Retreat from Kabul: The First Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-1842 (Conflicts of Empire)

by George Bruce

  Notwithstanding the Vizier’s power in the kingdom and responsibility for keeping his father on the throne, Kamran seized him as he returned to Kabul from Persia and blinded him forthwith. Honour was again satisfied, but there was a need for security too, in the face of the challenge from this band of formidable brothers.

  Kamran took Futteh Khan before Shah Mahmoud. Futteh Khan was called upon to write to his brothers and order them to surrender to the Shah. Resolutely, he refused — he would not betray his brothers and whatever harm was done to him, his influence now he was blind was at an end. Mahmoud Shah thereupon ordered the Vizier, upon whom his fortunes and his crown had depended for so long, to be slowly put to death before him.

  Captain James Abbott, who received the account from Summund Khan, one of Prince Kamran’s courtiers, tells how the blind Futteh Khan was brought into a tent in which sat a circle of his greatest enemies, together with the Shah and Kamran. They began by each in turn accusing him of injuries they said they had received at his hands and hurling insults of the worst kind at him.

  ‘Atta Mahmoud Khan then stepped up to him, and seizing one of his ears, cut it off with his knife… Shahagaussie Nawab cut off the other ear. Each, as he wreaked this unmanly vengeance upon his victim, whom he would have crouched to the day before, named the wrong of which it was the recompense… Another of the barbarians cut off his nose; Khana Moolla Khan severed his right hand; Khalook Dad Khan his left hand, the blood gushing copiously from each new wound. Summurdar Khan cut off his beard, saying, “This is for dishonouring my wife.”

  ‘Hitherto the high-spirited chief had borne his suffering without weakness… He had only once condescended in a calm voice to beg them to hasten his death. The mutilation of ears and nose, a punishment reserved for the meanest offences of slaves, had not been able to shake his fortitude; but the beard of a Mahommedan is a member so sacred that honour itself becomes confounded with it; and he who had borne with the constancy of a hero the taunts and tortures heaped upon him, seemed to lose his manhood with his beard, and burst into a passion of tears. His torments were now drawing to a close. Ghool Mahommed, with a blow of his sabre cut off his right foot, and a man of the Populzye tribe severed the left. Attah Mahommed Khan finished his torments by cutting his throat.’

  Dost Mahommed now had two reasons for swearing to put down Shah Mahmoud and his son Kamran. Their own wish for more vengeance upon him and his brothers; and his own irrevocable need to avenge the blood of Futteh Khan. He swore that he would march on Kabul with an army of retribution. His brother Azim Khan, ruler of Kashmir, gave him a few lakhs of rupees to pay his troops, and Dost Mahommed soon occupied Kabul. In the interests of legitimacy, Azim Khan then invited Shah Shuja to reassert his claim to the throne, but the partnership was brief — Shuja offended his new supporter by his airs and graces and soon was expelled from Afghanistan again.

  Dost Mahommed and his brothers now shared the country among themselves, Ayoob Khan being briefly the nominal Shah. Together Azim Khan and Dost Mahommed now planned, a defensive expedition against the expansionist Sikhs, but Ranjit Singh, hearing of it, sowed hostility among the brothers by lavish bribery. Azim Khan heard of the treachery among the brothers he had trusted and was said to be so filled with grief that his spirit was broken, he lost his formidable power of generalship and his troops deserted him. He died soon after, and Ranjit Singh occupied the Afghan city of Peshawar, thus sowing the seeds of enmity between Afghans and Sikhs. Rivalry and discord continued for another three years until, by 1826, Dost Mahommed emerged as the most capable ruler and military leader. His brothers accepted the situation and the once humble Dost Mahommed became supreme in the land, bringing Afghanistan a measure of peace and security, while the former king, Shah Shuja, lived comfortably as a British pensioner in India.

  Then, in 1833, tired of inactivity, Shuja obtained four months’ advance of his pension from the British, some 16,000 rupees (£1,600), and set out once again to try to reconquer the country. Raising an army and obtaining more money to maintain it while en route to Afghanistan, he entered the country upon a caparisoned elephant early in 1834 and attacked Kandahar.

  Dost Mahommed and his son Akbar Khan easily defeated the luckless Shuja, who fled the country, leaving his guns and equipment to Dost Mahommed. To regain Peshawar from the Sikhs was now the Amir’s greatest ambition and he began to dream of an alliance with the British to attain it. In 1837 circumstances beyond his control affected the issue. Rumours buzzed around the Kabul bazaars that a British emissary was on his way to the capital. His arrival in due course was to bear heavily upon the destiny of Dost Mahommed and the plans of the British in India. For they were to restore Shah Shuja and in doing so would drench the land in blood.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The events which led up to Lord Auckland’s decision to invade Afghanistan were complex. Auckland, a Whig peer — ‘unstable as water’ — who had succeeded Lord William Bentinck as Governor-General in 1836, brought with him from England the anxiety of Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary, about Russia’s presumed ambition to invade India through her north-west frontier — for Russia had by then succeeded Napoleon as the imagined ever-present threat to the British Empire in the East.

  India was of course governed at this time by the East India Company — originally a commercial organisation — through the Governor-General and Council, responsible to the Board of Control in London, which, in its turn, was responsible through its President to the British Government.

  What perhaps brought the issue to a head at this time was a letter from the British Envoy in Persia, Mr. Ellis, to Lord Palmerston, in January 1836.

  ‘The Shah of Persia lays claim to the sovereignty of Afghanistan as far as Ghazni and is fully determined to attempt the conquest in the Spring,’ Ellis had written. ‘The success of the Shah in the undertaking is anxiously wished for by Russia; and their minister here does not fail to press it on to early execution. The motive cannot be mistaken. Herat, once annexed to Persia, may become, according to the Commercial Treaty, the residence of a Russian consular agent, who would from thence push his researches and communications, avowed and secret, throughout Afghanistan.’

  But Ellis and Palmerston, too, had let their anxieties run away with them, for in reality, far from Afghanistan being a frontier for the defence of India, this frontier then lay 1,200 miles away across the mountains and deserts of the Punjab, Sind and Rajputana — not then a part of British India. It was therefore not of vital importance to India whether Persia held Herat or not.

  Lord Auckland, then fifty-one and not well versed in the mundane problems of military transport and supply, failed to understand the obstacle this vast tract placed in the path of an army invading India. Encouraged by irresponsible advisers, he saw the peace of his term of office threatened by war from the north-west.

  His fears grew when in the late summer of 1836 he received from the Secret Committee of the East India Company in London a letter referring to Palmerston’s anxieties about Russian advances towards Herat. It instructed him ‘to watch more closely the progress of events in Afghanistan and to counteract the progress of Russian influence’ in a quarter which could possibly interfere with the tranquillity of India.

  The letter went on to say that he should deal with the situation by sending a confidential agent to Dost Mahommed and if necessary, on the basis of information later received, to decide ‘that the time has arrived at which it would be right for you to interfere decidedly in the affairs of Afghanistan. Such an interference would doubtless be requisite either to prevent the extension of Persian dominion in that quarter, or to raise a timely barrier against the impending encroachments of Russian influence.’

  ‘Interference’ in this context could only mean war; and so the dispatch told Auckland that he should at the right moment decide whether or not it was advisable to invade Afghanistan. It put into the hands of this mild, pacific and indecisive peer responsibilities with which he was unfitted to deal.

&nb
sp; Responding to Palmerston’s misgivings, Auckland decided at first that he ought to know more about the policies of the ruler of Afghanistan. In November 1836 he therefore assigned a young Scot, Captain Alexander Burnes, on what was said to be a commercial mission to Kabul, but which was in fact a secret political one — the assessment of whether Dost Mahommed sought friendship with Russia or England.

  Brilliant and ambitious, Burnes is seen in portraits as a tolerably handsome person with watchful blue eyes and a perceptive expression in a round face whose dignity is marred by a small sensuous mouth. Though perhaps a little rash and impetuous for a diplomat, Burnes’s exceptional linguistic ability, no less than a bold, enterprising spirit which went beyond bravery, had secured him rapid promotion in the East India Company. His travels in unexplored Afghanistan and Bokhara four years earlier had, moreover, brought him friendship with Dost Mahommed and made of him a celebrity while still in his twenties.

  While Burnes was travelling unhurriedly to Kabul, Auckland was becoming more and more under the influence of three ambitious advisers in the Indian Political Service, each one of whom, beside such a confused and uncertain man, was dangerous. All three of them found themselves suddenly placed so as to be able to influence the great issue of peace or war at the side of this Governor-General who was utterly ignorant of India and its needs.

  These three officials were William Hay Macnaghten, forty-three, Chief Secretary to the Indian Government; John Colvin, a much younger man, Auckland’s official adviser on Indian affairs, and his private secretary; and third, Henry Torrens, his adviser on military matters. All three were former East India Company army officers, brilliant young men who had transferred to the political service, become specialists in Indian affairs and languages, and had become determined to influence the course of events.

  Macnaghten was the most important of them. He had joined the political service from the Madras Cavalry in 1814. For fourteen years, from 1816, he had been first judge, then registrar of an appeals court. He had become a specialist in Hindu and in Moslem law and had published notable studies of the systems, while at the same time attaining fluency in Persian, Hindustani and four other languages commonly used in India. A hardworking intellectual, he was appointed assistant to the former Governor-General Lord Bentinck in 1830 and chief of the Secret and Political Department — that is, of Foreign Affairs — in 1833. As Chief Secretary he soon became Auckland’s most trusted adviser. His defect — an excess of ambition, optimism and impulsiveness — began to influence Auckland dangerously.

  Burnes meantime, after a long and leisurely journey reached Kabul in September 1837. He was welcomed, and received, he relates, ‘with great pomp and splendour by a fine body of Afghan cavalry, led by Dost Mahommed’s son, Akbar Khan. He did me the honour to place me on the same elephant upon which he himself rode and conducted us to his father’s court, whose reception of us was most cordial.’

  Dost Mahommed had assigned Kandahar to Kohan Dil Khan, one of his many brothers, and, but for the independent principality of Herat, 400 miles west of Kabul, and about 100 miles from Persia, he had ruled the remainder of this turbulent country with a rod of iron for the past ten years.

  Before his seizure of power he is said to have been as much of a philanderer as a warrior, addicted to sex orgies and drunkenness, but when once he held the kingdom he stopped the drinking. He also taught himself to read and write, made a public confession of past crimes, dressed carefully, sought to rule with justice by redressing wrongs and making himself accessible to the poorest petitioners. Such was his love of fairness, indeed, that people were said to exclaim: ‘Is Dost Mahommed dead that there is no justice?’

  Yet any monarch who ruled in Afghanistan had no choice but to adapt himself to the vices of the people. As the contemporary historian Sir John Kaye remarked: ‘Once embarked in the strife of Afghan politics a man must either fight it out or die. Every man’s hand is against him and he must turn his hand against every man. There is no middle course open to him. If he would save himself he must cast his scruples to the winds. Even when seated most securely on the musnud, an Afghan ruler must commit many acts abhorrent to our ideas of humanity. He must rule with vigour or not at all… We cannot rein wild horses with silken braids.’

  This, then, was the determined ruler by whom Burnes was received — a tall, muscular man whom portraits show with the marks of hardship on aquiline features, with large pensive eyes, benign expression and carefully combed beard all surmounted by a voluminous turban.

  Flattered by his splendid reception, Burnes swiftly dropped all pretence that his interests were commercial rather than political, and thus seems to have played his hand too quickly.

  He allowed the wily and experienced Afghan leader to sense that the British were anxious about Russia’s ambitions in the region and the possibility that the Amir might encourage them. The outcome was that while professing sincere friendship for Britain, Dost Mahommed sought her help in regaining Peshawar from the Sikhs as the price of an alliance with him.

  Then on 23 November 1837 events took a new turn. A Persian army, aided by Russian officers and artillery, laid siege to the independent Afghan province of Herat. The worst fears seemed now several steps nearer to being realised. The ruler of Afghanistan became more important in British plans.

  Dost Mahommed at once gave concrete proof of his avowed feelings of friendship for Britain. His brother, Kohan Dil Khan of Kandahar, against the Dost’s advice, had sent one of his sons to the camp of Mohammed Shah of Persia to welcome the invaders. Russian agents at the camp praised the emissary warmly for this action.

  Realising that the British might believe he was behind this move, Dost Mahommed offered to Burnes to prove his loyalty by marching an army against his brother and deposing him.

  Burnes advised against this, but his warnings, sent to Kohan Dil Khan with those of Dost Mahommed, caused the expulsion of the Persian emissaries there and forced Kohan Dil Khan to agree to act henceforward in harmony with his brother and the British. Burnes, on his part, promised Kohan Dil Khan to pay his troops to defend Kandahar should the Persians threaten it. Here, he went beyond what he was authorised to do, sound though the proposal was.

  At this juncture, the formidable Russian Foreign Minister, Count Nesselrode was using Persia as the tool of Russian ambitions and so avoiding committing his country directly against Britain: the Persians were willing, with Russian support, to seize what they could of their former territories in Afghanistan; while Dost Mahommed wished to keep his own throne secure, regain Peshawar from the Sikhs, if possible with Britain’s help, and make an alliance if he could, with her rather than Russia.

  Burnes, convinced now that Dost Mahommed was the only man able to rule Afghanistan who could also be a reliable ally of Britain, committed himself wholeheartedly to this view in letters to Auckland. In one letter he wrote: ‘The Ameer of Kabul has… declared that his interests are bound up in an alliance with the British Government which he will never desert as long as there is a hope of securing one.’

  Then, while awaiting Auckland’s reactions, having inherited from his ancestor the poet Robert Burns a passionate love of women, he enjoyed himself to the full with beautiful Afghan and Kashmiri girls.

  A Russian agent, Captain Viktevich now arrived in Afghanistan, claiming to be an envoy from the Tsar. Burnes was alarmed, but Dost Mahommed took little account of it, refused to give the Russian more than one formal audience and calmed Burnes with assurances that he was sure his wished-for alliance with the English would materialise.

  But the interests of too many other people were at stake for the hopes of Burnes and Dost Mahommed to materialise. One of them was Claude Martine Wade, the pro-Sikh British resident at Ludiana, in the Punjab, who strongly favoured the restoration of the former Shah Shuja, mainly because Dost Mahommed was a sworn enemy of the Sikhs. Wade seems to have set himself firmly against any British alliance with Dost Mahommed and thus he supported instead the restoration of Shah Shuja by m
ilitary force.

  Through Colonel Wade’s hands passed all the letters of Burnes to Auckland in support of Dost Mahommed. Wade read the letters, sent them on together with flat contradictions of the facts and contrary arguments.

  Thus, while Herat was under siege by the Persians — while a Russian agent was in Kabul, and while the Afghans in Kandahar were known to have shown friendship to the Russians and Persians, Wade’s arguments — to which Burnes had no chance of replying — inclined the vacillating Auckland against Dost Mahommed. And an alliance with him would certainly have offended the Sikh leader, Ranjit Singh — whose friendship was necessary to the East India Company.

  At this decisive moment, when peace or war hung in the balance, Auckland turned his back on the wiser voices of his Council in sweltering Calcutta and took himself off to the cool hill-station of Simla with Macnaghten, Torrens and Colvin — all of whom, by now, had a vested personal interest in an invasion of Afghanistan.

  The initial results were first a letter from Auckland to Burnes, rebuking him for his wise offer of assistance to Kohan Dil Khan of Kandahar were he to be attacked by a foreign power and ordering him to revoke this promise. And secondly, to Dost Mahommed a rude and dictatorial letter — while Burnes was still assigned to Kabul — refusing mediation with the Sikhs over Peshawar and warning him not to ally himself with any other powers without the good offices of the Indian Government.

  Dost Mahommed now understood that the Governor-General no longer thought of an alliance with Afghanistan. At once he feared the truth — that an attempt might be made to put Shah Shuja back on the throne.

  Negotiations from that moment became hopeless, but Burnes stayed on in Kabul, openly cohabiting with Afghan and Kashmiri women and thus so offending the Muslim Afghans that his assassination was openly spoken of in Kabul. At the same time, in face of Russian promises, their agent Viktovitch was paraded in triumph through the streets.