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

by Sir John William Kaye

[December, 1841-January, 1842.]

The Capitulation—Supineness of the Garrison—Negotiations resumed—Efforts of Major Pottinger—Demands of the Chiefs—The Final Treaty—Humiliation of the Garrison—General Remarks.

It is recorded, that on the 23rd of December, 1841, the representative of the British Government was slain at a conference with the Afghan Sirdars, within sight of the British cantonments at Caubul; and it is now to be added to the record that this—the foulest indignity that one nation can put upon another, the murder of an ambassador in the performance of his ambassadorial duties—roused not the dormant energies of the military chiefs, or awakened them to a sense of the depths of humiliation in which they were plunging their unhappy country. The British Envoy was killed, in broad day, and upon the open plain, but not a gun was fired from the ramparts of the cantonment; not a company of troops sallied out to rescue or to avenge. The body of the British Minister was left to be hacked to pieces, and his mangled remains were paraded, in barbarous triumph, about the streets and bazaars of the city.

The military chiefs assert that they did not know, until the day after his death, that Macnaghten had been murdered. Elphinstone says it was thought by himself and others that the Envoy had proceeded to the city for the purpose of negotiating.[202] But there were those in cantonments who had seen the tumult at the place of conference, and who knew that some violence had been committed. One officer said that he distinctly saw the Envoy fall; and that afterwards he could see the Ghazees hacking to pieces the body of the murdered man. If the General did not tremble for the safety of the political chief, he was the only man in the garrison who encouraged the belief that the lives of the Envoy and his companions, if they had not been already sacrificed, were not now in imminent danger. There was something very remarkable, if not suspicious, in the unwonted confidence of the General at this time. It was not his habit to look upon the bright side of things, or to take any great pains to encourage and reassure the troops under his command. He had, on almost every occasion, taken the most desponding view of affairs, and freely expressed his apprehension of dangers, which had no existence save in his own mind. But now he sent round his Adjutant-General to the troops to assure them of the Envoy’s safety. They were all under arms. Captain Grant rode to the head of each regiment, and by Elphinstone’s orders told them that the conference had been interrupted by the Ghazees—that the Envoy and his companions had been removed to the city—but that they would return immediately to cantonments. Some who heard this authoritative announcement still believed that they would never hear the Envoy’s voice, or look upon his living face again. The whole garrison was in a state of painful excitement; and when the shades of evening fell over the cantonment, and still no certain intelligence of the fate of Macnaghten had arrived, not an officer joined the mess-table of his regiment, or sate down to his solitary meal, without a leaden weight of gloom and despondency at his heart.

The day, indeed, had been one of intense anxiety. It had been, too, a busy stirring time within the cantonment walls. The authorities seem to have been stimulated into something of activity at home, though they could not bring themselves to do anything abroad. They got up a little war against the Afghans, whom business or curiosity had brought into cantonments, and who were now either eagerly trafficking or idly looking about them in the square. They had been doing the same, and more, for many weeks—at a time, too, when danger resulted from their spying the nakedness of the land. But now that this danger had passed, the military authorities began for the first time to think of expelling the Afghans from cantonments. All the men of rank who could be found were placed under arrest; whilst hundreds of less note, apprehending that a similar fate might be awaiting them, rushed towards the different gates, jostling and upsetting each other on the icy ground, and creating a scene of indescribable confusion in their efforts to escape. A lull succeeded; but as the evening advanced, the noise and confusion in the city were such that the troops were again turned out and the cantonment-works manned, in expectation of coming dangers. The Ghazees were mustering, in the belief that the British troops would attack the city and avenge the murder of their ambassador. But all thought of doing had long ago passed away from the minds of our military chiefs. They had settled down into the belief that now it had become their duty only to suffer.

With the morrow came a confirmation of the worst fears of those who never thought to see the Envoy reenter the cantonment-gates. They waited for tidings of him, and tidings came at last. Though he had been killed almost within musket-shot of our ramparts, nothing had been done by the military chiefs to solve the painful doubts which perplexed them throughout that disastrous 23rd of December. It was thought that if they only waited long enough for it, some certain intelligence would come at last; and it came at last, on the afternoon of the 24th, in the shape of a letter from Captain Lawrence, and certain overtures from the confederate chiefs, seeking a renewal of the negotiations on the basis of the treaty initiated by the deceased Envoy.

As the game of negotiation was now to be commenced anew, it was necessary to secure the services of a new negotiator. There was a man then in cantonments of whom little had been seen or heard for some weeks, and of whom the chroniclers and journalists of the insurrection had up to this time made little or no mention, in connexion with the stirring scenes in which Macnaghten had been the chief actor, but to whom the garrison now turned as to the only man fitted to take the Envoy’s place. Ever since his arrival from Charekur, Major Pottinger had been incapacitated from active employment by the wound he had received in the early part of November. The severity of his sufferings had necessarily been much increased by the hardships of his perilous journey from Charekur to Caubul, and during the greater part of the time since his arrival at the latter place he had been confined to his bed. But he was now, in the difficult conjuncture that had arisen, ready to bring all the manly vigour and high courage which had done so much to roll back from the gates of Herat the tide of Persian invasion, to the new duty of endeavouring to rescue his country from the degradation in which it had been sunk by the faint hearts of the military chiefs.

The evening of the 24th saw Pottinger in council with General Elphinstone, Brigadiers Shelton and Anquetil, and Colonel Chambers, the four senior officers of the garrison. The chiefs had sent in a letter, sealed by Mahomed Zemaun Khan, Akbar Khan, Ameen-oollah Khan, Oosman Khan, and others, with a memorandum of the terms on which they were prepared to grant the army a safe conduct to Peshawur. This was now translated to the military officers, who were eager to conclude the engagement into which Macnaghten had consented to enter for the withdrawal of all the British troops from Afghanistan. Caubul, Candahar, Ghuznee, and Jellalabad were all to be immediately evacuated. Dost Mahomed was to be released from captivity, and restored, with all other Afghan prisoners, to his own country, while Shah Soojah was to remain, or to depart, as he might please; and in the event of his electing the former course, to receive an annual pension of a lakh of rupees. A certain number of English gentlemen were to be left behind as hostages for the evacuation of the country by the British troops, whilst certain Afghan chiefs were to accompany our retiring garrisons to guarantee their safe conduct to the frontier. Such were the main features of the treaty which Pottinger found in course of negotiation when the desperate game of diplomacy was placed in his hands. It need not be added that large sums of money were to be paid to the chiefs, as the price of the immunity which they pledged themselves to guarantee to our discomfited army on their retreat through the dreadful passes.

To Pottinger even these terms appeared deeply humiliating, and, had the military authorities consented to aid him, he would have rejected them with scorn and defiance. But he stood before the leaders of our army alone and unsupported. It was urged that further resistance was useless, and that Macnaghten had already pledged his country to the acceptance of the proposed terms. So the draft-treaty was sent back, with some notes of assent appended to the several articles. It would have been strange if the chiefs had not then risen in their demands—if they had not dictated to our unhappy people new terms more grievous than those which had already been accepted. Four additional articles were sent back with the original draft. The first stipulated that all the coin in the public treasury should be given up to the chiefs; the second, that the British should abandon all their guns but six; the third, that all the spare muskets should be left behind; and the fourth, that “General Sale, together with his wife and daughter, and the other gentlemen of rank who are married and have children,” should be left as hostages at Caubul, until the arrival of Dost Mahomed and the other Afghan prisoners from Hindostan.