Sir John William Kaye

“ He compelled the Wuzeer to appear before his men as one not utterly prostrate and helpless. The chief called upon the soldiery to fight; but they continued to fall back in dismay. Then seizing a large staff, Yar Mahomed rushed like a madman upon the hindmost of the party, and drove them forward under a shower of heavy blows. The nature of the works was such as to forbid their falling back in a body. Cooped up in a narrow passage, and seeing no other outlet of escape, many of them leapt wildly over the parapet, and rushed down the exterior slope full upon the Persian stormers. ”

“ But no one who fairly estimates the character of Afghan history and Afghan morals, and the necessities, personal and political, of all who take part in such stirring scenes, can fail to perceive that his vices were rather the growth of circumstances than of any extraordinary badness of heart. Dost Mahomed was not by nature cruel; but once embarked in the strife of Afghan politics, a man must fight it out or die. Every man’s hand is against him, and he must turn his hand against every man. ”

“ To march a British army into Afghanistan was not, therefore, an obligation upon the Indian Government; it was their deliberate choice. The avowed object of the expedition, as set forth in the November declaration, was the establishment of a friendly power in Afghanistan. But the subversion of an existing dynasty could only be justified on the ground that its hostility threatened to disturb the peace and tranquillity of our own dominions. Whatever the hostility of the Barukzye Sirdahs may have been when Mahomed Shah was before the gates of Herat, it had now ceased to be formidable. ”

“ I maintain that it is the best of all policy to make Caubul in itself as strong as we can make it, and not weaken it by divided forces. It has already been too long divided. Caubul owed its strength in bygone days to the tribute of Cashmere and Sindh. Both are irrevocably gone, and while we do all we can to keep up the Sikhs, as a power east of the Indus, during the Maharajah’s life or afterwards, we should consolidate Afghan power west of the Indus, and have a king, and not a collection of chiefs. ”

“ Raise the siege; retire and give me the troops and guns I want to recover my kingdom; and I will give you Herat on my return. Send the Afghan traitors out of your camp. If you persist in your present purpose, future ages will call you a robber, who preyed upon the aged and helpless. If you do not act generously, God is great; and on him we rely. We have still got our swords.”
Such was the pith of the message which Pottinger was commissioned to deliver to the Shah of Persia. It came out by snatches, in an excited spasmodic manner; but was understood by the British officer. ”

“ His avarice and his ambition knew no bounds, and nothing was suffered to stand in the way of their gratification. Utterly without tenderness or compassion, he had no regard for the sufferings of others. Sparing neither sex nor age, he trod down the weak with an iron heel; and, a tyrant himself, encouraged the tyranny of his retainers. As faithless as he was cruel, there was no obligation which he had not violated, no treachery that had not stained his career. If there was an abler or a worse man in Central Asia, I have not yet heard his name. ”

“ The royal body-guards rode among the foot passengers; lashed at them with their whips; tilted with their lances at grave spectators sitting quietly in their own balconies; and cleared the way as best they could. But fast as they dispersed the thronging multitude, it closed again around the novel cavalcade. Through this motley crowd of excited inhabitants, the British Mission was with difficulty conducted to a house prepared for them by royal mandate. Seated on rich carpets, fed with sweetmeats, and regaled with sherbet, every attention was paid to the European strangers. ”

“ In the turmoil of actual war, all these light matters may be forgotten; but a long, a wearisome, and unexciting march through a difficult but uninteresting country, tries the patience even of the best of soldiers, and fills him with unappeasable yearnings after the comforts which make endurable the tedium of barrack or cantonment life. It is natural that with the prospect of such a march before him, he should not be entirely forgetful of the pleasures of the mess-table, or regardless of the less social delights of the pleasant volume and the solacing pipe. ”

“ Among our Mussulman subjects the feeling was somewhat akin to that which had unsettled their minds at the time when the rumoured advent of Zemaun Shah made them look for the speedy restoration of Mahomedan supremacy in Hindostan. In their eyes, indeed, the movement beyond the Afghan frontier took the shape of a Mahomedan invasion, and it was believed that countless thousands of true believers were about to pour themselves over the plains of the Punjab and Hindostan, and to wrest all the country between the Indus and the sea from the hands of the infidel usurpers. ”

“ Dost Mahomed. The empire of Ahmed Shah had been rapidly falling to pieces beneath the heavy blows of the Sikh spoliator. The wealthy provinces of Cashmere and Mooltan had been wrested from the Douranees in the time of the Suddozye Princes, and now the same unsparing hand had amputated another tract of country, to the humiliation of the Barukzye Sirdars. The Ameer, in bitterness of spirit, bewailed the loss of territory, and burned to resent the affront. ”

“ It was plainly the duty of Indian statesmen to acquaint themselves with the politics of Central Asia, and the geography of the countries through which the invasion of India must be attempted. It was only right that they should have been seen tracing on incorrect [170] maps the march of a Russian army from St. Petersburgh to Calcutta, by every possible and impossible route, now floundering among the inhospitable steppes, now parching on the desert of Merve. The Russian army might not come at last; but it was clearly the duty of an Indian statesman to know how it would endeavour to come. ”

“ Yar Mahomed, long after the danger was past, moved about as one confused and bewildered. There were few of the chiefs whose minds were not so wholly unhinged by the terrors of that great crisis as to be unable, for days afterwards, to perform calmly their wonted duties. A complete paralysis, indeed, descended upon men of all ranks. The loss on both sides had been severe; but if half the garrison had fallen in the defence of the breach, Herat could not have been more stunned and prostrated by the blow. The Persian camp was equally dispirited ”

“ If utter failure had been the great end sought to be accomplished, the whole business could not have been more cunningly devised. Burnes asked everything; and promised nothing. He was tied hand and foot. He had no power to treat with Dost Mahomed. All that he could do was to demand on one hand and refuse on the other. He talked about the friendship of the British Government. Dost Mahomed asked for some proof of it; and no proof was forthcoming. The wonder is, not that the Ameer at last listened to the overtures of others, but that he did not seek other assistance before. ”

“ Thus early the want of an intelligence-department was painfully apparent; but up to the last day of our connection with Afghanistan nothing was done, nor has anything been done in more recent wars, to remedy the admitted evil. Down the left bank of the Indus went Cotton with his troops, glorying in the prospect before them. The treasures of Hyderabad seemed to lie at their feet. Never was there a more popular movement. The troops pushed on in the highest spirits, eager for the affray—confident of success. ”

“ In Afghanistan revenge is a virtue. The sons of Poyndah Khan had the murder of their father to avenge; and they rested not till the bloody obligation had been faithfully fulfilled. Futteh Khan had fled into Persia, and there leagued himself with Prince Mahmoud. Repeated failure had extinguished the ambition of this restless prince. The accession of the Barukzye sirdar now inspired him with new courage. Upheld by the strong arm of the “king-maker,” he determined to strike another blow for the sovereignty of Caubul. ”

“ They are [35] impatient of the restraints of a settled government, and are continually panting after change. Half-a-century of turbulance and anarchy has witnessed but little variation in the national character; and the Afghan of the present day is the same strange mixture of impetuosity and cunning—of boldness and treachery—of generosity and selfishness—of kindness and cruelty—as he was when Zemaun Shah haunted the Council-Chamber of Calcutta with a phantom of invasion, and the vision was all the more terrible because “the shape thereof” no one could discern. ”

“ At this time it may have been questioned whether the restoration of Shah Soojah to the sovereignty of the Douranee Empire were the best means of resisting Persian aggression and combating Russian intrigue, but few doubted the propriety of doing something to meet the dangers that threatened us from those sources. Had Herat fallen to the Persian arms, the Barukzye Sirdars, without some intervention on our part, would have prostrated themselves at the feet of the Persian monarch; and Russia would have established an influence in Afghanistan which we should have striven in vain to counteract. ”

“ But when in the month of May, 1838, Lord Auckland, then at Simlah, wrote an elaborate minute, setting forth his opinions regarding the measures best calculated to secure the integrity of the western frontier of Afghanistan, and suggesting the restoration of the exiled Suddozye Prince, it was evident that he had not, at that time, grasped the grand, but perilous idea, of sending a British army into the fastnesses of Afghanistan to break down the dynasty of the Barukzyes, to set up a monarch of our own, and so to roll back for ever the tide of western invasion. ”

“ Of Sultan Mahomed Khan, the first instrument at command, you will remember that his brother Dost Mahomed, plainly confessed his dread of him if guided by Sikh gold, and with such aid the ruler of Caubul may be readily destroyed; but Sultan Mahomed has not the ability to rule Caubul; he is a very good man, but incapable of acting for himself; and though fit as an instrument in getting rid of a present evil, he would still leave affairs as unsettled as ever when fixed in Caubul, and he is consequently a very questionable agent to be used at all. ”

“ It illustrates, in a remarkable manner, both the general character of Afghan politics, and the extraordinary vicissitudes of the early career of the man whom thirty years afterwards the British raised from the dust of exile, and reseated on the throne of his fathers. The history of the Afghan monarchy is a history of a long series of revolutions. Seldom has the country rested from strife—seldom has the sword reposed in the scabbard. The temper of the people has never been attuned to peace. ”

“ But, so surrounded, Lord Auckland journeyed by easy stages towards the cool mountain-ranges of the Himalayah; and as he advanced, there came to the vice-regal camp tidings, from time to time, of the progress or no-progress of Mahomed Shah’s army before Herat, and of Burnes’s diplomatic movements at the Court of the Caubul Ameer. There was much in all this to perplex Lord Auckland. He was in all sincerity a man of peace. They who best knew his character and that of his chief secretary, [215] predicted that if war could, in any way, be avoided, there would be no war. ”

“ Happy was every man in the force when the army again emerged into the open country. The valley of Shawl lay before them, a favoured spot in a country of little favour. The clear crisp climate braced the European frame; and over the wide plain, bounded by noble mountain-ranges, intersected by many sparkling streams, [423] and dotted with orchards and vineyards, the eye ranged with delight ”

“ But half a century ago, the English in India knew little of the resources of the Douranee Empire, of the national characteristics of the people, of the continually unsettled state of their political relations, or of the incompetency of the monarch himself to conduct any great enterprise. Distance and ignorance magnified the danger: but the apprehensions, which were then entertained, were not wholly groundless apprehensions. All the enemies of the British Empire in India had turned their eyes with malicious expectancy upon Caubul. ”

“ There was a Persian army, under the command of the “King-of-Kings” himself, investing Herat, and threatening to march upon Candahar and Caubul. There were Russian diplomatists and Russian engineers in his camp, directing the counsels of the Shah and the operations of the siege. The Barukzye Sirdars of Afghanistan were intriguing with the Persian Court; and far out in the distance, beyond the mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh, there was the shadow of a great northern army, tremendous in its indistinctness, sweeping across the wilds and deserts of Central Asia, towards the frontiers of Hindostan. ”

“ The inexperience of English statesmen suddenly transplanted to a new sphere of action, often sees in the most ordinary political phenomena strange and alarming portents. It is easy to be wise after the event. We know now that India has never been in any real danger from French intrigue or French aggressiveness; but Lord Wellesley and Lord Minto saw with different eyes, and grappled the shadowy danger as though it were a substantial fact. In those days such extraordinary events were passing around us, that to assign the limits of political probability was beyond the reach of human wisdom. ”

“ 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. That Dost Mahomed, during the twelve years of supremacy which he enjoyed at Caubul, often resorted, for the due maintenance of his power, to measures of severity incompatible with the character of a humane ruler, is only to say that for twelve years he retained his place at the head of affairs. ”

“ They doomed him only to political extinction. There is a cruel, but a sure way of achieving this in all Mahomedan countries. Between a blind king and a dead king there is no political difference. The eyes of a conquered monarch are punctured with a lancet, and he de facto ceases to reign. They blinded Shah Zemaun, and cast him into prison; and the Douranee Empire owned Shah Mahmoud as its head.
So fell Zemaun Shah, the once dreaded Afghan monarch, whose threatened invasion of Hindostan had for years been a ghastly phantom haunting the Council-Chamber of the British-Indian Government. ”

“ Civilians seldom estimate military difficulties aright. It is true that our political difficulties were melting away. The Candahar Sirdars, deserted and betrayed, seemed to have given themselves up to despair, and there was little chance of the progress of our army being disputed by an Afghan force. But the scarcity, which had pressed so severely on our troops, and had nearly destroyed our horses, was not less a reality because no enemy appeared [435] to educe all the disastrous results which were likely to flow from such deterioration of the physique of our army. ”