After this alarming incident, the 72nd Highlanders were sent forward to take the place of the native regiment previously leading; and once more the little column struggled on through the darkness up the rocky path. Their staunchness met its reward. At dawn the Highlanders and 5th Gurkhas charged the Afghan detachment in its entrenchments and breastworks of trees, and were soon masters of the Spingawi position. A long and anxious time of waiting now ensued, caused by the failure of the first frontal attack on the Kotal; but Roberts' pressure on the flank of the main Afghan position and another frontal attack sent the enemy flying in utter rout, leaving behind guns and waggons. The Kurram column had driven eight Afghan regiments and numbers of hillmen from a seemingly impregnable position, and now held the second of the outer passes leading towards Cabul (December 2, 1878). The Afghans offered but slight resistance at the Shutargardan Pass further on, and from that point the invaders looked down on valleys that conducted them easily to the Ameer's capital[313].
Meanwhile equal success was attending the 3rd British column, that of General Biddulph, which operated from Quetta. It occupied Sibi and the Khojak Pass; and on January 8, 1879, General Stewart and the vanguard reached Candahar, which they entered in triumph. The people seemed to regard their entry with indifference. This was but natural. Shere Ali had ruined his own cause. Hearing of the first defeats he fled from Cabul in company with the remaining members of the Russian Mission still at that city (December 13), and made for Afghan Turkestan in the hope of inducing his northern allies to give active aid.
He now discovered his error. The Czar's Government had been most active in making mischief between England and the Ameer, especially while the diplomatic struggle was going on at Berlin; but after the signature of the Treaty of Berlin (July 13, 1878), the natural leaning of Alexander II. towards peace and quietness began by degrees to assert itself. The warlike designs of Kaufmann and his officials in Turkestan received a check, though not so promptly as was consistent with strict neutrality.
Gradually the veil fell from the ex-Ameer's eyes. On the day of his flight (December 13), he wrote to the "Officers of the British Government," stating that he was about to proceed to St. Petersburg, "where, before a Congress, the whole history of the transactions between myself and yourselves will be submitted to all the Powers[314]." But nine days later he published a firman containing a very remarkable letter purporting to come from General Stolieteff at Livadia in the Crimea, where he was staying with the Czar. After telling him that the British desired to come to terms with him (the Ameer) through the intervention of the Sultan, the letter proceeded as follows:--
But the Emperor's desire is that you should not admit the English into your country, and like last year, you are to treat them with deceit and deception until the present cold season passes away. Then the Almighty's will will be made manifest to you, that is to say, the [Russian] Government having repeated the Bismillah, the Bismillah will come to your assistance. In short you are to rest assured that matters will end well. If God permits, we will convene a Government meeting at St. Petersburg, that is to say, a Congress, which means an assemblage of Powers. We will then open an official discussion with the English Government, and either by force of words and diplomatic action we will entirely cut off all English communications and interference with Afghanistan, or else events will end in a mighty and important war. By the help of God, by spring not a symptom or a vestige of trouble and dissatisfaction will remain in Afghanistan.
It is impossible to think that the Czar had any knowledge of this treacherous epistle, which, it is to be hoped, originated with the lowest of Russian agents, or emanated from some Afghan chief in their pay. Nevertheless the fact that Shere Ali published it shows that he hoped for Russian help, even when the British held the keys of his country in their hands. But one hope after another faded away, and in his last days he must have come to see that he had been merely the catspaw of the Russian bear. He died on February 21, 1879, hard by the city of Bactra, the modern Balkh.
That "mother of cities" has seen strange vicissitudes. It nourished the Zoroastrian and Buddhist creeds in their youth; from its crowded monasteries there shone forth light to the teeming millions of Asia, until culture was stamped out under the heel of Genghis Khan, and later, of Timur. In a still later day it saw the dawning greatness of that most brilliant but ill-starred of the Mogul Emperors, Aurungzebe. Its fallen temples and convents, stretching over many a mile, proclaim it to be the city of buried hopes. There was, then, something fitting in the place of Shere Ali's death. He might so readily have built up a powerful Afghan State in friendly union with the British Raj; he chose otherwise, and ended his life amidst the wreckage of his plans and the ruin of his kingdom. This result of the trust which he had reposed in Muscovite promises was not lost on the Afghan people and their rulers.
There is no need to detail the events of the first half of the year 1879 in Afghanistan. On the assembly of Parliament in February, Lord Beaconsfield declared that our objects had been attained in that land now that the three chief mountain highways between Afghanistan and India were completely in our power. It remained to find a responsible ruler with whom a lasting peace could be signed. Many difficulties were in the way owing to the clannish feuds of the Afghans and the number of possible claimants for the crown. Two men stood forth as the most likely rulers, Shere Ali's rebellious son, Yakub Khan, who had lately been released from his long confinement, and Abdur Rahman, son of Ufzal Khan, who was still kept by the Russians in Turkestan under some measure of constraint, doubtless in the hope that he would be a serviceable trump card in the intricate play of rival interests certain to ensue at Cabul.
About February 20, Yakub sent overtures for peace to the British Government; and, as the death of his father at that time greatly strengthened his claim, it was favourably considered at London and Calcutta. Despite one act at least of flagrant treachery, he was recognised as Ameer. On May 8 he entered the British camp at Gandarnak, near Jelalabad; and after negotiations, a treaty was signed there, May 26. It provided for an amnesty, the control of the Ameer's foreign policy by the British Government, the establishment of a British Resident at Cabul, the construction of a telegraph line to that city, the grant of commercial facilities, and the cession to India of the frontier districts of Kurram, Pishin, and Sibi (the latter two are near Quetta). The British Government retained control over the Khyber and Michnee Passes and over the neighbouring tribes (which had never definitely acknowledged Afghan rule). It further agreed to pay to the Ameer and his successors a yearly subsidy of six lakhs of rupees (nearly £50,000)[315].
General Roberts and many others feared that the treaty had been signed too hastily, and that the Afghans, "an essentially arrogant and conceited people," needed a severer lesson before they acquiesced in British suzerainty. But no sense of foreboding depressed Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, the gallant and able officer who had carried out so much of the work on the frontier, when he proceeded to take up his abode at Cabul as British Resident (July 24). The chief danger lay in the Afghan troops, particularly the regiments previously garrisoned at Herat, who knew little or nothing of British prowess, and whose fanaticism was inflamed by arrears of pay. Cavagnari's Journal kept at Cabul ended on August 19 with the statement that thirty-three Russians were coming up the Oxus to the Afghan frontier. But the real disturbing cause seems to have been the hatred of the Afghan troops to foreigners.