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

by Sir John William Kaye

At daybreak on the following morning they pushed on again. Some better horses had been obtained from the Kuzzilbashes; and now they moved forward with increasing rapidity. On the 20th, as two or three of the officers riding on a-head of the party were nearing Urghundeh, which was to be their halting-place, another cloud of dust was observed rising over the hills; and soon the welcome tidings reached them that a large body of British cavalry and infantry was approaching. This was the column which Pollock had sent out in support of the Kuzzilbash Horse—the column that Sale commanded. In a little time the happy veteran had embraced his wife and daughter; and the men of the 13th had offered their delighted congratulations to the loved ones of their old commander. A royal salute was fired. The prisoners were safe in Sale’s camp. Their anxieties were at an end. The good Providence that had so long watched over the prisoner and the captive now crowned its mercies by delivering them into the hands of their friends. Dressed as they were in Afghan costume, their faces bronzed by much exposure, and rugged with beards and moustachios of many months’ growth, it was not easy to recognise the liberated officers who now pushed forward to receive the congratulations of their friends. On that day they skirted the ground on which the Candahar force was posted, and out went officers, and soldiers, and camp-followers, eager and curious, to gaze at the released captives, and half-inclined to fall upon their guards.[316] On the 21st of September they passed through the city, on their way to Pollock’s camp. They found the shops closed; the streets deserted; and they paused, as they went along, before some melancholy memorials of the great outbreak which, a year before, had overwhelmed us with misery and disgrace.[317]

Great was the joy which the recovery of the prisoners diffused throughout the camps of Pollock and Nott; and great was the joy which it diffused throughout the provinces of India. Rightly judged Pollock that, if he returned to Hindostan without the brave men and tender women who had endured for so many months the pains and perils of captivity in a barbarous country, his countrymen would regard the victory as incomplete. Let him fight what battles, destroy what forts, and carry off what trophies he might, he would, without the liberation of the prisoners, be only half-a-conqueror after all. Pollock knew that his countrymen had not “thrown the prisoners overboard.” He had rescued them now from the hands of the enemy; that object of the war was obtained. There was little else, indeed, now to be done, except to fix upon Caubul some lasting mark of the just retribution of an outraged nation. It had been the declared wish of the Supreme Government that the army should leave behind it some decisive proof of its power, without impeaching its humanity; and now Pollock prepared to carry, as best he could interpret them, those wishes into effect.

The interpretation, however, was not easy. Very different opinions obtained among the leading officers in the British camp respecting the amount of punishment which it now became the British General to inflict upon the Afghan capital. It was a moot question, involving many considerations, and not to be hastily solved; but there could have been no question whether, at that time, justice and expediency did not alike require that the inhabitants of Caubul and the neighbourhood should be protected against unauthorised acts of depredation and violence. Against the plunderings of soldiers and camp-followers Pollock had steadfastly set his face; but in the neighbourhood of Nott’s camp much was done to destroy the confidence which Pollock was anxious to re-establish, and to alarm and irritate the chiefs whom he desired to conciliate.[318] After a few days the new minister and Khan Shereen Khan, the chief of the Kuzzilbashes, determined to represent to Pollock, in a joint letter, the grievances of which they thought they were entitled to complain.[319]

The minister had been anxious to pay his respects to the gallant commander of the Candahar division, and had waited upon him with a letter from Macgregor; but Nott had peremptorily refused to give him an audience. He believed it to be the desire of Lord Ellenborough that no Afghan Government should be recognised by the British authorities, and he was unwilling to favour any such recognition by receiving visits of ceremony from the functionaries appointed by the government which had been established at Caubul. As Pollock had not been equally nice upon this point, the refusal of his brother-general to extend his courtesies to the minister could only have embarrassed our supreme authorities at Caubul, and attached suspicion to the sincerity of our proceedings. But Nott, at this time, was in no mood of mind to extend his courtesies either to Afghan or to British authorities. It was his belief that even then the British army ought to have been on its way to Jellalabad. He had with him a sufficiency of supplies to carry him to the latter place; and was irritated at the thought that Pollock had come up to Caubul without provisions to carry him back.[320] If he had been in supreme authority at Caubul, he would have destroyed the Balla Hissar and the city, and would have marched on with the least possible delay to Jellalabad. He placed his sentiments on record regarding the impolicy of the halt at Caubul—declared that he would be compelled to make military requisitions to rescue his troops from starvation; and denounced Futteh Jung and the new ministers as the enemies of the British. Nothing, indeed, could dissuade Nott that every Afghan in the country was not our bitter foe.

Pollock, however, was inclined to discriminate—to protect our friends and to punish our enemies. Whilst supplies were coming in but slowly to his camp, it seemed good to him that another blow should be struck at the hostile chiefs. It was reported to him that Ameen-oollah Khan was in the field at Istaliff, in the Kohistan, endeavouring to bring together the scattered fragments of the broken Barukzye force. It was believed to be the design of the chief to attack the British on their retirement from Caubul; and it was expedient, therefore, at once to break up his force, and to leave some mark of our just resentment on a part of the country which had poured forth so many of the insurgents who had risen against us in the preceding winter. A force taken from the two divisions of the British army was therefore despatched, under General M’Caskill, to Istaliff, to scatter the enemy there collected, and to destroy the place. It was thought, moreover, that Ameen-oollah Khan, dreading the advance of the retributory army, would endeavour to conciliate the British General, by delivering up to him the person of Mahomed Akbar Khan, if he could adroitly accomplish his seizure. The Sirdar had sent his family and his property into Turkistan; and was himself waiting the progress of events in the Ghorebund Pass, ready, it was said, to follow his establishment across the hills, if the British troops pushed forward to overtake him.

The hostile chiefs were all now at the last gasp—all eager to conciliate the power that a few months before they had derided and defied. Already had Ameen-oollah Khan begun to make overtures to the British authorities—to declare that he had always at heart been their friend; but that he had been compelled to secure his own safety by siding with the Barukzyes. And now Akbar Khan with the same object, sent into Pollock’s camp a peace-offering, in the shape of the last remaining prisoner in his hands. Captain Bygrave was now restored to his friends. It might have been a feeling of generosity—for generous impulses sometimes welled up in the breast of the Sirdar; it might have been a mere stroke of policy, having reference solely to his own interests; or it might, and it probably was, a mixture of the two influences that prevailed upon him; but he would not any longer make war upon a single man, and upon one, too, whom he personally respected and esteemed with the respect and esteem due to a man of such fine qualities as Bygrave. So he sent the last remaining prisoner safely into Pollock’s camp; and with him he sent a letter of conciliation, and an agent commissioned to treat for him. He was eager to enter into negotiations with the British. It was little likely that so weak a Prince as Futteh Jung would be able to maintain his regal authority in Afghanistan a day after the departure of the British; and it appeared to him not wholly improbable that, wishing to leave behind them a friendly power in Afghanistan, the British authorities might be induced to enter into a convention with him before their final departure from the country.

Even now was Futteh Jung himself beginning to acknowledge his utter inability to maintain himself in the Balla Hissar after the striking of Pollock’s camp. Pollock had refused to supply him with troops, money, or arms; and the Prince himself had closed the door of reconciliation with his old Barukzye enemies by destroying their houses and property. Among the houses thus destroyed, it is deplorable to state, was the house of Mahomed Zemaun Khan—the very house in which the good old man, with real parental kindness, had so long and so faithfully protected the British hostages. The houses of Oosman Khan, Jubbar Khan, and others fell also. It was the policy of the Prince thus to compromise his supporters, and to prevent an alliance between them and the Barukzye party; but having done this, he felt that it was only by destroying the hostile chiefs that he could, in any way, maintain his position. He watched, therefore, with anxiety the issue of the expedition into the Kohistan, and deferred his ultimate decision until the return of M’Caskill’s force.

Aided by and relying on the wise counsels of Havelock, M’Caskill made a rapid march upon Istaliff, and took the enemy by surprise. The town is built, terrace above terrace, upon two ridges of the spur of the Hindoo-Koosh, which forms the western boundary of the beautiful valley of Kohistan. It was held in high repute as a maiden fortress by the Afghans, who had now collected, in its fortified streets and squares, their treasure and their women. Looking to it as to a place of refuge, secure from the assaults of the invading Feringhees, they had scarcely made any military dispositions. M’Caskill’s first intention had been to attack the left face of the city; but the intelligence brought in by a reconnoitering party, on the evening of his arrival, caused him to change his plan of operations, and to conduct the assault on the right. Soon after daybreak, therefore, on the following morning (the 29th of September), the camp was in motion towards the right of the city. The enemy soon marked the movement; and, believing that our columns were in retreat, poured in a sharp fire upon them. Growing more and more audacious in this belief, the foremost Afghans pressed closely upon our covering party, which, composed of Broadfoot’s sappers under their intrepid chief, soon found themselves in fierce collision with a large body of the enemy posted in a walled garden. There was a sturdy hand-to-hand conflict. The little band of sappers pushed on, and the Afghans retreated before them up the slopes in the direction of the city, where they would have been overwhelmed. But the time had now come for operations on a larger scale. Havelock and Mayne, who had observed the dangerous position of the sappers, galloped to the General, and urged the necessity of supporting Broadfoot. M’Caskill, who had made his arrangements for the assault, now ordered the columns to advance upon the city. Her Majesty’s 9th Foot and the 26th Native Infantry, who had done such good service before, delighted to receive the word to advance to the support of the sappers, tore across the intervening space, in generous emulation, and rushed cheerily to the encounter; whilst on the other side of the enemy’s position, the light companies of Her Majesty’s 41st, and the 42nd and 43rd Sepoy regiments of Bengal, stormed, with steady gallantry, the village and vineyard to the left. The Afghan marksmen gave way before our attacking columns; and as our men pursued them up the slopes, a great panic seized the people. They thought no longer of defence. Their first care was to save their property and their women. Ameen-oollah Khan himself fled at the first onset. As our troops entered the town, the face of the mountain beyond was covered with laden baggage-cattle, whilst long lines of white-veiled women, striving to reach a place of safety, streamed along the hill-side. The forbearance of our people was equal to their gallantry. M’Caskill, respecting the honour of the women, would not suffer a pursuit; but many fell into the hands of our soldiers in the town, and were safely delivered over to the keeping of the Kuzzilbashes.[321] Two guns and much booty were taken; the town was partially fired; and then M’Caskill went on towards the hills, meeting no opposition on the way, destroyed Charekur, where the Goorkha regiment had been annihilated, and some other fortified places which had been among the strongholds of the enemy; and then returned triumphantly to Caubul.

On the 7th of October, M’Caskill’s force rejoined the British camp. It was now necessary that immediate measures should be adopted for the withdrawal of the British troops from the capital of Afghanistan. Already had Pollock exceeded, but with a wise discretion, the time which the Supreme Government would have accorded to him. But there was yet work to be done. No lasting mark of our retributory visit to Caubul had yet been left upon the accursed city. Pollock had been unable to shape his measures before, for the nature of the retribution to be inflicted was dependent upon the constitution of the new Afghan Government; and it was long uncertain what government the British General would leave behind him. Futteh Jung had been for some time trembling at the thought of the prospect before him. If M’Caskill had brought back Akbar Khan a prisoner, or had sent his head to the British camp, the new King might have summoned resolution to maintain his seat on the throne. But he could never forget the treatment he had received from the Sirdar, or nerve himself again to meet the unscrupulous Barukzye.[322] So now he peremptorily declined to wear the crown which we would fain have kept a little longer on his head; and implored the British General to afford him the protection of his camp, and convey him to the provinces of India.