Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
https://archive.org/details/historyofwarinaf01kayeuoft
Project Gutenberg has the other two volumes of this work.
Volume II: see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49447
Volume III: see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50342
HISTORY OF THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN.
by
JOHN WILLIAM KAYE, F.R.S.
Third Edition.
In Three Volumes.
VOL. I.
London:
Wm. H. Allen & Co., 13, Waterloo Place,
Publishers to the India Office.
1874.
London.
Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street
and Charing Cross.
Dedication.
IF PUBLIC CLAIMS ALONE WERE TO BE REGARDED, I KNOW NOT TO WHOM I COULD
MORE FITLY INSCRIBE THESE VOLUMES, THAN TO THE OFFICERS OF A REGIMENT,
ON THE ROLLS OF WHICH ARE THE NAMES OF POLLOCK, MACGREGOR, TODD,
SHAKESPEAR, LAWRENCE, ABBOTT, ANDERSON, AND OTHERS, DISTINGUISHED IN
THE ANNALS OF THE AFGHAN WAR; BUT IT IS IN GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF
SOME OF THE HAPPIEST YEARS OF MY LIFE THAT I DEDICATE THESE VOLUMES TO
THE
OFFICERS OF THE BENGAL ARTILLERY.
BLETCHINGLEY,
_Oct. 30, 1851_.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THIRD EDITION.
The present Edition of the “History of the War in Afghanistan” is a
reproduction of the three-volumed Edition of 1857, which was thoroughly
revised, and much improved by the kindly aid of many of the chief
actors in the scenes described. I do not think that I can make it any
better.
Only one alleged error has been brought to my notice since the last
Edition was published. It is stated, in Chapter IV., page 55, that
“Mr. Harford Jones, a civil servant of the Company, who was made a
Baronet for the occasion, was deputed to Teheran to negotiate with the
Ministers of the Shah.” This was first published in 1851. After a lapse
of twenty-three years, I have recently been informed by the son of Sir
Harford Jones, that his father was not made a Baronet in consideration
of prospective but of past services. It is certain that Mr. Harford
Jones rendered good service to the East India Company, but it is
equally certain that His Majesty’s Government were not very prodigal
in their grants of honours to the Company’s servants. The Baronetcy
was created in 1807, when the Persian Mission was under consideration;
but I must admit that there is a difference between coincidences and
consequences—and, therefore, as I cannot establish the fact stated,
I am willing to withdraw the assertion of it, whatever may be my own
convictions.
J. W. K.
ROSE-HILL,
_March 1874_.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
The present Edition of the History of the War in Afghanistan has
been thoroughly revised; and several alterations have been made,
which I hope may be fairly regarded also as emendations. Some of the
notes have been abridged; and others, when the importance of their
subject-matter seemed to warrant it, have been incorporated with the
text. I have freely and gratefully availed myself of such information
and such suggestions as have been furnished to me by others since the
first appearance of the Work, whilst my own more recent historical
and biographical researches have enabled me to illustrate more fully
in some places my original conceptions, and in others to modify or to
correct them.
The material corrections, however, are not numerous. As almost every
statement in the book was based upon copious documentary evidence, I
have now, as regards my historical facts, very little to withdraw or to
amend. I think I may, without unreasonable self-congratulation, assert
that few works of contemporary history containing so large a body of
facts have been so little questioned and controverted. The numerous
communications, which I have received alike from friends and strangers,
have contained little but confirmatory or illustrative matter; and, if
they have cast any doubt upon the statements in the Work, it has been
mainly on those advanced by the actors in the events described, and
which therefore have appeared only in a dramatic sense in these pages.
When, however, an opportunity _has_ been afforded me of placing before
the reader any new facts, or counter-statements, which may possibly
cause him to modify his previous opinions, I have always turned them to
account. As I have no other object than that of declaring the truth,
I cannot but rejoice in every added means of contributing to its
completeness.
In this present Edition, the History of the War in Afghanistan is
divided into three Volumes. This is a change in the outer form of the
Work, which may appear to be scarcely worthy of notice; but I believe
it to be an improvement, and a suggestive one. I doubt whether there
is a series of events in all history, which falls more naturally into
three distinct groupes, giving the epic completeness of a beginning,
a middle, and an end to the entire Work. It is true that some very
generous and good-natured people have given me credit for the unity of
design and of construction apparent in this; but in truth all the parts
of the Work fell so naturally into their proper places, that there was
little left for art to accomplish; and I am conscious that I owe to the
nature of my subject the largest part of the praise which has been so
encouragingly bestowed on myself.
I should have nothing more to say in this place, if I did not desire to
express my gratitude to the friends who have taken an interest in this
new edition of my History, and have aided me with verbal corrections
of my text, or suggestions of greater moment. I might not please
them by any more special recognition of their kindness; but there is
one whom such praise and gratitude as mine can no longer reach, and
whom I may therefore name without offence. Among others who were at
the trouble to re-peruse this book, for the purpose of aiding its
revision for the present edition, the appearance of which has been
retarded by accidental circumstances, was the late Sir Robert Harry
Inglis. I believe that this, which he assured me was a labour of love,
was the last literary task which he ever set himself. His final list
of _corrigenda_ was sent to me, indeed, only a few days before the
occurrence of that event which, although there be good and wise and
genial men still among us, has left a gap in society, which cannot
easily be filled by one so good, so wise, and so genial. Of all the
privileges of literature, the greatest, perhaps, is that it makes for
its followers kind and indulgent friends, who sometimes transfer to
the writer the interest awakened by his book. I owe to this Work some
cherished friendships; but none more cherished than that which has now
become both a pleasing and a painful reminiscence.
LONDON,
_January, 1857_.
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.
Circumstances having placed at my disposal a number of very interesting
and important letters and papers, illustrative of the History of the
War in Afghanistan, I undertook to write this Work. There was nothing
that peculiarly qualified me for the task, beyond the fact that I
enjoyed the confidence of some of the chief actors in the events to be
narrated, or—for death had been busy among those actors—their surviving
relatives and friends. I had been in India, it is true, during the
entire period of the War; but I never took even the humblest part in
its stirring scenes, or visited the country in which they were enacted.
It was not, therefore, until I considered that no more competent
person might be disposed to undertake the Work; that the materials
placed in my hands might not in the same number and variety be placed
in the hands of any other writer; and that those best qualified by a
full knowledge of the subject to write the History of the War, were
restrained by the obligations of official position from that fulness
of revelation and freedom of discussion, which a work of this kind
demands—that entered upon the perilous undertaking. The necessities of
the subject have rendered the task peculiarly painful, and, but for the
encouragement I have received in the progress of its execution, alike
from strangers and from friends who have freely placed new materials
in my hands, and expressed a lively interest in my labours, I might
have shrunk from its completion. I now lay before the public the result
of much anxious thought and laborious investigation, confident that,
although the Work might have been done more ably, it could not have
been performed more conscientiously, by another.
I have been walking, as it were, with a torch in my hand over a floor
strewn thickly with gunpowder. There is the chance of an explosion at
every step. I have been treading all along on dangerous ground. But
if I cannot confidently state that I have asserted nothing which I
cannot prove, I can declare my belief that, except upon what I had a
right to consider as good and sufficient authority, I have advanced
absolutely nothing. It will be seen how careful I have been to quote my
authorities. Indeed, I have an uneasy misgiving in my mind that I have
overburdened my Work with quotations from the letters and documents in
my possession. But this has been done with design and deliberation.
It was not sufficient to refer to these letters and documents, for
they were singly accessible only to a few, and collectively, perhaps,
to no one but myself. They have, therefore, been left to speak for
themselves. What the Work has lost by this mode of treatment in
compactness and continuity, it has gained in trustworthiness and
authenticity. If the narrative be less animated, the history is more
genuine. I have had to deal with unpublished materials, and to treat of
very strange events; and I have not thought it sufficient to fuse these
materials into my text, and to leave the reader to fix or not to fix
his faith upon the unsupported assertions of an unknown writer.[1]
I would make another observation regarding the execution of this Work.
The more notorious events of the War, which stand fully revealed in
military despatches and published blue-books, have not been elaborated
with the care, and expanded into the amplitude, which their importance
may seem to demand. These Volumes may be thought, perhaps, rather
deficient in respect of military details. Compelled to condense
somewhere, I have purposely abstained from enlarging upon those
events, which have already found fitting chroniclers. The military
memoir-writers, each one on his own limited field, have arrayed before
us all the strategical operations of the Campaign from the assemblage
of Fane’s army in 1838, to the return of Pollock’s at the close of
1842; but the political history of the War has never been written.
For information on many points of military interest, not sufficiently
dwelt upon in these volumes, I would therefore refer the reader to the
works of Havelock, Hough, Barr, Eyre, Stacy, Neill, and other soldierly
writers. The progress of events in Upper Sindh after the capture of
Khelat, I have not attempted to narrate. The military operations in
that part of the country have found an intelligent annalist in Dr.
Buist.
I need only now, after gratefully acknowledging my obligations to all
who have aided me with original papers, or with information otherwise
conveyed (and I have largely taxed the patience of many during the
progress of this work), offer one more word of apology. I know that my
scholarly Oriental friends will revolt against my spelling of Oriental
names. I have only to bow beneath their correcting hand, and fling
myself upon their mercy. I have written all the names in the old and
vulgar manner, most familiar to the English eye, and, in pronunciation,
to the English ear; and I believe that the majority of readers will
thank me for the barbarism.
BLETCHINGLEY,
_October, 1851_.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.—INTRODUCTION.
[1800-1837.]
CHAPTER I.
[1800-1801.]
PAGE
Shah Zemaun and the Douranee Empire—Threatened Afghan
Invasion—Malcolm’s First Mission to Persia—Country and People
of Afghanistan—Fall of Zemaun Shah 1
CHAPTER II.
[1801-1808.]
The Early Days of Soojah-ool-Moolk—Disastrous Commencement of his
Career—Defeat of Shah Mahmoud—Reign of Shah Soojah—The
Insurrection of Prince Kaysur—Tidings of the British Mission 25
CHAPTER III.
[1801-1808.]
France and Russia in the East—Death of Hadjee Khalil Khan—The
Mission of Condolence—Aga Nebee Khan—Extension of Russian
Dominion in the East—French Diplomacy in Persia—The pacification
of Tilsit—Decline of French influence in Teheran 36
CHAPTER IV.
[1808-1809.]
The Second Mission to Persia—Malcolm’s Visit to Bushire—Failure
of the Embassy—His Return to Calcutta—Mission of Sir Harford
Jones—His Progress and Success 55
CHAPTER V.
[1808-1809.]
The Missions to Lahore and Caubul—The Aggressions of Runjeet
Singh—Mr. Metcalfe at Umritsur—Treaty of 1809—Mr. Elphinstone’s
Mission—Arrival at Peshawur—Reception by Shah Soojah—Withdrawal
of the Mission—Negotiations with the Ameers of Sindh 77
CHAPTER VI.
[1809-1816.]
The Mid-Career of Shah Soojah—His Wanderings and
Misfortunes—Captivity in Cashmere—Imprisonment at Lahore—Robbery
of the Koh-i-noor—Reception of the Shah by the Rajah of
Kistawar—His Escape to the British Territories 97
CHAPTER VII.
[1816-1837.]
Dost Mahomed and the Barukzyes—Early days of Dost Mahomed—The
fall of Futteh Khan—Defeat of Shah Mahmoud—Supremacy of the
Barukzyes—Position of the Empire—Dost Mahomed at
Caubul—Expedition of Shah Soojah—His Defeat—Capture of Peshawur
by the Sikhs 107
CHAPTER VIII.
[1810-1837.]
Later Events in Persia—The Treaty of Goolistan—Arrival of Sir
Gore Ouseley—Mr. Morier and Mr. Ellis—The Definitive Treaty—The
War of 1826-27—The Treaty of Toorkomanchai—Death of Futteh Ali
Shah—Accession of Mahomed Shah—His Projects of Ambition—The
Expedition against Herat 139
BOOK II.
[1835-1838.]
CHAPTER I.
[1835-1837.]
The Commercial Mission to Caubul—Arrival of Lord Auckland—His
Character—Alexander Burnes—His Travels in Central
Asia—Deputation to the Court of Dost Mahomed—Reception by the
Ameer—Negotiations at Caubul—Failure of the Mission 166
CHAPTER II.
[1837-1839.]
The Siege of Herat—Shah Kamran and Yar Mahomed—Return of the
Shah—Eldred Pottinger—Preparations for the Defence—Advance of
the Persian Army—Progress of the Siege—Negotiations for
Peace—Failure of the Attack—The Siege raised 211
CHAPTER III.
[1837-1838.]
Policy of the British-Indian Government—Our Defensive
Operations—Excitement in British India—Proposed Alliance with
Dost Mahomed—Failure of Burnes’s Mission considered—The
claims of the Suddozye Princes—The Tripartite Treaty—Invasion
of Afghanistan determined—Policy of the Movement 300
CHAPTER IV.
[July-October: 1838.]
The Simlah Manifesto—The Simlah Council—Influence of Messrs.
Colvin and Torrens—Views of Captains Burnes and Wade—Opinions
of Sir Henry Fane—The Army of the Indus—The Governor-General’s
Manifesto—Its Policy considered 350
BOOK III.
[1838-1839.]
CHAPTER I.
The Army of the Indus—Gathering at Ferozepore—Resignation of
Sir Henry Fane—Route of the Army—Passage through Bahwulpore—The
Ameers of Sindh—The Hyderabad Question—Passage of the Bolan
Pass—Arrival at Candahar 388
CHAPTER II.
[April-August: 1839.]
Arrival at Candahar—The Shah’s Entry into the City—His
Installation—Nature of his Reception—Behaviour of the
Douranees—The English at Candahar—Mission to Herat—Difficulties
of our Position—Advance to Ghuznee 437
CHAPTER III.
[June-August: 1839.]
The Disunion of the Barukzyes—Prospects of Dost Mahomed—Keane’s
Advance to Ghuznee—Massacre of the Prisoners—Fall of
Ghuznee—Flight of Dost Mahomed—Hadjee Khan, Khaukur—Escape of
Dost Mahomed—Restoration of Shah Soojah—Success of the Campaign 454
APPENDIX 481
THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN.
BOOK I.—INTRODUCTION.
[1800-1837.]
CHAPTER I.
[1800-1801.]
Shah Zemaun and the Douranee Empire—Threatened Afghan
Invasion—Malcolm’s First Mission to Persia—Country and People of
Afghanistan—Fall of Zemaun Shah.
At the dawn of the present century, Zemaun Shah reigned over the
Douranee Empire. The son of Timour Shah, and the grandson of the
illustrious Ahmed Shah, he had sought, on the death of his father,
the dangerous privilege of ruling a divided and tumultuous people.
Attaining by intrigue and violence what did not rightfully descend to
him by inheritance, he soon began to turn his thoughts towards foreign
conquest, and to meditate the invasion of Hindostan. His talents
were not equal to his ambition, and his success fell far short of
the magnitude of his designs. There was too little security at home
to ensure for him prosperity abroad. And so it happened, that he was
continually marching an army upon the frontier, eager to extend the
Douranee Empire to the banks of the Ganges; and continually retracing
his steps in alarm, lest his own sovereignty should be wrested
from him in his absence. For many years Zemaun Shah’s descent upon
Hindostan kept the British Indian Empire in a chronic state of unrest.
But he never advanced further than Lahore, and then was compelled
precipitately to retire. Starvation threatened his troops; a brotherly
usurper his throne; and he hastened back lest he should find Prince
Mahmoud reigning at Caubul in his stead.
This was in 1797,[2] when Sir John Shore was Governor-General of
India. We smile now at the alarm that was created along the whole
line of country from the Attock to the Hooghly, by the rumoured
approach of this formidable invader. But half a century ago, the
English in India knew little of the resources of the Douranee Empire,
of the national characteristics of the people, of the continually
unsettled state of their political relations, or of the incompetency
of the monarch himself to conduct any great enterprise. Distance and
ignorance magnified the danger: but the apprehensions, which were then
entertained, were not wholly groundless apprehensions. All the enemies
of the British Empire in India had turned their eyes with malicious
expectancy upon Caubul. Out of the rocky defiles of that romantic
country were to stream the deliverers of Islam from the yoke of the
usurping Franks. The blood of the Mahomedan princes of India was at
fever heat. From northern Oude and from southern Mysore had gone forth
invitations to the Afghan monarch. With large promises of aid, in money
and in men, Vizier Ali and Tippoo Sultan had encouraged him to move
down upon Hindostan at the head of an army of true believers. Others,
with whom he could claim no community of creed, extended to him the
hand of fellowship. The Rajah of Jyneghur offered him a lakh of rupees
a day as soon as the grand army should enter his district.[3] We, who
in these times trustingly contemplate the settled tranquillity of the
north-western provinces of India, and remember Zemaun Shah only as the
old blind pensioner of Loodhianah, can hardly estimate aright the real
importance of the threatened movement, or appreciate the apprehensions
which were felt by two governors-general of such different personal
characters as Sir John Shore and Lord Wellesley.[4]
The new century had scarcely dawned upon the English in India, when
the perils which seemed to threaten them from beyond the Indus began
to assume a more complicated and perplexing character. The ambition
of a semi-barbarous monarch and the inflammatory zeal of hordes of
Mussulman fanatics, were sources of danger, which, however alarming,
were at least plain and intelligible. But when it was suspected that
there was intrigue of a more remote and insidious character to be
combated—when intelligence, only too credible, of the active efforts
of French diplomacy in Persia, reached the Calcutta Council-Chamber,
and it was believed that the emissaries of Napoleon were endeavouring
to cement alliances hostile to Great Britain in every quarter of the
Eastern world, the position of affairs in Central Asia was regarded
with increased anxiety, and their management demanded greater wisdom
and address. It was now no longer a question of mere military defence
against the inroads of a single invader. The repeated failures of
Zemaun Shah had, in some degree, mitigated the alarm with which his
movements were dimly traced in Hindostan. The Douranee monarch had
lost something of his importance as an independent enemy; but as the
willing agent of a hostile confederacy, he appeared a more formidable
opponent, and might have become a more successful one. An offensive
alliance between France, Persia, and Caubul, might have rendered the
dangers, which once only seemed to threaten us from the north-west, at
once real and imminent. To secure the friendship of Persia, therefore,
was the great aim of the British Government. It was obvious that,
whilst threatened with invasion from the west, Zemaun Shah could never
conduct to a successful issue an expedition against Hindostan; and that
so long as Persia remained true to Great Britain, there was nothing to
be apprehended from French intrigue in the countries of Central Asia.
It was determined, therefore, to despatch a mission to the Court of the
Persian Shah, and Captain John Malcolm was selected to conduct it.
The choice could not have fallen on a fitter agent. In the fullest
vigour of life, a young man, but not a young soldier—for, born in
that year of heroes which witnessed the nativity of Wellington, of
Napoleon, and of Mehemet Ali, he had entered the service of the Company
at the early age of thirteen—Captain Malcolm brought to the difficult
and responsible duties entrusted to him, extraordinary energy of
mind and activity of body—talents of the most available and useful
character—some experience of native courts and acquaintance with the
Oriental languages. He had been successively military secretary to the
commander-in-chief of Madras, town-major of Fort St. George, assistant
to the Resident at Hyderabad, and commandant of the infantry of the
Nizam’s contingent. When that army took the field in Mysore, and shared
in the operations against Tippoo Sultan, Captain Malcolm accompanied
it in the capacity of political agent, which was virtually the chief
command of the force; and, after the reduction of Seringapatam and the
death of Tippoo, was associated with General Wellesley, Colonel Close,
and Captain Munro,[5] in the commission that was then appointed for the
settlement of the Mysore country.
This was in 1799. In that same year he was selected by Lord Wellesley
to fill the post of envoy to the Court of Persia. With such address had
he acquitted himself in all his antecedent appointments; so great had
been the knowledge of native character, the diplomatic tact, and the
sound understanding he had evinced in all his negotiations; that at an
age when the greater number of his contemporaries were in the discharge
of no higher duties than those entailed by the command of a company of
sepoys, Captain Malcolm was on his way to the presence of the great
defender of Islamism, charged with one of the most important missions
that has ever been despatched by the British-Indian Government to the
Court of a native potentate.
The mission, says Captain Malcom, was “completely successful”—a
declaration repeated more emphatically by Lord Wellesley.[6] But time
and circumstance did more for us than diplomacy. It was the ostensible
object of the mission to instigate the Shah of Persia to move an army
upon Herat, and so to withdraw Shah Zemaun from his threatened invasion
of Hindostan. But the move, which was to do so much for our security
in India, had been made before the British ambassador appeared at the
Persian Court; and the work, which was thus commenced by Futteh Ali,
was completed by Prince Mahmoud.[7] “You may rest assured,” wrote
Captain Malcolm, from Ispahan, in October, 1800, “that Zemaun Shah can
do nothing in India before the setting in of the rains of 1801. He has
not time, even if he had the power for such an attempt; and by the
blessing of God he will for some years to come be too much engaged
in this quarter to think of any other.”[8] But some years to come of
empire he was not destined to see. Even as Malcolm wrote, the days of
his sovereignty were numbered, and the bugbear of Afghan invasion was
passing into tradition.
The envoy was empowered either to offer a subsidy of from three to four
lakhs of rupees for a term of three years, or by a liberal distribution
of presents to the king and his principal ministers, to bribe them
into acquiescence. Malcolm chose the latter course. He threw about
his largesses with an unstinting hand, and everything went smoothly
with him. The farther he advanced into the interior, the greater was
the attention shown to the Mission, for the greater was the renown
of the liberality of the Christian _Elchee_. Every difficulty melted
away beneath the magic touch of British gold.[9] There had been at
the outset some trifling disputes about formalities—about titles and
designations—but these were soon cleared away; and the serious business
of the Mission proceeded in the midst of feasts and formalities to
a satisfactory completion. A commercial and a political treaty were
negotiated at Teheran by Malcolm and Hadjee Ibrahim; and the Shah
stamped their validity by prefixing to each a firman, or mandate, under
the royal seal, calling upon all the officers of the state to perform
its prescribed conditions. Of all the terms proposed by the English
envoy, but one was demurred to by the Persian Court. “And that even,”
writing some years afterwards, he said, “was not rejected.”[10] This
proposal related to the occupation by the English of the islands of
Kishm, Angani, and Khargh (or Kharrack),[11] in the Persian Gulf, on
the expediency of which, though much and ably controverted by others,
Malcolm never ceased to expatiate so long as he had a hand in the game
of Persian diplomacy.
This provision, which was to have been contained in the commercial
treaty, was said to contemplate only commercial objects; but, there
was to be a permission to fortify; and commerce, with an occasional
permission of this kind, had made India a British dependency, and the
Persians were not unreasonably jealous, therefore, of a commencement
which might have had a similar end.
In February, 1801, Captain Malcolm reported that he had accomplished
the object of his mission, and brought his labours to a close. “Whether
with credit or not,” he added in a private letter, “it is the province
of my superiors to judge. I can only say, in self-defence, that I
have done as much as I was able; and no man can do more. I am far
from admiring my own work, or considering it (as termed in one of
the preambles) _a beautiful image in the mirror of perpetuity_. It
is, on the contrary, I know, a very incorrect performance; and I can
hope it to meet with a favourable consideration only on the grounds
of the difficulties I had to encounter in a first negotiation with a
government not two stages removed from a state of barbarism.”[12]
The political treaty, indeed, called for apology; but not on the
grounds indicated in this deprecatory letter. It stipulated that if
ever again the Douranee monarch should be induced to attempt the
invasion of Hindostan, the King of Persia should be bound to lay waste,
with a great army, the country of the Afghans; and conclude no peace
with its ruler that was not accompanied with a solemn engagement to
abstain from all aggressions upon the English. But it was remarkable
chiefly for the bitterness with which it proscribed the French. “Should
an army of the French nation,” it stated, “actuated by design and
deceit, attempt to settle, with a view of establishing themselves on
any of the islands or shores of Persia, a conjoint force shall be
appointed by the two high contracting parties to act in co-operation,
and to destroy and put an end to the foundation of their treason.”
The firman prefixed to this treaty contained a passage addressed to
the rulers and officers of the ports, sea-coasts, and islands of Fars
and Koorgistan, saying, “Should ever any persons of the French nation
attempt to pass your boundaries, or desire to establish themselves
either on the shores or frontiers of the kingdom of Persia, you are
at full liberty to disgrace and slay them.”[13] These proceedings have
been severely censured by French writers, and even English politicians
have declared them to be “an eternal disgrace to our Indian diplomacy.”
But those were days when, even in India, men’s minds were unhinged
and unsettled, and their ideas of right and wrong confounded by the
monstrosities of the French revolution. It would be unjust to view
these measures with the eyes of to-day, or to forget the desperate
evils to which these desperate remedies were applied. It was conceived
that there was a great and pressing danger, and Captain Malcolm was
sent to combat it. But the treaty was never formally ratified; and the
Persian Court practically ignored its obligations as soon as it was
no longer convenient to observe them. The Embassy, however, was not a
fruitless one, even if the only estimated produce were the stores of
information it amassed.
* * * * *
Before the mission of Captain Malcolm to the West, but little was known
in India, and nothing in Great Britain, about the Douranee Empire, the
nature and extent of its resources, the quality of its soldiers, and
the character of its ruler. The information which that officer acquired
was not of a very alarming description. The Douranee Empire which has
since been shorn of some of its fairest provinces, then consisted of
Afghanistan, part of Khorassan, Cashmere, and the Derajat. The Sikh
nation had not then acquired the strength which a few years later
enabled it, under the military directorship of Runjeet Singh, to curb
the pretensions and to mutilate the empire of its dominant neighbour.
That empire extended from Herat in the west, to Cashmere in the east;
from northern Balkh to southern Shikarpoor. Bounded on the north and
east by immense mountain ranges, and on the south and west by vast
tracts of sandy desert, it opposed to external hostility natural
defences of a formidable character. The general aspect of the country
was wild and forbidding; in the imagination of the people haunted
by goules and genii; but not unvaried by spots of gentler beauty in
the valleys and on the plains, where the fields were smiling with
cultivation, and the husbandman might be seen busy at his work.
Few and far between as were the towns, the kingdom was thinly
populated. The people were a race—or a group of races—of hardy,
vigorous mountaineers. The physical character of the country had
stamped itself on the moral conformation of its inhabitants. Brave,
independent, but of a turbulent vindictive character, their very
existence seemed to depend upon a constant succession of internal
feuds. The wisest among them would probably have shaken their heads in
negation of the adage-“Happy the country whose annals are a blank.”
They knew no happiness in anything but strife. It was their delight to
live in a state of chronic warfare. Among such a people civil war has
a natural tendency to perpetuate itself. Blood is always crying aloud
for blood. Revenge was a virtue among them; the heritage of retribution
passed from father to son; and murder became a solemn duty. Living
under a dry, clear, bracing climate, but one subject to considerable
alternations of heat and cold, the people were strong and active; and
as navigable rivers were wanting, and the precipitous nature of the
country forbade the use of wheeled carriages, they were for the most
part good horsemen, and lived much in the saddle. Early trained to the
use of arms, compelled constantly to wear and often to use them in the
ordinary intercourse of life, every man was more or less a soldier or
a bandit. The very shepherds were men of strife. The pastoral and the
predatory character were strangely blended; and the tented cantonments
of the sheep-drivers often bristled into camps of war.
But there was a brighter side to the picture. Of a cheerful, lively
disposition, seemingly but little in accordance with the outward
gravity of their long beards and sober garments, they might be seen in
their villages, at evening tide, playing or dancing like children in
their village squares; or assembling in the Fakir’s gardens, to smoke
and talk, retailing the news gathered in the shops, reciting stories,
and singing their simple Afghan ballads, often expressive of that
tender passion which, among them alone of all Oriental nations, is
worthy of the name of love. Hospitable and generous, they entertained
the stranger without stint, and even his deadliest enemy was safe
beneath the Afghan’s roof. There was a simple courtesy in their manner
which contrasted favourably with the polished insincerity of the
Persians on one side, and the arrogant ferocity of the Rohillas on the
other. Judged by the strict standard of a Christian people, they were
not truthful in word or honest in deed, but, side by side with other
Asiatic nations, their truthfulness and honesty were conspicuous.
Kindly and considerate to their immediate dependents, the higher
classes were followed with loyal zeal and served with devoted fidelity
by the lower; and, perhaps, in no eastern country was less of tyranny
exercised over either the slaves of the household or the inmates of the
zenana. Unlettered were they, but not incurious; and although their
more polished brethren of Persia looked upon them as the Bœotians
of Central Asia, their Spartan simplicity and manliness more than
compensated for the absence of the Attic wit and eloquence of their
western neighbours.
Soldiers, husbandmen, and shepherds, they were described as the very
antithesis of a nation of shopkeepers. The vocation of the tradesman
they despised. To Taujiks, Hindoos, and other aliens, was the business
of selling entrusted, except upon that large scale which entitled the
dealer to be regarded as a merchant, and generally entailed upon him
the necessities of a wandering and adventurous life. The principal
commerce of the country was with the Persian and Russian states. In the
bazaars of Herat, Candahar, and Caubul the manufactures of Ispahan,
Yezd, and Cashan, the spices of India, and the broad-cloths of Russia,
brought by Astrakan and Bokhara, found a ready market. Occasionally,
when the settled state of the country gave encouragement to commercial
enterprise, an adventurous merchant would make his way, through Dera
from Bombay, with a cafila of British goods, for the scarlet cloths
of England were in especial demand to deck the persons of the body
servants of the king. The indigenous products of the country were few,
but important; for the rich shawls of Cashmere and the gaudy chintzes
of Mooltan, exported in large quantities, were in good repute all
over the civilised world.[14] At Herat some velvets and taffetas of
good quality were manufactured, but only for internal consumption;
whilst the assafœtida of that place, the madder of Candahar, and the
indigo of the Derajat,[15] found a market in the Persian cities, and
the dried fruits of the country were in request in all neighbouring
parts. These, a few other drugs of little note, and some iron from the
Hindoo Koosh and the Solimanee range, formed the main staple of Afghan
commerce. Between the large towns there was a constant interchange of
commodities; and long cafilas, or caravans, were ever in motion, from
east to west, and from north to south, toiling across the sandy plains
or struggling through the precipitous defiles, exposed to the attacks
of predatory tribes, who levied their contributions often not without
strife and bloodshed.
Such was the not very flattering picture of the commercial wealth of
the Douranee Empire, which was painted by Captain Malcolm’s informants.
Nor was the military strength of the Empire set forth in any more
striking colours. Distance and ignorance had vastly magnified the true
proportions of that famous military power, which was to have overrun
Hindostan, and driven the white men into the sea. The main strength
of the Afghan army was in the Douranee horse. The Douranee tribes
had been settled in Western Afghanistan by Nadir Shah. He had first
conquered, then taken them into his service, and then parcelled out
amongst them, as his military dependents, the lands which had before
been held, by a motley race of native cultivators. It was the policy
of Ahmed Shah and his successors—a policy which was subsequently
reversed by the Barukzye sirdars—to aggrandise and elevate these
powerful tribes, by heaping upon them privileges and immunities at
the expense of their less favoured countrymen. Upon the misery and
humiliation of others, the Douranee tribes throve and flourished.
The chief offices of the state were divided amongst them; they held
their lands exempt from taxation. The only demand made upon them, in
return for the privileges they enjoyed, was that they should furnish
a certain contingent of troops.[16] It was said to be the principle
of the military tenure by which they held their lands, that for every
plough used in cultivation[17] they should contribute a horseman for
the service of the state. But it does not appear that the integrity of
this system was long preserved. In a little time there ceased to be any
just proportion between the ploughs and the horsemen; and it became
difficult to account for the arbitrary manner in which each of the
different Douranee clans furnished its respective quota of troops.[18]
In the time of Ahmed Shah the Douranee horsemen mustered about 6000
strong. The other western tribes and the Persian stipendiaries together
reached about the same number. In the reign of Timour Shah, the army
was computed at some 40,000 soldiers, almost entirely horsemen;[19] but
no such force had served under Zemaun Shah, and they who had seen in
1799-1800, the muster of his troops near Caubul, and had access to the
returns of the muster-masters, reported that he then assembled only
some ten or twelve thousand men, and all, with the exception of a few
Persian stipendiaries, in the immediate service of the Wuzeer, very
miserably equipped. Even the Kuzzilbashes, when Shah Zemaun took the
field in 1799, refused to accompany the projected expedition, on the
plea that they wanted arms to fight their battles, and money to support
their wives.
Fighting men, indeed, were never wanting in Afghanistan, but money
was wanting to induce them to leave their homes. It was said that
Shah Zemaun might, on any great national enterprise, have led 200,000
men into the field, if he had had money to pay them. But his entire
revenues were not equal to the payment of a very much smaller force.
He was continually being deserted by his soldiery, at critical times,
for want of the sinews of war to retain them. The emptiness of his
treasury, indeed, reduced him to all kinds of shifts and expedients,
such as that of raising the value of the current coin of the realm. But
no devices of this character could confer upon him a really formidable
army. In one important branch he was miserably deficient. The Douranee
artillery consisted of some twelve brass field-pieces and five hundred
zumboorucks, or camel guns. Even these were miserably equipped; the
camels wanted drivers, and the guns were often unserviceable. It was
said by one who visited the encampment of the grand army, under Zemaun
Shah, in 1799-1800, that there were not above 500 good horses in camp,
and that these belonged principally to the King and the Wuzeer. The men
were mounted for the most part on yaboos, or ponies, few of which, at a
liberal valuation, were worth a hundred rupees.
Such was the army with which Zemaun Shah meditated the invasion
of Hindostan. The personal character of the monarch was not more
formidable than the army which he commanded. A scholar more than
a soldier, very strict in the observances of his religion, and an
assiduous reader of the Koran, his way of life, judged by the princely
standard of Central Asia, was sufficiently moral and decorous. Humane
and generous, of a gentle, plastic disposition; very prone to take for
granted the truth of all that was told him; by no means remarkable for
personal activity, and somewhat wanting in courage, he was designed by
nature for a facile puppet in the hands of a crafty Wuzeer. And such
was Zemaun Shah in the expert hands of Wuffadar Khan. It was reported
of him that he took no active part in the management of public affairs;
and that when it was politic that he should make a show of government
and appear at Durbar, what he said was little more than a public
recital of a lesson well learnt in private. He was, indeed, the mere
mouth-piece of the minister—of a worse and more designing man. Content
with the gilded externals of majesty, he went abroad sumptuously
arrayed and magnificently attended; and mighty in all the state papers
of the time was the name of Zemaun Shah. But it was shrewdly suspected
that, had the state of his domestic relations and the military
resources at his command enabled him to take the field, as the invader
of Hindostan, a bribe any day offered to the Wuzeer might have broken
up the Douranee army, and kept the invader quietly at home.
On the whole, he was a popular ruler. The cultivating classes were
happy under his government. It recognised their claims to remuneration
for whatever was taken from them for the service of the state, and
no acts of fraud and oppression were ever committed in his name. The
merchants and traders were secure under his rule. In the midst of
much that was base and unworthy in the character and conduct of the
minister, he had a reputation for fair dealing with these classes,
and they looked up to him for protection. But far otherwise were his
relations with the warlike tribes and the chief people of the empire.
They were not without feelings of loyalty towards the king; but it was
rather affection for his person, than satisfaction with the government
of which he was the head. The grasping character of the minister, who
engrossed to himself all the patronage of the state, rendered him, in
spite of his courteous manners and affable demeanour, obnoxious to the
principal Sirdars; and something of this disaffection began in time to
be directed against the monarch himself, who had too long abandoned
his own better nature to the sinister guidance of the unprincipled and
unpopular Wuzeer.
Like many a monarch, abler and better than himself, Zemaun Shah had
chosen his minister unwisely, and was undone by the choice. When he
entrusted the affairs of his empire to the administration of Wuffadar
Khan, he made the great mistake of his life. A base and designing
man, without any of those commanding qualities which impart something
of dignity and heroism to crime, the Wuzeer bent his sovereign, but
could not bend circumstances to his will. The loyalty of the Douranee
sirdars he could extinguish, but their power he could not break by his
oppressions. Alarmed at their increasing influence, Wuffadar Khan
sought to encompass them in the toils of destruction; but he destroyed
himself and involved his sovereign in the ruin. Prince Mahmoud was
in arms against his royal brother. Exasperated by the conduct of the
minister, the Douranees threw all the weight of their influence into
the scales in favour of the prince. The rebellion which they headed
acquired strength and swelled into a revolution. And then began that
great strife between the royal princes and the Douranee sirdars, which
half a century of continued conflict, now witnessing the supremacy of
the one, now of the other, has scarcely even yet extinguished.
The two principal clans or tribes of the Douranees were the Populzyes
and the Barukzyes. The Suddozye, or Royal race, was one of the branches
of the former. The Bamezye, in which the Wuzeership was vested, but
not by inalienable right, was another branch of the same tribe. Second
in influence to the Populzyes, and greater in extent, was the tribe of
the Barukzyes. To this tribe belonged Futteh Khan. He was the son of
Poyndah Khan, an able statesman and a gallant soldier, whose wisdom in
council and experience in war had long sustained the tottering fortunes
of Timour Shah. On the death of that feeble monarch he had supported
the claims of Zemaun Shah. With as little wisdom as gratitude, that
prince, it has been seen, suffered himself to be cajoled by a man
of less honesty and less ability, and became a tool in the hands of
Wuffadar Khan. The favourite of two monarchs was disgraced; and, from a
powerful friend, became the resolute enemy of the reigning family. He
conspired against the King and the Wuzeer; his designs were detected;
and he perished miserably with his associates in the enterprise of
treason.
Poyndah Khan died, leaving twenty-one sons, of whom Futteh Khan was
the eldest. They are said, after the death of their father, to have
stooped into a cloud of poverty and humiliation, and to have wandered
about begging their bread. But their trials were only for a season.
The Barukzye brothers soon emerged from the night of suffering that
surrounded them. There was no power in the Douranee Empire which
could successfully cope with these resolute, enterprising spirits.
In Afghanistan revenge is a virtue. The sons of Poyndah Khan had
the murder of their father to avenge; and they rested not till the
bloody obligation had been faithfully fulfilled. Futteh Khan had fled
into Persia, and there leagued himself with Prince Mahmoud. Repeated
failure had extinguished the ambition of this restless prince. The
accession of the Barukzye sirdar now inspired him with new courage.
Upheld by the strong arm of the “king-maker,” he determined to strike
another blow for the sovereignty of Caubul. With a few horsemen they
entered Afghanistan, and, raising the standard of revolt, pushed on to
unexpected conquest.
There were not many in Afghanistan, nor many among the disinterested
lookers-on at that fraternal strife, who were inclined to jeopardise
their character for sagacity by predicting the success of the prince.
Everything, indeed, was against him. His treasury was always empty.
His friends were not men of note. With the exception of the Barukzye
sirdars,[20] no chiefs of influence espoused his cause. His followers
were described to Captain Malcolm as men “of low condition and mean
extraction.” But in spite of the slender support which he received,
and the strenuous efforts which were made to destroy him, the successes
which from time to time he achieved, seemed to show that there was
some vitality in his cause. A divinity seemed to hedge him in, and to
protect him from the knife of the assassin. He escaped as though by
a miracle the snares of his enemies, and from every new deliverance
seemed to gather something of prosperity and strength. It was after one
of these marvellous escapes, when the weapons of the Kuzzilbashes[21]
had fallen from their hands, palsied by the mysterious presence of the
blood royal, that Candahar fell before the insurgents. With two or
three thousand horsemen, Mahmoud invested the place for thirty-three
days, at the end of which Futteh Khan, with a handful of resolute men,
escaladed the fort near the Shikarpoor gate, and put the panic-struck
garrison to flight. The Meer Akhoor, or Master of the Horse, fled for
his life. The Shah-zadah Hyder sought sanctuary at the tomb of Ahmed
Shah; and Prince Mahmoud became master of the place.
It is not a peculiarity of Eastern princes alone to shine with a
brighter and steadier light in the hour of adversity than in the
hour of success. The trials of prosperity were too great for Prince
Mahmoud, as they have been for greater men; and he soon began to lose
ground at Candahar. The marvel is, that his fortunes were not utterly
marred by his own folly. It was only by the concurrence of greater
folly elsewhere, that in this conjecture he was saved from ruin. His
impolitic and haughty conduct towards the sirdars early demonstrated
his unfitness for rule, and well-nigh precipitated the enterprise in
which he was engaged into a sea of disastrous failure. There seemed,
indeed, to be only one thing that could sustain him, and that one thing
was wanting. He was as poor as he was unpopular. But the days of Shah
Zemaun’s sovereignty were numbered, and no folly on the part of his
antagonist could arrest the doom that was brooding over him.
At this time Zemaun Shah was on his way towards the borders of
Hindostan. He had advanced as far as Peshawur, when intelligence of
the fall of Candahar reached his camp. It was believed that he had
little actual design of advancing beyond the Sutlej. Partly with a
view of enforcing the payment of the Sindh tribute—partly to overawe
the Sikhs, and partly to abstract his own army from the dangerous
vicinity of Candahar and the corrupting influences to which in such a
neighbourhood it was exposed, he had made this move to the southward.
It was very obvious that, in such a condition of his own empire, all
idea of invading Hindostan was utterly wild and chimerical. If such an
idea had ever been formed, it was now speedily abandoned. All other
considerations gave place to the one necessity of saving his kingdom
from the grasp of his brother. He hastened back to Western Afghanistan;
but an impolitic expedition under the prince Soojah-ool-Moolk, who was
soon destined to play a conspicuous part in the great Central-Asian
drama, had crippled his military resources, and when he retraced his
steps, he found that the strength of Prince Mahmoud had increased
as his own had diminished. He marched against the rebels only to be
defeated. The main body of the royal troops was under the command of
one Ahmed Khan, a chief of the Noorzye tribe. Watching his opportunity,
Futteh Khan seized the person of the Sirdar’s brother, and threatened
to destroy him if the chief refused to come over bodily with his
troops and swell the ranks of the insurgents. The character of the
Barukzye leader certified that this was no idle threat. Ahmed Khan,
already wavering in his loyalty, for the conduct of the Wuzeer had
alienated his heart from the royal cause, at once made his election.
When the troops of Shah Zemaun came up with the advance of the rebel
army, he joined the insurgent force. From that time the cause of the
royalists became hopeless. Disaster followed disaster till its ruin
was complete. The minister and his master fell into the hands of the
enemy. Wuffadar Khan, with his brothers, was put to death. Death, too,
awaited the king—but the man was suffered to live. They doomed him only
to political extinction. There is a cruel, but a sure way of achieving
this in all Mahomedan countries. Between a blind king and a dead king
there is no political difference. The eyes of a conquered monarch
are punctured with a lancet, and he _de facto_ ceases to reign. They
blinded Shah Zemaun, and cast him into prison; and the Douranee Empire
owned Shah Mahmoud as its head.
So fell Zemaun Shah, the once dreaded Afghan monarch, whose threatened
invasion of Hindostan had for years been a ghastly phantom haunting
the Council-Chamber of the British-Indian Government. He survived the
loss of his sight nearly half a century; and as the neglected pensioner
of Loodhianah, to the very few who could rememberer the awe which his
name once inspired, must have presented a curious spectacle of fallen
greatness—an illustration of the mutability of human affairs scarcely
paralleled in the history of the world. He died at last full of years,
empty of honours, his death barely worth a newspaper-record or a
paragraph in a state paper. Scarcely identified in men’s minds with
the Zemaun Shah of the reigns of Sir John Shore and Lord Wellesley, he
lived an appendage, alike in prosperity and adversity, to his younger
brother, Soojah-ool-Moolk. That Soojah had once been reputed and
described as an appendage to Shah Zemaun-“his constant companion at
all times.” They soon came to change places, and in a country where
fraternal strife is the rule and not the exception, it is worthy of
record that those brothers were true to each other to the last.[22]