The Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 by Archibald Forbes

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One result of the tidings from Herat was to reduce by a division the
strength of the expeditionary force. Fane, who had never taken kindly to
the project, declined to associate himself with the diminished array that
remained. The command of the Bengal column fell to Sir Willoughby Cotton,
with whom as his aide-de-camp rode that Henry Havelock whose name twenty
years later was to ring through India and England. Duncan's division was
to stand fast at Ferozepore as a support, by which disposition the
strength of the Bengal marching force was cut down to about 9500 fighting
men. After its junction with the Bombay column, the army would be 14,500
strong, without reckoning the Shah's contingent. There was an interlude
at Ferozepore of reviews and high jinks with the shrewd, debauched old
Runjeet Singh; of which proceedings Havelock in his narrative of the
expedition gives a detailed account, dwelling with extreme disapprobation
on Runjeet's addiction to a 'pet tipple' strong enough to lay out the
hardest drinker in the British camp, but which the old reprobate quaffed
freely without turning a hair.

At length, on December 10th, 1838, Cotton began the long march which was
not to terminate at Cabul until August 6th of the following year. The
most direct route was across the Punjaub, and up the passes from
Peshawur, but the Governor-General had shrunk from proposing to Runjeet
Singh that the force should march through his territories, thinking it
enough that the Maharaja had permitted Shah Soojah's heir, Prince Timour,
to go by Peshawur to Cabul, had engaged to support him with a Sikh force,
and had agreed to maintain an army of reserve at Peshawur. The chosen
route was by the left bank of the Sutlej to its junction with the Indus,
down the left bank of the Indus to the crossing point at Roree, and from
Sukkur across the Scinde and northern Belooch provinces by the Bolan and
Kojuk passes to Candahar, thence by Khelat-i-Ghilzai and Ghuznee to
Cabul. This was a line excessively circuitous, immensely long, full of
difficulties, and equally disadvantageous as to supplies and
communications. On the way the column would have to effect a junction
with the Bombay force, which at Vikkur was distant 800 miles from
Ferozepore. Of the distance of 850 miles from the latter post to Candahar
the first half to the crossing of the Indus presented no serious
difficulties, but from Sukkur beyond the country was inhospitable and
cruelly rugged. It needed little military knowledge to realise how more
and yet more precarious would become the communications as the chain
lengthened, to discern that from Ferozepore to the Indus they would be at
the mercy of the Sikhs, and to comprehend this also, that a single
serious check, in or beyond the passes, would involve all but inevitable
ruin.

Shah Soojah and his levies moved independently some marches in advance of
Cotton. The Dooranee monarch-elect had already crossed the Indus, and was
encamped at Shikarpore, when he was joined by Mr William Hay Macnaghten,
of the Company's Civil Service, the high functionary who had been
gazetted as 'Envoy and Minister on the part of the Government of India at
the Court of Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk.' Durand pronounces the selection an
unhappy one, 'for Macnaghten, long accustomed to irresponsible office,
inexperienced in men, and ignorant of the country and people of
Afghanistan, was, though an erudite Arabic scholar, neither practised in
the field of Asiatic intrigue nor a man of action. His ambition was,
however, great, and the expedition, holding out the promise of
distinction and honours, had met with his strenuous advocacy.' Macnaghten
was one of the three men who chiefly inspired Lord Auckland with the
policy to which he had committed himself. He was the negotiator of the
tripartite treaty. He was now on his way toward a region wherein he was
to concern himself in strange adventures, the outcome of which was to
darken his reputation, consign him to a sudden cruel death, bring awful
ruin on the enterprise he had fostered, and inflict incalculable damage
on British prestige in India.

Marching through Bhawulpore and Northern Scinde, without noteworthy
incident save heavy losses of draught cattle, Cotton's army reached
Roree, the point at which the Indus was to be crossed, in the third week
of January 1839. Here a delay was encountered. The Scinde Ameers were,
with reason, angered by the unjust and exacting terms which Pottinger had
been instructed to enforce on them. They had been virtually independent
of Afghanistan for nearly half a century; there was now masterfully
demanded of them quarter of a million sterling in name of back tribute,
and this in the face of the fact that they held a solemn release by Shah
Soojah of all past and future claims. When they demurred to this, and to
other exactions, they were peremptorily told that 'neither the ready
power to crush and annihilate them, nor the will to call it into action,
was wanting if it appeared requisite, however remotely, for the safety
and integrity of the Anglo-Indian empire and frontier.'

It was little wonder that the Ameers were reluctant to fall in with terms
advanced so arrogantly. Keane marched up the right bank of the Indus to
within a couple of marches of Hyderabad, and having heard of the
rejection by the Ameers of Pottinger's terms, and of the gathering of
some 20,000 armed Belooches about the capital, he called for the
co-operation of part of the Bengal column in a movement on Hyderabad.
Cotton started on his march down the left bank, on January Jeth, with
5600 men. Under menaces so ominous the unfortunate Ameers succumbed.
Cotton returned to Roree; the Bengal column crossed the Indus, and on
February 20th its headquarters reached Shikarpore. Ten days later,
Cotton, leading the advance, was in Dadur, at the foot of the Bolan Pass,
having suffered heavily in transport animals almost from the start.
Supplies were scarce in a region so barren, but with a month's partial
food on his beasts of burden he quitted Dadur March 10th, got safely, if
toilsomely, through the Bolan, and on 26th reached Quetta, where he was
to halt for orders. Shah Soojah and Keane followed, their troops
suffering not a little from scarcity of supplies and loss of animals.

Keane's error in detaining Cotton at Quetta until he should arrive proved
itself in the semi-starvation to which the troops of the Bengal column
were reduced. The Khan of Khelat, whether from disaffection or inability,
left unfulfilled his promise to supply grain, and the result of the
quarrel which Burnes picked with him was that he shunned coming in and
paying homage to Shah Soojah, for which default he was to suffer cruel
and unjustifiable ruin. The sepoys were put on half, the camp followers
on quarter rations, and the force for eleven days had been idly consuming
the waning supplies, when at length, on April 6th, Keane came into camp,
having already formally assumed the command of the whole army, and made
certain alterations in its organisation and subsidiary commands. There
still remained to be traversed 147 miles before Candahar should be
reached, and the dreaded Kojuk Pass had still to be penetrated.

Keane was a soldier who had gained a reputation for courage in Egypt and
the Peninsula. He was indebted to the acuteness of his engineer and the
valour of his troops, for the peerage conferred on him for Ghuznee, and
it cannot be said that during his command in Afghanistan he disclosed any
marked military aptitude. But he had sufficient perception to recognise
that he had brought the Bengal column to the verge of starvation in
Quetta, and sufficient common sense to discern that, since if it remained
there it would soon starve outright, the best thing to be done was to
push it forward with all possible speed into a region where food should
be procurable. Acting on this reasoning, he marched the day after his
arrival. Cotton, while lying in Quetta, had not taken the trouble to
reconnoitre the passes in advance, far less to make a practicable road
through the Kojuk defile if that should prove the best route. The
resolution taken to march through it, two days were spent in making the
pass possible for wheels; and from the 13th to the 21st the column was
engaged in overcoming the obstacles it presented, losing in the task,
besides, much baggage, supplies, transport and ordnance stores. Further
back in the Bolan Willshire with the Bombay column was faring worse; he
was plundered severely by tribal marauders.

By May 4th the main body of the army was encamped in the plain of
Candahar. From the Kojuk, Shah Soojah and his contingent had led the
advance toward the southern capital of the dominions from the throne of
which he had been cast down thirty years before. The Candahar chiefs had
meditated a night attack on his raw troops, but Macnaghten's intrigues
and bribes had wrought defection in their camp; and while Kohun-dil-Khan
and his brothers were in flight to Girishk on the Helmund, the infamous
Hadji Khan Kakur led the venal herd of turncoat sycophants to the feet of
the claimant who came backed by the British gold, which Macnaghten was
scattering abroad with lavish hand. Shah Soojah recovered from his
trepidation, hurried forward in advance of his troops, and entered
Candahar on April 24th. His reception was cold. The influential chiefs
stood aloof, abiding the signs of the times; the populace of Candahar
stood silent and lowering. Nor did the sullenness abate when the presence
of a large army with its followers promptly raised the price of grain, to
the great distress of the poor. The ceremony of the solemn recognition of
the Shah, held close to the scene of his defeat in 1834, Havelock
describes as an imposing pageant, with homagings and royal salutes,
parade of troops and presentation of _nuzzurs_; but the arena set apart
for the inhabitants was empty, spite of Eastern love for a _tamasha_, and
the display of enthusiasm was confined to the immediate retainers of His
Majesty.

The Shah was eager for the pursuit of the fugitive chiefs; but the troops
were jaded and sickly, the cavalry were partially dismounted, and what
horses remained were feeble skeletons. The transport animals needed
grazing and rest, and their loss of numbers to be made good. The crops
were not yet ripe, and provisions were scant and dear. When, on May 9th,
Sale marched toward Girishk, his detachment carried half rations, and his
handful of regular cavalry was all that two regiments could furnish.
Reaching Girishk, he found that the chiefs had fled toward Seistan, and
leaving a regiment of the Shah's contingent in occupation, he returned to
Candahar.

Macnaghten professed the belief, and perhaps may have deluded himself
into it, that Candahar had received the Shah with enthusiasm. He was
sanguine that the march to Cabul would be unopposed, and he urged on
Keane, who was wholly dependent on the Envoy for political information,
to move forward at once, lightening the difficulties of the march by
leaving the Bombay troops at Candahar. But Keane declined, on the advice
of Thomson, his chief engineer, who asked significantly whether he had
found the information given him by the political department in any single
instance correct. Food prospects, however, did not improve at Candahar,
and leaving a strong garrison there as well, curious to say, as the siege
train which with arduous labour had been brought up the passes, Keane
began the march to Cabul on June 27th. He had supplies only sufficient to
carry his army thither on half rations. Macnaghten had lavished money so
freely that the treasury chest was all but empty. How the Afghans
regarded the invasion was evinced by condign slaughter of our stragglers.

As the army advanced up the valley of the Turnuk, the climate became more
temperate, the harvest was later, and the troops improved in health and
spirit. Concentrating his forces, Keane reached Ghuznee on July 21st. The
reconnaissance he made proved that fortress occupied in force. The
outposts driven in, and a close inspection made, the works were found
stronger than had been represented, and its regular reduction was out of
the question without the battering train which Keane had allowed himself
to be persuaded into leaving behind. A wall some 70 feet high and a wet
ditch in its front made mining and escalade alike impracticable. Thomson,
however, noticed that the road and bridge to the Cabul gate were intact.
He obtained trustworthy information that up to a recent date, while all
the other gates had been built up, the Cabul gate had not been so dealt
with. As he watched, a horseman was seen to enter by it. This was
conclusive. The ground within 400 yards of the gate offered good
artillery positions. Thomson therefore reported that although the
operation was full of risk, and success if attained must cost dear, yet
in the absence of a less hazardous method of reduction there offered a
fair chance of success in an attempt to blow open the Cabul gate, and
then carry the place by a _coup de main_. Keane was precluded from the
alternative of masking the place and continuing his advance by the all
but total exhaustion of his supplies, which the capture of Ghuznee would
replenish, and he therefore resolved on an assault by the Cabul gate.

During the 21st July the army circled round the place, and camped to the
north of it on the Cabul road. The following day was spent in
preparations, and in defeating an attack made on the Shah's contingent by
several thousand Ghilzai tribesmen of the adjacent hill country. In the
gusty darkness of the early morning of the 23d the field artillery was
placed in battery on the heights opposite the northern face of the
fortress. The 13th regiment was extended in skirmishing order in the
gardens under the wall of this face, and a detachment of sepoys was
detailed to make a false attack on the eastern face. Near the centre of
the northern face was the Cabul gate, in front of which lay waiting for
the signal, a storming party consisting of the light companies of the
four European regiments, under command of Colonel Dennie of the 13th. The
main column consisted of two European regiments and the support of a
third, the whole commanded by Brigadier Sale; the native regiments
constituted the reserve. All those dispositions were completed by three
A.M., and, favoured by the noise of the wind and the darkness, without
alarming the garrison.

Punctually at this hour the little party of engineers charged with the
task of blowing in the gate started forward on the hazardous errand.
Captain Peat of the Bombay Engineers was in command. Durand, a young
lieutenant of Bengal Engineers, who was later to attain high distinction,
was entrusted with the service of heading the explosion party. The
latter, leading the party, had advanced unmolested to within 150 yards of
the works, when a challenge, a shot and a shout gave intimation of his
detection. A musketry fire was promptly opened by the garrison from the
battlements, and blue lights illuminated the approach to the gate, but in
the fortunate absence of fire from the lower works the bridge was safely
crossed, and Peat with his handful of linesmen halted in a sallyport to
cover the explosion operation. Durand advanced to the gate, his sappers
piled their powder bags against it and withdrew; Durand and his sergeant
uncoiled the hose, ignited the quick-match under a rain from the
battlements of bullets and miscellaneous missiles, and then retired to
cover out of reach of the explosion.

At the sound of the first shot from the battlements, Keane's cannon had
opened their fire. The skirmishers in the gardens engaged in a brisk
fusillade. The rattle of Hay's musketry was heard from the east. The
garrison was alert in its reply. The northern ramparts became a sheet of
flame, and everywhere the cannonade and musketry fire waxed in noise and
volume. Suddenly, as the day was beginning to dawn, a dull, heavy sound
was heard by the head of the waiting column, scarce audible elsewhere
because of the boisterous wind and the din of the firing. A pillar of
black smoke shot up from where had been the Afghan gate, now shattered by
the 300 pounds of gunpowder which Durand had exploded against it. The
signal to the storming party was to be the 'advance' sounded by the
bugler who accompanied Peat. But the bugler had been shot through the
head. Durand could not find Peat. Going back through the bullets to the
nearest party of infantry, he experienced some delay, but at last the
column was apprised that all was right, the 'advance' was sounded, Dennie
and his stormers sped forward, and Sale followed at the head of the main
column.

After a temporary check to the latter, because of a misconception, it
pushed on in close support of Dennie. That gallant soldier and his
gallant followers had rushed into the smoking and gloomy archway to find
themselves met hand to hand by the Afghan defenders, who had recovered
from their surprise. Nothing could be distinctly seen in the narrow
gorge, but the clash of sword blade against bayonet was heard on every
side. The stormers had to grope their way between the yet standing walls
in a dusk which the glimmer of the blue light only made more perplexing.
But some elbow room was gradually gained, and then, since there was
neither time nor space for methodic street fighting, each loaded section
gave its volley and then made way for the next, which, crowding to the
front, poured a deadly discharge at half pistol-shot into the densely
crowded defenders. Thus the storming party won steadily its way, till at
length Dennie and his leading files discerned over the heads of their
opponents a patch of blue sky and a twinkling star or two, and with a
final charge found themselves within the place.

A body of fierce Afghan swordsmen projected themselves into the interval
between the storming party and the main column. Sale, at the head of the
latter, was cut down by a tulwar stroke in the face; in the effort of his
blow the assailant fell with the assailed, and they rolled together among
the shattered timbers of the gate. Sale, wounded again on the ground, and
faint with loss of blood, called to one of his officers for assistance.
Kershaw ran the Afghan through the body with his sword; but he still
struggled with the Brigadier. At length in the grapple Sale got
uppermost, and then he dealt his adversary a sabre cut which cleft him
from crown to eyebrows. There was much confused fighting within the
place, for the Afghan garrison made furious rallies again and again; but
the citadel was found open and undefended, and by sunrise British banners
were waving above its battlements Hyder Khan, the Governor of Ghuznee,
one of the sons of Dost Mahomed, was found concealed in a house in the
town and taken prisoner. The British loss amounted to about 200 killed
and wounded, that of the garrison, which was estimated at from 3000 to
4000 strong, was over 500 killed. The number of wounded was not
ascertained; of prisoners taken in arms there were about 1600. The booty
consisted of numerous horses, camels and mules, ordnance and military
weapons of various descriptions, and a vast quantity of supplies of all
kinds.

Keane, having garrisoned Ghuznee, and left there his sick and wounded,
resumed on July 30th his march on Cabul. Within twenty-four hours after
the event Dost Mahomed heard of the fall of Ghuznee. Possessed of the
adverse intelligence, the Dost gathered his chiefs, received their facile
assurances of fidelity, sent his brother the Nawaub Jubbar Khan to ask
what terms Shah Soojah and his British allies were prepared to offer him,
and recalled from Jellalabad his son Akbar Khan, with all the force he
could muster there. The Dost's emissary to the allied camp was informed
that 'an honourable asylum' in British India was at the service of his
brother; an offer which Jubbar Khan declined in his name without thanks.
Before he left to share the fortunes of the Dost, the Sirdar is reported
to have asked Macnaghten, 'If Shah Soojah is really our king, what need
has he of your army and name? You have brought him here,' he continued,
'with your money and arms. Well, leave him now with us Afghans, and let
him rule us if he can.' When Jubbar Khan returned to Cabul with his
sombre message, the Dost, having been joined by Akbar Khan, concentrated
his army, and found himself at the head of 13,000 men, with thirty guns;
but he mournfully realised that he could lean no reliance on the
constancy and courage of his adherents. Nevertheless, he marched out
along the Ghuznee road, and drew up his force at Urgundeh, where he
commanded the most direct line of retreat toward the western hill country
of Bamian, in case his people would not fight, or should they fight, if
they were beaten.

There was no fight in his following; scarcely, indeed, was there a loyal
supporter among all those who had eaten his salt for years. There was
true manhood in this chief whom we were replacing by an effete puppet.
The Dost, Koran in hand, rode among his perfidious troops, and conjured
them in the name of God and the Prophet not to dishonour themselves by
transferring their allegiance to one who had filled Afghanistan with
infidels and blasphemers. 'If,' he continued, 'you are resolved to be
traitors to me, at least enable me to die with honour. Support the
brother of Futteh Khan in one last charge against these Feringhee dogs.
In that charge he will fall; then go and make your own terms with Shah
Soojah.' The high-souled appeal inspired no worthy response; but one is
loth to credit the testimony of the soldier-of-fortune Harlan that his
guards forsook the Dost, and that the rabble of troops plundered his
pavilion, snatched from under him the pillows of his divan, seized his
prayer carpet, and finally hacked into pieces the tent and its
appurtenances. On the evening of August 2d the hapless man shook the dust
of the camp of traitors from his feet, and rode away toward Bamian, his
son Akbar Khan, with a handful of resolute men, covering the retreat of
his father and his family. Tidings of the flight of Dost Mahomed reached
Keane on the 3d, at Sheikabad, where he had halted to concentrate; and
Outram volunteered to head a pursuing party, to consist of some British
officers as volunteers, some cavalry and some Afghan horse. Hadji Khan
Kakur, the earliest traitor of his race, undertook to act as guide. This
man's devices of delay defeated Outram's fiery energy, perhaps in deceit,
perhaps because he regarded it as lacking discretion. For Akbar Khan made
a long halt on the crown of the pass, waiting to check any endeavour to
press closely on his fugitive father, and it would have gone hard with
Outram, with a few fagged horsemen at his back, if Hadji Khan had allowed
him to overtake the resolute young Afghan chief. As Keane moved forward,
there fell to him the guns which the Dost had left in the Urgundeh
position. On August 6th he encamped close to Cabul; and on the following
day Shah Soojah made his public entry into the capital which he had last
seen thirty years previously. After so many years of vicissitude,
adventure and intrigue, he was again on the throne of his ancestors, but
placed there by the bayonets of the Government whose creature he was, an
insult to the nation whom he had the insolence to call his people.

The entry, nevertheless, was a goodly spectacle enough. Shah Soojah,
dazzling in coronet, jewelled girdle and bracelets, but with no
Koh-i-noor now glittering on his forehead, bestrode a white charger,
whose equipments gleamed with gold. By his side rode Macnaghten and
Burnes; in the pageant were the principal officers of the British army.
Sabres flashed in front of the procession, bayonets sparkled in its rear,
as it wended its way through the great bazaar which Pollock was to
destroy three years later, and along the tortuous street to the gate of
the Balla Hissar. But neither the monarch nor his pageant kindled the
enthusiasm in the Cabulees. There was no voice of welcome; the citizens
did not care to trouble themselves so much as to make him a salaam, and
they stared at the European strangers harder than at his restored
majesty. There was a touch of pathos in the burst of eagerness to which
the old man gave way as he reached the palace, ran through the gardens,
visited the apartments, and commented on the neglect everywhere apparent.
Shah Soojah was rather a poor creature, but he was by no means altogether
destitute of good points, and far worse men than he were actors in the
strange historical episode of which he was the figurehead. He was humane
for an Afghan; he never was proved to have been untrue to us; he must
have had some courage of a kind else he would never have remained in
Cabul when our people left it, in the all but full assurance of the fate
which presently overtook him as a matter of course. Havelock thus
portrays him: 'A stout person of the middle height, his chin covered with
a long thick and neatly trimmed beard, dyed black to conceal the
encroachments of time. His manner toward the English is gentle, calm and
dignified, without haughtiness, but his own subjects have invariably
complained of his reception of them as cold and repulsive, even to
rudeness. His complexion is darker than that of the generality of
Afghans, and his features, if not decidedly handsome, are not the reverse
of pleasing; but the expression of his countenance would betray to a
skilful physiognomist that mixture of timidity and duplicity so often
observable in the character of the higher order of men in Southern Asia.'

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