CHAPTER III.
[November, 1841.]
Progress of the Insurrection—General Elphinstone—His Infirmities—Recall of Brigadier Shelton to Cantonments—Capture of the Ricka-bashee Fort—Intrigues with the Afghan Chiefs—The Envoy’s Correspondence with Mohun Lal.
The insurrection had now been raging for a week. The enemy had increased in numbers and in daring. The troops in the British cantonments were dispirited and disheartened. The General had begun to talk and to write about negotiation. The Envoy was attempting to buy off the enemy. Nothing had yet been done to avert the disastrous and disgraceful catastrophe which now threatened to crown our misfortunes. It was plain that something must be done. Any change would be a change for the better.
The officers, who served under General Elphinstone throughout this unhappy crisis, have invariably spoken of him with tenderness and respect. He was an honourable gentleman—a kind-hearted man; and he had once been a good soldier. His personal courage has never been questioned. Regardless of danger and patient under trial, he exposed himself without reserve, and bore his sufferings without complaining. But disease had broken down his physical strength, and enfeebled his understanding. He had almost lost the use of his limbs. He could not walk; he could hardly ride. The gout had crippled him in a manner that it was painful to contemplate. You could not see him engaged in the most ordinary concerns of peaceful life without an emotion of lively compassion. He was fit only for the invalid establishment on the day of his arrival in India. It was a mockery to talk of his commanding a division of the army in the quietest district of Hindostan. But he was selected by Lord Auckland, against the advice of the Commander-in-Chief and the remonstrances of the Agra governor, to assume the command of that division of the army which of all others was most likely to be actively employed, and which demanded, therefore, the greatest amount of energy and activity in its commander. Among the general officers of the Indian army were many able and energetic men, with active limbs and clear understandings. There was one—a cripple, whose mental vigour much suffering had enfeebled; and he was selected by the Governor-General to command the army in Afghanistan.
Ever since his arrival at the head quarters at Caubul he had been, in his own words, “unlucky in the state of his health.” From the beginning of May to the beginning of October he had been suffering, with little intermission, from fever and rheumatic gout. Sometimes he had been confined wholly to his couch; at others he was enabled to go abroad in a palanquin. During one or two brief intervals he had sufficiently recovered his strength to trust himself on the back of a horse. He was in the enjoyment of one of these intervals—but expecting every day to relinquish a burden which he was so ill able to bear[133]—when on the 2nd of November, whilst inspecting the guards, he “had a very severe fall—the horse falling upon him,”[134] and he was compelled to return to his quarters. From that time, though he never spared himself, it was painfully obvious that the Caubul army was without a chief. The General was perplexed—bewildered. He was utterly without resources of his own. A crisis had come upon him, demanding all the energies of a robust constitution and a vigorous understanding; and it had found him with a frame almost paralysed by disease, and a mind quite clouded by suffering. He had little knowledge of the political condition of Afghanistan, of the feelings of the people, of the language they spoke, or the country they inhabited. He was compelled, therefore, to rely upon the information of others, and to seek the advice of those with whom he was associated. So circumstanced, the ablest and most confident general would have been guided by the counsels of the British Envoy. But General Elphinstone was guided by every man’s counsels—generally by the last speaker’s—by captains and subalterns, by any one who had a plan to propose or any kind of advice to offer. He was, therefore, in a constant state of oscillation; now inclining to one opinion, now to another; now determining upon a course of action, now abandoning it; the resolutions of one hour giving way before the doubts of its successor, until, in the midst of these vacillations, the time to strike passed away for ever, and the loss was not to be retrieved.
In such a conjuncture, there could have been no greater calamity than the feeble indecision of the military commander. Promptitude of action was the one thing demanded by the exigences of the occasion; but instead of promptitude of action, there was nothing but hesitation and incertitude; long delays and small doings, worse than nothing; paltry demonstrations, looking as though they were expressly designed as revelations of the lamentable weakness of our arms, and the more lamentable imbecility of our counsels. To the Envoy all this was miserably apparent. It was apparent to the whole garrison. It was not possible altogether to supersede the General. He was willing, with all his incompetency, to serve his country, and there was no authority in Afghanistan to remove him from his command. But something, it was thought, might be done by associating with him, in the command of the cantonment force, an officer of a more robust frame and more energetic character. Brigadier Shelton was known to be an active and a gallant soldier. Macnaghten counselled his recall from the Balla Hissar, and the General believing, or perhaps only hoping, that he would find a willing coadjutor in the Brigadier, despatched a note to him with instructions to come into cantonments.
Taking with him only a regiment of the Shah’s troops and a single gun, the Brigadier quitted the Balla Hissar on the morning of the 9th of November, and made his way, without any interruption, to the cantonment, in broad daylight. The garrison welcomed him with cordiality. He came amongst them almost as a deliverer. Great things were expected from him. He was beloved neither by officers nor by men; but he was held to possess some sturdy qualities, and never to shrink from fighting. Little or nothing was known of his aptitude as a leader. He had seldom or never been placed in a position of responsible command. But the time for weighing nice questions of generalship had long ago passed away. The garrison were content to look for a commander to lead them against the enemy, with sufficient promptitude and in sufficient numbers to protect them against the certainty of failure. But a week of almost unbroken disaster had dispirited and enfeebled them. Everything that Shelton saw and heard was of a nature to discourage him. Anxious faces were around him, and desponding words saluted his ears. He went round the cantonments, and saw at once how large a force it required to defend such extensive works, and how small a body of troops could be spared for external operations. Everything, indeed, was against him. He had not been sent for, until a series of disasters had crippled our means of defence, emboldened the enemy, disheartened the garrison, and brought the grim shadow of starvation close to the cantonment walls.[135]