The Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 by Archibald Forbes

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CHAPTER III: THE FIRST YEAR OF OCCUPATION

Sir John Kaye, in his picturesque if diffuse history of the first Afghan
war, lays it down that, in seating Shah Soojah on the Cabul throne, 'the
British Government had done all that it had undertaken to do,' and Durand
argues that, having accomplished this, 'the British army could have then
been withdrawn with the honour and fame of entire success.' The facts
apparently do not justify the reasoning of either writer. In the Simla
manifesto, in which Lord Auckland embodied the rationale of his policy,
he expressed the confident hope 'that the Shah will be speedily replaced
on his throne by his own subjects and adherents, and when once he shall
be received in power, and the independence and integrity of Afghanistan
established, the British army will be withdrawn.' The Shah had been
indeed restored to his throne, but by British bayonets, not by 'his own
subjects and adherents.' It could not seriously be maintained that he was
secure in power, or that the independence and integrity of Afghanistan
were established when British troops were holding Candahar, Ghuznee and
Cabul, the only three positions where the Shah was nominally paramount,
when the fugitive Dost was still within its borders, when intrigue and
disaffection were seething in every valley and on every hill-side, and
when the principality of Herat maintained a contemptuous independence.
Macnaghten might avow himself convinced of the popularity of the Shah,
and believe or strive to believe that the Afghans had received the puppet
king `with feelings nearly amounting to adoration,' but he did not
venture to support the conviction he avowed by advocating that the Shah
should be abandoned to his adoring subjects. Lord Auckland's policy was
gravely and radically erroneous, but it had a definite object, and that
object certainly was not a futile march to Cabul and back, dropping
incidentally by the wayside the aspirant to a throne whom he had himself
put forward, and leaving him to take his chance among a truculent and
adverse population. Thus early, in all probability, Lord Auckland was
disillusioned of the expectation that the effective restoration of Shah
Soojah would be of light and easy accomplishment, but at least he could
not afford to have the enterprise a _coup manqué_ when as yet it was
little beyond its inception.

The cost of the expedition was already, however, a strain, and the troops
engaged in it were needed in India. Lord Auckland intimated to Macnaghten
his expectation that a strong brigade would suffice to hold Afghanistan
in conjunction with the Shah's contingent, and his desire that the rest
of the army of the Indus should at once return to India. Macnaghten, on
the other hand, in spite of his avowal of the Shah's popularity, was
anxious to retain in Afghanistan a large body of troops. He meditated
strange enterprises, and proposed that Keane should support his project
of sending a force toward Bokhara to give check to a Russian column which
Pottinger at Herat had heard was assembling at Orenburg, with Khiva for
its objective. Keane derided the proposal, and Macnaghten reluctantly
abandoned it, but he demanded of Lord Auckland with success, the
retention in Afghanistan of the Bengal division of the army. In the
middle of September General Willshire marched with the Bombay column,
with orders, on his way to the Indus to pay a hostile visit to Khelat,
and punish its khan for the 'disloyalty' with which he had been charged,
a commission which the British officer fulfilled with a skill and
thoroughness that could be admired with less reservation had the
aggression on the gallant Mehrab been less wanton. A month later Keane
started for India by the Khyber route, which Wade had opened without
serious resistance when in August and September he escorted through the
passes Prince Timour, Shah Soojah's heir-apparent. During the temporary
absence of Cotton, who accompanied Keane, Nott had the command at
Candahar, Sale at and about Cabul, and the troops were quartered in those
capitals, and in Jellalabad, Ghuznee, Charikar and Bamian. The Shah and
the Envoy wintered in the milder climate of Jellalabad, and Burnes was in
political charge of the capital and its vicinity.

It was a prophetic utterance that the accomplishment of our military
succession would mark but the commencement of our real difficulties in
Afghanistan. In theory and in name Shah Soojah was an independent
monarch; it was, indeed, only in virtue of his proving himself able to
rule independently that he could justify his claim to rule at all. But
that he was independent was a contradiction in terms while British troops
studded the country, and while the real powers of sovereignty were
exercised by Macnaghten. Certain functions, it is true, the latter did
permit the nominal monarch to exercise. While debarred from a voice in
measures of external policy, and not allowed to sway the lines of conduct
to be adopted toward independent or revolting tribes, the Shah was
allowed to concern himself with the administration of justice, and in his
hands were the settlement, collection and appropriation of the revenue of
those portions of the kingdom from which any revenue could be exacted. He
was allowed to appoint as his minister of state, the companion of his
exile, old Moolla Shikore, who had lost both his memory and his ears, but
who had sufficient faculty left to hate the English, to oppress the
people, to be corrupt and venal beyond all conception, and to appoint
subordinates as flagitious as himself. 'Bad ministers,' wrote Burnes,
'are in every government solid ground for unpopularity; and I doubt if
ever a king had a worse set than has Shah Soojah.' The oppressed people
appealed to the British functionaries, who remonstrated with the
minister, and the minister punished the people for appealing to the
British functionaries. The Shah was free to confer grants of land on his
creatures, but when the holders resisted, he was unable to enforce his
will since he was not allowed to employ soldiers; and the odium of the
forcible confiscation ultimately fell on Macnaghten, who alone had the
ordering of expeditions, and who could not see the Shah belittled by
non-fulfilment of his requisitions.

Justice sold by venal judges, oppression and corruption rampant in every
department of internal administration, it was no wonder that nobles and
people alike resented the inflictions under whose sting they writhed.
They were accustomed to a certain amount of oppression; Dost Mahomed had
chastised them with whips, but Shah Soojah, whom the English had brought,
was chastising them with scorpions. And they felt his yoke the more
bitterly because, with the shrewd acuteness of the race, they recognised
the really servile condition of this new king. They fretted, too, under
the sharp bit of the British political agents who were strewn about the
country, in the execution of a miserable and futile policy, and whose
lives, in a few instances, did not maintain the good name of their
country. Dost Mahomed had maintained his sway by politic management of
the chiefs, and through them of the tribes. Macnaghten would have done
well to impress on Shah Soojah the wisdom of pursuing the same tactics.
There was, it is true, the alternative of destroying the power of the
barons, but that policy involved a stubborn and doubtful struggle, and
prolonged occupation of the country by British troops in great strength.
Macnaghten professed our occupation of Afghanistan to be temporary; yet
he was clearly adventuring on the rash experiment of weakening the nobles
when he set about the enlistment of local tribal levies, who, paid from
the Royal treasury and commanded by British officers, were expected to be
staunch to the Shah, and useful in curbing the powers of the chiefs. The
latter, of course, were alienated and resentful, and the levies, imbued
with the Afghan attribute of fickleness, proved for the most part
undisciplined and faithless.

The winter of 1839-40 passed without much noteworthy incident. The winter
climate of Afghanistan is severe, and the Afghan, in ordinary
circumstances, is among the hibernating animals. But down in the Khyber,
in October, the tribes gave some trouble. They were dissatisfied with the
amount of annual black-mail paid them for the right of way through their
passes. When the Shah was a fugitive thirty years previously, they had
concealed and protected him; and mindful of their kindly services, he had
promised them, unknown to Macnaghten, the augmentation of their subsidy
to the old scale from which it had gradually dwindled. Wade, returning
from Cabul, did not bring them the assurances they expected, whereupon
they rose and concentrated and invested Ali Musjid, a fort which they
regarded as the key of their gloomy defile. Mackeson, the Peshawur
political officer, threw provisions and ammunition into Ali Musjid, but
the force, on its return march, was attacked by the hillmen, the Sikhs
being routed, and the sepoys incurring loss of men and transport. The
emboldened Khyberees now turned on Ali Musjid in earnest; but the
garrison was strengthened, and the place was held until a couple of
regiments marched down from Jellalabad, and were preparing to attack the
hillmen, when it was announced that Mackeson had made a compact with the
chiefs for the payment of an annual subsidy which they considered
adequate.

Afghanistan fifty years ago, and the same is in a measure true of it
to-day, was rather a bundle of provinces, some of which owned scarcely a
nominal allegiance to the ruler in Cabul, than a concrete state. Herat
and Candahar were wholly independent, the Ghilzai tribes inhabiting the
wide tracts from the Suliman ranges westward beyond the road through
Ghuznee, between Candahar and Cabul, and northward into the rugged
country between Cabul and Jellalabad, acknowledged no other authority
than that of their own chiefs. The Ghilzais are agriculturists,
shepherds, and robbers; they are constantly engaged in internal feuds;
they are jealous of their wild independence, and through the centuries
have abated little of their untamed ferocity. They had rejected
Macnaghten's advances, and had attacked Shah Soojah's camp on the day
before the fall of Ghuznee. Outram, in reprisal, had promptly raided part
of their country. Later, the winter had restrained them from activity,
but they broke out again in the spring. In May Captain Anderson, marching
from Candahar with a mixed force about 1200 strong, was offered battle
near Jazee, in the Turnuk, by some 2000 Ghilzai horse and foot.
Andersen's guns told heavily among the Ghilzai horsemen, who, impatient
of the fire, made a spirited dash on his left flank. Grape and musketry
checked them; but they rallied, and twice charged home on the bayonets
before they withdrew, leaving 200 of their number dead on the ground.
Nott sent a detachment to occupy the fortress of Khelat-i-Ghilzai,
between Candahar and Ghuznee, thus rendering the communications more
secure; and later, Macnaghten bribed the chiefs by an annual subsidy of
£600 to abstain from infesting the highways. The terms were cheap, for
the Ghilzai tribes mustered some 40,000 fighting men.

Shah Soojah and the Envoy returned from Jellalabad to Cabul in April
1840. A couple of regiments had wintered not uncomfortably in the Balla
Hissar. That fortress was then the key of Cabul, and while our troops
remained in Afghanistan it should not have been left ungarrisoned a
single hour. The soldiers did their best to impress on Macnaghten the
all-importance of the position. But the Shah objected to its continued
occupation, and Macnaghten weakly yielded. Cotton, who had returned to
the chief military command in Afghanistan, made no remonstrance; the
Balla Hissar was evacuated, and the troops were quartered in cantonments
built in an utterly defenceless position on the plain north of Cabul, a
position whose environs were cumbered with walled gardens, and commanded
by adjacent high ground, and by native forts which were neither
demolished nor occupied. The troops, now in permanent and regularly
constructed quarters, ceased to be an expeditionary force, and became
substantially an army of occupation. The officers sent for their wives to
inhabit with them the bungalows in which they had settled down. Lady
Macnaghten, in the spacious mission residence which stood apart in its
own grounds, presided over the society of the cantonments, which had all
the cheery surroundings of the half-settled, half-nomadic life of our
military people in the East. There were the 'coffee house' after the
morning ride, the gathering round the bandstand in the evening, the
impromptu dance, and the _burra khana_ occasionally in the larger houses.
A racecourse had been laid out, and there were 'sky' races and more
formal meetings. And so 'as in the days that were before the flood, they
were eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, and knew
not until the flood came, and took them all away.'

Macnaghten engaged himself in a welter of internal and external intrigue,
his mood swinging from singular complacency to a disquietude that
sometimes approached despondency. It had come to be forced on him, in
spite of his intermittent optimism, that the Government was a government
of sentry-boxes, and that Afghanistan was not governed so much as
garrisoned. The utter failure of the winter march attempted by
Peroffski's Russian column across the frozen steppes on Khiva was a
relief to him; but the state of affairs in Herat was a constant trouble
and anxiety. Major Todd had been sent there as political agent, to make a
treaty with Shah Kamran, and to superintend the repair and improvement of
the fortifications of the city. Kamran was plenteously subsidised; he
took Macnaghten's lakhs, but furtively maintained close relations with
Persia. Detecting the double-dealing, Macnaghten urged on Lord Auckland
the annexation of Herat to Shah Soojah's dominions, but was instructed to
condone Kamran's duplicity, and try to bribe him higher. Kamran by no
means objected to this policy, and, while continuing his intrigues with
Persia, cheerfully accepted the money, arms and ammunition which
Macnaghten supplied him with so profusely as to cause remonstrance on the
part of the financial authorities in Calcutta. The Commander-in-Chief was
strong enough to counteract the pressure which Macnaghten brought to bear
on Lord Auckland in favour of an expedition against Herat, which his
lordship at length finally negatived, to the great disgust of the Envoy,
who wrote of the conduct of his chief as 'drivelling beyond contempt,'
and 'sighed for a Wellesley or a Hastings.' The ultimate result of
Macnaghten's negotiations with Shah Kamran was Major Todd's withdrawal
from Herat. Todd had suspended the monthly subsidy, to the great wrath of
Kamran's rapacious and treacherous minister Yar Mahomed, who made a
peremptory demand for increased advances, and refused Todd's stipulation
that a British force should be admitted into Herat. Todd's action in
quitting Herat was severely censured by his superiors, and he was
relegated to regimental duty. Perhaps he acted somewhat rashly, but he
had not been kept well informed; for instance, he had been unaware that
Persia had become our friend, and had engaged to cease relations with
Shah Kamran--an important arrangement of which he certainly should have
been cognisant. Macnaghten had squandered more gold on Herat than the
fee-simple of the principality was worth, and to no purpose; he left that
state just as he found it, treacherous, insolent, greedy and independent.

The precariousness of the long lines of communications between British
India and the army in Afghanistan--a source of danger which from the
first had disquieted cautious soldiers--was making itself seriously felt,
and constituted for Macnaghten another cause of solicitude. Old Runjeet
Singh, a faithful if not disinterested ally, had died on June 27th, 1839,
the day on which Keane marched out from Candahar. The breath was scarcely
out of the old reprobate when the Punjaub began to drift into anarchy. So
far as the Sikh share in it was concerned, the tripartite treaty
threatened to become a dead letter. The Lahore Durbar had not adequately
fulfilled the undertaking to support Prince Timour's advance by the
Khyber, nor was it duly regarding the obligation to maintain a force on
the Peshawur frontier of the Punjaub. But those things were trivial in
comparison with the growing reluctance manifested freely, to accord to
our troops and convoys permission to traverse the Punjaub on the march to
and from Cabul. The Anglo-Indian Government sent Mr Clerk to Lahore to
settle the question as to the thoroughfare. He had instructions to be
firm, and the Sikhs did not challenge Mr Clerk's stipulation that the
Anglo-Indian Government must have unmolested right of way through the
Punjaub, while he undertook to restrict the use of it as much as
possible. This arrangement by no means satisfied the exacting Macnaghten,
and he continued to worry himself by foreseeing all sorts of troublous
contingencies unless measures were adopted for 'macadamising' the road
through the Punjaub.

The summer of 1840 did not pass without serious interruptions to the
British communications between Candahar and the Indus; nor without
unexpected and ominous disasters before they were restored. General
Willshire, with the returning Bombay column, had in the previous November
stormed Mehrab Khan's ill-manned and worse armed fort of Khelat, and the
Khan, disdaining to yield, had fallen in the hopeless struggle. His son
Nusseer Khan had been put aside in favour of a collateral pretender, and
became an active and dangerous malcontent. All Northern Beloochistan fell
into a state of anarchy. A detachment of sepoys escorting supplies was
cut to pieces in one of the passes. Quetta was attacked with great
resolution by Nusseer Khan, but was opportunely relieved by a force sent
from another post. Nusseer made himself master of Khelat, and there fell
into his cruel hands Lieutenant Loveday, the British political officer
stationed there, whom he treated with great barbarity, and finally
murdered. A British detachment under Colonel Clibborn, was defeated by
the Beloochees with heavy loss, and compelled to retreat. Nusseer Khan,
descending into the low country of Cutch, assaulted the important post of
Dadur, but was repulsed, and taking refuge in the hills, was routed by
Colonel Marshall with a force from Kotree, whereupon he became a skulking
fugitive. Nott marched down from Candahar with a strong force, occupied
Khelat, and fully re-established communications with the line of the
Indus, while fresh troops moved forward into Upper Scinde, and thence
gradually advancing to Quetta and Candahar, materially strengthened the
British position in Southern Afghanistan.

Dost Mahomed, after his flight from Cabul in 1839, had soon left the
hospitable refuge afforded him in Khooloom, a territory west of the
Hindoo Koosh beyond Bamian, and had gone to Bokhara on the treacherous
invitation of its Ameer, who threw him into captivity. The Dost's family
remained at Khooloom, in the charge of his brother Jubbar Khan. The
advance of British forces beyond Bamian to Syghan and Bajgah, induced
that Sirdar to commit himself and the ladies to British protection. Dr
Lord, Macnaghten's political officer in the Bamian district, was a rash
although well-meaning man. The errors he had committed since the opening
of spring had occasioned disasters to the troops whose dispositions he
controlled, and had incited the neighbouring hill tribes to active
disaffection. In July Dost Mahomed made his escape from Bokhara, hurried
to Khooloom, found its ruler and the tribes full of zeal for his cause,
and rapidly grew in strength. Lord found it was time to call in his
advance posts and concentrate at Bamian, losing in the operation an
Afghan regiment which deserted to the Dost. Macnaghten reinforced Bamian,
and sent Colonel Dennie to command there. On September 18th Dennie moved
out with two guns and 800 men against the Dost's advance parties raiding
in an adjacent valley. Those detachments driven back, Dennie suddenly
found himself opposed to the irregular mass of Oosbeg horse and foot
which constituted the army of the Dost. Mackenzie's cannon fire shook the
undisciplined horde, the infantry pressed in to close quarters, and soon
the nondescript host of the Dost was in panic flight, with Dennie's
cavalry in eager pursuit. The Dost escaped with difficulty, with the loss
of his entire personal equipment. He was once more a fugitive, and the
Wali of Khooloom promptly submitted himself to the victors, and pledged
himself to aid and harbour the broken chief no more. Macnaghten had been
a prey to apprehension while the Dost's attitude was threatening; he was
now in a glow of joy and hope.

But the Envoy's elation was short-lived. Dost Mahomed was yet to cause
him much solicitude. Defeated in Bamian, he was ready for another attempt
in the Kohistan country to the north of Cabul. Disaffection was rife
everywhere throughout the kingdom, but it was perhaps most rife in the
Kohistan, which was seething with intrigues in favour of Dost Mahomed,
while the local chiefs were intensely exasperated by the exactions of the
Shah's revenue collectors. Macnaghten summoned the chiefs to Cabul. They
came, they did homage to the Shah and swore allegiance to him; they went
away from the capital pledging each other to his overthrow, and jeering
at the scantiness of the force they had seen at Cabul. Intercepted
letters disclosed their schemes, and in the end of September Sale, with a
considerable force, marched out to chastise the disaffected Kohistanees.
The fort of Tootundurrah fell without resistance. Julgah, however, the
next fort assailed, stubbornly held out, and officers and men fell in the
unsuccessful attempt to storm it. In three weeks Sale marched to and fro
through the Kohistan, pursuing will-o'-the-wisp rumours as to the
whereabouts of the Dost, destroying forts on the course of his weary
pilgrimage, and subjected occasionally to night attacks.

Meanwhile, in the belief that Dost Mahomed was close to Cabul, and
mournfully conscious that the capital and surrounding country were ripe
for a rising, Macnaghten had relapsed into nervousness, and was a prey to
gloomy forebodings. The troops at Bamian were urgently recalled. Cannon
were mounted on the Balla Hissar to overawe the city, the concentration
of the troops in the fortress was under consideration, and men were
talking of preparing for a siege. How Macnaghten's English nature was
undergoing deterioration under the strain of events is shown by his
writing of the Dost: 'Would it be justifiable to set a price on this
fellow's head?' How his perceptions were warped was further evinced by
his talking of 'showing no mercy to the man who has been the author of
all the evil now distracting the country,' and by his complaining of Sale
and Burnes that, 'with 2000 good infantry, they are sitting down before a
fortified place, and are afraid to attack it.'

Learning that for certain the Dost had crossed the Hindoo Koosh from
Nijrao into the Kohistan, Sale, who had been reinforced, sent out
reconnaissances which ascertained that he was in the Purwan Durrah
valley, stretching down from the Hindoo Koosh to the Gorebund river; and
the British force marched thither on 2d November. As the village was
neared, the Dost's people were seen evacuating it and the adjacent forts,
and making for the hills. Sale's cavalry was some distance in advance of
the infantry of the advance guard, but time was precious. Anderson's
horse went to the left, to cut off retreat down the Gorebund valley.
Fraser took his two squadrons of Bengal cavalry to the right, advanced
along the foothills, and gained the head of the valley. He was too late
to intercept a small body of Afghan horsemen, who were already climbing
the upland; but badly mounted as the latter were, he could pursue them
with effect. But it seemed that the Afghans preferred to fight rather
than be pursued. The Dost himself was in command of the little party, and
the Dost was a man whose nature was to fight, not to run. He wheeled his
handful so that his horsemen faced Fraser's troop down there below them.
Then the Dost pointed to his banner, bared his head, called on his
supporters in the name of God and the Prophet to follow him against the
unbelievers, and led them down the slope.

Fraser had formed up his troopers when recall orders reached him. Joyous
that the situation entitled him to disobey them, he gave instead the word
to charge. As the Afghans came down at no great pace, they fired
occasionally; either because of the bullets, or because of an access of
pusillanimity, Fraser's troopers broke and fled ignominiously. The
British gentlemen charged home unsupported. Broadfoot, Crispin and Lord
were slain; Ponsonby, severely wounded and his reins cut, was carried out
of the _mêlée_ by his charger; Fraser, covered with blood and wounds,
broke through his assailants, and brought to Sale his report of the
disgrace of his troopers. After a sharp pursuit of the poltroons, the
Dost and his followers leisurely quitted the field.

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