Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute

by Theophilus F. Rodenbough

That Power was (1837) engaged in fomenting trouble in the western part of Afghanistan, encouraging an attack by 30,000 Persians, led by Russian officers, upon Herat. Instead of acceding to the request of Dost Mohammed, the British Governor-General--Lord Auckland--declared war against that potentate, alleging in a proclamation that "the welfare of the English possessions in the East rendered it necessary to have an ally on their western frontier who would be in favor of peace, and opposed to all disorders and innovations."

This was the beginning of intrigues relating to Afghanistan on the part, alternately, of England and Russia, in which John Bull has had to pay, literally, "the lion's share" of the cost in blood and treasure. In 1850, Sir John Cam Hobhouse, President of the Board of Control in India confessed: "The Afghan war was done by myself; the Court of Directors had nothing to do with it." The reason already mentioned was alleged as an excuse for hostilities. They were declared, notwithstanding that the British political agent at the Court of Dost Mohammed reported that ruler as "entirely English" in his sympathies. This report was suppressed. Twenty years later the facts were given to Parliament, Russian letters were found implicating the Czar's ministers, and the English agent, Burnes, was vindicated.

The Anglo-Indian army--consisting of twenty thousand troops, fifty thousand followers, and sixty thousand camels--advanced in two columns, one from Bengal, and the other from Bombay by the Indus. Scinde, which had hitherto been independent, like the Punjab and Lahore, was subjugated en route, and nine thousand men were left behind to occupy it. On the 23d of February, 1839, a simultaneous advance from Shikarpur, on the Bolan Pass, commenced. Kandahar was occupied April 25th, Ghazni July 23d, and Kabul August 6th, and Shah Sujah was proclaimed Ameer by British authority. By the following September the greater part of the English forces returned to India. Only five regiments of infantry and one of cavalry remained in Afghanistan, where suspicious symptoms of discontent with the new order of things began very soon to show themselves. During the summer of 1840 insurrections had to be put down by force in several places. In November of the same year Dost Mohammed defeated the English in the Perwan Pass. From that time until the autumn of 1841 a sultry calm reigned in the country.

The English commanders, although fully aware of the state of mind of the people, neglected to take the most simple measures of precaution.

The local control was vested in a mixed military and civil council, consisting of General Elphinstone, unfitted by disease and natural irresolution from exercising the functions of command, and Sir William McNaghten, the British envoy, whose self-confidence and trust in the treacherous natives made him an easy victim. In the centre of an insurrection which was extending day by day under their eyes and under their own roofs, these representatives of a powerful nation, with a small but effective force, deliberately buried their heads in the sand of their credulity, not realizing the nature of the danger which for weeks was evident to many of their subordinates.

Finally a force of the insurgents, under the direction of the son of the deposed ruler, Akbar Khan, threw off the disguise they had assumed before the English, and taking possession of the Khurd Kabul Pass near the city, entirely cut off the retreat to India which Elphinstone had commenced.

As there was no intelligent concert of action among the British leaders, the garrison melted away in detail, the Afghan auxiliaries refused to fight, or turned their arms against the Europeans. Sir William McNaghten was murdered by Akbar, at a council in sight of the garrison. A few attempts to force a passage, or to defend themselves, made by certain brave officers of the beleagured force, failed.

On January 6, 1842, an agreement was made by which the Afghan leader promised to ensure to the British forces a safe withdrawal to India. This was violated with Afghan readiness, and the entire Anglo-Indian contingent of seventeen thousand souls was destroyed; sacrificed to the murderous brutality of the Afghan insurgents, or dying from exposure to one of the most severe winters known to that region. Months after, heaps of dead bodies, preserved by the intense cold, obstructed the mountain passes. The horrors of Moscow were repeated in the Khurd Kabul, and the noblest attributes of humanity were exemplified in the acts of the officers and soldiers of the doomed party. Only twenty of this entire force survived. The news of this horrible disaster was brought to Jelalabad by the only man who penetrated the Afghan environment, Dr. Brydon.

On receipt of the news of this overwhelming catastrophe, the Indian Government endeavored to rescue the garrisons of Kandahar and Ghazni, as well as that of Jelalabad; but the Mohammedan troops refused to march against their co-religionists, and the Sikhs also showed great unwillingness. The garrison of Ghazni, thinking to secure its safety by capitulation, was cut to pieces December 23, 1841. Jelalabad, held by 2,400 men under General Sale, still withstood the storm like a rock of iron. General Nott, the energetic officer commanding at Kandahar, on receiving the news of the destruction of the British, blew up the citadel of the town, destroyed every thing not necessary to his object, and started, August 8, 1842, for Ghazni, which he also destroyed, September 6th.