The Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 by Archibald Forbes

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Macnaghten was naturally much depressed by the news communicated by
Pottinger, and realised that the Afghan masses already encompassing the
position on the Cabul plain would certainly be increased by bands from
the Kohistan and Nijrao, flushed already with their Charikar success. He
sided strongly with the large party among the officers who were
advocating the measure of abandoning the cantonments altogether, and
moving the force now quartered there to the safer and more commanding
position in the Balla Hissar. The military chiefs opposed the project,
and propounded a variety of objections to it, none of which were without
weight, yet all of which might have been overcome by energy and proper
dispositions. Shelton, however, was opposed to the scheme, since if
carried out it would avert or postpone the accomplishment of his policy
of retreat on Jellalabad; Elphinstone was against it in the inertia of
debility, and the project gradually came to be regarded as abandoned.
Another project, that of driving the Afghans from Mahmood Khan's fort,
commanding the direct road between the cantonments and the Balla Hissar,
and of occupying it with a British force, was so far advanced that the
time for the attempt was fixed, and the storming party actually warned,
when some petty objection intervened and the enterprise was abandoned,
never to be revived.

The rising was not three days old when already Elphinstone had lost
heart. On the 5th he had written to Macnaghten suggesting that the latter
should 'consider what chance there is of making terms,' and since then he
had been repeatedly pressing on the Envoy the 'hopelessness of further
resistance.' Macnaghten, vacillating as he was, yet had more pith in his
nature than was left in the debilitated old general. He wrote to
Elphinstone on the 18th recommending, not very strenuously, the policy of
holding out where they were as long as possible, and indeed throughout
the winter, if subsistence could be obtained. He pointed out that in the
cantonments, which he believed to be impregnable, there were at least the
essentials of wood and water. Arguing that a retreat on Jellalabad must
be most disastrous, and was to be avoided except in the last extremity,
he nevertheless ended somewhat inconsistently by leaving to the military
authorities, if in eight or ten days there should appear no prospect of
an improvement of the situation, the decision whether it would be wiser
to attempt a retreat or to withdraw from the cantonments into the Balla
Hissar.

Far from improving, the situation was speedily to become all but
hopeless. The village of Behmaroo, built on the north-eastern slope of
the ridge of the same name bounding the plain on the north-west, lay
about half a mile due north of the cantonments, part of which some of the
houses on the upper slope commanded. From this village, after the loss of
the Commissariat fort, our people had been drawing supplies. On the
morning of the 22d the Afghans were seen moving in force from Cabul
toward Behmaroo, obviously with intent to occupy the village, and so
deprive the occupants of the cantonments of the resource it had been
affording them. A detachment under Major Swayne, sent out to forestall
this occupation, found Behmaroo already in the possession of a body of
Kohistanees, who had so blocked the approaches that Swayne did not
consider himself justified in attempting the fulfilment of his orders to
storm the place; and he contented himself with maintaining all day an
ineffectual musketry fire on it. A diversion in his favour by a gun
supported by cavalry had no result save that of casualties to the gunners
and troopers; reinforcements brought out by Shelton effected nothing, and
in the evening the troops were recalled. On this ill-fated day Akbar
Khan, Dost Mahomed's fierce and implacable son, arrived in Cabul, and the
evil influence on the British fortunes which he exerted immediately made
itself felt, for the events of the following day were to bring about a
crisis in the fate of our ill-starred people.

Recognising the mischief wrought by the hostile occupation of our only
source of supplies, the Envoy strongly urged the immediate despatch of a
strong force to occupy the Behmaroo ridge, and dislodge from the village
its Kohistanee garrison. Shelton opposed the measure, urging the
dispirited state of the troops, their fatigue from constant defensive
duty, and their weakened physique because of poor and scanty rations. He
was overruled, and before daybreak of the 23d a force under his command,
consisting of five companies of the 44th, twelve companies of native
infantry, some cavalry, and one horse-artillery gun, was in position on
the north-eastern extremity of the ridge overhanging the village. The gun
opened fire on the village with grape, and after a short resistance the
greater part of its garrison quitted it. The storming party intrusted to
Major Swayne did not, however, act, and was withdrawn. Leaving a
detachment on the knoll above the village, Shelton moved his force along
the upland to a position near the gorge intersecting the ridge, forming
his infantry into two squares, with the cavalry in rear. The further hill
beyond the gorge was crowded with hostile Afghans from Cabul, and the
long-range fire of their jezails across the dividing depression, carried
execution into the squares which Shelton had inexplicably formed as if to
furnish his foes with a target which they could not miss. The muskets of
his men could not retaliate, and the skirmishers he threw forward to the
brow of his hill could not endure the Afghan fire. Shelton's single gun
maintained a hot and telling fire on the Afghan masses on the opposite
hill, and baulked an attempt against his right flank made by the Afghan
cavalry swarming in the outer plain; but when its vent became too hot for
the gunners to serve it, the dullest comprehension became alive to the
folly of sending a single gun into the field.

Shelton's men, falling fast though they were, and faint with fatigue and
thirst, yet had endured for hours a fusillade to which they could not
reply, when a body of Afghan fanatics suddenly sprang up out of the
gorge, swept back with their fire the few skirmishers who had been still
holding the brow of the hill, and planted their flag within thirty yards
of the front of the nearer of the squares. Shelton offered a large reward
to the man who should bring it in, but there was no response. In a
passion of soldierly wrath, the veteran commanded a bayonet charge; not a
man sprang forward at the summons which British soldiers are wont to
welcome with cheers. The cowed infantry remained supine, when their
officers darted forward and threw stones into the faces of the enemy; the
troopers heard but obeyed not that trumpet-call to 'Charge!' which so
rarely fails to thrill the cavalryman with the rapture of the fray. The
gunners only, men of that noble force the Company's Horse-Artillery,
quitted themselves valiantly. They stood to their piece to the bitter
end. Two of them were killed beside it, another was severely wounded, a
fourth, refusing to run, took refuge under the gun, and miraculously
escaped death. But the gallant example of the artillerymen in their front
did not hearten the infantrymen of the leading square. The panic spread
among them, and they broke and fled. Fortunately they were not pursued.
The rear square stood fast, and the officers by great exertion succeeded
in rallying the fugitives under the cover it afforded. The news that a
principal chief, Abdoolah Khan, had been severely wounded in the plain
gave pause to the offensive vigour of the Afghans, and the assailants
fell back, abandoning the gun, but carrying off the limber and gun-team.
Our people reoccupied the position, the gun recommenced its fire, and if
the cavalry and infantry could have been persuaded to take the offensive
the battle might have been retrieved. But they remained passive. The
reinforced Afghans renewed their long-range fire with terrible effect;
most of the gunners had fallen, and the Brigadier, recognising the
growing unsteadiness of his command and the imminent danger of capture to
which the solitary gun was again exposed, ordered a retirement on the
detachment left near Behmaroo and the limbering up of the gun, to which a
second limber had been sent out from the cantonments. The movement was
scarcely begun when a rush of fanatic Afghans completely broke the
square, and all order and discipline then disappeared. A regular rout set
in down the hill toward cantonments, the fugitives disregarding the
efforts of the officers to rally them, and the enemy in full pursuit, the
Afghan cavalry making ghastly slaughter among the panic-stricken
runaways. The detachment near Behmaroo attempted to fall back in orderly
fashion, but the reinforced garrison of the village swept out upon it,
surrounded it, broke it up, and threw it into utter rout with the loss of
a large proportion of its strength, one whole company being all but
annihilated. It seemed as if pursued and pursuers would enter the
cantonments together so closely were they commingled; but the fire from
the ramparts and an opportune charge of horse arrested the pursuit. Yet
Eyre reckons as the chief reason why all the British force that had gone
out to battle was not destroyed, the fact that a leading Afghan chief
forced his men to spare the fugitives, and ultimately halted and withdrew
his people when the opportunity for wholesale slaughter lay open to them.
Most of the wounded were left on the field, where they were miserably cut
to pieces; and the gun, which had been overturned in the attempt of the
drivers to gallop down the face of the hill, finally passed into the
possession of the Afghans. Shelton's dispositions as a commander could
not well have been worse; his bearing as a soldier, although undaunted,
imparted to his hapless troops nothing of inspiration. The obstinacy with
which he held the hill after the impossibility of even partial success
must have been patent to him, was universally condemned. It need scarcely
be added that his loss was very severe.

No more fighting was possible. What, then, was to be done? Elphinstone
and Shelton were at one in opposing removal into the Balla Hissar.
Macnaghten, to whom Shah Soojah had communicated his urgent
recommendation of that measure as the only expedient which could secure
the safety of the British troops, fell in with the views of the military
authorities. There came to him a letter from Osman Khan, the chief who
had called off his adherents on the previous day from pursuing the
fugitives fleeing into cantonments. Osman wrote that, if his troops had
followed up their successes, the loss of the cantonments and the
destruction of the British force were inevitable; but, he continued, that
it was not the wish of the chiefs to proceed to such extremities, their
sole desire being that our people should quietly evacuate the country,
leaving the Afghan sirdars to govern it according to their own customs,
and with a king of their own choosing. In communicating this letter to
General Elphinstone, Sir William asked for the latter's opinion on the
military possibility, or the reverse, of the retention of the British
position in Afghanistan. Elphinstone, in reply, enumerated sundry reasons
which led him to the conclusion which he stated, that 'it is not feasible
any longer to maintain our position in this country, and that you ought
to avail yourself of the offer to negotiate which has been made to you.'

CHAPTER VI: THE ROAD TO RUIN

As the result of the military disaster of November 23d, and of the
representations of the General, recorded in the last chapter, Macnaghten,
with whatever reluctance, permitted himself to entertain proposals for an
arrangement made by the Afghan leaders. From the beginning of the
outbreak, while urging on the military authorities to exert themselves in
putting down the revolt, he had been engaged in tortuous and dangerous
intrigues, with the object of sowing discord among the Afghan chiefs, and
thus weakening the league of hostility against Shah Soojah and his
British supporters. In the conduct of these intrigues he used the
services of Mohun Lal, who had been one of Burnes' assistants, and who,
having escaped the fate of his chief, had found refuge in the city
residence of a Kuzzilbash chief. Mohun Lal was a fitting agent for the
sort of work prescribed to him, and he burrowed and suborned with
assiduity, and not altogether without success. But it is unhappily true
that he was commissioned to carry out a darker enterprise, the removal by
assassination of certain of the more virulently hostile among the Afghan
leaders. The incident is the blackest of the many discreditable
transactions which chequer the inner political history of this melancholy
chapter of our annals. It is unfortunately certain that Lieutenant John
Conolly, Macnaghten's kinsman and his confidential representative with
Shah Soojah, authorised Mohun Lal, in writing, to compass the taking off
of prominent Afghan leaders. In a letter to Mohun Lal, of 5th November,
Conolly wrote: 'I promise 10,000 rupees for the head of each rebel
chief.' Again, on the 11th, he wrote: 'There is a man called Hadji Ali,
who might be induced by a bribe to try and bring in the heads of one or
two of the Mufsids. Endeavour to let him know that 10,000 rupees will be
given for each head, or even 15,000 rupees.' Two chiefs certainly did die
under suspicious circumstances, and in each case the blood-money was
claimed. It was refused by Mohun Lal on the plea that the stipulation
that the heads of the dead Afghans should be brought in was not
fulfilled.

Whether Macnaghten inspired those nefarious machinations, whether indeed
he was actively aware of them, are questions which, in the absence of
conclusive evidence, may judiciously be left unanswered. There is extant
a letter from him to Mohun Lal, written December 1st, which has the
following passage: 'I am sorry to find from your letter of last night
that you should have supposed it was ever my object to encourage
assassination. The rebels are very wicked men, but we must not take
unlawful means to destroy them.' And later he is reported to have
informed an Afghan deputation that, 'as a British functionary, nothing
would induce him to pay a price for blood.' Durand holds that it was the
belief on the part of the Afghan chiefs that the British Envoy had set a
price on their heads which destroyed all confidence in Macnaghten's good
faith, and which was Akbar Khan's chief incentive to his murder.

The terms proffered on November 25th by an Afghan deputation were so
humiliating that Macnaghten peremptorily rejected them; and the threat of
immediate hostilities unless our people promptly surrendered their arms
and withdrew was not carried out. A period of inaction strangely ensued,
which on the Afghan side was a treacherous lull, but which Macnaghten,
hoping against hope that some turn in our favour might yet occur,
regarded with complacency. The chiefs, aware that winter was approaching
with added hardship to the forlorn garrison, temporarily desisted from
urging negotiations. But the British military authorities, with troops
living from hand to mouth on precarious half rations, and with transport
cattle dying fast of starvation, kept urging the Envoy to activity in
making terms, if absolute starvation was to be averted. Futile projects
were discussed between Envoy and General, only to be put aside. As the
dreary days of inaction and depletion passed, the deterioration of
military spirit among our people manifested itself more and more plainly.
British soldiers stolidly watched the Afghans destroying our bridge
across the Cabul river, within a quarter of a mile from cantonments.
Scared by the threat of an assault, which, in the scornful words of brave
Lady Sale, a child with a stick might have repulsed, the garrison of the
Mahomed Shereef fort abandoned it in a panic, the white soldiers of the
44th showing the example of pusillanimity to the sepoys whom their
cowardice demoralised. Next day the detachment of the 44th which had
guarded an exposed position had to be withdrawn, ceding the post of
honour to the stauncher sepoys. The camp followers were living on
carrion; the commissaries reported but four days' provisions in store,
and their inability to procure any more supplies. At length on December
8th the four senior military officers informed the Envoy that it was
imperatively necessary he should negotiate a retreat, on the best terms
he could obtain.

Macnaghten had to bring himself to recognise that the alternatives were
negotiation or starvation, and on the 11th December, with a draft treaty
in his hand, he met the principal Afghan chiefs on the river side between
the cantonments and the city. After the introductory palavers, Macnaghten
read the proposed treaty, whose purport was as follows: that the British
should evacuate Afghanistan forthwith unmolested, furnished with supplies
and accompanied by hostages, on their march to India; that the Dost, his
family, and other Afghan political exiles, should be allowed to return to
their country; that Shah Soojah should have the option of remaining at
Cabul or going down to India; that amnesty should be accorded to all
adherents of Shah Soojah and his British allies; that all prisoners
should be released; and that perpetual friendship and mutual good offices
should thenceforth endure between the British and the Afghans.

Akbar Khan made demur to some of the provisions, but was overruled, and
the main stipulations of the treaty were agreed to by the chiefs. The
conference broke up with the understanding that the British troops should
evacuate cantonments within three days, and that meanwhile provisions
should be sent in for their use. The treaty was simply a virtual
capitulation all along the line; but the inherent falseness of our
position, the incapacity of the military chiefs, and the debased spirit
of the troops, consequent partly on low rations but mainly because of the
utter absence of competent and vigorous leadership such as a Broadfoot or
a Havelock would have supplied, enforced on the reluctant Envoy
conditions humiliating beyond previous parallel in the history of our
nation.

From the outset the Afghan chiefs defaulted from their promise of sending
in supplies, but some grain was brought into cantonments by the troops,
whose evacuation of the Balla Hissar on the 13th was effected under
humiliating circumstances. The Afghans demanded the surrender of the
forts in British occupation in the vicinity of the cantonments. The
requisition was complied with, and the Magazine fort furnished the enemy
with both arms and ammunition.

The three stipulated days passed away, and still the British force
remained motionless in the cantonments. Macnaghten was bent on
procrastination, and circumstances seemed to favour a policy which to all
but himself was inexplicable. By the treaty, Shah Soojah was in effect
committed to withdraw to India, but soon after its acceptance the chiefs
had invited him to remain in Cabul as king, on the stipulation that he
should give his daughters in marriage to leaders of the malcontents.
After considerable deliberation, the Shah had consented to remain on the
condition named, but a few days later he withdrew his acceptance. His
vacillation increased the suspicions of the chiefs, and they demanded the
immediate evacuation of the cantonments, refusing to furnish provisions
until that was done. Meanwhile they sent in no transport animals,
although large sums had been handed over for their purchase. Our people
were still immobile, and already, on the 18th, there had occurred a fall
of snow several inches deep.

The Envoy was engaged in strange and dubious intrigues, and since the
Afghans were not fulfilling their share of the treaty obligations, he
appears to have regarded himself as no longer bound by its conditions,
and free to try to obtain better terms from other sources, in pursuit of
which purpose he was expending money in a variety of directions. The dark
and unscrupulous Mohun Lal was his confidant and instrument. Akbar Khan
and the chiefs of his party had become aware of Macnaghten's
machinations, and they laid a snare for him into which he fell with open
eyes. Emissaries were sent to him with the sinister proposals that the
British should remain in Afghanistan until the spring, when they were to
withdraw as of their own accord; that the head of Ameenoolla Khan, one of
the most powerful and obnoxious of the rebel leaders, should be presented
to the Envoy in return for a stipulated sum of money; and that for all
those services the British Government should requite Akbar Khan with a
present of thirty lakhs of rupees, and an annual pension of four lakhs.
Macnaghten refused peremptorily the proffer of Ameenoolla's head, but did
not reject co-operation in that chiefs capture by a dubious device in
which British troops were to participate; he did not hesitate to accept
the general terms of the proposals; and he consented to hold a conference
with Akbar Khan on the following day to carry into effect the projected
measures.

On the morning of the 23d the deceived and doomed man, accompanied by his
staff-officers, Lawrence, Trevor and Mackenzie, rode out from cantonments
to keep the fateful tryst on the bank of the Cabul river. His manner was
'distracted and hurried.' When he told Lawrence of the nature of the
affair on which he was going, that shrewd officer immediately warned him
that it was a plot against him. 'A plot!' he replied hastily, 'let me
alone for that; trust me for that!' and Lawrence desisted from useless
expostulation. Poor old Elphinstone had scented treachery; but the Envoy
had closed his mouth with the impatient words: 'I understand these things
better than you!' As he rode out, he admitted the danger of the
enterprise, but argued that if it succeeded it was worth all risks. 'At
all events,' he ended, 'let the loss be what it may, I would rather die a
hundred deaths than live the last six weeks over again.' The escort
halted, and the four British gentlemen advanced to the place of
rendezvous, whither came presently Akbar Khan and his party. Akbar began
the conference by asking the Envoy if he was ready to carry out the
proposals presented to him overnight. 'Why not?' was Sir William's short
reply. A number of Afghans, armed to the teeth, had gradually formed a
circle around the informal durbar. Lawrence and Mackenzie pointed out
this environment to some of the chiefs, who affected to drive off the
intruders with their whips; but Akbar observed that it did not matter, as
they 'were all in the secret.' 'Suddenly,' wrote Mackenzie, 'I heard
Akbar call out, "Begeer! begeer!" ("Seize! seize!") and turning round I
saw him grasp the Envoy's left hand with an expression on his face of the
most diabolical ferocity. I think it was Sultan Jan who laid hold of the
Envoy's right hand. They dragged him in a stooping posture down the
hillock, the only words I heard poor Sir William utter being, "Az barae
Khooda" ("For God's sake"). I saw his face, however, and it was full of
horror and astonishment.' Neither Mackenzie nor Lawrence, the surviving
companions of the Envoy, witnessed the actual end. 'Whether,' writes
Kaye, 'he died on the spot, or whether he was slain by the infuriated
ghazees, is not very clearly known; but the fanatics threw themselves on
the prostrate body and hacked it with their knives.' There is no doubt
that the head of the unfortunate Macnaghten was paraded in triumph
through the streets of Cabul, and that the mangled trunk, after being
dragged about the city, was hung up in the great bazaar. Of the three
officers who accompanied the Envoy to the conference, Trevor was
massacred, Lawrence and Mackenzie were saved with difficulty by friendly
chiefs, and brought into the city, where they and Captain Skinner joined
the hostages, Captains Connolly and Airey, under the safe roof of the
venerable Mahomed Zemaun Khan.

That Akbar and the confederate chiefs spread a snare for the Envoy is
plain, and that they regarded his acceptance of their deceitful proposals
as a proof of his faithlessness to the treaty obligations to which he had
bound himself. It was no element in their reasoning that since they had
not regarded the treaty the British functionary might without breach of
faith hold that it did not bind him. But it is improbable that the murder
of Macnaghten was actually included in their scheme of action. Their
intention seems to have been to seize him as a hostage, with intent thus
to secure the evacuation of Afghanistan and the restoration of Dost
Mahomed. The ill-fated Envoy's expressions on his way to the rendezvous
indicate his unhinged state of mind. He went forth to sure treachery;
Akbar's gust of sudden fury converted the planned abduction into savage
murder, and his abrupt pistol bullet baulked the more wily and less
ruthless project which had probably been devised in cold blood.

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