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

by Sir John William Kaye

They passed out of cantonments. As they went, Macnaghten remembered that a beautiful Arab horse, which Akbar Khan had much coveted, and which the Envoy had purchased from its owner,[198] had been left behind. Mackenzie was sent back for it, that it might now be presented to the Sirdar. Lawrence was told to hold himself in readiness to ride to the Balla Hissar, to communicate with the King. There were many suspicious appearances which excited the apprehensions of all but the Envoy. Crowds of armed Afghans were hovering about the cantonment, and clustering in the neighbourhood of Mahmood Khan’s fort. Macnaghten saw nothing but the prospect of escaping the disgrace of a sudden retreat from Afghanistan. He looked neither to the right nor to the left. He had a great object in view, and he kept his eyes steadily upon it. He did not even, when the chiefs met him, perceive that a brother of Ameen-oollah Khan was one of the party.

Near the banks of the river, midway between Mahmood Khan’s fort and the bridge, about 600 yards from the cantonment, there were some small hillocks, on the further slope of which, where the snow was lying less thickly than on other parts, some horse-cloths were now spread by one of Akbar Khan’s servants. The English officers and the Afghan Sirdars had exchanged salutations and conversed for a little while on horseback. The Arab horse, with which Mackenzie had returned, had been presented to Akbar Khan, who received it with many expressions of thanks, and spoke also with gratitude of the gift of the pistols which he had received on the preceding day.[199] It was now proposed that they should dismount. The whole party accordingly repaired to the hill-side. Macnaghten threw himself, in a reclining position, on the bank; Trevor and Mackenzie, burdened with presentiments of evil, seated themselves beside him. Lawrence stood behind his chief until urged by one of the Khans to seat himself, when he knelt down on one knee, in the attitude of a man ready for immediate action. A question from Akbar Khan, who sate beside Macnaghten, opened the business of the conference. He abruptly asked the Envoy if he were ready to carry out the proposals of the preceding evening? “Why not?” asked Macnaghten. The Afghans were by this time gathering around in numbers, which excited both the surprise and the suspicion of Lawrence and Mackenzie, who said, that if the conference was to be a secret one, the intruders ought to be removed. With a movement of doubtful sincerity some of the chiefs then lashed out with their whips at the closing circle; but Akbar Khan said that their presence was of no consequence, as they were all in the secret with him.

Scarcely were the words uttered, when the Envoy and his companions were violently seized from behind. The movement was sudden and surprising. There was a scene of terrible confusion, which no one can distinctly describe. The officers of the Envoy’s staff were dragged away, and compelled each to mount a horse ridden by an Afghan chief. Soon were they running the gauntlet through a crowd of Ghazees, who struck out at them as they passed. Trevor unfortunately slipped from his insecure seat behind Dost Mahomed Khan, and was cut to pieces on the spot, Lawrence and Mackenzie, more fortunate, reached Mahmood Khan’s fort alive.

In the meanwhile, the Envoy himself was struggling desperately on the ground with Akbar Khan. The look of wondering horror that sat upon his upturned face will not be forgotten by those who saw it to their dying day. The only words he was heard to utter were, “Az barae Khoda” (”For God’s sake”). They were, perhaps, the last words spoken by one of the bravest gentlemen that ever fell a sacrifice to his erring faith in others. He had struggled from the first manfully against his doom, and now these last manful struggles cost the poor chief his life. Exasperated past all control by the resistance of his victim, whom he designed only to seize, Akbar Khan drew a pistol from his girdle—one of those pistols for the gift of which only a little while before he had profusely thanked the Envoy—and shot Macnaghten through the body. Whether the wretched man died on the spot—or whether he was slain by the infuriated Ghazees, who now pressed eagerly forward, is not very clearly known—but these miserable fanatics flung themselves upon the prostrate body of the English gentleman, and hacked it to pieces with their knives.

Thus perished William Hay Macnaghten; struck down by the hand of the favourite son of Dost Mahomed. Thus perished as brave a gentleman as ever, in the midst of fiery trial, struggled manfully to rescue from disgrace the reputation of a great country. Throughout those seven weeks of unparalleled difficulty and danger he had confronted with stedfast courage every new peril and perplexity that had risen up before him; and a man of peace himself, had resisted the timid counsels of the warriors, and striven to infuse, by the manliness of his example, some strength into their fainting hearts. Whatever may be the judgment of posterity on other phases of his character, and other incidents of his career, the historian will ever dwell with pride upon the unfailing courage and constancy of the man who, with everything to discourage and depress him, surrounded by all enervating influences, was ever eager to counsel the nobler and the manlier course, ever ready to bear the burdens of responsibility, and face the assaults of danger. There was but one civilian at Caubul; and he was the truest soldier in the camp.

It is not easy to estimate correctly the character of William Macnaghten. Of the moral and intellectual attributes of the ill-fated Envoy very conflicting accounts have been rendered; and it is probable that in all these conflicting accounts some leaven of truth resides. There are few men whose characters are not made up of antagonistic qualities, and Macnaghten was not one of the few. In early life he had distinguished himself by the extent of his philological acquirements; and was reputed as one of the most accomplished Oriental scholars in the presidencies of India. With a deep insight into the character of the natives of the East was blended the kindliest sympathy and toleration towards them. In the knowledge, indeed, of the native languages, the institutions, and the character of the people of Hindostan, he was surpassed by none of the many accomplished officers who have made them their study. His long connexion with the judicial department of the public service had afforded him opportunities, which his temper and his taste led him to improve, of maturing and perfecting this essential branch of official knowledge. In attention to business he was one of the most unwearying of men: his pen was ever in his hand; he wrote rapidly, and expressed himself on most subjects with clearness; he was quick in his apprehension of the views of others, and accommodated himself with facility to shifting circumstances. But at this point there are many who believe that they cease to tread upon undebateable ground. It is admitted that he was an accomplished Oriental scholar, a good judicial officer, an apt secretary, and a kind-hearted man; but it is denied that, in any enlarged acceptation of the word, he is entitled to be called a statesman.

Sir Alexander Burnes was constantly writing to his friends in India, “Macnaghten is an excellent man, but quite out of place here.” Burnes was not an unprejudiced witness; and he, doubtless, expressed himself in language too sweeping and unqualified. But there are many who believe with Burnes, that Macnaghten was out of his place in Afghanistan. It is hard to say who would not have been more or less out of place, in the situation which he was called upon suddenly to occupy. The place, indeed, was one to which no English officer ought to have been called. For a Calcutta Secretary to be at Caubul at all was necessarily to be out of place. If Macnaghten, suddenly transplanted from the bureau of an Anglo-Indian Governor to the stirrup of an Afghan monarch, is chargeable with some errors, it is, perhaps, more just, as it is more generous, to wonder not that those errors were so numerous, but that they were so few. To govern such a people as the Afghans through such a King as Shah Soojah, was an experiment in which an English officer might fail without the sacrifice of his reputation. When we come to think, now, of what was attempted, we cease to marvel at the result. The marvel is, that utter ruin did not overtake the scheme at an earlier date—that the day of reckoning was so long delayed. The policy itself was so inherently faulty that success was an unattainable result.

The causes of the failure are not to be sought in the personal character of the Envoy. That character may have been one of many accidental circumstances which may in some sort have helped to develop it; but, sooner or later, ruin must have overtaken the scheme, let who might be the agent of it. In this view of the case Macnaghten is not to be acquitted; but it is on Macnaghten the Secretary, not on Macnaghten the Envoy, that our censures must then descend. Macnaghten the Envoy, however, was not free from human infirmity. Most men have an unhappy faculty of believing what they wish to be true. In Macnaghten this propensity was unnaturally developed. God had cursed him with a strong delusion that he should believe a lie. He believed in the popularity of Shah Soojah and the tranquillity of Afghanistan. To have admitted the non-existence of either, would have been to have admitted the failure of the policy which he had recommended, and with which he was, in no small measure, personally identified. But Macnaghten did not seek to deceive others: he was himself deceived. When he spoke of the popularity of Shah Soojah, he believed that the Shah was popular; when he reported the tranquillity of Afghanistan, he believed that the country was tranquil. He was sincere, but he was miserably mistaken. Everything he saw took colour in his eyes from the hues of his own sanguine temperament. From the day when on entering Candahar he beheld a joyous people welcoming their restored monarch with feelings almost amounting to adoration, to the last luckless day of his life, when he went out to the fatal conference, firmly believing in the good faith and good feeling of his Afghan allies, he continued steadily to create for himself all kinds of favourable omens and encouraging symptoms, and lived in a state of blind confidence unparalleled in the history of human infatuation. To this self-deception some of the finest qualities of his nature largely contributed. The very goodness of his heart and generosity of his disposition moved him to regard the character and conduct of others with a favour to which they were seldom entitled. Macnaghten was too nobleminded to be suspicious—but he erred on the other side; he wanted some of the sterner stuff which will not suffer the soundness of the judgment to be weakened by the generosity of the heart.

When not blinded by his partiality for any pet projects of his own, he was by no means wanting in political sagacity. He could decide justly, as he could promptly, on points of detail as they rose up one by one before him; but as soon as anything occurred to cast discredit upon the general policy of the Afghan expedition, by indicating the germs of failure, he resolutely refused to see what others saw, and censured those others for seeing it. Hence it was that he received coldly, if not contemptuously, those elaborate general reviews of the condition and prospects of Afghanistan which Burnes and Conolly thrust upon him, and resented every effort that was made by Rawlinson and others to draw his attention towards the unquiet and feverish symptoms which, from time to time, developed themselves in different parts of the unsettled country. His correspondence indicates an unwillingness, rather than an inability, to take any large and comprehensive views of Afghan policy. He seems to have shrunk from applying to that policy the test of any great principles; and to have addressed himself rather to the palliation of accidental symptoms than to the eradication of those constitutional diseases which were eating into the very life of the government which he directed.