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

by Sir John William Kaye

To have placed Shah Soojah on the throne, and to have left him again to be driven back an outcast and a fugitive, to seek an asylum in the provinces of India, would have been a failure and a disgrace. It was the object of the British Government, therefore, to hedge him in a little longer with our authority, and to establish him more firmly on the throne. But so far from these being synonymous terms, and co-existent states of being, they were utterly antagonistic and irreconcileable. The more we surrounded the King with our authority, the less firmly he was fixed on the throne. It might have been sound policy to have continued the occupation of Afghanistan, if our continuance there had tended to secure the supremacy of the Shah, and to establish him in the affections of the people; but it was not in the nature of things that the effect of the experiment should not have been diametrically the reverse.

So prodigious an anomaly was the system itself, that, except so far as it affected the period of its dissolution, retarding or expediting it by a few months or a few years, the agency employed in the vain attempt to uphold it was a matter of little moment. But that agency was assuredly not of a character to enhance the chances even of its temporary success. Shah Soojah had brought from Loodhianah one Moollah Shikore[12]—a man who had shared his exile, and acted as his confidential agent. He was old, and enfeebled by age. His memory was gone; so were his ears. For some offence against his Majesty in former days, he had forfeited those useful appendages. A happy faculty of remembering the persons and personal histories of men, is one of the most useful ingredients in the character of a statesman, and it is one which, in rare exuberance, some of our greatest statesmen have possessed. But it was said of this Moollah Shikore, that men whom he had seen on one day he forgot on the next.[13] The King had abundant faith in his loyalty, and confidence in his personal attachment. The man had managed the stunted household of the royal exile with such address, that it was believed that he could now manage the affairs of his master’s restored dominions. So he was made minister of state. They called him Wuzeer. But his master did not acknowledge the title, and the British did not call him by it. “Bad ministers,” wrote Burnes, “are in every government solid grounds for unpopularity; and I doubt if ever a King had a worse set than Shah Soojah.” The system itself was rotten to the very core; and the agency employed was, perhaps, the corruptest in the world. Had there been much more vitality and strength in the system, Moollah Shikore and his deputies would soon have given it its death-blow.

But though feeble in other respects, this Moollah Shikore was not feeble in his hatred of the British. The minister oppressed the people. The people appealed to the British functionaries. The British functionaries remonstrated with the minister. And the minister punished the people for appealing.[14] The Shah and the Moollah chafed under the interference of the British. But they loved the British money; and they required the support of the British bayonets. And so bravely for a time worked the double government at Caubul.

Whilst such was the state of things at the supreme seat of government, there was little less to create dissatisfaction in the internal administration of Candahar. The principal revenue officers were two Sheeahs, the sons of that Hussein Khan, the obnoxious minister whom Shah Zemaun had put to death. Their names were Mahomed Takee Khan and Wulloo Mahomed Khan. Cradled in intense enmity to the Douranees, they had grown into unscrupulous persecutors of the tribes. Selected by the Barukzye Sirdars as willing agents of those humiliating and enfeebling measures by which they sought to extinguish the vitality of the Douranees, they entered upon their work in a ruthless and uncompromising spirit, and plied the instruments of their office with remarkable success for the persecution and degradation of their enemies. The hatred with which the Douranees regarded these men was too deep to suffer them to embrace with complacency any measures, however conciliatory in themselves, of which the old Barukzye tools were the executors. Such unpopular agents were enough to render distasteful the most popular measures. The Douranees were, indeed, greatly disappointed. Do what they would, they could not obtain a paramount influence in the state. The door was closed against them by the British janitors who kept watch around the palace; and the chiefs soon began to chafe under the foreign intrusion which deprived them of all ascendancy in the councils of the restored monarch, and prevented them from regaining the full extent of those financial privileges which they had enjoyed under his Suddozye predecessors.[15]

And so it happened that, from the very dawn of the Restoration, unpopular and unscrupulous Afghan agents were employed to carry out a monstrous system. Of a very different character were the British agents upon whom now devolved the duty of watching the proceedings of the native executive, and, without any palpable acknowledged interference, virtually controlling it. The political agents scattered about Afghanistan have drawn down upon themselves a larger measure of vituperation than perhaps has ever descended upon any body of British functionaries. They were mixed up with an unholy and a disastrous policy, and perhaps some little of the evil that subsequently developed itself may be attributed to their personal defects; but, on the whole, they were not unwisely chosen, and it is doubtful if other men would have done better. At all events, when Burnes, Conolly, Leech, Pottinger, Todd, Lord, and others, who had previously made themselves acquainted with the country and the people, were sent to overlook the progress of affairs in different parts of Afghanistan, it cannot be said that no care was taken to select our agents from among the officers who were most qualified by previous experience to perform the new duties devolving upon them. Macnaghten’s assistants were, for the most part, men of local experience and proved activity. The Governor-General had imparted to the Envoy his ideas of the manner in which it would be most expedient to employ them.[16] And it may be doubted whether, if the system itself had not been so radically defective, it would have ever broken down under the agency which was commissioned to carry it into effect.

Such, traced in dim outline, were some of the elements of decay planted deep in the constitution of the political system which we were attempting to carry out in Afghanistan. Always of a sanguine temperament, and one whose wish was ever father of his thoughts, Macnaghten did not see that already the seeds of a great and sweeping revolution were being sown broadcast across the whole length and breadth of the land. He was prepared, and it was right that he should have been, for local and accidental outbreaks. The Afghans are a turbulent and lawless people, little inclined to succumb to authority, and have a rough way of demonstrating their dislikes. Had he expected the authority of the Shah to be universally established in a few weeks, the British Envoy would have manifested a deplorable ignorance of the national character; but little less was the ignorance which he manifested, when he believed that the system of government he was countenancing could ever establish the country in tranquillity, and the King in the affections of the people. There were others who saw clearly that such a system was doomed to set in disaster and disgrace;[17] but Macnaghten, when he accompanied the Court to Jellalabad, carried with him no forebodings of evil. He believed that the country was settling down into quietude under the restored monarchy; and so little, indeed, did he think that any danger was to be apprehended, that he encouraged his wife to join him in Afghanistan, and sent a party of irregular horsemen under Edward Conolly to escort her from the provinces of India.

But already was he beginning to have some experience of the turbulent elements of Afghan society, and the difficulty of controlling the tribes. In the West, the Ghilzyes had been demonstrating the unruliness of their nature ever since Shah Soojah re-entered Afghanistan; and, shortly after his restoration to the Balla Hissar of Caubul, Captain Outram had been sent out against them, and had achieved one of those temporary successes which, in a country like Afghanistan, where blood is ever crying aloud for blood, can only perpetuate the disquietude of a disaffected people. And now in the East, the passes of the Khybur were bristling with the hostile tribes. The Khybur chiefs had always turned to good account the difficulties of the passage through their terrible defiles. They opened the highway in consideration of certain money-payments from the Caubul rulers. The sums paid under the Suddozye Kings had been reduced by the Barukzye Sirdars; but on his restoration, Shah Soojah, who, in a day of difficulty, had sought and found a refuge among the Khyburees, now promised to restore to the tribes the privileges which they had enjoyed under his fathers. But the Shah had acted in this matter without the authority or the knowledge of Macnaghten, and the chiefs were little likely to receive the amount which the King had agreed to pay to them. Incensed by what they considered a breach of faith, they rose up against the small detached parties which Wade had left at different posts between Peshawur and Jellalabad.[18] Ali-Musjid was attacked, but not taken. Ferris, who commanded the garrison, repulsed them with heavy loss. But a battalion of Nujeebs, entrenched in the vicinity of the fort, was cut up by an incursion of the mountaineers.[19] The appearance of Sir John Keane, with the residue of the Army of the Indus, quieted for a time the turbulent tribes. But when the column had cleared the pass, they harassed the detachments sent to the relief of Ali-Musjid,[20] and a force under Colonel Wheeler was therefore sent out from Jellalabad to overawe the refractory mountaineers, and support the negotiations in which Mackeson was engaged. The Khyburees attacked his baggage, hamstrung his camels, and thus contrived to sweep some booty into their hands. Wheeler’s operations were for a time successful; but it was not until Macnaghten himself appeared on the scene, and recognised, in view of their formidable defiles, the expediency of conciliating by sufficient money-payments these troublesome clans, that they sunk into temporary quiescence.

It was at Avitabile’s hospitable table in the Goorkhutra of Peshawur, that Macnaghten received intelligence of the fall of Khelat. The health of the victors was drunk with delighted enthusiasm, manifesting itself in the “three times three” of a good English cheer. All the circumstances of the capture of the stronghold were discussed with deep interest to a late hour. It was told how, on the morning of the 13th of November, General Wiltshire, with the 2nd and 17th Queen’s Regiments, the 31st Bengal Native Infantry, with two howitzers, four of the Shah’s six-pounder guns, and a detachment of local horse, found himself before Khelat. It was plain that Mehrab Khan was in no mood to submit to the terms dictated to him. He had at first doubted the intentions of the British to move against his stronghold, and had been slow to adopt measures of defence. But when he knew that our troops were advancing upon Khelat, he prepared himself, like a brave man, to meet his fate, and flung defiance at the infidel invaders. Khelat is a place of commanding strength. The citadel rises high above the buildings of the town, and frowns menacingly on its assailants. On the north-west of the fort were three heights, which the Khan had covered with his infantry, supported by five guns in position. The engineer officers reported that, until these heights were carried, it would be impossible to proceed against the fortress. Orders were then given for the attack. It was Willshire’s hope that the enemy might be driven down to the gates of the fortress, and that our stormers might rush in with them. Gallantly the hills were carried; gallantly the guns were captured. The infantry advanced under a heavy fire from the British artillery. The shrapnel shot from Stevenson’s batteries fell with too deadly an aim among the Beloochee footmen for them to hold their position on the hills. They fled towards the walls of the fortress, and our infantry pushed hotly after them. But not in time were they to secure an entrance; the gates were closed against their advance.

The artillery was now brought into play. The infantry, compelled to protect themselves against the heavy fire poured in from the rocks, sheltered themselves behind some ruined buildings, whilst our batteries, planted on the heights, opened upon the gate and the neighbouring defences. Two of Cooper’s guns were brought within a distance of 200 yards; and whilst the gunners fell under the matchlock fire of the enemy, played full upon the gate. At last it gave way. Pointing his hand towards the gate, Willshire rode down to show the infantry that an entrance was ready for them. Rising at once from their cover, they rushed in with a loud hurrah. Pennycuick and his men were the first to enter. The other companies soon followed, until the whole of the storming column were within the walls of Khelat. Onward they struggled manfully towards the citadel. Every inch of ground was obstinately disputed. But at last the citadel was won. There was a desperate resistance. Sword in hand, Mehrab Khan and some of his principal chiefs stood there to give us battle. The Khan himself fell dead with a musket-ball through his breast. Eight of his principal ministers and Sirdars fell beside him. From some inner apartments, of difficult approach, a fire was still poured in upon our people; and it was not until Lieutenant Loveday, an assistant of the British agent, went up to them alone, that they were induced to surrender.[21] Loveday received them as prisoners; and then proceeded to rescue from captivity the aged mother and other female dependents of an old rival, whose claims were to be no longer denied.