The lenity shewn by Lord Auckland to Yar Mohamed in condoning his perfidy, and continuing the supply of arms and money, elicited at first some appearance of gratitude, but he speedily resumed his treacherous communications with the court of Persia, and Major Todd had the courage to refuse any payment beyond the monthly subsidy of 25,000 rupees. Yar Mohamed immediately renewed his intrigues with increased vigour, and despatched an agent to the Persian governor of Meshid, inviting him to unite in an attack on Candahar while the road to Cabul was blocked up with snow, and also instigated the disaffected chiefs of Western Afghanistan to revolt. This glaring act of perfidy exhausted the patience of Major Todd, who took advantage of the assemblage of a large British force in Upper Sinde, to suspend even the monthly allowance, till the pleasure of his Government was known. But this only served to kindle the wrath of the minister, and to increase his demands. On the 8th February, he required the payment of two lacs of rupees to discharge his own debts, as well as a further advance of money to improve the fortifications, and an increase of the regular stipend. Major Todd made the injudicious request that he would admit a contingent of British troops into Herat, and depute his own son to meet and escort them, if the measure were approved by his own Government. Yar Mohamed refused the request and peremptorily insisted on the immediate payment of all his demands, or the instant departure of the mission, and Major Todd at once determined to withdraw from
Herat. Lord Auckland was mortified with this precipitate movement which aggravated the difficulties of our position in Afghanistan, and cast an air of ridicule on the whole policy of the Government. The Major was dismissed from his political employment, and remanded to his regiment. This has been considered a harsh if not an unjust measure, but it is impossible to peruse the clear and able vindication of this proceeding which Lord Auckland placed on record, without admitting the great force of his justification. The abrupt termination of the mission was in one respect inopportune, inasmuch as all our differences with Persia had been accommodated and the court of Persia was closed against the intrigues of Bamran before it occurred, though the fact was not known at the time to Major Todd; in other respects it cannot he considered unfortunate, as it withdrew our officers from the dangers to which they would inevitably have been exposed nine months later on our expulsion from Cabul.
The political charge of the province of Candahar had been entrusted to Major – now Sir Henry – Rawlinson, who had served his apprenticeship to diplomacy in Persia, where he had acquired a complete knowledge of the language and character of the people, and a clear perception of the position and policy of the different courts in Central Asia. He was second to none of the political officers whose talents were developed, and whose reputation was nurtured, in the instructive school of Afghan politics, and it was mainly owing to his foresight and management that our authority was maintained in that seething cauldron of rebellion. The military command was in the hands of General Nott, who, with all his infirmities of temper, possessed a fund of sound sense, a spirit of great decision, and no inconsiderable store of professional knowledge. He was prompt and energetic in dealing with the revolts which were continually cropping up around him, but the freedom of his remarks was displeasing to Sir W. Macnaghten and to Lord Auckland, and he was consequently refused the promotion to which his
rank and abilities entitled him. On the retirement of Sir Willoughby Cotton from Cabul, that important command should, in all fairness, have been entrusted to him; but he was again passed over; and it is melancholy to reflect how different would have been the course of events, and the fate of the army, if he had been at the side of Sir William Macnaghten, on the memorable morning of the 2nd November. The Dooranees who occupied the province of Zemindawer, lying between Candahar and Herat, were of Shah Soojah’s own tribe; they had been subjected to great oppression during the ascendency of the Barukzyes and hailed the return of their prince as a deliverer with delight. If there was one province in Afghanistan more than another in which the Shah had reason to expect cordial loyalty and unflinching support, it was in that occupied by the Dooranees; but when their expectations of sharing the sweets of power under a ruler of their own clan were disappointed, and they found that all real power was monopolized by strangers and infidels, no tribe eventually manifested a more rancorous hostility to the Shah. In November, 1840, Akbar Khan, their chief, openly announced his intention to march on Candahar, and General Nott sent a force to beat up his quarters, which awed him into temporary submission. He succeeded in reassembling his army, and in July took up a position on the Helmund, with 6,000 men, in six divisions, with a priest at the head of each, and a banner inscribed “We have been trusting in God; may he guide and guard us.” He was vigorously attacked by Colonel Woodburn and defeated, but assembled his followers again in the following month, when a more signal discomfiture broke up the confederacy. These successive reverses dismayed the Dooranee chiefs who came in and made their submission to the representative of the Shah, with the exception of Akram Khan, whose indomitable spirit resisted every overture and defied every threat. His feelings were well expressed in the common Afghan remark, “We are content with blood, but shall never be content with a master.” In other countries, his
conduct might have been deemed patriotic, but in Afghanistan it was pronounced treasonable, and it was resolved that no mercy should be shewn him. One of his own countrymen was induced by a bribe to disclose his retreat; he was seized and brought into Candahar, and, under positive orders from Cabul, barbarously blown from a gun.
The province lying to the north-east of Candahar was inhabited by the Ghilzyes, a fine muscular race, expert in the use of the musket, sword, and knife, and characterized by an intense ferocity of disposition, the result of centuries of rapine and petty warfare. They were able to bring 40,000 men into the field, and were as jealous of their own independence in their wild mountains, as they were eager to destroy that of others. They had in time past carried their victorious arms to the capital of Persia, and recorded their prowess on many a battle field in India. They had played an important part in the politics of Afghanistan, where, within three generations, they had exercised supreme authority. They had been the most resolute opponents of every invader, and had never bowed the neck to the rulers of Cabul or Candahar, but continued with perfect impunity their hereditary profession of levying black mail on all who traversed their mountains. Though Sir William Macnaghten had prevailed on them for an annual subsidy of 30,000 rupees to abstain from infesting the highways, their deep-rooted hostility to the intrusive foreigners was becoming daily more palpable, and it was resolved to strengthen the fortifications of Khelat-i-ghilzye which lay in the heart of their country. They were determined to oppose a measure which would restrain their freedom, and they boldly advanced to obstruct the progress of Colonel Weymer, who was sent against them with a body of 5,000 men. The combat, which took place on the 22nd May, 1841, lasted five hours; and it was not till ten in the evening that they quitted the field, carrying their wounded with them. The strength of the tribe was impaired by this and a subsequent defeat, and Sir William Macnaghten
began to congratulate himself on the cheering aspect of affairs in Afghanistan, and to flatter himself that all difficulty in managing the country was now removed. But Major Robinson, with a clearer appreciation of the precariousness of our position, did not fail to press on him the unpalatable truth that the country was universally pervaded by an implacable spirit of hostility, and that there would assuredly be a general outburst, on the first favourable opportunity.
That opportunity was not far distant. The expense of garrisoning Afghanistan began to tell to an alarming extent on the finances of India. The army of occupation fell little short of 25,000 men, and the annual charge was moderately computed at a crore and a half of rupees. All the treasure accumulated by Lord William Bentinck’s economical reforms had been exhausted, and the treasury was empty. The Court of Directors were alarmed, and at the close of 1840 communicated their apprehensions to Lord Auckland. The restored monarchy, they said, would evidently require a British force to maintain tranquillity within, and prevent aggression from without; to attempt to accomplish this object by a small force would be unwise and dangerous, and they should prefer the entire abandonment of the country, with a frank avowal of the complete failure of our project; but they left it to the Government of India to determine the course to be adopted – either a speedy withdrawal from the country, or a large increase of the army. When the surrender of Dost Mohamed was announced at the India House, the Directors stated that it had made no change in their views, and they trusted that advantage would be taken of this auspicious circumstance to bring the question to an issue in accordance with their wishes. Nothing could be more judicious than this recommendation. Since our entry into Afghanistan there had been no opportunity so favourable for retiring from it. All apprehension of an invasion from the west had disappeared. The Persian court was on the most friendly terms with us. The expedition of the Russians to
Khiva had failed, and they were no longer heard of in Central Asia. Dost Mohamed and his family were in our hands. Khelat had been recovered, and Belochistan reoccupied. “The noses of the Dooranee chiefs,” as Sir William Macnaghten affirmed, “had been brought to the grindstone. Afghanistan was as quiet as an Indian district, and its tranquillity was miraculous.” Lord Auckland could not, however, bring himself to approve of a retrograde movement in Afghanistan, before the authority of the Shah had been completely established, though it was impossible not to perceive that our presence was the chief cause of his unpopularity and insecurity. The two civil members of the Council concurred with him in voting for the maintenance of our position in Afghanistan. The two military members who would undoubtedly have voted with the Court of Directors for the withdrawal of our army, had no opportunity, either by accident or by design, of recording their opinions. Sir William Macnaghten, on hearing that the question of withdrawing the British force had been the subject of serious discussion, declared that to deprive the Shah of British support would be an act of “unparalleled political atrocity, and that he would pack up his all, and return to his asylum at Loodiana as soon as the resolution was communicated to him.” We had, in fact, placed ourselves in a position from which it was impossible to recede without the complete collapse of our policy, which would have exposed us to the ridicule of Central Asia, and of the princes of India. Neither could we hold it without an enormous and apparently interminable expenditure, which would cripple the resources of Government, and deprive it of the power of doing justice to the interests of India.
The Governor-General, having resolved to remain in Afghanistan, opened a new loan, and inculcated a system of rigid economy on the Envoy, which was to be begun with curtailing the stipends of the chiefs. By that fatality which seemed to cling to every measure connected with this ill-starred expedition, the retrenchments which should have been delayed to the last were the first
adopted. These stipends were considered by Sir William Macnaghten as a compensation to the chiefs for relinquishing the immemorial practice of levying contributions on the highways in their respective districts. He had many misgivings about the wisdom of this economy, which would affect every tribe in the country, but the orders from Calcutta were peremptory, and the eastern Ghilzye chiefs were the first to be summoned to Cabul and informed that the exigencies of the state rendered it necessary to reduce their allowance. They received the announcement at the beginning of October, without any apparent discontent, made their salaam to the Envoy, and returning to their mountain fastnesses, plundered a caravan, and closed the road to India by blocking up the passes. They had always regarded these exactions from travellers in the light of an ancient inheritance, and an indefeasible right. They were magnanimously indifferent to the politics of Afghanistan, and cared not who ruled, so long as their privileges were respected. The stipends now about to be reduced had been guaranteed to them when we entered the country, and they had performed their part of the contract with exemplary fidelity. They had not allowed a finger to be raised against our posts, or couriers, or weak detachments, and convoys of every description had passed through their terrific defiles, the strongest mountain barriers in the world, without interruption. The Shah, on hearing of this hostile movement, sent Humza Khan, the governor of the Ghilzyes, whose allowance had also been retrenched, to bring them to reason, but as he was himself at the root of the conspiracy, his presence only served to fan the flame. The 35th Native Infantry, commanded by Colonel Monteith, which was under orders to return to the provinces, was directed by the Envoy to “proceed to the passes and chastise these rascals and open the road to India,” but he was treacherously attacked during the night by the mountaineers, who were abetted by the horsemen and officers the Shah had deputed to accompany and assist him, and he lost much baggage. Sir Robert Sale,
who had been appointed to command the brigade of troops returning to India, was sent forward to the support of the 35th. He encountered no little opposition in the Khoord Cabul, and on reaching Tezeen ordered a large detachment to proceed against the fort of the leader of the Ghilzyes, the capture of which would have inflicted a severe, and perhaps a decisive blow on the insurrection. The wily chief sent his envoys to cozen the political agent with the force, who allowed himself to be drawn into a treaty which conceded nearly all the claims of the insurgents. Their stipends were restored, and a sum of 10,000 rupees was actually paid down to them, though they were then in open hostility. Not only was the opportunity of nipping the revolt in the bud thus sacrificed, but it was indefinitely strengthened by this fatuous compliance, which proclaimed the weakness of Government, and enabled the chiefs to announce that Sir Robert Sale had been obliged to purchase their forbearance. They gave hostages, it is true, to accompany the force, well knowing that we should not injure them, under any-circumstances, but they took care at the same time to send emissaries to raise the tribes on the route, who attacked the brigade at every point as it advanced towards Gundamuk. Sir Robert Sale reached that station in the beginning of November, and found all communication with Cabul cut off, and the intermediate country in a blaze of rebellion.
Sir William Macnaghten had been rewarded for his services by the Governorship of Bombay, and had made preparations for leaving Cabul in the beginning of November. Throughout the previous month, while the surface of society in Afghanistan presented the image of unruffled calm, a general confederacy, which embraced almost every influential chief of every tribe, was organized for the expulsion of the infidels from the country. Intimation of it poured in upon the British authorities from all quarters. Major Pottinger, who, since his departure from Herat, had taken charge of the political duties in the highlands north of
Cabul; Captain Colin Mackenzie, whose public occupation in the city placed him in a position to feel the native pulse; Lieutenant Conolly, in attendance at the Shah’s court; Mohun Lall, a Cashmere youth who had received the benefit of an English education, and acted as Sir Alexander Burnes’s moonshee, together, with many others, warned the Envoy of the storm which was gathering. But he had persuaded himself that the country was in a state of unexampled repose, and that the rising of the Ghilzyes was a mere local émeute which might be easily suppressed, and not the token of a national revolt. He was confirmed in this feeling of security by Sir Alexander, who was to succeed to his political employment, and who was supposed to enjoy the best opportunities of knowing the feelings of the chiefs and the people. On the evening of the 1st November he called on Sir William Macnaghten and congratulated him on leaving the country in a state of profound tranquillity.
At the same hour, some of the conspirators were assembled in a house in the city to arrange the plan of the insurrection. Among the foremost was Abdoolla Khan, a proud and vindictive noble, who had been deprived of the headship of his tribe, and now revenged himself by fomenting the outbreak of the Ghilzyes. Aware of his sinister designs, Sir Alexander Burnes had sent him an offensive message, calling him a dog, and threatening to recommend the Shah to deprive him of his ears. At this meeting he advised that the first attack on the morrow should be made on the house of the man who had insulted him. Sir Alexander was unfortunately more obnoxious to the Afghan chiefs, not excepting even the Shah himself, than any of the other British officers, some of whom, by their genial disposition and their high moral character, had acquired general esteem. He received repeated premonitions of his danger, but he had an overweening confidence in his personal influence over the Afghans, and treated every suggestion with contempt. The insurgents surrounded his house at dawn with loud yells, when for the first time he became aware of the peril of his situation,
and despatched a note to Sir William for succour. He likewise sent two messengers to Abdoolla Khan offering to redress all his grievances if he would restrain the fury of the people; but one of them was murdered, and the other covered with wounds. He harangued the mob from his balcony, and offered large sums for his own life and that of his brother, but the Afghans were thirsting for his blood, and for the more tempting plunder of the neighbouring treasury. Captain William Broadfoot fell in defence of the house, but not before he had slain six of his assailants. A Mohamedan Cashmerian then entered the house, and approaching Sir Alexander solemnly swore on the Koran to conduct him to a place of safety if he would direct his guard to cease firing on the insurgents, but no sooner had he and his brother entered the garden, than the miscreant called out “This is Secunder – Sir Alexander – Burnes Sahib,” and they were immediately hacked to pieces by the infuriated crowd. The insurgents then attacked the adjoining house of Captain Johnson, the paymaster of the Shah’s force, and plundered it of 170,000 rupees, which he had imprudently removed from the Bala Hissar to suit his own convenience. The houses of the officers were then set on fire, and all the records consumed. The mob did not originally exceed a hundred, but the number was rapidly augmented by the success of this exploit and the booty which had been acquired, and the whole city was soon in a flame of hostile excitement. The confederate chiefs who had stirred up the émeute, had so little expectation of its success that they kept aloof from the assailants, and had their horses ready for flight on the first appearance of British troops; and it was not till the afternoon, when it appeared that no efforts were to be made to avenge the outrage and to vindicate our authority, that they ventured abroad. The slightest exhibition of energy at the commencement would have extinguished the insurrection. This assertion rests not only on the authority of the officers who survived the catastrophe, but also on that of all the native chiefs to whose custody they were subsequently committed. It appears absolutely
incredible that a British army of 5,000 men should have been allowed to remain inactive within a mile and a quarter of the spot where British officers of the highest rank had been murdered, and a British treasury sacked by a handful of insurgents.
The General-in-chief in Afghanistan was General Elphinstone, a gallant old Queen’s officer, but utterly disqualified for this important and dangerous post by his physical infirmities. These were fully known to Lord Auckland when he importuned him to accept the post, contrary to the advice of Sir Jasper Nicholls, the Commander-in-chief, who earnestly recommended that it should be given to General Nott; but General Nott had incurred the displeasure of Lord Auckland by the freedom of his remarks. It is impossible, therefore, to exonerate the Governor-General from a large share of the responsibility of the overwhelming calamity which ensued, and which is to be attributed to the incompetency of the officer entrusted with the supreme command in a country ripe for revolt. General Elphinstone was equally unfitted for this arduous duty by his mental weakness, and the total want of all decision of character. It was at seven in the morning of the 2nd November, that Sir William received information that the city was in a ferment, and that Sir Alexander Burnes’s house was besieged, and he proceeded immediately to consult the General. The Envoy made light of the émeute which he said would speedily subside, and the General was too happy to be spared the exertion of thought, not to acquiesce in this opinion.
It was decided, however, that Brigadier Shelton’s brigade, which was encamped on the neighbouring heights of Sea Sung, should be ordered to proceed to the Bala Hissar to act as might appear expedient, that assistance should be sent, if possible, to Sir Alexander Burnes, and that the remainder of the troops should be concentrated in the cantonments. At a period when moments were of inestimable value, hours were wasted in communications with the Shah regarding the admission of the Brigadier’s force into the Bala
Hissar, which was at first refused, and it was mid-day before these orders and counter-orders terminated with permission to march. On the arrival of the Brigadier, the Shah asked who had sent him, and why he had come? The Shah himself, however, was the only man who acted with promptitude on that memorable morning. On hearing of the outbreak he ordered his own regiment of Hindostanees under the command of Colonel Campbell to proceed at once to the spot and quell it. If that officer had promptly marched along the skirt of the hill without any encumbrance, he might have arrived in time to save Sir Alexander Burnes and the treasure, but he proceeded with his guns through the narrow and intricate streets of the city, where his way was soon blocked up by the opposition of the inhabitants. The insurgents, flushed with success, drove his regiment back, and Brigadier Shelton did nothing more than cover its retreat to the Bala Hissar. No effort was made by the Envoy or the Commander-in-chief, to extricate Sir Alexander, which might have been effected with perfect ease. There was a short and direct route of only a mile and a quarter from the cantonment to the scene of disturbance by the open Kohistan road, and a body of a thousand men might have been sent forward at once with their guns. Their approach at an early hour would, at once, have restored order, more especially as that quarter of the city was inhabited by the tribe of Kuzzilbashes, who were friendly to us, and would immediately have joined the force. Such a movement was the more imperative, as the provisions for the Shah’s army, to the extent of 8,000 maunds, were stored in a wretched fort not 500 yards from Sir Alexander’s residence. The mob, after plundering and burning his house, and sacking Captain Johnson’s treasury, immediately attacked this fort. Captain – now Sir George – Lawrence, entreated permission to proceed to its relief, but it was peremptorily refused him. Captain Colin Mackenzie gallantly defended the post for two days without food or rest, and at length, seeing no hope of succour, was obliged to abandon it and cut his way to the cantonments.
On the evening of this first day of disaster, the General, instead of forming a vigorous plan of operations for the morrow, contented himself with writing to the Envoy: “We must see what the morning brings, and then think what can be done.” The morning revealed the fact that nothing was wanting to quench the rebellion but promptitude and resolution. The 37th Native Infantry had been summoned back on the previous day from the Khoord Cabul where it had been left by Sir Robert Sale, and Major Griffiths, the commandant, though vigorously opposed at every step by the insurgents, succeeded in conducting the corps in safety to the cantonment, with all its baggage and its sick and two guns. Nothing, however, was done on the second day except a feeble effort to penetrate the city with an inadequate force, but it was not despatched till three hours after noon, and it was driven back by the thousands of armed men, whom the success of the rising had brought into the city. Within thirty hours of the outbreak, with a body of troops, sufficient, under a man of spirit, to maintain our position against all attacks, the Envoy deemed it necessary to send letters to General Nott at Candahar, and to Sir Robert Sale to importune them to hasten with their regiments to the relief of the garrison. It was then that the fatal error of relinquishing the Bala Hissar and cantoning the troops in the plain was revealed in all its intensity. These cantonments had been planted in a piece of low ground, nearly a mile in extent, with ramparts so contemptible, that a pony was backed by an officer to scramble down the ditch and over the wall. They were so situated as to be commanded by the neighbouring hills, and by intermediate forts which had not been occupied or demolished, and the troops could neither enter nor leave them without being exposed to a raking fire from these various points of attack. Human folly seemed to have exhausted itself in the construction of these works in the immediate neighbourhood of a populous, fanatic, and disaffected city. To crown the blunders of the political and military authorities, the commissariat
stores on which the existence of the force depended, and which ought to have been lodged in the Bala Hissar, or at least within the cantonments, had been deposited in a small fort four hundred yards beyond them, the access to which was commanded by an unoccupied fort and by the King’s garden. The commissariat fort, which was guarded by only eighty men, was vigorously assailed by the insurgents, and the General proposed to send out a detachment to enable Lieutenant Warren, who was in command, to evacuate it. There was a universal remonstrance against this act of insanity, and two companies were therefore sent to strengthen the garrison, – while 4,000 men were lying idle in the cantonments – but they were repulsed with the loss of two officers killed, and three wounded. Thrice did the General yield so far to the importunity of his staff as to promise to despatch sufficient reinforcements, and thrice did he alter his mind. The enemy began at length to undermine the walls of the fort, and Lieutenant Warren, despairing of all succour, was obliged to abandon it; and men and officers looked over the walls of the cantonment with burning indignation, while a rabble of Afghans was diligently employed, like a swarm of ants, in carrying off the provisions on which their only hope of sustaining life was placed. The loss of these stores completely paralyzed the garrison.
The urgent request sent by Sir William Macnaghten to General Sale and General Nott to come to the relief of the cantonment without any delay, produced no result. General Sale had reached Gundamuk when he received this communication, which was accompanied by one from General Elphinstone who desired him to return, if he could place his sick and wounded in safety with the Afghan irregulars at that station. A council of war was held, and it was determined to push on to Jellalabad, instead of falling back on Cabul. General Sale has been censured by high authority for this movement, but the reasons which recommended it appear to be conclusive. The winter had already set in with intense rigour. The brigade had lost
a great portion of its camp equipage; the camel drivers had nearly all deserted with their animals, and to transport the ammunition and provisions it would be necessary to abandon the remainder of the tents. The cartridges in store were not sufficient for more than three actions, and the force would probably be obliged to fight the enemy at each of the eight marches to Cabul. The sick and the wounded had increased to three hundred, and to leave them at Gundamuk, either with or without the irregulars, would be to consign them to inevitable destruction. On the other hand the occupation of a position like Jellalabad was recommended by the consideration that it would keep open the communication with India, and provide a defensible fortress and a safe retreat for the Cabul force to fall back on, if circumstances should render it necessary.
The aspect of affairs at Candahar towards the close of 1841 was considered so tranquil that it was resolved to send back to India three of the regiments then in the province. But they had not accomplished more than two marches when unquestionable tokens of the coming storm were afforded by the total destruction of a detachment in the north, and by the altered and offensive bearing of the people. On the 14th November, General Nott received, in a quill, the letter sent by the Envoy the day after the murder of Sir Alexander Burnes requiring three regiments to be despatched to his relief with all speed. He was exceedingly averse, however, to part with the brigade, which he considered would be more useful at Candahar. The troops could not, he argued, reach Cabul under five weeks, by which time, “everything would be settled one way or another.” They would be required to fight every inch of the way beyond Ghuzni, and to wade through the snow; and they would eventually arrive in so crippled a state as to be wholly unfit for service. In obedience, however, to the orders of the Envoy the three regiments were despatched under Colonel Maclaren, but the General did not conceal from him his own conviction that they were marching to certain destruction.
That they might have reached Cabul in safety, was however, by no means improbable, but they commenced their march with great reluctance, and returned to Candahar with great alacrity on the first appearance of a few flakes of snow, and the loss of some commissariat donkeys.
Extraordinary exertions were made by the Commissariat officers to obtain supplies from the neighbouring villages, and within four days of the outbreak the General was enabled to inform the Envoy that they had temporarily, and he hoped permanently, got over the difficulty of provisions. “Our case,” he said “is not yet desperate; I do not mean to impress that, but it must be borne in mind that it goes very fast.” The Envoy, seeing the honour and safety of the force in such keeping, felt himself constrained to open negotiations with the insurgent chiefs. Through the moonshee Mohun Lall who continued to reside in the city, he made them an offer of two, three, or even five lacs of rupees, but, as might have been expected, this fresh token of weakness only served to increase their arrogance. At the same time Lieutenant John Conolly, the political agent with the Shah in the Bala Hissar, authorized the moonshee to offer 10,000 or even 15,000 rupees for the head of each of the principal rebels. There is nothing to support the attempt which has been made to connect the Envoy with this atrocious proposal except the circumstance that Lieutenant Conolly was in constant communication with him; on the other hand, there is irrefragable evidence of the detestation in which he held the practice, in his letter to the moonshee in which he regretted “to find that it was ever considered his object to encourage assassination.” “The rebels,” he said, “are very wicked men, but we must not take unlawful means to destroy them.” On a subsequent occasion, when the subject was brought up in the presence of Captain Skinner, he assured him that his mind revolted from the very suggestion of such a procedure.
The utter incompetence of the General was
hurrying the garrison to destruction, but there appeared some faint hope of deliverance, if Brigadier Shelton could be associated with him in the command, and he was accordingly recalled to the cantonment from the Bala Hissar where he had continued since the morning of the 2nd of November. He was a younger and more vigorous officer, distinguished for his dauntless courage and iron nerve, and his arrival on the 9th November was hailed by the desponding garrison with delight. But it was soon found that the obliquities of his disposition completely neutralized the value of his services. If he had chosen to control his petulant humours, and had cordially sustained and strengthened the General, he might have earned the gratitude of his country by securing the salvation of the force, but the discord which arose from his intractable disposition only served to increase the difficulties of the crisis. The Brigadier complained of the officious interference of the General, or rather of the officers who advised him, as he does not appear ever to have had an opinion of his own. The General pronounced him insubordinate and contumacious; and between them the national honour was trampled in the dust, and 15,000 lives sacrificed: In the desperate condition to which affairs had been reduced there was still one course which would have extricated the army from all its perils, – an immediate retreat to the Bala Hissar. From that impregnable position the troops could have sallied forth on the city, and procured supplies from the surrounding country. The Shah did not cease to urge this movement, which was equally recommended by the Envoy and the General. But the Brigadier pertinaciously resisted it on grounds which were palpably frivolous, inasmuch as he himself had recently brought a regiment and a gun from the citadel into the cantonment without meeting with any impediment. His incredible obstinacy prevented the adoption of this course and sealed the doom of the army.
On the 13th the enemy planted two guns on the Behmaroo hills and began to cannonade the cantonments.
The General and the Brigadier resisted all the entreaties of the Envoy to make an attempt to dislodge them, but as he continued to insist on the despatch of a strong force, and took the entire responsibility of the movement upon himself, the Brigadier started before daybreak and was engaged throughout the day in conflict with the enemy. The success was not decisive, but it was the last which the garrison was destined to achieve. There is little interest in dwelling on the long and melancholy catalogue of errors and disasters, faithfully and eloquently described by Lieutenant – now Sir Vincent – Eyre who bore a large share in the dangers of the siege, which followed closely upon each other, disgusting the officers, disheartening the men, and finally sinking the army in irretrievable ruin. On the 16th, Major Pottinger and Lieutenant Haughton, the sole survivors of the gallant body of men in the Kohistan, in the defence of which a noble Goorkha corps fell to a man, reached the cantonment exhausted with fatigue and wounds. The 23rd November brought the climax of military disasters. The enemy had again made their appearance on the Behmaroo hills, and the Envoy urged the necessity of a vigorous effort to dislodge them from a position which enabled them to inflict the greatest injury on the cantonments. The Brigadier protested against the movement; the troops, he said, were dispirited and exhausted by living on half rations of parched wheat, but his objections were overruled and a detachment was sent out which, being weak, failed to accomplish the object. A council of war was then held when, upon the earnest entreaty of the Envoy, it was determined that a stronger force should set out before daybreak, on the morning of the 23rd.
The hill was carried without difficulty, but as day began to dawn, thousands of armed men streamed out of the city, and a general action was brought on. By an act of incredible fatuity, Brigadier Shelton had taken out a single gun with him, which was admirably worked and told with great effect on the
enemy, till the vent became overheated and it was rendered unserviceable. The Afghans with their long range matchlocks poured a destructive fire upon our musketeers, and laughed at their balls which fell short of the mark. The troops, pining with cold and hunger, and utterly broken in spirit, refused to follow their officers, and were soon in confused and disastrous flight. The Brigadier with iron courage stood in the thickest of the fire and called on his men to support the honour of their flag. The flying regiments paused and reformed, and the Mohamedan fanatics shrunk from the assault. At this juncture, Abdoollah Khan, one of the insurgent chiefs whom Mohun Lall had marked out for assassination and who commanded the Afghan cavalry, fell and they fled in a panic to the city, followed by the infantry. Sir William was standing on the ramparts with the General, eagerly watching these movements, and urged him to send out a body of fresh troops to improve the advantage and complete the victory, but he replied that it was a wild scheme. The Brigadier might have withdrawn his force in safety to the cantonments during the confusion, but he chose to halt; the enemy recovered from the panic, and rushed back on him with redoubled fury, when the whole body of English soldiers disgracefully abandoned the field and took to flight. The fugitives and the pursuers were so mingled in this race, that the Afghans might easily have captured the cantonments if they had known how to improve the advantage they had gained; but in the moment of victory, the chiefs drew off their men, and, after mutilating the bodies of the slain, returned to the city with shouts of exultation. This defeat at Behmaroo, as Brigadier Shelton truly observed, “concluded all exterior operations.” A general gloom hung over the encampment; the army was thoroughly demoralized; the disasters and the dishonour of these three weeks, which were justly attributed to the imbecility and the mismanagement of the commanders, destroyed all confidence in them, and wore out the principle of military discipline.
The day after this disaster, the Shah again entreated the Envoy to occupy the Bala Hissar, as the only course left to secure the honour and safety of the army, and Sir William pressed it on the military chiefs with increasing importunity, but they pertinaciously resisted all his entreaties, and General Elphinstone officially informed him that it was no longer feasible to maintain our position in the country, and advised him to have recourse to negotiation. With such imbecility at the head of the force, Sir William was obliged to submit to this humiliation and to solicit a conference with the insurgent chiefs, whom he met in the guardroom of one of the gateways. The debate, which was long and acrimonious, was brought to a close by Sultan Mohamed, who asserted in haughty and offensive language that, as the Afghans had beaten the English, they had a right to dictate the terms of capitulation, and he demanded that the whole army should surrender at discretion with its arms, ammunition, and treasure. The Envoy at once terminated the interview by declaring that he preferred death to dishonour.
A week after, Akbar Khan, one of the sons of Dost Mohamed, a young soldier of great energy, but of a fiery and impetuous temper, arrived at Cabul, and was at once accepted as the leader of the national confederacy. He soon discovered that to extinguish the British force it was only necessary to defeat the efforts of the commissariat officers to obtain provisions. He accordingly arrested the progress of supplies by threatening with death all who were detected in furnishing them. Under the pressure of hunger, the troops daily became less capable of exertion, and the Envoy, seeing the destruction of the force inevitable, renewed his entreaty to withdraw it to the Bala Hissar, while the sick and wounded were sent under cover of the night, but the General raised a host of objections, and refused his concurrence. Sir William then suggested that they should endeavour to obtain provisions by their own good swords from the surrounding villages, but the General assured him that the only alternative left was to negotiate for a safe
retreat from the country on the most favourable terms possible.
Starvation now stared the ill-fated garrison in the face; on the 11th December there was food left only for the day’s consumption of the fighting men, while the camp followers, who had been living on the carcases of camels, were completely famished. Supplies were not to be obtained for money because the villagers could not venture to sell them, nor by force because the commanders and the men had not the heart to fight, and the Envoy was constrained with infinite reluctance to make another offer of negotiation. A conference was accordingly held with the chiefs, and, after an angry discussion of two hours, the terms of a treaty were arranged. The salient points in it were, that the British troops at Candahar and Cabul, at Ghuzni and Jellalabad should evacuate the country, receiving every possible assistance in carriage and provisions, and that Dost Mohamed and his family should be set at liberty. Shah Soojah was to be allowed the option of remaining in Afghanistan with a pension of a lac of rupees a-year, or of accompanying the British troops to India. The army was to quit the cantonments within three days, and in the mean time to receive ample supplies of provisions, for which due payment was to be made, and four officers were to be delivered up as hostages for the performance of the stipulations. This is the most disgraceful transaction in the records of British India, but to form an impartial opinion of it, we must turn to the Envoy’s own explanation. “The whole country,” he wrote, “as far as we could learn, had risen in rebellion; our communications on all sides were cut off; we had been fighting forty days against superior numbers under most disadvantageous circumstances with a deplorable loss of life, and in a day or two must have perished of hunger. I had been repeatedly apprized by the military authorities that nothing could be done with our troops. The terms I secured were the best obtainable, and the destruction of 15,000 human beings would little have benefited our country, while the Government
would have been almost compelled to avenge our fate at whatever cost.” The position of the Envoy has been vividly described by the historian of the Afghan war, “environed and hemmed in by difficulties and dangers, overwhelmed with responsibility which there was none to share – the lives of 15,000 men resting on his decision – the honour of his country at stake – with a perfidious enemy before him, a decrepit General at his side, and a paralyzed army at his back, he was driven to negotiate by the imbecility of his companions.” The entire responsibility of this humiliating convention rests upon the two military commanders, than whom it would scarcely have been possible to select officers more completely disqualified for their post, the one by bodily infirmity and constitutional imbecility; the other by his perverse temper and his obstinacy. The brilliant success of Sir Robert Sale at Jellalabad shows how easily the position of the British army at Cabul might have been rectified, with the superior means and appliances at command, if the direction of affairs had devolved on Captain Lawrence, or Captain Colin Mackenzie, or Captain Eyre, or Major Pottinger, or any other of the noble spirits in the camp.
But it never was the intention of the Afghan leaders to fulfil the terms of the treaty, or to permit any portion of the army to leave the country. The Bala Hissar was evacuated by our troops on the 13th, but they were assailed by the insurgents on their route, and no small portion of the priceless provisions in their charge was lost. Supplies were furnished so scantily as not to satisfy hunger, and the Afghans were permitted to intercept them without any interference on the part of the chiefs; sometimes they were altogether withheld. The forts around the cantonment were surrendered, and the Afghans were seen squatting on the walls jeering at our misfortunes. The chiefs were allowed to go into the magazines and carry away whatever stores they liked, while the British officers and men watched the spoliation with swelling indignation. To complete the disasters of the force, snow began to fall on the 18th December, and was
lying many inches deep on the ground by the evening. If the troops had been enabled to move towards Jellalabad immediately on the signature of the treaty, they might have reached it as a military body, though attacked at every step of the way; but a new horror was now added to the difficulties of their position. The conduct of Sir William Macnaghten at this crisis, during the twelve days which elapsed between the signature of the treaty and his assassination, has been characterized by some, as not only dishonourable, but perfidious. It is certainly to be regretted that in the remote hope of saving the army from destruction, he should have allowed himself to be drawn into the filthy meshes of Afghan intrigue; but it must not be overlooked, that if the treaty bound him to repair to Peshawar with all practical expedition, it also bound the Afghan chiefs to furnish him with all possible assistance in carriage and provisions. The treaty was equally binding on both parties; he had faithfully fulfilled his part, as far as practicable, by ordering the evacuation of Jellalabad, Ghuzni, and Candahar, by surrendering the forts, and giving hostages, while Akbar Khan and the Barukzyes not only continued to withhold both carriage and provisions, but rose in their demands and insisted on the delivery of all our military stores and ammunition, and the surrender of the married families as additional hostages for the fulfilment of the treaty. In these circumstances, Sir William instructed the moonshee Mohan Lall to open negotiations with other tribes and to inform them that if any portion of the Afghans wished him to remain and would make this declaration to the Shah and send in provisions, he should feel himself at liberty to break with the faithless Barukzyes. In this communication he made the characteristic remark that “though it would be very agreeable to stop at Cabul a few months, he must not consider what was agreeable but what was consistent with good faith.” if he had hesitated to depart after receiving sufficient supplies of cattle and provisions, he would have been justly chargeable with a breach of his engagement; but it is the mere wantonness of detraction
to charge him with violating it when the other party intentionally kept him without the means of fulfilling it. There can, at the same time, however, be no doubt that while he lingered at Cabul and endeavoured to play off one party against another, he indulged a latent hope of some happy turn in the current of events which might enable him to rescue the garrison from perdition, and the British character from the ignominy of the treaty; but what other British functionary, with the same responsibilities, would have hesitated to adopt the same course ?
It was at this critical juncture, while Sir William Macnaghten was tossed upon a sea of difficulties, and bewildered by the appalling crisis which was approaching, that he was drawn into the net which Akbar Khan spread for his destruction. On the evening of the 22nd December, the wily Afghan sent two agents with Major Skinner, who was his prisoner, to the Envoy, with a proposal, to be considered at a conference the next day, that Akbar Khan and the Ghilzyes should unite with the British troops outside the cantonment and make a sudden attack on Mohamed Shah’s fort and seize the person of Ameenoolla, the most hostile and ferocious of the insurgent chiefs, whose head was to be presented to the Envoy for a sum of money, but the offer was indignantly rejected by him. It was further proposed that the British force should remain till the spring, and then retire of its own accord: that the Shah should retain the title of king, and that Akbar Khan should be vizier, receiving from the British Government an annuity of four lacs of rupees a-year, and an immediate payment of thirty lacs. In an evil hour for his reputation and his safety, the Envoy accepted this treacherous proposal in a Persian paper drawn up with his own hand. When this wild overture was communicated to General Elphinstone and Captain Mackenzie the next morning, they both pronounced it to be a plot, and endeavoured to dissuade Sir William from going out to meet Akbar Khan. He replied in a hurried manner, “Let me alone for that, dangerous
though it be; if it succeeds it is worth all risks; the rebels have not fulfilled one article of the treaty, and I have no confidence in them, and if by it we can only save our honour, all will be well. At any rate, I would rather suffer a hundred deaths than live the last six weeks over again.” At noon he directed the General to have two regiments and some guns ready for the attack of the fort, and then proceeded with Captains Trevor, Mackenzie, and Lawrence, with the slender protection of only sixteen of his body guard to the fatal meeting. At the distance of six hundred yards from the cantonment Akbar Khan had caused some horse cloths to be spread on the slope of a hill, where the snow lay less deep. The suspicions of the officers as they dismounted were roused by the appearance of Ameenoolla’s brother at the conference, and the large number of armed followers who were present. Akbar Khan addressed a haughty salutation to Sir William, and immediately after, on a given signal, the officers were suddenly seized from behind, and placed separately on the saddle of an Afghan horseman, who galloped off to the city. Captain Trevor fell off the horse, and was hacked to pieces. Akbar Khan himself endeavoured to seize Sir William, who struggled vigorously, exclaiming in Persian, “For God’s sake.” Exasperated by this resistance, the fierce youth drew forth the pistol which Sir William had presented to him the day before, and shot him dead, when the ghazees rushed up, and mutilated his body with their knives. If his own repeated declaration be worthy of any credit, Akbar Khan had no intention of taking away the life of the Envoy, but was simply anxious to obtain possession of his person as a hostage for the Dost.
Thus perished Sir William Macnaghten, the victim of an unsound and unjust policy, but as noble and brave a gentleman as ever fell in the service of his country. If he was in a false position in Afghanistan, it was because he had so completely identified himself with the policy which carried us across the Indus, as to be unable to perceive the magnitude of its errors and the certainty of its
failure. If he misled others regarding that policy, it was only after his own mind had been deceived. He attempted the task of establishing the permanent authority of foreigners and infidels in a wild and inaccessible country, inhabited by sturdy, lawless, and fanatical Mohamedans, and he failed. Whether there was any other officer in the service who would . have proved more successful may well be doubted; but it certainly could not have been accomplished without entailing ruin on the finances of India. Throughout seven weeks of unparalleled difficulties, Sir William exhibited a spirit of courage and constancy of which there are few examples in the history of the Company. He was the only civilian at Cabul, and he was one of the truest-hearted soldiers in the garrison. If he was at length drawn into a fatal negotiation with Akbar, not altogether in accordance with the high standard of English morals, let it not in all candour be forgotten that no public officer since the establishment of British power in the east, has ever been called to pass through so fiery an ordeal; that the unexampled strain of the three preceding days had evidently disturbed the balance of his mind, and that he risked his own honour and life to save the lives of fifteen thousand of his fellow creatures.
No effort was made from the cantonment to avenge the murder of the Envoy, or to recover his mangled remains, which were paraded in triumph through the city of Cabul. Major Pottinger had been unnoticed since his arrival in a wounded state from Charekar, but all eyes were now turned on him to fill the political post of the late Envoy, and he summoned a council, at which were present General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton, and two senior officers, to discuss the terms on which the Afghan chiefs now offered to grant the army a safe conduct to Peshawar. They differed from those to which the late Envoy had given his consent only in the demand of larger gratuities to themselves. Major Pottinger recoiled from these humiliating conditions; he asserted that the former treaty had been cancelled by the foul murder of Sir
William, and he urged the officers to reject the terms with scorn and defiance. His energy might yet have saved the garrison, but the council of war refused to fight, and resolved to accept the proposed treaty, at whatever sacrifice of honour or money. Orders were therefore signed by Major Pottinger and General Elphinstone to the commanders at Jellalabad, Ghuzni and Candahar to surrender the forts to the Afghans who might be deputed to demand them, and retire from the country. The confederate chiefs, as might have been expected, immediately rose in their demands, and required that all the coin and the spare muskets and guns, save six, should be surrendered, and that General Sale, his wife and his daughter, and all the other officers of rank who were married and had families, should be left in the country as hostages for Dost Mohamed. On the 26th, letters arrived from Jellalabad and Peshawar stating that reinforcements were on the way from Hindostan, and imploring the garrison to hold out. There were, moreover, intestine feuds among the Afghan chiefs; Shah Soojah appeared to be regaining some portion of his influence, and Major Pottinger seized the occasion of this gleam of sunshine to dissuade the General and the Brigadier from treating with enemies who would be sure to betray them, and he implored them to make one bold and prompt effort either to occupy the Bala Hissar, or to cut their way to Jellalabad. The General was almost persuaded to adopt this advice, but Brigadier Shelton, the evil genius of the cantonment, vehemently contended that both courses were equally impracticable, and that it was more advisable to pay any sum of money than to risk the safety of the force in such attempts. The Major, mortified and humiliated, was constrained to proceed with the treaty; but he informed the chiefs that no pecuniary transactions could be completed without the presence of Captain Lawrence, the secretary of the late Envoy. He was accordingly released, and returned to the cantonment, where he drew bills to the extent of fourteen lacs of rupees on the Government of India, but made them payable after the safe arrival of the force at
Peshawar, which the Afghan chiefs professed to guarantee, but had determined to prevent. By this stroke of policy, he inflicted on them a just penalty for their treachery, and relieved his own Government from the necessity of honouring the bills. Guns, waggons, small arms, and ammunition were then given up amidst the indignant exclamations of the garrison, and four officers were surrendered as hostages. On the 4th January, the ratified treaty with the seals of eighteen of the Afghan chiefs was sent in. It was dictated in a spirit of arrogance, and received with a spirit of humility which no British officers had exhibited since the day of Plassy, and it was violated without any scruple. With the treaty came also intimations from the city of the preparations which were in progress to assail the force as soon as it quitted the cantonments, and of the oath which Akbar Khan had taken to annihilate every soldier but one, who was to be permitted to reach Jellalabad to tell the tale.
On the 6th January the army, still 4,500 strong, with 11,000 camp followers, after having for sixty-five days endured such indignities as no British soldiers had ever before suffered in India, began its ominous march from the cantonments, leaving all its trophies in the hands of an insolent foe. The snow lay ankle deep on the ground, and the salvation of the force depended on the rapidity of its movements. If it had crossed the Cabul river before noon, and pushed on with promptitude to the Khoord Cabul pass, it might have escaped destruction; but owing to the indecision and mismanagement of the General, the rear guard did not leave the gate before the shades of night came on. The Afghan fanatics then rushed in, and set the cantonments on fire, and lighted up this first night of horrors with the blaze. In the morning the spirit of discipline began to wane, and the force was no longer a retreating army, but a panic stricken and disorganized rabble. The infuriated Ghilzyes pressed on the rear, seizing the baggage and cutting down all who opposed them. Safety was to be found only in speed, but, through the unaccountable
folly of the military authorities, the troops were halted on the second night at Bootkhak. The crowd of men, women, and children, horses and camels, lying in the snow in wild confusion, without food, or fuel, or shelter, presented a scene of unexampled misery. Akbar Khan now made his appearance and demanded fresh hostages for the safe conduct of the force to Tezeen, and Captain Lawrence, Captain Colin Mackenzie, and Major Pottinger were delivered up to him. Between Bootkhak and Tezeen lay the terrific gorge of the Khoord Cabul, five miles in length, so narrow that the rays of the sun seldom penetrated its recesses. At the bottom of it ran an impetuous torrent, which the road crossed and recrossed twenty-eight times, and it was through this fearful defile that the disordered mass of human beings pressed on with one maddening desire of escaping destruction. But the Ghilzyes poured an incessant fire from their unerring rifles upon the crowd from every height, and three thousand perished under their weapons, and through the intensity of the cold. It was in this scene of indiscriminate carnage, that English ladies, some with infants in their arms, had to run the gauntlet of Afghan bullets amidst a heavy fall of snow.
In the morning Akbar again made his appearance, and offered a supply of provisions and advised the General to halt. The whole force exclaimed against this insane delay, but he was deaf to all entreaties, and the perishing troops were constrained to sit down idle for an entire day in the snow, when another march would have cleared the defile. Akbar offered likewise to take charge of the ladies and children and convey them to Peshawar. They had scarcely tasted food since leaving Cabul; they were insufficiently clad and without any shelter from the frost and snow. Major Pottinger, now Akbar’s prisoner, felt that it would be impossible for them to survive such hardships, and was anxious that they should be relieved from the horrors of their situation. In accordance with his advice, Lady Macnaghten, Lady Sale, and nine other ladies, with fifteen children, and eight officers were
sent to Akbar’s camp, and thus rescued from destruction. On the morning of the 10th, the remains of the army resumed the march, but before evening the greater number of the sepoys had disappeared. Panic stricken and paralyzed with cold, they were slaughtered like sheep by the remorseless Ghilzyes and a narrow defile between two hills was choked up with the dying and the dead. Four hundred and fifty Europeans, with a considerable body of officers, yet remained, but the enemy took post on every point, blocked up every ravine, and dealt death among their ranks, while Akbar himself hovered over their flank, and, when implored to put an end to the slaughter, declared that it was beyond his power to restrain the fury of these hill men. He proposed, however, that the remnant of the troops should lay down their arms, and surrender, but even General Elphinstone revolted from this indignity. The march was therefore resumed, and Brigadier Shelton with his accustomed gallantry repelled every attack. On approaching Jugdulluk, a conference was held with Akbar Khan, who still continued to hang upon the rear, and he promised to send in water and provisions to the famished men, on condition that General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton, and Captain Johnson should be transferred to him as hostages for the evacuation of Jellalabad. They were accordingly given up, but this concession brought no respite from the ferocity of the Ghilzyes, in whom the thirst for blood had overcome even the love of money. They resisted the most tempting offers, and openly revelled in the prospect of cutting the throats of all the Feringees who were left. Akbar Khan, having obtained possession of the ladies and the principal officers, abandoned the rest of the army to their vengeance, and retired to Cabul. At the Jugdulluk pass twelve of the bravest of the officers met their doom, and here the Cabul force may be said to have ceased to exist. Twenty officers and forty-five European soldiers contrived to reach Gundamuk, but they gradually dropped down under the weapons of their foes, with the exception of one officer, Dr. Brydon, who was descried from the ramparts of
Jellalabad on the 13th January, slowly wending his way to the fort, wounded and exhausted, on his jaded pony, the sole survivor, with the exception of a hundred and twenty in captivity, of a body of 15,000 men.
The entire annihilation of this large army was the heaviest blow which had ever fallen upon the British power in India. But it did not produce any such demonstrations of hostility at the native courts, or any such fermentation in the community as might have been expected, by comparison with the effect created by the destruction of Monson’s army in 1804, or by our failures in Nepaul in 1814, or our non-success in Burmah in 1824. The sensation created in the native states and among our native subjects, at each of the successive shocks which have affected our prestige in India, appears to have gradually become more and more moderate. This may be attributed not merely to the extinction of the military power of the native rulers, but to that feeling of acquiescence which time scarcely fails to produce in an established .Government which is felt to be equitable and mild beyond all former example, and affords ample protection to industry, and full scope for the general pursuit of happiness, and to which there is no other objection than that it is a Government of foreigners. This conclusion was still more clearly exemplified during the great Sepoy mutiny of 1857, which, if it had occurred forty years before, would unquestionably have been followed by the temporary loss of the empire, but which produced no conspiracies at the native courts of Hyderabad, Indore, Baroda, or Gwalior, and scarcely any ebullitions of hostile feeling, except in the districts in which our authority was entirely extinguished. In the case of this Afghan disaster, moreover, the chiefs and people of India awaited a demonstration of the efforts we should make to vindicate our military character. Such adversity was not new in the history of the country. Two centuries and a-half before this period, a Mogul army of equal, if not greater
magnitude, had been engulfed in these same defiles, and only two men survived to tell the tale, but the Emperor immediately despatched a more powerful force under his ablest generals to the scene of humiliation, and his reputation was at once restored, and his authority re-established. Nor did the native princes forget that in the British period of history, the sack of Calcutta in 1756 was avenged by the conquest of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and that Colonel Monson’s disastrous retreat in 1804 was immediately followed by the pursuit of Holkar, the victory of Deeg, and the extinction of his battalions. The promptitude with which we had repaired our misfortunes on those occasions had served to brighten our reputation, and there could be no doubt that similar efforts would produce similar results in 1842.
Unhappily, at this period there was no Wellesley at the head of the state, and Lord Auckland was not equal to the crisis. He was completely bewildered and prostrated by the magnitude of the calamity, and, instead of determining boldly to retrieve our honour by putting forth the strength of the empire, he allowed its fortunes to drift down the stream with the current of circumstances. He knew that his proceedings in Afghanistan were unanimously reprobated by the India House, and by the Tory Ministry which had recently returned to Downing Street. He was on the eve of relinquishing the government, and the prospect of handing it over to his successor, who had emphatically denounced his Afghan policy, just at the period when it had miserably collapsed, augmented his confusion. On hearing of the siege and peril of the cantonment, he wrote to the Commander-in-chief, Sir Jasper Nicholls, that it was not clear to him how the march of a brigade, for which the officers on the frontier were importunate, could produce any influence on the events which were passing at Cabul, and that “if all should be lost there, he would not encounter new hazards for the purpose of re-conquest.” This imbecile policy was fully upheld by the Commander-in-chief, who had always expressed
a strong disapprobation of the war. The news of the extinction of the force was received in Calcutta on the 30th January; it roused Lord Auckland from the state of morbid despondency into which he had sunk, and he issued a declaration, stating that “The Governor-General in Council regarded the partial reverse which had overtaken a body of British troops in a country removed by distance and difficulties of season from the possibility of succour, as a new occasion for displaying the stability and vigour of the British power, and the admirable spirit and valour of the British Indian Army.” But after this spasmodic flush of energy, he relapsed into an unhealthy feeling of dejection, and wrote to the Commander-in-chief, that, as the main inducement for maintaining the post of Jellalabad, as a point of support for any troops escaping from Cabul, had now passed away, his only object was to withdraw General Sale to Peshawar. Instead of considering how to restore our military superiority, the sole basis on which our position in India rests, he was prepared to leave it without vindication, and considered only by what means he might most speedily wash his hands of Afghanistan.
Mr Robertson and Mr. George Clerk, 1842. But there were two officers in the north-west as fully alive to the exigencies of the Crisis, as the Governor-General and the Commander-in-chief were dead to them; Mr. Robertson, formerly the Commissioner in Burmah, and now the Lieutenant-Governor of Agra, and Mr. – subsequently Sir George – Clerk, who exerted themselves with extraordinary energy to push on reinforcements and supplies. On Mr. Clerk devolved the duty of forwarding through the Punjab the regiments which had been appointed to relieve those returning from Afghanistan, and his able assistant, Captain – afterwards Sir Henry – Lawrence, now urged them on with redoubled vigour. Their exertions, however, were neutralized by the unhappy choice of a commander, which did not rest with them, and the brigade, instead of being placed under the orders of the most energetic officer which the service could furnish, was sent forward
under Colonel Wild, into whom the Commander-in-chief said he would endeavour to infuse some degree of energy. By a fatality to which we had become accustomed in everything connected with Afghanistan, the brigade was despatched without cavalry or cannon, in the vague hope that the Sikhs might be induced to accommodate it with some ordnance. The Colonel crept through the Punjab at a snail-like pace, and was thirty-five days in reaching Peshawar, whereas five years before, when Runjeet Sing had met with reverses in Afghanistan, one of his European officers marched over the same ground, short of fifty miles, in twelve days. Colonel Wild had doubtless many difficulties to encounter, but the most serious impediment to his progress was the lack of that vigour with which other soldiers would have conquered them. His sepoys, on their arrival at Peshawar, were eager to advance, but he lingered at that station till they had become thoroughly demoralized by the example of their Sikh auxiliaries. Shere Sing, the successor of Runjeet Sing, had sent positive injunctions to General Avitabile who commanded at Peshawar, and to his native generals to co-operate with the British brigade, and to “earn a name by their zealous services which should be known in London;” but the Sikh soldiers, as already stated, had an instinctive dread of the Afghan passes, and although Major Mackeson had advanced a lac and a-half of rupees for their services, they intercepted one of the guns which had been sent over to Colonel Wild, and threatened to put General Avitabile to death and return to Lahore. They were induced, however, to advance to Jumrood at the entrance of the pass, but they had no sooner looked in, than they turned round to a man, and marched back to Peshawar, when General Avitabile shut the gates upon them, and retired to the citadel. Colonel Wild then ventured into the pass alone, but the rickety guns the Sikhs had lent him, broke down on the first discharge, and his sepoys lost heart, and allowed themselves to be ignominiously chased back, leaving their cannon in the possession of the Afreedis.
Meanwhile, Mr. Clerk was urging the Commander-in-chief, then in the north-west provinces, and the Governor-General to despatch a second brigade to the relief of the army, which was still supposed to be holding its ground at Cabul. Lord Auckland was reluctant to allow it to proceed, but the indomitable zeal of Mr. Clerk bore down every obstacle, and a force of 3,000 men, including a European regiment crossed the Sutlege on the 4th January. The selection of the officer to command it was the solitary instance of wisdom exhibited by the military authorities in this emergency. It fell on General Pollock, an old artillery officer, who had campaigned with Lord Lake, assisted in the first siege of Bhurtpore, commanded the horse artillery in pursuit of Holkar, taken an active share in the Nepaul war, and commanded the Bengal artillery in Burmah in 1824. Forty years of service had enlarged his experience, and matured his judgment without impairing his energy. His sagacity, caution, and collectedness, combined with great decision of character, qualified him in a pre-eminent degree for the arduous task which had now to be performed. On the 22nd January, after the entire destruction of the Cabul force had been announced, Mr. Clerk met Sir Jasper Nicholls at Thanesur to discuss the measures which it was advisable to adopt at this crisis. The Commander-in-chief considered that this catastrophe furnished no reason for pushing forward further reinforcements, and that as the retention of Jellalabad was no longer necessary for the safety of the Cabul force, the withdrawal of Sir Robert Sale’s brigade was the only object which ought now to engage the attention of Government. Mr. Clerk, in a spirit more worthy of a Briton, maintained that the national reputation and the safety of British interests in the east required that the garrison of Jellalabad should be strengthened with fresh troops, to enable it to march to Cabul simultaneously with the Candahar force from the westward, and inflict a signal retribution upon the Afghans on the theatre of their recent successes, and then withdraw from Afghanistan with dignity and
undiminished renown. He could not brook the idea of leaving them to revel in the annihilation of a British army, and the humiliation of British honour. The energy of this appeal was successful, and a third brigade was directed to be held in readiness to advance into Afghanistan. But, in the latest communication addressed by Lord Auckland to the Secret Committee, he stated that his directions in regard to the immediate withdrawal of the brigade from Jellalabad into our own provinces, were clear and positive, and in his last letter to General Pollock informed him that the paramount object of his proceedings at Peshawar should be to “secure the safe return of our people and troops, now detained beyond the Indus.”
The arrival of Lord Ellenborough at Calcutta on the 28th February, brought Lord Auckland’s melancholy administration to a close. It comprised a single series of events – the conquest, the occupation, and the loss of Afghanistan. He likewise wrote a benevolent minute on education; he sanctioned the substitution of solemn declarations for judicial oaths, a measure of doubtful expediency; and he endeavoured to promote the interests of science, for which he had a natural turn, but for administrative or material progress he had no leisure, and they remained for six years in a state of comparative abeyance. His administration commenced with a surplus revenue of a crore and a-half of rupees, and it closed with a deficit of two millions, and a large addition to the debt.
It was, however, rendered memorable in the history of India, by the termination of the connection Government had maintained for many years with the establishments of idolatry, which was a scandal to the pious Christian, and offensive to the religious Hindoo. The views of the Court of Directors on the subject of religious observances after their functions had been limited to the imperial duty of governing India in 1833, were communicated to the local authorities in an able despatch drawn up by Mr. Charles Grant, the President of the Board of
Control. The natives of India were assured that the Government would never fail to protect them in the exercise of their privileges, and to manifest a liberal regard to their feelings, in all cases in which their religious rites and offices were not flagrantly opposed to the rules of common humanity and decency. But the interference of British functionaries in the interior management of native temples, in the customs, habits, and religious proceedings of their priests, and in the arrangement of their ceremonies and festivals, was to cease. The pilgrim tax was everywhere to be abolished. Fines and offerings were no longer to be considered sources of public revenue, and no servant of the Company was to be engaged in the collection, management, or custody of them. In all matters relative to their temples, their worship, their festivals, their religious practices and their ceremonial observances, the natives were to be left entirely to themselves. These orders were tardily obeyed in Bengal, and it was not till seven years after they had been issued, that the management of the temple of Juggunnath was restored to the raja of Khoorda, its hereditary custodian, and that the pilgrim tax at the various shrines was relinquished, though not without an unbecoming reluctance at the loss of the three lacs of rupees a-year it yielded to the treasury. At Madras, which, from the obtuse feelings of its public functionaries in long and unbroken succession had come to be designated the “benighted Presidency,” a morbid homage had been paid for half a century to native superstitions, and it required an objurgatory missive from the Court of Directors, of which Mr. Butterworth Bayley was then Chairman, to suppress the attendance of troops and military bands at idolatrous festivals, the firing of salutes on the birthdays of the gods, and the decoration of images, and the presentation of offerings, on the part of the East India Company.
This collection transcribed by Chris Gage