CHAPTER IV.
[December: 1841-June: 1842.]
Stoddart and Conolly—Intelligence of the Caubul Outbreak—Arrest of the English Officers—Their sufferings in Prison—Conolly’s Letters and Journals—Death of the Prisoners.
There is a painful episode in this epic of the Afghan war, which perhaps can be introduced in no place more fitly than in this. Whilst the prisoners, who surrendered themselves on the march between Caubul and Jellalabad, were suffering such hardships only as were inseparable from their position in a rude and inhospitable country, and the hostages at Caubul were under the protection of a benevolent and high-minded Afghan nobleman, two enlightened and chivalrous British officers were enduring unparalleled sufferings in the dungeons of an Oosbeg tyrant, far beyond the snowy mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh. Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly were being devoured by vermin in a cheerless prison in the city of Bokhara.
It has been shown that in the autumn of 1840, Arthur Conolly had started from Caubul, ostensibly on a mission to Khiva and Kokund. He had subsequently, on the invitation of the Ameer, and with the implied permission, if not under the direct instructions of the Caubul envoy, proceeded to Bokhara, where Colonel Stoddart was still detained, but outwardly in a more honourable and less painful state of captivity than that which he had been condemned to endure during a part of the preceding years.[198] It was in the summer of 1841[199] that this invitation was forwarded to Conolly, then at Kokund; but that state was then at war with Bokhara, and its rulers hesitated to allow the departure of her Christian guest. After some delay, however, Conolly received his passports, and, proceeding by a circuitous route, reached Bokhara in the month of November. The crisis was an unfortunate one. Conolly was from the first regarded with suspicion. The Ameer believed, or affected to believe, that he had instigated the states of Kokund and Khiva to war against him. But other circumstances of a still more inauspicious character were gathering around the ill-fated Englishmen.
It was in the middle of the month of December, 1841, that intelligence reached Bokhara to the effect that all Caubul and the surrounding country had risen against Shah Soojah and his Feringhee allies, that Sir Alexander Burnes had been killed, and the British troops beaten in battle. A few days before, an answer had been received to a letter addressed by the Ameer to the Queen of England. The answer was written by the Foreign Secretary, and it referred the King to the Government of India. This indignity—for so he regarded it—was still rankling in his mind, when tidings of the Caubul outbreak reached Bokhara. The Ameer now sent for the English officers; asked them many questions; said that he would release Colonel Stoddart, but detain Captain Conolly; and finally, after pondering the matter for a few days, condemned them both to imprisonment in the house of the Topshee-Bashee, or chief artilleryman of Bokhara.[200]
Here their condition became every day more deplorable. They were not allowed a change of raiment, and the clothes rotted on their backs. Nauseous vermin preyed upon their bodies, and they tore the irritated flesh with their nails. They were not denied either a sufficiency of food or firing; but water leaked through the roof of the miserable room in which they were confined. Ague and fever racked them grievously; but they comforted one another with Christian consolation, and they prayed together to the Christians’ God.
In this wretched prison-house, though strictly guarded, they were not so closely watched that Conolly could not contrive to spend many an hour chronicling, in small characters upon Russian paper, all the incidents of captive life, and drawing up, for the information of his Government, elaborate memoranda on the politics of Central Asia. In spite of all difficulties of transmission, many of these notes and memoranda found their way from Bokhara to Caubul; and, surviving all the chances of destruction to which the convulsed state of Afghanistan necessarily exposed them, were conveyed in safety to the British camp, and are now lying before me.[201] In no way could the sufferings which the Bokhara captives endured be set forth so truthfully as in extracts from such of Conolly’s letters and journals as have fortunately been preserved.
The English officers must have been thrown into prison about the 17th of December. At the end of that month, or on the first day of the new year, Allahdad Khan, the Caubul envoy, was brought in to share their captivity.[202] “The Topshee-Bashee, on leaving Allahdad Khan with us,” wrote Conolly in his journal, “made over to me a superfluous posteen[203] belonging to my friend, which enabled me to throw aside the stinking garment given by the Meer Shub (Master of the Police); this and his allowing Allahdad Khan to keep the rest of his clothes, looked as if the Ameer had somewhat relented, as the Topshee-Bashee would not have dared to show us so much kindness without leave.” But these hopes were delusive. The Ameer had not relented. Day after day passed, and their sufferings increased.