Every war is a blunder; every battle a blot of shame upon human
nature; and the greatest wisdom a successful belligerent can shew,
even when he has been forced into the fray by his beaten antagonist,
is to get out of it as fast as he can. But some wars are viewed, not
as they ought to be, as indications of the slow progress of the human
race from barbarism, but through the medium of the lofty and
chivalrous feelings of the resisting party, or the party which takes
arms against oppression. Hence, war and glory have come to be
associated in the vulgar mind; and hence the mere act of fighting is
termed honourable, although it is obvious that, abstractedly, it
should excite only feelings of shame. Even the late Afghan war is
looked upon as a _calamity_, relieved throughout by flashes of heroism
and gleams of success--a war which, rightly viewed, is either one of
the greatest crimes, or one of the most stupendous blunders recorded
in history!
This war, we observe, has already found a chronicler, and one
peculiarly qualified, both by his knowledge and talent, to do justice
to the subject.[1] Although possessing all the essentials of history,
however, the book has something more, and is therefore not strictly a
history, in the conventional sense of the term; the text as well as
the margin being burdened with letters, diaries, and documents of all
kinds--the crude materials which it is the province of the historian
to digest. The author, notwithstanding, has a clear historical head;
his narrative, when he permits it to flow uninterrupted, is animated;
his reflections generally philosophical; his summaries of individual
character acute and distinct; and so peculiar have been his sources of
information, that henceforward no man will sit down to write upon this
era of the history of India, or of Central Asia, before carefully
consulting the volumes of Mr Kaye.
These volumes, however, comprise between thirteen and fourteen hundred
octavo pages, filled with hard names and minute details, and rendered
more difficult by the unpardonable want of an index. Although a
necessity, therefore, for the more respectable libraries, and a thing
to be hoarded by all collectors as a work of reference, the book has
little chance of being known to the mass of the public; and we
propose, therefore, to arrange the few extracts we are able to give,
in such a way as, with the aid of our own filling up, may convey to
the general reader--what, we suspect, he has never received
before--some distinct idea of one of the most fantastic tricks that
ever made the angels weep.
There is no country in the world more secure from external invasion
than India; but on the west, more especially, nature has interposed
between her and the more civilised powers of Europe and Asia a
succession of rivers, mountains, and deserts, absolutely impassable by
an army of any formidable magnitude. Notwithstanding this, there had
been long an uneasy feeling connected with the idea of the territorial
aggrandisement of Russia, and of late years, by the desire manifested
by that power to interfere in the affairs of Persia. In 1837-38,
therefore, when a Persian army was before Herat, with Russian officers
busy in the camp, it is no wonder that, to previously excited
imaginations, the danger should have seemed to assume a tangible
form. The principality of Herat, although on the other side of
intervening deserts, extending for many hundred miles, was in itself a
fertile and beautiful oasis, where a numerous army might be refreshed
and provisioned, and established as on a vantage-ground. From thence
the Persians, strengthened and officered by the Russians, might roll
on towards Cabool, and there prepare for a descent upon India. This
magnificent but terrible idea was not examined in its details--it was
taken for granted as a thing not only possible but probable; and the
far-distant region of Hindostan, separated as it was by deserts,
mountains, and rivers from the tumult that agitated Central Asia, was
stirred by conflicting feelings of terror and exultation. British
India, from the Himalaya to the sea, is dotted here and there with
native states, which the inconsistent policy of the Company in
Leadenhall Street has preserved in a kind of liberty, as relics and
remembrancers of a past _régime_. But besides these uncertain
protégés, we had to look to the natives in our own provinces, who
seemed to _expect_ that something would happen--they knew not what,
any more than their rulers. 'Among our Mussulman subjects,' says Mr
Kaye, 'the feeling was somewhat akin to that which had unsettled their
minds at the time when the rumoured advent of Zemaun Shah made them
look for the speedy restoration of Mohammedan supremacy in Hindostan.
In their eyes, indeed, the movement beyond the Afghan frontier took
the shape of a Mohammedan invasion; and it was believed that countless
thousands of true believers were about to pour themselves over the
plains of the Punjab and Hindostan, and to wrest all the country
between the Indus and the sea from the hands of the infidel usurpers.
The Mohammedan journals, at this time, teemed with the utterances of
undisguised sedition. There was a decline in the value of public
securities; and it went openly from mouth to mouth, in the streets and
the bazaars, that the Company's Raj was nearly at an end.'
Under these circumstances, it seemed necessary to look to the
intervening country, Afghanistan, which in this summary manner was to
be made a 'platform of observation' for the Perso-Russian army to
prepare for its descent upon Hindostan. The Afghans were tribes of
hardy mountaineers, inhabiting a wild and thinly-peopled country. They
consisted of soldiers, husbandmen, and shepherds, all convertible, at
a moment's notice, into thieves and bandits; and through their
formidable defiles flowed an uncertain stream of commerce, connecting
India with the distant provinces of Persia and Russia. So little was
known of these mountaineers, that in the early part of this century,
their prince, Shah Zemaun, was a formidable bugbear to the Indian
Council, and nothing was thought of for a time but an invasion of the
Afghans. In one of the sudden revolutions, however, so common in
semi-barbarous states, this shah was taken captive, and his eyes
punctured with a lancet--a summary act of deposition in the East, for
a blind man cannot reign. Two of his brothers competed for the vacant
throne; and notwithstanding the efforts of a famous king-making
vizier, Futteh Khan, the prize fell for a time to the lot of him who
is so well known to English readers by the name and style of Shah
Soojah. But his incapacity was soon manifest. Sometimes a king,
sometimes a bandit, and sometimes a fugitive subsisting by the sale of
his jewels, his cause at length became altogether hopeless; and after
being robbed of his last treasure, the Koh-i-Noor--as has already been
detailed in this Journal[2]--he took refuge in the British territory.
Futteh Khan, the king-making vizier, had twenty brothers; but one of
the younger fry he treated with especial neglect. 'The son of a woman
of the Kuzzilbash tribe, looked down upon by the high-bred Douranee
ladies of his father's household, the boy had begun life in the
degrading office of a sweeper at the sacred cenotaph of Lamech.
Permitted, at a later period, to hold a menial office about the person
of the powerful Wuzeer, he served the great man with water, or bore
his pipe; was very zealous in his ministrations; kept long and painful
vigils; saw everything, heard everything in silence; bided his time
patiently, and when the hour came, trod the stage of active life as no
irresolute novice. A stripling of fourteen, in the crowded streets of
Peshawur in broad day, as the buyers and the sellers thronged the
thoroughfares of the city, he slew one of the enemies of Futteh Khan,
and galloped home to report the achievement to the Wuzeer. From that
time his rise was rapid. The neglected younger brother of Futteh Khan
became the favourite of the powerful chief, and following the fortunes
of the warlike minister, soon took his place among the chivalry of the
Douranee Empire.'
The name of this youth is well known in the annals of our time: he was
Dost Mahomed, a gay, bold, frank, daring character, who rose from the
excesses of his early years into something resembling a hero of
romance. One of these excesses was committed when he had taken by
assault the Palace of Herat. It consisted in tearing the jewelled
waistband from the person of the wife of one of the royal princes--a
terrible outrage in the eyes of these _barbarous_ soldiers of the
farther East, who, even when covered with blood, and loaded with
rapine, cast down their eyes before the females of their enemies'
household. In this case, the profaned garment was sent by the lady to
her brother, the son of the then Afghan king, and a bloody vengeance
followed, not upon the author of the outrage, but on the king-making
vizier, who, falling into the hands of the prince whom he had himself
placed upon the throne, was literally hacked to pieces. Dost Mahomed
now rose like a rocket. The base and feeble remains of legitimacy
seemed to die away of its own weakness, and the despised younger son
of the king-making vizier soon reigned supreme at Cabool. Let us note
that this was in 1826. The new king, says Mr Kaye, 'had hitherto lived
the life of a dissolute soldier. His education had been neglected, and
in his very boyhood he had been thrown in the way of pollution of the
foulest kind. From his youth, he had been greatly addicted to wine,
and was often to be seen in public reeling along in a state of
degrading intoxication, or scarcely able to keep his place in the
saddle. All this was now to be reformed. He taught himself to read and
to write, accomplishments which he had before, if at all, scantily
possessed. He studied the Koran, abandoned the use of strong liquors,
became scrupulously abstemious, plain in his attire, assiduous in his
attention to business, urbane and courteous to all.' In 1833, Shah
Soojah, issuing from the British territory, made an abortive attempt
to recover his kingdom; but Runjeet Singh, the ruler of the Sikhs, was
more successful in wresting from him Peshawur, a province of
Afghanistan, and Dost Mahomed, both in rage and terror, began to look
around him for a foreign alliance. His grand aim was to secure the
friendship of the British; but this was scornfully refused. The
governor-general, with exquisite irony, replied to his overture: 'My
friend, you are aware that it is not the practice of the British
government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states!'
and a British envoy to Cabool, while refusing everything that was
important for him to ask, kindly cautioned him to abstain from
connecting himself with any other power.
Such was the position of affairs in Afghanistan when the government of
India, in 1838, was roused to a sense of what seemed immediate danger
by the movements in Central Asia. On the one hand, there was a _de
facto_ king, who had reigned twelve years, who was now struggling in
the grasp of the ruler of the Punjab, and eagerly soliciting the
alliance of the British; while the Russians and Persians, leagued
before Herat, were already negotiating for a footing in his country.
On the other hand, there was a deposed exile, who had tried
repeatedly, and in vain, to recover his throne, whose whole life had
been a tissue of misfortunes and feeblenesses, and who now lived on
the charity of the Company in their own territory. The obvious policy
was to secure the independence of Afghanistan and aid her resources.
How to do this? To embrace the proffered alliance of Dost Mahomed, or
force Shah Soojah upon the country, and prepare for the reception of
the Persians and Russians, by kindling a civil war? The latter was the
course determined on! A league was formed, known in the history of our
time as the Tripartite Treaty--including Runjeet Singh, Shah Soojah,
and the British government. By this document, it was agreed that
certain large portions of the Afghan territory, including Peshawur,
should belong for ever to Runjeet Singh; that the maharajah should
likewise possess the passes both of the Sutlej and the Indus, with
power to bar the way at his pleasure; that the Afghans and Sikhs
should mutually exchange military assistance when required; and that
the friends and enemies of any of the three high contracting parties
should be the friends and enemies of all.
There was not a word in this treaty, it will be seen, of a British war
in Afghanistan; but the Indian government soon came to enlarge its
views, and instead of merely patting Shah Soojah on the back, and
setting him upon his countrymen, it determined to take the field in
such force as would instantaneously settle the whole affair. The
celebrated Simlah manifesto was accordingly drawn up, in which the
governor-general gave 'his most exquisite reasons,' unpolitely
stigmatised by a great portion of the Indian press as a tissue of
falsehoods. With this, however, we have nothing to do; _our_ business
is with the fact, that before this proclamation had obtained general
currency, information had been received that the siege of Herat was
raised, and the Persian army on its retreat. This was awkward. The
occasion of the intended British invasion of Afghanistan was at an
end. No matter. A large and brilliant army was already assembled on
the banks of the Indus, and the war must go on! Many persons from the
first considered the result doubtful; and Shah Soojah himself had his
misgivings, when he found that he was to be forced by Christian
bayonets upon a nation of bigoted Mohammedans!
But although the change in the state of affairs in Central Asia made
no change in the belligerent resolves of the Indian government, it
determined them to reduce the size of the army, and so make a little
war instead of a great one. Scarcely had the Army of the Indus, as it
was called, begun its march through Scinde, when it was beset with
difficulties. 'Between Sukkur and Shikarpoor the camels had dropped
down dead by scores. But there was a worse tract of country in
advance. The officers looked at their maps, and traced with dismay the
vast expanse of sandy desert, where no green pasture met the eye, and
no sound of water spoke to the ear. But the season was favourable.
Escaping the arid and pestilential blasts of April and May, and the
noxious exhalations of the four succeeding months, the column advanced
into Cutch. The hard, salt-mixed sand crackled under their horses'
feet, as the general and his staff crossed the desert, on a fine
bright night of early March--so cool, that only when in a full gallop
the riders ceased to long for the warmth of their cloaks. The distance
from Shikarpoor to Dadur is a hundred and forty-six miles. It was
accomplished by the Bengal column in sixteen painful marches. Water
and forage were so scarce, that the cattle suffered terribly on the
way. The camels fell dead by scores on the desert; and further on, the
Beloochee robbers carried them off with appalling dexterity. When the
column reached a cultivated tract of country, the green crops were
used as forage for the horses. The _ryots_ were liberally paid on the
spot; but the agents of the Beloochee chiefs often plundered the
unhappy cultivators of the money that had been paid to them, even in
front of the British camp.' The Bolan Pass was more formidable. 'The
stream of the Bolan river was tainted by the bodies of the camels that
had sunk beneath their loads. The Beloochee freebooters were hovering
about, cutting off our couriers, murdering stragglers, carrying off
our baggage and our cattle. Among the rocks of this stupendous defile,
our men pitched their tents, and toiled on again day after day, over a
wretched road, covered with loose flint-stones, surmounting, at first
by a scarcely perceptible ascent, and afterwards by a difficult
acclivity, the great Brahoo chain of hills. The Bolan Pass is nearly
sixty miles in length. The passage was accomplished in six days. They
were days of drear discomfort, but not of danger. A resolute enemy
might have wrought mighty havoc among Cotton's regiments: but the
enemies with which now they had to contend were the sharp
flint-stones, which lamed our cattle; the scanty pasturage, which
destroyed them; and the marauding tribes, who carried them off. The
way was strewn with baggage, with abandoned tents and stores; and
luxuries, which a few weeks afterwards would have fetched their weight
twice counted in rupees, were left to be trampled down by the cattle
in the rear, or carried off by the plunderers about them.'
These disagreeables were surmounted; Soojah was installed at Candahar;
Ghuznee was captured in gallant style--when fifty prisoners were
hacked to pieces by orders of the shah; Dost Mahomed was beaten
wherever he shewed himself; and, finally, our victorious army arrived
at Cabool. Glorious victories are always highly appreciated in
England. The chief actors in this expedition were rewarded with titles
of earl, baron, baronet, and knight; and 'all went merry as a
marriage-bell.' Not, however, but that there were moments of misgiving
among the conquerors at Cabool. Dost Mahomed, though beaten, was not
subdued, and his repeated small successes made him almost formidable.
But even this was at an end, and the Dost surrendered himself
prisoner.
The British force remained in Cabool two years, where officers and men
alike misconducted themselves, as soldiers always do in a conquered
country. The exasperation of the natives became more and more
manifest: Akbar Khan, a son of Dost Mahomed, hovered about the
country, the evil genius, as it is supposed, of the rising storm; and
at length an insurrection broke out in the city. In this tissue of
surprising blunders, perhaps none is more remarkable than the facts,
that the general selected to command an army so critically placed was
a poor old man, feeble in body and mind, and that the wives and
children of many of the officers were present with their husbands and
fathers, as if the causeless invasion of a country, and the massacre
of thousands of its inhabitants, had been a party of pleasure! The
moment of retreat at length came; snow covered the ground; the dreary
passes of Khoord-Cabool were before them; and as they turned their
backs upon the city, they were saluted with farewell volleys of
musket-bullets.
The story of this fatal retreat has been often told. The result was
communicated in the following manner to the British troops shut up in
Jelalabad: 'At last, on the 13th of January, when the garrison were
busy on the works, toiling with axe and shovel, with their arms piled
and their accoutrements laid out close at hand, a sentry on the
ramparts, looking out towards the Cabool road, saw a solitary
white-faced horseman struggling on towards the fort. The word was
passed; the tidings spread. Presently the ramparts were lined with
officers, looking out, with throbbing hearts, through unsteady
telescopes, or with straining eyes tracing the road. Slowly and
painfully, as though horse and rider both were in an extremity of
mortal weakness, the solitary mounted man came reeling, tottering on.
They saw that he was an Englishman. On a wretched, weary pony,
clinging, as one sick or wounded, to its neck, he sat or rather leant
forward; and there were those who, as they watched his progress,
thought that he could never reach, unaided, the walls of Jelalabad. A
shudder ran through the garrison. That solitary horseman looked like
the messenger of death. Few doubted that he was the bearer of
intelligence that would fill their souls with horror and dismay. Their
worst forebodings seemed confirmed. There was the one man who was to
tell the story of the massacre of a great army. A party of cavalry
were sent out to succour him. They brought him in wounded, exhausted,
half-dead. The messenger was Dr Brydon, and he now reported his belief
that he was the sole survivor of an army of some 16,000 men!'[3] From
this wholesale butchery, which we are not disposed to detail, the
women and children, the general, and the husbands of the ladies, were
rescued by Akbar Khan. They were held for a time by the son of Dost
Mahomed in a sort of captivity; where some of them had leisure to
write narratives of their adventures, while others, with an
inconsistence common and entertaining in melodramatic pieces, amused
themselves with fun and frolic!
And what became of Shah Soojah? 'Rising early on the morning, he
arrayed himself in royal apparel, and, accompanied by a small party
of Hindostanees, proceeded under a salute, in a chair of state,
towards his camp, which had been pitched at Seeah-Sungh. But
Soojah-ool-dowlah, the son of the Newab, had gone out before him, and
placed in ambush a party of Jezailchees. As the shah and his followers
were making their way towards the regal tent, the marksmen fired upon
them. The volley took murderous effect. Several of the bearers and of
the escort were struck down, and the king himself killed on the spot.
A ball had entered his brain. Soojah-ool-dowlah then rode up; and as
he contemplated his bloody work, the body of the unhappy king, vain
and pompous as he was to the very last, was stripped of all the jewels
about it--the jewelled dagger, the jewelled girdle, the jewelled
head-dress--and it was then cast into a ditch.'
It was of course impossible for the Company to suffer the blot upon
their arms to remain: indeed, their safety in India required that no
tarnish of defeat should rest permanently upon their name. The British
troops at Candahar and Jelalabad were ordered to march upon Cabool,
where, as an enduring mark of the retributary visit, in addition to
pillaging the shops, setting fire to the houses, and murdering the
unresisting inhabitants, they destroyed--not the fortress--but the
_bazaar_, the great commercial depôt of Central Asia!
_The objects of the war were now accomplished._ But Shah Soojah was
dead. The king we had driven from the throne, however, was still
alive: Dost Mahomed, therefore, was restored; and nothing remained to
be done, since the grand drama had been brought to a conclusion, but
to celebrate the happy _dénouement_ by a fête. This, accordingly, came
off at Ferozepore. 'Then there was feasting and festivity in the
gigantic tents, hung with silken flags, on which, in polyglot
emblazonments, were the names of the actions that had been fought;
many complimentary effusions, in the shape of after-dinner harangues;
and in the mornings grand field-days, more or less, according to the
"skyey influences." The year--a most eventful one--was closed with a
grand military display. The plain was covered with British and Sikh
troops, and in the presence of Pertaub Singh, the heir-apparent of
Lahore; Dhyan Singh, the minister; the governor-general, the
commander-in-chief, and others of less note, some 40,000 men, with 100
guns, were man[oe]uvred on the great plain. On this grand tableau the
curtain fell; and the year opportunely closed in gaiety and
glitter--in prosperity and parade.'
We have now concluded our task, but without having been able to convey
even a faint idea of the stores of information that are contained in
these valuable volumes. They are destined, however, to retain a
permanent place among the books of reference which enrich our national
literature, and contribute to its advancement.