[505] Ibid. p. 314. Wolff adds that the unfortunate Khān’s pregnant wife was also butchered (Bokhara, p. 232).
[506] He published an interesting account of his wanderings in his Travels into Bokhara, being an account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia in 1831–33. London, 1834–39.
[507] Wolff, p. 176. It appears that he drew his sword on the court official charged with the duty of presenting him to His Majesty.
[508] “He delights to hear that people tremble at his name, and laughs with violence when he hears of their apprehensions” (Wolff, p. 233).
[509] The first regular Russian embassy to Bokhārā was that of M. Regni in 1820, which was described by Colonel Baron Meyendorff in his Voyage d’Orenbourg à Boukhara, Paris, 1826. The Russian reply to Burnes’ mission were those of Desmaison in 1834, and of Vitkovich in the following year (Vambéry, p. 380).
[510] The issue of our first attempt to meddle in the affairs of Afghanistān is too well known for recapitulation. The British forces left Kābul on January 1842 on their homeward march, and, out of 16,500 troops and camp followers, only one man lived to carry the news of disaster to Jalālābād. See Kaye’s History of the War in Afghanistan, 1851.
[511] Nasrullah was tormented by remorse to his dying day. He told the Shaykh ul-Islām of Bokhārā that “he had given himself a terrible wound by having killed Stoddart and Conolly.” And the chief-justice assured Wolff that the Amīr had more than once exclaimed, “The wounds of my heart, for having slain these English people, will never heal!” (Wolff’s Bokhara, pp. 176, 233). Even this black heart had one white spot. But we must not judge a bad man by the good he may do on impulse, nor a good one by the evil which alloys the finest nature.
[512] Wolff, Bokhara, p. 231. It is not exhaustive, for Vambéry (p. 389) mentions a poor Italian watchmaker named Giovanni Orlando as one of Nasrullah’s victims. Wolff’s work is disfigured by its author’s eccentricities, and is deficient in information of value as to the manners and economy of the country. But his courage and self-devotion are beyond all praise.
[513] Vambéry, p. 391. The date which he gives tentatively, 1840, is certainly wrong: had it occurred then, details would have appeared in the works of Wolff and Khanikoff. H. Moser, who twice visited Bokhārā during his reign, says that he lived in idleness till his father’s death, the date of which he inexplicably states to have been 1842 (A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 156).
[514] Vambéry, p. 391.