CHAPTER IV.
[December: 1841-June: 1842.]
Stoddart and Conolly—Intelligence of the Caubul Outbreak—Arrest of the English Officers—Their sufferings in Prison—Conolly’s Letters and Journals—Death of the Prisoners.
There is a painful episode in this epic of the Afghan war, which perhaps can be introduced in no place more fitly than in this. Whilst the prisoners, who surrendered themselves on the march between Caubul and Jellalabad, were suffering such hardships only as were inseparable from their position in a rude and inhospitable country, and the hostages at Caubul were under the protection of a benevolent and high-minded Afghan nobleman, two enlightened and chivalrous British officers were enduring unparalleled sufferings in the dungeons of an Oosbeg tyrant, far beyond the snowy mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh. Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly were being devoured by vermin in a cheerless prison in the city of Bokhara.
It has been shown that in the autumn of 1840, Arthur Conolly had started from Caubul, ostensibly on a mission to Khiva and Kokund. He had subsequently, on the invitation of the Ameer, and with the implied permission, if not under the direct instructions of the Caubul envoy, proceeded to Bokhara, where Colonel Stoddart was still detained, but outwardly in a more honourable and less painful state of captivity than that which he had been condemned to endure during a part of the preceding years.[198] It was in the summer of 1841[199] that this invitation was forwarded to Conolly, then at Kokund; but that state was then at war with Bokhara, and its rulers hesitated to allow the departure of her Christian guest. After some delay, however, Conolly received his passports, and, proceeding by a circuitous route, reached Bokhara in the month of November. The crisis was an unfortunate one. Conolly was from the first regarded with suspicion. The Ameer believed, or affected to believe, that he had instigated the states of Kokund and Khiva to war against him. But other circumstances of a still more inauspicious character were gathering around the ill-fated Englishmen.
It was in the middle of the month of December, 1841, that intelligence reached Bokhara to the effect that all Caubul and the surrounding country had risen against Shah Soojah and his Feringhee allies, that Sir Alexander Burnes had been killed, and the British troops beaten in battle. A few days before, an answer had been received to a letter addressed by the Ameer to the Queen of England. The answer was written by the Foreign Secretary, and it referred the King to the Government of India. This indignity—for so he regarded it—was still rankling in his mind, when tidings of the Caubul outbreak reached Bokhara. The Ameer now sent for the English officers; asked them many questions; said that he would release Colonel Stoddart, but detain Captain Conolly; and finally, after pondering the matter for a few days, condemned them both to imprisonment in the house of the Topshee-Bashee, or chief artilleryman of Bokhara.[200]
Here their condition became every day more deplorable. They were not allowed a change of raiment, and the clothes rotted on their backs. Nauseous vermin preyed upon their bodies, and they tore the irritated flesh with their nails. They were not denied either a sufficiency of food or firing; but water leaked through the roof of the miserable room in which they were confined. Ague and fever racked them grievously; but they comforted one another with Christian consolation, and they prayed together to the Christians’ God.
In this wretched prison-house, though strictly guarded, they were not so closely watched that Conolly could not contrive to spend many an hour chronicling, in small characters upon Russian paper, all the incidents of captive life, and drawing up, for the information of his Government, elaborate memoranda on the politics of Central Asia. In spite of all difficulties of transmission, many of these notes and memoranda found their way from Bokhara to Caubul; and, surviving all the chances of destruction to which the convulsed state of Afghanistan necessarily exposed them, were conveyed in safety to the British camp, and are now lying before me.[201] In no way could the sufferings which the Bokhara captives endured be set forth so truthfully as in extracts from such of Conolly’s letters and journals as have fortunately been preserved.
The English officers must have been thrown into prison about the 17th of December. At the end of that month, or on the first day of the new year, Allahdad Khan, the Caubul envoy, was brought in to share their captivity.[202] “The Topshee-Bashee, on leaving Allahdad Khan with us,” wrote Conolly in his journal, “made over to me a superfluous posteen[203] belonging to my friend, which enabled me to throw aside the stinking garment given by the Meer Shub (Master of the Police); this and his allowing Allahdad Khan to keep the rest of his clothes, looked as if the Ameer had somewhat relented, as the Topshee-Bashee would not have dared to show us so much kindness without leave.” But these hopes were delusive. The Ameer had not relented. Day after day passed, and their sufferings increased.
All through the month of January little change took place in the condition of the captives. On the last day of the month, wrote Conolly, “a Mehrum came to desire that we would minutely describe the city and castle of Caubul, and also give an account of Heraut. Allahdad Khan drew a plan of the first place; Stoddart was named as the one who best knew the second; but the Mehrum did not take his account of it. We next day learnt that he had been sent to the Akhondzadeh,[204] who had drawn a large plan of his native city.” As February wore on, other encouraging signs of the Ameer’s desire to treat the prisoners with greater kindness presented themselves. On the 9th of February another gleam of hope burst in upon them. The incident is thus touchingly described in Conolly’s journal:
February 9 [1842].—Moolla Nasir came to ask if we had seen the Peacock throne of India. As every lettered Asiatic should know that Nadir Shah carried that throne away to Persia, and Moolla Nasir’s manner was pointedly kind, we judged that the question he had been sent to ask was a pretence, and that the Ameer desired an opening for a return to proper treatment of us. Stoddart, therefore, gave him this, by speaking of his position here as British agent, and expressing regret that he had not been able to relieve the Huzrut’s mind from the doubts which he seemed to entertain of the English Government’s friendship. We showed the sad state of our clothes (Stoddart had been obliged to put aside his shirt in consequence of the roof’s having leaked over him the night before), and expressed hope that the Ameer would soon improve our condition; but we both spoke cheerfully, that the King might not think we entertained resentment for his treatment of us.[205]
All the symptoms of a favourable change in the state of the Ameer’s feelings proved delusive. Day after day passed, and the prisoners still remained in the same unhappy condition; at last, at the end of February, Conolly wrote:
We hoped from Moolla Nasir’s visit, and that of the page, who brought my thermometer, that the Ameer was relenting, but nothing has since occurred to favour this idea; on the contrary, the chief would appear to find pleasure in his servant’s accounts of our discomfort, which may be imagined from the fact that we have now been seventy-one days and nights without means of changing or washing our linen, which is hanging in filthy tatters from our persons. The Topshee-Bashee, who looks in upon us every seven or eight days, replies to our entreaties for an improvement in this respect, that our state must be well known to the Huzrut, whose mind retains thought of the greatest and least matters, and that nothing can be said to his Majesty about us till he opens the subject. The Topshee-Bashee, has, I believe, been as kind to us as he has dared to be. We have had quite enough firing and food throughout the cold season we have passed in his house, and continue, thank God! in good health. We sometimes think, from the Ameer’s keeping back Said’s and the Akhondzadeh’s packets, that he must have received the Governor-General’s communication, and that he is acting big in irritation at not having been answered from the English throne; but it is impossible to form certain conclusions from his conduct, for it is very often influenced by caprice, which is not very far from madness. We hope that all is well in Afghanistan, and that, soon as the Hindoo-Koosh roads become open, the Ameer will receive some communication which will induce him to properly treat or dismiss us. We beg that government will convey its sentiments to the Ameer in Persian, as he will not take our word for what is written in English any longer than it suits him, and also that no allusion may be made to the above details, for if the King knew that we were able to send intelligence he might treat us worse, and perhaps kill everybody about us. The Russians propose to go about No-roz. We kept Colonel Boutenoff informed of our proceedings up to the date of our seizure, and if he should reach Europe ere our release, he may be able to enlarge this abstract, which is necessarily very imperfect.
In the second week of March, Conolly’s sufferings broke out openly in the shape of cold and fever. Enfeebled and irritated by disease, he then began to despond. It seemed to him that he was in the toils of death; and in a high state of excitement, after many sleepless nights, he wrote to his brother, John Conolly, then also a prisoner in the hands of a Mussulman enemy, the following touching letter:
From our Prison in the Bokhara Citadel,
11th March, 1842.
My dear John,
This will probably be my last note hence, so I dedicate it to you, who now, alas! stand next to me. We both dedicate everything we feel warmest to William, whom may God bless in all belonging to him, for his long and untiring brotherly affection to us all! Send my best love to Henry and to all our dear sisters.
This is the eighty-third day that we have been denied the means of getting a change of linen from the rags and vermin that cover us; and yesterday, when we begged for an amendment in this respect, the Topshee-Bashee, who had before come occasionally as our host to speak encouragingly, set his face like a flint to our request, showing that he was merely a vane to the withering wind of his heartless master, and could not help us thus, so that we need not ask him to do so. This, at first, astonished and defeated us; we had viewed the Ameer’s conduct as perhaps dictated by mad caprice; but now, looking back upon the whole, we saw instead that it had been just the deliberate malice of a demon, questioning and raising our hopes, and ascertaining our condition, only to see how our hearts were going on in the process of breaking. I did not think to shed one warm tear among such cold-blooded men; but yesterday evening, as I looked upon Stoddart’s half-naked and nail-lacerated body, conceiving that I was the special object of the king’s hatred because of my having come to him after visiting Khiva and Kokund, and told him that the British Government was too great to stir up secret enmity against any of its enemies, I wept on entreating one of our keepers, the gunner’s brother, to have conveyed to the chief my humble request that he would direct his anger upon me, and not further destroy by it my poor brother Stoddart, who had suffered so much and so meekly here for three years. My earnest words were answered by a “Don’t cry and distress yourself;” he also could do nothing. So we turned and kissed each other, and prayed together, and then said, in the words of the Kokunders, “My-bish!”[206] Let him do as he likes! he is a demon, but God is stronger than the devil himself, and can certainly release us from the hands of this fiend, whose heart he has perhaps hardened to work out great ends by it; and we have risen again from bed with hearts comforted, as if an angel had spoken to them, resolved, please God, to wear our English honesty and dignity to the last, within all the filth and misery that this monster may try to degrade us with.
We hope that, though the Ameer should now dismiss us with gold clothing, the British and Afghan Governments will treat him as an enemy; and this out of no feeling of revenge. He treacherously caused Stoddart to invite me here on his own Imayut-Nameh; and after Stoddart had given him a translation of a letter from Lord Palmerston, containing nothing but friendly assurances, which he could have verified, with our entire consent, at the Russian embassy, he pent us both up here, because we would not pay him as a kidnapper for our release, to die by slow rot, if it should appear that he might venture at last to put us altogether out of the way. We hope and pray that God may forgive him his sins in the next world; but we also trust that some human power will soon put him down from his oppressive throne at this capital, whence emanates the law by which the Khivans harry and desolate the roads and homes of the Persians. He wishes every soul to crouch before him, and not breathe God’s air freely without his leave, nor dare to be happy or at ease. For instance (and we are at the fountain-head of police reports), a poor wretch, confined without food for three days and nights in the Bug House, an infernal hole used for severe imprisonment, said incautiously, on being taken out, that he was alive and well. “He is, is he!” said the Ameer, on the report; “then put him in for three days and nights more.” Again, the other night, fifty-six grooms assembled at a house outside the city, to make merry on pilau and tea, with money liberally given by one of the Oosbeg men, Rahman Kool Tohsaba, to his head groom, who acted as master of the feast: they were convicted of having got together, so all that the police-master could seize received seventy-five blows each on the back with a heavy thorn-stick; and because one man uncomplainingly bore his punishment, which was inflicted on all before the King, he had him hoisted for seventy-five more, saying, “He must have been struck softly.” “But what was the crime in this innocent meeting of poor grooms?” we asked our gaolers. “Who knows?—he is a king, and gave the order.” The master of the entertainment stood with his dagger against some thirty policemen, till he was felled by a stone thrown at his head, to let all who could escape; for this heavier offence he was condemned to be thrown from a part of the citadel wall, which gives a culprit a chance of escape with only the fracture of a limb, because it has a slope: he threatened to pull down with him any who should approach the brink to throw him off, and, leaping boldly down, came to the ground with whole bones, and lives, let us hope, for many a happy meeting yet with his friends in this now oppressed city. This is how the Ameer would treat such ambassadors as he dares insult, who do not bend reverently enough before him; but the days for such despotism are passing quick, and he must himself be made to go down before the strong spirit of Western civilisation. Stoddart has asked me to put on paper my notions as to the measures that should now be adopted for the settlement and independent happiness of the Central Asian states;—here they are, briefly and freely; those of a man born and bred, thank God! in Protestant England, who has seen Russia, Persia, and Afghanistan, and all the three Oosbeg States.
Turn out the horrible Wuzeer Yar Mahomed Khan, who has sold 12,000 men, women, and children, since he obliged the Persians to retire from Herat, and buy out Kamran’s family from that principality. Kamran himself forfeited all his kingly right here by his letter to the Khan Huzrut of Khiva, which the latter chief gave me in return for my frank communication to him, and which I sent to Sir William Macnaghten. Thus will be gained the only point from which the Afghan nation can lend its weight to the preservation of peace and the advancement of civilisation in Toorkistan, protect its weakest subjects from being stolen or sold away, and properly guard its own and India’s frontier. Next, let Pottinger come in attendance upon Shah Soojah’s heir-apparent, Shah-zadah Timour, with a few thousand select Afghan horsemen of both the tribes, half Douranee and half Ghilzye, to blow down the gate of the citadel, which unjustly imprisoned us, against the rights of all nations, except those the Oosbegs profess. The Ameer scornfully says that the Afghans and English are one people; let him feel that they really are so in a good cause. I really do believe that if Shah-zadah Timour were to return, after such a proceeding, to assume the actual exercise of government at his father’s capital, taking back with him all real Afghans now enslaved in Toorkistan, whose orthodoxy, according to the Soonees, is unquestionable, and who might easily be collected for a friendly offering, the Afghans would so thoroughly like him and understand us, that every English and Indian soldier might be withdrawn to Hindostan.
Let the Shah-i-Shah of Persia at the same time write these few words to the Court of the faithful at Bokhara, sending copies of his letter by friendly and high ambassadors to Khiva and Kokund: “I want all my enslaved subjects who are not willing to remain in Bokhara, and I am now coming, in reliance upon the only God of justice, to free them, and to destroy the law of THY Mooftehed, by which people who pray towards the same Kebla are sold as cattle.” Let Mahomed Shah lithograph this, and send a copy to be stuck up at every mosque where his authority or influence can reach, in Persia, Afghanistan, and Tartary. This writing will tell the Ameer that his kingdom has been weighed and found wanting; it will do much to soften and liberalise Mahomedan feeling wherever it is read; and if the Persian nation are informed that it comes to them recommended by English sympathy, they will dismiss all irritation of mind that was caused by our checking their military career at Herat.
I feel confident that this great and most necessary measure of Persian emancipation may be effected at once without shedding one drop of blood. I never uttered a word of hostility against the Ameer, either at Khiva or Kokund; but now I am authorised to show how I thought the rulers of these states, who both hate him, may be made to end or lessen their own foolish enmity by his removing from between them. Let the Shah of Persia send a firman to Syud Mahomed Zahed, Kurruck Kojeh at Kokund, whom he knows, saying—“Tell the Khan Huzrut, of Kokund, who, I am happy to find, does not deal in my people, that I am about to liberate all those oppressed men and women who are unwillingly detained as slaves in Bokhara. I don’t want that country; and if you will send Lushker Begglerbegge, or Mahomed Shereff Atalik, with the Kokund army about the same time to Samarcand, my prime minister shall make it over to him by treaty, as the capital of Mawarulneh. I shall give up Merve to the Khan Huzrut of Khiva to be made the capital of Kharasm, on condition of his doing all he can to restore and content my unfortunate people, whom his tribes have carried off during my wars in other directions.”
The best Oosbeg troops are mere rubbish as opponents to Persian regulars and cannon, and they all know it. Allah Kouli Khan is the best and most sensible man in his country, and he will remain quiet while Mahomed Shah comes against Bokhara, if Shakespear can be empowered to tell him that this is a reform which must be effected, and which Persia is determined now to effect, with the commerce of England and Russia. Shakespear can mediate between the Khan Huzrut and Mahomed Shah for the gentle emancipation of those who may wish to return home in the next four or five years, or to settle in the fine waste land of Merve; and perhaps Mahomed Shah may give to Allah Kouli Khan the very large colony of [ ],[207] now settled here, who really yet long for the home of their fathers: this, and securing to him the Kokund frontier up the Oxus to Balkh, perhaps leaving the khan of it his easy tributary, would make him agree to all that the Afghans need for the formation of their frontier from Persian Khorassan to the Oxus.
England and Russia may then agree about immutable frontiers for Persia, Afghanistan, Mawarulneh, and Kharasm, in the spirit which becomes two of the first European nations in the year 1842 of Jesus Christ, the God incarnate of all peace and wisdom. May this pure and peaceable religion be soon extended all over the world!
Arthur Conolly.
March 12th.
I beg that fifty tillas may be given to Jooma Bai, the servant who will convey this to Long Joseph. (Let the utmost caution be used always in mentioning their names while this Ameer lives and reigns.) As for Long Joseph, I don’t know what reward to propose for him. He has risked his life for us in the most gallant manner, as few men would, except for a brother, and he is a noble fellow. I feel sure that Government will forgive me for not being able to make an account of my stewardship during my Toorkish mission, and that it will use every exertion to set free and to reward all who have suffered with me, but remained alive.
Allahdad Khan had some 400 tillas in cash when he was brought back, besides his baggage and horses. Akhondzadeh Saleh Mahomed has served too well to make it necessary for me to recommend him. I trust that God has preserved his life. Stoddart and I will comfort each other in every way till we die, when, may our brotherhood be renewed in heaven through Jesus Christ our Saviour! Send this assurance to all our friends, and do you, my dear John, stand in this faith. It is the only thing that can enable a man to bear up against the trials of this life, and lead him to the noblest state of existence in the next. Farewell—farewell! I shall send this to be forwarded, if news reaches Stoddart’s faithful man Ibraheem of our death, through Jooma Bai and Long Joseph.[208]
On the 22nd of March, Conolly again wrote, full of affectionate solicitude for the sufferings of his friends, but little mindful of his own:
After sending a page with my thermometer on the 15th ult. (February), to ask how much cold it indicated, as detailed in my last letter, the Ameer took no notice of us till the 13th of this month, when he sent the gold chronometer which I had given him, to show that its chain was broken, and to ask if we could repair it; a pretence, the Topshee-Bashee said, to ascertain what state we were in. We had both become ill a few days before, from a sudden cold change of weather and the discomfort of filthy clothing; and I, who had given in most to the sickness, owing to anxiety of mind regarding the many persons whom I had been the means of bringing into the Ameer’s tyrannous hands, was lying weak in bed with fever when the last page came. The Topshee-Bashee, who for some time spoke encouragingly about changing our clothes, had by this time caused us plainly to understand that he neither dared himself to amend our position in this respect, nor even to represent it to the Ameer. He now tried to save us by telling the page that I had been confined to my bed eight days, and by remarking upon the wretched state of our apparel after eighty-five days’ and nights’ wear. I showed the Mehrum that Stoddart had been obliged to cast away all his under-clothing, and was suffering much from cold on the chest. I experienced hope that the Ameer would take some pity upon us, and especially upon such of my late travelling companions and people as might be suffering under his displeasure. The page said that he would make a representation if the Huzrut questioned him; and he afterwards told the Topshee-Bashee that, on the Ameer’s doing so, he had stated that the King’s last-come slave, Khan-Ali (Conolly), had been very ill for eight or nine days; to which the Huzrut had replied, “May he not die (or, I suppose, he won’t die) for the three or four days that remain till his going.” We thought from this that the Ameer proposed to send us away with the Russians, who were said to be preparing to depart after the No-roz. Nothing else has since transpired regarding ourselves; but through the indefatigable Long Joseph we have learnt the following items of intelligence about our friends.[209]
On the 13th inst., Ibraheem wrote: “With regard to Caubul be quite at ease; 30,000 people (rebels?) have been slaughtered there.” Allahdad Khan, the Akhonzadeh, Eusoff Khan (Augustin), the Jemadar, Meer Akhor, with Bolund Khan, Kurreem Khan, and Gool Mahomed, had been released; for which we sincerely thanked God. Their sufferings, poor fellows, in that horrible dungeon, must have been great....
On the 23rd, we were made further happy by the verbal intelligence of Long Joseph that Allahdad Khan and the rest of our people had been released.
On the 24th, he again recorded that a ray of hope had broken into his dreary dungeon:
24th.—This forenoon, the Topshee-Bashee coming to see us, said, with a cheerful manner, “‘Sewonchee’—Reward me for glad tidings. I represented your great want of clothes, and proposed to buy shirts and trousers for you from the bazaar: but the Huzrut said, ‘They don’t wear bazaar clothes; in three or four days I’ll give them dresses of honour and dismiss them.’ And the Huzrut asked Meerza Juneid which road would be the best one for you to travel by, saying, ‘They cannot now go in that direction’ (apparently meaning Caubul). Meerza Juneid replied, that the route by Persia would now be the best. After which the Ameer spoke graciously about you. He said that Khan-Ali was a well-informed person, that the Meerza represented that he had conversed very little with Khan-Ali, but that Stoddart of whom he had seen much, was a man instructed upon all matters.” We doubted the Topshee-Bashee’s having dared to make a representation of himself regarding us. And the old guardian mentioned afterwards that Meerza Juneid had come to his brother’s office. Probably desiring to know whether I was better or worse in health since the 13th, the Ameer sent Meerza Juneid, in his capacity of physician, to make inquiries in this matter.
A few days afterwards, remembering how he had written, under the excitement, almost the delirium of fever, a desponding letter to John Conolly, he wrote more cheerfully to his brother, begging him, if the letter reached its destination, not to be dispirited by it, for that both he and Stoddart were now in good health:
Bokhara Citadel, 28th March, 1842.
My dear John,
We have been comforted by intelligence that the Ameer has released Allahdad Khan and all my people from the gaol in which he so unjustly and cruelly confined them.... The Ameer has lately been talking, we hear, of sending us away, and though we do not set much store by his words, we think it possible he may give us to the Russian Mission, who are about to depart.... I wrote you a longish letter on the 11th of this month, when I was in a high state of excitement, from fever and several nights of sleepless anxiety. The burden of it was an entreaty to the last effect regarding my poor people, and a hope that the British Government would seize the opportunity which the Ameer’s faithlessness had given them to come forward with Persia to put him down, and give his country to Kharasm and Kokund, on condition of the entire suppression of the Persian and Afghan slave trade in Toorkistan. If that paper (which I shall endeavour to recover) should reach you, compress its words into this purport and destroy it, reserving my last good wishes for the friends to whom I addressed them, thinking that I might not live much longer. I am now, thank God, almost well in health again, and the news regarding our people has set my mind at rest. Stoddart, also, who was suffering awhile from severe cold, is, I rejoice to say, convalescent. We are both in a very uncomfortable state, as you may imagine, having been ninety-nine days and nights without a change of clothes; but we are together. Stoddart is such a friend as a man would desire to have in adversity, and our searchers having missed the little Prayer-book which George Macgregor gave us (tell him), we are able to read and pray, as well as to converse together. God bless you, my dear John. Send my love to everybody, and believe me,
Yours, ever most affectionately,
Arthur Conolly.[210]
To J. B. Conolly, Esq., Caubul.
The passages omitted from this letter relate almost entirely to the services and the pay of Conolly’s attendants. There is nothing more remarkable in his letters and journals, written at this time, than his tender regard for others, and his forgetfulness of self. Not only did he grieve for the sufferings of his friend, and endeavour, by putting him forward as the real representative of the British Government, to obtain Stoddart’s release, or at least a mitigation of the severity of his confinement, but he exhibited, also, the tenderest solicitude for the welfare of all the servants who had accompanied him to Bokhara, and, in the midst of his own affliction, even on the bed of sickness and in the near prospect of death, thought of nothing more earnestly than the future welfare of his poor dependents.[211] On the 5th of April he wrote in his journal:
April 5.—When I came here, Stoddart did his utmost to put me forward; but now, as long as the Ameer detains him, I shall refer to him as the accredited British agent, every communication on business that the Ameer may make to me, whether we should be together or separated. He well knows all the people here, and the dignity of our government is safe in his hands.
We have heard that the Russians are about to depart, and that they are to take their enslaved people with them; but we cannot get at the truth of the statement. Report also says that the Ameer will march with his army seven or eight days hence. There is no doubt that he is preparing for an early move; but though Takkind and Kokund are named as his points of attack, it is not certain that he will go eastward. This is the 107th day of our confinement, without change of clothes; but the weather having become warmer, we can do without the garments that most harboured the vermin that we found so distressing, and we are both now, thank God! quite well. We trust that our friends will be informed of our well-being. We have desired all our servants, except Ibraheem (who remains behind to keep up correspondence), to return to their homes as soon as their strength enables them to travel, begging them to make their way anyhow, and to rest assured that everything due will be made up to them on their reaching Caubul.... Allahdad Khan behaved very firmly in refusing to allow that he was the servant of a Feringhee servant, as the Ameer wished him to do, and did justice both to the dignity of his royal master and to the policy of the British Government in Afghanistan. I beg that his conduct may be mentioned to Shah Soojah, and I trust that all his losses will be made up to him; but if the preparation of the account is left to him, he will make it a very large one, and part of the settlement may perhaps be deferred till it is decided whether or not the Ameer is to be called upon for repayment.
When our last packet was despatched we deemed it not impossible, from the Ameer’s expressions, which had been reported to us, that his Majesty designed to send us away with the Russian Mission. Our keepers rather inclined to the idea that Huzrut would dismiss us about the same time by the route of Persia; and the Topshee-Bashee’s old brother talked seriously about performing a pilgrimage to the holy city of Meshid in our company.
These hopes were most delusive. As time advanced, the prospects of restoration to liberty became more and more remote. About the middle of the month of April, the Russian Mission took its departure; and the Ameer set out from Bokhara at the head of a grand military expedition against the state of Kokund. On the 13th of April, Conolly wrote in his journal:
April 13.—We heard that the Russians had been dismissed with presents of honour, that the Kodiyar Beg Karawool Beggee, ranking as captain or commander of 100, had been attached to Colonel Boutenoff as the Ameer’s envoy to St. Petersburg, and that the Huzrut had promised to promote him to the grade of Tok-Suba, commander of 1000, privileged to bear a cow-tail banner, on his return after the performance of good service. The Ameer’s own arrangements were said to be completed, and the direction of it certainly to the eastward. An envoy from Kokund, who arrived two days ago, was not received, but was told to go about his own business wherever he listed. Our informant mentioned at the same time that the last envoy from Khiva had been dismissed a fortnight before with extraordinary honour, all his servants getting dresses. We now also learned that the heir of the Koondooz chief had sent an envoy to the Ameer, who had ordered one of his officers, a Khojeh, styled Salam Aghassi, to accompany that agent to Koondooz on his return. It was thought, we were told, that the Khojeh of Balkh would endeavour to take Koondooz on Meer Morad’s death, and the heir may, in this apprehension, have been alert to put himself under the Ameer’s protection. This morning the Ameer showed the Topshee-Bashee an especial mark of favour by sending him a loaf of refined sugar from the palace; towards evening his Majesty rode four miles to a place of pilgrimage, and on his return at night had the Topshee-Bashee up to give him some orders.
The narrative then proceeds:
Early next morning (the 14th) the Ameer marched out to the sound of his palace kettle-drums and trumpets, leaving us in the filthy clothes which we had worn for 115 days and nights. We said to the Gunner’s old brother, when he mentioned the Ameer’s having departed, “Then the Meshid caravan apparently stands fast.” “No,” was his reply; “please God it will go soon. I asked the Topshee-Bashee last night if nothing had been settled about you, and he replied, ‘When the Russians get out a march or so, the Dustan Kanchee will make a petition about them, and they will be dismissed.’” The old man also remarked, probably from what he had heard his brother say, that the Ameer had expressed himself to the effect that he knew the Russian Elchee was led to get us in order to make a boast of having procured our release, which made it seem as though Colonel Boutenoff had been endeavouring to obtain our dismissal. Our old keeper persisted for some days in assuring us of his belief that our immediate dismissal was designed, and on the 18th said that he was going down into the city to seek out my Dewan Beggee, Eusoff Khan (Augustin), to set his mind at ease about us; he returned, saying that he had been referred from place to place without finding Eusoff Khan, or any of our people; but that one Meer Hyder and another shopkeeper of his acquaintance had assured him that they were all in the town, and that four or five of them were in the habit of coming occasionally at night to a certain quarter, to hear books read. We had thought the gunners might have received orders to collect some of our people in order to our respectable dismissal; but knowing that all our men, except Ibraheem, had left Bokhara, we concluded that the Topshee-Bashee had made use of his old brother to deceive us, in order to keep us hopeful and quiet for another period, as he said nothing about changing our clothes, and kept himself quite aloof from us, which he would hardly have done had he believed what he reported in the Ameer’s name.
Just before the Ameer’s departure, we heard that a British Elchee had arrived at Merve, on his way hither. We could get no further accounts of the said Elchee, but judged that it might be Shakespear on his way to Khiva.... [MS. defaced] ... From the 4th to the 7th of May the palace drums and trumpets were continually sounding for intelligence that Kokund had been taken after a faint endeavour at resistance under the famed Kokund general, Guda Bai; that the latter had been taken prisoner, and that the rebellious town had been given up to plunder, &c.
Then follows much of Bokhara politics, the manuscript being greatly defaced—and after this, some passages of personal narrative, the chronicle of which extends up to the 24th of May—the latest date under which I have been able to discover anything in the hand-writing of Arthur Conolly:
We had expressed to our old guardian a wish to get some money from Meshid, with which to reward him for his kindness, (and to get) him privately to buy (us) a few necessaries in the event of our further detention, and, liking the idea, he, on the 19th instant (May), brought secretly to see us his son-in-law Budub, employed as a caravan-bashee between Bokhara and the Holy City, who agreed to act as agent in the business after another week. Inquiring the news from Budub, we heard that Kamran was said to be confined in Herat by Yar Mahomed Khan—that the English remained as before at Candahar and Caubul—and that four Elchees, English, Russian, Persian, and Turkish, had gone together to Khiva, each displaying his national flag, and told the Khan Huzrut that he had the choice of quietly giving up plundering and slave-dealing, or of meeting the Shah of Persia, who had assembled a large army for the redress of his people.
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Our old friend now informed us, on the authority of his Afghan acquaintance, Meer Hyder, that all our people had left Bokhara on hearing that they had been inquired about.... Possibly the Ameer really did mean to send us away at the time of his marching, but deferred to do so on hearing that we had no servants left here, or from one of his incalculable caprices. I had noted, in a detailed report of our proceedings after leaving Kokund, which when we were seized I was waiting the Ameer’s permission to despatch by a courier to Caubul, an expression which the Naib heard his Majesty had uttered in his camp after my arrival, to the effect that he would give the English a few rubs more, and then be friends with them again. Though we were not sure that the Amer had so spoken, the plan seems one likely to be entertained by an ignorant and weak man, anxious to give an imposing impression of his greatness and confidence; and to it I partly attributed the ungraciousness of my public reception in camp, though I was the Naib’s honoured guest; the failure of the Huzrut to recover the horses and the property of my servants which had been plundered at his outposts, when bringing letters to him, and the hauteur with which, at the first joint reception of Stoddart and myself here, he caused it to be signified to us that as in old times there had been friendship between the Mussulmans and infidels, there existed no objection to the establishment of friendly relations between the states of Bokhara and England; but that the Huzrut desired to know whether we (the English) had been travellers over all Toorkistan to spy the land with a view to take it, as we had taken Caubul, or for other purposes; and wished all our designs to be unveiled, in order that if they were friendly they might become apparent, and that if hostile, they might still be known. The Government of India, knowing what communications it has sent to Bokhara, will be able to judge the Ameer’s conduct better than we are.
On the 19th (May) the Topshee-Bashee paid us a visit of a few moments, after keeping away for two months. He mentioned that a man with a name like Noor Mohumnud had come three or four days before from Persia, bringing a load of things for Stoddart, of which the Dustan Kanchee had forwarded a list to the Ameer—probably the articles which should have accompanied Lord Palmerston’s letter. The Huzrut, the Topshee-Bashee said, would doubtless, on his return, be gracious to us, and give us fine robes of honour, and treat us even better than before.
About sunset on the 23rd, as Stoddart and myself were pacing up and down a small court of twenty feet long, which encloses our prison, one of the citadel doorkeepers came and desired us both to sit down in a corner; we complied, wondering what would follow, and presently saw heads peering at us from the adjoining roofs, when we understood that the Ameer’s heir, a youth of seventeen, had taken this way of getting a sight of the Feringhee Elchees. We must have given him but a poor impression in the remains of our clothes, and with heads and beards uncombed for more than five months.
On the 23rd, Jooma Bai was accosted by a man named Makhzoom, known to Stoddart, who gave him a token, and a note written in such bad grammar as scarcely to be understood, in which he said one Juleb arrived lately from Khiva, mentioned that he saw Pottinger Sahib there, and another person named Moosa having come, bringing a letter from Pottinger Sahib, who, he says, is at Khiva, with the Elchee of Mahomed Shah.
Authentic history here terminates. Beyond this all is doubt and conjecture. On the 28th of May, Stoddart despatched an official letter to the Indian Government,[212] which was forwarded with Conolly’s journals; and at this point we lose altogether the track of the footprints which the Bokhara captives have left on the great desert of time. That they perished miserably is certain. “No change has taken place in our treatment,” wrote Stoddart—it is the last sentence penned in the Bokhara prison which seems to have reached its destination—“though hopes, so long proved to be deceitful, are held out to us on the return of the chief.” But the Ameer, glutted with conquest, returned from the Kokund expedition, and ordered them out to death. They died by the hands of the public executioner. But the precise period of their death is not with certainty to be ascertained.
There is but scanty evidence to enable us to determine the point. That which is most credible is the evidence of Saleh Mahomed, a youth whom Major Todd despatched from Herat, to join Captain Conolly’s suit. His story is, that in the month of June, 1842, Stoddart and Conolly were executed by order of the Ameer; that he derived his information from one of the executioners; and that he saw their graves. On the 17th of June, it is related, they were taken out of their prison, and, in the presence of an assembled multitude, led into a small square. Their hands were bound together before them. Their graves were dug before their eyes. Stoddart was first marked for death. He cried aloud against the tyranny of the Ameer; and his head was cut off with a knife. Conolly was then offered his life, on condition that he would adopt the Mussulman faith. But he indignantly rejected the proposal. “Stoddart,” he said, “became a Mussulman, and yet you kill him: I am prepared to die.” And then Arthur Conolly, full of faith in the merits of his Redeemer, stretched forth his neck, and died.[213]
There is nothing more painful than this in all the history of the Central-Asian war. It would be unjust to encourage a belief in the reader’s mind that efforts were not made to compass the liberation of Colonel Stoddart. From the time when Major Pottinger first received at Herat intimation of his friend’s captivity, and wrote to the Ameer a protest against the outrage he had committed, to a date long subsequent to the deaths of Stoddart and Conolly, continual efforts were made, both from the side of India and of England, to accomplish this great object. Todd did all that he could do from Herat; Abbott and Shakespear did all that they could do from Khiva; Macnaghten did all that he could do from Caubul; Lord Auckland did all that he could do from Calcutta. From London, Lord Palmerston directed our ambassadors at St. Petersburgh and Constantinople to obtain the agency of the Courts at which they were resident; and both the Sultan and Count Nesselrode wrote urgent letters to Bokhara in behalf of the British prisoners.[214] But when all this is related, it still appears that more regard might have been shown for Stoddart’s position, and that if there had been greater promptitude in answering the references made by him to the home authorities, he might have taken advantage of a favorable change in the feelings of the Ameer, and of his own circumstances, to take his departure from Bokhara. Certain it is that Stoddart felt acutely the culpable indifference to his fate displayed by the British Government. As far back as the July of the preceding year he had written:
News from me you will not expect, nor have I the least word of interest to offer you, except that I am waiting the replies of government, before I am finally released and take my departure. Nothing can be more slack than the time and means taken to provide me with those replies, and my disgust perfectly negatives any attempt to write a commonly agreeable note. My last news from Caubul, dated June 6, says that poor Todd is there awaiting, if possible, a mitigation of his sentence. Conolly is not yet here from Kokan, nor have my messengers to him yet returned. They conveyed the orders from Caubul, and an invitation to the Ameer, to return by this route.[215]
On the 28th of February, 1842, he wrote again, as a kind of endorsement to one of Conolly’s letters:
TO THE SECRETARY OF GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.
Sir,
The Governor-General in Council will be informed by the accompanying abstract how far my position here [and that of Captain Conolly] has been sacrificed.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient, humble servant,
Charles Stoddart.
The words within brackets were erased—most probably by Conolly.[216]
But Stoddart, though he may have resented the injustice of sacrificing him to no purpose, was ready to become a sacrifice if, by so doing, he could promote the interests of his country. “I beg sincerely,” he wrote on the 5th of April, “that no one will regret any sacrifice of me, for it is nothing at all. It may yet not be requisite—but if it be, I regard the probable result, from the action of government in doing justice to others, and bringing all these countries to reasonable conduct, as fully compensating a much greater sacrifice than that of so humble an individual as I am.”[217] If anything could increase the sorrow with which we contemplate the fate of this brave man, it would be a perusal of such noble sentences as these.
It was under a high and chivalrous sense of duty to his government that Colonel Stoddart continued to face the dangers of his position at Bokhara, after he might have escaped from them; and it was under an equally strong sense of duty that Captain Conolly made his way to the inhospitable city. To describe them officially as “innocent travellers,” was clearly a misapplication of language; and yet, when on the famous 1st of October, 1842, Lord Ellenborough addressed the following letter to the Ameer of Bokhara, he so described them both:
Simlah, October 1st, 1842.
A. C.
The Queen of England, my royal mistress, has sanctioned my coming to India, to conduct its government, and direct its armies.
On my arrival, I found that great disasters had befallen those armies, and much injury had been inflicted on my countrymen and the people of India by the treacherous Afghans, under Mahomed Akbar Khan.
In forty days from the time when I directed to British armies, reinforced from India, to move forward, three great victories have been gained over the Afghans; the city and citadel of Ghuznee have been destroyed, and now the Balla Hissar of Caubul is in my power.
Thus, by God’s aid, have I afflicted with merited punishment the murderers of their own king and of a British minister. In this I have avenged the cause of all sovereigns and of all nations.
The wife and family of Mahomed Akbar Khan are prisoners, and my soldiers are now conducting them to the sea.
Thus are the wicked punished, even in their wives and families.
I hear that you, too, have gained great successes, at which I rejoice, if you had just ground of complaint against your enemy.
It is in the midst of successes that clemency most becomes the conqueror, and gives to him an extent of permanent fame which often does not attend on victory.
I was informed, when I reached India, that you detained in confinement two Englishmen, supposing them to have entertained designs against you. This must have been your reason, for no prince detains an innocent traveller.
I am informed that they are innocent travellers. As individuals they could not entertain designs against you; and I know they were not employed by their government in such designs, for their government is friendly to you.
Send them away towards Persia. It will redound to your honour. They shall never return to give you offence, but be sent back to their own country.
Do this as you wish to have my friendship.
Ellenborough.[218]
So manifest a repudiation of the official character of these two officers was not right; and it has been said, by one whose zeal and enthusiasm overlaid his judgment and discretion, but who is still entitled to honourable mention for his generous exertions in a hopeless cause,[219] that this very letter, in all likelihood, caused the execution of the prisoners. To describe them as travellers was, it is said, to proclaim them as spies. But the letter, however dangerous in itself, was at least harmless in its results. Before it was even written, the “innocent travellers” had journeyed to a land where the tyranny of princes could not reach them—where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.[220]