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

by Sir John William Kaye

It was on the evening of the 2nd of August that Dost Mahomed fled from Urghundeh. On the following day the British army, which had moved from Ghuznee on the 30th of July, received tidings of his flight. It was now determined to send a party in pursuit. It was mainly to consist of Afghan horsemen; but some details from our cavalry regiments were sent with them, and Captain Outram, ever ready for such service, volunteered for the command. Other officers—bold riders and dashing soldiers[352]—were eager to join in the pursuit; and a party of ten, with about five hundred mounted men, mustered that afternoon before the Mission tents, equipped for the raid.

If the success of this expedition had depended upon the zeal and activity of the officers, Dost Mahomed would have been brought back a prisoner to the British camp; for never did a finer set of men leap into their saddles, flushed with the thought of the stirring work before them. But when they set out in pursuit of the fallen Ameer, a traitor rode with them, intent on turning to very nothingness all their chivalry and devotion. There was an Afghan chief known as Hadjee Khan Khaukur, of whom mention has been made. He was a man of mean extraction, the son of a goat-herd,[353] but from this low estate had risen into notice, and obtained service with Dost Mahomed. It was not in his nature to be faithful. He deserted Dost Mahomed, and attached himself to the Candahar Sirdars. On the advance of the British army he deserted the Sirdars, and flung himself at the feet of the Suddozye. Delighted with such an accession to his strength, the King appointed him Nassur-ood-dowlah, or “Defender of the State,” and conferred on him a Jaghire of the annual value of three lakhs of rupees.

At Candahar, whence the Sirdars had fled, the Hadjee, profoundly conscious of the hopelessness of their cause, broke out into loyalty and enthusiasm, and was, to all outward seeming, a faithful adherent of the Shah. But as he entered the principality of the Caubul Ameer, he seemed to stand upon more uncertain ground; the issue of the contest was yet doubtful. Dost Mahomed and his sons were in the field. So the Hadjee made many excuses; and fell in the rear of the British army. He was sick; it was necessary that he should march easily; he could not bear the bustle of the camp. Keeping, therefore, a few marches in the rear, he followed our advancing columns, with his retainers; and there, it is said, “enjoyed the congenial society of several discontented and intriguing noblemen.”[354]

If Ghuznee had not fallen, Hadjee Khan and his friends would have gone over in a body to the Ameer, and on the slightest information of a reverse having befallen us, would have flung themselves on our rear. But the fall of this great Afghan stronghold brought the Hadjee again to the stirrup of the Shah; and he was again all loyalty and devotion. Confident of his fidelity, and perhaps anxious to establish it in the eyes of all who had viewed with suspicion the proceedings of the Hadjee, the King now put it to the proof. The man had once been Governor of Bameean. He knew the country along which the Ameer had taken his flight. What could be better than to entrust the conduct of the expedition to the veteran chief? The King and Macnaghten were of the same mind; so Hadjee Khan, who had been for some time in treasonable correspondence with Dost Mahomed, was now despatched to overtake him and bring him back a prisoner to the camp of the Shah.

The result may be easily anticipated. Hadjee Khan cheerfully undertook the duty entrusted to him. The enterprise required the utmost possible amount of energy and promptitude to secure its success. The Ameer and his party were more than a day’s journey in advance of his pursuers. Every hour’s delay lessened the chance of overtaking the fugitive. So the Hadjee began at once to delay. The pursuers were to have started four hours after noon; Hadjee Khan was not ready till nightfall. Then he was eager to take the circuitous high road instead of dashing across the hills. His people lagged behind to plunder. He himself, when Outram was most eager to push on, always counselled a halt, and in the hour of need the guides deserted. The Ameer was now but little in advance; he was encumbered with women, and children, and much baggage. He had a sick son,[355] on whose account it was necessary to diminish the speed of his flight. Outram seemed almost to have the Ameer in his grasp; when Hadjee Khan again counselled delay. It was necessary, he said, to wait for reinforcements. The Ameer had two thousand fighting men. The Afghans under Hadjee Khan were not to be relied upon. They had no food: their horses were knocked up; they were unwilling to advance. Angry and indignant, Outram broke from the Hadjee in the midst of his entreaties, and declared that he would push on with his own men. Again and again there was the same contention between the chivalrous earnestness of the British officer and the foul treachery of the Afghan chief. At last, on the 9th of August, they reached Bameean, where Hadjee Khan had repeatedly declared that Dost Mahomed would halt, only to learn that the fugitives were that morning to be at Syghan, nearly thirty miles in advance. The Ameer was pushing on with increased rapidity, for the sick Prince, who had been carried in a litter, was now transferred to the back of an elephant, and his escape was now almost certain. The treachery of Hadjee Khan had done its work. Outram had been restricted in his operations to the limits of the Shah’s dominions; and the Ameer had now passed the borders. Further pursuit, indeed, would have been hopeless. The horses of our cavalry were exhausted by over-fatigue and want of food. They were unable any longer to continue their forced marches. The game, therefore, was up. Dost Mahomed had escaped. Hadjee Khan Khaukur had saved the Ameer; but he had sacrificed himself. He had overreached himself in his career of treachery, and was now to pay the penalty of detection. Outram officially reported the circumstances of the Hadjee’s conduct, which had baffled all his best efforts—efforts which, he believed, would have been crowned with success[356]—and the traitor, on his return to Caubul, was arrested by orders of the Shah. Other proofs of his treason were readily found; and he was sentenced to end a life of adventurous vicissitude as a state prisoner in the provinces of Hindostan.[357]

So fled Dost Mahomed Khan across the frontier of Afghanistan. His guns were found in position at Urghundeh by a party of cavalry and horse artillery sent forward to capture them. They were mostly light pieces;[358] and neither the ordnance nor the position which had been taken up, could be considered of a very formidable character.[359] It has been already said, however, that the Ameer had fixed upon another spot on which to meet the advancing armies of the Shah and his allies—a spot well calculated for defence, which, three years afterwards, Shumshoodeen Khan selected for his last stand against the battalions of General Nott; but on which, like his distinguished clansman, he never gave us battle.

On the 6th of August, Shah Soojah and the British army appeared before the walls of Caubul. On the following day the King entered the capital of Afghanistan. The exile of thirty years—the baffled and rejected representative of the legitimacy of the Douranee Empire, was now at the palace gates. The jingling of the money-bags, and the gleaming of the bayonets of the British, had restored him to the throne which, without these glittering aids, he had in vain striven to recover. The Balla Hissar of Caubul now reared its proud front before him, It was truly a great occasion. The King, gorgeous in regal apparel, and resplendent with jewels, rode a white charger, whose equipments sparkled with Asiatic gold.[360] It was a goodly sight to see the coronet, the girdle, and the bracelets which scintillated upon the person of the rider, and turned the fugitive and the outcast into a pageant and a show. There were those present to whom the absence of the Koh-i-noor, which, caged in Hyde Park, has since become so familiar to the sight-seers of Great Britain, suggested strange reminiscences of the King’s eventful career. But the restored monarch, wanting the great diamond, still sparkled into royalty as he rode up to the Balla Hissar, with the white-faced Kings of Afghanistan beside him. In diplomatic costume, Macnaghten and Burnes accompanied the Suddozye puppet. The principal military officers of the British army rode with them. And Moonshee Mohun Lal, flaunting a majestic turban, and looking, in his spruceness, not at all as though his mission in Afghanistan were to do the dirty work of the British diplomatists, made a very conspicuous figure in the gay cavalcade.[361]

But never was there a duller procession. The King and his European supporters rode through the streets of Caubul to the palace in the citadel; but as they went there was no popular enthusiasm; the voice of welcome was still. The inhabitants came to the thresholds of the houses simply to look at the show. They stared at the European strangers more than at the King, who had been brought back to Caubul by the Feringhees; and scarcely even took the trouble to greet the Suddozye Prince with a common salaam. It was more like a funeral procession than the entry of a King into the capital of his restored dominions. But when Shah Soojah reached the palace from which he had so long been absent, he broke out into a paroxysm of childish delight—visited the gardens and apartments with eager activity—commented on the signs of neglect which everywhere presented themselves to his eyes—and received with feelings of genial pleasure the congratulations of the British officers, who soon left his Majesty to himself to enjoy the sweets of restored dominion.