The Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 by Archibald Forbes

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[Illustration: Sir Frederick Roberts]

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THE AFGHAN WARS 1839-42 AND 1878-80

by ARCHIBALD FORBES

With Portraits and Plans

* * * * *

CONTENTS

PART I.--THE FIRST AFGHAN WAR

CHAP.

I.--PRELIMINARY

II.--THE MARCH TO CABUL

III.--THE FIRST YEAR OF OCCUPATION

IV.--THE SECOND YEAR OF OCCUPATION

V.--THE BEGINNING OF THE END

VI.--THE ROAD TO RUIN

VII.--THE CATASTROPHE

VIII.--THE SIEGE AND DEFENCE OF JELLALABAD

IX.--RETRIBUTION AND RESCUE

PART II.--THE SECOND AFGHAN WAR

I.--THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

II.--THE OPENING OF THE SECOND CAMPAIGN

III.--THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM

IV.--THE DECEMBER STORM

V.--ON THE DEFENSIVE IN SHERPUR

VI.--AHMED KHEL

VII.--THE AMEER ABDURRAHMAN

VIII.--MAIWAND AND THE GREAT MARCH

IX.--THE BATTLE OF CANDAHAR
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS

PORTRAIT OF SIR FREDERICK ROBERTS _Frontispiece_

PLAN OF CABUL, THE CANTONMENT

PORTRAIT OF SIR GEORGE POLLOCK

PORTRAIT OF SIR LOUIS CAVAGNARI AND SIRDARS

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

PLAN OF ACTION, AHMED KHEL

PORTRAIT OF THE AMEER ABDURRAHMAN

PLAN OF THE ACTION OF MAIWAND

PLAN OF THE ACTION OF CANDAHAR

_The Portraits of Sir G. Pollock and Sir F. Roberts are engraved by
permission of Messrs Henry Graves & Co._

* * * * *

THE AFGHAN WARS

PART I: _THE FIRST AFGHAN WAR_

CHAPTER I: PRELIMINARY

Since it was the British complications with Persia which mainly furnished
what pretext there was for the invasion of Afghanistan by an Anglo-Indian
army in 1839, some brief recital is necessary of the relations between
Great Britain and Persia prior to that aggression.

By a treaty, concluded between England and Persia in 1814, the former
state bound itself, in case of the invasion of Persia by any European
nation, to aid the Shah either with troops from India or by the payment
of an annual subsidy in support of his war expenses. It was a dangerous
engagement, even with the _caveat_ rendering the undertaking inoperative
if such invasion should be provoked by Persia. During the fierce struggle
of 1825-7, between Abbas Meerza and the Russian General Paskevitch,
England refrained from supporting Persia either with men or with money,
and when prostrate Persia was in financial extremities because of the war
indemnity which the treaty of Turkmanchai imposed upon her, England took
advantage of her needs by purchasing the cancellation of the inconvenient
obligation at the cheap cost of about £300,000. It was the natural result
of this transaction that English influence with the Persian Court should
sensibly decline, and it was not less natural that in conscious weakness
Persia should fall under the domination of Russian influence.

Futteh Ali, the old Shah of Persia, died in 1834, and was succeeded by
his grandson Prince Mahomed Meerza, a young man who inherited much of the
ambition of his gallant father Abbas Meerza. His especial aspiration,
industriously stimulated by his Russian advisers, urged him to the
enterprise of conquering the independent principality of Herat, on the
western border of Afghanistan. Herat was the only remnant of Afghan
territory that still remained to a member of the legitimate royal house.
Its ruler was Shah Kamran, son of that Mahmoud Shah who, after ousting
his brother Shah Soojah from the throne of Cabul, had himself been driven
from that elevation, and had retired to the minor principality of Herat.
The young Shah of Persia was not destitute of justification for his
designs on Herat. That this was so was frankly admitted by Mr Ellis, the
British envoy to his Court, who wrote to his Government that the Shah had
fair claim to the sovereignty of Afghanistan as far as Ghuznee, and that
Kamran's conduct in occupying part of the Persian province of Seistan had
given the Shah 'a full justification for commencing hostilities against
Herat.'

The serious phase of the situation for England and India was that Russian
influence was behind Persia in this hostile action against Herat. Mr
Ellis pointed out that in the then existing state of relations between
Persia and Russia, the progress of the former in Afghanistan was
tantamount to the advancement of the latter. But unfortunately there
remained valid an article in the treaty of 1814 to the effect that, in
case of war between the Afghans and the Persians, the English Government
should not interfere with either party unless when called on by both to
mediate. In vain did Ellis and his successor M'Neill remonstrate with the
Persian monarch against the Herat expedition. An appeal to St Petersburg,
on the part of Great Britain, produced merely an evasive reply. How
diplomatic disquietude had become intensified may be inferred from this,
that whereas in April 1836 Ellis wrote of Persia as a Russian first
parallel of attack against India, Lord Auckland, then Governor-General of
India, directed M'Neill, in the early part of 1837, to urge the Shah to
abandon his enterprise, on the ground that he (the Governor-General)
'must view with umbrage and displeasure schemes of interference and
conquest on our western frontier.'

The Shah, unmoved by the representations of the British envoy, marched on
Herat, and the siege was opened on November 23d, 1837. Durand, a capable
critic, declares that the strength of the place, the resolution of the
besiegers, the skill of their Russian military advisers, and the
gallantry of the besieged, were alike objects of much exaggeration. 'The
siege was from first to last thoroughly ill-conducted, and the defence,
in reality not better managed, owed its _éclat_ to Persian ignorance,
timidity and supineness. The advice of Pottinger, the gallant English
officer who assisted the defence, was seldom asked, and still more seldom
taken; and no one spoke more plainly of the conduct of both besieged and
besiegers than did Pottinger himself.' M'Neill effected nothing definite
during a long stay in the Persian camp before Herat, the counteracting
influence of the Russian envoy being too strong with the Shah; and the
British representative, weary of continual slights, at length quitted the
Persian camp completely foiled. After six days' bombardment, the Persians
and their Russian auxiliaries delivered an assault in force on June 23d,
1838. It failed, with heavy loss, and the dispirited Shah determined on
raising the siege. His resolution was quickened by the arrival of Colonel
Stoddart in his camp, with the information that a military force from
Bombay, supported by ships of war, had landed on the island of Karrack in
the Persian Gulf, and with the peremptory ultimatum to the Shah that he
must retire from Herat at once. Lord Palmerston, in ordering this
diversion in the Gulf, had thought himself justified by circumstances in
overriding the clear and precise terms of an article in a treaty to which
England had on several occasions engaged to adhere. As for the Shah, he
appears to have been relieved by the ultimatum. On the 9th September he
mounted his horse and rode away from Herat. The siege had lasted nine and
a half months. To-day, half a century after Simonich the Russian envoy
followed Mahomed Shah from battered but unconquered Herat, that city is
still an Afghan place of arms.

Shah Soojah-ool Moolk, a grandson of the illustrious Ahmed Shah, reigned
in Afghanistan from 1803 till 1809. His youth had been full of trouble
and vicissitude. He had been a wanderer, on the verge of starvation, a
pedlar and a bandit, who raised money by plundering caravans. His courage
was lightly reputed, and it was as a mere creature of circumstance that
he reached the throne. His reign was perturbed, and in 1809 he was a
fugitive and an exile. Runjeet Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjaub,
defrauded him of the famous Koh-i-noor, which is now the most precious of
the crown jewels of England, and plundered and imprisoned the fallen man.
Shah Soojah at length escaped from Lahore. After further misfortunes he
at length reached the British frontier station of Loodianah, and in 1816
became a pensioner of the East India Company.

After the downfall of Shah Soojah, Afghanistan for many years was a prey
to anarchy. At length in 1826, Dost Mahomed succeeded in making himself
supreme at Cabul, and this masterful man thenceforward held sway until
his death in 1863, uninterruptedly save during the three years of the
British occupation. Dost Mahomed was neither kith nor kin to the
legitimate dynasty which he displaced. His father Poyndah Khan was an
able statesman and gallant soldier. He left twenty-one sons, of whom
Futteh Khan was the eldest, and Dost Mahomed one of the youngest. Futteh
Khan was the Warwick of Afghanistan, but the Afghan 'Kingmaker' had no
Barnet as the closing scene of his chequered life. Falling into hostile
hands, he was blinded and scalped. Refusing to betray his brothers, he
was leisurely cut to pieces by the order and in the presence of the
monarch whom he had made. His young brother Dost Mahomed undertook to
avenge his death. After years of varied fortunes the Dost had worsted all
his enemies, and in 1826 he became the ruler of Cabul. Throughout his
long reign Dost Mahomed was a strong and wise ruler. His youth had been
neglected and dissolute. His education was defective, and he had been
addicted to wine. Once seated on the throne, the reformation of our Henry
Fifth was not more thorough than was that of Dost Mahomed. He taught
himself to read and write, studied the Koran, became scrupulously
abstemious, assiduous in affairs, no longer truculent but courteous. He
is said to have made a public acknowledgment of the errors of his
previous life, and a firm profession of reformation; nor did his after
life belie the pledges to which he committed himself. There was a fine
rugged honesty in his nature, and a streak of genuine chivalry;
notwithstanding the despite he suffered at our hands, he had a real
regard for the English, and his loyalty to us was broken only by his
armed support of the Sikhs in the second Punjaub war.

The fallen Shah Soojah, from his asylum in Loodianah, was continually
intriguing for his restoration. His schemes were long inoperative, and it
was not until 1832 that certain arrangements were entered into between
him and the Maharaja Runjeet Singh. To an application on Shah Soojah's
part for countenance and pecuniary aid, the Anglo-Indian Government
replied that to afford him assistance would be inconsistent with the
policy of neutrality which the Government had imposed on itself; but it
unwisely contributed financially toward his undertaking by granting him
four months' pension in advance. Sixteen thousand rupees formed a scant
war fund with which to attempt the recovery of a throne, but the Shah
started on his errand in February 1833. After a successful contest with
the Ameers of Scinde, he marched on Candahar, and besieged that fortress.
Candahar was in extremity when Dost Mahomed, hurrying from Cabul,
relieved it, and joining forces with its defenders, he defeated and
routed Shah Soojah, who fled precipitately, leaving behind him his
artillery and camp equipage, During the Dost's absence in the south,
Runjeet Singh's troops crossed the Attock, occupied the Afghan province
of Peshawur, and drove the Afghans into the Khyber Pass. No subsequent
efforts on Dost Mahomed's part availed to expel the Sikhs from Peshawur,
and suspicious of British connivance with Runjeet Singh's successful
aggression, he took into consideration the policy of fortifying himself
by a counter alliance with Persia. As for Shah Soojah, he had crept back
to his refuge at Loodianah.

Lord Auckland succeeded Lord William Bentinck as Governor-General of
India in March 1836. In reply to Dost Mahomed's letter of congratulation,
his lordship wrote: 'You are aware that it is not the practice of the
British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent
states;' an abstention which Lord Auckland was soon to violate. He had
brought from England the feeling of disquietude in regard to the designs
of Persia and Russia which the communications of our envoy in Persia had
fostered in the Home Government, but it would appear that he was wholly
undecided what line of action to pursue. 'Swayed,' says Durand, 'by the
vague apprehensions of a remote danger entertained by others rather than
himself,' he despatched to Afghanistan Captain Burnes on a nominally
commercial mission, which, in fact, was one of political discovery, but
without definite instructions. Burnes, an able but rash and ambitious
man, reached Cabul in September 1837, two months before the Persian army
began the siege of Herat. He had a strong prepossession in favour of the
Dost, whose guest he had already been in 1832, and the policy he favoured
was not the revival of the legitimate dynasty in the person of Shah
Soojah, but the attachment of Dost Mahomed to British interests by
strengthening his throne and affording him British countenance.

Burnes sanguinely believed that he had arrived at Cabul in the nick of
time, for an envoy from the Shah of Persia was already at Candahar,
bearing presents and assurances of support. The Dost made no concealment
to Burnes of his approaches to Persia and Russia, in despair of British
good offices, and being hungry for assistance from any source to meet the
encroachments of the Sikhs, he professed himself ready to abandon his
negotiations with the western powers if he were given reason to expect
countenance and assistance at the hands of the Anglo-Indian Government.
Burnes communicated to his Government those friendly proposals,
supporting them by his own strong representations, and meanwhile, carried
away by enthusiasm, he exceeded his powers by making efforts to dissuade
the Candahar chiefs from the Persian alliance, and by offering to support
them with money to enable them to make head against the offensive, by
which Persia would probably seek to revenge the rejection of her
overtures. For this unauthorised excess of zeal Burnes was severely
reprimanded by his Government, and was directed to retract his offers to
the Candahar chiefs. The situation of Burnes in relation to the Dost was
presently complicated by the arrival at Cabul of a Russian officer
claiming to be an envoy from the Czar, whose credentials, however, were
regarded as dubious, and who, if that circumstance has the least weight,
was on his return to Russia utterly repudiated by Count Nesselrode. The
Dost took small account of this emissary, continuing to assure Burnes
that he cared for no connection except with the English, and Burnes
professed to his Government his fullest confidences in the sincerity of
those declarations. But the tone of Lord Auckland's reply, addressed to
the Dost, was so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's
intention that it should give offence. It had that effect, and Burnes'
mission at once became hopeless. Yet, as a last resort, Dost Mahomed
lowered his pride so far as to write to the Governor-General imploring
him 'to remedy the grievances of the Afghans, and afford them some little
encouragement and power.' The pathetic representation had no effect. The
Russian envoy, who was profuse in his promises of everything which the
Dost was most anxious to obtain, was received into favour and treated
with distinction, and on his return journey he effected a treaty with the
Candahar chiefs, which was presently ratified by the Russian minister at
the Persian Court. Burnes, fallen into discredit at Cabul, quitted that
place in August 1838. He had not been discreet, but it was not his
indiscretion that brought about the failure of his mission. A nefarious
transaction, which Kaye denounces with the passion of a just indignation,
connects itself with Burnes' negotiations with the Dost; his official
correspondence was unscrupulously mutilated and garbled in the published
Blue Book with deliberate purpose to deceive the British public.

Burnes had failed because, since he had quitted India for Cabul, Lord
Auckland's policy had gradually altered. Lord Auckland had landed in
India in the character of a man of peace. That, so late as April 1837, he
had no design of obstructing the existing situation in Afghanistan is
proved by his written statement of that date, that 'the British
Government had resolved decidedly to discourage the prosecution by the
ex-king Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, so long as he may remain under our
protection, of further schemes of hostility against the chiefs now in
power in Cabul and Candahar.' Yet, in the following June, he concluded a
treaty which sent Shah Soojah to Cabul, escorted by British bayonets. Of
this inconsistency no explanation presents itself. It was a far cry from
our frontier on the Sutlej to Herat in the confines of Central Asia--a
distance of more than 1200 miles, over some of the most arduous marching
ground in the known world. No doubt the Anglo-Indian Government was
justified in being somewhat concerned by the facts that a Persian army,
backed by Russian volunteers and Russian roubles, was besieging Herat,
and that Persian and Russian emissaries were at work in Afghanistan. Both
phenomena were rather of the 'bogey' character; how much so to-day shows
when the Afghan frontier is still beyond Herat, and when a descendant of
Dost Mahomed still sits in the Cabul _musnid_. But neither England nor
India scrupled to make the Karrack counter-threat which arrested the
siege of Herat; and the obvious policy as regarded Afghanistan was to
watch the results of the intrigues which were on foot, to ignore them
should they come to nothing, as was probable, to counteract them by
familiar methods if serious consequences should seem impending. Our
alliance with Runjeet Singh was solid, and the quarrel between Dost
Mahomed and him concerning the Peshawur province was notoriously easy of
arrangement.

On whose memory rests the dark shadow of responsibility for the first
Afghan war? The late Lord Broughton, who, when Sir John Cam Hobhouse, was
President of the Board of Control from 1835 to 1841, declared before a
House of Commons Committee, in 1851, 'The Afghan war was done by myself;
entirely without the privity of the Board of Directors.' The meaning of
that declaration, of course, was that it was the British Government of
the day which was responsible, acting through its member charged with the
control of Indian affairs; and further, that the directorate of the East
India Company was accorded no voice in the matter. But this utterance was
materially qualified by Sir J. C. Hobhouse's statement in the House of
Commons in 1842, that his despatch indicating the policy to be adopted,
and that written by Lord Auckland, informing him that the expedition had
already been undertaken, had crossed each other on the way.

It would be tedious to detail how Lord Auckland, under evil counsel,
gradually boxed the compass from peace to war. The scheme of action
embodied in the treaty which, in the early summer of 1838, was concluded
between the Anglo-Indian Government, Runjeet Singh, and Shah Soojah, was
that Shah Soojah, with a force officered from an Indian army, and paid by
British money, possessing also the goodwill and support of the Maharaja
of the Punjaub, should attempt the recovery of his throne without any
stiffening of British bayonets at his back. Then it was urged, and the
representation was indeed accepted, that the Shah would need the buttress
afforded by English troops, and that a couple of regiments only would
suffice to afford this prestige. But Sir Harry Fane, the
Commander-in-Chief, judiciously interposed his veto on the despatch of a
handful of British soldiers on so distant and hazardous an expedition.
Finally, the Governor-General, committed already to a mistaken line of
policy, and urged forward by those about him, took the unfortunate
resolution to gather together an Anglo-Indian army, and to send it, with
the ill-omened Shah Soojah on its shoulders, into the unknown and distant
wilds of Afghanistan. This action determined on, it was in accordance
with the Anglo-Indian fitness of things that the Governor-General should
promulgate a justificatory manifesto. Of this composition it is
unnecessary to say more than to quote Durand's observation that in it
'the words "justice and necessity" were applied in a manner for which
there is fortunately no precedent in the English language,' and Sir Henry
Edwardes' not less trenchant comment that 'the views and conduct of Dost
Mahomed were misrepresented with a hardihood which a Russian statesman
might have envied.'

All men whose experience gave weight to their words opposed this
'preposterous enterprise.' Mr Elphinstone, who had been the head of a
mission to Cabul thirty years earlier, held that 'if an army was sent up
the passes, and if we could feed it, no doubt we might take Cabul and set
up Shah Soojah; but it was hopeless to maintain him in a poor, cold,
strong and remote country, among so turbulent a people.' Lord William
Bentinck, Lord Auckland's predecessor, denounced the project as an act of
incredible folly. Marquis Wellesley regarded 'this wild expedition into a
distant region of rocks and deserts, of sands and ice and snow,' as an
act of infatuation. The Duke of Wellington pronounced with prophetic
sagacity, that the consequence of once crossing the Indus to settle a
government in Afghanistan would be a perennial march into that country.

CHAPTER II: THE MARCH TO CABUL

The two main objects of the venturesome offensive movement to which Lord
Auckland had committed himself were, first, the raising of the Persian
siege of Herat if the place should hold out until reached--the recapture
of it if it should have fallen; and, secondly, the establishment of Shah
Soojah on the Afghan throne. The former object was the more pressing, and
time was very precious; but the distances in India are great, the means
of communication in 1838 did not admit of celerity, and the seasons
control the safe prosecution of military operations. Nevertheless, the
concentration of the army at the frontier station of Ferozepore was fully
accomplished toward the end of November. Sir Harry Fane was to be the
military head of the expedition, and he had just right to be proud of the
14,000 carefully selected and well-seasoned troops who constituted his
Bengal contingent. The force consisted of two infantry divisions, of
which the first, commanded by Major-General Sir Willoughby Cotton,
contained three brigades, commanded respectively by Colonels Sale, Nott,
and Dennis, of whom the two former were to attain high distinction within
the borders of Afghanistan. Major-General Duncan commanded the second
infantry division of the two brigades, of which one was commanded by
Colonel Roberts, the gallant father of a gallant son, the other by
Colonel Worsley. The 6000 troops raised for Shah Soojah, who were under
Fane's orders, and were officered from our army in India, had been
recently and hurriedly recruited, and although rapidly improving, were
not yet in a state of high efficiency. The contingent which the Bombay
Presidency was to furnish to the 'Army of the Indus,' and which landed
about the close of the year near the mouth of the Indus, was under the
command of General Sir John Keane, the Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay
army. The Bombay force was about 5000 strong.

Before the concentration at Ferozepore had been completed, Lord Auckland
received official intimation of the retreat of the Persians from before
Herat. With their departure had gone, also, the sole legitimate object of
the expedition; there remained but a project of wanton aggression and
usurpation. The Russo-Persian failure at Herat was scarcely calculated to
maintain in the astute and practical Afghans any hope of fulfilment of
the promises which the western powers had thrown about so lavishly, while
it made clear that, for some time at least to come, the Persians would
not be found dancing again to Russian fiddling. The abandonment of the
siege of Herat rendered the invasion of Afghanistan an aggression
destitute even of pretext. The Governor-General endeavoured to justify
his resolution to persevere in it by putting forth the argument that its
prosecution was required, 'alike in observation of the treaties entered
into with Runjeet Singh and Shah Soojah as by paramount considerations of
defensive policy.' A remarkable illustration of 'defensive policy' to
take the offensive against a remote country from whose further confines
had faded away foiled aggression, leaving behind nothing but a bitter
consciousness of broken promises! As for the other plea, the tripartite
treaty contained no covenant that we should send a corporal's guard
across our frontier. If Shah Soojah had a powerful following in
Afghanistan, he could regain his throne without our assistance; if he had
no holding there, it was for us a truly discreditable enterprise to foist
him on a recalcitrant people at the point of the bayonet.

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