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

by Sir John William Kaye

The movement had the desired effect. At all events, Jubbar Khan set out for Bameean. Nor was this the only noticeable result of the reconnaissance. Beyond the valley or glen of Kamurd, which stretches northward from Syghan across the great mountain-range, lay the isolated fortress of Bajgah. When our reconnoitring party came upon this place, to their surprise they found it deserted. It belonged to one Syud Mahomed, who now appeared, and declared that he had vacated it for the express purpose of making a tender of the fort to the British, as an outpost that might be of great service to them. A small party of infantry were accordingly placed in the fort, and the circumstance was immediately reported to Dr. Lord. Lord grasped at the offer; and in the strongest terms recommended both to Cotton and Macnaghten the permanent occupation of the post. His arguments prevailed; and on the 29th of June the Shah’s 4th Regiment, under Captain Hay, was sent to garrison this isolated fort. On the 3rd of July, Jubbar Khan arrived at Bameean with the remaining members of the Ameer’s family, and a large party of retainers.

It soon became obvious that the occupation of Bajgah was a mistake. Sturt, the engineer, who had been sent up to survey the passes, pronounced upon its unfitness as a military post. It was plain, too, that the temper of the surrounding tribes was very different from that of the population about Bameean. At the latter place the soldiery and the peasantry were on the best possible terms. About Bajgah the people looked upon the new comers with a jealous eye. All the efforts of Captain Hay to establish a friendly intercourse between himself and the inhabitants failed. They would not bring in grain; they would not bring in forage. Soon their hostility began to evince itself in a more alarming manner. “On the extreme summits of the northern hills overlooking Bajgah, were frequently seen groups of horsemen, apparently watching the movements of the people in the deep glen below.”[49]

Unfortunately, at this time Hay, the only officer at Bajgah, was incapacitated by sickness. So he sent to Syghan for Lieutenant Golding; and on the 2nd of August sent out a party of two companies, under Sergeant Douglas, to escort that officer to Bajgah. They performed their march without interruption, and at night bivouacked under the walls of a fort held by one Sula Beg. The chief received them with an outside show of friendliness; and then despatched a message to another chief, Baba Beg, of Ajur, saying, “See! I have the Feringhees in a dieg (caldron). They are ready to your hand. If you are not here by noontide to-morrow, I will yield up my fort to them.”

Morning came. There was no appearance of the party whom they had been sent to meet; so Douglas was preparing to return to Bajgah, when a heavy matchlock fire was opened on his men, from the fort and the surrounding orchards; and presently a party of Oosbeg horsemen appeared in sight, and charged down upon the little band, who met and repulsed the attack. It was a fine thing then to see the bold front which Douglas and his men showed to the enemy, as they made their way, exposed to a heavy matchlock fire, through the dense orchards and wilderness of gardens. But many fell on the retreat; and many more would have fallen, for their ammunition was well-nigh gone, had not Sturt suddenly appeared with two more companies of the same sturdy Goorkha Regiment,[50] and rescued them from inevitable destruction. The enemy turned and fled; and Sturt and Douglas returned to Bajgah.

The evil tidings of this disaster soon reached Caubul. It was a time of deep anxiety. As this month of August advanced, the perplexities which distracted the mind of the envoy, gathered around him more closely and more tormentingly. A series of small but mortifying failures, of which this Bajgah affair was one, not without a significance of their own, kept him in a constant state of excitability, and left him neither rest of body nor serenity of mind. On the 12th of August he wrote to Major Rawlinson, saying, “There has been an awkward business near Bajgah, owing to the incapacity of the officer in command of the 4th or Ghoorka Regiment. He has allowed a company to lose thirty or forty men, killed and wounded, I think but little of this affair. Lord has gone off to put things to rights. Macgregor has failed also in his efforts to set matters to rights in Bajore. His invincibles have been vanquished, and he has lost a gun. All these little accidents happening at once are enough to disgust one; but, Inshallah! the Company’s Nusseeb will prove superior to them all.”

A week later, and it had become still more apparent that, even in the very neighbourhood of the capital, sedition was weaving plots for the subversion of the authority of the Shah; and that the Sikhs were intriguing from a distance for the restoration of Dost Mahomed. On the 19th of August, the envoy wrote to the same correspondent, that he had “intercepted a letter which, if genuine (as he had every reason to believe it to be), implicated many chiefs in meditated insurrection in favour of Dost Mahomed.” It distinctly stated too, that Nao Nahal Singh had promised pecuniary aid in furtherance of the design. “I am now just going to his Majesty,” he added, “to consult as to what should be done.” It was time, indeed, that the King and the envoy should take counsel together. Dost Mahomed had escaped from Bokhara.

For a while the fugitive Ameer had tasted the bitterness of close confinement in the city of Bokhara. His sons, Afzul Khan and Akbar Khan, shared his captivity. We know how the Khan of this inhospitable place is wont to treat his Christian guests. His Mahomedan visitors, whom he at first received with an outside show of kindness, were dealt with somewhat more leniently. But the natural ferocity of the man was not to be kept down. Dost Mahomed nearly became the victim of a treacherous murder. Baffled in this attempt on the life of his prisoners, and not daring openly to slay them, the Bokhara Ameer kept them for a time under strict surveillance, forbidding them even to repair to worship in the mosques. This inhospitable treatment seems to have called forth a remonstrance from the Shah of Persia, in consequence of which greater liberty was allowed to the unfortunate Princes. They made the most of the relaxation, and effected their escape. Many romantic incidents are told about this flight from Bokhara. The horse, on which the Ameer fled, fell exhausted by the way-side. So he transferred himself to a caravan, which he chanced to overtake, and escaped detection only by dyeing his beard with ink. The Wullee of Khooloom, with unshaken fidelity, opened his arms to receive his old ally, and placed all his resources at his command.

It was not long before the Ameer again found himself at the head of a considerable force. His family, with the exception of the two sons who had shared his captivity in Bokhara, were in the hands of the British. He knew the danger of his determined course, and when reminded that his wives and children were in our power, sorrowfully replied, “I have no family; I have buried my wives and children.” As the Oosbeg fighting men flocked to the standards of Dost Mahomed and the Wullee of Khooloom, the hopes of the former seemed to rise; and his determination to strike a vigorous blow for the recovery of his lost empire, gathered strength and consistency. To have cut up the Bameean detachment, and emerging from the Hindoo-Koosh, to have appeared on the plains below flushed with victory, raising the old war-cry in the name of the Prophet, and profiting by the unpopularity of Shah Soojah and his supporters, in that part of the country, would have been a noble achievement—one which would have rendered easy his triumphant progress to the very walls of the capital. He determined to make the effort; and early in September advanced upon Bameean, with a force of six or eight thousand men.

The month of September brought with it no mitigation of the anxieties of the envoy. From the country beyond the Hindoo-Koosh came exaggerated tidings of the successful progress of Dost Mahomed. “It is reported to-day,” wrote Macnaghten on the 3rd, “that all Toorkistan is in arms against the Feringhees and the Moofsids (rebels) here are very hard at work. It is certain that Hybuk has fallen to the Dost, and it is probable that Codrington will have to retire on Syghan. I put the best face on matters, and a slight success which our troops had at Bajgah over a party of the enemy, furnishes me with the foundation of a good story.”