CHAPTER I.
[December, 1841.]
Preparations for the Retreat—Evacuation of the Balla Hissar—Progress
of the Negotiations—Continued Delay—Variations of the
Treaty—Designs of the Envoy—Overtures of Mahomed Akbar Khan—Death
of Sir William Macnaghten—His Character.
And now began preparations for the retreat. Orders were dispatched to
the Balla Hissar for the evacuation of that position by the British
troops; and it was said that in two days the whole force would be
moving towards the British provinces. Doubtful of our good faith,
the chiefs withheld the promised supplies; but small quantities of
grain were procured from the Balla Hissar. In the meanwhile, though
our commissariat store-rooms were empty, our military magazines were
full.[184] There was a scramble among the soldiers for new arms and
accoutrements; and even the camp-followers, to whom ammunition was
served out by orders of the General, came in for a share of the spoil.
The Balla Hissar was evacuated by the British troops on the 13th of
December. Akbar Khan had pledged himself to conduct the party safely
to cantonments. Grain was of unspeakable value at this time; but
time was valuable too. In our efforts to save the former we lost the
latter. There were 1600 maunds of wheat to be conveyed to cantonments,
and the packing and loading were more than a day’s work. Great as had
been the exertions of the commissariat officer, and worthy of all
praise, Major Ewart was compelled to break in upon his labours, and
move off his force, before the baggage-cattle were ready to start with
their precious loads. It was six o’clock in mid-winter, very dark,
and bitterly cold, when the troops began to march slowly out of the
Balla Hissar. Akbar Khan and his followers had been for some time in
readiness to escort them to cantonments; and now it was whispered
among the King’s people that a trap had been laid for the destruction
of the force, and that not a man would reach his destination. Major
Ewart moved out his men; and the party had scarcely cleared the gate
when a rush, it was said, was made by some of Akbar Khan’s jezailchees
to obtain admittance to the Balla Hissar. The gates were immediately
closed; the King’s troops on the walls opened a smart fire of musketry
on friends and on foes alike. Then followed a shower of grape, striking
down some of our Sepoys, and creating no little dismay and confusion in
our ranks.
The Seeah-Sungh hills, along the base of which lay the road between the
Balla Hissar and the cantonments, were bristling with Ghilzye banditti.
At that late hour, Akbar Khan declared that it would be almost
impossible to restrain them, and that therefore, if the British force
would secure its safety, it must abstain from prosecuting its march
towards cantonments until he had made arrangements with the chiefs—in
fact, that it must halt till the morrow. On that dark, frosty December
night this was, indeed, a discouraging announcement. The troops were
halted on low marshy ground, under the walls of the fort. The ground
was white with the hoar frost. The air was bitingly cold. They would
have lit fires and clustered around them, but there was no fuel in
their reach. They had no tents. They had no bedding. They had no food.
They were every minute expecting to be attacked by the enemy. In this
cheerless, miserable state they could do nothing but stand, or walk
about, looking for the rising of the morning star.[185] The night was a
long one, but it came to a close at last. The miseries of the darkness
were now to be succeeded by the perils of the dawn. They were only
about six hundred strong, and the road was infested by thousands of
the enemy. They had nothing on which to depend but the good faith of
Akbar Khan and their own steadiness and courage. Happily the former
did not fail them. Akbar Khan did not play the traitor. The rear-guard
was molested by a party of Afghans, and the Sirdar himself, with a
few followers, galloped into the midst of his hostile countrymen, and
threatened to cut down all who dared to oppose the progress of the
detachment. About ten o’clock the force reached cantonments in safety;
but “thoroughly exhausted with hunger and fatigue.”[186]
It has been stated, that when on the evening of the 13th of December
the British troops moved out of the Balla Hissar, an attempt was made
by some of the followers of Akbar Khan to obtain admittance. It has
been said that it was the Sirdar’s object to seize the gate, so as
to admit the main body of his followers, and to carry the place by
storm. It has been surmised, also, that the Sirdar delayed the march
of Major Ewart’s detachment, hoping that the gates of the Balla Hissar
would be reopened to the British troops; and that then, under cover of
the night, his followers might force an entrance into the place.[187]
A very different account of this incident, however, has been left on
record by the Envoy himself. “On the 13th, of December,” he wrote, “it
was agreed upon that our troops should evacuate the Balla Hissar, and
return to the cantonment, whilst the Barukzyes should have a conference
with his Majesty, with a view to his retaining the nominal powers of
sovereignty, they, for their own security, placing a guard of their own
in the upper citadel. No sooner, however, had our troops left the Balla
Hissar, than his Majesty, owing to some panic or misunderstanding,
ordered the gate to be shut, and the proposed conference was thereby
prevented. So offended were the Barukzyes, that they determined never
to offer his Majesty the same terms again. In explanation of his
conduct, his Majesty states that the party whom the Barukzyes desired
to introduce was not the party which had been agreed upon.”[188] This
was, probably, one of the last sentences ever penned by Sir William
Macnaghten. It closes the fragment of the official report found in his
writing-desk after his death.
The treaty read by the Envoy at the conference on the 11th of December
contained an article involving the formal abdication of Shah Soojah.
The restoration of the Barukzye Sirdars to their old principalities
was, at that time, decreed by both contracting parties; but the meeting
had scarcely broken up, when some of the Douranee chiefs, jealous of
the power of the Barukzyes, which had ever been put forth to the injury
and depression of the tribes, recoiled from this perilous stipulation,
and began to think of the retention of the King, at all events as a
puppet and a name.[189] On the following day it was proposed by the
chiefs that Shah Soojah should remain on the throne, on condition
of his intermarrying his daughters with the leading Afghan Sirdars,
and vesting the Wuzeership in the family of the Barukzyes. It was
stipulated also that the King, whose love of pomp and ceremony was
one of his besetting infirmities, and who had excited the indignation
of many of the chiefs by his haughty bearing towards them, should
dispense with some of the regal formalities which had given them so
great offence. The proposal, sanctioned by the British minister, was
formally made to the Shah. There was the loss of his kingdom on the one
side; there was the loss of some regal dignity on the other. The King
hesitated; then yielded a reluctant assent; and a few days afterwards
withdrew it altogether. His pride and his fear both deterred him from
forming such an alliance with the chiefs. He was unwilling so to sully
the purity of the royal blood; and he could not trust to the good faith
of the Sirdars after the departure of his British allies. And so the
treaty with the Barukzye chiefs reverted to its original shape, and the
Shah determined to return to the British provinces, from which he had
never yet emerged without plunging into new disasters.
The stipulations of the treaty were now to be brought into effect. But
mutual distrust existed between the parties, and each was unwilling
to give the other any advantage by being the first to act up to the
obligations that it imposed. The British authorities called upon the
chiefs to send in the provisions which they had undertaken to supply;
and the chiefs called upon the British authorities to demonstrate the
sincerity of their promises to retire from Afghanistan, by giving
up the different forts which they occupied in the neighbourhood of
cantonments, and by placing hostages in their hands. The question of
the abandonment of the forts was officially discussed between the Envoy
and the General, and the result was an order for their cession.[190]
No time was lost in carrying this arrangement into effect. Whatever
dilatoriness may have been displayed on other occasions, there was
no want of alacrity evinced when anything was to be yielded to the
enemy. Our garrisons were speedily withdrawn from the forts, and the
victorious insurgents duly placed in possession of them. By four
o’clock in the afternoon, the Afghan conquerors were sitting on the
walls of these ceded forts, looking into the British cantonments, and
joking over our discomfiture.[191] A brother of the Newab Zemaun Khan
was sent in as a hostage on the part of the enemy;[192] and a small
supply of attah was furnished to the troops.
Provisions, however, came in very slowly; and carriage was not sent
in at all. There was a mixed crowd of robbers and fanatics swarming
between the city and the cantonments, ever on the alert to intercept
the supplies that were sent in either by the Sirdars or by private
speculators. All kinds of outrages were committed, in the very face of
our guards, and under the very muzzles of our guns; but not a shot was
fired upon the plunderers. Our enemies, now become “our new allies,”
were to be treated with all possible consideration. Nothing was to be
done to interrupt the good feeling which was now said to have been
established; and so, whilst our troops were starving, the military
authorities suffered the grain so eagerly looked for by the wretched
force to be swept away from them, under the very walls of cantonments,
by a miserable rabble, whom a few rounds of grape would have scattered
like a flock of sheep.
This was a season of perilous procrastination. Both parties seemed
anxious to postpone the day that was to witness the departure of
the British force; and each was suspicious of the good faith of the
other. The chiefs withheld, from day to day, the provisions and the
carriage-cattle, with which they had undertaken to facilitate our
escape from Afghanistan; and Macnaghten, hoping still against hope,
and sanguine, even in the midst of every kind of discouragement, still
thought that “something might turn up” to avert the humiliation of an
enforced withdrawal from the country which we had entered with so much
pomp and parade. It was still possible, he thought, that Maclaren’s
brigade might make good its way to Caubul. It was not then known that
it had retraced its steps to Candahar.
Then snow began to fall. On the 18th of December, the doomed force
looked out upon the new horror. From morning to evening prayer it fell
with frightful perseverance, and before sunset was lying many inches
thick upon the ground. Our difficulties had now fearfully increased.
Had the force been set in motion a few days before the first snow fall,
and, moving lightly, pushed on by forced marches through the passes, it
might have reached Jellalabad in safety. But now everything was against
us. The elements were conspiring for our destruction. It was more and
more painfully obvious, every day, that the curse of God was brooding
over the agents of an unrighteous policy. Whatever may have been the
causes of that week’s delay—whether the bad faith of the chiefs, the
irresolution of the Shah, or the reluctance of the British Envoy, it
cut away from under us the last hope that remained of rescuing the
British force from the annihilating dangers that hemmed it in on every
side.
The 22nd was now fixed upon as the day for the departure of the
British troops. On the 19th, the Envoy and the General despatched
letters to Ghuznee, Candahar, and Jellalabad, ordering the evacuation
of those positions. Money was given freely to the chiefs for cattle
which was not sent in for our use; and it was believed that Mahomed
Akbar was expending the treasure thus raised on the instruments of our
destruction. “Our new allies” had become more insolent and defiant. As
our difficulties thickened, their demands rose. All hope of succours
from Candahar vanished on that 19th of December, when intelligence of
the return of Maclaren’s brigade was received by the Envoy. Macnaghten
had clung to this chance, with desperate tenacity, to the last—and
now he abandoned all hope of saving the reputation of his country by
beating the enemy in the field.
But he had not yet abandoned all hope of saving the reputation of his
country by playing a game of dexterous diplomacy, such as could only
have been played against a number of disunited factions, almost as
hostile to each other as to the common foe. It is not easy to group
into one lucid and intelligible whole all the many shifting schemes
and devices which distracted the last days of the Envoy’s career.
It is probable that at this time he could have given no very clear
account of the game which he was playing. He appears to have turned
first to one party and then to another, eagerly grasping at every new
combination that seemed to promise more hopeful results than the last.
His mind was by this time unhinged;—his intellect was clouded; his
moral perceptions were deadened. The wonder is, not that he was pressed
down at last by the tremendous burden of anxiety which had sate upon
him throughout those seven long weeks of unparalleled suffering and
disaster, but that he had borne up so long and so bravely under the
weight.
It seems, indeed, that Macnaghten, at this time, never knew, from one
day to another, with whom he would eventually conclude a treaty for the
extrication of the unhappy force from the perils that girt it around
as with a ring of fire. He was throwing about money in all directions,
and there were hungry claimants, pressing on now from one direction now
from another, eager to turn the sufferings of the Feringhees to the
best account, and to find the best market for their own influence and
authority. He saw no honesty and sincerity among the chiefs; he saw
that they were all contending one against the other; every man thinking
only of himself. He knew that they had failed in their engagements to
him, and he doubted whether he was bound by the obligations which he
had contracted, or was free to negotiate with any one who was willing,
and able, to offer or to accept terms less degrading in themselves
and less likely to be violated. It was his general design to keep the
different factions in a state of antagonism with each other, and to
cling to the one best able to protect us from the malice of the rest.
But he could not determine, of the many combinations that could be
formed, which was the best calculated to evolve a state of things most
favourable to British interests, and so he seems to have had more than
one game in hand at the same time, and hardly to have known which was
to be played out.
Ostensibly Macnaghten was at this time in treaty with the Barukzye
party. But he was offering at the same time large sums of money to the
Ghilzyes and to the Kuzzilbashes to side with the Shah and the British;
and if they had declared themselves openly on our side, he might have
thrown over the Barukzye alliance. “You can tell the Ghilzyes and Khan
Shereen,” he wrote on the 20th of December to Mohun Lal, “that after
they have declared for his Majesty and us, and sent in 100 _kurwars_
of grain to cantonments, I shall be glad to give them a bond for five
lakhs of rupees; and if Naib Sheriff is satisfied that they will do so,
he should advance to them as much money as he can. I fear for Mahomed
Shah that he is with Akbar; but you will know best. You must let me
know before sunrise, if possible, what is likely to be the effect of
this proposal, as I must talk accordingly to the Barukzyes, who have
shown no disposition to be honest. To save time, you may tell Khan
Shereen to correspond with the Shah, if there is a chance of success.”
On the following day he wrote again to Mohun Lal, unfolding his
views more distinctly with regard to the contemplated alliance with
the Ghilzyes and the Kuzzilbashes, out of which he still hoped that
something might be evolved to avert the retreat which was so loathsome
to him. “In conversing,” he wrote, “with anybody, you must say
distinctly that I am ready to stand by my engagement with the Barukzyes
and other chiefs associated with them; but that if any portion of the
Afghans wish our troops to remain in the country, I shall think myself
at liberty to break the engagement which I have made to go away, which
engagement was made believing it to be in accordance with the wishes of
the Afghan nation. If the Ghilzyes and Kuzzilbashes wish us to stay,
let them declare so openly in the course of to-morrow, and we will
side with them. The best proof of their wish for us to stay is to send
us a large quantity of grain this night—100 or 200 kurwars. If they
do this, and make their salaam to the Shah early to-morrow, giving
his Majesty to understand that we are along with them, I will write
to the Barukzyes and tell them my agreement is at an end; but if they
(Ghilzyes and Kuzzilbashes) are not prepared to go all lengths with us,
nothing should be said about the matter, because the agreement I have
made is very good for us.”
An hour afterwards he wrote again to Mohun Lal, repeating all this in
still more decided language, and declaring that if grain were obtained
he should think himself “at liberty to break his agreement of going
away on Friday, because that agreement was made under the belief that
all the Afghan people wished us to go away.” “Do not let me appear in
this matter,” he wrote, in conclusion; “say that I am ready to stand by
my engagement, but that I leave it to the people themselves.” And again
after the lapse of another hour, he wrote: “If any grain is coming in
to-night, let me have notice of it a few minutes before. Anything that
may be intended in our favour must appear before noon to-morrow.”
Far better than any explanations that I could offer do such words as
these unfold the character of Macnaghten’s designs. The days on which
they were written saw the Envoy in conference, near the banks of the
canal, with Akbar Khan and a few chiefs of the Barukzye party. As time
advanced, the Sirdars rose in their demands; and every new meeting
witnessed the dictation of fresh terms. They called upon us to deliver
up to them all our military stores and ammunition, and to surrender
the married families as hostages for the fulfilment, on our part,
of the conditions of the treaty. Then they demanded that Brigadier
Shelton should be given over to them as a hostage; but the Brigadier
was unwilling to accept the duty, and the proposal was declined. The
hostages given up on the 21st of December were Lieutenants J. B.
Conolly, the Envoy’s relative and assistant, and Lieutenant Airey, of
the 3rd Buffs, who had been acting as the General’s aide-de-camp.
On the following day the commissary of ordnance, Lieutenant Eyre,
was “ordered to conduct an officer of the Newab Zemaun Khan over the
magazine, that he might make choice of such stores as would be most
acceptable to the chiefs.”[193] At the same time the Envoy sent his
carriage and horses as a present to Akbar Khan. He was now beginning
to despair of deriving any real assistance from the Ghilzyes, who were
slow to declare themselves openly on our side, and he saw plainly how
dangerous it was to appear to be in treaty with them and the Barukzyes
at the same time. Some doubts, too, of the honesty of the course he was
pursuing began to obtrude themselves upon him; and he wrote accordingly
to Mohun Lal, requesting him to instruct the Ghilzyes not to send in
any grain until further advised upon the subject. “The sending grain to
us just now,” he said, “would do more harm than good to our cause; and
it would lead the Barukzyes to suppose that I am intriguing with a view
of breaking my agreement; but I can never break that agreement so long
as all the Khawanen wish me to stand by it. Pray thank our friends,
nevertheless, for their kind attention to our interest. I wish very
much to please them, and am sorry my treasury is so empty.”
On the same day Macnaghten sent 7000 rupees to Khan Shereen Khan, the
chief of the Kuzzilbashes, but urged Mohun Lal to keep it secret, as
there was scarcely any money left. He had become doubtful by this time
of the honesty of intriguing with one party, whilst he was bound by
engagements to another; so he urged the Moonshee to tell the Ghilzyes
to send him no more grain. “If,” he wrote on the 22nd of December,
“while our present agreement lasts I were to receive a large supply of
grain from the Ghilzyes, suspicion would be raised that I intend to
break my engagement, and wish to keep the troops here, in spite of the
wishes of all the chiefs to the contrary. It would be very agreeable
to stop here for a few months instead of having to travel through
the snow; but we must not consider what is agreeable, but what is
consistent with our faith.”
It was on the evening of this 22nd of December, when Macnaghten, long
tossed about on a sea of doubt and distraction—perplexed in the
extreme by the manifest bad faith and the ever-increasing demands
of the chiefs—seeing no end to the perilous uncertainties of his
position, and wearied out beyond human endurance by days and nights of
ceaseless anxiety and bewilderment—was in a temper to grasp at any new
thing that might seem to open a door of escape from the embarrassments
which surrounded him, that Akbar Khan sent in Captain Skinner from the
city with a new string of proposals.
The Envoy had been warned of the danger of treating independently
with the young Barukzye Sirdar; he had been told that treachery was
spreading itself around him, and that he would be enclosed in its
toils. But he had now become desperate. Anything was better than the
wearing uncertainty which had so long been unhinging his mind. Akbar
Khan sent tempting proposals; and the Envoy flung himself upon the
snare. He knew that there was danger, but he had become regardless of
it. Anything was better than the life he had so long been leading. Even
death itself was better than such a life.
Captain Skinner came into cantonments, accompanied by Mahomed Sadig and
Surwar Khan, the Lohanee merchant.[194] The English officer sate down
to dinner with the Envoy whilst the two Afghans remained in another
room. A gleam of hope passed over Macnaghten’s careworn face when
Skinner told him, in a light jesting manner, that he was the bearer
of a message from Akbar Khan of a portentous nature, and that he felt
as one loaded with combustibles.[195] But the message was not then
delivered. The proposals were to be stated by the Afghan delegates,
who were soon closeted with the Envoy. Skinner alone was present at
the interview. Mahomed Sadig stated the proposals that had been made
by Akbar Khan. It was proposed that an agreement should be entered
into on the following day, to the effect that Akbar Khan and the
Ghilzyes should unite themselves with the British troops, which were
to be drawn up outside of cantonments, and at a given signal should
assault Mahmood Khan’s fort and seize the person of Ameen-oollah Khan.
Then followed a startling offer, from which the Envoy shrunk back with
abhorrence. This was the offer of Ameen-oollah’s head, which, for a sum
of money, Mahomed Sadig declared should be presented to the British
Envoy. Macnaghten at once rejected the offer. It was never, he said,
his custom, nor that of his country, to pay a price for blood. Then
Mahomed Sadig went on to state the proposals of the Barukzye Sirdar.
The English were to remain in Afghanistan until the spring; and then,
to save their credit, by withdrawing, as though of their own free will.
Shah Soojah was to remain in the country as King, and Akbar Khan was
to be his Wuzeer. As a reward for these services, Akbar Khan was to
receive an annuity of four lakhs of rupees from the British Government,
and a bonus of thirty lakhs!
Wild as were these proposals, the Envoy caught eagerly at them. He did
not hesitate for a moment. He had, from first to last, clung to the
hope of something being evolved out of the chaos of difficulty, that
would enable him to retain his position in the country, at all events
till the coming spring; and now there suddenly welled up within him a
hope that he had obtained the object of his desires. He now accepted
the proposals; and signified his assent in a Persian paper written by
his own hand. With this the Afghan delegates returned to the city and
made known to Akbar Khan the success of their mission. Captain Skinner
returned with them.
The morning of the 23rd of December found Macnaghten restless and
excited. A great crisis had arrived. That day was to decide the fate
of the British force, and determine the question of the loss or the
salvation of our national honour. It is probable that the morning
brought with it some doubts and misgivings; but he brushed the
obtrusive thoughts aside, and endeavoured to persuade himself, as he
did to persuade others, that there was no treachery to be feared.
Having breakfasted, he sent for the officers of his staff—Lawrence,
Trevor, and Mackenzie—who were his friends and counsellors, to whom on
all occasions but this he had entrusted his designs—to accompany him
to the conference with Akbar Khan. Mackenzie, finding him alone, heard
from him now, for the first time, the history of this new negotiation,
and at once exclaimed that it was a plot. “A plot!” replied the Envoy,
hastily; “let me alone for that—trust me for that!”
He had braced himself up with desperate courage for the conference
which was to be followed by such great results; and now he sent for
the General to acquaint him with the nature of the proposals and to
request his aid to carry the scheme into effect. Startled by the
announcement, and little comprehending all the depths and intricacies
of the perilous game which the Envoy had now in hand, Elphinstone
asked what part the other Barukzyes, who had been foremost in the
previous negotiations, were to take in those now on foot, and was told
in reply that they were “not in the _plot_.” On the untutored ear of
the single-minded veteran this significant monosyllable smote with an
ominous sound. He began now to understand the double game which was
being played by the Envoy on one side, and the young Barukzye Sirdar
on the other, and he eagerly asked the former if he did not apprehend
that some treachery was at work. “None at all,” said Macnaghten, in
reply; “I wish you to have two regiments and two guns got ready, as
speedily and as quietly as possible, for the capture of Mahmood Khan’s
fort; the rest you may leave to me.” But still the General spoke of
the danger of such machinations, and urged him to pause before he
committed himself irretrievably to so perilous a course. Elphinstone
had unfortunately been talking about danger so incessantly since the
very commencement of the outbreak, that now, when he uttered only words
of common sense and prudence, the warning notes fell upon Macnaghten’s
ears like the old imbecile croakings of timidity and irresolution which
had been irritating him for so many weeks, and he now turned away with
impatience, saying, “I understand these things better than you.”[196]
Elphinstone went; but in spite of Macnaghten’s confidence, he could
not dispossess himself of the belief that treachery was brewing, and
that the Envoy was rushing upon destruction. So, hoping that yet
something might be done to arrest him, he sate down and wrote him a
letter, pointing out the danger of dividing the force; dwelling upon
the probable treachery of the Afghans, of whom he said the cantonments
were full; and asking what guarantee there was for the truth of all
that had been said. It was the last letter ever addressed to the Envoy.
It never reached its destination.
About the hour of noon the little party—Macnaghten, Lawrence, Trevor,
Mackenzie, and a few horsemen—set out on their ill-omened expedition.
Shelton had been invited to accompany them; but he was occupied in
getting ready the two regiments and the guns, and was, therefore,
unable to attend the conference.[197] The troops, however, were not
ready when the ambassadorial cavalcade rode out of the Seeah-Sungh
gate, and the Envoy, observing the backwardness of the military chiefs,
bitterly remarked that it was of a piece with all their arrangements
since the commencement of the outbreak. He then went on to speak of the
enterprise on which they were engaged; admitted that it was a dangerous
one; said that he was playing for a heavy stake, but the prize was
worth the risk that was to be incurred. “At all events,” he said, “let
the loss be what it may, a thousand deaths were preferable to the life
I have of late been leading.”
They passed out of cantonments. As they went, Macnaghten remembered
that a beautiful Arab horse, which Akbar Khan had much coveted, and
which the Envoy had purchased from its owner,[198] had been left
behind. Mackenzie was sent back for it, that it might now be presented
to the Sirdar. Lawrence was told to hold himself in readiness to ride
to the Balla Hissar, to communicate with the King. There were many
suspicious appearances which excited the apprehensions of all but the
Envoy. Crowds of armed Afghans were hovering about the cantonment, and
clustering in the neighbourhood of Mahmood Khan’s fort. Macnaghten saw
nothing but the prospect of escaping the disgrace of a sudden retreat
from Afghanistan. He looked neither to the right nor to the left. He
had a great object in view, and he kept his eyes steadily upon it.
He did not even, when the chiefs met him, perceive that a brother of
Ameen-oollah Khan was one of the party.
Near the banks of the river, midway between Mahmood Khan’s fort and
the bridge, about 600 yards from the cantonment, there were some small
hillocks, on the further slope of which, where the snow was lying
less thickly than on other parts, some horse-cloths were now spread
by one of Akbar Khan’s servants. The English officers and the Afghan
Sirdars had exchanged salutations and conversed for a little while
on horseback. The Arab horse, with which Mackenzie had returned, had
been presented to Akbar Khan, who received it with many expressions
of thanks, and spoke also with gratitude of the gift of the pistols
which he had received on the preceding day.[199] It was now proposed
that they should dismount. The whole party accordingly repaired to
the hill-side. Macnaghten threw himself, in a reclining position, on
the bank; Trevor and Mackenzie, burdened with presentiments of evil,
seated themselves beside him. Lawrence stood behind his chief until
urged by one of the Khans to seat himself, when he knelt down on one
knee, in the attitude of a man ready for immediate action. A question
from Akbar Khan, who sate beside Macnaghten, opened the business of the
conference. He abruptly asked the Envoy if he were ready to carry out
the proposals of the preceding evening? “Why not?” asked Macnaghten.
The Afghans were by this time gathering around in numbers, which
excited both the surprise and the suspicion of Lawrence and Mackenzie,
who said, that if the conference was to be a secret one, the intruders
ought to be removed. With a movement of doubtful sincerity some of the
chiefs then lashed out with their whips at the closing circle; but
Akbar Khan said that their presence was of no consequence, as they were
all in the secret with him.
Scarcely were the words uttered, when the Envoy and his companions were
violently seized from behind. The movement was sudden and surprising.
There was a scene of terrible confusion, which no one can distinctly
describe. The officers of the Envoy’s staff were dragged away, and
compelled each to mount a horse ridden by an Afghan chief. Soon were
they running the gauntlet through a crowd of Ghazees, who struck out
at them as they passed. Trevor unfortunately slipped from his insecure
seat behind Dost Mahomed Khan, and was cut to pieces on the spot,
Lawrence and Mackenzie, more fortunate, reached Mahmood Khan’s fort
alive.
In the meanwhile, the Envoy himself was struggling desperately on the
ground with Akbar Khan. The look of wondering horror that sat upon his
upturned face will not be forgotten by those who saw it to their dying
day. The only words he was heard to utter were, “_Az barae Khoda_”
(“For God’s sake”). They were, perhaps, the last words spoken by one of
the bravest gentlemen that ever fell a sacrifice to his erring faith
in others. He had struggled from the first manfully against his doom,
and now these last manful struggles cost the poor chief his life.
Exasperated past all control by the resistance of his victim, whom he
designed only to seize, Akbar Khan drew a pistol from his girdle—one
of those pistols for the gift of which only a little while before he
had profusely thanked the Envoy—and shot Macnaghten through the body.
Whether the wretched man died on the spot—or whether he was slain by
the infuriated Ghazees, who now pressed eagerly forward, is not very
clearly known—but these miserable fanatics flung themselves upon the
prostrate body of the English gentleman, and hacked it to pieces with
their knives.
Thus perished William Hay Macnaghten; struck down by the hand of the
favourite son of Dost Mahomed. Thus perished as brave a gentleman
as ever, in the midst of fiery trial, struggled manfully to rescue
from disgrace the reputation of a great country. Throughout those
seven weeks of unparalleled difficulty and danger he had confronted
with stedfast courage every new peril and perplexity that had risen
up before him; and a man of peace himself, had resisted the timid
counsels of the warriors, and striven to infuse, by the manliness of
his example, some strength into their fainting hearts. Whatever may be
the judgment of posterity on other phases of his character, and other
incidents of his career, the historian will ever dwell with pride upon
the unfailing courage and constancy of the man who, with everything to
discourage and depress him, surrounded by all enervating influences,
was ever eager to counsel the nobler and the manlier course, ever ready
to bear the burdens of responsibility, and face the assaults of danger.
There was but one civilian at Caubul; and he was the truest soldier in
the camp.
It is not easy to estimate correctly the character of William
Macnaghten. Of the moral and intellectual attributes of the ill-fated
Envoy very conflicting accounts have been rendered; and it is probable
that in all these conflicting accounts some leaven of truth resides.
There are few men whose characters are not made up of antagonistic
qualities, and Macnaghten was not one of the few. In early life he had
distinguished himself by the extent of his philological acquirements;
and was reputed as one of the most accomplished Oriental scholars in
the presidencies of India. With a deep insight into the character
of the natives of the East was blended the kindliest sympathy and
toleration towards them. In the knowledge, indeed, of the native
languages, the institutions, and the character of the people of
Hindostan, he was surpassed by none of the many accomplished officers
who have made them their study. His long connexion with the judicial
department of the public service had afforded him opportunities, which
his temper and his taste led him to improve, of maturing and perfecting
this essential branch of official knowledge. In attention to business
he was one of the most unwearying of men: his pen was ever in his
hand; he wrote rapidly, and expressed himself on most subjects with
clearness; he was quick in his apprehension of the views of others,
and accommodated himself with facility to shifting circumstances. But
at this point there are many who believe that they cease to tread
upon undebateable ground. It is admitted that he was an accomplished
Oriental scholar, a good judicial officer, an apt secretary, and a
kind-hearted man; but it is denied that, in any enlarged acceptation of
the word, he is entitled to be called a statesman.
Sir Alexander Burnes was constantly writing to his friends in India,
“Macnaghten is an excellent man, but quite out of place _here_.”
Burnes was not an unprejudiced witness; and he, doubtless, expressed
himself in language too sweeping and unqualified. But there are many
who believe with Burnes, that Macnaghten was out of his place in
Afghanistan. It is hard to say who would not have been more or less
out of place, in the situation which he was called upon suddenly to
occupy. The place, indeed, was one to which no English officer ought to
have been called. For a Calcutta Secretary to be at Caubul at all was
necessarily to be out of place. If Macnaghten, suddenly transplanted
from the bureau of an Anglo-Indian Governor to the stirrup of an
Afghan monarch, is chargeable with some errors, it is, perhaps, more
just, as it is more generous, to wonder not that those errors were so
numerous, but that they were so few. To govern such a people as the
Afghans through such a King as Shah Soojah, was an experiment in which
an English officer might fail without the sacrifice of his reputation.
When we come to think, now, of what was attempted, we cease to marvel
at the result. The marvel is, that utter ruin did not overtake the
scheme at an earlier date—that the day of reckoning was so long
delayed. The policy itself was so inherently faulty that success was an
unattainable result.
The causes of the failure are not to be sought in the personal
character of the Envoy. That character may have been one of many
accidental circumstances which may in some sort have helped to develop
it; but, sooner or later, ruin must have overtaken the scheme, let
who might be the agent of it. In this view of the case Macnaghten is
not to be acquitted; but it is on Macnaghten the Secretary, not on
Macnaghten the Envoy, that our censures must then descend. Macnaghten
the Envoy, however, was not free from human infirmity. Most men have an
unhappy faculty of believing what they wish to be true. In Macnaghten
this propensity was unnaturally developed. God had cursed him with
a strong delusion that he should believe a lie. He believed in the
popularity of Shah Soojah and the tranquillity of Afghanistan. To have
admitted the non-existence of either, would have been to have admitted
the failure of the policy which he had recommended, and with which he
was, in no small measure, personally identified. But Macnaghten did
not seek to deceive others: he was himself deceived. When he spoke of
the popularity of Shah Soojah, he believed that the Shah was popular;
when he reported the tranquillity of Afghanistan, he believed that the
country was tranquil. He was sincere, but he was miserably mistaken.
Everything he saw took colour in his eyes from the hues of his own
sanguine temperament. From the day when on entering Candahar he beheld
a joyous people welcoming their restored monarch with feelings almost
amounting to adoration, to the last luckless day of his life, when he
went out to the fatal conference, firmly believing in the good faith
and good feeling of his Afghan allies, he continued steadily to create
for himself all kinds of favourable omens and encouraging symptoms, and
lived in a state of blind confidence unparalleled in the history of
human infatuation. To this self-deception some of the finest qualities
of his nature largely contributed. The very goodness of his heart and
generosity of his disposition moved him to regard the character and
conduct of others with a favour to which they were seldom entitled.
Macnaghten was too nobleminded to be suspicious—but he erred on the
other side; he wanted some of the sterner stuff which will not suffer
the soundness of the judgment to be weakened by the generosity of the
heart.
When not blinded by his partiality for any pet projects of his own, he
was by no means wanting in political sagacity. He could decide justly,
as he could promptly, on points of detail as they rose up one by one
before him; but as soon as anything occurred to cast discredit upon
the general policy of the Afghan expedition, by indicating the germs
of failure, he resolutely refused to see what others saw, and censured
those others for seeing it. Hence it was that he received coldly, if
not contemptuously, those elaborate general reviews of the condition
and prospects of Afghanistan which Burnes and Conolly thrust upon him,
and resented every effort that was made by Rawlinson and others to draw
his attention towards the unquiet and feverish symptoms which, from
time to time, developed themselves in different parts of the unsettled
country. His correspondence indicates an unwillingness, rather than
an inability, to take any large and comprehensive views of Afghan
policy. He seems to have shrunk from applying to that policy the test
of any great principles; and to have addressed himself rather to the
palliation of accidental symptoms than to the eradication of those
constitutional diseases which were eating into the very life of the
government which he directed.
Of Macnaghten’s humanity I have never entertained a doubt. But it is
a proof of the inconsistency even of the kindest and most amiable
characters, that the Envoy, when greatly disquieted and perplexed by
the difficulties which thickened around him, and irritated by the
opposition, which he could not subdue, sometimes thought of resorting
to measures repugnant to humanity, for the suppression of evils which
baffled all the more lenient efforts of legitimate diplomacy. But
these sterner feelings soon passed away; and all the more generous
sentiments of his nature held dominion over him again. He regretted the
excesses—always rather those of word than of deed—into which he had
been momentarily betrayed, and was as merciful towards a fallen enemy
as he had been eager in his pursuit of a triumphant one. Macnaghten
was anything but a cautious man; his first hasty impulses were often
set down in writing with perilous unreserve; and it would be unjust to
record against him, as his positive opinion, everything that he set
down suggestively in his hasty letters to his numerous correspondents,
or spoke out still more hastily to his friends.
Posterity may yet discuss the question, whether, in these last fatal
negotiations with Akbar Khan, Macnaghten acted strictly in accordance
with that good faith which is the rule of English statesmen, and
for which our country, in spite of some dubious instances, is still
honoured by all the nations of the East. In one of the last letters
ever written by him, the Envoy said, “It would be very agreeable to
stop here for a few months instead of to travel through the snow;
but we must not consider what is agreeable, but what is consistent
with our faith.” On the same day, too—the day before his death—he
had written, “I can never break that agreement (with the Barukzyes)
so long as all the Khawanen wish me to stand by it.” It has been
questioned whether the negotiations he was then carrying on with the
Ghilzyes and Kuzzilbashes were consistent with his obligations to the
Barukzye Sirdars. The stipulations, however, on the part of the British
diplomatist, in this case, extended no further than the promise of
certain money payments in return for certain specific services, and
Macnaghten may have considered himself justified in retaining those
services conditionally on the rupture of the existing covenant with
the Barukzye chiefs. That covenant, indeed, was one of so precarious
a nature—it was sliding away from him more and more certainly as
time advanced—there was so little prospect of its obligations being
fulfilled, that it seemed necessary to have something to fall back upon
in the event of the open annulment of the treaty, the obligations of
which had long been practically denied. Up to the evening of the 22nd
of December, Macnaghten had been willing to abide by the stipulations
of the treaty with the confederate chiefs; but there were such manifest
symptoms of bad faith on the part of the chiefs constantly breaking
out, that it appeared to him but ordinary prudence to prepare himself
for an event so probable as an open rupture. He was ready to proceed,
in mutual good faith, to the accomplishment of the original treaty; and
so long as the chiefs adhered to their engagements, he was prepared to
evacuate the country, but he believed that it was his duty to prepare
himself also for a rupture with the chiefs, and to purchase supplies,
wherever he could obtain them, for the use of the troops in the event
of their retaining their position.
But the compact with Akbar Khan was altogether of another kind. There
was nothing of a conditional character about it. The Envoy had, in
the course of the day, virtually acknowledged that to break off the
negotiations then pending with the chiefs would be a breach of good
faith. Nothing had occurred between the hour in which he wrote this to
Mohun Lal and that in which he received the overtures of Akbar Khan,
to absolve him from obligations from which he was not absolved before.
The same principle of diplomatic integrity which he had applied to the
case of the Ghilzye alliance was doubly applicable to this: “It would
be very agreeable to stop here for a few months instead of to travel
through the snow; but we must not consider what is agreeable, but what
is consistent with our faith.” If we read Macnaghten’s subsequent
conduct by the light of these high-principled words, it must in truth
be pronounced that he stands self-condemned.
In estimating the character of these transactions, it should always
be borne steadily in mind that the Afghan chiefs had from the first
violated their engagements with the British, and exacted from them
after-conditions not named in the treaty. Their want of faith, indeed,
was so palpable, that Macnaghten would, at any time, have been
justified in declaring that the treaty was annulled. It is plain, that
whilst they were violating their engagements he was under no obligation
to adhere to the conditions of the violated treaty. But it appears to
me that this matter is altogether distinct from the question of the
honesty of negotiating with one party whilst negotiations are pending
with another. There would have been no breach of faith in breaking off
the treaty with the confederate chiefs; but it was a breach of faith to
enter into any new engagements until that treaty was broken off. It is
certain that up to the time of his receipt of the fatal overtures from
Akbar Khan, Macnaghten considered that he was bound by his engagements
with the confederate chiefs. He might, it is true, have declared those
engagements at an end, but until such a declaration was made, he was
not at liberty to enter secretly into any new negotiations practically
annulling the old.
And whatever objections may lie against the general honesty of the
compact, it is certain that they apply with double force to that
portion of it which involved the seizure of Ameen-oollah Khan. It is
not to be justified by any reference to the infamous character of that
chief. Ameen-oollah Khan was one of our “new allies.” He had been, with
the other chiefs, in friendly negotiation with Macnaghten. It was now
proposed, during a suspension of hostilities—whilst, indeed, we were
in friendly intercourse with the Afghan chiefs, this very Ameen-oollah
Khan included—that a body of troops should be got ready as quietly as
possible for secret service, that a sudden attack should be made on
the unsuspecting garrison of Mahmood Khan’s fort, and that one of our
allies—one of the chiefs with whom the Envoy was in treaty—should be
violently seized. I confess that I cannot see anything to justify such
a measure as this. It certainly was not in accordance with that good
faith, the observance of which Macnaghten had declared to be of more
importance than the retention of our position in the country.
But although I cannot bring myself to justify the act, either on the
plea that the chiefs had not observed the engagements into which they
had entered, or that Ameen-oollah Khan was an infamous wretch, and one
of the archenemies of the British, it appears to me to be as little the
duty of the historian severely to condemn the actor as to justify the
act.[200] It is one of those cases in which the exercise of charity
is a solemn duty—one of those cases, to the consideration of which
every one should bring the kindliest resolution to weigh well the
temptation before he measures the offence. There are cases to which,
it is my deliberate conviction, a strict application of the ordinary
rules of right and wrong would be a grievous injustice. It is easy,
in one’s closet, to sit in judgment upon the conduct of a man tempted
far beyond the common limits of human temptation—environed and hemmed
in by difficulties and dangers—overwhelmed with responsibility which
there is no one to share—the lives of sixteen thousand men resting on
his decision—the honour of his country at stake—with a perfidious
enemy before him, a decrepit general at his side, and a paralysed army
at his back—driven to negotiate by the imbecility of his companions,
and then thwarted in his negotiations by the perfidy of his “new
allies.” But if, without injustice and cruelty, we would pass sentence
on the conduct of a man so environed, we must ponder well all these
environments, and consider what must have been the effect of seven
wearing weeks of such unparalleled trial even on the strongest mind,
and what must have been the temptation that arrayed itself before him,
when there suddenly gleamed upon him a hope of saving at once the lives
of his companions and the credit of the British nation. If, when that
great temptation burst suddenly upon his path, and, dazzled by its
delusive brilliancy, he saw the great object set before him, but did
not see the slough of moral turpitude to be passed through before it
could be attained, it is right that we should remember that Macnaghten,
though a good and a brave man, was _but_ a man after all, and that
human strength, at the best, is but weakness to resist the pressure of
overwhelming circumstance.
We have not the same intelligible guides to a right estimate of the
conduct of Akbar Khan. If we regard the assassination of the British
Envoy as a deliberate, predetermined act, it can only be said of it
that it stands recorded as one of the basest, foulest murders that ever
stained the page of history. But it does not appear that the murder of
Macnaghten was premeditated by the Sirdar. It seems to have been the
result of one of those sudden gusts of passion which were among the
distinguishing features of the young Barukzye’s character, and which
had often before betrayed him into excesses laden with the pangs of
after-repentance. The seizure of the Envoy and his companions, which
was designed by the Sirdar, was an act of deliberate treachery, which
the chiefs would perhaps endeavour to justify by declaring that they
only designed to do towards the Envoy as the Envoy had declared himself
willing to do towards Ameen-oollah Khan.[201] But whilst Macnaghten
had only consented to a proposal made to him by others—whilst he had
merely yielded to temptation, and at the instance of one Afghan chief
consented to the betrayal of another—Akbar Khan, with deliberate
subtlety and malice, wove the net which he was to cast over the deluded
Englishman, and treacherously enclosed him in the toils. The trap was
cunningly laid and craftily baited; and the unhappy Envoy, all his
perceptions blunted by the long-continued overstraining of his mind,
fell readily into the snare, and went insanely to his undoing. Like
Burnes, he had been warned of the treachery that encompassed him; and
like his ill-fated colleague he had disregarded the warnings that
might have saved him. The brave confidence of Macnaghten clung to
him to the last; his sanguine temperament, at one time so dangerous
and disastrous, at another so noble and inspiriting—which more than
anything else had sustained the character of the nation throughout the
sore trials which it had brought upon us—lured him at last to his
death.
CHAPTER II.
[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.
And thus sinking more and more deeply in the great slough of
humiliation, the unhappy leaders of the Caubul force groaned
through the festal Christmas season. No thought of the dear homes
of England inspired them to uphold England’s dearest honour. On the
26th of December, encouraging letters were received from Macgregor
at Jellalabad, and from Mackeson at Peshawur, setting forth that
reinforcements were on their way up from India, and urging the
authorities at Caubul to hold out to the last. Addressed to Macnaghten,
these letters were opened by one who had carried to Macnaghten’s
duties all Macnaghten’s constancy and courage. He saw in these tidings
fit opportunity to urge again upon the military leaders the duty of
continued resistance. Moreover, there were intestine feuds in the
city; the enemy were weakened by disunion; Shah Soojah seemed to be
gathering strength; and Oosman Khan, Barukzye, who really desired
the salvation of the British force, had offered to conduct it safely
to Peshawur for five lakhs of rupees. These facts were communicated
to Elphinstone, who summoned a council of war. The two Brigadiers,
Shelton and Anquetil, Colonel Chambers, and Captains Grant and Bellew,
met the military and the political chief at the house of the former.
Earnestly, and almost hopefully, Pottinger set forth these encouraging
circumstances, and besought the military chiefs not to treat with the
enemy. The reasons with which he enforced his request, were as weighty
as the spirit which informed them was noble. He contended that they had
no right to bind their government to future measures which might be
injurious to the public welfare; that they had no right to order other
commanding officers to abandon the trusts confided to them; no right
to sacrifice large sums of public money to purchase their own safety.
He contended, too, that the enemy were not to be trusted; that, in all
human probability, they would betray us; and that it would be safer,
therefore, as it would be more honourable, to make a great effort to
occupy the Balla Hissar till the spring, or else to fight their way to
Jellalabad, and there await the promised reinforcements.
Eldred Pottinger had not the gift of speech—had not a commanding
presence; but there was natural eloquence in these plain soldierly
words, and the resolute bearing of the man imparted dignity to his
utterance of them. Almost was the General, though greatly enfeebled
at this time by disease, roused into action by them. But Shelton
vehemently contended that neither course suggested by Pottinger was
practicable, and that it was better to pay any sum of money than to
sacrifice the force. In this opinion the council of war, true to the
character of such assemblies, unanimously concurred. So grievously
disappointed and mortified as he was, Pottinger renewed his diplomatic
intercourse with the enemy, and proceeded to give effect to the terms
of the hated treaty.
Captain Lawrence, who since his seizure at the fatal conference, had
resided in the house of Akbar Khan in the city, was sent for to draw
the bills, and on the 27th of December came into cantonments. Fourteen
lakhs of rupees were then signed away. Then came a more dreadful
concession. The enemy demanded the immediate surrender of our guns.
All but six field-pieces, which were to be suffered to accompany the
retreating force, were now to be given up to the triumphant Afghans.
This was the sorest trial that the British garrison had yet been called
upon to encounter. It burnt in our humiliation as with a brand of iron.
The troops chafed under this crowning indignity; and the military
chiefs, when the hour of surrender came, shrunk from the mortifying
necessity of giving up to a barbarous foe those muniments of war, which
soldiers of all nations honour, and some almost idolise. But they
could not bring themselves to risk a renewal of the conflict by openly
refusing to accede to the demand. So, Pottinger hoping, perhaps, that
something might yet arise to break off the negotiations, determined to
procrastinate. He began by giving up the Shah’s guns, two by two, on
successive days; but if this alleviated the pain of the concession, it
did not really soften the disgrace.
From day to day, guns, waggons, small arms, and ammunition were
surrendered to the enemy. The hostages, too, were given up. Lieutenants
Conolly and Airey were already in the hands of the Afghans. Now
Captains Walsh and Drummond, and Lieutenant Warburton and Webb, were
sent to join them in captivity.[203] The enemy were anxious to get
some of the married families into their hands; but there was a general
unwillingness on the part of the officers to suffer their wives and
children to be cast upon the forbearance of an enemy supposed to be so
cruel, so treacherous, and so unscrupulous. On the 29th, such of the
sick and wounded as were believed to be unable to bear the fatigues
of the march, were sent into the city; and two medical officers, Drs.
Berwick and Campbell, were appointed to take charge of them.
On the 1st of January, 1842, the ratified treaty was sent in, bearing
the seals of eighteen of the Afghan Sirdars. It contained all the
stipulations already detailed, except that relating to the surrender,
as hostages, of the English ladies. Even without this crowning
indignity it was miserably degrading. There is nothing, indeed,
more painful in all this painful history than the progress of the
negotiations which resulted in the accomplishment of this treaty. The
tone of the enemy throughout was arrogant, dictatorial, and insulting;
whilst the language of our diplomatists was that of submission
and self-abasement. It is so rare a thing for Englishmen to throw
themselves upon the clemency and forbearance of an insolent foe, that
when we see our officers imploring the Afghan chiefs “not to overpower
the weak with suffering,”[204] we contemplate the sad picture of our
humiliation with as much astonishment as shame. The disgrace rests
on the military commanders. Pottinger, had he not been overruled in
council, would have snapped asunder the treaty before the faces of the
chiefs, and appealed again to the God of Battles.
There were other things, too, to humble us. The state of affairs in
cantonments was something very grievous to contemplate. The Ghazees
hovering round the walls were insulting our people at their very gates,
and bearding them at the very muzzles of their guns. Intercepting the
supplies of grain which the commissariat had purchased with so much
difficulty, they drove off the cattle and ill-treated their attendants.
The chiefs declared that they had no power to prevent these outrages,
and told the British authorities that they should order the garrison to
fire upon all who molested them. Officers and men alike were burning
to chastise the wretches who thus insulted their misfortunes; but they
were not suffered to fire a shot. The Afghans had triumphed over us so
long with impunity that they now believed the Feringhees had sunk into
hopeless cowardice, and had become as patient of injury and insult as a
herd of broken-spirited slaves.[205]
All this was very hard to bear. Other trials, too, were upon them.
All who had friends in the city—and many of our officers had among
the Caubulees faithful and long-tried friends—were now receiving
from them alarming intimations of the dangers that threatened them
on the retreat. It was no secret, indeed, either in the city or in
cantonments, that the promises of the chiefs were not to be depended
on, and that treachery was brewing for the destruction of our wretched
force. Mohun Lal warned Pottinger that the chiefs were not to be
believed, and that unless their sons accompanied the army as hostages,
it would be attacked upon the road. To this Pottinger replied: “The
chiefs have signed the treaty, and their sons accompany us. As for
attacking us on the road, we are in the hands of God, and him we
trust.”[206] Again, Mohun Lal wrote that the troops would be attacked
as soon as they quitted cantonments; but it was too late now to recede.
Other warning notes of still more ominous import were sounded at
this time. Moollah Ahmed Khan told Captain Johnson, that Akbar Khan
had sworn that he would obtain possession of the English ladies as a
pledge for the safe return of his own wives and family; and annihilate
every soldier of the British army, with the exception of one man, who
should reach Jellalabad to tell the story of the massacre of all his
comrades.[207]
But to those who pondered well the dangers that threatened the
retreating force in the gloomy defiles between Caubul and Jellalabad,
there was something more terrible still than the vindictive treachery
of the Afghan tribes. Ever since the 18th of December, snow had been
falling heavily at intervals—sometimes from morning to evening, with
terrible perseverance. It was now lying more than ankle-deep upon the
ground. Already had the Sepoys and the camp-followers begun to faint
under the cruel sufferings of a frosty winter, fearfully aggravated
by the exhaustion of all the firewood in their reach. The trees in
cantonments had already been cut down and consumed. What was once a
flourishing grove or orchard (for they were mainly fruit-trees) had
now become a desert. But the sufferings which these wretched men,
transplanted from the torrid plains of Hindostan, were now enduring in
the Caubul cantonment, seemed but faintly to foreshadow the misery of a
long march through the dreadful snow. Even to the hardy people of the
North such a march, it was known, must be a sore trial; but to the weak
and effeminate strangers from the plains of Hindostan, who had followed
our fortunes into those dreary regions, it seemed to threaten nothing
short of absolute extermination.
Those few first days of January were days of painful doubt and anxiety.
Every preparation for the march had been made by the garrison. For
some time our officers had been gathering together and securing such
property as they could take with them, and destroying what they were
compelled to abandon. Every night, since the commencement of the
new year, they had retired to rest, believing that the army would
commence its march on the following morning; but the movement was
delayed day after day, because the chiefs had not completed their
promised arrangements for the safe conduct of the force. At last,
on the evening of the 5th of January, the engineer-officer received
instructions actually to commence the work, which he had been so long
in readiness to accomplish. He was ordered to cut an opening through
the rampart-walls of the cantonment to allow the egress of the troops,
more rapidly and less confusedly, than they could pass out through the
gates. The chiefs had not sent the promised safeguard; but, contrary to
the advice of Major Pottinger,[208] the military authorities determined
to march out of their entrenchments. And so, on the following morning,
the British force, beaten and disgraced, commenced its ill-fated
retreat towards the provinces of Hindostan.
I have commented upon the various incidents of the Caubul insurrection
as they have arisen, one by one, to claim the attention of the reader;
and little now remains to be said in explanation of the causes which
conduced to the calamitous and disgraceful defeat of a British army by
an undisciplined and disunited enemy, who had no artillery to bring
into the field. Whatever more remote causes of this lamentable failure
may be found elsewhere, it is impossible to conceal or to disguise the
one galling fact, that the British army at Caubul was disastrously
beaten because it was commanded by an incapable chief. Whether that
chief would have beaten the enemy, if the military arrangements for
which he was not responsible had been better ordered—if the site of
the cantonments had been more judiciously chosen, and its defences
more effectively constructed, if all our magazines and godowns had
been well located and well protected,—may still be an open question;
but it appears to me that there is no question as to whether a
commanding officer of the right stamp would have triumphed over these
difficulties, and beaten the enemy in spite of them. The Caubul
cantonments were very badly situated, and very ill-constructed for
purposes of defence; but if our troops had been commanded by an officer
with a robust frame, strong nerves, a clear understanding, and a proper
knowledge of his business, as the chief of a mixed army of British and
Hindostanee troops, they would have crushed the insurrection in a few
hours, and demonstrated the irresistible power of British valour and
British discipline.
It has been said that the British army was not beaten out of Caubul,
but that it was _starved_ out of Caubul. This is a belief that I would
willingly encourage, if I could only bring my judgment to embrace it.
But the fact is, that the army was driven out of Caubul for want of
supplies, only because the troops would not fight, or were not suffered
to fight, to obtain them. The Commissariat officers would have fed
the troops, if the military authorities had not shamefully sacrificed
their supplies,—if they had not ignominiously lost what was already
in store; and ignominiously refused to make an effort to obtain fresh
supplies from the surrounding country. The troops, indeed, fought
neither to keep their food when they had it, nor to procure food when
they had none. There was an alacrity only in losing. The imbecility
which sacrificed the Bengal Commissariat Fort, on the 5th of November,
and the miserable abandonment of the expedition to Khoja Rewash, on
the 9th of December, are equally apt illustrations of the truth, that,
if the army was starved out of Caubul, it was only because it courted
starvation.
This is a very humiliating confession, but it is impossible, without
a sacrifice of truth for the sake of administering to our national
vanity, to avoid the mortifying conclusion that the Caubul army wanted
food, only because it wanted vigour and energy to obtain it. If
General Elphinstone had thrown half as much heart into his work as
Captain Johnson threw into his, the army would not have been starved
out of Caubul. There is nothing sadder than the spectacle of a fine
army sacrificed by the imbecility of an incapable general, and nothing
more painful than to write of it. But such humiliating revelations
are not without their uses. They operate in the way of warning. Never
again, after this frightful illustration of the evils of a vicious
system of routine, will the lives of sixteen thousand men, and the
honour of a great nation, be placed in the hands of a senile commander,
crippled by disease and enfeebled by suffering. It was General
Elphinstone’s misfortune that he was sent to Caubul. It was Lord
Auckland’s fault that he sent him there. General Elphinstone knew that
he was incapable of performing worthily the duties of such a command,
and he took the earliest opportunity of applying for relief from a
burden of responsibility which he was not able to bear. Lord Auckland
knew that he was incapable, for the attention of the Governor-General
was strongly called to the fact; but he sent the infirm old General
to Caubul, in spite of the representations that were made to him by
men less jealous of the integrity of the roster than of the honour
of their country. The British army was beaten at Caubul, because it
was commanded by General Elphinstone; and it was commanded by General
Elphinstone, because Lord Auckland decreed that it should be so.
General Elphinstone has left upon record a declaration of his belief
that if he had been more worthily supported he would not have been
beaten at Caubul. So long as he held the chief command in his own
hands, he—and he alone—was responsible for all the operations of
the army. He never relinquished the command. Though he did not take
the field in person, every order emanated from him. To him the Envoy
addressed himself; with him the Envoy took counsel. It is possible
that if the second-in-command had been an officer of a different stamp,
the army would not have been so disastrously and ignominiously beaten;
but this admission does not affect the question of responsibility.
Brigadier Shelton, throughout the siege, held a subordinate situation.
He was immediately under Elphinstone’s orders; and though he may be
chargeable with certain individual miscarriages—with certain errors
in the executive management of details—he is not chargeable with the
great comprehensive failure which has plunged his country into such
a sea of disgrace. Of Shelton’s faults I have not been unmindful;
but when I have admitted all his perverseness, his arrogance, his
contumacy, and expressed my belief that there was not another man
in the British army so unfitted by nature for the post he occupied
under such a General, the admission amounts to little more than this:
that Brigadier Shelton was not the man to supply the deficiencies
of General Elphinstone. It is only because General Elphinstone was
so incapable himself that we come to canvass at all the merits of
his second-in-command. History does not trouble itself much about
seconds-in-command, when the chiefs are fit for their posts.
Unquestionably Elphinstone was not well supported. Macnaghten, in
emphatic language, described the troops as “a pack of despicable
cowards.” On more than one occasion they forgot that they were British
troops, and turned their backs upon the enemy. They did not fight,
as they would have fought if they had been well commanded. But the
commander had less reason to complain of his troops than the troops
had to complain of their commander. It was the faint-heartedness of
the commander, at the outset of the insurrection, that dispirited and
unnerved the troops. If Elphinstone, on the 2nd of November, had struck
a vigorous blow at the then incipient rebellion, and proved himself,
by his energy and resolution, worthy of the confidence of the troops,
they would have had confidence in him and in themselves. But they were
held in restraint by the backwardness of their leader; the forward
feeling that then inspired them was crushed and deadened. There was
nothing to encourage and to animate them, but everything to dishearten
and depress. They saw that the enemy were suffered to triumph over and
insult them—that the worst indignities were unresented, the vilest
outrages unpunished. Thus abased they soon lost their self-respect, and
forgot what was due to their colours and their country.
Brigadier Shelton has attributed to physical causes the deterioration
of the troops; but it is rather to moral than to physical causes that
that deterioration is to be ascribed. The troops would have borne up
against continued harassing duty in cantonments—against cold, hunger,
and fatigue; they would have kept up a brave heart under the sorest
physical trials, if there had been no moral influences to sicken and to
chill. They bore, indeed, their outward sufferings without complaining.
Cold, hunger, and fatigue they could endure without a murmur; but the
supineness of those who suffered them to be robbed and insulted under
the very shadow of their guns filled them with burning indignation,
which, in time, was succeeded by a reaction of sullen despondency. They
felt that they were sacrificed to the imbecility of their commander;
and, in time, under the sure process of moral deterioration, they
became in all respects worthy of their chief.
Examples of individual heroism were not wanting. Wherever Englishmen
congregate, there are surely to be found brave hearts and resolute
spirits amongst them. There were many in that Caubul garrison who bore
themselves throughout the perilous season of their beleaguerment in a
manner worthy of the chivalry of the empire. When the retreating force
commenced its miserable march towards the British provinces, it left
behind it the remains of many brave men who had fallen nobly on the
field of battle; and many brave men were now bracing themselves up in
the desperate resolution to sell their lives dearly to the enemy, if
treachery were at work for their destruction. But they who had been
most eager to counsel a vigorous course of action, and who had felt
most deeply the humiliation into which the feebleness of their chief
had sunk them, were mostly officers of the lower grades; and though
the opinions of captains and subalterns were sought, and offered when
not sought, in a manner unprecedented in the annals of British warfare
(but still short of what might have been justified by the magnitude
of the crisis), they had no power to direct the current of events or
to avert the evils which they clearly foresaw. Even Pottinger, with
all the influence of recognised official position, and the prestige
of an heroic character, could only lift up his voice in remonstrance
against the sacrifice of national honour involved in the humiliating
treaty with the Afghan Sirdars. The military chiefs were fixed in their
determination to abandon Afghanistan, and to leave Shah Soojah to his
fate.
CHAPTER III.
[November, 1841-January, 1842.]
Sale’s Brigade—Evacuation of Gundamuck—Skirmishes with the
Enemy—Occupation of Jellalabad—State of the Defences—Successful
Sallies—The Fortifications repaired—Disastrous Tidings from
Caubul—Summons to surrender—Arrival of Dr. Brydon.
Whilst Elphinstone was flinging himself into the snares of the enemy
at Caubul, Sale was holding out manfully at Jellalabad. Whether the
latter ought not to have returned to Caubul, or if such a movement were
impossible, to have stood his ground at Gundamuck, is a question which
military critics will long continue to discuss. That the appearance
of this brigade at Caubul would have changed the aspect of affairs at
that place, and in all probability rescued Elphinstone’s unhappy force
from destruction, and the national character from disgrace, there
seems no reason to doubt. But it was the opinion of General Sale that
his brigade could not reach Caubul. “My retracing my steps on that
city,” he says, “was, in a military sense, impracticable, since the
first inevitable sacrifice would have been of the lives of 300 sick
and wounded, whom I could not have left in depôt with the treasonable
irregulars at Gundamuck, whilst my cattle was unequal to the transport
of my camp-equipage, and my ammunition insufficient for protracted
operations. In the position which I occupied, I could not absolutely
command a day’s provisions, or even water, and should have been hemmed
in on every side by hostile tribes, amounting to thirty or forty
thousand men, part of whom might have seized Jellalabad, and reduced it
to ashes; or, holding it, have left me no alternative but a disastrous
retreat to Peshawur. I therefore came to the resolution of anticipating
any movement of this kind, and, by possessing myself of Jellalabad,
establishing a point on which the force at Caubul might retire if
hardly pressed, and restoring a link in the chain of communication with
our provinces.”
This was written five months after the brigade had abandoned its
position at Gundamuck. It does not, however, differ much from the
statement of reasons sent to General Elphinstone only as many days
afterwards.[209] But the fact is, that those few days had given a very
different complexion to the aspect of affairs. It was on the 10th
of November that Captain Macgregor, who for days had been perplexed
by alarming rumours of native origin, received the first authentic
intelligence of the outbreak at Caubul, coupled with an urgent
requisition from the Envoy to bring back Sale’s brigade. Some, at
least, of the military objections urged against the movement by the
General had not then begun to exist. The irregulars were not then
known to be treasonable. The surrounding country was not then known
to be hostile. Food was believed to be procurable. The brigade was at
this time halted in the valley of Gundamuck. There was no more fertile
spot than this between Caubul and Jellalabad. Orchards and vineyards,
green fields and rippling streams, refreshed the eyes and gladdened the
hearts of men who, for many weary days, had been toiling through arid
defiles, under the shadow of dreary walls of rock. Here the brigade had
encamped itself on the 30th of October, and looked forward to a brief
season of repose.
Everything, indeed, at this time wore a most encouraging aspect.
Provisions were freely coming into camp, and the Ghilzye chiefs were
making their submission. “On the 31st,” says Captain Macgregor, in
his narrative of these events, “Burkutt Khan paid me a visit, and
brought with him two of the rebel chiefs, Sadad Meer and Sir Biland
Khan; they had returned to their allegiance, and delivered over to me
sixteen camel loads of property (not very valuable) which had been
plundered from some Rehwaree merchants; this property I made over
to their owners. Aghur Khan Sahuk, a Ghilzye chief of considerable
influence, and Attah Mahomed Khan Sahuk, joined me at Gundamuck, and
established their Thanahs for the protection of the Caubul road within
their respective boundaries from Seh Baba to near Jugdulluck. Burkutt
Khan had reposted his Thanahs at Jugdulluck, and at this time there
seemed to be a great promise of the Ghilzye country being shortly
tranquillised.”[210]
There was one exception, however, to the general amity which the
chiefs seemed now inclined to offer to Macgregor. Meer Afzool Khan,
Urz-Begee, who was the possessor of a fort and some circumjacent land
at Mammoo-Khail, about two miles distant from Sale’s camp at Gundamuck,
had fled from Caubul, and having sent his family and his property
to this fort, was now proceeding to garrison it, and, in aid of the
rebel cause, to molest us by continued incursions upon our camp. On
the 3rd or 4th of November,[211] certain intelligence of this movement
was brought to Macgregor. He was then dining in the mess-tent of the
Sappers. With him were George Broadfoot, who commanded the Sapper-corps
(then ignorant of the fate of his brother at Caubul)—and Backhouse
and Dawes, two stout-hearted officers of artillery. All were of
opinion with Macgregor that no time should be lost in attacking the
fort, before Afzool Khan had thrown his reinforcements into it. So
the political officer went at once to the General’s tent, and urged
him to sanction the assault. His arguments were of no avail; and he
returned only to announce his failure. It was then midnight. But the
emergency was great; so Broadfoot and Backhouse went at once to the
tent of Captain Havelock of the 13th Light Infantry—than whom there
was no finer soldier or abler man in Sale’s camp—and roused him from
his bed to take counsel with them. The General had much confidence in
his judgment, and was more likely to be moved by him than by any man in
his force. Fortunately, Havelock was eager for the attack; and although
he had already recommended it in vain, he undertook to renew his
solicitations, and to the delight of Broadfoot and Backhouse partially
succeeded. They desired an immediate movement upon the rebel fort, and
would have had the necessary troops ready to march at daybreak. But
it was not until the fifth hour after noon that the force received its
orders to march. The enemy fled at its approach, and the evacuated fort
was garrisoned by a party of the Shah’s troops under Captain Gerrard.
A commanding position was thus wrested from the enemy, who were coming
down to occupy it in force, and the moral effects of the achievement
were as great as its immediate and material results. The spirits of the
troops, which had begun to flag, rose rapidly; and the enemy awoke from
their delusive belief that Sale was afraid to attack them.
Up to the day on which Macgregor received the pressing solicitations of
the Envoy to bring back Sale’s brigade to Caubul, circumstances, since
the arrival of the force at Gundamuck, had been all in its favour.
When, therefore, Macnaghten’s letter was received, and they took
counsel together as to the course it then became them to pursue, some
at least of those strong reasons against the movement on Caubul, which
Sale set forth in his official letters, had not yet been forced into
being. A council of war was held, and the members of it were divided
in opinion; but the majority pronounced against the movement for the
rescue of Elphinstone’s force. It was determined that the brigade
should throw itself into Jellalabad. There was a middle course open
to them—the retention of their position at Gundamuck; but it seems
to have found no favour in their eyes. Had Sale’s force remained in
the valley of Gundamuck, it might have saved Elphinstone’s army from
annihilation on its fatal January retreat. As long as it was encamped
there, the tendency of the Ghilzye chiefs was towards the establishment
of friendly relations with the British; but no sooner had we determined
to abandon our position, than the whole country broke out into
hostility, and the passes were sealed.[212]
On the 11th of November, the brigade commenced its march towards
Jellalabad. Sale had wisely determined to move with as little
encumbrance of baggage as possible. He was partly, indeed, compelled
to this by the depredations of the tribes who had swept off the bulk
of his cattle whilst the animals were grazing on the plain. The injury
inflicted upon us by their predatory adroitness was of a very doubtful
character. The taste for baggage is ordinarily so strong that little
short of absolute necessity compels its abandonment. Sale was forced
to move lightly out of Gundamuck, and he found the advantage of the
absence of the usual impediments before he had been long on the march.
To leave, however, any property at Gundamuck was virtually to sacrifice
it. To the care of the Shah’s irregulars posted in the cantonment all
that could not be carried away was now consigned. As soon as Sale’s
brigade had commenced its march to Jellalabad the cantonment was
attacked. True to their character, the Janbaz, who seem to have been
raised for the express purpose of going over to the enemy, did it with
their wonted address. The property left at Gundamuck fell into the
hands of the Afghans; the cantonment was burnt to the ground; and all
the surrounding country rose against us in open revolt.
Without any serious opposition, the march to Jellalabad was
accomplished. On the morning of the 12th, however, soon after the
brigade got under arms in the grey twilight, the tribes were seen
clustering on the steep hills on either side, and soon poured
themselves down on the rear-guard, vainly striving to sweep off the
baggage. A running skirmish, which lasted for some miles, and brought
out the fine qualities of our troops, their admirable discipline
and steadiness under fire, the gallantly of their bearing, and the
rapidity of their movements, ended in the complete dispersion of the
depredators, and secured the safety of the remainder of their march.
Clever were the manœuvres by which on that day Dennie drew the enemy
into his toils, and heavy the retribution which descended upon them.
Placing his cavalry in ambush, he brought up his infantry to the
attack, ordered them to advance firing, and then wheeled them about,
as though in panic flight. The stratagem succeeded to admiration.
The enemy, after a brief pause of wonderment, believed they had
accomplished a great victory, sent up a wild shout, and then rushed
in pursuit of the flying Feringhees. They were soon in the clear open
space to which Dennie had designed to lure them. The cavalry, whom they
had laughed at on the hills, able now to operate freely, dashed at them
with sudden fury. The slaughter was tremendous; the rout was complete.
It was said of the British horsemen that day that “their right arms
were wearied with the blows which they struck; and the quantity of dead
that might be seen scattered over the face of the valley proved that
they had not struck at random.”[213]
On the morning of the 13th of November, Sale’s brigade took possession
of Jellalabad. The movement took the Afghans by surprise. They had
believed that the Feringhees were making the best of their way to the
provinces of Hindostan; and now their entrance into the city struck
a panic into the hearts of the inhabitants. As the regiments marched
in, the citizens fled out in dismay. Everything was abandoned to the
British troops. There was no need to fire a shot or to draw a sabre.
Sale’s brigade had now become the garrison of Jellalabad.[214]
Scarcely, however, had Sale made himself master of the place before
it was surrounded by yelling crowds, who threatened death to the
infidels if they did not at once abandon the town. The utmost caution
was now necessary. The place, though surrounded by fortifications,
was absolutely without any real defences; and the troops within its
dilapidated walls and its filled up ditches, were almost as much
exposed as in the open country. The extent of the works was very
great, and it was quite impossible to man them. But guards were posted
at all the gates; and a strong piquet planted in a central position,
and ordered to hold itself in readiness to send supports to any point
from which the sound of firing might proceed.[215] These arrangements
made, the remainder of the troops were suffered to lie down to rest by
companies, with their officers beside them, whilst Sale summoned the
commanders of regiments and detachments to a council of war.
The question to be determined was this. There was the extensive,
ill-defended city of Jellalabad; and in the midst of it was the Balla
Hissar, or citadel, surrounded by a wall, sufficiently extensive to
enclose the brigade without inconvenience, but yet not so extensive
as to exhaust our means of defence. It was now debated whether it
would be more expedient to abandon the town and concentrate our troops
in the Balla Hissar, or to hold possession of the former. Weighty
and very apparent were the arguments in favour of the occupation of
the citadel; and for a time the council seemed inclined towards the
adoption of that securer course; but to Dennie and others it was clear,
that the abandonment of the city would be a virtual acknowledgment of
weakness, and that it would have a far better political effect, as it
would a more becoming military appearance, to hold the city itself,
than to be cooped up within the walls of the citadel. And so it was at
last determined that the city should be held, and the enemy resolutely
defied.
But to hold the city it was necessary that the defences should be
repaired. Well might Sale look with dismay at their condition, and
almost regard it as a wild hope ever to look for the completion of the
work that he had marked out for his little garrison. “I found the walls
of Jellalabad,” he said, “in a state which might have justified despair
as to the possibility of defending them. The _enceinte_ was far too
extensive for my small force, embracing a circumference of upwards of
2300 yards. Its tracing was vicious in the extreme; it had no parapet
excepting for a few hundred yards, which, there, was not more than two
feet high earth; and rubbish had accumulated to such an extent about
the ramparts, that there were roads in various directions across and
over them into the country. There was a space of 400 yards together, on
which none of the garrison could show themselves excepting at one spot:
the population within was disaffected, and the whole _enceinte_ was
surrounded by ruined forts, walls, mosques, tombs, and gardens, from
which a fire could be opened upon the defenders at twenty and thirty
yards.”[216]
The first thing now to be done was to appoint a committee of officers
to examine and report upon the works of the place. On the 13th of
November, Captain Broadfoot, who commanded the corps of sappers,
with some other officers, went round the dilapidated works. Broadfoot
alone succeeded in making the circuit of them. “Large gaps cut off the
communication, or insecure footing compelled the officers to descend
among the adjoining enclosures, from which it was difficult to find the
way; whilst on the south side the rampart was so embedded in houses and
surrounded by them, that its course could only be traced by laboriously
threading the lanes of the native town. On the north side the wall
rose to a very great height _towards the town_, but sloped down to the
exterior in a heap of ruins almost everywhere accessible; while at the
foot were houses and gardens so strongly occupied by the enemy, that
during the night of the 13th of November our troops were unable to
maintain their posts; and with the exception of the gateway, a line of
four hundred yards on the northern face was without a man on the works.
Had the enemy then attacked us, we must have been reduced to a street
combat.”[217]
Broadfoot, now appointed garrison engineer, set about the work
entrusted to him with all the energy and zeal for which his character
was distinguished. His little corps of sappers had brought with them
their pickaxes, shovels, and other working tools from Caubul; and were
now ready to ply them with the heartiest good-will. There was not a
soldier in garrison, European or Native, who was not eager to join
in the work. Wood was to be collected; and iron was to be collected;
for there were no available supplies of either. But from the ruins of
old houses in the cantonment and in the town the former was extracted
in sufficient quantity, and the neighbouring country supplied the
latter.[218] Every difficulty was overcome as it arose. Impossibilities
did not grow in Jellalabad.
But before our soldiers could carry on their work in safety upon the
ramparts, it was necessary to give the enemy, who assembled in great
force beyond the walls of the city, a taste of our military strength.
The morning of the 16th of November was an exciting, and it proved to
be a glorious one. On the preceding evening it had been determined that
Colonel Monteith, of the 35th Bengal Infantry, a true soldier and a
good officer, should take out eleven hundred men, at daybreak, and give
battle to the molesting Afghans. As soon as the early dawn would suffer
him to take a survey of surrounding objects, Monteith ascended to the
flat house-top of one of the most commanding edifices in the city, and
looked around, with a keen soldier’s eye, upon the expanse of hill and
plain, of garden and of vineyard, traced the course of the river, and
marked the castles of the chiefs which dotted the adjacent country. He
saw, too, what was of more importance still—the dispositions of the
enemy. There seemed to be about 5000 fighting men, gathered together,
some on the hill-sides, some in the enclosures on the plain; and though
they were kept together by little discipline, there seemed to be some
sturdy qualities about them, and they were, at all events, well armed.
Monteith learnt all that could be learnt from that commanding position,
and then he went down to place himself at the head of his men.
The little force was well composed and well commanded. The remaining
men of the garrison were under arms; and the guns, which Monteith did
not take with him, were posted on the ramparts to cover his advance.
Nothing could have been more gallant or more successful than the
attack. What the artillery commenced, the infantry followed up bravely,
and the cavalry completed. The enemy were beaten at all points. The
wretched Janbaz, who had gone over to the insurgents at Gundamuck,
now met the men of the 5th Cavalry in fair fight, and were hewn down
remorselessly by them. In a little time the panic was complete. The
British horsemen, following up our successes, flung themselves upon
the flying Afghans on the plains, and slaughtered them as they fled.
Then the bugle sounded the recall: Monteith brought his men together,
flushed with success, and the whole returned, in joyous spirits, to
the city. The Afghans were checked at the outset of their career of
insolence and intimidation, and for many a day kept themselves quietly
in their homes.
Then the work of defence proceeded apace. Broadfoot was toiling all
day long to repair the decayed ramparts and clear out the ditches,
which, ditches no longer, had been filled up to the consistency of
thoroughfares. Abbott, who had been appointed commissary of ordnance
was getting his guns into position, and making up his ammunition as
best he could from the materials to be found in the neighbourhood.
Macgregor, with his wonted activity, was playing the part of the
commissariat officer—and playing it well—bringing all his political
influence, which was great, to bear upon the important business of
the collection of supplies. And so successful were his exertions—so
successful were the efforts of the foraging parties, which went out
from time to time in search of grain, sheep, firewood, and other
essentials—that in a little while a month’s provisions were in store.
It is true that the men were on half-rations; but they did not work
the worse for that. It was never said at Jellalabad that the soldiery
were unequal to their accustomed duties because they had not their
accustomed supplies of food. The gallant men who composed the garrison
of Jellalabad, took their half-rations cheerfully, and cheerfully did
double work.[219]
Not again, until the 1st of December, was the mettle of Sale’s brigade
tried in the open field. For some days before, the enemy had been
hovering about and threatening the garrison, who, chary of their
ammunition, which was running scarce, gave back nothing in reply to the
desultory fire of the Afghans. But on the 1st of December they appeared
in such formidable array, and grew so bold and menacing—closing in
nearly and more nearly about the walls, until the workmen on the
ramparts could not safely perform their accustomed duties—that Sale
could no longer refrain from sending out his fighting men against them.
Monteith, an officer of the Company’s service, had led the attack on
the 14th of November. Now, the direction of the sortie was entrusted
to an officer of the Queen’s army, who had already, on more than one
occasion, shown his capacity for command. Dennie led out the garrison
this time; and gallantly they moved to the attack. It was mid-day when
they sallied out with a cheer, and fell upon their besiegers. It were
scarcely truth to say that a battle was fought on that 1st of December.
The affair began and ended with the rout of the Afghans. Two guns of
Abbott’s battery were unlimbered, and with murderous execution poured
in their thick showers of grape upon the discomfited mass. They, who
had of late been so bold and defiant, now fled in wild confusion, but
could not escape the sabres of our cavalry, who charged them home,
and drove them across the plain into the river, whilst our infantry
pursued them up the hill-sides, and fell upon them with their gleaming
bayonets. And so, without the loss of a single man, Dennie dispersed
the investing force; and not a trace of it was to be seen on the morrow
except the dead bodies on the plain.
And now, with little or no interruption, the labours of the garrison
proceeded, and the works began to assume an appearance of effective
defence. In fine health, in good working condition, and in an admirable
state of discipline, European and Native troops alike laboured with axe
and shovel, and soon saw the mud-walls rising around them. Had they
thought only of themselves, they would have toiled on, in high spirits
as in high health. But the worst rumours were coming in from Caubul. It
was plain that their fellow-soldiers at the capital were not achieving
like honourable success. It was believed, too, that Sale and Macgregor
knew more than they were willing to reveal. Men asked each other
fearful questions; but beyond the leading outline of events, nothing
was known that could be shaped into intelligible replies.