History of the War in Afghanistan, Vol. 2 (of 3) / Third Edition

by Sir John William Kaye

With deep and painful interest Macnaghten watched the progress of events at Herat. The perfidy of Yar Mahomed was so glaring—so unblushing—that the Envoy had not hesitated to recommend offensive proceedings against the state of Herat, to be followed by its re-annexation to the dominions of Shah Soojah. But Lord Auckland when the proposal first came before him, was disinclined to embrace it. He thought it better to forgive Yar Mahomed; and make a further experiment upon the gratitude of the Wuzeer. So, instead of an army, as Macnaghten eagerly recommended, a further supply of money was sent to Herat; and Yar Mahomed continued to intrigue with the Persian Government.[35]

It seemed to the Envoy, at this time, that there was no middle course to be pursued. All through our Central-Asian policy, indeed, there ran two substantive ideas. It was either the bayonet or the money-bag that was to settle everything for us. When Macnaghten found that the rulers of Herat were not to be dragooned into propriety, he declared that there was nothing left for us now but to bribe them. He proposed that a subsidy of two or three lakhs per annum should be granted to Herat; that guns, muskets, and ordnance stores in abundance should be furnished to the state; and in the meanwhile he continued to send up more treasure, with a profusion which startled the Calcutta Government, to be expended on the strengthening of its defences and the sustentation of the people.

But as the treachery of Yar Mahomed became more fully developed, the Governor-General began to mistrust the efficacy of the course of forbearance and conciliation which he had in the first instance recommended. He had authorised Major Todd to declare his forgiveness of all past offences, and was willing to enter upon a new covenant of friendship, rasâ tabulâ, with the offending state. But he was not then acquainted with the fact of the letter to Mahomed Shah, in which, with almost unexampled shamelessness, the writer boasted of the cajolery practised upon the English, who lavished their money freely upon Herat, whilst its rulers were flinging themselves into the arms of Persia; for although that letter had been written in January, and came, therefore, within the margin of those offences for which forgiveness had been declared, it was not until some time afterwards that this crowning act of perfidy was discovered and laid bare before the Governor-General. Then it would seem that Lord Auckland began to waver in his resolution to maintain the independence of Herat. But he was at this time resident at Calcutta. Sir Jasper Nicolls,[36] who had held the chief command at Madras, an old and distinguished officer, who had done good service in the Nepaul war, and was possessed of an amount of Indian experience almost unexampled in an Indian Commander-in-Chief, was at the Presidency. The war in Afghanistan had been extremely distasteful to him from the beginning, and he now viewed with suspicion and alarm all the projects which were passing before him for the despatch of more troops and the diversion of more treasure from their legitimate purposes in Hindostan. No warlike promptings, therefore, from the military side of the Council Chamber, ever stimulated Lord Auckland to bury his legions in the inhospitable defiles of Afghanistan, or to waste the finances of India in insane attempts to change the nature of the chiefs and people of Central Asia, and to bribe them into quiescence and peace.

But ever was it the burden of Macnaghten’s letters, that he could do nothing with Afghanistan until Yar Mahomed and the Sikhs had been chastised; and Herat on the one side, and Peshawur on the other, re-annexed to the Douranee Empire. How strongly he felt on these points may be gathered both from the public and private letters which, in the summer of 1840, he despatched from Caubul to his correspondents in different parts of India and Afghanistan. “This,” he wrote to the Governor-General on the 20th of July, “if the means are available, appears to me the time for accomplishing the great work which your Lordship has commenced, and of effectually frustrating the designs of Russia. Herat should now be taken possession of in the name of Shah Soojah. To leave it in the hands of its present possessors, after the fresh proofs of treachery and enmity towards us which they have displayed, would, in my humble opinion, be most dangerous. Herat may be said to be the pivot of all operations affecting the safety of our possessions and our interests in the East, and thence Balkh and Bokhara would be at all times accessible. The Sikhs should no longer be suffered to throw unreasonable obstacles in the way of our just and necessary objects, and if they really feel (as they are bound by treaty to do) an interest in the success of our operations, they should not object to the passage of our troops, or even to their location in the Punjab, should such a measure be deemed conducive to the welfare of us both. Your Lordship will, I feel assured, forgive the freedom of these remarks. I am convinced that one grand effort will place the safety of our interests on a firm and solid basis.... I shall only add, that should offensive operations against Herat be undertaken, I should not entertain the smallest doubt of their complete and speedy success, especially as we should have many friends in the country.”[37] “We have a beautiful game on our hands,” he wrote in another letter, “if we have the means and inclination to play it properly. Our advance upon Herat would go far to induce the Russian government to attend to any reasonable overtures on the part of the Khan of Khiva.”

And so still was Macnaghten’s cry ever for more money and more bayonets, that he might play the “beautiful game” of knocking down and setting up kingdoms and principalities, with which it became us not to interfere, to the waste of the resources, and the sacrifice of the interests of those whom Providence had especially committed to our care.

In the meanwhile, in the dominions of Shah Soojah everything was going wrong. Macnaghten still professed his belief in the popularity of the King, and was unwilling to acknowledge that the people were not in a state of repose. But every now and then, both in Afghanistan itself, and in the country that had been wrested from Mehrab Khan, awkward evidences of the unsettled state of the country rose up to proclaim far and wide the fact, that there was little loyalty in men’s minds towards the Shah, and little affection for his foreign supporters. The Ghilzyes, whom in the preceding autumn Captain Outram had attacked, and, it was said, reduced, were now again rebelling in Western Afghanistan. The chiefs had fled to Peshawur, had been harboured there during the winter, and now, on the return of the spring, had been slipped from their retreat, strengthened, it was believed, by Sikh gold. At all events, in the month of April they were actively employed raising the tribes and cutting off our communications between Candahar and Caubul. General Nott had by this time assumed the command of the troops at the former place—a place with which his name has since become imperishably associated. Under-rating the strength of the “rebels,” as all were then called who did not appreciate the new order of things which the British had established in Afghanistan, he sent out a party of 200 horsemen, under Captains Walker and Tayler, to clear the road. But the detachment was not strong enough for the purpose. It was necessary to reinforce them. Nott had some good officers about him, but he had not one better than Captain William Anderson, of the Bengal Artillery, commandant of the Shah’s Horse Artillery at Candahar. So, on the 6th of May, the General sent for Anderson, and asked him whether he could prepare himself to march on the following morning, with a regiment of foot, four guns, and 300 horsemen. Anderson answered promptly that the artillery were always ready, and that he would do his best. By seven o’clock on the following morning the detachment was under arms and ready for the march. On the 14th they came up with Tayler and Walker, in the neighbourhood of the Turnuk river. The Ghilzyes were about eight miles distant, variously reported at from 600 to 3000 men. Anderson’s cattle were exhausted; so he halted, and to gain time, opened negotiations with the enemy. The answer sent back by the chiefs was a gallant one. They said, that they had 12,000 men—a firm faith in God and in the justice of their cause—and that they would fight. So Anderson prepared to attack them. Detaching his cavalry to the right and left, he moved down, on the 16th, with his infantry and his guns, and, after a march of some five miles, found the enemy about 2000 strong, occupying some hills in his front. The action was a gallant one on both sides. Twice the enemy charged. The first charge was repulsed by a heavy fire from Turner’s guns—the second was met at the point of the bayonet by Spence’s infantry. Anderson, after the first march from Candahar, beguiled by some accounts of the retirement of the enemy, had sent back the greater part of the cavalry with which he had started; so that he was weak in that arm. But for this, he would have cut up the enemy with heavy slaughter. As it was, the victory was complete. The enemy fled and betook themselves to their mountain fastnesses, whilst Anderson re-formed column and marched on to take up a good position above Olan Robat. The country around was quieted for a time by this victory; but disaffection was not rooted out. Indeed, every action of this kind only increased the bitter animosity of the Ghilzyes, and established unappeasable blood-feuds between our people and the tribes.

But the money-bag was now brought in to complete what the bayonet had commenced. It was expedient to conciliate the Ghilzyes, who had at any time the power of cutting off our communications between Candahar and Caubul; and Macnaghten, therefore, recommended the payment of an annual stipend to the chiefs,[38] on condition that they would restrain their followers from infesting the highways. But neither the bayonet nor the money-bag could keep these turbulent tribes in a continued state of repose.[39]

At the same time, the state of the southern provinces was such as to excite painful disquietude in Macnaghten’s mind. The tract of country which, after the capture of Khelat, had been annexed, by the fiat of the Indian Government, to the territory of Shah Soojah, was perpetually breaking out into fierce spasms of unrest. It had been almost entirely denuded of British troops; and small detachments were sent here and there, or solitary political agents sate themselves down, with only a handful of fighting men at command, as though all their paths were pleasantness and peace, and all their homes bowers of repose. But the Beloochees neither liked their new chief nor his European supporters. The blood of Mehrab Khan was continually crying out against the usurpation. Ever and anon opportunity offered, and it was not neglected. One officer,[40] on his way from the fort of Kahun with a convoy of camels, was overwhelmed and destroyed by the Beloochees. Kahun was invested by the Murrees. Quettah was besieged by the Khaukurs.[41] It was soon apparent that the whole country was in revolt. The youthful son of Mehrab Khan was in the field. The tribes were flocking around him. The chief who had been set up in his place was at Khelat. Lieutenant Loveday was with him. The defences of the place were miserably out of repair. The garrison mainly consisted of the chief’s own people. There were scarcely any means of resistance at their command, when the wild tribes, headed by the family of Nussur Khan, came crowding around the walls of Khelat. The new chief was staunch and true. But there were traitors and evil counsellors in the fort, and Loveday listened to bad advice. No succours could be sent to his relief, for our other positions in Upper Sindh were threatened by the hostile tribes. And so it happened that, after some days of beleaguerment, Khelat fell to the Brahoo chiefs.[42] Newaz Khan abdicated in favour of the youthful son of the prince who had fallen in the defence of his stronghold; Loveday was made a prisoner; and when some months afterwards, a detachment of British troops advanced to the relief of Dadur, which had been attacked by the enemy, the unfortunate young officer was found in the deserted camp of the Brahoos, chained to a camel-pannier, half naked, emaciated, and dead. His throat had just been cut by the sabre of a Beloochee horseman.[43]

But in spite of all these indications of unrest——these signs of the desperate unpopularity of the restored monarchy——Macnaghten clung to the belief that the country was settling down under the rule of Shah Soojah, and never ceased to represent to Lord Auckland and his secretaries that there were no grounds for uneasiness or alarm. He was, indeed, most anxious to remove any impressions of an opposite character which may have forced themselves upon the minds of the Governor-General and his advisers. On the 8th of July he wrote to Mr. Colvin, saying; “You tell me that my letter has left a very painful impression upon you, as manifesting my sense of the weakness of the royal cause. I fear I must have written my mind to very little purpose regarding the state of this country. You rightly conjecture that the Barukzyes have most ‘inflammable material to work upon.’ Of all moral qualities, avarice, credulity, and bigotry, are the most inflammable, and the Afghans have all these three in perfection. They will take Sikh gold, they will believe that Shah Soojah is nobody, and they will esteem it a merit to fight against us. When, in addition to these inducements, there has been positively no government in the country for the last thirty years, it will cease to be wondered at that commotion can easily be raised by intriguers possessing a long contiguity of frontier, and having, besides, all the means and appliances to ensure success. Though our presence here, doubtless, strengthens Shah Soojah, it must be remembered that in some sense it weakens him. There is no denying that he has been supported by infidels; and were we not here, he would adopt Afghan means of suppressing disturbances such as we could not be a party to. To break faith with a rebel is not deemed a sin by the most moral Afghan; and assassination was an every day occurrence. By the encouragement of blood-feuds, it is notorious that Dost Mahomed propped up the little power he had beyond the gates of Caubul.”[44]

It vexed Macnaghten’s spirit to think that he could not infuse into other British officers in Afghanistan some of his own overflowing faith in the popularity of the Shah, or his own respect for the royal person. From the very outset of the campaign the popular feeling throughout the army had been strong against Shah Soojah, and the conduct of his Majesty himself had not tended to lessen it.[45] And the worst of it was, that all kinds of stories about the haughty exclusiveness of the Shah, and the low estimation in which he was held both by the British officers and by his own subjects, were perpetually making their way to Government House, and there finding ready acceptance. It irritated Macnaghten to receive letters from Colvin, commenting on failure, and hinting at mismanagement in Afghanistan. At last his patience gave way, and on the 4th of August he wrote to the Private Secretary, bitterly complaining of the attention paid by Government to the stories of persons afflicted with the “imposthume of too much leisure,” who, he said, were daily fabricating the grossest falsehoods against his Majesty and the authorities, as the supposed cause of their detention in a land “not overflowing with beer and cheroots.” “The Shah,” he added, “is conciliatory in the extreme to all his chiefs. He listens with the greatest patience to all their requests and representations, however unreasonable, and he cannot bear to give any of them a direct refusal on any occasion. You have been told that he is a ruler who seeks to get on ‘without trusting, rewarding, or punishing’ any of his own people. It is nonsense upon the face of it, and is contradicted by every hour’s experience. I have nothing more to say about his Majesty’s character than I have already said. I believe him to be the best and ablest man in his kingdom. The history of the revenues of this poor country may be given in a few words. The whole is consumed in the pay of the priesthood, the soldiery, and the support of his Majesty’s household. You shall have the particulars of these as soon as I can get half an hour’s leisure. You know we are solemnly bound to refrain from interference in the internal administration; and, in my advice, I have been cautious to urge no innovations which could, at this early stage of our connection with them, shock the prejudices of the people.”