CHAPTER I: THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

[Illustration: Sir Frederick Roberts]

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THE AFGHAN WARS 1839-42 AND 1878-80

by ARCHIBALD FORBES

With Portraits and Plans

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CONTENTS

PART I.--THE FIRST AFGHAN WAR

CHAP.

I.--PRELIMINARY

II.--THE MARCH TO CABUL

III.--THE FIRST YEAR OF OCCUPATION

IV.--THE SECOND YEAR OF OCCUPATION

V.--THE BEGINNING OF THE END

VI.--THE ROAD TO RUIN

VII.--THE CATASTROPHE

VIII.--THE SIEGE AND DEFENCE OF JELLALABAD

IX.--RETRIBUTION AND RESCUE

PART II.--THE SECOND AFGHAN WAR

I.--THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

II.--THE OPENING OF THE SECOND CAMPAIGN

III.--THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM

IV.--THE DECEMBER STORM

V.--ON THE DEFENSIVE IN SHERPUR

VI.--AHMED KHEL

VII.--THE AMEER ABDURRAHMAN

VIII.--MAIWAND AND THE GREAT MARCH

IX.--THE BATTLE OF CANDAHAR

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS

PORTRAIT OF SIR FREDERICK ROBERTS _Frontispiece_

PLAN OF CABUL, THE CANTONMENT

PORTRAIT OF SIR GEORGE POLLOCK

PORTRAIT OF SIR LOUIS CAVAGNARI AND SIRDARS

PLAN OF CABUL SHOWING THE ACTIONS, DEC. 11-14

PLAN OF ACTION, AHMED KHEL

PORTRAIT OF THE AMEER ABDURRAHMAN

PLAN OF THE ACTION OF MAIWAND

PLAN OF THE ACTION OF CANDAHAR

_The Portraits of Sir G. Pollock and Sir F. Roberts are engraved by

permission of Messrs Henry Graves & Co._

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THE AFGHAN WARS

PART I: _THE FIRST AFGHAN WAR_

CHAPTER I: PRELIMINARY

Since it was the British complications with Persia which mainly

furnished what pretext there was for the invasion of Afghanistan by an

Anglo-Indian army in 1839, some brief recital is necessary of the

relations between Great Britain and Persia prior to that aggression.

By a treaty, concluded between England and Persia in 1814, the former

state bound itself, in case of the invasion of Persia by any European

nation, to aid the Shah either with troops from India or by the payment

of an annual subsidy in support of his war expenses. It was a dangerous

engagement, even with the _caveat_ rendering the undertaking inoperative

if such invasion should be provoked by Persia. During the fierce

struggle of 1825-7, between Abbas Meerza and the Russian General

Paskevitch, England refrained from supporting Persia either with men or

with money, and when prostrate Persia was in financial extremities

because of the war indemnity which the treaty of Turkmanchai imposed

upon her, England took advantage of her needs by purchasing the

cancellation of the inconvenient obligation at the cheap cost of about

£300,000. It was the natural result of this transaction that English

influence with the Persian Court should sensibly decline, and it was not

less natural that in conscious weakness Persia should fall under the

domination of Russian influence.

Futteh Ali, the old Shah of Persia, died in 1834, and was succeeded by

his grandson Prince Mahomed Meerza, a young man who inherited much of

the ambition of his gallant father Abbas Meerza. His especial

aspiration, industriously stimulated by his Russian advisers, urged him

to the enterprise of conquering the independent principality of Herat,

on the western border of Afghanistan. Herat was the only remnant of

Afghan territory that still remained to a member of the legitimate royal

house. Its ruler was Shah Kamran, son of that Mahmoud Shah who, after

ousting his brother Shah Soojah from the throne of Cabul, had himself

been driven from that elevation, and had retired to the minor

principality of Herat. The young Shah of Persia was not destitute of

justification for his designs on Herat. That this was so was frankly

admitted by Mr Ellis, the British envoy to his Court, who wrote to his

Government that the Shah had fair claim to the sovereignty of

Afghanistan as far as Ghuznee, and that Kamran's conduct in occupying

part of the Persian province of Seistan had given the Shah 'a full

justification for commencing hostilities against Herat.'

The serious phase of the situation for England and India was that

Russian influence was behind Persia in this hostile action against

Herat. Mr Ellis pointed out that in the then existing state of relations

between Persia and Russia, the progress of the former in Afghanistan was

tantamount to the advancement of the latter. But unfortunately there

remained valid an article in the treaty of 1814 to the effect that, in

case of war between the Afghans and the Persians, the English Government

should not interfere with either party unless when called on by both to

mediate. In vain did Ellis and his successor M'Neill remonstrate with

the Persian monarch against the Herat expedition. An appeal to St

Petersburg, on the part of Great Britain, produced merely an evasive

reply. How diplomatic disquietude had become intensified may be inferred

from this, that whereas in April 1836 Ellis wrote of Persia as a Russian

first parallel of attack against India, Lord Auckland, then

Governor-General of India, directed M'Neill, in the early part of 1837,

to urge the Shah to abandon his enterprise, on the ground that he (the

Governor-General) 'must view with umbrage and displeasure schemes of

interference and conquest on our western frontier.'

The Shah, unmoved by the representations of the British envoy, marched

on Herat, and the siege was opened on November 23d, 1837. Durand, a

capable critic, declares that the strength of the place, the resolution

of the besiegers, the skill of their Russian military advisers, and the

gallantry of the besieged, were alike objects of much exaggeration. 'The

siege was from first to last thoroughly ill-conducted, and the defence,

in reality not better managed, owed its _éclat_ to Persian ignorance,

timidity and supineness. The advice of Pottinger, the gallant English

officer who assisted the defence, was seldom asked, and still more

seldom taken; and no one spoke more plainly of the conduct of both

besieged and besiegers than did Pottinger himself.' M'Neill effected

nothing definite during a long stay in the Persian camp before Herat,

the counteracting influence of the Russian envoy being too strong with

the Shah; and the British representative, weary of continual slights, at

length quitted the Persian camp completely foiled. After six days'

bombardment, the Persians and their Russian auxiliaries delivered an

assault in force on June 23d, 1838. It failed, with heavy loss, and the

dispirited Shah determined on raising the siege. His resolution was

quickened by the arrival of Colonel Stoddart in his camp, with the

information that a military force from Bombay, supported by ships of

war, had landed on the island of Karrack in the Persian Gulf, and with

the peremptory ultimatum to the Shah that he must retire from Herat at

once. Lord Palmerston, in ordering this diversion in the Gulf, had

thought himself justified by circumstances in overriding the clear and

precise terms of an article in a treaty to which England had on several

occasions engaged to adhere. As for the Shah, he appears to have been

relieved by the ultimatum. On the 9th September he mounted his horse and

rode away from Herat. The siege had lasted nine and a half months.

To-day, half a century after Simonich the Russian envoy followed Mahomed

Shah from battered but unconquered Herat, that city is still an Afghan

place of arms.

Shah Soojah-ool Moolk, a grandson of the illustrious Ahmed Shah, reigned

in Afghanistan from 1803 till 1809. His youth had been full of trouble

and vicissitude. He had been a wanderer, on the verge of starvation, a

pedlar and a bandit, who raised money by plundering caravans. His

courage was lightly reputed, and it was as a mere creature of

circumstance that he reached the throne. His reign was perturbed, and in

1809 he was a fugitive and an exile. Runjeet Singh, the Sikh ruler of

the Punjaub, defrauded him of the famous Koh-i-noor, which is now the

most precious of the crown jewels of England, and plundered and

imprisoned the fallen man. Shah Soojah at length escaped from Lahore.

After further misfortunes he at length reached the British frontier

station of Loodianah, and in 1816 became a pensioner of the East India

Company.

After the downfall of Shah Soojah, Afghanistan for many years was a prey

to anarchy. At length in 1826, Dost Mahomed succeeded in making himself

supreme at Cabul, and this masterful man thenceforward held sway until

his death in 1863, uninterruptedly save during the three years of the

British occupation. Dost Mahomed was neither kith nor kin to the

legitimate dynasty which he displaced. His father Poyndah Khan was an

able statesman and gallant soldier. He left twenty-one sons, of whom

Futteh Khan was the eldest, and Dost Mahomed one of the youngest. Futteh

Khan was the Warwick of Afghanistan, but the Afghan 'Kingmaker' had no

Barnet as the closing scene of his chequered life. Falling into hostile

hands, he was blinded and scalped. Refusing to betray his brothers, he

was leisurely cut to pieces by the order and in the presence of the

monarch whom he had made. His young brother Dost Mahomed undertook to

avenge his death. After years of varied fortunes the Dost had worsted

all his enemies, and in 1826 he became the ruler of Cabul. Throughout

his long reign Dost Mahomed was a strong and wise ruler. His youth had

been neglected and dissolute. His education was defective, and he had

been addicted to wine. Once seated on the throne, the reformation of our

Henry Fifth was not more thorough than was that of Dost Mahomed. He

taught himself to read and write, studied the Koran, became scrupulously

abstemious, assiduous in affairs, no longer truculent but courteous. He

is said to have made a public acknowledgment of the errors of his

previous life, and a firm profession of reformation; nor did his after

life belie the pledges to which he committed himself. There was a fine

rugged honesty in his nature, and a streak of genuine chivalry;

notwithstanding the despite he suffered at our hands, he had a real

regard for the English, and his loyalty to us was broken only by his

armed support of the Sikhs in the second Punjaub war.

The fallen Shah Soojah, from his asylum in Loodianah, was continually

intriguing for his restoration. His schemes were long inoperative, and

it was not until 1832 that certain arrangements were entered into

between him and the Maharaja Runjeet Singh. To an application on Shah

Soojah's part for countenance and pecuniary aid, the Anglo-Indian

Government replied that to afford him assistance would be inconsistent

with the policy of neutrality which the Government had imposed on

itself; but it unwisely contributed financially toward his undertaking

by granting him four months' pension in advance. Sixteen thousand rupees

formed a scant war fund with which to attempt the recovery of a throne,

but the Shah started on his errand in February 1833. After a successful

contest with the Ameers of Scinde, he marched on Candahar, and besieged

that fortress. Candahar was in extremity when Dost Mahomed, hurrying

from Cabul, relieved it, and joining forces with its defenders, he

defeated and routed Shah Soojah, who fled precipitately, leaving behind

him his artillery and camp equipage, During the Dost's absence in the

south, Runjeet Singh's troops crossed the Attock, occupied the Afghan

province of Peshawur, and drove the Afghans into the Khyber Pass. No

subsequent efforts on Dost Mahomed's part availed to expel the Sikhs

from Peshawur, and suspicious of British connivance with Runjeet Singh's

successful aggression, he took into consideration the policy of

fortifying himself by a counter alliance with Persia. As for Shah

Soojah, he had crept back to his refuge at Loodianah.

Lord Auckland succeeded Lord William Bentinck as Governor-General of

India in March 1836. In reply to Dost Mahomed's letter of

congratulation, his lordship wrote: 'You are aware that it is not the

practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of

other independent states;' an abstention which Lord Auckland was soon to

violate. He had brought from England the feeling of disquietude in

regard to the designs of Persia and Russia which the communications of

our envoy in Persia had fostered in the Home Government, but it would

appear that he was wholly undecided what line of action to pursue.

'Swayed,' says Durand, 'by the vague apprehensions of a remote danger

entertained by others rather than himself,' he despatched to Afghanistan

Captain Burnes on a nominally commercial mission, which, in fact, was

one of political discovery, but without definite instructions. Burnes,

an able but rash and ambitious man, reached Cabul in September 1837, two

months before the Persian army began the siege of Herat. He had a strong

prepossession in favour of the Dost, whose guest he had already been in

1832, and the policy he favoured was not the revival of the legitimate

dynasty in the person of Shah Soojah, but the attachment of Dost Mahomed

to British interests by strengthening his throne and affording him

British countenance.

Burnes sanguinely believed that he had arrived at Cabul in the nick of

time, for an envoy from the Shah of Persia was already at Candahar,

bearing presents and assurances of support. The Dost made no concealment

to Burnes of his approaches to Persia and Russia, in despair of British

good offices, and being hungry for assistance from any source to meet

the encroachments of the Sikhs, he professed himself ready to abandon

his negotiations with the western powers if he were given reason to

expect countenance and assistance at the hands of the Anglo-Indian

Government. Burnes communicated to his Government those friendly

proposals, supporting them by his own strong representations, and

meanwhile, carried away by enthusiasm, he exceeded his powers by making

efforts to dissuade the Candahar chiefs from the Persian alliance, and

by offering to support them with money to enable them to make head

against the offensive, by which Persia would probably seek to revenge

the rejection of her overtures. For this unauthorised excess of zeal

Burnes was severely reprimanded by his Government, and was directed to

retract his offers to the Candahar chiefs. The situation of Burnes in

relation to the Dost was presently complicated by the arrival at Cabul

of a Russian officer claiming to be an envoy from the Czar, whose

credentials, however, were regarded as dubious, and who, if that

circumstance has the least weight, was on his return to Russia utterly

repudiated by Count Nesselrode. The Dost took small account of this

emissary, continuing to assure Burnes that he cared for no connection

except with the English, and Burnes professed to his Government his

fullest confidences in the sincerity of those declarations. But the tone

of Lord Auckland's reply, addressed to the Dost, was so dictatorial and

supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give

offence. It had that effect, and Burnes' mission at once became

hopeless. Yet, as a last resort, Dost Mahomed lowered his pride so far

as to write to the Governor-General imploring him 'to remedy the

grievances of the Afghans, and afford them some little encouragement and

power.' The pathetic representation had no effect. The Russian envoy,

who was profuse in his promises of everything which the Dost was most

anxious to obtain, was received into favour and treated with

distinction, and on his return journey he effected a treaty with the

Candahar chiefs, which was presently ratified by the Russian minister at

the Persian Court. Burnes, fallen into discredit at Cabul, quitted that

place in August 1838. He had not been discreet, but it was not his

indiscretion that brought about the failure of his mission. A nefarious

transaction, which Kaye denounces with the passion of a just

indignation, connects itself with Burnes' negotiations with the Dost;

his official correspondence was unscrupulously mutilated and garbled in

the published Blue Book with deliberate purpose to deceive the British

public.

Burnes had failed because, since he had quitted India for Cabul, Lord

Auckland's policy had gradually altered. Lord Auckland had landed in

India in the character of a man of peace. That, so late as April 1837,

he had no design of obstructing the existing situation in Afghanistan is

proved by his written statement of that date, that 'the British

Government had resolved decidedly to discourage the prosecution by the

ex-king Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, so long as he may remain under our

protection, of further schemes of hostility against the chiefs now in

power in Cabul and Candahar.' Yet, in the following June, he concluded a

treaty which sent Shah Soojah to Cabul, escorted by British bayonets. Of

this inconsistency no explanation presents itself. It was a far cry from

our frontier on the Sutlej to Herat in the confines of Central Asia--a

distance of more than 1200 miles, over some of the most arduous marching

ground in the known world. No doubt the Anglo-Indian Government was

justified in being somewhat concerned by the facts that a Persian army,

backed by Russian volunteers and Russian roubles, was besieging Herat,

and that Persian and Russian emissaries were at work in Afghanistan.

Both phenomena were rather of the 'bogey' character; how much so to-day

shows when the Afghan frontier is still beyond Herat, and when a

descendant of Dost Mahomed still sits in the Cabul _musnid_. But neither

England nor India scrupled to make the Karrack counter-threat which

arrested the siege of Herat; and the obvious policy as regarded

Afghanistan was to watch the results of the intrigues which were on

foot, to ignore them should they come to nothing, as was probable, to

counteract them by familiar methods if serious consequences should seem

impending. Our alliance with Runjeet Singh was solid, and the quarrel

between Dost Mahomed and him concerning the Peshawur province was

notoriously easy of arrangement.

On whose memory rests the dark shadow of responsibility for the first

Afghan war? The late Lord Broughton, who, when Sir John Cam Hobhouse,

was President of the Board of Control from 1835 to 1841, declared

before a House of Commons Committee, in 1851, 'The Afghan war was done

by myself; entirely without the privity of the Board of Directors.' The

meaning of that declaration, of course, was that it was the British

Government of the day which was responsible, acting through its member

charged with the control of Indian affairs; and further, that the

directorate of the East India Company was accorded no voice in the

matter. But this utterance was materially qualified by Sir J. C.

Hobhouse's statement in the House of Commons in 1842, that his despatch

indicating the policy to be adopted, and that written by Lord Auckland,

informing him that the expedition had already been undertaken, had

crossed each other on the way.

It would be tedious to detail how Lord Auckland, under evil counsel,

gradually boxed the compass from peace to war. The scheme of action

embodied in the treaty which, in the early summer of 1838, was concluded

between the Anglo-Indian Government, Runjeet Singh, and Shah Soojah, was

that Shah Soojah, with a force officered from an Indian army, and paid

by British money, possessing also the goodwill and support of the

Maharaja of the Punjaub, should attempt the recovery of his throne

without any stiffening of British bayonets at his back. Then it was

urged, and the representation was indeed accepted, that the Shah would

need the buttress afforded by English troops, and that a couple of

regiments only would suffice to afford this prestige. But Sir Harry

Fane, the Commander-in-Chief, judiciously interposed his veto on the

despatch of a handful of British soldiers on so distant and hazardous an

expedition. Finally, the Governor-General, committed already to a

mistaken line of policy, and urged forward by those about him, took the

unfortunate resolution to gather together an Anglo-Indian army, and to

send it, with the ill-omened Shah Soojah on its shoulders, into the

unknown and distant wilds of Afghanistan. This action determined on, it

was in accordance with the Anglo-Indian fitness of things that the

Governor-General should promulgate a justificatory manifesto. Of this

composition it is unnecessary to say more than to quote Durand's

observation that in it 'the words "justice and necessity" were applied

in a manner for which there is fortunately no precedent in the English

language,' and Sir Henry Edwardes' not less trenchant comment that 'the

views and conduct of Dost Mahomed were misrepresented with a hardihood

which a Russian statesman might have envied.'

All men whose experience gave weight to their words opposed this

'preposterous enterprise.' Mr Elphinstone, who had been the head of a

mission to Cabul thirty years earlier, held that 'if an army was sent up

the passes, and if we could feed it, no doubt we might take Cabul and

set up Shah Soojah; but it was hopeless to maintain him in a poor, cold,

strong and remote country, among so turbulent a people.' Lord William

Bentinck, Lord Auckland's predecessor, denounced the project as an act

of incredible folly. Marquis Wellesley regarded 'this wild expedition

into a distant region of rocks and deserts, of sands and ice and snow,'

as an act of infatuation. The Duke of Wellington pronounced with

prophetic sagacity, that the consequence of once crossing the Indus to

settle a government in Afghanistan would be a perennial march into that

country.

CHAPTER II: THE MARCH TO CABUL

The two main objects of the venturesome offensive movement to which Lord

Auckland had committed himself were, first, the raising of the Persian

siege of Herat if the place should hold out until reached--the recapture

of it if it should have fallen; and, secondly, the establishment of Shah

Soojah on the Afghan throne. The former object was the more pressing,

and time was very precious; but the distances in India are great, the

means of communication in 1838 did not admit of celerity, and the

seasons control the safe prosecution of military operations.

Nevertheless, the concentration of the army at the frontier station of

Ferozepore was fully accomplished toward the end of November. Sir Harry

Fane was to be the military head of the expedition, and he had just

right to be proud of the 14,000 carefully selected and well-seasoned

troops who constituted his Bengal contingent. The force consisted of two

infantry divisions, of which the first, commanded by Major-General Sir

Willoughby Cotton, contained three brigades, commanded respectively by

Colonels Sale, Nott, and Dennis, of whom the two former were to attain

high distinction within the borders of Afghanistan. Major-General Duncan

commanded the second infantry division of the two brigades, of which one

was commanded by Colonel Roberts, the gallant father of a gallant son,

the other by Colonel Worsley. The 6000 troops raised for Shah Soojah,

who were under Fane's orders, and were officered from our army in India,

had been recently and hurriedly recruited, and although rapidly

improving, were not yet in a state of high efficiency. The contingent

which the Bombay Presidency was to furnish to the 'Army of the Indus,'

and which landed about the close of the year near the mouth of the

Indus, was under the command of General Sir John Keane, the

Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay army. The Bombay force was about 5000

strong.

Before the concentration at Ferozepore had been completed, Lord Auckland

received official intimation of the retreat of the Persians from before

Herat. With their departure had gone, also, the sole legitimate object

of the expedition; there remained but a project of wanton aggression and

usurpation. The Russo-Persian failure at Herat was scarcely calculated

to maintain in the astute and practical Afghans any hope of fulfilment

of the promises which the western powers had thrown about so lavishly,

while it made clear that, for some time at least to come, the Persians

would not be found dancing again to Russian fiddling. The abandonment of

the siege of Herat rendered the invasion of Afghanistan an aggression

destitute even of pretext. The Governor-General endeavoured to justify

his resolution to persevere in it by putting forth the argument that its

prosecution was required, 'alike in observation of the treaties entered

into with Runjeet Singh and Shah Soojah as by paramount considerations

of defensive policy.' A remarkable illustration of 'defensive policy' to

take the offensive against a remote country from whose further confines

had faded away foiled aggression, leaving behind nothing but a bitter

consciousness of broken promises! As for the other plea, the tripartite

treaty contained no covenant that we should send a corporal's guard

across our frontier. If Shah Soojah had a powerful following in

Afghanistan, he could regain his throne without our assistance; if he

had no holding there, it was for us a truly discreditable enterprise to

foist him on a recalcitrant people at the point of the bayonet.

One result of the tidings from Herat was to reduce by a division the

strength of the expeditionary force. Fane, who had never taken kindly to

the project, declined to associate himself with the diminished array

that remained. The command of the Bengal column fell to Sir Willoughby

Cotton, with whom as his aide-de-camp rode that Henry Havelock whose

name twenty years later was to ring through India and England. Duncan's

division was to stand fast at Ferozepore as a support, by which

disposition the strength of the Bengal marching force was cut down to

about 9500 fighting men. After its junction with the Bombay column, the

army would be 14,500 strong, without reckoning the Shah's contingent.

There was an interlude at Ferozepore of reviews and high jinks with the

shrewd, debauched old Runjeet Singh; of which proceedings Havelock in

his narrative of the expedition gives a detailed account, dwelling with

extreme disapprobation on Runjeet's addiction to a 'pet tipple' strong

enough to lay out the hardest drinker in the British camp, but which the

old reprobate quaffed freely without turning a hair.

At length, on December 10th, 1838, Cotton began the long march which was

not to terminate at Cabul until August 6th of the following year. The

most direct route was across the Punjaub, and up the passes from

Peshawur, but the Governor-General had shrunk from proposing to Runjeet

Singh that the force should march through his territories, thinking it

enough that the Maharaja had permitted Shah Soojah's heir, Prince

Timour, to go by Peshawur to Cabul, had engaged to support him with a

Sikh force, and had agreed to maintain an army of reserve at Peshawur.

The chosen route was by the left bank of the Sutlej to its junction with

the Indus, down the left bank of the Indus to the crossing point at

Roree, and from Sukkur across the Scinde and northern Belooch provinces

by the Bolan and Kojuk passes to Candahar, thence by Khelat-i-Ghilzai

and Ghuznee to Cabul. This was a line excessively circuitous, immensely

long, full of difficulties, and equally disadvantageous as to supplies

and communications. On the way the column would have to effect a

junction with the Bombay force, which at Vikkur was distant 800 miles

from Ferozepore. Of the distance of 850 miles from the latter post to

Candahar the first half to the crossing of the Indus presented no

serious difficulties, but from Sukkur beyond the country was

inhospitable and cruelly rugged. It needed little military knowledge to

realise how more and yet more precarious would become the communications

as the chain lengthened, to discern that from Ferozepore to the Indus

they would be at the mercy of the Sikhs, and to comprehend this also,

that a single serious check, in or beyond the passes, would involve all

but inevitable ruin.

Shah Soojah and his levies moved independently some marches in advance

of Cotton. The Dooranee monarch-elect had already crossed the Indus, and

was encamped at Shikarpore, when he was joined by Mr William Hay

Macnaghten, of the Company's Civil Service, the high functionary who had

been gazetted as 'Envoy and Minister on the part of the Government of

India at the Court of Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk.' Durand pronounces the

selection an unhappy one, 'for Macnaghten, long accustomed to

irresponsible office, inexperienced in men, and ignorant of the country

and people of Afghanistan, was, though an erudite Arabic scholar,

neither practised in the field of Asiatic intrigue nor a man of action.

His ambition was, however, great, and the expedition, holding out the

promise of distinction and honours, had met with his strenuous

advocacy.' Macnaghten was one of the three men who chiefly inspired Lord

Auckland with the policy to which he had committed himself. He was the

negotiator of the tripartite treaty. He was now on his way toward a

region wherein he was to concern himself in strange adventures, the

outcome of which was to darken his reputation, consign him to a sudden

cruel death, bring awful ruin on the enterprise he had fostered, and

inflict incalculable damage on British prestige in India.

Marching through Bhawulpore and Northern Scinde, without noteworthy

incident save heavy losses of draught cattle, Cotton's army reached

Roree, the point at which the Indus was to be crossed, in the third week

of January 1839. Here a delay was encountered. The Scinde Ameers were,

with reason, angered by the unjust and exacting terms which Pottinger

had been instructed to enforce on them. They had been virtually

independent of Afghanistan for nearly half a century; there was now

masterfully demanded of them quarter of a million sterling in name of

back tribute, and this in the face of the fact that they held a solemn

release by Shah Soojah of all past and future claims. When they demurred

to this, and to other exactions, they were peremptorily told that

'neither the ready power to crush and annihilate them, nor the will to

call it into action, was wanting if it appeared requisite, however

remotely, for the safety and integrity of the Anglo-Indian empire and

frontier.'

It was little wonder that the Ameers were reluctant to fall in with

terms advanced so arrogantly. Keane marched up the right bank of the

Indus to within a couple of marches of Hyderabad, and having heard of

the rejection by the Ameers of Pottinger's terms, and of the gathering

of some 20,000 armed Belooches about the capital, he called for the

co-operation of part of the Bengal column in a movement on Hyderabad.

Cotton started on his march down the left bank, on January Jeth, with

5600 men. Under menaces so ominous the unfortunate Ameers succumbed.

Cotton returned to Roree; the Bengal column crossed the Indus, and on

February 20th its headquarters reached Shikarpore. Ten days later,

Cotton, leading the advance, was in Dadur, at the foot of the Bolan

Pass, having suffered heavily in transport animals almost from the

start. Supplies were scarce in a region so barren, but with a month's

partial food on his beasts of burden he quitted Dadur March 10th, got

safely, if toilsomely, through the Bolan, and on 26th reached Quetta,

where he was to halt for orders. Shah Soojah and Keane followed, their

troops suffering not a little from scarcity of supplies and loss of

animals.

Keane's error in detaining Cotton at Quetta until he should arrive

proved itself in the semi-starvation to which the troops of the Bengal

column were reduced. The Khan of Khelat, whether from disaffection or

inability, left unfulfilled his promise to supply grain, and the result

of the quarrel which Burnes picked with him was that he shunned coming

in and paying homage to Shah Soojah, for which default he was to suffer

cruel and unjustifiable ruin. The sepoys were put on half, the camp

followers on quarter rations, and the force for eleven days had been

idly consuming the waning supplies, when at length, on April 6th, Keane

came into camp, having already formally assumed the command of the whole

army, and made certain alterations in its organisation and subsidiary

commands. There still remained to be traversed 147 miles before Candahar

should be reached, and the dreaded Kojuk Pass had still to be

penetrated.

Keane was a soldier who had gained a reputation for courage in Egypt and

the Peninsula. He was indebted to the acuteness of his engineer and the

valour of his troops, for the peerage conferred on him for Ghuznee, and

it cannot be said that during his command in Afghanistan he disclosed

any marked military aptitude. But he had sufficient perception to

recognise that he had brought the Bengal column to the verge of

starvation in Quetta, and sufficient common sense to discern that, since

if it remained there it would soon starve outright, the best thing to be

done was to push it forward with all possible speed into a region where

food should be procurable. Acting on this reasoning, he marched the day

after his arrival. Cotton, while lying in Quetta, had not taken the

trouble to reconnoitre the passes in advance, far less to make a

practicable road through the Kojuk defile if that should prove the best

route. The resolution taken to march through it, two days were spent in

making the pass possible for wheels; and from the 13th to the 21st the

column was engaged in overcoming the obstacles it presented, losing in

the task, besides, much baggage, supplies, transport and ordnance

stores. Further back in the Bolan Willshire with the Bombay column was

faring worse; he was plundered severely by tribal marauders.

By May 4th the main body of the army was encamped in the plain of

Candahar. From the Kojuk, Shah Soojah and his contingent had led the

advance toward the southern capital of the dominions from the throne of

which he had been cast down thirty years before. The Candahar chiefs had

meditated a night attack on his raw troops, but Macnaghten's intrigues

and bribes had wrought defection in their camp; and while Kohun-dil-Khan

and his brothers were in flight to Girishk on the Helmund, the infamous

Hadji Khan Kakur led the venal herd of turncoat sycophants to the feet

of the claimant who came backed by the British gold, which Macnaghten

was scattering abroad with lavish hand. Shah Soojah recovered from his

trepidation, hurried forward in advance of his troops, and entered

Candahar on April 24th. His reception was cold. The influential chiefs

stood aloof, abiding the signs of the times; the populace of Candahar

stood silent and lowering. Nor did the sullenness abate when the

presence of a large army with its followers promptly raised the price of

grain, to the great distress of the poor. The ceremony of the solemn

recognition of the Shah, held close to the scene of his defeat in 1834,

Havelock describes as an imposing pageant, with homagings and royal

salutes, parade of troops and presentation of _nuzzurs_; but the arena

set apart for the inhabitants was empty, spite of Eastern love for a

_tamasha_, and the display of enthusiasm was confined to the immediate

retainers of His Majesty.

The Shah was eager for the pursuit of the fugitive chiefs; but the

troops were jaded and sickly, the cavalry were partially dismounted, and

what horses remained were feeble skeletons. The transport animals

needed grazing and rest, and their loss of numbers to be made good. The

crops were not yet ripe, and provisions were scant and dear. When, on

May 9th, Sale marched toward Girishk, his detachment carried half

rations, and his handful of regular cavalry was all that two regiments

could furnish. Reaching Girishk, he found that the chiefs had fled

toward Seistan, and leaving a regiment of the Shah's contingent in

occupation, he returned to Candahar.

Macnaghten professed the belief, and perhaps may have deluded himself

into it, that Candahar had received the Shah with enthusiasm. He was

sanguine that the march to Cabul would be unopposed, and he urged on

Keane, who was wholly dependent on the Envoy for political information,

to move forward at once, lightening the difficulties of the march by

leaving the Bombay troops at Candahar. But Keane declined, on the advice

of Thomson, his chief engineer, who asked significantly whether he had

found the information given him by the political department in any

single instance correct. Food prospects, however, did not improve at

Candahar, and leaving a strong garrison there as well, curious to say,

as the siege train which with arduous labour had been brought up the

passes, Keane began the march to Cabul on June 27th. He had supplies

only sufficient to carry his army thither on half rations. Macnaghten

had lavished money so freely that the treasury chest was all but empty.

How the Afghans regarded the invasion was evinced by condign slaughter

of our stragglers.

As the army advanced up the valley of the Turnuk, the climate became

more temperate, the harvest was later, and the troops improved in health

and spirit. Concentrating his forces, Keane reached Ghuznee on July

21st. The reconnaissance he made proved that fortress occupied in force.

The outposts driven in, and a close inspection made, the works were

found stronger than had been represented, and its regular reduction was

out of the question without the battering train which Keane had allowed

himself to be persuaded into leaving behind. A wall some 70 feet high

and a wet ditch in its front made mining and escalade alike

impracticable. Thomson, however, noticed that the road and bridge to the

Cabul gate were intact. He obtained trustworthy information that up to a

recent date, while all the other gates had been built up, the Cabul gate

had not been so dealt with. As he watched, a horseman was seen to enter

by it. This was conclusive. The ground within 400 yards of the gate

offered good artillery positions. Thomson therefore reported that

although the operation was full of risk, and success if attained must

cost dear, yet in the absence of a less hazardous method of reduction

there offered a fair chance of success in an attempt to blow open the

Cabul gate, and then carry the place by a _coup de main_. Keane was

precluded from the alternative of masking the place and continuing his

advance by the all but total exhaustion of his supplies, which the

capture of Ghuznee would replenish, and he therefore resolved on an

assault by the Cabul gate.

During the 21st July the army circled round the place, and camped to the

north of it on the Cabul road. The following day was spent in

preparations, and in defeating an attack made on the Shah's contingent

by several thousand Ghilzai tribesmen of the adjacent hill country. In

the gusty darkness of the early morning of the 23d the field artillery

was placed in battery on the heights opposite the northern face of the

fortress. The 13th regiment was extended in skirmishing order in the

gardens under the wall of this face, and a detachment of sepoys was

detailed to make a false attack on the eastern face. Near the centre of

the northern face was the Cabul gate, in front of which lay waiting for

the signal, a storming party consisting of the light companies of the

four European regiments, under command of Colonel Dennie of the 13th.

The main column consisted of two European regiments and the support of a

third, the whole commanded by Brigadier Sale; the native regiments

constituted the reserve. All those dispositions were completed by three

A.M., and, favoured by the noise of the wind and the darkness, without

alarming the garrison.

Punctually at this hour the little party of engineers charged with the

task of blowing in the gate started forward on the hazardous errand.

Captain Peat of the Bombay Engineers was in command. Durand, a young

lieutenant of Bengal Engineers, who was later to attain high

distinction, was entrusted with the service of heading the explosion

party. The latter, leading the party, had advanced unmolested to within

150 yards of the works, when a challenge, a shot and a shout gave

intimation of his detection. A musketry fire was promptly opened by the

garrison from the battlements, and blue lights illuminated the approach

to the gate, but in the fortunate absence of fire from the lower works

the bridge was safely crossed, and Peat with his handful of linesmen

halted in a sallyport to cover the explosion operation. Durand advanced

to the gate, his sappers piled their powder bags against it and

withdrew; Durand and his sergeant uncoiled the hose, ignited the

quick-match under a rain from the battlements of bullets and

miscellaneous missiles, and then retired to cover out of reach of the

explosion.

At the sound of the first shot from the battlements, Keane's cannon had

opened their fire. The skirmishers in the gardens engaged in a brisk

fusillade. The rattle of Hay's musketry was heard from the east. The

garrison was alert in its reply. The northern ramparts became a sheet of

flame, and everywhere the cannonade and musketry fire waxed in noise and

volume. Suddenly, as the day was beginning to dawn, a dull, heavy sound

was heard by the head of the waiting column, scarce audible elsewhere

because of the boisterous wind and the din of the firing. A pillar of

black smoke shot up from where had been the Afghan gate, now shattered

by the 300 pounds of gunpowder which Durand had exploded against it. The

signal to the storming party was to be the 'advance' sounded by the

bugler who accompanied Peat. But the bugler had been shot through the

head. Durand could not find Peat. Going back through the bullets to the

nearest party of infantry, he experienced some delay, but at last the

column was apprised that all was right, the 'advance' was sounded,

Dennie and his stormers sped forward, and Sale followed at the head of

the main column.

After a temporary check to the latter, because of a misconception, it

pushed on in close support of Dennie. That gallant soldier and his

gallant followers had rushed into the smoking and gloomy archway to find

themselves met hand to hand by the Afghan defenders, who had recovered

from their surprise. Nothing could be distinctly seen in the narrow

gorge, but the clash of sword blade against bayonet was heard on every

side. The stormers had to grope their way between the yet standing walls

in a dusk which the glimmer of the blue light only made more perplexing.

But some elbow room was gradually gained, and then, since there was

neither time nor space for methodic street fighting, each loaded section

gave its volley and then made way for the next, which, crowding to the

front, poured a deadly discharge at half pistol-shot into the densely

crowded defenders. Thus the storming party won steadily its way, till at

length Dennie and his leading files discerned over the heads of their

opponents a patch of blue sky and a twinkling star or two, and with a

final charge found themselves within the place.

A body of fierce Afghan swordsmen projected themselves into the interval

between the storming party and the main column. Sale, at the head of the

latter, was cut down by a tulwar stroke in the face; in the effort of

his blow the assailant fell with the assailed, and they rolled together

among the shattered timbers of the gate. Sale, wounded again on the

ground, and faint with loss of blood, called to one of his officers for

assistance. Kershaw ran the Afghan through the body with his sword; but

he still struggled with the Brigadier. At length in the grapple Sale got

uppermost, and then he dealt his adversary a sabre cut which cleft him

from crown to eyebrows. There was much confused fighting within the

place, for the Afghan garrison made furious rallies again and again; but

the citadel was found open and undefended, and by sunrise British

banners were waving above its battlements Hyder Khan, the Governor of

Ghuznee, one of the sons of Dost Mahomed, was found concealed in a house

in the town and taken prisoner. The British loss amounted to about 200

killed and wounded, that of the garrison, which was estimated at from

3000 to 4000 strong, was over 500 killed. The number of wounded was not

ascertained; of prisoners taken in arms there were about 1600. The booty

consisted of numerous horses, camels and mules, ordnance and military

weapons of various descriptions, and a vast quantity of supplies of all

kinds.

Keane, having garrisoned Ghuznee, and left there his sick and wounded,

resumed on July 30th his march on Cabul. Within twenty-four hours after

the event Dost Mahomed heard of the fall of Ghuznee. Possessed of the

adverse intelligence, the Dost gathered his chiefs, received their

facile assurances of fidelity, sent his brother the Nawaub Jubbar Khan

to ask what terms Shah Soojah and his British allies were prepared to

offer him, and recalled from Jellalabad his son Akbar Khan, with all the

force he could muster there. The Dost's emissary to the allied camp was

informed that 'an honourable asylum' in British India was at the service

of his brother; an offer which Jubbar Khan declined in his name without

thanks. Before he left to share the fortunes of the Dost, the Sirdar is

reported to have asked Macnaghten, 'If Shah Soojah is really our king,

what need has he of your army and name? You have brought him here,' he

continued, 'with your money and arms. Well, leave him now with us

Afghans, and let him rule us if he can.' When Jubbar Khan returned to

Cabul with his sombre message, the Dost, having been joined by Akbar

Khan, concentrated his army, and found himself at the head of 13,000

men, with thirty guns; but he mournfully realised that he could lean no

reliance on the constancy and courage of his adherents. Nevertheless, he

marched out along the Ghuznee road, and drew up his force at Urgundeh,

where he commanded the most direct line of retreat toward the western

hill country of Bamian, in case his people would not fight, or should

they fight, if they were beaten.

There was no fight in his following; scarcely, indeed, was there a loyal

supporter among all those who had eaten his salt for years. There was

true manhood in this chief whom we were replacing by an effete puppet.

The Dost, Koran in hand, rode among his perfidious troops, and conjured

them in the name of God and the Prophet not to dishonour themselves by

transferring their allegiance to one who had filled Afghanistan with

infidels and blasphemers. 'If,' he continued, 'you are resolved to be

traitors to me, at least enable me to die with honour. Support the

brother of Futteh Khan in one last charge against these Feringhee dogs.

In that charge he will fall; then go and make your own terms with Shah

Soojah.' The high-souled appeal inspired no worthy response; but one is

loth to credit the testimony of the soldier-of-fortune Harlan that his

guards forsook the Dost, and that the rabble of troops plundered his

pavilion, snatched from under him the pillows of his divan, seized his

prayer carpet, and finally hacked into pieces the tent and its

appurtenances. On the evening of August 2d the hapless man shook the

dust of the camp of traitors from his feet, and rode away toward Bamian,

his son Akbar Khan, with a handful of resolute men, covering the retreat

of his father and his family. Tidings of the flight of Dost Mahomed

reached Keane on the 3d, at Sheikabad, where he had halted to

concentrate; and Outram volunteered to head a pursuing party, to consist

of some British officers as volunteers, some cavalry and some Afghan

horse. Hadji Khan Kakur, the earliest traitor of his race, undertook to

act as guide. This man's devices of delay defeated Outram's fiery

energy, perhaps in deceit, perhaps because he regarded it as lacking

discretion. For Akbar Khan made a long halt on the crown of the pass,

waiting to check any endeavour to press closely on his fugitive father,

and it would have gone hard with Outram, with a few fagged horsemen at

his back, if Hadji Khan had allowed him to overtake the resolute young

Afghan chief. As Keane moved forward, there fell to him the guns which

the Dost had left in the Urgundeh position. On August 6th he encamped

close to Cabul; and on the following day Shah Soojah made his public

entry into the capital which he had last seen thirty years previously.

After so many years of vicissitude, adventure and intrigue, he was again

on the throne of his ancestors, but placed there by the bayonets of the

Government whose creature he was, an insult to the nation whom he had

the insolence to call his people.

The entry, nevertheless, was a goodly spectacle enough. Shah Soojah,

dazzling in coronet, jewelled girdle and bracelets, but with no

Koh-i-noor now glittering on his forehead, bestrode a white charger,

whose equipments gleamed with gold. By his side rode Macnaghten and

Burnes; in the pageant were the principal officers of the British army.

Sabres flashed in front of the procession, bayonets sparkled in its

rear, as it wended its way through the great bazaar which Pollock was to

destroy three years later, and along the tortuous street to the gate of

the Balla Hissar. But neither the monarch nor his pageant kindled the

enthusiasm in the Cabulees. There was no voice of welcome; the citizens

did not care to trouble themselves so much as to make him a salaam, and

they stared at the European strangers harder than at his restored

majesty. There was a touch of pathos in the burst of eagerness to which

the old man gave way as he reached the palace, ran through the gardens,

visited the apartments, and commented on the neglect everywhere

apparent. Shah Soojah was rather a poor creature, but he was by no means

altogether destitute of good points, and far worse men than he were

actors in the strange historical episode of which he was the figurehead.

He was humane for an Afghan; he never was proved to have been untrue to

us; he must have had some courage of a kind else he would never have

remained in Cabul when our people left it, in the all but full assurance

of the fate which presently overtook him as a matter of course. Havelock

thus portrays him: 'A stout person of the middle height, his chin

covered with a long thick and neatly trimmed beard, dyed black to

conceal the encroachments of time. His manner toward the English is

gentle, calm and dignified, without haughtiness, but his own subjects

have invariably complained of his reception of them as cold and

repulsive, even to rudeness. His complexion is darker than that of the

generality of Afghans, and his features, if not decidedly handsome, are

not the reverse of pleasing; but the expression of his countenance would

betray to a skilful physiognomist that mixture of timidity and duplicity

so often observable in the character of the higher order of men in

Southern Asia.'

CHAPTER III: THE FIRST YEAR OF OCCUPATION

Sir John Kaye, in his picturesque if diffuse history of the first Afghan

war, lays it down that, in seating Shah Soojah on the Cabul throne, 'the

British Government had done all that it had undertaken to do,' and

Durand argues that, having accomplished this, 'the British army could

have then been withdrawn with the honour and fame of entire success.'

The facts apparently do not justify the reasoning of either writer. In

the Simla manifesto, in which Lord Auckland embodied the rationale of

his policy, he expressed the confident hope 'that the Shah will be

speedily replaced on his throne by his own subjects and adherents, and

when once he shall be received in power, and the independence and

integrity of Afghanistan established, the British army will be

withdrawn.' The Shah had been indeed restored to his throne, but by

British bayonets, not by 'his own subjects and adherents.' It could not

seriously be maintained that he was secure in power, or that the

independence and integrity of Afghanistan were established when British

troops were holding Candahar, Ghuznee and Cabul, the only three

positions where the Shah was nominally paramount, when the fugitive Dost

was still within its borders, when intrigue and disaffection were

seething in every valley and on every hill-side, and when the

principality of Herat maintained a contemptuous independence. Macnaghten

might avow himself convinced of the popularity of the Shah, and believe

or strive to believe that the Afghans had received the puppet king

'with feelings nearly amounting to adoration,' but he did not venture

to support the conviction he avowed by advocating that the Shah should

be abandoned to his adoring subjects. Lord Auckland's policy was

gravely and radically erroneous, but it had a definite object, and that

object certainly was not a futile march to Cabul and back, dropping

incidentally by the wayside the aspirant to a throne whom he had himself

put forward, and leaving him to take his chance among a truculent and

adverse population. Thus early, in all probability, Lord Auckland was

disillusioned of the expectation that the effective restoration of Shah

Soojah would be of light and easy accomplishment, but at least he could

not afford to have the enterprise a _coup manqué_ when as yet it was

little beyond its inception.

The cost of the expedition was already, however, a strain, and the

troops engaged in it were needed in India. Lord Auckland intimated to

Macnaghten his expectation that a strong brigade would suffice to hold

Afghanistan in conjunction with the Shah's contingent, and his desire

that the rest of the army of the Indus should at once return to India.

Macnaghten, on the other hand, in spite of his avowal of the Shah's

popularity, was anxious to retain in Afghanistan a large body of troops.

He meditated strange enterprises, and proposed that Keane should support

his project of sending a force toward Bokhara to give check to a Russian

column which Pottinger at Herat had heard was assembling at Orenburg,

with Khiva for its objective. Keane derided the proposal, and Macnaghten

reluctantly abandoned it, but he demanded of Lord Auckland with success,

the retention in Afghanistan of the Bengal division of the army. In the

middle of September General Willshire marched with the Bombay column,

with orders, on his way to the Indus to pay a hostile visit to Khelat,

and punish its khan for the 'disloyalty' with which he had been charged,

a commission which the British officer fulfilled with a skill and

thoroughness that could be admired with less reservation had the

aggression on the gallant Mehrab been less wanton. A month later Keane

started for India by the Khyber route, which Wade had opened without

serious resistance when in August and September he escorted through the

passes Prince Timour, Shah Soojah's heir-apparent. During the temporary

absence of Cotton, who accompanied Keane, Nott had the command at

Candahar, Sale at and about Cabul, and the troops were quartered in

those capitals, and in Jellalabad, Ghuznee, Charikar and Bamian. The

Shah and the Envoy wintered in the milder climate of Jellalabad, and

Burnes was in political charge of the capital and its vicinity.

It was a prophetic utterance that the accomplishment of our military

succession would mark but the commencement of our real difficulties in

Afghanistan. In theory and in name Shah Soojah was an independent

monarch; it was, indeed, only in virtue of his proving himself able to

rule independently that he could justify his claim to rule at all. But

that he was independent was a contradiction in terms while British

troops studded the country, and while the real powers of sovereignty

were exercised by Macnaghten. Certain functions, it is true, the latter

did permit the nominal monarch to exercise. While debarred from a voice

in measures of external policy, and not allowed to sway the lines of

conduct to be adopted toward independent or revolting tribes, the Shah

was allowed to concern himself with the administration of justice, and

in his hands were the settlement, collection and appropriation of the

revenue of those portions of the kingdom from which any revenue could be

exacted. He was allowed to appoint as his minister of state, the

companion of his exile, old Moolla Shikore, who had lost both his memory

and his ears, but who had sufficient faculty left to hate the English,

to oppress the people, to be corrupt and venal beyond all conception,

and to appoint subordinates as flagitious as himself. 'Bad ministers,'

wrote Burnes, 'are in every government solid ground for unpopularity;

and I doubt if ever a king had a worse set than has Shah Soojah.' The

oppressed people appealed to the British functionaries, who remonstrated

with the minister, and the minister punished the people for appealing to

the British functionaries. The Shah was free to confer grants of land on

his creatures, but when the holders resisted, he was unable to enforce

his will since he was not allowed to employ soldiers; and the odium of

the forcible confiscation ultimately fell on Macnaghten, who alone had

the ordering of expeditions, and who could not see the Shah belittled by

non-fulfilment of his requisitions.

Justice sold by venal judges, oppression and corruption rampant in every

department of internal administration, it was no wonder that nobles and

people alike resented the inflictions under whose sting they writhed.

They were accustomed to a certain amount of oppression; Dost Mahomed had

chastised them with whips, but Shah Soojah, whom the English had

brought, was chastising them with scorpions. And they felt his yoke the

more bitterly because, with the shrewd acuteness of the race, they

recognised the really servile condition of this new king. They fretted,

too, under the sharp bit of the British political agents who were strewn

about the country, in the execution of a miserable and futile policy,

and whose lives, in a few instances, did not maintain the good name of

their country. Dost Mahomed had maintained his sway by politic

management of the chiefs, and through them of the tribes. Macnaghten

would have done well to impress on Shah Soojah the wisdom of pursuing

the same tactics. There was, it is true, the alternative of destroying

the power of the barons, but that policy involved a stubborn and

doubtful struggle, and prolonged occupation of the country by British

troops in great strength. Macnaghten professed our occupation of

Afghanistan to be temporary; yet he was clearly adventuring on the rash

experiment of weakening the nobles when he set about the enlistment of

local tribal levies, who, paid from the Royal treasury and commanded by

British officers, were expected to be staunch to the Shah, and useful in

curbing the powers of the chiefs. The latter, of course, were alienated

and resentful, and the levies, imbued with the Afghan attribute of

fickleness, proved for the most part undisciplined and faithless.

The winter of 1839-40 passed without much noteworthy incident. The

winter climate of Afghanistan is severe, and the Afghan, in ordinary

circumstances, is among the hibernating animals. But down in the Khyber,

in October, the tribes gave some trouble. They were dissatisfied with

the amount of annual black-mail paid them for the right of way through

their passes. When the Shah was a fugitive thirty years previously, they

had concealed and protected him; and mindful of their kindly services,

he had promised them, unknown to Macnaghten, the augmentation of their

subsidy to the old scale from which it had gradually dwindled. Wade,

returning from Cabul, did not bring them the assurances they expected,

whereupon they rose and concentrated and invested Ali Musjid, a fort

which they regarded as the key of their gloomy defile. Mackeson, the

Peshawur political officer, threw provisions and ammunition into Ali

Musjid, but the force, on its return march, was attacked by the hillmen,

the Sikhs being routed, and the sepoys incurring loss of men and

transport. The emboldened Khyberees now turned on Ali Musjid in earnest;

but the garrison was strengthened, and the place was held until a couple

of regiments marched down from Jellalabad, and were preparing to attack

the hillmen, when it was announced that Mackeson had made a compact with

the chiefs for the payment of an annual subsidy which they considered

adequate.

Afghanistan fifty years ago, and the same is in a measure true of it

to-day, was rather a bundle of provinces, some of which owned scarcely a

nominal allegiance to the ruler in Cabul, than a concrete state. Herat

and Candahar were wholly independent, the Ghilzai tribes inhabiting the

wide tracts from the Suliman ranges westward beyond the road through

Ghuznee, between Candahar and Cabul, and northward into the rugged

country between Cabul and Jellalabad, acknowledged no other authority

than that of their own chiefs. The Ghilzais are agriculturists,

shepherds, and robbers; they are constantly engaged in internal feuds;

they are jealous of their wild independence, and through the centuries

have abated little of their untamed ferocity. They had rejected

Macnaghten's advances, and had attacked Shah Soojah's camp on the day

before the fall of Ghuznee. Outram, in reprisal, had promptly raided

part of their country. Later, the winter had restrained them from

activity, but they broke out again in the spring. In May Captain

Anderson, marching from Candahar with a mixed force about 1200 strong,

was offered battle near Jazee, in the Turnuk, by some 2000 Ghilzai horse

and foot. Andersen's guns told heavily among the Ghilzai horsemen, who,

impatient of the fire, made a spirited dash on his left flank. Grape and

musketry checked them; but they rallied, and twice charged home on the

bayonets before they withdrew, leaving 200 of their number dead on the

ground. Nott sent a detachment to occupy the fortress of

Khelat-i-Ghilzai, between Candahar and Ghuznee, thus rendering the

communications more secure; and later, Macnaghten bribed the chiefs by

an annual subsidy of £600 to abstain from infesting the highways. The

terms were cheap, for the Ghilzai tribes mustered some 40,000 fighting

men.

Shah Soojah and the Envoy returned from Jellalabad to Cabul in April

1840. A couple of regiments had wintered not uncomfortably in the Balla

Hissar. That fortress was then the key of Cabul, and while our troops

remained in Afghanistan it should not have been left ungarrisoned a

single hour. The soldiers did their best to impress on Macnaghten the

all-importance of the position. But the Shah objected to its continued

occupation, and Macnaghten weakly yielded. Cotton, who had returned to

the chief military command in Afghanistan, made no remonstrance; the

Balla Hissar was evacuated, and the troops were quartered in cantonments

built in an utterly defenceless position on the plain north of Cabul, a

position whose environs were cumbered with walled gardens, and commanded

by adjacent high ground, and by native forts which were neither

demolished nor occupied. The troops, now in permanent and regularly

constructed quarters, ceased to be an expeditionary force, and became

substantially an army of occupation. The officers sent for their wives

to inhabit with them the bungalows in which they had settled down. Lady

Macnaghten, in the spacious mission residence which stood apart in its

own grounds, presided over the society of the cantonments, which had all

the cheery surroundings of the half-settled, half-nomadic life of our

military people in the East. There were the 'coffee house' after the

morning ride, the gathering round the bandstand in the evening, the

impromptu dance, and the _burra khana_ occasionally in the larger

houses. A racecourse had been laid out, and there were 'sky' races and

more formal meetings. And so 'as in the days that were before the flood,

they were eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, and

knew not until the flood came, and took them all away.'

Macnaghten engaged himself in a welter of internal and external

intrigue, his mood swinging from singular complacency to a disquietude

that sometimes approached despondency. It had come to be forced on him,

in spite of his intermittent optimism, that the Government was a

government of sentry-boxes, and that Afghanistan was not governed so

much as garrisoned. The utter failure of the winter march attempted by

Peroffski's Russian column across the frozen steppes on Khiva was a

relief to him; but the state of affairs in Herat was a constant trouble

and anxiety. Major Todd had been sent there as political agent, to make

a treaty with Shah Kamran, and to superintend the repair and improvement

of the fortifications of the city. Kamran was plenteously subsidised; he

took Macnaghten's lakhs, but furtively maintained close relations with

Persia. Detecting the double-dealing, Macnaghten urged on Lord Auckland

the annexation of Herat to Shah Soojah's dominions, but was instructed

to condone Kamran's duplicity, and try to bribe him higher. Kamran by no

means objected to this policy, and, while continuing his intrigues with

Persia, cheerfully accepted the money, arms and ammunition which

Macnaghten supplied him with so profusely as to cause remonstrance on

the part of the financial authorities in Calcutta. The

Commander-in-Chief was strong enough to counteract the pressure which

Macnaghten brought to bear on Lord Auckland in favour of an expedition

against Herat, which his lordship at length finally negatived, to the

great disgust of the Envoy, who wrote of the conduct of his chief as

'drivelling beyond contempt,' and 'sighed for a Wellesley or a

Hastings.' The ultimate result of Macnaghten's negotiations with Shah

Kamran was Major Todd's withdrawal from Herat. Todd had suspended the

monthly subsidy, to the great wrath of Kamran's rapacious and

treacherous minister Yar Mahomed, who made a peremptory demand for

increased advances, and refused Todd's stipulation that a British force

should be admitted into Herat. Todd's action in quitting Herat was

severely censured by his superiors, and he was relegated to regimental

duty. Perhaps he acted somewhat rashly, but he had not been kept well

informed; for instance, he had been unaware that Persia had become our

friend, and had engaged to cease relations with Shah Kamran--an

important arrangement of which he certainly should have been cognisant.

Macnaghten had squandered more gold on Herat than the fee-simple of the

principality was worth, and to no purpose; he left that state just as he

found it, treacherous, insolent, greedy and independent.

The precariousness of the long lines of communications between British

India and the army in Afghanistan--a source of danger which from the

first had disquieted cautious soldiers--was making itself seriously

felt, and constituted for Macnaghten another cause of solicitude. Old

Runjeet Singh, a faithful if not disinterested ally, had died on June

27th, 1839, the day on which Keane marched out from Candahar. The breath

was scarcely out of the old reprobate when the Punjaub began to drift

into anarchy. So far as the Sikh share in it was concerned, the

tripartite treaty threatened to become a dead letter. The Lahore Durbar

had not adequately fulfilled the undertaking to support Prince Timour's

advance by the Khyber, nor was it duly regarding the obligation to

maintain a force on the Peshawur frontier of the Punjaub. But those

things were trivial in comparison with the growing reluctance manifested

freely, to accord to our troops and convoys permission to traverse the

Punjaub on the march to and from Cabul. The Anglo-Indian Government sent

Mr Clerk to Lahore to settle the question as to the thoroughfare. He had

instructions to be firm, and the Sikhs did not challenge Mr Clerk's

stipulation that the Anglo-Indian Government must have unmolested right

of way through the Punjaub, while he undertook to restrict the use of it

as much as possible. This arrangement by no means satisfied the exacting

Macnaghten, and he continued to worry himself by foreseeing all sorts of

troublous contingencies unless measures were adopted for 'macadamising'

the road through the Punjaub.

The summer of 1840 did not pass without serious interruptions to the

British communications between Candahar and the Indus; nor without

unexpected and ominous disasters before they were restored. General

Willshire, with the returning Bombay column, had in the previous

November stormed Mehrab Khan's ill-manned and worse armed fort of

Khelat, and the Khan, disdaining to yield, had fallen in the hopeless

struggle. His son Nusseer Khan had been put aside in favour of a

collateral pretender, and became an active and dangerous malcontent. All

Northern Beloochistan fell into a state of anarchy. A detachment of

sepoys escorting supplies was cut to pieces in one of the passes. Quetta

was attacked with great resolution by Nusseer Khan, but was opportunely

relieved by a force sent from another post. Nusseer made himself master

of Khelat, and there fell into his cruel hands Lieutenant Loveday, the

British political officer stationed there, whom he treated with great

barbarity, and finally murdered. A British detachment under Colonel

Clibborn, was defeated by the Beloochees with heavy loss, and compelled

to retreat. Nusseer Khan, descending into the low country of Cutch,

assaulted the important post of Dadur, but was repulsed, and taking

refuge in the hills, was routed by Colonel Marshall with a force from

Kotree, whereupon he became a skulking fugitive. Nott marched down from

Candahar with a strong force, occupied Khelat, and fully re-established

communications with the line of the Indus, while fresh troops moved

forward into Upper Scinde, and thence gradually advancing to Quetta and

Candahar, materially strengthened the British position in Southern

Afghanistan.

Dost Mahomed, after his flight from Cabul in 1839, had soon left the

hospitable refuge afforded him in Khooloom, a territory west of the

Hindoo Koosh beyond Bamian, and had gone to Bokhara on the treacherous

invitation of its Ameer, who threw him into captivity. The Dost's family

remained at Khooloom, in the charge of his brother Jubbar Khan. The

advance of British forces beyond Bamian to Syghan and Bajgah, induced

that Sirdar to commit himself and the ladies to British protection. Dr

Lord, Macnaghten's political officer in the Bamian district, was a rash

although well-meaning man. The errors he had committed since the opening

of spring had occasioned disasters to the troops whose dispositions he

controlled, and had incited the neighbouring hill tribes to active

disaffection. In July Dost Mahomed made his escape from Bokhara, hurried

to Khooloom, found its ruler and the tribes full of zeal for his cause,

and rapidly grew in strength. Lord found it was time to call in his

advance posts and concentrate at Bamian, losing in the operation an

Afghan regiment which deserted to the Dost. Macnaghten reinforced

Bamian, and sent Colonel Dennie to command there. On September 18th

Dennie moved out with two guns and 800 men against the Dost's advance

parties raiding in an adjacent valley. Those detachments driven back,

Dennie suddenly found himself opposed to the irregular mass of Oosbeg

horse and foot which constituted the army of the Dost. Mackenzie's

cannon fire shook the undisciplined horde, the infantry pressed in to

close quarters, and soon the nondescript host of the Dost was in panic

flight, with Dennie's cavalry in eager pursuit. The Dost escaped with

difficulty, with the loss of his entire personal equipment. He was once

more a fugitive, and the Wali of Khooloom promptly submitted himself to

the victors, and pledged himself to aid and harbour the broken chief no

more. Macnaghten had been a prey to apprehension while the Dost's

attitude was threatening; he was now in a glow of joy and hope.

But the Envoy's elation was short-lived. Dost Mahomed was yet to cause

him much solicitude. Defeated in Bamian, he was ready for another

attempt in the Kohistan country to the north of Cabul. Disaffection was

rife everywhere throughout the kingdom, but it was perhaps most rife in

the Kohistan, which was seething with intrigues in favour of Dost

Mahomed, while the local chiefs were intensely exasperated by the

exactions of the Shah's revenue collectors. Macnaghten summoned the

chiefs to Cabul. They came, they did homage to the Shah and swore

allegiance to him; they went away from the capital pledging each other

to his overthrow, and jeering at the scantiness of the force they had

seen at Cabul. Intercepted letters disclosed their schemes, and in the

end of September Sale, with a considerable force, marched out to

chastise the disaffected Kohistanees. The fort of Tootundurrah fell

without resistance. Julgah, however, the next fort assailed, stubbornly

held out, and officers and men fell in the unsuccessful attempt to storm

it. In three weeks Sale marched to and fro through the Kohistan,

pursuing will-o'-the-wisp rumours as to the whereabouts of the Dost,

destroying forts on the course of his weary pilgrimage, and subjected

occasionally to night attacks.

Meanwhile, in the belief that Dost Mahomed was close to Cabul, and

mournfully conscious that the capital and surrounding country were ripe

for a rising, Macnaghten had relapsed into nervousness, and was a prey

to gloomy forebodings. The troops at Bamian were urgently recalled.

Cannon were mounted on the Balla Hissar to overawe the city, the

concentration of the troops in the fortress was under consideration, and

men were talking of preparing for a siege. How Macnaghten's English

nature was undergoing deterioration under the strain of events is shown

by his writing of the Dost: 'Would it be justifiable to set a price on

this fellow's head?' How his perceptions were warped was further evinced

by his talking of 'showing no mercy to the man who has been the author

of all the evil now distracting the country,' and by his complaining of

Sale and Burnes that, 'with 2000 good infantry, they are sitting down

before a fortified place, and are afraid to attack it.'

Learning that for certain the Dost had crossed the Hindoo Koosh from

Nijrao into the Kohistan, Sale, who had been reinforced, sent out

reconnaissances which ascertained that he was in the Purwan Durrah

valley, stretching down from the Hindoo Koosh to the Gorebund river;

and the British force marched thither on 2d November. As the village

was neared, the Dost's people were seen evacuating it and the adjacent

forts, and making for the hills. Sale's cavalry was some distance in

advance of the infantry of the advance guard, but time was precious.

Anderson's horse went to the left, to cut off retreat down the Gorebund

valley. Fraser took his two squadrons of Bengal cavalry to the right,

advanced along the foothills, and gained the head of the valley. He was

too late to intercept a small body of Afghan horsemen, who were already

climbing the upland; but badly mounted as the latter were, he could

pursue them with effect. But it seemed that the Afghans preferred to

fight rather than be pursued. The Dost himself was in command of the

little party, and the Dost was a man whose nature was to fight, not to

run. He wheeled his handful so that his horsemen faced Fraser's troop

down there below them. Then the Dost pointed to his banner, bared his

head, called on his supporters in the name of God and the Prophet to

follow him against the unbelievers, and led them down the slope.

Fraser had formed up his troopers when recall orders reached him. Joyous

that the situation entitled him to disobey them, he gave instead the

word to charge. As the Afghans came down at no great pace, they fired

occasionally; either because of the bullets, or because of an access of

pusillanimity, Fraser's troopers broke and fled ignominiously. The

British gentlemen charged home unsupported. Broadfoot, Crispin and Lord

were slain; Ponsonby, severely wounded and his reins cut, was carried

out of the _mêlée_ by his charger; Fraser, covered with blood and

wounds, broke through his assailants, and brought to Sale his report of

the disgrace of his troopers. After a sharp pursuit of the poltroons,

the Dost and his followers leisurely quitted the field.

Burnes wrote to the Envoy--he was a soldier, but he was also a

'political,' and political employ seemed often in Afghanistan to

deteriorate the attribute of soldierhood--that there was no alternative

for the force but to fall back on Cabul, and entreated Macnaghten to

order immediate concentration of all the troops. This letter Macnaghten

received the day after the disaster in the Kohistan, when he was taking

his afternoon ride in the Cabul plain. His heart must have been very

heavy as he rode, when suddenly a horseman galloped up to him and

announced that the Ameer was approaching. 'What Ameer?' asked

Macnaghten. 'Dost Mahomed Khan,' was the reply, and sure enough there

was the Dost close at hand. Dismounting, this Afghan prince and

gentleman saluted the Envoy, and offered him his sword, which Macnaghten

declined to take. Dost and Envoy rode into Cabul together, and such was

the impression the former made on the latter that Macnaghten, who a

month before had permitted himself to think of putting a price on 'the

fellow's' head, begged now of the Governor-General 'that the Dost be

treated more handsomely than was Shah Soojah, who had no claim on us.'

And then followed a strange confession for the man to make who made the

tripartite treaty, and approved the Simla manifesto: 'We had no hand in

depriving the Shah of his kingdom, _whereas we ejected the Dost, who

never offended us, in support of our policy, of which he was the

victim_.'

Durand regards Dost Mahomed's surrender as 'evincing a strange

pusillanimity.' This opprobrious judgment appears unjustified. No doubt

he was weary of the fugitive life he had been leading, but to pronounce

him afraid that the Kohistanees or any other Afghans would betray him is

to ignore the fact that he had been for months among people who might,

any hour of any day, have betrayed him if they had chosen. Nobler

motives than those ascribed to him by Durand may be supposed to have

actuated a man of his simple and lofty nature. He had given the

arbitrament of war a trial, and had realised that in that way he could

make no head against us. He might, indeed, have continued the futile

struggle, but he was the sort of man to recognise the selfishness of

that persistency which would involve ruin and death to the devoted

people who would not desert his cause while he claimed to have a cause.

When historians write of Afghan treachery and guile, it seems to have

escaped their perception that Afghan treachery was but a phase of Afghan

patriotism, of an unscrupulous character, doubtless, according to our

notions, but nevertheless practical in its methods, and not wholly

unsuccessful in its results. It may have been a higher and purer

patriotism that moved Dost Mahomed to cease, by his surrender, from

being an obstacle to the tranquillisation of the country of which he had

been the ruler.

CHAPTER IV: THE SECOND YEAR OF OCCUPATION

Dost Mahomed remained for a few days in the British cantonments on the

Cabul plain, an honoured guest rather than a prisoner. His soldierly

frankness, his bearing at once manly and courteous, his honest liking

for and trust in our race, notwithstanding the experiences which he had

undergone, won universal respect and cordiality. Officers who stood

aloof from Shah Soojah vied with each other in evincing to Dost Mahomed

their sympathy with him in his fallen fortunes. Shah Soojah would not

see the man whom he had ingloriously supplanted, on the pretext that he

'could not bring himself to show common civility to such a villain.' How

Macnaghten's feeling in regard to the two men had altered is disclosed

by his comment on this refusal. 'It is well,' he wrote, 'as the Dost

must have suffered much humiliation in being subjected to such an

ordeal.'

In the middle of November 1840 the Dost began his journey toward British

India, accompanied by Sir Willoughby Cotton, who was finally quitting

Afghanistan, and under the escort of a considerable British force which

had completed its tour of duty in Afghanistan. Sale succeeded Cotton in

temporary divisional command pending the arrival of the latter's

successor. About the middle of December Shah Soojah and his Court,

accompanied by the British Envoy, arrived at Jellalabad for the winter,

Burnes remaining at Cabul in political charge.

Macnaghten was mentally so constituted as to be continually alternating

between high elation and the depths of despondency; discerning to-day

ominous indications of ruin in an incident of no account, and to-morrow

scorning imperiously to recognise danger in the fierce rising of a

province. It may almost be said that each letter of his to Lord Auckland

was of a different tone from the one which had preceded it. Burnes, who

was nominally Macnaghten's chief lieutenant, with more self-restraint,

had much the same temperament. Kaye writes of him: 'Sometimes sanguine,

sometimes despondent, sometimes confident, sometimes credulous, Burnes

gave to fleeting impressions all the importance and seeming permanency

of settled convictions, and imbued surrounding objects with the colours

of his own varying mind.' But if Burnes had been a discreet and

steadfast man, he could have exercised no influence on the autocratic

Macnaghten, since between the two men there was neither sympathy nor

confidence. Burnes had, indeed, no specific duties of any kind; in his

own words, he was in 'the most nondescript situation.' Macnaghten gave

him no responsibility, and while Burnes waited for the promised

reversion of the office of envoy, he chiefly employed himself in writing

long memorials on the situation and prospects of affairs, on which

Macnaghten's marginal comments were brusque, and occasionally

contemptuous. The resolute and clear-headed Pottinger, who, if the

opportunity had been given him, might have buttressed and steadied

Macnaghten, was relegated to provincial service. Throughout his career

in Afghanistan the Envoy could not look for much advice from the

successive commanders of the Cabul force, even if he had cared to

commune with them. Keane, indeed, did save him from the perpetration of

one folly. But Cotton appears to have been a respectable nonentity. Sale

was a stout, honest soldier, who was not fortunate on the only occasion

which called him outside of his restricted _métier_. Poor Elphinstone

was an object for pity rather than for censure.

It happened fortunately, in the impending misfortunes, that two men of

stable temperament and lucid perception were in authority at Candahar.

General Nott was a grand old Indian officer, in whom there was no guile,

but a good deal of temper. He was not supple, and he had the habit of

speaking his mind with great directness, a propensity which accounted,

perhaps, for the repeated supersessions he had undergone. A

clear-headed, shrewd man, he was disgusted with very many things which

he recognised as unworthy in the conduct of the affairs of Afghanistan,

and he was not the man to choose mild phrases in giving vent to his

convictions. He had in full measure that chronic dislike which the

Indian commander in the field nourishes to the political officer who is

imposed on him by the authorities, and who controls his measures and

trammels his actions. Nott's 'political,' who, the sole survivor of the

men who were prominent during this unhappy period, still lives among us

esteemed and revered, was certainly the ablest officer of the unpopular

department to which he belonged; and how cool was Henry Rawlinson's

temper is evinced in his ability to live in amity with the rugged and

outspoken chief who addressed him in such a philippic as the

following--words all the more trenchant because he to whom they were

addressed must have realised how intrinsically true they were:--

'I have no right to interfere with the affairs of this country, and I

never do so. But in reference to that part of your note where you speak

of political influence, I will candidly tell you that these are not

times for mere ceremony, and that under present circumstances, and at a

distance of 2000 miles from the seat of the supreme Government, I throw

responsibility to the wind, and tell you that in my opinion you have not

had for some time past, nor have you at present, one particle of

political influence in this country.'

Nott steadily laboured to maintain the _morale_ and discipline of his

troops, and thus watching the flowing tide of misrule and embroilment,

he calmly made the best preparations in his power to meet the storm the

sure and early outbreak of which his clear discernment prognosticated.

Shah Soojah's viceroy at Candahar was his heir-apparent Prince Timour.

The Dooranee chiefs of Western Afghanistan had not unnaturally expected

favours and influence under the rule of the Dooranee monarch; and while

in Candahar before proceeding to Cabul, and still uncertain of what

might occur there, Shah Soojah had been lavish of his promises. The

chiefs had anticipated that they would be called around the vice-throne

of Prince Timour; but Shah Soojah made the same error as that into which

Louis XVIII. fell on his restoration. He constituted his Court of the

men who had shared his Loodianah exile. The counsellors who went to

Candahar with Timour were returned _émigrés_, in whom fitness for duty

counted less than the qualification of companionship in exile. Those

people had come back to Afghanistan poor; now they made haste to be rich

by acts of oppressive injustice, in the exaction of revenue from the

people, and by intercepting from the Dooranee chiefs the flow of royal

bounty to which they had looked forward.

Uktar Khan was prominent among the Dooranee noblemen, and he had the

double grievance of having been disappointed of the headship of the

Zemindawar province on the western bank of the Helmund, and having been

evilly entreated by the minions of Prince Timour. He had raised his clan

and routed a force under a royalist follower, when Nott sent a

detachment against him. Uktar Khan had crossed the Helmund into

Zemindawar, when Farrington attacked him, and, after a brisk fight,

routed and pursued him. The action was fought on January 3, 1841, in the

very dead of winter; the intensity of the cold dispersed Uktar's levies,

and Farrington returned to Candahar.

In reply to Macnaghten's demand for information regarding the origin of

this outbreak, Rawlinson wrote him some home truths which were very

distasteful. Rawlinson warned his chief earnestly of the danger which

threatened the false position of the British in Afghanistan. He pointed

out how cruel must be the revenue exactions which enabled Prince

Timour's courtiers to absorb great sums. He expressed his suspicion that

Shah Soojah had countenanced Uktar Khan's rising, and spoke of intrigues

of dark and dangerous character. Macnaghten scouted Rawlinson's warning,

and instructed him that 'it will make the consideration of all questions

more simple if you will hereafter take for granted that as regards us

"the king can do no wrong."' However, he and the Shah did remove from

Candahar the Vakeel and his clique of obnoxious persons, who had been

grinding the faces of the people; and the Envoy allowed himself to hope

that this measure would restore order to the province of Candahar.

The hope was vain, the evil lay deeper; disaffection to the Shah and

hatred to the British power were becoming intensified from day to day,

and the aspiration for relief was swelling into a passion. In the days

before our advent there had been venality and corruption in public

places--occasionally, likely enough, as Macnaghten asserted, to an

extent all but incredible. But exaction so sweeping could have occurred

only in regions under complete domination; and in Afghanistan, even to

this day, there are few regions wholly in this condition. When the yoke

became over-weighty, a people of a nature so intractable knew how to

resent oppression and oppose exaction. But now the tax gatherer

swaggered over the land, and the people had to endure him, for at his

back were the soldiers of the Feringhees and the levies of the Shah. The

latter were paid by assignments on the revenues of specified districts;

as the levies constituted a standing army of some size, the

contributions demanded were heavier and more permanent than in bygone

times. Macnaghten, aware of the discontent engendered by the system of

assignments, desired to alter it. But the Shah's needs were pressing;

the Anglo-Indian treasury was strained already by the expenditure in

Afghanistan; and it was not easy in a period of turmoil and rebellion to

carry out the amendment of a fiscal system. That, since the surrender of

the Dost, there had been no serious rising in Northern or Eastern

Afghanistan, sufficed to make Macnaghten an optimist of the moment. He

had come by this time to a reluctant admission of the fact against which

he had set his face so long, that Shah Soojah was unpopular. 'He has

incurred,' he wrote, 'the odium that attaches to him from his alliance

with us'; but the Envoy would not admit that our position in Afghanistan

was a false one, in that we were maintaining by our bayonets, against

the will of the Afghans, a sovereign whom they detested. 'It would,' he

pleaded, 'be an act of downright dishonesty to desert His Majesty before

he has found the means of taking root in the soil to which we have

transplanted him.' While he wrote, Macnaghten must have experienced a

sudden thrill of optimism or of self-delusion, for he continued: 'All

things considered, the present tranquillity of this country is to my

mind perfectly miraculous. Already our presence has been infinitely

beneficial in allaying animosities and in pointing out abuses.' If it

had been the case that the country was tranquil, his adjective would

have been singularly appropriate, but not precisely in the sense he

meant to convey.

But there was no tranquillity, miraculous or otherwise. While Macnaghten

was writing the letter which has just been quoted, Brigadier Shelton,

who, about the New Year, had reached Jellalabad with a brigade from

British India in relief of the force which was withdrawing with Cotton,

was contending with an outbreak of the wild and lawless clans of the

Khyber. When Macnaghten wrote, he had already received intelligence of

the collapse of his projects in Herat, and that Major Todd, who had been

his representative there, judging it imperative to break up the mission

of which he was the head, had abruptly quitted that city, and was on his

way to Candahar. Mischief was simmering in the Zemindawar country. The

Ghilzai tribes of the region between Candahar and Ghuznee had accepted a

subsidy to remain quiet, but the indomitable independence of this wild

and fierce race was not to be tamed by bribes, and the spirit of

hostility was manifesting itself so truculently that a British garrison

had been placed in Khelat-i-Ghilzai, right in the heart of the disturbed

territory. This warning and defensive measure the tribes had regarded

with angry jealousy; but it was not until a rash 'political' had

directed the unprovoked assault and capture of a Ghilzai fort that the

tribes passionately flew to arms, bent on contesting the occupation of

their rugged country. Colonel Wymer was sent from Candahar with a force,

escorting a convoy of stores intended for the equipment of

Khelat-i-Ghilzai. The tribes who had been loosely beleaguering that

place marched down the Turnuk upon Wymer, and on May 19th attacked him

with great impetuosity, under the command of a principal chief who was

known as the 'Gooroo.' Wymer, in the protection of his convoy, had to

stand on the defensive. The Ghilzais, regardless of the grape which tore

through their masses, fell on sword in hand, and with an intuitive

tactical perception struck Wymer simultaneously in front and flank. His

sepoys had to change their dispositions, and the Ghilzais took the

opportunity of their momentary dislocation to charge right home. They

were met firmly by the bayonet, but again and again the hillmen renewed

their attacks; and it was not till after five hours of hard fighting

which cost them heavy loss, that at length, in the darkness, they

suddenly drew off. Had they been Swiss peasants defending their

mountains, or Poles struggling against the ferocious tyranny of Russia,

their gallant effort might have excited praise and sympathy. Had they

been Soudanese, a statesman might have spoken of them as a people

'rightly struggling to be free'; as it was, the Envoy vituperated them

as 'a parcel of ragamuffins,' and Wymer's sepoys were held to have

'covered themselves with glory.' Macnaghten proceeded to encourage a

sense of honour among the tribes by proposing the transfer to another

chief, on condition of his seizing and delivering over the inconvenient

'Gooroo,' of the share of subsidy of which the latter had been in

receipt.

While this creditable transaction was under consideration, Uktar Khan

was again making himself very unpleasant; so much so that Macnaghten was

authorising Rawlinson to offer a reward of 10,000 rupees for his

capture, which accomplished, Rawlinson was instructed to 'hang the

villain as high as Haman.' The gallows was not built, however, on which

Uktar was to hang, although that chief sustained two severe defeats at

the hands of troops sent from Candahar, and had to become a fugitive.

The Ghilzais, who had gathered again after their defeat under the

'Gooroo,' had made little stand against the detachment which Colonel

Chambers led out from Candahar, and they were again temporarily

dispersed. The 'Gooroo' himself was in our hands. If the disaffection

was in no degree diminished, the active ebullitions of it were assuredly

quelled for the time. It was true, to be sure, that Akbar Khan, the

fierce and resolute son of Dost Mahomed, had refused the Envoy's

overtures to come in, and was wandering and plotting in Khooloom, quite

ready to fulfil Macnaghten's prophetic apprehension that 'the fellow

will be after some mischief should the opportunity present itself'; that

the Dooranees were still defiant; that an insurgent force was out in the

Dehrawat; and that the tameless chief Akram Khan was being blown from a

gun by the cruel and feeble Timour. But unquestionably there was a

comparative although short-lived lull in the overt hostility of the

Afghan peoples against Shah Soojah and his foreign supporters; and

Macnaghten characteristically announced that 'the country was quiet from

Dan to Beersheba.' To one of his correspondents he wrote: 'From Mookoor

to the Khyber Pass, all is content and tranquillity; and wherever we

Europeans go, we are received with respect, attention and welcome. I

think our prospects are most cheering; and with the materials we have

there ought to be little or no difficulty in the management of the

country. The people are perfect children, and they should be treated as

such. If we put one naughty boy in the corner, the rest will be

terrified.'

General Nott at Candahar, who 'never interfered in the government of the

country,' but regarded the situation with shrewd, clear-headed common

sense, differed utterly from the Envoy's view. The stout old soldier did

not squander his fire; it was a close volley he discharged in the

following words: 'The conduct of the thousand and one politicals has

ruined our cause, and bared the throat of every European in this country

to the sword and knife of the revengeful Afghan and bloody Belooch; and

unless several regiments be quickly sent, not a man will be left to

describe the fate of his comrades. Nothing will ever make the Afghans

submit to the hated Shah Soojah, who is most certainly as great a

scoundrel as ever lived.'

Nott's conclusions were in the main justified by after events, but the

correctness of his premiss may be questioned. That the conduct of some

of the political officers intensified the rancour of the Afghans is

unhappily true, but the hate of our domination, and of the puppet thrust

upon them by us, seems to have found its origin in a deeper feeling. The

patriotism of a savage race is marked by features repulsive to civilised

communities, but through the ruthless cruelty of the indiscriminate

massacre, the treachery of the stealthy stab, and the lightly broken

pledges, there may shine out the noblest virtue that a virile people can

possess. A semi-barbarian nation whose manhood pours out its blood like

water in stubborn resistance against an alien yoke, may be pardoned for

many acts shocking to civilised communities which have not known the

bitterness of stern and masterful subjugation.

CHAPTER V: THE BEGINNING OF THE END

The deceptive quietude of Afghanistan which followed the sharp lessons

administered to the Dooranees and the Ghilzais was not seriously

disturbed during the month of September 1841, and Macnaghten was in a

full glow of cheerfulness. His services had been recognised by his

appointment to the dignified and lucrative post of Governor of the

Bombay Presidency, and he was looking forward to an early departure for

a less harassing and tumultuous sphere of action than that in which he

had been labouring for two troubled years. The belief that he would

leave behind him a quiescent Afghanistan, and Shah Soojah firmly

established on its throne, was the complement, to a proud and zealous

man, of the satisfaction which his promotion afforded.

One distasteful task he had to perform before he should go. The Home

Government had become seriously disquieted by the condition of affairs

in Afghanistan. The Secret Committee of the Court of Directors, the

channel through which the ministry communicated with the

Governor-General, had expressed great concern at the heavy burden

imposed on the Indian finances by the cost of the maintenance of the

British force in Afghanistan, and by the lavish expenditure of the

administration which Macnaghten directed. The Anglo-Indian Government

was urgently required to review with great earnestness the question of

its future policy in regard to Afghanistan, and to consider gravely

whether an enterprise at once so costly and so unsatisfactory in results

should not be frankly abandoned. Lord Auckland was alive to the

difficulties and embarrassments which encompassed the position beyond

the Indus, but he was loth to admit that the policy of which he had been

the author, and in which the Home Government had abetted him so eagerly,

was an utter failure. He and his advisers finally decided in favour of

the continued occupation of Afghanistan; and since the Indian treasury

was empty, and the annual charge of that occupation was not less than a

million and a quarter sterling, recourse was had to a loan, Macnaghten

was pressed to effect economies in the administration, and he was

specially enjoined to cut down the subsidies which were paid to Afghan

chiefs as bribes to keep them quiet. Macnaghten had objected to this

retrenchment, pointing out that the stipends to the chiefs were simply

compensation for the abandonment by them of their immemorial practice of

highway robbery, but he yielded to pressure, called to Cabul the chiefs

in its vicinity, and informed them that thenceforth their subsidies

would be reduced. The chiefs strongly remonstrated, but without effect,

and they then formed a confederacy of rebellion. The Ghilzai chiefs were

the first to act. Quitting Cabul, they occupied the passes between the

capital and Jellalabad, and entirely intercepted the communications with

India by the Khyber route.

Macnaghten did not take alarm at this significant demonstration,

regarding the outbreak merely as 'provoking,' and writing to Rawlinson

that 'the rascals would be well trounced for their pains.' Yet warnings

of gathering danger were rife, which but for his mood of optimism should

have struck home to his apprehension. Pottinger had come down from the

Kohistan, where he was acting as political officer, bent on impressing

on him that a general rising of that region was certain unless strong

measures of prevention were resorted to. For some time before the actual

outbreak of the Ghilzais, the Afghan hatred to our people had been

showing itself with exceptional openness and bitterness. Europeans and

camp followers had been murdered, but the sinister evidences of growing

danger had been regarded merely as ebullitions of private rancour. Akbar

Khan, Dost Mahomed's son, had moved forward from Khooloom into the

Bamian country, and there was little doubt that he was fomenting the

disaffection of the Ghilzai chiefs, with some of whom this indomitable

man, who in his intense hatred of the English intruders had resolutely

rejected all offers of accommodation, and preferred the life of a

homeless exile to the forfeiture of his independence, was closely

connected by marriage.

The time was approaching when Sale's brigade was to quit Cabul on its

return journey to India. Macnaghten seems to have originally intended to

accompany this force, for he wrote that he 'hoped to settle the hash of

the Ghilzais on the way down, if not before.' The rising, however,

spread so widely and so rapidly that immediate action was judged

necessary, and on October 9th Colonel Monteath marched towards the

passes with his own regiment, the 35th Native Infantry, some artillery

and cavalry details, and a detachment of Broadfoot's sappers.

How able, resolute, and high-souled a man was George Broadfoot, the

course of this narrative will later disclose. He was one of three

gallant brothers, all of whom died sword in hand. The corps of sappers

which he commanded was a remarkable body--a strange medley of

Hindustanees, Goorkhas, and Afghan tribesmen of divers regions. Many

were desperate and intractable characters, but Broadfoot, with mingled

strength and kindness, moulded his heterogeneous recruits into skilful,

obedient and disciplined soldiers. Broadfoot's description of his

endeavours to learn something of the nature of the duties expected of

him in the expedition for which he had been detailed, and to obtain such

equipment as those duties might require, throws a melancholy light on

the deteriorated state of affairs among our people at this period, and

on the relations between the military and civilian authorities.

Broadfoot went for information, in the first instance, to Colonel

Monteath, who could give him no orders, having received none himself.

Monteath declined to apply for details as to the expedition, as he knew

'these people' (the authorities) too well; he was quite aware of the

danger of going on service in the dark, but explained that it was not

the custom of the military authorities at Cabul to consult or even

instruct the commanders of expeditions. Broadfoot then went to the

General. Cotton's successor in the chief military command in Afghanistan

was poor General Elphinstone, a most gallant soldier, but with no

experience of Indian warfare, and utterly ignorant of the Afghans and of

Afghanistan. Wrecked in body and impaired in mind by physical ailments

and infirmities, he had lost all faculty of energy, and such mind as

remained to him was swayed by the opinion of the person with whom he had

last spoken. The poor gentleman was so exhausted by the exertion of

getting out of bed, and being helped into his visiting-room, that it was

not for half-an-hour, and after several ineffectual efforts, that he

could attend to business. He knew nothing of the nature of the service

on which Monteath was ordered, could give Broadfoot no orders, and was

unwilling to refer to the Envoy on a matter which should have been left

to him to arrange. He complained bitterly of the way in which he was

reduced to a cypher--'degraded from a general to the "Lord-Lieutenant's

head constable."' Broadfoot went from the General to the Envoy, who 'was

peevish,' and denounced the General as fidgety. He declared the enemy to

be contemptible, and that as for Broadfoot and his sappers, twenty men

with pickaxes were enough; all they were wanted for was to pick stones

from under the gun wheels. When Broadfoot represented the inconvenience

with which imperfect information as to the objects of the expedition was

fraught, Macnaghten lost his temper, and told Broadfoot that, if he

thought Monteath's movement likely to bring on an attack, 'he need not

go, he was not wanted'; whereupon Broadfoot declined to listen to such

language, and made his bow. Returning to the General, whom he found

'lost and perplexed,' he was told to follow his own judgment as to what

quantity of tools he should take. The Adjutant-General came in, and

'this officer, after abusing the Envoy, spoke to the General with an

imperiousness and disrespect, and to me, a stranger, with an insolence

it was painful to see the influence of on the General. His advice to his

chief was to have nothing to say to Macnaghten, to me, or to the

sappers, saying Monteath had men enough, and needed neither sappers nor

tools.' At parting the poor old man said to Broadfoot: 'If you go out,

for God's sake clear the passes quickly, that I may get away; for if

anything were to turn up, I am unfit for it, done up in body and mind.'

This was the man whom Lord Auckland had appointed to the most

responsible and arduous command at his disposal, and this not in

ignorance of General Elphinstone's disqualifications for active service,

but in the fullest knowledge of them!

Monteath's camp at Bootkhak, the first halting-place on the Jellalabad

road, was sharply attacked on the night of the 9th, and the assailants,

many of whom were the armed retainers of chiefs living in Cabul sent out

specially to take part in the attack, although unsuccessful, inflicted

on Monteath considerable loss. Next day Sale, with H.M.'s 13th, joined

Monteath, and on the 13th he forced the long and dangerous ravine of the

Khoord Cabul with sharp fighting, but no very serious loss, although

Sale himself was wounded, and had to relinquish the active command to

Colonel Dennie. Monteath encamped in the valley beyond the pass, and

Sale, with the 13th, returned without opposition to Bootkhak, there to

await reinforcements and transports. In his isolated position Monteath

remained unmolested until the night of the 17th, when he repulsed a

Ghilzai attack made in considerable strength, and aided by the treachery

of 'friendly' Afghans who had been admitted into his camp; but he had

many casualties, and lost a number of camels. On the 20th Sale,

reinforced by troops returned from the Zurmut expedition, moved forward

on Monteath, and on the 22d pushed on to the Tezeen valley, meeting with

no opposition either on the steep summit of the Huft Kotul or in the

deep narrow ravine opening into the valley. The Ghilzais were in force

around the mouth of the defile, but a few cannon-shots broke them up.

The advance guard pursued with over-rashness; the Ghilzais rallied, in

the skirmish which ensued an officer and several men were killed, and

the retirement of our people unfortunately degenerated into precipitate

flight, with the Ghilzais in hot pursuit. The 13th, to which the

fugitive detachment mainly belonged, now consisted mainly of young

soldiers, whose constancy was impaired by this untoward occurrence.

Macnaghten had furnished Sale with a force which, in good heart and

vigorously commanded, was strong enough to have effected great things.

The Ghilzai chief of Tezeen possessed a strong fort full of supplies,

which Dennie was about to attack, when the wily Afghan sent to Major

Macgregor, the political officer accompanying Sale, a tender of

submission. Macgregor fell into the snare, desired Sale to countermand

the attack, and entered into negotiations. In doing so he committed a

fatal error, and he exceeded his instructions in the concessions which

he made. Macnaghten, it was true, had left matters greatly to

Macgregor's discretion; and if 'the rebels were very humble,' the Envoy

was not disposed to be too hard upon them. But one of his firm

stipulations was that the defences of Khoda Buxsh's fort must be

demolished, and that Gool Mahomed Khan 'should have nothing but war.'

Both injunctions were disregarded by Macgregor, who, with unimportant

exceptions, surrendered all along the line. The Ghilzais claimed and

obtained the restoration of their original subsidies; a sum was handed

to them to enable them to raise the tribes in order to keep clear the

passes; Khoda Buxsh held his fort, and sold the supplies it contained to

Sale's commissary at a fine price. Every item of the arrangement was

dead in favour of the Ghilzais, and contributory to their devices. Sale,

continuing his march, would be separated further and further from the

now diminished force in Cabul, and by the feigned submission the chiefs

had made they had escaped the permanent establishment of a strong

detachment in their midst at Tezeen.

Macnaghten, discontented though he was with the sweeping concessions

which Macgregor had granted to the Ghilzais, put the best face he could

on the completed transaction, and allowed himself to believe that a

stable settlement had been effected. On the 26th Sale continued his

march, having made up his baggage animals at the expense of the 37th

Native Infantry, which, with half of the sappers and three guns of the

mountain train, he sent back to Kubbar-i-Jubbar, there to halt in a

dangerously helpless situation until transport should be sent down from

Cabul. His march as far as Kutti Sung was unmolested. Mistrusting the

good faith of his new-made allies, he shunned the usual route through

the Purwan Durrah by taking the mountain road to the south of that

defile, and thus reached the Jugdulluk valley with little opposition,

baulking the dispositions of the Ghilzais, who, expecting him to

traverse the Purwan Durrah, were massed about the southern end of the

defile, ready to fall on the column when committed to the tortuous

gorge.

From the Jugdulluk camping ground there is a steep and winding ascent of

three miles, commanded until near the summit by heights on either side.

Sale's main body had attained the crest with trivial loss, having

detached parties by the way to ascend to suitable flanking positions,

and hold those until the long train of slow-moving baggage should have

passed, when they were to fall in and come on with the rear-guard. The

dispositions would have been successful but that on reaching the crest

the main body, instead of halting there for the rear to close up,

hurried down the reverse slope, leaving baggage, detachments, and

rear-guard to endure the attacks which the Ghilzais promptly delivered,

pressing fiercely on the rear, and firing down from either side on the

confused mass in the trough below. The flanking detachments had

relinquished their posts in panic, and hurried forward in confusion to

get out of the pass. The rear-guard was in disorder, when Broadfoot,

with a few officers and some of his sappers, valiantly checked the

onslaught, but the crest was not crossed until upwards of 120 men had

fallen, the wounded among whom had to be abandoned with the dead. On

October 30th Sale's force reached Gundamuk without further molestation,

and halted there temporarily to await orders. During the halt melancholy

rumours filtered down the passes from the capital, and later came

confirmation of the evil tidings from the Envoy, and orders from

Elphinstone directing the immediate return of the brigade to Cabul, if

the safety of its sick and wounded could be assured. Sale called a

council of war, which pronounced, although not unanimously, against a

return to Cabul; and it was resolved instead to march on to Jellalabad,

which was regarded as an eligible _point d'appui_ on which a relieving

force might move up and a retiring force might move down. Accordingly

on November 11th the brigade quitted Gundamuk, and hurried down rather

precipitately, and with some fighting by the way, to Jellalabad, which

was occupied on the 14th.

Some members of the Gundamuk council of war, foremost among whom was

Broadfoot, argued vigorously in favour of the return march to Cabul.

Havelock, who was with Sale as a staff-officer, strongly urged the

further retreat into Jellalabad. Others, again, advocated the middle

course of continuing to hold Gundamuk. It may be said that a daring

general would have fought his way back to Cabul, that a prudent general

would have remained at Gundamuk, and that the occupation of Jellalabad

was the expedient of a weak general. That a well-led march on Cabul was

feasible, although it might have been difficult and bloody, cannot be

questioned, and the advent of such men as Broadfoot and Havelock would

have done much toward rekindling confidence and stimulating the

restoration of soldierly virtue, alike in the military authorities and

in the rank and file of the Cabul force. At Gundamuk, again, the

brigade, well able to maintain its position there, would have made its

influence felt all through the Ghilzai country and as far as Cabul. The

evacuation of that capital decided on, it would have been in a position

to give the hand to the retiring army, and so to avert at least the

worst disasters of the retreat. The retirement on Jellalabad, in the

terse language of Durand, 'served no conceivable purpose except to

betray weakness, and still further to encourage revolt.'

While Sale was struggling through the passes on his way to Gundamuk, our

people at Cabul were enjoying unwonted quietude. Casual entries in Lady

Sale's journal, during the later days of October, afford clear evidence

how utterly unconscious were they of the close gathering of the storm

that so soon was to break upon them. Her husband had written to her from

Tezeen that his wound was fast healing, and that the chiefs were

extremely polite. She complains of the interruption of the mails owing

to the Ghilzai outbreak, but comforts herself with the anticipation of

their arrival in a day or two. She was to leave Cabul for India in a few

days, along with the Macnaghtens and General Elphinstone, and her diary

expresses an undernote of regret at having to leave the snug house in

the cantonments which Sale had built on his own plan, the excellent

kitchen garden in which her warrior husband, in the intervals of his

soldiering duties, grew fine crops of peas, potatoes, cauliflowers and

artichokes, and the parterres of flowers which she herself cultivated,

and which were the admiration of the Afghan gentlemen who came to pay

their morning calls.

[Illustration: CABUL the CANTONMENT _and the_ Surrounding COUNTRY.]

The defencelessness of the position at Cabul had long engaged the

solicitude of men who were no alarmists. Engineer officer after engineer

officer had unavailingly and a half from the cantonments, with the Cabul

river intervening. With Shelton's troops and those in the cantonments

General Elphinstone had at his disposition, apart from the Shah's

contingent, four infantry regiments, two batteries of artillery, three

companies of sappers, a regiment of cavalry, and some irregular horse--a

force fully equipped and in good order. In the Balla Hissar Shah Soojah

had a considerable, if rather mixed, body of military and several guns.

The rising of the 2d November may not have been the result of a fully

organised plan. There are indications that it was premature, and that

the revolt in force would have been postponed until after the expected

departure of the Envoy and the General with all the troops except

Shelton's brigade, but for an irrepressible burst of personal rancour

against Burnes. Durand holds, however, that the malcontents acted on the

belief that to kill Burnes and sack the Treasury was to inaugurate the

insurrection with an imposing success. Be this as it may, a truculent

mob early in the morning of November 2d assailed Burnes' house. He at

first regarded the outbreak as a casual riot, and wrote to Macnaghten to

that effect. Having harangued the throng without effect, he and his

brother, along with William Broadfoot his secretary, prepared for

defence. Broadfoot was soon killed, and a little later Burnes and his

brother were hacked to pieces in the garden behind the house. The

Treasury was sacked; the sepoys who had guarded it and Burnes' house

were massacred, and both buildings were fired; the armed mob swelled in

numbers, and soon the whole city was in a roar of tumult.

Prompt and vigorous military action would no doubt have crushed the

insurrection, at least for the time. But the indifference, vacillation

and delay of the British authorities greatly encouraged its rapid

development. Macnaghten at first 'did not think much of it.' Shelton was

ordered into the Balla Hissar, countermanded, a second time ordered, and

again instructed to halt for orders. At last the Envoy himself

despatched him, with the loose order to act on his own judgment in

communication with the Shah. Shelton marched into the Balla Hissar with

part of his force, and the rest of it was moved into the cantonments.

When the Brigadier went to the Shah, that potentate demanded to know who

sent him, and what he had come for. But the Shah, to do him justice, had

himself taken action. Informed that Burnes was attacked and the city in

revolt, he had ordered Campbell's regiment of his own levies and a

couple of guns to march to his assistance. Campbell recklessly attempted

to push his way through the heart of the city, instead of reaching

Burnes' house by a circuitous but opener route, and after some sharp

street fighting in which he lost heavily, he was driven back, unable to

penetrate to the scene of plunder and butchery. Shelton remained

inactive in the Balla Hissar until Campbell was reported beaten and

retreating, when he took some feeble measures to cover the retreat of

the fugitives, who, however, abandoned their guns outside the fortress.

The day was allowed to pass without anything further being done, except

the despatch of an urgent recall to Major Griffiths, whom Sale had left

at Kubbar-i-Jubbar, and that good soldier, having fought every step of

the way through the passes, brought in his detachment in unbroken order

and without loss of baggage, notwithstanding his weakness in transport.

Shelton, reinforced in the Balla Hissar, maintained an intermittent and

ineffectual fire on the city. Urgent orders were despatched to Sale,

recalling him and his brigade--orders with which, as has been mentioned,

Sale did not comply--and also to Nott, at Candahar, begging him to send

a brigade to Cabul. In compliance with this requisition, Maclaren's

brigade immediately started from Candahar, but soon returned owing to

the inclemency of the weather.

Captain Mackenzie was in charge of a fort containing the Shah's

commissariat stores; this fort was on the outskirts of a suburb of

Cabul, and was fiercely attacked on the 2d. For two days Mackenzie

maintained his post with unwearying constancy. His garrison was short of

water and of ammunition, and the fort was crowded with women and

children, but he held on resolutely until the night of the 3d. No

assistance was sent, no notice, indeed, of any kind was taken of him;

his garrison was discouraged by heavy loss, and by the mines which the

enemy were pushing forward. At length, when the gate of the fort had

been fired, and his wounded were dying for lack of medical aid, he

evacuated the fort, and fought his way gallantly into cantonments,

bringing in his wounded and the women and children. With this solitary

exception the Afghans had nowhere encountered resistance, and the

strange passiveness of our people encouraged them to act with vigour.

From the enclosed space of the Shah Bagh, and the adjacent forts of

Mahmood Khan and Mahomed Shereef, they were threatening the Commissariat

fort, hindering access to it, and besetting the south-western flank of

the cantonments. A young officer commanded the hundred sepoys

garrisoning the Commissariat fort; he reported himself in danger of

being cut off, and Elphinstone gave orders that he and his garrison

should be brought off, and the fort and its contents abandoned. Several

efforts to accomplish the withdrawal were thwarted by the Afghan

flanking fire, with the loss of several officers and many men. The

commissary officer urged on the General the disastrous consequences

which the abandonment of the fort would entail, containing as it did all

the stores, adding that in cantonments there were only two days'

supplies, without prospect of procuring any more. Orders were then sent

to Warren to hold out to the last extremity; which instructions he

denied having received. Early in the morning of the 5th troops were

preparing to attack the Afghan fort and reinforce the Commissariat fort,

when Warren and his garrison reached the cantonments. The gate of the

Commissariat fort had been fired, but the enemy had not effected an

entrance, yet Warren and his people had evacuated the fort through a

hole cut in its wall. Thus, with scarcely a struggle to save it, was

this vital fort allowed to fall into the enemy's hands, and

thenceforward our unfortunate people were to be reduced to precarious

and scanty sources for their food.

From the 5th to the 9th November there was a good deal of desultory

fighting, in the course of which, after one failure, Mahomed Shereef's

fort was stormed by a detachment of our people, under the command of

Major Griffiths; but this success had little influence on the

threatening attitude maintained by the Afghans. On the 9th, owing to the

mental and physical weakness of poor General Elphinstone, Brigadier

Shelton was summoned into cantonments from the Balla Hissar, bringing

with him part of the garrison with which he had been holding the latter

post. The hopes entertained that Shelton would display vigour, and

restore the confidence of the troops, were not realised. He from the

first had no belief in the ability of the occupants of the cantonment to

maintain their position, and he never ceased to urge prompt retreat on

Jellalabad. From the purely military point of view he was probably

right; the Duke of Wellington shared his opinion when he said in the

House of Lords: 'After the first few days, particularly after the

negotiations at Cabul had commenced, it became hopeless for General

Elphinstone to maintain his position.' Shelton's situation was

unquestionably a very uncomfortable one, for Elphinstone, broken as he

was, yet allowed his second in command no freedom of action, and was

testily pertinacious of his prerogative of command. If in Shelton, who

after his manner was a strong man, there had been combined with his

resolution some tact and temper, he might have exercised a beneficial

influence. As it was he became sullen and despondent, and retired behind

an 'uncommunicative and disheartening reserve.' Brave as he was, he

seems to have lacked the inspiration which alone could reinvigorate the

drooping spirit of the troops. In a word, though he probably was, in

army language, a 'good duty soldier,' he certainly was nothing more. And

something more was needed then.

Action on Shelton's part became necessary the day after he came into

cantonments. The Afghans occupied all the forts on the plain between the

Seah Sung heights and the cantonments, and from the nearest of them, the

Rikabashee fort, poured in a heavy fire at close range, which the return

artillery fire could not quell. On Macnaghten's urgent requisition the

General ordered out a strong force, under Shelton, to storm the

obnoxious fort. Captain Bellew missed the gate, and blew open merely a

narrow wicket, but the storming party obeyed the signal to advance.

Through a heavy fire the leaders reached the wicket, and forced their

way in, followed by a few soldiers. The garrison of the fort hastily

evacuated it, and all seemed well, when a sudden stampede ensued--the

handful which, led by Colonel Mackrell of the 44th and Lieutenant Bird

of the Shah's force, had already entered the fort, remaining inside it.

The runaway troops were rallied with difficulty by Shelton and the

subordinate officers, but a call for volunteers from the European

regiment was responded to but by one solitary Scottish private. After a

second advance, and a second retreat--a retreat made notwithstanding

strong artillery and musketry support--Shelton's efforts brought his

people forward yet again, and this time the fort was occupied in force.

Of those who had previously entered it but two survivors were found. The

Afghans, re-entering the fort, had hacked Mackrell to pieces and

slaughtered the men who tried to escape by the wicket. Lieutenant Bird

and a sepoy, from a stable the door of which they had barricaded with

logs of wood, had fended off their assailants by a steady and deadly

fire, and when they were rescued by the entrance of the troops they had

to clamber out over a pile of thirty dead Afghans whom the bullets of

the two men had struck down.

It had come to our people in those gloomy days, to regard as a 'triumph'

a combat in which they were not actually worsted; and even of such

dubious successes the last occurred on November 13, when the Afghans,

after having pressed our infantry down the slopes of the Behmaroo ridge,

were driven back by artillery fire, and forced by a cavalry charge to

retreat further, leaving behind them a couple of guns from which they

had been sending missiles into the cantonments. One of those guns was

brought in without difficulty, but the other the Afghans covered with

their jezail fire. The Envoy had sent a message of entreaty that 'the

triumph of the day' should be completed by its capture. Major Scott of

the 44th made appeal on appeal, ineffectually, to the soldierly feelings

of his men, and while they would not move the sepoys could not be

induced to advance. At length Eyre spiked the piece as a precautionary

measure, and finally some men of the Shah's infantry succeeded in

bringing in the prize. The return march of the troops into cantonments

in the dark, was rendered disorderly by the close pressure of the

Afghans, who, firing incessantly, pursued the broken soldiery up to the

entrance gate.

On the depressed garrison of the Cabul cantonments tidings of disaster

further afield had been pouring in apace. Soon after the outbreak of the

rising, it was known that Lieutenant Maule, commanding the Kohistanee

regiment at Kurdurrah, had been cut to pieces, with his adjutant and

sergeant-major, by the men of his own corps; and on November 6th

intelligence had come in that the Goorkha regiment stationed at Charikar

in the Kohistan, where Major Pottinger was Resident, was in dangerous

case, and that Codrington, its commandant, and some of his officers had

already fallen. And now, on the 15th, there rode wearily into

cantonments two wounded men, who believed themselves the only British

survivors of the Charikar force. Pottinger was wounded in the leg,

Haughton, the adjutant of the Goorkha corps, had lost his right hand,

and his head hung forward on his breast, half severed from his body by a

great tulwar slash. Of the miserable story which it fell to Pottinger to

tell only the briefest summary can be given. His residence was at

Lughmanee, a few miles from the Charikar cantonments, when early in the

month a number of chiefs of the Kohistan and the Nijrao country

assembled to discuss with him the terms on which they would reopen the

communications with Cabul. Those chiefs proved treacherous, slew

Rattray, Pottinger's assistant, and besieged Pottinger in Lughmanee.

Finding his position untenable, he withdrew to Charikar under cover of

night. On the morning of the 5th the Afghans assailed the cantonments.

Pottinger was wounded, Codrington was killed, and the Goorkhas were

driven into the barracks. Haughton, who succeeded to the command of the

regiment, made sortie on sortie, but was finally driven in, and the

enemy renewed their assaults in augmented strength. Thenceforward the

position was all but hopeless. On the 10th the last scant remains of

water was distributed. Efforts to procure water by sorties on the nights

of the 11th and 12th were not successful, and the corps fell into

disorganisation because of losses, hardships, exhaustion, hunger and

thirst. Pottinger and Haughton agreed that there was no prospect of

saving even a remnant of the regiment unless by a retreat to Cabul,

which, however, was clearly possible only in the case of the stronger

men, unencumbered with women and children, of whom, unfortunately, there

was a great number in the garrison. On the afternoon of the 13th

Haughton was cut down by a treacherous native officer of the artillery,

who then rushed out of the gate, followed by all the gunners and most of

the Mahommedans of the garrison. In the midst of the chaos of

disorganisation, Dr Grant amputated Haughton's hand, dressed his other

wounds, and then spiked all the guns. When it was dark, the garrison

moved out, Pottinger leading the advance, Dr Grant the main body, and

Ensign Rose the rear-guard. From the beginning of the march, discipline

was all but entirely in abeyance; on reaching the first stream, the last

remains of control were lost, and the force was rapidly disintegrating.

Pottinger and Haughton, the latter only just able to keep the saddle,

pushed on toward Cabul, rested in a ravine during the day, evaded the

partisan detachment sent out from Cabul to intercept them, rode through

sleeping Cabul in the small hours of the morning, and after being

pursued and fired upon in the outskirts of the city, finally attained

the cantonments. It was afterwards learned that a portion of the

regiment had struggled on to within twenty miles from Cabul, gallantly

headed by young Rose and Dr Grant. Then the remnant was destroyed. Rose

was killed, after despatching four Afghans with his own hand. Dr Grant,

escaping the massacre, held on until within three miles of the

cantonments, when he too was killed.

Macnaghten was naturally much depressed by the news communicated by

Pottinger, and realised that the Afghan masses already encompassing the

position on the Cabul plain would certainly be increased by bands from

the Kohistan and Nijrao, flushed already with their Charikar success. He

sided strongly with the large party among the officers who were

advocating the measure of abandoning the cantonments altogether, and

moving the force now quartered there to the safer and more commanding

position in the Balla Hissar. The military chiefs opposed the project,

and propounded a variety of objections to it, none of which were without

weight, yet all of which might have been overcome by energy and proper

dispositions. Shelton, however, was opposed to the scheme, since if

carried out it would avert or postpone the accomplishment of his policy

of retreat on Jellalabad; Elphinstone was against it in the inertia of

debility, and the project gradually came to be regarded as abandoned.

Another project, that of driving the Afghans from Mahmood Khan's fort,

commanding the direct road between the cantonments and the Balla

Hissar, and of occupying it with a British force, was so far advanced

that the time for the attempt was fixed, and the storming party actually

warned, when some petty objection intervened and the enterprise was

abandoned, never to be revived.

The rising was not three days old when already Elphinstone had lost

heart. On the 5th he had written to Macnaghten suggesting that the

latter should 'consider what chance there is of making terms,' and since

then he had been repeatedly pressing on the Envoy the 'hopelessness of

further resistance.' Macnaghten, vacillating as he was, yet had more

pith in his nature than was left in the debilitated old general. He

wrote to Elphinstone on the 18th recommending, not very strenuously, the

policy of holding out where they were as long as possible, and indeed

throughout the winter, if subsistence could be obtained. He pointed out

that in the cantonments, which he believed to be impregnable, there were

at least the essentials of wood and water. Arguing that a retreat on

Jellalabad must be most disastrous, and was to be avoided except in the

last extremity, he nevertheless ended somewhat inconsistently by leaving

to the military authorities, if in eight or ten days there should appear

no prospect of an improvement of the situation, the decision whether it

would be wiser to attempt a retreat or to withdraw from the cantonments

into the Balla Hissar.

Far from improving, the situation was speedily to become all but

hopeless. The village of Behmaroo, built on the north-eastern slope of

the ridge of the same name bounding the plain on the north-west, lay

about half a mile due north of the cantonments, part of which some of

the houses on the upper slope commanded. From this village, after the

loss of the Commissariat fort, our people had been drawing supplies. On

the morning of the 22d the Afghans were seen moving in force from Cabul

toward Behmaroo, obviously with intent to occupy the village, and so

deprive the occupants of the cantonments of the resource it had been

affording them. A detachment under Major Swayne, sent out to forestall

this occupation, found Behmaroo already in the possession of a body of

Kohistanees, who had so blocked the approaches that Swayne did not

consider himself justified in attempting the fulfilment of his orders to

storm the place; and he contented himself with maintaining all day an

ineffectual musketry fire on it. A diversion in his favour by a gun

supported by cavalry had no result save that of casualties to the

gunners and troopers; reinforcements brought out by Shelton effected

nothing, and in the evening the troops were recalled. On this ill-fated

day Akbar Khan, Dost Mahomed's fierce and implacable son, arrived in

Cabul, and the evil influence on the British fortunes which he exerted

immediately made itself felt, for the events of the following day were

to bring about a crisis in the fate of our ill-starred people.

Recognising the mischief wrought by the hostile occupation of our only

source of supplies, the Envoy strongly urged the immediate despatch of a

strong force to occupy the Behmaroo ridge, and dislodge from the village

its Kohistanee garrison. Shelton opposed the measure, urging the

dispirited state of the troops, their fatigue from constant defensive

duty, and their weakened physique because of poor and scanty rations. He

was overruled, and before daybreak of the 23d a force under his command,

consisting of five companies of the 44th, twelve companies of native

infantry, some cavalry, and one horse-artillery gun, was in position on

the north-eastern extremity of the ridge overhanging the village. The

gun opened fire on the village with grape, and after a short resistance

the greater part of its garrison quitted it. The storming party

entrusted to Major Swayne did not, however, act, and was withdrawn.

Leaving a detachment on the knoll above the village, Shelton moved his

force along the upland to a position near the gorge intersecting the

ridge, forming his infantry into two squares, with the cavalry in rear.

The further hill beyond the gorge was crowded with hostile Afghans from

Cabul, and the long-range fire of their jezails across the dividing

depression, carried execution into the squares which Shelton had

inexplicably formed as if to furnish his foes with a target which they

could not miss. The muskets of his men could not retaliate, and the

skirmishers he threw forward to the brow of his hill could not endure

the Afghan fire. Shelton's single gun maintained a hot and telling fire

on the Afghan masses on the opposite hill, and baulked an attempt

against his right flank made by the Afghan cavalry swarming in the outer

plain; but when its vent became too hot for the gunners to serve it, the

dullest comprehension became alive to the folly of sending a single gun

into the field.

Shelton's men, falling fast though they were, and faint with fatigue and

thirst, yet had endured for hours a fusillade to which they could not

reply, when a body of Afghan fanatics suddenly sprang up out of the

gorge, swept back with their fire the few skirmishers who had been still

holding the brow of the hill, and planted their flag within thirty yards

of the front of the nearer of the squares. Shelton offered a large

reward to the man who should bring it in, but there was no response. In

a passion of soldierly wrath, the veteran commanded a bayonet charge;

not a man sprang forward at the summons which British soldiers are wont

to welcome with cheers. The cowed infantry remained supine, when their

officers darted forward and threw stones into the faces of the enemy;

the troopers heard but obeyed not that trumpet-call to 'Charge!' which

so rarely fails to thrill the cavalryman with the rapture of the fray.

The gunners only, men of that noble force the Company's Horse-Artillery,

quitted themselves valiantly. They stood to their piece to the bitter

end. Two of them were killed beside it, another was severely wounded, a

fourth, refusing to run, took refuge under the gun, and miraculously

escaped death. But the gallant example of the artillerymen in their

front did not hearten the infantrymen of the leading square. The panic

spread among them, and they broke and fled. Fortunately they were not

pursued. The rear square stood fast, and the officers by great exertion

succeeded in rallying the fugitives under the cover it afforded. The

news that a principal chief, Abdoolah Khan, had been severely wounded in

the plain gave pause to the offensive vigour of the Afghans, and the

assailants fell back, abandoning the gun, but carrying off the limber

and gun-team. Our people reoccupied the position, the gun recommenced

its fire, and if the cavalry and infantry could have been persuaded to

take the offensive the battle might have been retrieved. But they

remained passive. The reinforced Afghans renewed their long-range fire

with terrible effect; most of the gunners had fallen, and the Brigadier,

recognising the growing unsteadiness of his command and the imminent

danger of capture to which the solitary gun was again exposed, ordered a

retirement on the detachment left near Behmaroo and the limbering up of

the gun, to which a second limber had been sent out from the

cantonments. The movement was scarcely begun when a rush of fanatic

Afghans completely broke the square, and all order and discipline then

disappeared. A regular rout set in down the hill toward cantonments, the

fugitives disregarding the efforts of the officers to rally them, and

the enemy in full pursuit, the Afghan cavalry making ghastly slaughter

among the panic-stricken runaways. The detachment near Behmaroo

attempted to fall back in orderly fashion, but the reinforced garrison

of the village swept out upon it, surrounded it, broke it up, and threw

it into utter rout with the loss of a large proportion of its strength,

one whole company being all but annihilated. It seemed as if pursued and

pursuers would enter the cantonments together so closely were they

commingled; but the fire from the ramparts and an opportune charge of

horse arrested the pursuit. Yet Eyre reckons as the chief reason why all

the British force that had gone out to battle was not destroyed, the

fact that a leading Afghan chief forced his men to spare the fugitives,

and ultimately halted and withdrew his people when the opportunity for

wholesale slaughter lay open to them. Most of the wounded were left on

the field, where they were miserably cut to pieces; and the gun, which

had been overturned in the attempt of the drivers to gallop down the

face of the hill, finally passed into the possession of the Afghans.

Shelton's dispositions as a commander could not well have been worse;

his bearing as a soldier, although undaunted, imparted to his hapless

troops nothing of inspiration. The obstinacy with which he held the hill

after the impossibility of even partial success must have been patent to

him, was universally condemned. It need scarcely be added that his loss

was very severe.

No more fighting was possible. What, then, was to be done? Elphinstone

and Shelton were at one in opposing removal into the Balla Hissar.

Macnaghten, to whom Shah Soojah had communicated his urgent

recommendation of that measure as the only expedient which could secure

the safety of the British troops, fell in with the views of the military

authorities. There came to him a letter from Osman Khan, the chief who

had called off his adherents on the previous day from pursuing the

fugitives fleeing into cantonments. Osman wrote that, if his troops had

followed up their successes, the loss of the cantonments and the

destruction of the British force were inevitable; but, he continued,

that it was not the wish of the chiefs to proceed to such extremities,

their sole desire being that our people should quietly evacuate the

country, leaving the Afghan sirdars to govern it according to their own

customs, and with a king of their own choosing. In communicating this

letter to General Elphinstone, Sir William asked for the latter's

opinion on the military possibility, or the reverse, of the retention of

the British position in Afghanistan. Elphinstone, in reply, enumerated

sundry reasons which led him to the conclusion which he stated, that 'it

is not feasible any longer to maintain our position in this country, and

that you ought to avail yourself of the offer to negotiate which has

been made to you.'

CHAPTER VI: THE ROAD TO RUIN

As the result of the military disaster of November 23d, and of the

representations of the General, recorded in the last chapter,

Macnaghten, with whatever reluctance, permitted himself to entertain

proposals for an arrangement made by the Afghan leaders. From the

beginning of the outbreak, while urging on the military authorities to

exert themselves in putting down the revolt, he had been engaged in

tortuous and dangerous intrigues, with the object of sowing discord

among the Afghan chiefs, and thus weakening the league of hostility

against Shah Soojah and his British supporters. In the conduct of these

intrigues he used the services of Mohun Lal, who had been one of Burnes'

assistants, and who, having escaped the fate of his chief, had found

refuge in the city residence of a Kuzzilbash chief. Mohun Lal was a

fitting agent for the sort of work prescribed to him, and he burrowed

and suborned with assiduity, and not altogether without success. But it

is unhappily true that he was commissioned to carry out a darker

enterprise, the removal by assassination of certain of the more

virulently hostile among the Afghan leaders. The incident is the

blackest of the many discreditable transactions which chequer the inner

political history of this melancholy chapter of our annals. It is

unfortunately certain that Lieutenant John Conolly, Macnaghten's kinsman

and his confidential representative with Shah Soojah, authorised Mohun

Lal, in writing, to compass the taking off of prominent Afghan leaders.

In a letter to Mohun Lal, of 5th November, Conolly wrote: 'I promise

10,000 rupees for the head of each rebel chief.' Again, on the 11th, he

wrote: 'There is a man called Hadji Ali, who might be induced by a bribe

to try and bring in the heads of one or two of the Mufsids. Endeavour to

let him know that 10,000 rupees will be given for each head, or even

15,000 rupees.' Two chiefs certainly did die under suspicious

circumstances, and in each case the blood-money was claimed. It was

refused by Mohun Lal on the plea that the stipulation that the heads of

the dead Afghans should be brought in was not fulfilled.

Whether Macnaghten inspired those nefarious machinations, whether indeed

he was actively aware of them, are questions which, in the absence of

conclusive evidence, may judiciously be left unanswered. There is extant

a letter from him to Mohun Lal, written December 1st, which has the

following passage: 'I am sorry to find from your letter of last night

that you should have supposed it was ever my object to encourage

assassination. The rebels are very wicked men, but we must not take

unlawful means to destroy them.' And later he is reported to have

informed an Afghan deputation that, 'as a British functionary, nothing

would induce him to pay a price for blood.' Durand holds that it was the

belief on the part of the Afghan chiefs that the British Envoy had set a

price on their heads which destroyed all confidence in Macnaghten's good

faith, and which was Akbar Khan's chief incentive to his murder.

The terms proffered on November 25th by an Afghan deputation were so

humiliating that Macnaghten peremptorily rejected them; and the threat

of immediate hostilities unless our people promptly surrendered their

arms and withdrew was not carried out. A period of inaction strangely

ensued, which on the Afghan side was a treacherous lull, but which

Macnaghten, hoping against hope that some turn in our favour might yet

occur, regarded with complacency. The chiefs, aware that winter was

approaching with added hardship to the forlorn garrison, temporarily

desisted from urging negotiations. But the British military authorities,

with troops living from hand to mouth on precarious half rations, and

with transport cattle dying fast of starvation, kept urging the Envoy to

activity in making terms, if absolute starvation was to be averted.

Futile projects were discussed between Envoy and General, only to be put

aside. As the dreary days of inaction and depletion passed, the

deterioration of military spirit among our people manifested itself more

and more plainly. British soldiers stolidly watched the Afghans

destroying our bridge across the Cabul river, within a quarter of a mile

from cantonments. Scared by the threat of an assault, which, in the

scornful words of brave Lady Sale, a child with a stick might have

repulsed, the garrison of the Mahomed Shereef fort abandoned it in a

panic, the white soldiers of the 44th showing the example of

pusillanimity to the sepoys whom their cowardice demoralised. Next day

the detachment of the 44th which had guarded an exposed position had to

be withdrawn, ceding the post of honour to the stauncher sepoys. The

camp followers were living on carrion; the commissaries reported but

four days' provisions in store, and their inability to procure any more

supplies. At length on December 8th the four senior military officers

informed the Envoy that it was imperatively necessary he should

negotiate a retreat, on the best terms he could obtain.

Macnaghten had to bring himself to recognise that the alternatives were

negotiation or starvation, and on the 11th December, with a draft treaty

in his hand, he met the principal Afghan chiefs on the river side

between the cantonments and the city. After the introductory palavers,

Macnaghten read the proposed treaty, whose purport was as follows: that

the British should evacuate Afghanistan forthwith unmolested, furnished

with supplies and accompanied by hostages, on their march to India; that

the Dost, his family, and other Afghan political exiles, should be

allowed to return to their country; that Shah Soojah should have the

option of remaining at Cabul or going down to India; that amnesty should

be accorded to all adherents of Shah Soojah and his British allies; that

all prisoners should be released; and that perpetual friendship and

mutual good offices should thenceforth endure between the British and

the Afghans.

Akbar Khan made demur to some of the provisions, but was overruled, and

the main stipulations of the treaty were agreed to by the chiefs. The

conference broke up with the understanding that the British troops

should evacuate cantonments within three days, and that meanwhile

provisions should be sent in for their use. The treaty was simply a

virtual capitulation all along the line; but the inherent falseness of

our position, the incapacity of the military chiefs, and the debased

spirit of the troops, consequent partly on low rations but mainly

because of the utter absence of competent and vigorous leadership such

as a Broadfoot or a Havelock would have supplied, enforced on the

reluctant Envoy conditions humiliating beyond previous parallel in the

history of our nation.

From the outset the Afghan chiefs defaulted from their promise of

sending in supplies, but some grain was brought into cantonments by the

troops, whose evacuation of the Balla Hissar on the 13th was effected

under humiliating circumstances. The Afghans demanded the surrender of

the forts in British occupation in the vicinity of the cantonments. The

requisition was complied with, and the Magazine fort furnished the enemy

with both arms and ammunition.

The three stipulated days passed away, and still the British force

remained motionless in the cantonments. Macnaghten was bent on

procrastination, and circumstances seemed to favour a policy which to

all but himself was inexplicable. By the treaty, Shah Soojah was in

effect committed to withdraw to India, but soon after its acceptance the

chiefs had invited him to remain in Cabul as king, on the stipulation

that he should give his daughters in marriage to leaders of the

malcontents. After considerable deliberation, the Shah had consented to

remain on the condition named, but a few days later he withdrew his

acceptance. His vacillation increased the suspicions of the chiefs, and

they demanded the immediate evacuation of the cantonments, refusing to

furnish provisions until that was done. Meanwhile they sent in no

transport animals, although large sums had been handed over for their

purchase. Our people were still immobile, and already, on the 18th,

there had occurred a fall of snow several inches deep.

The Envoy was engaged in strange and dubious intrigues, and since the

Afghans were not fulfilling their share of the treaty obligations, he

appears to have regarded himself as no longer bound by its conditions,

and free to try to obtain better terms from other sources, in pursuit of

which purpose he was expending money in a variety of directions. The

dark and unscrupulous Mohun Lal was his confidant and instrument. Akbar

Khan and the chiefs of his party had become aware of Macnaghten's

machinations, and they laid a snare for him into which he fell with open

eyes. Emissaries were sent to him with the sinister proposals that the

British should remain in Afghanistan until the spring, when they were to

withdraw as of their own accord; that the head of Ameenoolla Khan, one

of the most powerful and obnoxious of the rebel leaders, should be

presented to the Envoy in return for a stipulated sum of money; and that

for all those services the British Government should requite Akbar Khan

with a present of thirty lakhs of rupees, and an annual pension of four

lakhs. Macnaghten refused peremptorily the proffer of Ameenoolla's head,

but did not reject co-operation in that chiefs capture by a dubious

device in which British troops were to participate; he did not hesitate

to accept the general terms of the proposals; and he consented to hold a

conference with Akbar Khan on the following day to carry into effect the

projected measures.

On the morning of the 23d the deceived and doomed man, accompanied by

his staff-officers, Lawrence, Trevor and Mackenzie, rode out from

cantonments to keep the fateful tryst on the bank of the Cabul river.

His manner was 'distracted and hurried.' When he told Lawrence of the

nature of the affair on which he was going, that shrewd officer

immediately warned him that it was a plot against him. 'A plot!' he

replied hastily, 'let me alone for that; trust me for that!' and

Lawrence desisted from useless expostulation. Poor old Elphinstone had

scented treachery; but the Envoy had closed his mouth with the impatient

words: 'I understand these things better than you!' As he rode out, he

admitted the danger of the enterprise, but argued that if it succeeded

it was worth all risks. 'At all events,' he ended, 'let the loss be what

it may, I would rather die a hundred deaths than live the last six weeks

over again.' The escort halted, and the four British gentlemen advanced

to the place of rendezvous, whither came presently Akbar Khan and his

party. Akbar began the conference by asking the Envoy if he was ready to

carry out the proposals presented to him overnight. 'Why not?' was Sir

William's short reply. A number of Afghans, armed to the teeth, had

gradually formed a circle around the informal durbar. Lawrence and

Mackenzie pointed out this environment to some of the chiefs, who

affected to drive off the intruders with their whips; but Akbar observed

that it did not matter, as they 'were all in the secret.' 'Suddenly,'

wrote Mackenzie, 'I heard Akbar call out, "Begeer! begeer!" ("Seize!

seize!") and turning round I saw him grasp the Envoy's left hand with an

expression on his face of the most diabolical ferocity. I think it was

Sultan Jan who laid hold of the Envoy's right hand. They dragged him in

a stooping posture down the hillock, the only words I heard poor Sir

William utter being, "Az barae Khooda" ("For God's sake"). I saw his

face, however, and it was full of horror and astonishment.' Neither

Mackenzie nor Lawrence, the surviving companions of the Envoy, witnessed

the actual end. 'Whether,' writes Kaye, 'he died on the spot, or whether

he was slain by the infuriated ghazees, is not very clearly known; but

the fanatics threw themselves on the prostrate body and hacked it with

their knives.' There is no doubt that the head of the unfortunate

Macnaghten was paraded in triumph through the streets of Cabul, and that

the mangled trunk, after being dragged about the city, was hung up in

the great bazaar. Of the three officers who accompanied the Envoy to

the conference, Trevor was massacred, Lawrence and Mackenzie were saved

with difficulty by friendly chiefs, and brought into the city, where

they and Captain Skinner joined the hostages, Captains Connolly and

Airey, under the safe roof of the venerable Mahomed Zemaun Khan.

That Akbar and the confederate chiefs spread a snare for the Envoy is

plain, and that they regarded his acceptance of their deceitful

proposals as a proof of his faithlessness to the treaty obligations to

which he had bound himself. It was no element in their reasoning that

since they had not regarded the treaty the British functionary might

without breach of faith hold that it did not bind him. But it is

improbable that the murder of Macnaghten was actually included in their

scheme of action. Their intention seems to have been to seize him as a

hostage, with intent thus to secure the evacuation of Afghanistan and

the restoration of Dost Mahomed. The ill-fated Envoy's expressions on

his way to the rendezvous indicate his unhinged state of mind. He went

forth to sure treachery; Akbar's gust of sudden fury converted the

planned abduction into savage murder, and his abrupt pistol bullet

baulked the more wily and less ruthless project which had probably been

devised in cold blood.

The escort brought back into cantonments tidings that the Envoy had been

seized. The garrison got under arms, and remained passive throughout the

day. The defences were manned at night, in the apprehension that the

noise and disturbance in the city portended an assault; but that clamour

was caused by the mustering of the Afghans in expectation that the

British would attack the city, bent on vengeance on the murderers of the

Envoy. Action of that nature was, however, wholly absent from the

prostrate minds of the military chiefs. On the following afternoon

Captain Lawrence transmitted certain overtures from the chiefs, as the

result of a conference held by them, when, notwithstanding severe

comments on the conduct of the Envoy, professions were made of sincere

regret for his death. With certain alterations and additions, the treaty

drawn up by Macnaghten was taken by the chiefs as the basis for the

negotiations which they desired to renew. Major Pottinger, as now the

senior 'political' with the force, was called on by General Elphinstone

to undertake the task of conducting negotiations with the Afghan

leaders. The high-souled Pottinger rose at the summons from the sickbed

to which he had been confined ever since his wonderful escape from

Charikar, and accepted the thankless and distasteful duty. It is not

necessary to recount the details of negotiations, every article and

every stage of which display the arrogance of the men who knew

themselves masters of the situation, and reveal not less the degrading

humiliation to which was submitting itself a strong brigade of British

troops, whose arms were still in the soldiers' hands, and over whose

ranks hung banners blazoned with victories that shall be memorable down

the ages. On the sombre and cheerless Christmas Day Pottinger rose in

the council of men who wore swords, and remonstrated with soldierly

vigour and powerful argument against the degrading terms which the

chiefs had contumeliously thrown to them. He produced letters from

Jellalabad and Peshawur giving information of reinforcements on the way

from India, and urging the maintenance of resistance. He argued that to

conclude a treaty with the Afghans would be a fatal error, and suggested

two alternative courses which offered a prospect of saving their honour

and part of the army--the occupation of the Balla Hissar, which was the

preferable measure, or the abandonment of camp, baggage, and

encumbrances, and forcing a retreat down the passes. The

council--Pottinger must have written sarcastically when he termed it a

'council of war'--unanimously decided that to remain in Cabul and to

force a retreat were alike impracticable, and that nothing remained but

the endeavour to release the army by agreeing to the conditions offered

by the enemy. 'Under these circumstances,' in the words of Pottinger,

'as the Major-General coincided with the officers of the council, and

refused to attempt occupying the Balla Hissar, and as his second in

command declared that impracticable, I considered it my duty,

notwithstanding my repugnance to and disapproval of the measure, to

yield, and attempt to carry on a negotiation.'

This Pottinger accordingly did. The first demand with which he had to

comply was to give bills for the great sums promised by the Envoy to the

chiefs for their services in furthering and supporting his treaty. This

imposition had to be submitted to, since the Afghans stopped the

supplies until the extortion was complied with. The next concession

required was the surrender of the artillery of the force, with the

exception of six field and three mule guns; and the military chiefs

endured this humiliation, against which even the demoralised soldiery

chafed. Then the demand for hostages had to be complied with, and four

officers were sent on to join the two hostages already in Afghan hands.

The chiefs had demanded four married hostages, with their wives and

children, and a circular was sent round offering to volunteers the

inducement of a large stipend; but the sentiment of repulsion was too

strong to be overcome by the bribe. The sick and wounded who could not

bear the march were sent into the city in accordance with an article of

the treaty, two surgeons accompanying their patients.

The treaty, ratified by the leading chiefs and sent into cantonments on

New Year's Day 1842, provided that the British troops, within

twenty-four hours after receiving transport, and under the protection of

certain chiefs and an adequate escort, should begin their march of

evacuation, the Jellalabad garrison moving down to Peshawur in advance;

that the six hostages left in Cabul should be well treated, and

liberated on the arrival at Peshawur of Dost Mahomed; the sick and

wounded left behind to be at liberty to return to India on their

recovery; all small arms and ordnance stores in the cantonment magazine

to be made over to the Afghans 'as a token of friendship,' on which

account also, they were to have all the British cannon except as above

mentioned; the Afghans to escort the Ghuznee garrison in safety to

Peshawur; and a further stipulation was that the British troops in

Candahar and Western Afghanistan were to resign the territories occupied

by them and start quickly for India, provisioned and protected from

molestation by the way.

Severe and humiliating as were those terms, they were not obtained

without difficulty. The terms put forward in the earlier drafts of the

treaty were yet more exacting, and the tone of the demands was abrupt,

contemptuous, and insulting. Pottinger had to plead, to entreat, to be

abject; to beg the masterful Afghans 'not to overpower the weak with

sufferings'; 'to be good enough to excuse the women from the suffering'

of remaining as hostages; and to entreat them 'not to forget kindness'

shown by us in former days. One blushes not for but with the gallant

Pottinger, loyally carrying out the miserable duty put upon him. The

shame was not his; it lay on the council of superior officers, who

overruled his remonstrances, and ground his face into the dust.

Our people were made to pass under the yoke every hour of their wretched

lives during those last winter days in the Cabul cantonments. The

fanatics and the common folk of the city and its environs swarmed around

our petty ramparts, with their foul sneers and their blackguard taunts,

hurled with impunity from where they stood at the muzzles of the loaded

guns which the gunners were forbidden to fire. Officers and rank and

file were in a condition of smouldering fury, but no act of reprisal or

retribution was permitted. If the present was one continuous misery,

the future lowered yet more gloomily. It was of common knowledge as well

in the cantonments as in the city, that the engagements made by the

chiefs were not worth the paper on which they had been written, and

that treachery was being concerted against the force on its impending

travail through the passes. It was told by a chief to one of the

officers who was his friend, that Akbar Khan had sworn to have in his

possession the British ladies as security for the safe restoration of

his own family and relatives, and, strange forecast to be fulfilled

almost to the very letter, had vowed to 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. Pottinger was

well aware how desperate was the situation of the hapless people on

whose behalf he had bent so low his proud soul. Mohun Lal warned him of

the treachery the chiefs were plotting, and assured him that unless

their sons should accompany the army as hostages, it would be attacked

on the march. Day after day the departure was delayed, on the pretext

that the chiefs had not completed their preparations for the safe

conduct of the force and its encumbrances. Day after day the snow was

falling with a quiet, ruthless persistency. The bitter night frosts were

destroying the sepoys and the camp followers, their vitality weakened by

semi-starvation and by the lack of firewood which had long distressed

them. At length on January 5th, Sturt the engineer officer got his

instructions to throw down into the ditch a section of the eastern

rampart, and so furnish a freer exit than the gates could afford. The

supply of transport was inadequate, provisions were scant, and the

escort promised by the chiefs was not forthcoming. Pottinger advised

waiting yet a little longer, until supplies and escort should arrive;

but for once the military chiefs were set against the policy of delay,

and firm orders were issued that the cantonments should be evacuated on

the following day.

Shah Soojah remained in Cabul. The resolution became him better than

anything else we know of the unfortunate man. It may be he reasoned that

he had a chance for life by remaining in the Balla Hissar, and that from

what he knew, there was no chance of life for anyone participating in

the fateful march. He behaved fairly by the British authorities, sending

more than one solemn warning pressing on them the occupation of the

Balla Hissar. And there was some dignity in his appeal to Brigadier

Anquetil, who commanded his own contingent, 'if it were well to forsake

him in the hour of need, and to deprive him of the aid of that force

which he had hitherto been taught to regard as his own?'

CHAPTER VII: THE CATASTROPHE

The ill-omened evacuation by our doomed people of the cantonments

wherein for two months they had undergone every extremity of humiliation

and contumely, was begun on the dreary winter morning of January 6th,

1842. Snow lay deep on plain and hill-side; the cruel cold, penetrating

through the warmest clothing, bit fiercely into the debilitated and

thinly clad frames of the sepoys and the great horde of camp followers.

The military force which marched out of cantonments consisted of about

4500 armed men, of whom about 690 were Europeans, 2840 native soldiers

on foot, and 970 native cavalrymen. The gallant troop of Company's

Horse-Artillery marched out with its full complement of six guns, to

which, with three pieces of the mountain train, the artillery arm of the

departing force was restricted by the degrading terms imposed by the

Afghan chiefs. In good heart and resolutely commanded, a body of

disciplined troops thus constituted, and of a fighting strength so

respectable, might have been trusted not only to hold its own against

Afghan onslaught, but if necessary to take the offensive with success.

But alas, the heart of the hapless force had gone to water, its

discipline was a wreck, its chiefs were feeble and apathetic; its steps

were dogged by the incubus of some 12,000 camp followers, with a great

company of women and children. The awful fate brooded over its forlorn

banners of expiating by its utter annihilation, the wretched folly and

sinister prosecution of the enterprise whose deserved failure was to be

branded yet deeper on the gloomiest page of our national history, by the

impending catastrophe of which the dark shadow already lay upon the

blighted column.

The advance began to move out from cantonments at nine A.M. The march

was delayed at the river by the non-completion of the temporary bridge,

and the whole of the advance was not across until after noon. The main

body under Shelton, which was accompanied by the ladies, invalids, and

sick, slowly followed. It as well as the advance was disorganised from

the first by the throngs of camp followers with the baggage, who could

not be prevented from mixing themselves up with the troops. The Afghans

occupied the cantonments as portion after portion was evacuated by our

people, rending the air with their exulting cries, and committing every

kind of atrocity. It was late in the afternoon before the long train of

camels following the main body had cleared the cantonments; and

meanwhile the rear-guard was massed outside, in the space between the

rampart and the canal, among the chaos of already abandoned baggage. It

was exposed there to a vicious jezail fire poured into it by the

Afghans, who abandoned the pleasures of plunder and arson for the yet

greater joy of slaughtering the Feringhees. When the rear-guard moved

away in the twilight, an officer and fifty men were left dead in the

snow, the victims of the Afghan fire from the rampart of the cantonment;

and owing to casualties in the gun teams it had been found necessary to

spike and abandon two of the horse-artillery guns.

The rear-guard, cut into from behind by the pestilent ghazees, found its

route encumbered with heaps of abandoned baggage around which swarmed

Afghan plunderers. Other Afghans, greedier for blood than for booty,

were hacking and slaying among the numberless sepoys and camp followers

who had dropped out of the column, and were lying or sitting on the

wayside in apathetic despair, waiting for death and careless whether it

came to them by knife or by cold. Babes lay on the snow abandoned by

their mothers, themselves prostrate and dying a few hundred yards

further on. It was not until two o'clock of the following morning that

the rear-guard reached the straggling and chaotic bivouac in which its

comrades lay in the snow at the end of the first short march of six

miles. Its weary progress had been illuminated by the conflagration

raging in the cantonments, which had been fired by the Afghan fanatics,

rabid to erase every relic of the detested unbelievers.

It was a night of bitter cold. Out in the open among the snow, soldiers

and camp followers, foodless, fireless, and shelterless, froze to death

in numbers, and numbers more were frost-bitten. The cheery morning noise

of ordinary camp life was unheard in the mournful bivouac. Captain

Lawrence outlines a melancholy picture. 'The silence of the men betrayed

their despair and torpor. In the morning I found lying close to me,

stiff, cold, and quite dead, in full regimentals, with his sword drawn

in his hand, an old grey-haired conductor named Macgregor, who, utterly

exhausted, had lain down there silently to die.' Already defection had

set in. One of the Shah's infantry regiments and his detachment of

sappers and miners had deserted bodily, partly during the march of the

previous day, partly in the course of the night.

No orders were given out, no bugle sounded the march, on the morning of

the 7th. The column heaved itself forward sluggishly, a mere mob of

soldiers, camp followers and cattle, destitute of any semblance of order

or discipline. Quite half the sepoys were already unfit for duty; in

hundreds they drifted in among the non-combatants and increased the

confusion. The advance of the previous day was now the rear-guard. After

plundering the abandoned baggage, the Afghans set to harassing the

rear-guard, whose progress was delayed by the disorderly multitude

blocking the road in front. The three mountain guns, temporarily

separated from the infantry, were captured by a sudden Afghan rush. In

vain Anquetil strove to rouse the 44th to make an effort for their

recapture. Green was more successful with his handful of artillerymen,

who followed him and the Brigadier and spiked the pieces, but being

unsupported were compelled a second time to abandon them. On this march

it became necessary also, from the exhaustion of their teams, to spike

and abandon two more of the horse-artillery guns; so that there now

remained with the force only a couple of six-pounders. While the

rear-guard was in action, a body of Afghan horse charged on the flank,

right into the heart of the baggage column, swept away much plunder, and

spread confusion and dismay far and wide. The rear of the column would

probably have been entirely cut off, but that reinforcements from the

advance under Shelton pushed back the enemy, and by crowning the lateral

heights kept open the thoroughfare. At Bootkhak was found Akbar Khan,

who professed to have been commissioned to escort the force to

Jellalabad, and who blamed our people for having marched out prematurely

from the cantonments. He insisted on the halt of the column at Bootkhak

until the following morning, when he would provide supplies, but he

demanded an immediate subsidy of 15,000 rupees, and that Pottinger,

Lawrence and Mackenzie should be given up to him as hostages that the

force would not march beyond Tezeen until tidings should arrive that

Sale had evacuated Jellalabad. Those officers by the General's

instructions joined the Afghan chief on the following morning, and

Akbar's financial requisition was obsequiously fulfilled. After two

days' marching our people, who had brought out with them provisions for

but five and a half days, expecting within that time to reach

Jellalabad, were only ten miles forward on their march.

Another night passed, with its train of horrors--starvation, cold,

exhaustion, death. Lady Sale relates that scarcely any of the baggage

now remained; that there was no food for man or beast; that snow lay a

foot deep on the ground; that even water from the adjacent stream was

difficult to obtain, as the carriers were fired on in fetching it; and

that she thought herself fortunate in being sheltered in a small tent in

which 'we slept nine, all touching each other.' Daylight brought merely

a more bitter realisation of utter misery. Eyre expresses his wonderment

at the effect of two nights' exposure to the frost in disorganising the

force. 'It had so nipped even the strongest men as to completely

prostrate their powers and incapacitate them for service; even the

cavalry, who suffered less than the rest, were obliged to be lifted on

their horses.' In fact, only a few hundred serviceable men remained. At

the sound of hostile fire the living struggled to their feet from their

lairs in the snow, stiffened with cold, all but unable to move or hold a

weapon, leaving many of their more fortunate comrades stark in death. A

turmoil of confusion reigned. The Afghans were firing into the rear of

the mass, and there was a wild rush of camp followers to the front, who

stripped the baggage cattle of their loads and carried the animals off,

leaving the ground strewn with ammunition, treasure, plate, and other

property. The ladies were no longer carried in litters and palanquins,

for their bearers were mostly dead; they sat in the bullet fire packed

into panniers slung on camels, invalids as some of them were--one poor

lady with her baby only five days old. Mess stores were being recklessly

distributed, and Lady Sale honestly acknowledges that, as she sat on her

horse in the cold, she felt very grateful for a tumbler of sherry, which

at any other time would have made her 'very unladylike,' but which now

merely warmed her. Cups full of sherry were drunk by young children

without in the least affecting their heads, so strong on them was the

hold of the cold.

It was not until noon that the living mass of men and animals was once

more in motion. The troops were in utter disorganisation; the baggage

was mixed up with the advance guard; the camp followers were pushing

ahead in precipitate panic. The task before the wretched congeries of

people was to thread the stupendous gorge of the Khoord Cabul pass--a

defile about five miles long, hemmed in on either hand by steeply

scarped hills. Down the bottom of the ravine dashed a mountain torrent,

whose edges were lined with thick layers of ice, on which had formed

glacier-like masses of snow. The 'Jaws of Death' were barely entered

when the slaughter began. With the advance rode several Afghan chiefs,

whose followers, by their command, shouted to the Ghilzais lining the

heights to hold their fire, but the tribesmen gave no heed to the

mandate. Lady Sale rode with the chiefs. The Ghilzai fire at fifty yards

was close and deadly. The men of the advance fell fast. Lady Sale had a

bullet in her arm, and three more through her dress. But the weight of

the hostile fire fell on the main column, the baggage escort, and the

rear-guard. Some of the ladies, who mostly were on camels which were led

with the column, had strange adventures. On one camel was quite a group.

In one of its panniers were Mrs Boyd and her little son, in the other

Mrs Mainwaring, with her own infant and Mrs Anderson's eldest child. The

camel fell, shot. A Hindustanee trooper took up Mrs Boyd _en croupe_,

and carried her through in safety; another horseman behind whom her son

rode, was killed, and the boy fell into Afghan hands. The Anderson girl

shared the same fate. Mrs Mainwaring, with her baby in her arms,

attempted to mount a baggage pony, but the load upset, and she pursued

her way on foot. An Afghan horseman rode at her, threatened her with his

sword, and tried to drag away the shawl in which she carried her child.

She was rescued by a sepoy grenadier, who shot the Afghan dead, and then

conducted the poor lady along the pass through the dead and dying,

through, also, the close fire which struck down people near to her,

almost to the exit of the pass, when a bullet killed the chivalrous

sepoy, and Mrs Mainwaring had to continue her tramp to the bivouac

alone.

A very fierce attack was made on the rear-guard, consisting of the 44th.

In the narrow throat of the pass the regiment was compelled to halt by a

block in front, and in this stationary position suffered severely. A

flanking fire told heavily on the handful of European infantry. The

belated stragglers masked their fire, and at length the soldiers fell

back, firing volleys indiscriminately into the stragglers and the

Afghans. Near the exit of the pass a commanding position was maintained

by some detachments which still held together, strengthened by the only

gun now remaining, the last but one having been abandoned in the gorge.

Under cover of this stand the rear of the mass gradually drifted forward

while the Afghan pursuit was checked, and at length all the surviving

force reached the camping ground. There had been left dead in the pass

about 500 soldiers and over 2500 camp followers.

Akbar and the chiefs, taking the hostages with them, rode forward on the

track of the retreating force. Akbar professed that his object was to

stop the firing, but Mackenzie writes that Pottinger said to him:

'Mackenzie, remember if I am killed that I heard Akbar Khan shout "Slay

them!" in Pushtoo, although in Persian he called out to stop the

firing.' The hostages had to be hidden away from the ferocious ghazees

among rocks in the ravine until near evening, when in passing through

the region of the heaviest slaughter they 'came upon one sight of horror

after another. All the bodies were stripped. There were children cut in

two. Hindustanee women as well as men--some frozen to death, some

literally chopped to pieces, many with their throats cut from ear to

ear.'

Snow fell all night on the unfortunates gathered tentless on the Khoord

Cabul camping ground. On the morning of the 9th the confused and

disorderly march was resumed, but after a mile had been traversed a halt

for the day was ordered at the instance of Akbar Khan, who sent into

camp by Captain Skinner a proposal that the ladies and children, with

whose deplorable condition he professed with apparent sincerity to

sympathise, should be made over to his protection, and that the married

officers should accompany their wives; he pledging himself to preserve

the party from further hardships and dangers, and afford its members

safe escort through the passes in rear of the force. The General had

little faith in the Sirdar, but he was fain to give his consent to an

arrangement which promised alleviation to the wretchedness of the

ladies, scarce any of whom had tasted a meal since leaving Cabul. Some,

still weak from childbirth, were nursing infants only a few days old;

other poor creatures were momentarily apprehending the pangs of

motherhood. There were invalids whose only attire, as they rode in the

camel panniers or shivered on the snow, was the nightdresses they wore

when leaving the cantonments in their palanquins, and none possessed

anything save the clothes on their backs. It is not surprising, then,

that dark and doubtful as was the future to which they were consigning

themselves, the ladies preferred its risks and chances to the awful

certainties which lay before the doomed column. The Afghan chief had

cunningly made it a condition of his proffer that the husbands should

accompany their wives, and if there was a struggle in the breasts of the

former between public and private duties, the General humanely decided

the issue by ordering them to share the fortunes of their families.

Akbar Khan sent in no supplies, and the march was resumed on the morning

of the both by a force attenuated by starvation, cold, and despair,

diminished further by extensive desertion. After much exertion the

advance, consisting of all that remained of the 44th, the solitary gun,

and a detachment of cavalry, forced a passage to the front through the

rabble of camp followers, and marched unmolested for about two miles

until the Tunghee Tariki was reached, a deep gorge not more than ten

feet wide. Men fell fast in the horrid defile, struck down by the Afghan

fire from the heights; but the pass, if narrow, was short, and the

advance having struggled through it moved on to the halting-place at

Kubbar-i-Jubbar, and waited there for the arrival of the main body. But

that body was never to emerge from out the shambles in the narrow throat

of the Tunghee Tariki. The advance was to learn from the few stragglers

who reached it the ghastly truth that it now was all that remained of

the strong brigade which four days before had marched out from the Cabul

cantonments. The slaughter from the Afghan fire had blocked the gorge

with dead and dying. The Ghilzai tribesmen, at the turn into the pen at

the other end of which was the blocked gorge, had closed up fiercely.

Then the steep slopes suddenly swarmed with Afghans rushing sword in

hand down to the work of butchery, and the massacre stinted not while

living victims remained. The rear-guard regiment of sepoys was

exterminated, save for two or three desperately wounded officers who

contrived to reach the advance.

The remnant of the army consisted now of about seventy files of the

44th, about 100 troopers, and a detachment of horse-artillery with a

single gun. The General sent to Akbar Khan to remonstrate with him on

the attack he had allowed to be made after having guaranteed that the

force should meet with no further molestation. Akbar protested his

regret, and pleaded his inability to control the wild Ghilzai hillmen,

over whom, in their lust for blood and plunder, their own chiefs had

lost all control; but he was willing to guarantee the safe conduct to

Jellalabad of the European officers and men if they would lay down their

arms and commit themselves wholly into his hands. This sinister proposal

the General refused, and the march was continued, led in disorder by the

remnant of the camp followers. In the steep descent from the Huft Kotul

into the Tezeen ravine, the soldiers following the rabble at some

distance, came suddenly on a fresh butchery. The Afghans had suddenly

fallen on the confused throng, and the descent was covered with dead and

dying.

During the march from Kubbar-i-Jubbar to the Tezeen valley Shelton's

dogged valour had mainly saved the force from destruction. With a few

staunch soldiers of his own regiment, the one-armed veteran, restored

now to his proper _métier_ of stubborn fighting man, had covered the

rear and repelled the Ghilzai assaults with persevering energy and

dauntless fortitude. And he it was who now suggested, since Akbar Khan

still held to his stipulation that the force should lay down its arms,

that a resolute effort should be made to press on to Jugdulluk by a

rapid night march of four-and-twenty miles, in the hope of clearing the

passes in that vicinity before the enemy should have time to occupy

them.

That the attempt would prove successful was doubtful, since the force

was already exhausted; but it was the last chance, and Shelton's

suggestion was adopted. In the early moonlight the march silently began,

an ill omen marking the start in the shape of the forced abandonment of

the last gun. Fatal delay occurred between Seh Baba and Kutti Sung

because of a panic among the camp followers, who, scared by a few shots,

drifted backwards and forwards in a mass, retarding the progress of the

column and for the time entirely arresting the advance of Shelton's and

his rear-guard. The force could not close up until the morning, ten

miles short of Jugdulluk, and already the Afghans were swarming on every

adjacent height. All the way down the broken slope to Jugdulluk the

little column trudged through the gauntlet of jezail fire which lined

the road with dead and wounded. Shelton and his rear-guard handful

performed wonders, again and again fending off with close fire and

levelled bayonets the fierce rushes of Ghilzais charging sword in hand.

The harassed advance reached Jugdulluk in the afternoon of the 11th, and

took post behind some ruins on a height by the roadside, the surviving

officers forming line in support of the gallant rear-guard struggling

forward through its environment of assailants. As Shelton and his brave

fellows burst through the cordon they were greeted by cheers from the

knoll. But there was no rest for the exhausted people, for the Afghans

promptly occupied commanding positions whence they maintained a fire

from which the ruins afforded but scant protection. To men parched with

thirst the stream at the foot of their knoll was but a tantalising

aggravation, for to attempt to reach it was certain death. The snow they

devoured only increased their sufferings, and but little stay was

afforded by the raw flesh of a few gun bullocks. Throughout the day

volley after volley was poured down upon the weary band by the

inexorable enemy. Frequent sallies were made, and the heights were

cleared, but the positions were soon reoccupied and the ruthless fire

was renewed.

Captain Skinner, summoned by Akbar, brought back a message that General

Elphinstone should visit him to take part in a conference, and that

Brigadier Shelton and Captain Johnson should be given over as hostages

for the evacuation of Jellalabad. Compliance was held to be imperative,

and the temporary command was entrusted to Brigadier Anquetil. Akbar

was extremely hospitable to his compulsory guests; but he insisted on

including the General among his hostages, and was not moved by

Elphinstone's representations that he would prefer death to the disgrace

of being separated from his command in its time of peril. The Ghilzai

chiefs came into conference burning with hatred against the British, and

revelling in the anticipated delights of slaughtering them. Akbar seemed

sincere in his effort to conciliate them, but was long unsuccessful.

Their hatred seemed indeed stronger than their greed; but at length

toward nightfall Akbar announced that pacific arrangements had been

accepted by the tribes, and that what remained of the force should be

allowed to march unmolested to Jellalabad.

How futile was the compact, if indeed there was any compact, was soon

revealed. The day among the ruins on the knoll had passed in dark and

cruel suspense--in hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, in the presence of

frequent death; and as the evening fell, in anguish and all but utter

despair. As darkness set in the conviction enforced itself that to

remain longer in the accursed place was madness; and the little band,

leaving behind perforce the sick and wounded, marched out, resolute to

push through or die fighting. In the valley the only molestation at

first was a desultory fire from the camping Ghilzais, who were rather

taken by surprise, but soon became wide awake to their opportunities.

Some hurried forward to occupy the pass rising from the valley to the

Jugdulluk crest; others, hanging on the rear and flanks of the column

encumbered with its fatal incubus of camp followers, mixed among the

unarmed throng with their deadly knives, and killed and plundered with

the dexterity of long practice. Throughout the tedious march up the

steeply rising defile a spattering fire came from the rocks and ridges

flanking the track, all but blocked by the surging concourse of

miserable followers. The advance had to employ cruel measures to force

its way through the chaos toward the crest. As it is approached from the

Jugdulluk direction the flanking elevations recede and merge in the

transverse ridge, which is crowned by a low-cut abrupt rocky upheaval,

worn down somewhat where the road passes over the crest by the friction

of traffic. Just here the tribesmen had constructed a formidable abattis

of prickly brushwood, which stretched athwart the road, and dammed back

the fugitives in the shallow oval basin between the termination of the

ravine and the summit of the ridge. In this trap were caught our hapless

people and the swarm of their native followers, and now the end was very

near. From behind the barrier, and around the lip of the great trap, the

hillmen fired their hardest into the seething mass of soldiers and

followers writhing in the awful Gehenna on which the calm moon shone

down. On the edges of this whirlpool of death the fell Ghilzais were

stabbing and hacking with the ferocious industry inspired by thirst for

blood and lust for plunder. It is among the characteristics of our

diverse-natured race to die game, and even to thrill with a strange

fierce joy when hope of escape from death has all but passed away and

there remains only to sell life at the highest possible premium of

exchange. Among our people, face to face with death on the rocky

Jugdulluk, officers and soldiers alike fought with cool deadly rancour.

The brigadier and the private engaged in the same fierce _mêlée_, fought

side by side, and fell side by side. Stalwart Captain Dodgin of the 44th

slew five Afghans before he fell. Captain Nicholl of the

horse-artillery, gunless now, rallied to him the few staunch gunners who

were all that remained to him of his noble and historic troop, and led

them on to share with him a heroic death.

All did not perish on the rugged summit of the Jugdulluk. The barrier

was finally broken through, and a scant remnant of the force wrought out

its escape from the slaughter-pit. Small detachments, harassed by sudden

onslaughts, and delayed by reluctance to desert wounded comrades, were

trudging in the darkness down the long slope to the Soorkhab. The

morning of the 13th dawned near Gundamuk on the straggling group of some

twenty officers and forty-five European soldiers. Its march arrested by

sharp attacks, the little band moved aside to occupy a defensive

position on an adjacent hillock. A local sirdar invited the senior

officer to consult with him as to a pacific arrangement, and while Major

Griffiths was absent on this errand there was a temporary suspension of

hostilities. The Afghans meanwhile swarmed around the detachment with a

pretence of friendship, but presently attempts were made to snatch from

the soldiers their arms. This conduct was sternly resented, and the

Afghans were forced back. They ascended an adjacent elevation and set

themselves to the work of deliberately picking off officer after

officer, man after man. The few rounds remaining in the pouches of the

soldiers were soon exhausted, but the detachment stood fast, and calmly

awaited the inevitable end. Rush after rush was driven back from its

steadfast front, but at last, nearly all being killed or wounded, a

final onset of the enemy, sword in hand, terminated the struggle, and

completed the dismal tragedy. Captain Souter of the 44th, with three or

four privates all of whom as well as himself were wounded, was spared

and carried into captivity; he saved the colours of his regiment, which

he had tied round his waist before leaving Jugdulluk. A group of mounted

officers had pushed forward as soon as they had cleared the barrier on

the crest. Six only reached Futtehabad in safety. There they were

treacherously offered food, and while they halted a few moments to eat

two were cut down. Of the four who rode away three were overtaken and

killed within four miles of Jellalabad; one officer alone survived to

reach that haven of refuge.

The ladies, the married officers, and the original hostages, followed

Akbar Khan down the passes toward Jugdulluk, pursuing the line of

retreat strewn with its ghastly tokens of slaughter, and recognising

almost at every step the bodies of friends and comrades. At Jugdulluk

they found General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton, and Captain Johnson,

and learned the fate which had overtaken the marching force. On the

following day Akbar quitted Jugdulluk with his hostages and the ladies,

all of whom were virtually prisoners, and rode away through the

mountains in a northerly direction. On the fourth day the fort of

Budiabad in the Lughman valley was reached, where Akbar left the

prisoners while he went to attempt the reduction of Jellalabad.

CHAPTER VIII: THE SIEGE AND DEFENCE OF JELLALABAD

Sale's brigade, retreating from Gundamuk, reached Jellalabad on the 12th

November 1841. An investigation into the state of the fortifications of

that place showed them, in their existing condition, to be incapable of

resisting a vigorous assault. But it was resolved to occupy the place,

and to Captain George Broadfoot, as garrison engineer, was committed the

duty of making it defensible. This assuredly was no light task. The

enciente was far too extensive for the slender garrison, and its tracing

was radically bad. The ramparts were so dilapidated that in places they

were scarcely discernible, and the ruins strewn over what should have

been the glacis afforded near cover to assailants, whose attitude was

already so threatening as to hinder the beginning of repairing

operations. Their fire swept the defences, and their braves capered

derisively to the strains of a bagpipe on the adjacent rocky elevation,

which thenceforth went by the name of 'Piper's Hill.' A sortie on the

15th cleared the environs of the troublesome Afghans, supplies began to

come in, and Broadfoot was free to set his sappers to the task of

repairing the fortifications, in which work the entrenching tools he

had wrenched from the Cabul stores proved invaluable. How greatly Sale

had erred in shutting up his force in Jellalabad was promptly

demonstrated. The connecting posts of Gundamuk and Peshbolak had to be

evacuated; and thus, from Jumrood at the foot of the Khyber up to Cabul,

there remained no intermediate post in British possession with the

solitary exception of Jellalabad, and communications were entirely

interrupted except through the medium of furtive messengers.

The Jellalabad garrison was left unmolested for nearly a fortnight, and

the repairs were well advanced when on the 29th the Afghans came down,

invested the place, and pushed their skirmishers close up to the walls.

On December 1st Colonel Dennie headed a sortie, which worsted the

besiegers with considerable slaughter and drove them from the vicinity.

Bad news came at intervals from Cabul, and at the new year arrived a

melancholy letter from Pottinger, confirming the rumours already rife of

the murder of the Envoy, and of the virtual capitulation to which the

Cabul force had submitted. A week later an official communication was

received from Cabul, signed by General Elphinstone and Major Pottinger,

formally announcing the convention which the Cabul force had entered

into with the chiefs, and ordering the garrison of Jellalabad forthwith

to evacuate that post and retire to Peshawur, leaving behind with 'the

new Governor,' an Afghan chief who was the bearer of the humiliating

missive, the fortress guns and such stores and baggage as there lacked

transport to remove. The council of war summoned by Sale was unanimous

in favour of non-compliance with this mandate. Broadfoot urged with

vigour that an order by a superior who was no longer a free agent and

who issued it under duress, could impose no obligation of obedience.

Sale pronounced himself untrammelled by a convention forced from people

'with knives at their throats,' and was resolute in the expression of

his determination to hold Jellalabad unless ordered by the Government to

withdraw.

More and more ominous tidings poured in from Cabul. A letter received on

January both reported the Cabul force to be still in the cantonments,

living utterly at the mercy of the Afghans; another arriving on the 12th

told of the abandonment of the cantonments and the beginning of the

march, but that the forlorn wayfarers were lingering in detention at

Bootkhak, halted in their misery by the orders of Akbar Khan. Those

communications in a measure prepared the people in Jellalabad for

disaster, but not for the awful catastrophe of which Dr Brydon had to

tell, when in the afternoon of the 13th the lone man, whose approach to

the fortress Lady Butler's painting so pathetically depicts, rode

through the Cabul gate of Jellalabad. Dr Brydon was covered with cuts

and contusions, and was utterly exhausted. His first few hasty sentences

extinguished all hope in the hearts of the listeners regarding their

Cabul comrades and friends.

There was naturally great excitement in Jellalabad, but no panic. The

working parties were called in, the assembly was sounded, the gates were

closed, the walls were lined, and the batteries were manned; for it was

believed for the moment that the enemy were in full pursuit of fugitives

following in Brydon's track. The situation impressed Broadfoot with the

conviction that a crisis had come in the fortunes of the Jellalabad

garrison. He thought it his duty to lay before the General the

conditions of the critical moment which he believed to have arrived,

pointing out to him that the imperative alternatives were that he should

either firmly resolve on the defence of Jellalabad to the last

extremity, or that he should make up his mind to a retreat that very

night, while as yet retreat was practicable. Sale decided on holding on

to the place, and immediately announced to the Commander-in-Chief his

resolve to persevere in a determined defence, relying on the promise of

the earliest possible relief.

Because of the defection of his Sikh auxiliaries and the

faint-heartedness of his sepoys, Wild's efforts to cross the threshold

of the Khyber had failed, and with the tidings of his failure there came

to Sale the information that the effort for his relief must be

indefinitely postponed. It may be assumed that this intimation weakened

in some degree the General's expressed resolution to hold Jellalabad

with determination, and it is not to be denied that this resolution was

in a measure conditional on the not unwarranted expectation of early

relief. Neither he nor his adviser Macgregor appears to have realised

how incumbent on the garrison of Jellalabad it was to hold out to the

last extremity, irrespective of consequences to itself, unless it should

receive a peremptory recall from higher authority; or to have recognised

the glorious opportunity presented of inspiriting by its staunch

constancy and high-souled self-abnegation a weak government staggering

under a burden of calamity. Than Sale no braver soldier ever wore sword,

but a man may delight to head a forlorn hope and yet lack nerve to carry

with high heart a load of responsibility; nor was Macgregor so

constituted as to animate his chief to noble emprise. Fast on the heels

of the gloomy tidings from the Khyber mouth there came to them from Shah

Soojah, who was still the nominal sovereign at Cabul, a curt peremptory

letter obviously written under compulsion, of which the following were

the terms: 'Your people have concluded a treaty with us; you are still

in Jellalabad; what are your intentions? Tell us quickly.'

Sale summoned a council of war, which assembled at his quarters on

January 27th. Its proceedings were recorded, and the documents laid

before it were preserved by Captain Henry Havelock in his capacity as

Sale's staff-officer. Record and papers were reclaimed from Havelock's

custody by General Sale before the evacuation of Afghanistan, and had

been long lost to sight. They have recently been deposited among the

records of the India Office, but not before their latest non-official

possessor had published some extracts from them. It is to be hoped that

the more important documents may be given to the public in full, since

passages from documents, whether intentionally or not, may be so

extracted as to be misleading. Broadfoot, who had been a member of the

council of war, and who was apparently aware of the suppression of the

official records, wrote in 1843 a detailed narrative of its proceedings

while his recollection of them was still fresh, and this narrative he

sent to Havelock, desiring him to note 'any points erroneously stated,

distinguishing between what you may merely not remember and what you

know I am mistaken in.' Havelock, who was a loyal and ardent admirer of

General Sale, having sparsely annotated Broadfoot's narrative, returned

it with the statement that he had compared it with memoranda still in

his possession, and that he considered that it 'contributes a fair and

correct statement of that which occurred.' The officers comprising the

council to whom Sale and Macgregor addressed themselves were Colonel

Dennie of the 13th, Colonel Monteath of the 35th N.I., Captains

Backhouse and Abbott of the artillery, Captain Oldfield commanding the

cavalry, and Captain Broadfoot the garrison engineer. The following is a

summary of the proceedings, as recorded by Broadfoot and authenticated

by Havelock.

After a few formal words from General Sale, he called on Macgregor to

submit a matter on which that political officer and himself were agreed.

Macgregor then described the situation from the point of view of Sale

and himself, and expressed their united conviction that nothing was to

be hoped for from the Government. Reserving his own liberty of action,

he sought the opinion of the officers on offers received from Akbar Khan

to treat for the evacuation of Afghanistan, and he laid before them a

draft answer to Shah Soojah's curt letter, professing the readiness of

the garrison to evacuate Jellalabad on his requisition, since it was

held only for him, but naming certain conditions: the exchange of

hostages, the restoration of British prisoners and hostages in exchange

for the Afghan hostages on arrival of the force at Peshawur, escort

thither 'in safety and honour,' with arms, colours, and guns, and

adequate assistance of supplies and transport. Both Sale and Macgregor

frankly owned that they were resolved to yield, and negotiate for safe

retreat.

Great excitement from the first had pervaded the assemblage, and when

Macgregor had finished his statement Broadfoot arose in his wrath. He

declined to believe that the Government had abandoned the Jellalabad

garrison to its fate, and there was a general outburst of indignation

when Sale produced a letter carrying that significance. Broadfoot waxed

so warm in his remonstrances against the proposed action that an

adjournment was agreed to. Next day Sale and Macgregor urged that it was

impossible to hold out much longer, that later retreat would be

impracticable, and that the scheme they proposed was safe and

honourable. Broadfoot denounced it as disgraceful, contended that they

could hold Jellalabad indefinitely--'could colonise if they liked'--and

retreat at discretion. He denied that the place was held for Shah

Soojah, and challenged their right to surrender the post unless by

Government order. Hostages he proclaimed worthless while the Afghans

held heavier pledges of ours in the shape of prisoners and hostages. He

denounced as disgraceful the giving of hostages on our part. Monteath's

remark that nobody would go as a hostage roused Oldfield to express

himself tersely but pointedly on the subject. 'I for one,' he exclaimed

in great agitation, 'will fight here to the last drop of my blood, but I

plainly declare that I will never be a hostage, and I am surprised that

anyone should propose such a thing, or regard an Afghan's word as worth

anything.' The resolution to treat for the abandonment of Jellalabad was

carried, Oldfield only voting with Broadfoot against it, but the

stipulations: regarding hostages were omitted. Broadfoot continued to

press modifications of the conditions set out in the proposed reply,

pleading, but in vain, that the restoration of the prisoners in Afghan

hands before departure of the garrison should be insisted on; and that

since evacuation was resolved on, it should at least be conducted as a

military operation, and not degradingly under escort. Then, and little

wonder, he objected to expressions in the draft letter as too abject,

and he was successful in procuring the alteration of them. The letter

was written out, signed by Macgregor, and despatched to Cabul. It was

agreed that those members of the council who chose to do should record

in writing the reasons for their votes, and this was done by Dennie,

Monteath, Abbott, and Broadfoot.

Broadfoot, pending an answer from Cabul, set the garrison to work in

digging a ditch round the fortifications. The reply from the Shah, to

the effect 'If you are sincere in offers, let all the chief gentlemen

affix their seals,' was laid before the reassembled council on February

12th. The implied imputation on the good faith of British officers might

well have stung to indignation the meekest; but the council's opinion

was taken as to the expediency of complying with the derogatory request

made by the Shah, as well as of a stipulation--a modification of what

Broadfoot had originally urged in vain--for the surrender of all

prisoners, hostages, sick, and wounded under detention in Afghanistan,

on the arrival at Peshawur of the Jellalabad brigade. The members of

council, who in the long interval since the previous meeting had been

gradually regaining their self-respect and mental equipoise, unanimously

declined to accept the proposals tendered them by their commanding

officer and his political ally; and a letter written by Monteath was

accepted, which 'was not a continuation of the negotiation.'

Thus ended the deliberations of the memorable council of war, whose

eleventh hour resolve to 'hold the fort' mainly averted the ruin of

British prestige in India and throughout the regions bordering on our

Eastern Empire; and the credit of its final decision to repudiate the

humiliating proposals of Sale and Macgregor belongs to George Broadfoot,

who was firmly though silently backed by Havelock. The day after that

decision was formulated a letter came from Peshawur informing the

garrison that every effort would be made for its relief; and thenceforth

there was no more talk of surrender, nor was the courage of the little

brigade impaired even when the earthquake of February 19th shook the

newly repaired fortifications into wreck. Broadfoot's vehement energy

infected the troops, and by the end of the month the parapets were

entirely restored, the bastions repaired, and every battery

re-established.

After the council of war had rejected the proposals laid before it, a

decision which in effect involved the maintenance of the defence to the

last extremity, nearly two months passed without the occurrence of any

important event, except the speedily retrieved misfortune of the

earthquake of February 19th. The close investment of the place by Akbar

Khan thwarted the efforts of the foraging parties to obtain much needed

supplies. Those efforts were not vigorous, for Sale, aware of his

garrison's poverty of ammunition, was bent on a passive defence, and

steadily refused his consent to vigorous sorties. The policy may have

had its abstract merits, but it was certainly unsatisfactory in this

respect, that perseverance in it involved the unpleasantness of

apparently inevitable starvation. General Pollock had arrived in

Peshawur, and was making energetic efforts to get his force in order for

the accomplishment of the relief of Jellalabad. But he foresaw serious

delays, and so late as the middle of March was still unable to specify

with any definiteness the probable date of his arrival at that place.

The European troops in Jellalabad would be out of meat rations early in

April, and Havelock's calculation was that the grain, on which mainly

subsisted the native soldiers, who had been on half rations since the

new year, would be exhausted before the middle of that month. Sale

modified his policy of inactivity when he learned that the blockading

Afghans were attempting to drive a mine under a salient of the defences,

and Dennie on March 11th led out a sally, destroyed the works, and

thrust back Akbar's encroachments. The general lack of vigour, however,

on the garrison's part emboldened the Afghans so much that they actually

grazed their flocks of sheep within 600 yards of the walls. This was too

impudent, and the General consented to a raid, which resulted in the

acquisition of some 500 sheep, an invaluable addition to the

commissariat resources. It is worth recording that the native regiment

gave up its share of the sheep to the soldiers of the 13th, on the

ground that Europeans needed animal food more than did natives of India.

On April 6th the Afghan leader fired a salute in triumph for a

supposititious repulse of Pollock in the Khyber. In regard to what then

happened there is a strange conflict of testimony. General Sale, in a

private letter written six weeks later, states: 'I made my arrangements

with Macgregor to sally the next day, provided we did not hear that

Pollock had forced the pass.' Akbar's salutes, and the information of

spies that Pollock had fallen back, 'made us look very grave--our case

desperate, our provisions nearly out, and no relief at hand. I therefore

decided to play a bold stroke to relieve ourselves, and give courage to

Pollock's force in case of success. If we failed in thrashing Akbar, we

would have left our bones on the field.' Abbott's diary of April 5th and

6th records that spies reported that Pollock had been repulsed at Ali

Musjid, and that the heads of three of his officers had been sent in to

Akbar, whereupon 'all the commanding officers waited on the General,

beseeching him to attack Akbar instantly. The 13th and the battery got

all ready for work, but the old General was obstinate, and refused to

act.' Backhouse's diary (April 6th) mentions that Pollock having been

reported repulsed, and Akbar having fired a salute, the officers

commanding corps and detachments went in a body and proposed to the

General to attack Akbar instantly, but without success. 'Immediately the

matter was broached, the General set his face against anything of the

kind, and disagreed about every point--insisted that the enemy had 5000

or 6000 men in camp, and were too strong for us; and then, the next

minute, that it was no use going out as we couldn't punish them, as they

_wouldn't stand_; and concluding with usual excuse for inactivity, "It

isn't our game." Words ran precious high....'

Whether spontaneously or under pressure, General Sale must have ordered

a sortie in force; for at dawn of the 7th three infantry columns marched

out by the Cabul gate, the right commanded by Havelock, the centre by

Dennie, the left by Monteath, General Sale being in command of the whole

force. Akbar, reputed about 5000 strong, was in formation in front of

his camp about three miles west of Jellalabad, his left flank resting on

the river, with an advanced post of 300 men in the 'patched up' fort

about midway between his camp and Jellalabad. The prescribed tactics

were to march straight on the enemy, with which Monteath and Havelock

complied; but Dennie, whether with or without orders is a matter in

dispute, diverged to assail the 'patched up' fort. The outer defences

were carried, gallant old Dennie riding at the head of his men to

receive his death wound. In vain did the guns for which Sale had sent

batter at the inner keep, and the General abandoning the attempt to

reduce it, led on in person the centre column. Meanwhile Havelock and

Monteath had been moving steadily forward, until halted by orders when

considerably advanced. Havelock had to form square once and again

against the Afghan horsemen, who, however, did not dare to charge home.

The artillery came to the front at the gallop, and poured shot and shell

into Akbar's mass. The three columns, now abreast of each other,

deployed into line, and moving forward at the double in the teeth of the

Afghan musketry fire, swept the enemy clean out of his position,

capturing his artillery, firing his camp, and putting him to utter rout.

Akbar, by seven o'clock in the April morning, had been signally beaten

in the open field by the troops he had boasted of blockading in the

fortress.

The garrison of Jellalabad had thus wrought out its own relief.

Thenceforth it experienced neither annoyance nor scarcity. Pollock

arrived a fortnight after the dashing sally which had given the garrison

deliverance, and the head of his column was played into its camp on the

Jellalabad plain by the band of the 13th, to the significant tune 'Oh,

but ye've been lang o'coming.' The magniloquent Ellenborough dubbed

Sale's brigade 'the Illustrious Garrison,' and if the expression is

overstrained, its conduct was without question eminently creditable.

CHAPTER IX: RETRIBUTION AND RESCUE

It was little wonder that the unexpected tidings of the Cabul outbreak,

and the later shock of the catastrophe in the passes, should have

temporarily unnerved the Governor-General. But Lord Auckland rallied his

energies with creditable promptitude. His successor was on the voyage

out, and in the remnant of his term that remained he could not do more

than make dispositions which his successor might find of service. Every

soldier of the 'Army of Retribution' was despatched to the frontier

during Lord Auckland's rule. Lord Auckland appointed to the command of

the troops which he was sending forward a quiet, steadfast, experienced

officer of the artillery arm, who had fought under Lake at Deig and

Bhurtpore, and during his forty years of honest service had soldiered

steadily from the precipices of Nepaul to the rice-swamps of the

Irrawaddy. Pollock was essentially the fitting man for the service that

lay before him, characterised as he was by strong sense, shrewd

sagacity, calm firmness, and self-command. When his superior devolved on

him an undue onus of responsibility he was to prove himself thoroughly

equal to the occasion, and the sedate, balanced man murmured not, but

probably was rather amused when he saw a maker of phrases essaying to

deck himself in his laurels. There were many things in Lord Auckland's

Indian career of which it behoved him to repent, but it must go to his

credit that he gave Pollock high command, and that he could honestly

proclaim, as he made his preparations to quit the great possession whose

future his policy had endangered, that he had contributed toward the

retrieval of the crisis by promptly furthering 'such operations as might

be required for the maintenance of the honour and interests of the

British Government.'

Brigadier Wild reached Peshawur with a brigade of four sepoy regiments

just before the new year. He was destitute of artillery, his sepoys were

in poor heart, and the Sikh contingent was utterly untrustworthy. To

force the Khyber seemed hopeless. Wild, however, made the attempt

energetically enough. But the Sikhs mutinied, expelled their officers,

and marched back to Peshawur; Wild's sepoys, behaving badly, were driven

back with loss from the mouth of the pass, and Wild himself was wounded.

When Pollock reached Peshawur on February 6th, 1842, he found half of

Wild's brigade sick in hospital, and the whole of it in a state of utter

demoralisation. A second brigade commanded by Brigadier-General

McCaskill, had accompanied Pollock, the sepoys of which promptly fell

under the evil influence of Wild's dispirited and disaffected regiments.

Pollock had to resist the pressing appeals for speedy relief made to him

from Jellalabad, and patiently to devote weeks and months to the

restoration of the morale and discipline of the disheartened sepoys of

his command, and to the reinvigoration of their physique. By kindness

combined with firmness he was able gradually to inspire them with

perfect trust and faith in him, and when in the end of March there

reached him a third brigade, comprising British cavalry and

horse-artillery, ordered forward by Lord Auckland on receipt of tidings

of the destruction of the Cabul force, he felt himself at length

justified in advancing with confidence.

[Illustration: Sir George Pollock]

Before daylight on the morning of April 5th Pollock's army about 8000

strong, consisting of eight infantry regiments, three cavalry corps, a

troop and two batteries of artillery, and a mountain train, marched from

the Jumrood camping ground into the portals of the Khyber. Pollock's

scheme of operations was perfect in conception and complete in detail.

His main column, with strong advance and rear-guards, was to pursue the

usual road through the pass. It was flanked on each side by a chain of

infantry detachments, whose assigned duty was to crown the heights and

sweep them clear of assailants in advance of the head of the central

column. The Afreedi hill men had blocked the throat of the pass by a

formidable barrier, behind which they were gathered in force, waiting

for the opportunity which was never to come to them. For the main body

of Pollock's force serenely halted, while the flanking columns, breaking

into skirmishing order, hurried in the grey dawn along the slopes and

heights, dislodging the Afreedi pickets as they advanced, driving them

before them with resolute impetuosity, and pushing forward so far as to

take in reverse with their concentrated fire the great barrier and its

defenders. The clansmen, recognising the frustration of their devices,

deserted the position in its rear, and rushed tumultuously away to crags

and sungahs where knife and jezail might still be plied. The centre

column then advanced unmolested to the deserted barricade, through which

the sappers soon cleared a thoroughfare. The guns swept with shrapnel

the hill-sides in front, the flanking detachments pushed steadily

further and yet further forward, chasing and slaying the fugitive

hillmen; and the Duke of Wellington's observation was that morning fully

made good, that he had never heard that our troops were not equal, as

well in their personal activity as in their arms, to contend with and

overcome any natives of hills whatever.' The whole British force, in its

order of three columns, the centre in the bed of the hollow, the wings

on the flanking ridges, steadily if slowly moved on in the assured

consciousness of victory. It was sunset before the rear-guard was in

camp under the reoccupied Ali Musjid. The Sikh troops who were to keep

open Pollock's communications with Peshawur moved simultaneously on Ali

Musjid by a more circuitous route.

While Pollock was halted opposite the throat of the Khyber waiting for

the demolition of the Afreedi barricade, the ill-starred Shah Soojah was

being murdered, on his way from the Balla Hissar of Cabul to review on

the Siah Sung slopes the reinforcements which Akbar Khan was clamouring

that he should lead down to aid that Sirdar in reducing Jellalabad

before relief should arrive. Ever since the outbreak of November Shah

Soojah had led a dog's life. He had reigned in Cabul, but he had not

ruled. The Sirdars dunned him for money, and jeered at his protestations

of poverty. It is not so much a matter of surprise that he should have

been murdered as that, feeble, rich, and loathed, he should have been

let live so long. It does not seem worth while to discuss the vexed

question whether or not he was faithful to his British allies. He was

certainly entitled to argue that he owed us nothing, since what we did

in regard to him was nakedly for our own purposes. Shah Soojah's second

son Futteh Jung had himself proclaimed his father's successor. The

vicissitudes of his short reign need not be narrated. While Pollock was

gathering his brigades at Gundamuk in the beginning of the following

September, a forlorn Afghan, in dirty and tattered rags, rode into his

camp. This scarecrow was Futteh Jung, who, unable to endure longer his

sham kingship and the ominous tyranny of Akbar Khan, had fled from Cabul

in disguise to beg a refuge in the British camp.

Pollock's march from Ali Musjid to Jellalabad was slow, but almost

unmolested. He found, in his own words, 'the fortress strong, the

garrison healthy; and except for wine and beer, better off than we are.'

One principal object of his commission had been accomplished; he had

relieved the garrison of Jellalabad, and was in a position to ensure its

safe withdrawal. But his commission gave him a considerable discretion,

and a great company of his countrymen and countrywomen were still in

Afghan durance. The calm pulsed, resolute commander had views of his own

as to his duty, and he determined in his patient, steadfast way to tarry

a while on the Jellalabad plain, in the hope that the course of events

might play into his hands.

Maclaren's brigade, which in the beginning of November 1841 General

Elphinstone had instructed General Nott to despatch with all speed to

Cabul, returned to Candahar early in December. Nott in despatching it

had deferred reluctantly to superior authority, and probably Maclaren

not sorry to have in the snowfall a pretext for retracing his steps.

Atta Mahomed Khan, sent from Cabul to foment mischief in the Candahar

regions, had gathered to his banner a considerable force. General Nott

quietly waited until the Sirdar, at the head of some 10,000 men, came

within five miles of Candahar, and then he crushed him after twenty

minutes' fighting. The fugitives found refuge in the camp of the

disaffected Dooranee chiefs, whose leader Meerza Ahmed was sedulously

trying to tamper with Nott's native troops, severe weather hindering the

General from attacking him. Near the end of February there reached Nott

a letter two months old from Elphinstone and Pottinger, ordering him to

evacuate Candahar and retire to India, in pursuance of the convention

into which they had entered. The Dooranee chiefs astutely urged that

Shah Soojah, no longer supported by British bayonets, was now ruling in

Cabul, as an argument in favour of Nott's withdrawal. Nott's answer was

brief: 'I will not treat with any person whatever for the retirement of

the British troops from Afghanistan, until I have received instructions

from the Supreme Government'--a blunt sentence in curious contrast to

the missive which Sale and Macgregor laid before the Jellalabad council

of war. When presently there came a communication from Government

intimating that the continued occupation of Candahar was regarded as

conducive to the interest of the state, Nott and Rawlinson were in a

position to congratulate themselves on having anticipated the wishes of

their superiors. The situation, however, became so menacing that early

in March its Afghan inhabitants were expelled from the city of Candahar

to the last soul; and then Nott, leaving a garrison in the place, took

the field in force. The old soldier, wary as he was, became the victim

of Meerza's wily strategy. As he advanced, the Afghans retired,

skirmishing assiduously. Leaving Nott in the Turnuk valley, they doubled

back on Candahar, and in the early darkness of the night of the 10th

March they furiously assailed the city gates. They fired one of the

gates, and the swarming ghazees tore down with fury its blazing planks

and the red-hot ironwork. The garrison behaved valiantly. Inside the

burning gate they piled up a rampart of grain bags, on which they

trained a couple of guns loaded with case. For three hours after the

gate fell did the fanatics hurl assault after assault on the interior

barricade. They were terribly critical hours, but the garrison

prevailed, and at midnight, with a loss of many hundreds, the obstinate

assailants sullenly drew off. Nott, although urgently summoned, was

unable to reach Candahar until the 12th.

Candahar was fortunately preserved, but at the end of March the

unpleasant tidings came that Ghuznee, which British valour had carried

by storm three years before, had now reverted into Afghan possession.

The siege had lasted for nearly three and a half months. In mid-December

the besiegers occupied the city in force, introduced by the citizens

through a subterranean way; and the garrison, consisting chiefly of a

regiment of sepoys, withdrew into the citadel. The bitter winter and the

scant rations took the heart out of the natives of the warm and fertile

Indian plains; but nevertheless it was not until March 6th that the

garrison, under pledge of being escorted to Peshawur with colours, arms,

and baggage, marched out. The unfortunates would have done better to

have died a soldierly death, with arms in their hands and the glow of

fighting in their hearts. As the event was, faith with them was broken,

and save for a few officers who were made prisoners, most were

slaughtered, or perished in a vain attempt to escape.

During his long isolation Nott's resources had been seriously depleted,

and he had ordered up from Scinde a brigade, escorting much needed

treasure, ammunition, and medicines. Brigadier England was entrusted

with the command of this force, whose assemblage at Quetta was expected

about the end of March. Pending its gathering England had moved out

toward the entrance of the Kojuk Pass, where he met with a sharp and far

from creditable repulse, and fell back on Quetta miserably disheartened,

suggesting in his abjectness that Nott should abandon Candahar and

retire on him. The stout old soldier at Candahar waxed wroth at the

limpness of his subordinate, and addressed to England a biting letter,

ordering peremptorily the latter's prompt advance to Candahar, engaging

to dry-nurse him through the Kojuk by a brigade sent down from Candahar

for the purpose, and remarking sarcastically, 'I am well aware that war

cannot be made without loss; but yet perhaps British troops can oppose

Asiatic armies without defeat.' Thus exhorted England moved, to find his

march through the Kojuk protected by Wymer's sepoys from Candahar, who

had crowned the lateral heights before he ventured into the pass; and he

reached Candahar without maltreatment on the 10th May, bringing to Nott

the much needed supplies which rendered that resolute man equal to any

enterprise.

It remained, however, to be seen whether any enterprise was to be

permitted to him and to his brother commander lying in camp on the

Jellalabad plain. Lord Ellenborough, the successor of Lord Auckland, had

struck a firm if somewhat inexplicit note in his earliest manifesto,

dated March 13th. A single sentence will indicate its tenor: 'Whatever

course we may hereafter take must rest solely on military

considerations, and hence in the first instance regard to the safety of

our detached garrisons in Afghanistan; to the security of our troops now

in the field from unnecessary risks; and finally, to the

re-establishment of our military reputation by the infliction upon the

Afghans of some signal and decisive blow.' Those were brave words, if

only they had been adhered to. But six weeks later his lordship was

ordering Nott to evacuate Candahar and fall back on Quetta, until the

season should permit further retirement to the Indus; and instructing

Pollock, through the Commander-in-Chief, to withdraw without delay every

British soldier from Jellalabad to Peshawur, except under certain

specified eventualities, none of which were in course of occurrence.

Pollock temporised, holding on to his advanced position by the plea of

inability to retire for want of transport, claiming mildly to find

discretionary powers in the Government instructions, and cautiously

arguing in favour of an advance by a few marches to a region where

better climate was to be found, and whence he might bring to bear

stronger pressure for the liberation of the prisoners. Nott was a

narrower man than Pollock. When he got his orders he regarded them as

strictly binding, no matter how unpalatable the injunctions. 'I shall

not lose a moment,' he wrote, 'in making arrangements to carry out my

orders, without turning to the right or the left, and without inquiring

into the reasons for the measures enjoined, whatever our own opinions or

wishes may be.' He reluctantly began preparations for withdrawal.

Carriage was ordered up from Quetta, and a brigade was despatched to

withdraw the garrison of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, and to destroy the fort which

Craigie had so long and valiantly defended.

It would be tedious to detail the vacillations, the obscurities, and the

tortuosities of Lord Ellenborough's successive communications to his two

Generals in Afghanistan. Pollock had been permitted to remain about

Jellalabad until the autumn should bring cooler marching weather. Nott

had been detained at Candahar by the necessity for crushing menacing

bodies of tribal levies, but as July waned his preparations for

withdrawal were all but complete. On the 4th of that month Lord

Ellenborough wrote to him, reiterating injunctions for his withdrawal

from Afghanistan, but permitting him the alternatives of retiring by the

direct route along his line of communications over Quetta and Sukkur, or

of boxing the compass by the curiously circuitous 'retirement' _via_

Ghuznee, Cabul, and Jellalabad. Pollock, for his part, was permitted, if

he thought proper, to advance on Cabul in order to facilitate Nott's

withdrawal, if the latter should elect to 'retreat' by the circuitous

route which has just been described.

One does not care to characterise the 'heads I win, tails you lose'

policy of a Governor-General who thus shuffled off his responsibility

upon two soldiers who previously had been sedulously restricted within

narrow if varying limits. Their relief from those trammels set them

free, and it was their joy to accept the devolved responsibility, and to

act with soldierly initiative and vigour. The chief credit of the

qualified yet substantial triumph over official hesitation certainly

belongs to Pollock, who gently yet firmly forced the hand of the

Governor-General, while Nott's merit was limited to a ready acceptance

of the responsibility of a proffered option. A letter from Nott

intimating his determination to retire by way of Cabul and Jellalabad

reached Pollock in the middle of August, who immediately advanced from

Jellalabad; and his troops having concentrated at Gundamuk, he marched

from that position on 7th September, his second division, commanded by

M'Caskill, following next day. Pollock was woefully short of transport,

and therefore was compelled to leave some troops behind at Gundamuk, and

even then could carry only half the complement of tentage. But his

soldiers, who carried in their haversacks seven days' provisions, would

gladly have marched without any baggage at all, and the chief himself

was eager to hurry forward, for Nott had written that he expected to

reach Cabul on 15th September, and Pollock was burning to be there

first. In the Jugdulluk Pass, on the 8th, he found the Ghilzais in

considerable force on the heights. Regardless of a heavy artillery fire

they stood their ground, and so galled Pollock's troops with sharp

discharges from their jezails that it became necessary to send infantry

against them. They were dislodged from the mountain they had occupied by

a portion of the Jellalabad brigade, led by gallant old General Sale,

who had his usual luck in the shape of a wound.

This Jugdulluk fighting was, however, little more than a skirmish, and

Pollock's people were to experience more severe opposition before they

should emerge from the passes on to the Cabul plain. On the morning of

the 13th the concentrated force had quitted its camp in the Tezeen

valley, and had committed itself without due precaution to the passage

of the ravine beyond, when the Afghan levies with which Akbar Khan had

manned the flanking heights, opened their fire. The Sirdar had been

dissuaded by Captain Troup, one of his prisoners, from attempting futile

negotiations, and advised not to squander lives in useless opposition.

Akbar had replied that he was too deeply committed to recede, and that

his people were bent on fighting. They were not baulked in the

aspiration, which assuredly their opponents shared with at least equal

zeal. Pollock's advance guard was about the middle of the defile, when

the enemy were suddenly discovered blocking the pass in front, and

holding the heights which Pollock's light troops should have crowned in

advance of the column. Akbar's force was calculated to be about 15,000

strong, and the Afghans fought resolutely against the British regiments

which forced their way up the heights on the right and left. The ghazees

dashed down to meet the red soldiers halfway, and up among the

precipices there were many hand-to-hand encounters, in which the sword

and the bayonet fought out the issue. The Afghans made their last stand

on the rocky summit of the Huft Kotul; but from this commanding position

they were finally driven by Broadfoot's bloodthirsty little Goorkhas,

who, hillmen themselves from their birth, chased the Afghans from crag

to crag, using their fell kookeries as they pursued. It was Akbar Khan's

last effort, and the quelling of it cost Pollock the trivial loss of

thirty-two killed and 130 wounded. There was no more opposition, and it

was well for the Afghans, for the awful spectacles presented in the

Khoord Cabul Pass traversed on the following day, kindled in Pollock's

soldiers a white heat of fury. 'The bodies,' wrote Backhouse in his

unpublished diary, 'lay in heaps of fifties and hundreds, our gun wheels

crushing the bones of our late comrades at every yard for four or five

miles; indeed, the whole march from Gundamuk to Cabul may be said to

have been over the bodies of the massacred army.' Pollock marched

unmolested to Cabul on the 15th, and camped on the old racecourse to the

east of the city.

Nott, in evacuating Candahar, divided his force into two portions, the

weaker of which General England took back to India by Quetta and Sukkur,

while on August 9th Nott himself, with two European battalions, the

'beautiful sepoy regiments' of which he had a right to be proud, and his

field guns, marched away from Candahar, his face set towards Cabul. His

march was uneventful until about midway between Khelat-i-Ghilzai and

Ghuznee, when on the 28th the cavalry, unsupported and badly handled in

a stupid and unauthorised foray, lost severely in officers and men, took

to flight in panic, and so gave no little encouragement to the enemy

hanging on Nott's flank. Two days later Shumshoodeen, the Afghan leader,

drew up some 10,000 men in order of battle on high ground left of the

British camp. Nott attacked with vigour, advancing to turn the Afghan

left. In reprisal the enemy threw their strength on his left, supporting

their jezail fire with artillery, whereupon Nott changed front to the

left, deployed, and then charged. The Afghans did not wait for close

quarters, and Nott was no more seriously molested. Reaching the vicinity

of Ghuznee on September 5th, he cleared away the hordes hanging on the

heights which encircle the place. During the night the Afghans evacuated

Ghuznee. Soon after daylight the British flag was waving from the

citadel. Having fulfilled Lord Ellenborough's ridiculous order to carry

away from the tomb of Sultan Mahmoud in the environs of Ghuznee, the

supposititious gates of Somnath, a once famous Hindoo shrine in the

Bombay province of Kattiawar, Nott marched onward unmolested till within

a couple of marches of Cabul, when near Maidan he had some stubborn

fighting with an Afghan force which tried ineffectually to block his

way. On the 17th he marched into camp four miles west of Cabul, whence

he could discern, not with entire complacency, the British ensign

already flying from the Balla Hissar, for Pollock had won the race to

Cabul by a couple of days.

For months there had been negotiations for the release of the British

prisoners whom Akbar Khan had kept in durance ever since they came into

his hands in the course of the disastrous retreat from Cabul in January,

but they had been unsuccessful, and now it was known that the

unfortunate company of officers, women, and children, had been carried

off westward into the hill country of Bamian. Nott's officers, as the

Candahar column was nearing Cabul, had more than once urged him to

detach a brigade in the direction of Bamian in the hope of effecting a

rescue of the prisoners, but he had steadily refused, leaning

obstinately on the absence from the instructions sent him by Government

of any permission to engage in the enterprise of attempting their

release. He was not less brusque in the intimation of his declinature

when Pollock gave him the opportunity to send a force in support of Sir

Richmond Shakespear, whom, with a detachment of Kuzzilbash horse,

Pollock had already despatched on the mission of attempting the

liberation of the prisoners. The narrow old soldier argued doggedly that

Government 'had thrown the prisoners overboard.' Why, then, should he

concern himself with their rescue? If his superior officer should give

him a firm order, of course he would obey, but he would obey under

protest. Pollock disdained to impose so enviable a duty on a

recalcitrant man, and committed to Sale the honourable and welcome

service--all the more welcome to that officer because his wife and

daughter were among the captives. At the head of his Jellalabad brigade,

he was to push forward by forced marches on the track of Shakespear and

his horsemen.

The strange and bitter experiences of the captives, from that miserable

January Sabbath day on which they passed under the 'protection' of Akbar

Khan until the mid-September noon when Shakespear galloped into their

midst, are recorded in full and interesting detail in Lady Sale's

journal, in Vincent Eyre's _Captivity_, and in Colin Mackenzie's

biography published under the title of _Storms and Sunshine of a

Soldier's Life_. Here it is possible only briefly to summarise the chief

incidents of the captivity. The unanimous testimony of the released

prisoners was to the effect that Akbar Khan, violent, bloody, and

passionate man though he was, behaved toward them with kindness and a

certain rude chivalry. They remained for nearly three months at

Budiabad, living in great squalor and discomfort. For the whole party

there were but five rooms, each of which was occupied by from five to

ten officers and ladies, the few soldiers and non-commissioned officers,

who were mostly wounded, being quartered in sheds and cellars. Mackenzie

drily remarks that the hardships of the common lot, and the close

intimacy of prison life, brought into full relief good and evil

qualities; 'conventional polish was a good deal rubbed off and replaced

by a plainness of speech quite unheard of in good society.' Ladies and

gentlemen were necessitated to occupy the same room during the night,

but the men 'cleared out' early in the morning, leaving the ladies to

themselves. The dirt and vermin of their habitation were abominably

offensive to people to whom scrupulous cleanliness was a second nature.

But the captives were allowed to take exercise within a limited range;

they had among them a few books, and an old newspaper occasionally came

on to them from Jellalabad, with which place a fitful correspondence in

cypher was surreptitiously maintained. They had a few packs of playing

cards; they made for themselves backgammon and draught-boards, and when

in good spirits they sometimes played hopscotch and blindman's-buff with

the children of the party. The Sundays were always kept scrupulously,

Lawrence and Mackenzie conducting the service in turn.

The earthquake which shook down the fortifications of Jellalabad brought

their rickety fort about the ears of the captives. Several escaped

narrowly with their lives when walls and roofs yawned and crumbled, and

all had to turn out and sleep in the courtyard, where they suffered from

cold and saturating dews. After the defeat of Akbar by the Jellalabad

garrison on April 7th, there was keen expectation that Sale would march

to their rescue, but he came not, and there were rumours among the

guards of their impending massacre in revenge for the crushing reverse

Akbar had experienced. Presently, however, Mahomed Shah Khan, Akbar's

lieutenant, arrived full of courtesy and reassurance, but with the

unwelcome intimation that the prisoners must prepare themselves to leave

Budiabad at once, and move to a greater distance from Jellalabad and

their friends. For some preparation was not a difficult task. 'All my

worldly goods,' wrote Captain Johnson, 'might be stowed away in a

towel.' Others who possessed heavier impedimenta, were lightened of the

encumbrance by the Ghilzai Sirdar, who plundered indiscriminately. The

European soldiers were left behind at Budiabad, and the band of ladies

and gentlemen started on the afternoon of April 10th, in utter ignorance

of their destination, under the escort of a strong band of Afghans. At

the ford across the Cabul river the cavalcade found Akbar Khan wounded,

haggard, and dejected, seated in a palanquin, which, weak as he was, he

gave up to Ladies Macnaghten and Sale, who were ill. A couple of days

were spent at Tezeen among the melancholy relics of the January

slaughter, whence most of the party were carried several miles further

into the southern mountains to the village of Zandeh, while General

Elphinstone, whose end was fast approaching, remained in the Tezeen

valley with Pottinger, Mackenzie, Eyre, and one or two others. On the

evening of April 23d the poor General was finally released from

suffering of mind and body. Akbar, who when too late had offered to free

him, sent the body down to Jellalabad under a guard, and accompanied by

Moore the General's soldier servant; and Elphinstone lies with Colonel

Dennie and the dead of the defence of Jellalabad in their nameless

graves in a waste place within the walls of that place. Toward the end

of May the captives were moved up the passes to the vicinity of Cabul,

where Akbar Khan was now gradually attaining the ascendant. Prince

Futteh Jung, however, still held out in the Balla Hissar, and

intermittent firing was heard as the weary _cortège_ of prisoners

reached a fort about three miles short of Cabul, which the ladies of the

proprietor's zenana had evacuated in their favour. Here they lived if

not in contentment at least in considerable comfort and amenity. They

had the privacy of a delightful garden, and enjoyed the freedom of

bathing in the adjacent river. After the strife between Akbar Khan and

Futteh Jung ceased they were even permitted to exchange visits with

their countrymen, the hostages quartered on the Balla Hissar. They were

able to obtain money from the Cabul usurers, and thus to supply

themselves with suitable clothing and additions to their rations, and

their mails from India and Jellalabad were forwarded to them without

hindrance. The summer months were passed in captivity, but it was no

longer for them a captivity of squalor and wretchedness. Life was a good

deal better worth living in the pleasant garden house on the bank of the

Logur than it had been in the noisome squalor of Budiabad and the

vermin-infested huddlement of Zandeh. But they still-lived under the

long strain of anxiety and apprehension, for none of them knew what the

morrow might bring forth. While residing in the pleasant quarters in the

Logur valley the captives of the passes were joined by nine officers,

who were the captives of Ghuznee. After the capitulation the latter had

been treated with cruel harshness, shut up in one small room, and

debarred from fresh air and exercise. Colonel Palmer, indeed, had

undergone the barbarity of torture in the endeavour to force him to

disclose the whereabouts of treasure which he was suspected of having

buried.

Akbar had full and timely intimation of the mutual intention of the

British generals at Jellalabad and Candahar to march on Cabul, and did

not fail to recognise of what value to him in extremity might be his

continued possession of the prisoners. They had been warned of their

probable deportation to the remote and rugged Bamian; and the toilsome

journey thither was begun on the evening of August 25th. A couple of

ailing families alone, with a surgeon in charge of them, were allowed to

remain behind; all the others, hale and sick, had to travel, the former

on horseback, the latter carried in camel panniers. The escort consisted

of an irregular regiment of Afghan infantry commanded by one Saleh

Mahomed Khan, who when a subadar serving in one of the Shah's Afghan

regiments had deserted to Dost Mahomed. The wayfarers, female as well as

male, wore the Afghan costume, in order that they might attract as

little notice as possible.

Bamian was reached on September 3d, where the wretchedness of the

quarters contrasted vividly with the amenity of those left behind on the

Cabul plain. But the wretchedness of Bamian was not to be long endured.

An intimacy had been struck up between Captain Johnson and Saleh

Mahomed, and the latter cautiously hinted that a reward and a pension

might induce him to carry his charges into the British camp. On

September 11th there was a private meeting between the Afghan commandant

and three British officers, Pottinger, Johnson, and Lawrence. Saleh

Mahomed intimated the receipt of instructions from the Sirdar to carry

the prisoners over the Hindoo Koosh into Khooloom, and leave them there

to seeming hopeless captivity. But on the other hand a messenger had

reached Saleh from Mohun Lal with the assurance that General Pollock, if

he restored the prisoners, would ensure him a reward of 20,000 rupees,

and a life pension of 12,000 rupees a year. Saleh Mahomed demanded and

received a guarantee from the British officers; and the captives bound

themselves to make good from their own resources their redemption money.

The Afghan ex-Subadar proved himself honest; the captives were captives

no longer, and they proceeded to assert themselves in the masterful

British manner. They hoisted the national flag; Pottinger became once

again the high-handed 'political,' and ordered the local chiefs to come

to his durbar and receive dresses of honour. Their fort was put into a

state of defence, and a store of provisions was gathered in case of a

siege. But in mid-September came the tidings that Akbar had been

defeated at Tezeen, and had fled no one knew whither, whereupon the

self-emancipated party set out on the march to Cabul. At noon of the

17th they passed into the safe guardianship of Shakespear and his

horsemen. Three days later, within a march of Cabul, there was reached

the column which Sale had taken out, and on September 21st Pollock

greeted the company of men and women whose rescue had been wrought out

by his cool, strong steadfastness.

Little more remains to be told. There was an Afghan force still in arms

at Istalif, a beautiful village of the inveterately hostile Kohistanees;

a division marched to attack it, carried the place by assault, burnt

part of it, and severely smote the garrison. Utter destruction was the

fate of Charikar, the capital of the Kohistan, where Codrington's

Goorkha regiment had been destroyed. Pollock determined to 'set a mark'

on Cabul to commemorate the retribution which the British had exacted.

He spared the Balla Hissar, and abstained from laying the city in ruins,

contenting himself with the destruction of the principal bazaar, through

which the heads of Macnaghten and Burnes had been paraded, and in which

their mangled bodies had been exposed. Prince Futteh Jung, tired of his

vicissitudes in the character of an Afghan monarch, ceded what of a

throne he possessed to another puppet of his race, and gladly

accompanied the British armies to India. Other waifs of the wreck of a

nefarious and disastrous enterprise, among them old Zemaun Khan, who had

been our friend throughout, and the family of the ill-fated Shah Soojah,

were well content to return to the exile which afforded safety and

quietude. There also accompanied the march of the humane Pollock a great

number of the mutilated and crippled camp followers of Elphinstone's

army who had escaped with their lives from its destruction. On the 12th

of October the forces of Pollock and of Nott turned their backs on

Cabul, which no British army was again to see for nearly forty years,

and set out on their march down the passes. Jellalabad and Ali Musjid

were partially destroyed in passing. Pollock's division reached Peshawur

without loss, thanks to the precautions of its chief; but with M'Caskill

and Nott the indomitable Afghans had the last word, cutting off their

stragglers, capturing their baggage, and in the final skirmish killing

and wounding some sixty men of Nott's command.

Of the bombastic and grotesque paeans of triumph emitted by Lord

Ellenborough, whose head had been turned by a success to which he had

but scantly contributed, nothing need now be said, nor of the garish

pageant with which he received the armies as they re-entered British

territory at Ferozepore. As they passed down through the Punjaub, Dost

Mahomed passed up on his way to reoccupy the position from which he had

been driven. And so ended the first Afghan war, a period of history in

which no redeeming features are perceptible except the defence of

Jellalabad, the dogged firmness of Nott, and Pollock's noble and

successful constancy of purpose. Beyond this effulgence there spreads a

sombre welter of misrepresentation and unscrupulousness, intrigue, moral

deterioration, and dishonour unspeakable.

PART II: THE SECOND AFGHAN WAR

CHAPTER I: THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

A brief period of peace intervened between the ratification of the

treaty of Gundamuk on May 30th, 1879, and the renewal of hostilities

consequent on the massacre at Cabul of Sir Louis Cavagnari and the whole

_entourage_ of the mission of which he was the head. There was nothing

identical or even similar in the motives of the two campaigns, and

regarded purely on principle they might be regarded as two distinct

wars, rather than as successive campaigns of one and the same war. But

the interval between them was so short that the ink of the signatures to

the treaty of Gundamuk may be said to have been scarcely dry when the

murder of the British Envoy tore that document into bloody shreds; and

it seems the simplest and most convenient method to designate the two

years of hostilities from November 1878 to September 1880, as the

'second Afghan war,' notwithstanding the three months' interval of peace

in the summer of 1879.

Dost Mahomed died in 1863, and after a long struggle his son Shere Ali

possessed himself of the throne bequeathed to him by his father. The

relations between Shere Ali and the successive Viceroys of India were

friendly, although not close. The consistent aim of the British policy

was to maintain Afghanistan in the position of a strong, friendly, and

independent state, prepared in certain contingencies to co-operate in

keeping at a distance foreign intrigue or aggression; and while this

object was promoted by donations of money and arms, to abstain from

interference in the internal affairs of the country, while according a

friendly recognition to the successive occupants of its throne, without

undertaking indefinite liabilities in their interest. The aim, in a

word, was to utilise Afghanistan as a 'buffer' state between the

north-western frontier of British India and Russian advances from the

direction of Central Asia. Shere Ali was never a very comfortable ally;

he was of a saturnine and suspicious nature, and he seems also to have

had an overweening sense of the value of the position of Afghanistan,

interposed between two great powers profoundly jealous one of the other.

He did not succeed with Lord Northbrook in an attempt to work on that

Viceroy by playing off the bogey of Russian aggression; and as the

consequence of this failure he allowed himself to display marked

evidences of disaffected feeling. Cognisance was taken of this 'attitude

of extreme reserve,' and early in 1876 Lord Lytton arrived in India

charged with instructions to break away from the policy designated as

that of 'masterly inactivity,' and to initiate a new basis of relations

with Afghanistan and its Ameer.

Lord Lytton's instructions directed him to despatch without delay a

mission to Cabul, whose errand would be to require of the Ameer the

acceptance of a permanent Resident and free access to the frontier

positions of Afghanistan on the part of British officers, who should

have opportunity of conferring with the Ameer on matters of common

interest with 'becoming attention to their friendly councils.' Those

were demands notoriously obnoxious to the Afghan monarch and the Afghan

people. Compliance with them involved sacrifice of independence, and the

Afghan loathing of Feringhee officials in their midst had been fiercely

evinced in the long bloody struggle and awful catastrophe recorded in

earlier pages of this volume. Probably the Ameer, had he desired, would

not have dared to concede such demands on any terms, no matter how full

of advantage. But the terms which Lord Lytton was instructed to tender

as an equivalent were strangely meagre. The Ameer was to receive a money

gift, and a precarious stipend regarding which the new Viceroy was to

'deem it inconvenient to commit his government to any permanent

pecuniary obligation.' The desiderated recognition of Abdoolah Jan as

Shere Ali's successor was promised with the qualifying reservation that

the promise 'did not imply or necessitate any intervention in the

internal affairs of the state.' The guarantee against foreign aggression

was vague and indefinite, and the Government of India reserved to itself

entire 'freedom of judgment as to the character of circumstances

involving the obligation of material support.'

The Ameer replied to the notice that a mission was about to proceed to

Cabul by a courteous declinature to receive an Envoy, assigning several

specious reasons. He was quite satisfied with the existing friendly

relations, and desired no change in them; he could not guarantee the

safety of the Envoy and his people; if he admitted a British mission, he

would have no excuse for refusing to receive a Russian one. An

intimation was conveyed to the Ameer that if he should persist in his

refusal to receive the mission, the Viceroy would have no other

alternative than to regard Afghanistan as a state which had 'voluntarily

isolated itself from the alliance and support of the British

Government.' The Ameer arranged that the Vakeel of the Indian Government

should visit Simla, carrying with him full explanations, and charged to

lay before the Viceroy sundry grievances which were distressing Shere

Ali. That functionary took back to Cabul certain minor concessions, but

conveyed the message also that those concessions were contingent on the

Ameer's acceptance of British officers about his frontiers, and that it

would be of no avail to send an Envoy to the conference at Peshawur for

which sanction was given, unless he were commissioned to agree to this

condition as the fundamental basis of a treaty. Before the Vakeel

quitted Simla he had to listen to a truculent address from Lord Lytton,

in the course of which Shere Ali's position was genially likened to that

of 'an earthen pipkin between two iron pots.' Before Sir Lewis Pelly and

the Ameer's representative met at Peshawur in January 1877, Shere Ali

had not unnaturally been perturbed by the permanent occupation of

Quetta, on the southern verge of his dominions, as indicating, along

with other military dispositions, an intended invasion. The Peshawur

conference, which from the first had little promise, dragged on

unsatisfactorily until terminated by the death of the Ameer's

representative, whereupon Sir Lewis Pelly was recalled by Lord Lytton,

notwithstanding the latter's cognisance that Shere Ali was despatching

to Peshawur a fresh Envoy authorised to assent to all the British

demands. The justification advanced by Lord Lytton for this procedure

was the discovery purported to have been made by Sir Lewis Pelly that

the Ameer was intriguing with General Kaufmann at Tashkend. Since Shere

Ali was an independent monarch, it was no crime on his part to enter

into negotiations with another power than Great Britain, although if the

worried and distracted man did so the charge of folly may be laid to

him, since the Russians were pretty certain to betray him after having

made a cat's-paw of him, and since in applying to them he involved

himself in the risk of hostile action on the part of the British. The

wisdom of Lord Lytton's conduct is not apparent. The truculent policy of

which he was the instrument was admittedly on the point of triumphing;

and events curiously falsified his short-sighted anticipation of the

unlikelihood, because of the Russo-Turkish war then impending, of any

_rapprochement_ between the Ameer and the Russian authorities in Central

Asia. The Viceroy withdrew his Vakeel from Cabul, and in the recognition

of the Ameer's attitude of 'isolation and scarcely veiled hostility'

Lord Salisbury authorised Lord Lytton to protect the British frontier

by such measures as circumstances should render expedient, 'without

regard to the wishes of the Ameer or the interests of his dynasty.' Lord

Lytton took no measures, expedient or otherwise, in the direction

indicated by Lord Salisbury; the Ameer, as if he had been a petted boy

consigned to the corner, was abandoned to his sullen 'isolation,' and

the Russians adroitly used him to involve us in a war which lasted two

years, cost us the lives of many valiant men, caused us to incur an

expenditure of many millions, and left our relations with Afghanistan in

all essential respects in the same condition as Lord Lytton found them

when he reached India with the 'new policy' in his pocket.

If the Russians could execute as thoroughly as they can plan skilfully,

there would be hardly any limit to their conquests. When England was

mobilising her forces after the treaty of San Stefano, and ordering into

the Mediterranean a division of sepoys drawn from the three presidencies

of her Indian Empire, Russia for her part was concerting an important

diversion in the direction of the north-western frontier of that great

possession. But for the opportune conclusion of the treaty of Berlin,

the question as to the ability of sepoy troops stiffened by British

regiments to cope with the mixed levies of the Tzar might have been

tried out on stricken fields between the Oxus and the Indus. When

Gortschakoff returned from Berlin to St Petersburg with his version of

'Peace with Honour'--Bessarabia and Batoum thrown in--Kaufmann had to

countermand the concentration of troops that had been in progress on the

northern frontier of Afghanistan. But the Indian division was still much

in evidence in the Mediterranean, its tents now gleaming on the brown

slopes of Malta, now crowning the upland of Larnaca and nestling among

the foliage of Kyrenea. Kaufmann astutely retorted on this demonstration

by despatching, not indeed an expedition, but an embassy to Cabul; and

when Stolietoff, the gallant defender of the Schipka Pass, rode into the

Balla Hissar on August 11th, 1878, Shere Ali received him with every

token of cordiality and regard.

No other course was now open to Her Majesty's Government than to insist

on the reception at Cabul of a British mission. The gallant veteran

officer Sir Neville Chamberlain, known to be held in regard by the

Ameer, was named as Envoy, and an emissary was sent to Cabul in advance

with information of the date fixed for the setting out of the mission.

Shere Ali was greatly perplexed, and begged for more time. 'It is not

proper,' he protested, 'to use pressure in this way; it will tend to a

complete rupture.' But Sir Neville Chamberlain was satisfied that the

Ameer was trifling with the Indian Government; and he had certain

information that the Ameer, his Ministers, and the Afghan outpost

officers, had stated plainly that, if necessary, the advance of the

mission would be arrested by force. This was what in effect happened

when on September 21st Major Cavagnari rode forward to the Afghan post

in the Khyber Pass. The officer who courteously stopped him assured him

that he had orders to oppose by force the progress of Sir Neville and

his mission, so Cavagnari shook hands with the Afghan major and rode

back to Peshawur.

The Viceroy sought permission to declare war immediately,

notwithstanding his condition of unpreparedness; but the Home Government

directed him instead to require in temperate language an apology and the

acceptance of a permanent mission, presenting at the same time the

ultimatum that if a satisfactory reply should not be received on or

before the 20th November hostilities would immediately commence.

Meanwhile military preparations were actively pushed forward. The scheme

of operations was as follows: three columns of invasion were to move

simultaneously, one through the Khyber Pass to Dakka, another through

the Kuram valley, south of the Khyber, with the Peiwar Pass as its

objective, and a third from Quetta into the Pisheen valley, to march

forward to Candahar after reinforcement by a division from Mooltan. To

General Sir Sam Browne was assigned the command of the Khyber column,

consisting of about 10,000 men, with thirty guns; to General Roberts the

command of the Kuram valley column, of about 5,500 men, with twenty-four

guns; and to General Biddulph the command of the Quetta force, numbering

some 6000 men, with eighteen guns. When General Donald Stewart should

bring up from Mooltan the division which was being concentrated there,

he was to command the whole southern force moving on Candahar. The

reserve division gathering at Hassan Abdul and commanded by General

Maude, would support the Khyber force; another reserve division massing

at Sukkur under General Primrose, would act in support of the Candahar

force; and a contingent contributed by the Sikh Feudatory States and

commanded by Colonel Watson, was to do duty on the Kurum line of

communication. The Generals commanding columns were to act independently

of each other, taking instructions direct from Army and Government

headquarters.

No answer to the ultimatum was received from the Ameer, and on the

morning of November 21st Sir Sam Browne crossed the Afghan frontier and

moved up the Khyber on Ali Musjid with his third and fourth brigades and

the guns. Overnight he had detached Macpherson's and Tytler's brigades

with the commission to turn the Ali Musjid position by a circuitous

march, the former charged to descend into the Khyber Pass in rear of the

fortress, and block the escape of its garrison; the latter instructed to

find, if possible, a position on the Rhotas heights on the proper left

of the fortress from which a flank attack might be delivered. About noon

Sir Sam reached the Shagai ridge and came under a brisk fire from the

guns of Ali Musjid, to which his heavy cannon and Manderson's

horse-battery replied with good results. The Afghan position, which was

very strong, stretched right athwart the valley from an entrenched line

on the right to the Rhotas summit on the extreme left. The artillery

duel lasted about two hours, and then Sir Sam determined to advance, on

the expectation that the turning brigades had reached their respective

objectives. He himself moved forward on the right upland; on the

opposite side of the Khyber stream Appleyard led the advance of his

brigade against the Afghan right. No co-operation on the part of the

turning brigades had made itself manifest up till dusk; the right

brigade had been brought to a halt in face of a precipitous cliff

crowned by the enemy, and it was wisely judged that to press the frontal

attack further in the meantime would involve a useless loss of life. Sir

Sam therefore halted, and sent word to Appleyard to stay for the night

his further advance, merely holding the ridge which he had already

carried. But before this order reached him Appleyard was sharply engaged

with the enemy in their entrenched position, and in the fighting which

occurred before the retirement was effected two officers were killed, a

third wounded, and a good many casualties occurred among the rank and

file of the native detachments gallantly assailing the Afghan

entrenchments.

Early next morning offensive operations were about to be resumed, when a

young officer of the 9th Lancers brought intelligence that the Afghan

garrison had fled under cover of night, whereupon the fort was promptly

occupied. The turning brigades had been delayed by the difficult country

encountered, but detachments from both had reached Kata Kustia in time

to capture several hundred fugitives of the Ali Musjid garrison. The

mass of it, however--its total strength was about 4000 men--effected a

retreat by the Peshbolak track from the right of the entrenched

position. Sir Sam Browne's advance to Dakka was made without

molestation, and on 20th December he encamped on the plain of

Jellalabad, where he remained throughout the winter, Maude's reserve

division keeping open his communications through the Khyber Pass. The

hill tribes, true to their nature, gave great annoyance by their

continual raids, and several punitive expeditions were sent against them

from time to time, but seldom with decisive results. The tribesmen for

the most part carried off into the hills their movable effects, and the

destruction of their petty forts apparently gave them little concern.

For the most part they maintained their irreconcilable attitude, hanging

on the flanks of our detachments on their return march through the

lateral passes to their camps, and inflicting irritating if not very

severe losses. Occasionally they thought proper to make nominal

submission with tongue in cheek, breaking out again when opportunity or

temptation presented itself. Detailed description of those raids and

counter-raids would be very tedious reading. It was when starting to

co-operate in one of those necessary but tantalising expeditions that a

number of troopers of the 10th Hussars were drowned in a treacherous

ford of the Cabul river near Jellalabad.

General Roberts, to whom the conduct of operations in the Kuram district

had been entrusted, crossed the frontier on November 21st, and marched

up the valley with great expedition. The inhabitants evinced

friendliness, bringing in live stock and provisions for sale. Reaching

Habib Killa on the morning of the 28th, he received a report that the

Afghan force which he knew to be opposed to him had abandoned its guns

on the hither side of the Peiwar Kotul, and was retreating in confusion

over that summit. Roberts promptly pushed forward in two columns.

Building on the erroneous information that the enemy were in a hollow

trying to withdraw their guns--in reality they were already in their

entrenched position on the summit of the Kotul--he ordered Cobbe's (the

left) column to turn the right of the supposed Afghan position, and

debar the enemy from the Kotul, while the other column (Thelwall's) was

ordered to attack in front, the object being to have the enemy between

two fires. Cobbe's leading regiment near the village of Turrai found its

advance blocked by precipices, and a withdrawal was ordered, the

advantage having been attained of forcing the enemy to disclose the

position which he was holding. Further reconnaissances proved that the

Afghan line of defence extended along the crest of a lofty and broken

mountainous range from the Spingawai summit on the left to the Peiwar

Kotul on the right centre, the right itself resting on commanding

elevations a mile further south. The position had a front in all of

about four miles. It was afterwards ascertained to have been held by

about 3500 regulars and a large number of tribal irregulars. General

Roberts' force numbered about 3100 men.

His scheme of operations he explained to his commanding officers on the

evening of December 1st. With the bulk of the force he himself was to

make a circuitous night march by his right on the Spingawai Kotul, with

the object of turning that position and taking the main Afghan position

on the Peiwar Kotul in reverse; while Brigadier Cobbe, with whom were to

remain the 8th (Queen's) and 5th Punjaub Infantry regiments, a cavalry

regiment and six guns, was instructed to assail the enemy's centre when

the result of the flank attack on his left should have made itself

apparent.

The turning column, whose advance the General led in person, consisted

of the 29th N. I. (leading), 5th Goorkhas, and a mountain battery, all

under Colonel Gordon's command; followed by a wing of the 72d

Highlanders, 2d Punjaub Infantry, and 23d Pioneers, with four guns on

elephants, under Brigadier Thelwall. The arduous march began at ten P.M.

Trending at first rearward to the Peiwar village, the course followed

was then to the proper right, up the rugged and steep Spingawai ravine.

In the darkness part of Thelwall's force lost its way, and disappeared

from ken. Further on a couple of shots were fired by disaffected Pathans

in the ranks of the 29th N. I. That regiment was promptly deprived of

the lead, which was taken by the Goorkha regiment, and the column toiled

on by a track described by General Roberts as 'nothing but a mass of

stones, heaped into ridges and furrowed into deep hollows by the action

of the water.' Day had not broken when the head of the column reached

the foot of the steep ascent to the Spingawai Kotul. The Goorkhas and

the 72d rushed forward on the first stockade. It was carried without a

pause save to bayonet the defenders, and stockade after stockade was

swept over in rapid and brilliant succession. In half-an-hour General

Roberts was in full possession of the Spingawai defences, and the Afghan

left flank was not only turned but driven in. Cobbe was ordered by

signal to co-operate by pressing on his frontal attack; and Roberts

himself hurried forward on his enterprise of rolling up the Afghan left

and shaking its centre. But this proved no easy task. The Afghans made a

good defence, and gave ground reluctantly. They made a resolute stand on

the further side of a narrow deep-cut ravine, to dislodge them from

which effort after effort was ineffectually made. The General then

determined to desist from pressing this line of attack, and to make a

second turning movement by which he hoped to reach the rear of the

Afghan centre. He led the 72d wing, three native regiments, and ten

guns, in a direction which should enable him to threaten the line of the

Afghan retreat. Brigadier Cobbe since morning had been steadily although

slowly climbing toward the front of the Peiwar Kotul position. After an

artillery duel which lasted for three hours the Afghan fire was

partially quelled; Cobbe's infantry pushed on and up from ridge to

ridge, and at length they reached a crest within 800 yards of the guns

on the Kotul, whence their rifle fire compelled the Afghan gunners to

abandon their batteries. Meanwhile Roberts' second turning movement was

developing, and the defenders of the Kotul placed between two fires and

their line of retreat compromised, began to waver. Brigadier Cobbe had

been wounded, but Colonel Drew led forward his gallant youngsters of the

8th, and after toilsome climbing they entered the Afghan position, which

its defenders had just abandoned, leaving many dead, eighteen guns, and

a vast accumulation of stores and ammunition. Colonel H. Gough pursued

with his cavalry, and possessed himself of several more guns which the

Afghans had relinquished in their precipitate flight. The decisive

success of the Peiwar Kotul combat had not cost heavily; the British

losses were twenty-one killed and seventy-two wounded.

His sick and wounded sent back to Fort Kuram, General Roberts advanced

to Ali Khel, and thence made a reconnaissance forward to the

Shutargurdan Pass, whose summit is distant from Cabul little more than

fifty miles. Its height is great--upwards of 11,200 feet--but it was

regarded as not presenting serious obstacles to the advance by this

route of a force from the Kuram valley moving on Cabul. A misfortune

befell the baggage guard on one of the marches in the trans-Peiwar

region when Captains Goad and Powell lost their lives in a tribal

onslaught. The somewhat chequered experiences of General Roberts in the

Khost valley need not be told in detail. After some fighting and more

marching he withdrew from that turbulent region altogether, abjuring its

pestilent tribesmen and all their works. The Kuram force wintered in

excellent health spite of the rigorous climate, and toward the end of

March 1879 its forward concentration about Ali Kheyl was ordered, which

was virtually accomplished before the snow had melted from the passes in

the later weeks of April. Adequate transport had been got together and

supplies accumulated; Colonel Watson's contingent was occupying the

posts along the valley; and General Roberts was in full readiness

promptly to obey the orders to advance which he had been led to expect,

and on which his brother-general Sir Sam Browne had already acted to

some extent.

The march on Candahar of the two divisions under the command of General

Stewart had the character, for the most part, of a military promenade.

The tramp across the deserts of Northern Beloochistan was arduous; the

Bolan, the Gwaga, and the Kojuk passes had to be surmounted, and the

distances which both Biddulph and Stewart had to traverse were immensely

in excess of those covered by either of the forces operating from the

north-western frontier line. But uneventful marches, however long and

toilsome, do not call for detailed description. Stewart rode into

Candahar on January 8th, 1879, and the troops as they arrived encamped

on the adjacent plain. The Governor and most of his officials, together

with the Afghan cavalry, had fled toward Herat; the Deputy-Governor

remained to hand over the city to General Stewart. For commissariat

reasons one division under Stewart presently moved by the Cabul road on

Khelat-i-Ghilzai, which was found empty, the Afghan garrison having

evacuated it. Simultaneously with Stewart's departure from Candahar

Biddulph marched out a column westward toward the Helmund, remaining in

that region until the third week in February. On its return march to

Candahar the rear-guard had a sharp skirmish at Khushk-i-Nakhud with

Alizai tribesmen, of whom 163 were left dead on the field. Soon after

the return of Stewart and Biddulph to Candahar, orders arrived that the

former should retain in Candahar, Quetta, and Pishin a strong division

of all arms, sending back to India the remainder of his command under

Biddulph--the march to be made by the previously unexplored

Thal-Chotiali route to the eastward of the Pisheen valley.

Before Sir Sam Browne moved forward from Jellalabad to Gundamuk he had

been able to report to the Viceroy the death of Shere Ali. That

unfortunate man had seen with despair the departure on December 10th of

the last Russian from Cabul--sure token that he need hope for nothing

from Kaufmann or the Tzar. His chiefs unanimous that further resistance

by him was hopeless, he released his son Yakoub Khan from his long harsh

imprisonment, constituted him Regent, and then followed the Russian

mission in the direction of Tashkend. Kaufmann would not so much as

allow him to cross the frontier, and after a painful illness Shere Ali

died on February 21st, 1879, near Balkh in northern Afghanistan. He was

a man who deserved a better fate than that which befell him. His

aspiration was to maintain the independence of the kingdom which he

ruled with justice if also with masterfulness, and he could not brook

the degradation of subjection. But, unfortunately for him, he was the

'earthen pipkin' which the 'iron pot' found inconvenient. There had been

plenty of manhood originally in his son and successor Yakoub Khan, but

much of that attribute had withered in him during the long cruel

imprisonment to which he had been subjected by his father. Shere Ali's

death made him nominal master of Afghanistan, but the vigour of his

youth-time no longer characterised him. He reigned but did not rule, and

how precarious was his position was evidenced by the defection of many

leading chiefs who came into the English camps and were ready to make

terms.

After the flight of Shere Ali some correspondence had passed between

Yakoub Khan and Major Cavagnari, but the former had not expressed any

willingness for the re-establishment of friendly relations. In February

of his own accord he made overtures for a reconciliation, and soon after

intimated the death of his father and his own accession to the Afghan

throne. Major Cavagnari, acting on the Viceroy's authorisation, wrote to

the new sovereign stating the terms on which the Anglo-Indian Government

was prepared to engage in negotiations for peace. Yakoub temporised for

some time, but influenced by the growing defection of the Sirdars from

his cause, as well as by the forward movements of the forces commanded

by Browne and Roberts, he intimated his intention of visiting Gundamuk

in order to discuss matters in personal conference with Major Cavagnari.

A fortnight later he was on his way down the passes.

Instructions had been given by the Viceroy that Yakoub Khan should be

received in the British camp with all honour and distinction. When his

approach was announced on May 8th, Cavagnari and a number of British

officers rode out to meet him; when he reached the camp, a royal salute

greeted him, a guard of honour presented arms, and Sir Sam Browne and

his staff gave him a ceremonious welcome. Cavagnari had full powers to

represent his Government in the pending negotiations, as to the terms of

which he had received from the Viceroy detailed instructions. The Ameer

and his General-in-Chief, Daoud Shah, came to the conference attired in

Russian uniforms. The negotiations were tedious, for the Ameer, his

Minister, and his General made difficulties with a somewhat elaborate

stupidity, but Cavagnari as a diplomatist possessed the gift of being at

once patient and firm; and at length on May 26th the treaty of peace was

signed, and formally ratified by the Viceroy four days later. By the

treaty of Gundamuk Afghanistan was deprived for the time of its

traditional character of a 'buffer state,' and its Ameer became

virtually a feudatory of the British Crown. He was no longer an

independent prince; although his titular rank and a nominal sovereignty

remained to him, his position under its articles was to be analogous to

that of the mediatised princes of the German Empire. The treaty vested

in the British Government the control of the external relations of

Afghanistan. The Ameer consented to the residence of British Agents

within his dominions, guaranteeing their safety and honourable

treatment, while the British Government undertook that its

representatives should not interfere with the internal administration of

the country. The districts of Pisheen, Kuram, and Sibi were ceded to the

British Government along with the permanent control of the Khyber and

Michnai passes, and of the mountain tribes inhabiting the vicinity of

those passes; all other Afghan territory in British occupation was to be

restored. The obligations to which the treaty committed the British

Government were that it should support the Ameer against foreign

aggression with arms, money, or troops at its discretion, and that it

should pay to him and his successor an annual subsidy of £60,000.

Commercial relations between India and Afghanistan were to be protected

and encouraged; a telegraph line between Cabul and the Kuram was

forthwith to be constructed; and the Ameer was to proclaim an amnesty

relieving all and sundry of his subjects from punishment for services

rendered to the British during the war.

That the treaty of Gundamuk involved our Indian Empire in serious

responsibilities is obvious, and those responsibilities were the more

serious that they were vague and indefinite, yet none the less binding

on this account. It is probable that its provisions, if they had

remained in force, would have been found in the long run injurious to

the interests of British India. For that realm Afghanistan has the value

that its ruggedness presents exceptional obstacles to the march through

it of hostile armies having the Indian frontier for their objective, and

this further and yet more important value that the Afghans by nature are

frank and impartial Ishmaelites, their hands against all foreigners

alike, no matter of what nationality. If this character be impaired,

what virtue the Afghan has in our eyes is lost. In his implacable

passion for independence, in his fierce intolerance of the Feringhee

intruder, he fulfils in relation to our Indian frontier a kindred office

to that served by abattis, _cheveux de frise,_ and wire entanglements in

front of a military position. The short-lived treaty, for which the

sanguine Mr Stanhope claimed that it had gained for England 'a friendly,

an independent, and a strong Afghanistan,' may now be chiefly remembered

because of the circumstance that it gave effect for the moment to Lord

Beaconsfield's 'scientific frontier.'

The withdrawal of the two northern forces to positions within the new

frontier began immediately on the ratification of the treaty of

Gundamuk, the evacuation of Candahar being postponed for sanitary

reasons until autumn. The march of Sir Sam Browne's force from the

breezy upland of Gundamuk down the passes to Peshawur, made as it was in

the fierce heat of midsummer through a region of bad name for

insalubrity, and pervaded also by virulent cholera, was a ghastly

journey. That melancholy pilgrimage, every halting-place in whose course

was marked by graves, and from which the living emerged 'gaunt and

haggard, marching with a listless air, their clothing stiff with dried

perspiration, their faces thick with a mud of dust and sweat through

which their red bloodshot eyes looked forth, many suffering from heat

prostration,' dwells in the memory of British India as the 'death

march,' and its horrors have been recounted in vivid and pathetic words

by Surgeon-Major Evatt, one of the few medical officers whom,

participating in it, it did not kill.