History of the War in Afghanistan, Vol. 1 (of 3) / Third Edition

by Sir John William Kaye

The reluctance of the Bahwulpore authorities was soon overcome; but the demands made upon the forbearance of the Ameers of Sindh were of a more oppressive and irritating character. The Bahwul Khan has ever been held up to admiration as the most consistently friendly of all the allies of the British Government; but the expedition was distasteful to him and his people, and the real feeling broke out in the beginning, though, after a while, it was suppressed. It is not strange, therefore, that the Talpoor Ameers, of whom so much more was demanded, should have co-operated somewhat unwillingly in a measure which had openly exacted from them a large amount of treasure, and was not unlikely in the end to deprive them of all that they possessed. Interpreted into homely English, the language now to be addressed to these unhappy Princes was simply, “Your money or your life.” Colonel Pottinger was the agent employed, in the first instance, to dictate terms to the Court of Hyderabad; but he was too clear-headed and too high-minded a man not to perceive the injustice of the course prescribed by his government, and to feel painfully unwilling to pursue it. The instructions he had received, divested of the specious outside dress of diplomatic phraseology, and rendered in plain English by Colonel Pottinger himself, were truly of a startling character. The British agent was directed to tell the Ameers that “the day they connected themselves with any other power than England would be the last of their independence, if not of their rule.” “Neither,” it was added, “the ready power to crush and annihilate them, nor the will to call it into action, were wanting, if it appeared requisite, however remotely, for the safety or integrity of the Anglo-Indian Empire or frontier.” The Ameers were known to be weak; and they were believed to be wealthy. Their money was to be taken; their country to be occupied; their treaties to be set aside at the point of the bayonet—but amidst a shower of hypocritical expressions of friendship and good-will.

Whilst Colonel Pottinger, not without some scruples, was enclosing the Ameers of Lower Sindh in the toils of his diplomacy, Captain Burnes, who by this time had reaped the reward of his services in knighthood and a lieutenant-colonelcy, was proceeding to operate upon the Princes of Beloochistan. Originally sent upon a mission to Mehrab Khan of Khelat, he had turned aside, however, to negotiate with the Ameers of Khyrpore, in Upper Sindh, and had found them more tractable than the Hyderabad Princes in Colonel Pottinger’s hands. It was deemed expedient that the British troops should cross the Indus at Bukkur, and Burnes was instructed to obtain the temporary cession of the island. The fortress stands on a rock, dividing the river into two channels. Apprehending that the incursion of British troops into their country would be followed by acts of territorial spoliation, the Ameers of Khyrpore, whilst expressing in general terms their willingness to co-operate with our government, expressly stipulated that the forts on either bank of the river were to be untouched. But as Bukkur stood on neither bank, but on an island, it appeared to the British diplomatist that the wording of the memorandum actually placed the fortress in his hands. Ashamed, however, of such an exhibition of legal acuteness, he declared that he had no intention to take advantage of such a reading of the document; he cited it merely as an instance of the manner in which very cunning people sometimes overreach themselves. There was no need, indeed, to look for flaws in a state paper, when the Army of the Indus was assembling to help itself to what it liked. The Ameers were told that, whatever might be their dislike to the march of our troops through Sindh, “the Sindhian who hoped to stop the approach of the British army might as well seek to dam up the Indus at Bukkur.” The fiat had gone forth, an army was to march, and it was now on the road.

There was every reason why the restoration of Shah Soojah, who was famous for the extravagance of his pretensions in the direction of Sindh, should have been viewed with apprehension and alarm by the Talpoor Ameers. But the matter now began to wear a much more formidable aspect. The British Government had not only announced its intention to assist the long-exiled monarch in his attempt to regain his crown, but had encouraged him to assert long dormant claims, and had announced its intention to march an army into the country of the Ameers, to plant a subsidiary force there, to compel the Princes of Sindh to pay for it, to knock down and set up the Princes themselves at discretion, to take possession of any part of the country that might be wanted for our own purposes—in fact, to treat Sindh and Beloochistan in all respects as though they were petty principalities of our own. That the Ameers thus struggling in our grasp, conscious of their inability openly to resist oppression, should have writhed and twisted, and endeavoured to extricate themselves by the guile which might succeed, rather than by the strength which could not, was only to follow the universal law of nature in all such contests between the weak and the strong. Macnaghten complained, some time afterwards, that no civilised beings had ever been treated so badly as were the British by the Princes of Sindh. If it were so, it was only because no civilised beings had ever before committed themselves to acts of such gross provocation. Throughout the entire period of British connection with Afghanistan, a strange moral blindness clouded the visions of our statesmen: they saw only the natural, the inevitable results of their own measures, and forgot that those measures were the dragon’s teeth from which sprung up the armed men. The Ameers of Sindh viewed all our proceedings at this time with mingled terror and indignation. Our conduct was calculated to alarm and incense them to the extremest point of fear and irritation; and yet we talked of their childish distrust and their unprovoked hostility.

The Ameers of Sindh were told that, whether they were friendly or unfriendly to the movement, the British army would cross the Indus when and where our government directed, and do whatsoever our government pleased—that resistance on their part would be not only useless, but insane, as it would bring down inevitable destruction on the head of all who stood up to oppose us. From that time these unhappy Princes felt that they ruled only by sufferance of the British. They knew their helplessness, and if at any time they thought of open resistance, the idea was speedily abandoned. Two British armies were bearing down upon their dominions—the one from Upper India; the other from the Sea. Burnes and the Commissariat officers were in advance, laying in supplies for the consumption of the invading force, and threatening with heavy penalties all who refused to co-operate with them. It would be difficult to conceive anything more distressing and more irritating; and yet we expected the Ameers to open their arms and to lay down their treasures at our feet.

The Bengal army moved from Ferozepore on the 10th of December.[282] Availing themselves of the water-carriage, they moved down parallel to the river. The sick, the hospital stores, and a portion of our Commissariat supplies were forwarded on boats, which were subsequently to be used for the bridging of the Indus. The force consisted of about 9500 men and 38,000 camp-followers. Some 30,000 camels accompanied the army.[283] There was an immense assemblage of baggage. Sir Henry Fane had exhorted the officers of the Army of the Indus not to encumber themselves with large establishments and unnecessary equipages; but there is a natural disposition on the part of Englishmen, in all quarters of the globe, to carry their comforts with them. It requires a vast deal of exhortation to induce officers to move lightly equipped. The more difficult the country into which they are sent—the more barbarous the inhabitants—the more trying the climate—the greater is their anxiety to surround themselves with the comforts which remote countries and uncivilised people cannot supply, and which ungenial climates render more indispensable. In the turmoil of actual war, all these light matters may be forgotten; but a long, a wearisome, and unexciting march through a difficult but uninteresting country, tries the patience even of the best of soldiers, and fills him with unappeasable yearnings after the comforts which make endurable the tedium of barrack or cantonment life. It is natural that with the prospect of such a march before him, he should not be entirely forgetful of the pleasures of the mess-table, or regardless of the less social delights of the pleasant volume and the solacing pipe. Clean linen, too, is a luxury which a civilised man, without any imputation upon his soldierly qualities, may, in moderation, desire to enjoy. The rudeness and barrenness of the country compel him to supply himself at the commencement of his journey with everything that he will require in the course of it; and the exigencies of the climate necessarily increase the extent of these requirements. The expedition across the Indus had been prospectively described as a “grand military promenade;” and if such were the opinion of some of the highest authorities, it is not strange that officers of inferior rank should have endorsed it, and hastened to act upon the suggestion it conveyed. And so marched the Army of the Indus, accompanied by thousands upon thousands of baggage-laden camels and other beasts of burden, spreading themselves for miles and miles over the country, and making up with the multitudinous followers of the camp one of those immense moving cities, which are only to be seen when an Indian army takes the field, and streams into an enemy’s country.

It was clear, bright, invigorating weather—the glorious cold season of Northern India—when the army of the Indus entered the territories of Bahwul Khan. Nature seemed to smile on the expedition, and circumstance to favour its progress. There was a fine open country before them; they moved along a good road;[284] supplies were abundant everywhere. The coyness of the Bahwulpore authorities, which had threatened to delay the initial march of the army, had yielded in good time, and at every stage Mackeson and Gordon had laid up in depôt stores of grain, and fodder, and firewood, for the consumption of man and beast.[285] Officers and soldiers were in the highest spirits. “These,” it was said by one who accompanied the army on the staff of its commander, and has chronicled all its operations,[286] “were the halcyon days of the movements of this force.” To the greater number who now crossed the frontier this was their virgin campaign. The excitement was as novel as it was inspiriting. They might be about to meet mighty armies and to subdue great principalities; or they might only be entering upon a “grand military promenade.” Still in that bright December weather the very march through a strange country, with all that great and motley assemblage, was something joyous and animating. The army was in fine health, full of heart, and overflowing with spirits. It seemed as if an expedition so auspiciously commenced must be one great triumph to the end.

There was but one thing to detract from the general prosperity of the opening campaign. Desertion was going on apace—not from the ranks of the fighting men, but from the mass of officers’ servants, camel drivers, and camp-followers which streamed out from the rear of the army. The cattle, too, were falling sick and dying by the way-side. The provisions with which they were supplied were not good, and dysentery broke out among them. Many were carried off by their owners, who shrunk from the long and trying journey before them; and it soon became manifest that the most formidable enemy with which the advancing army would have to contend, would be a scarcity of carriage and supplies.

Even in those early days the voice of complaint was not wholly silent;[287] but when the army began to make its toilsome way through Sindh and Beloochistan, there were few in its ranks who did not look back with regret to the march through Bahwulpore, when all their wants had been supplied in a manner which they were little likely to see again. It was on the 29th of December that the head-quarters of the army reached the capital of Bahwul Khan’s country. Sir Henry Fane, who had been proceeding down the river by water, landed from his boats, and held a Durbar on the following day; and on the 31st returned the visit of state which the Khan had paid him.[288] On the first day of the new year the army broke ground again, and set out for the frontier of Sindh.

On the 14th of January, the head-quarters of the Army of the Indus entered the Sindh territory near Subzulkote. On the preceding day, Sir Alexander Burnes had joined the British camp; and though he had obtained by his negotiations the cession of Bukkur to the British Government,[289] for such time as it might seem expedient to us to retain it, and had thus secured the peaceful passage of the Indus, the report which he made of the general feeling of the Sindhians was not very encouraging. It was plain that our armed passage through the country of the Ameers was extremely distasteful to them; and that if they did not break out into acts of open hostility, their conduct towards us was likely to be marked by subterfuges, evasions, and deceit of every possible kind.

And presently it began to be suspected that the temper of at least some of the Talpoor Princes was such, that a hostile demonstration against them was little likely to be avoided. The Hyderabad Ameers had assumed an attitude of defiance. They had insulted and outraged Colonel Pottinger, and were now collecting troops for the defence of their capital. Sir John Keane, with the Bombay army, had landed at Vikkur at the end of November, and, after a long and mortifying delay, had made his way on to Tattah. Having come by sea, he was necessarily without carriage. He had relied upon the friendly feelings of the Sindh rulers; but the Sindh rulers were not disposed to do anything for him, but everything against him. They regarded the British General as an enemy, and threw every obstacle in his way. Sir John Keane was compelled, therefore, to remain in inactivity on the banks of the river until the 24th of December. A supply of carriage from Cutch, by no means adequate to the wants of the force, but most welcome at such a time, came opportunely to release Sir John Keane from this local bondage, and the Bombay column then commenced its march into Sindh. Proceeding up the right bank of the Indus to Tattah, and thence to Jerruk, he awaited at the latter place the result of the negotiations which were going on at Hyderabad. Captain Outram and Lieutenant Eastwick had been despatched to the Court of the Ameers with Lord Auckland’s ultimatum; and Keane with the Bombay column, was now, at the end of January, awaiting the result.