WHAT TOOK US THERE.
The kings of Cabul in relation to their people somewhat resembled
those of the House of Stuart when on the Scottish throne; being only
the khans of a warlike tribe, among many other khans and tribes;
hence the old Celtic term for the king of Scotland is simply the
"chief of chiefs." The resemblance to Scotland in the days of old,
is still further carried out in the fact that Cabul was a mere
amalgamation of petty republics, or clans, having at their head a
king, whose influence was felt in the capital, but whose authority
failed to reach the fierce dwellers in the glens and on the mountains.
After witnessing many civil wars, crimes and outrages, Shah Mahmud
died, and was succeeded on the throne of Herat and Afghanistan, by
his son Kamran.
Meanwhile Dost Mohammed Khan, another prince of the family, seized on
the beautiful vale of the Cabul river; and the Lion of Lahore,
Runjeet Sing (with whose name the newspapers long made us familiar)
over-ran all Cashmere. Dost Mohammed was desirous of securing the
friendship of the British Government, who sent Captain (afterwards
Sir Alexander) Burnes to him; but the honourable reception he
accorded to a Russian officer at Cabul about the first year of Her
present Majesty's reign caused him to be secretly distrusted by the
Governor-General of India.
The latter, with a view to secure our north-western frontier against
Russian influence, and an intended invasion of the peninsula, became
a party to a treaty between Shah Sujah, third son of the deceased
Mahmud of Herat and Afghanistan, to re-establish him on the throne of
his ancestors; and hence war was declared against the Dost, whose
ally, Runjeet Sing, refused permission for our troops to march
through the Punjaub--"The land of the five rivers." But, heedless of
this, two Corps d'Armée, advancing simultaneously from Bombay and
Bengal, under Sir Willoughby Cotton, ten thousand strong, soon found
themselves under the walls of Candahar; and next Ghuznee, the most
formidable fortress in Asia, was stormed at the point of the bayonet,
after its gates had been blown in by a petard, and there enormous
booty was found.
The seventh of the subsequent August saw the union-jack hoisted on
the Bala Hissar of Cabul, and Shah Sujah, an aged, effete, and most
unpopular prince, brought from exile in Loodianah and replaced upon
his ancient and hereditary throne, while an army of eight thousand
Beloochees and other wild warriors, sons of the Gedrosian desert, was
assigned him, under the command of the Shahzadeh Timour and Colonel
Simpson of the 19th Native Infantry; for such were the arrangements
of that Honourable Company of Merchants whose office was in
Leadenhall Street, in the City.
The restored Shah, a cruel and ruthless prince, who blinded his
kinsman Futteh Khan, by thrusting a dagger into his eyes, and
afterwards having him hacked into "kabobs," soon excited great
discontent among the fiery tribes under his rule, and particularly by
retaining a regiment of Sikhs as his body-guard; and so resolute and
manifest became the hostility of the natives, that the situation of
the small British force--now reduced to little more than four
thousand men--cantoned without the walls of Cabul, grew daily more
perilous and critical, while General Elphinstone, who now commanded,
by age and health was quite unequal to the task assigned him.
After a long and arduous contest, Dost Mohammed became at last the
peaceful prisoner of the British Government; for it chanced that one
evening, after his last battle and defeat, our envoy, Sir William
Macnaghten, when riding near Cabul, was overtaken by a horseman,
whose steed, like himself, was covered with dust and blood and flakes
of foam.
Announcing that he was Dost Mohammed, the stranger proffered his
sword in token of surrender; for it would seem that the hapless
prince had that day ridden sixty miles from the Nijrow Valley,
quitting his routed host; and he was immediately transmitted to
Calcutta; but rejecting with hatred and scorn all offers of pension
or place from the British Government, Ackbar Khan, the most brave and
reckless of his sons, preferred a life of rude independence in
Loodianah, and never lost the hope of levying a holy war for the
extermination of the meddling and Kaffir Feringhees--the infidel
English; for so he stigmatised us.
Prior to this point of time our little army under General Elphinstone
had remained peacefully in Cabul, far distant from the British
settlements in Hindostan. Many of the officers had built pleasant
and even pretty houses in the neighbourhood of the fortified
cantonments which lay between the hills of Behmaru and those of Siah
Sung, two miles distant from the city; and there they dwelt
comfortably and unsuspectingly with their wives and families.
Communication with the outer world beyond the passes was however both
difficult and dubious; for the territories of wild and untrustworthy
allies lay between our troops and the Indies on one hand; and between
them and the Arabian Sea on the other.
It was August, as before stated, when we entered Cabul. The violets,
the tulips and the wall-flower, which grow wild during spring, had
passed away; but the air was yet perfumed by the Persian iris; the
orchards and lovely gardens around the city were teeming with
luscious fruit; and the Cabul river flowed between its banks, where
the purple grape, the ruddy apple, and golden orange, bending the
laden branches, dipped in the stream or kissed its shining ripples.
Englishmen take old England with them everywhere; and thus the honest
and confident freedom with which our officers went to and fro between
the camp and city, and the free way in which they spent their money,
won them, for a time, the favour of the Afghans; and the winter of
the first year saw the introduction of horse races, at which a
splendid sword, given by the Shah, was won by Major Daly of the 4th
Light Dragoons; cricket matches, when Bob Waller held his wicket
against the field; and cock-fighting, a favourite sport with the
natives.
The chiefs invited them to their houses in the city and to their
castles in the country, where their double-barrelled rifles brought
down the snipes and quails, the elk, the deer, the hare and flying
fox, with a precision that elicited many a shout of "Allah" and
"Bismillah" from the entertainers.
The winter of that year also saw our officers skating on the lake of
Istaliff, six miles from Cabul--the skates being the work of a
Scottish armourer sergeant. Amateur theatricals,* for which Polwhele
painted the scenery, were not wanting to add to the wonder of those
sequestered Orientals, to whom the doors of the houses were thrown
freely open; but with the coming spring, when the field-pea, the
yellow briar-rose, the variously tinted asphodels, and the orchards
in rich blossom, made all the valley beautiful, came the crowning
marvel, when Lieutenant Sinclair of Her Majesty's 13th Light
Infantry, an officer who possessed great mechanical skill,
constructed and launched on the lake of Istaliff, that which had
never before been seen in Afghanistan, a large boat, with masts,
sails, and oars.
* The favourite play was "The Irish Ambassador," and others of the
same kind. "On such occasions they changed the titles of the
_dramatis personæ_, so as to bring them and the offices of the
parties bearing them, down to the level of Afghan comprehension;
while Burnes and others skilled in the dialect of the country,
translated the speeches as they were uttered."--Sales' Brigade in
Afghanistan.
The plaudits of the assembled thousands made the welkin ring.
"Now," they exclaimed, "we see that you are not like the infidel
Hindoos that follow you! You are men born and bred like ourselves in
a land where God varies the seasons, thus giving vigour to mind and
body. Oh, that you had come among us as friends, rather than
enemies, for you are fine fellows, one by one, though as a body we
hate you!"
And so dark days were coming, for the misrule of the Shah Sujah, the
intrigues of the restless Ackbar Khan, and the national distrust of
the mountaineers of all foreign, especially Kaffir, intervention,
were soon to put an end to this pleasant state of matters.
On the Chief of the Ghiljees spreading a rumour by letter, that it
was the intention of Sir William Macnaghten to seize all the khans of
tribes and send them to the Feringhee Queen in London, a dreadful
tumult ensued in the city, and ere the cannon could clear the
streets, several officers, among whom was Sir Alexander Burnes, were
killed in the confusion. Fast spread the spirit of revolt! The
feeble Shah shut himself up in the Bala Hissar on its towering rock;
and it was deemed advisable to make terms with the leaders, the chief
of whom was Ackbar Khan, whose conduct during the whole of those
affairs curiously combined the romantic, aristocratic, and courteous
tones of a half-civilised prince, with the ferocity of an utter
barbarian.
A part of the garrison having been detached under Sir Robert Sale to
Jellalabad, his brigade had barely entered the terrible and tortuous
ravines which lead thereto, ere it was attacked by the mountain
hordes, and had to fight its way inch by inch for miles, and by the
middle of November, about the time this portion of our story opens,
the sixty thousand citizens of Cabul and the tribes of the
surrounding country were ripe for insurrection, the fiery elements of
discord being fanned by Ackbar Khan in person.
And such was the state of affairs in and around Cabul on that day,
when Waller and Denzil, both well-armed--as they could not forget the
friendly warnings of Taj Mohammed--quitted their quarters in the old
fort, to have "tiffin" (_i.e._ luncheon) with the Trecarrels in the
house of the General, who had now been some two months with
Elphinstone's army, but without yet obtaining that which he had been
promised, command of a brigade, unless one to be chiefly formed of
Beloochees from the Shah's little army, under Timour the Shahzadeh,
could be considered as such a force, that speedily melted away.