was very hard not to love him. But now that it has been recorded how the soldier became the captive, and how the captive passed away to his rest, these things may be set down with a kindly hand upon the last page which bears his name; and it may be permitted to us, for a little space, to forget the deficiencies of the soldier whilst we sympathise with the sufferings of the man.[197]