The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 Part 4

Thus ended the deliberations of the memorable council of war, whose eleventh hour resolve to 'hold the fort' mainly averted the ruin of British prestige in India and throughout the regions bordering on our Eastern Empire; and the credit of its final decision to repudiate the humiliating proposals of Sale and Macgregor belongs to George Broadfoot, who was firmly though silently backed by Havelock. The day after that decision was formulated a letter came from Peshawur informing the garrison that every effort would be made for its relief; and thenceforth there was no more talk of surrender, nor was the courage of the little brigade impaired even when the earthquake of February 19th shook the newly repaired fortifications into wreck. Broadfoot's vehement energy infected the troops, and by the end of the month the parapets were entirely restored, the bastions repaired, and every battery re-established.

After the council of war had rejected the proposals laid before it, a decision which in effect involved the maintenance of the defence to the last extremity, nearly two months pa.s.sed without the occurrence of any important event, except the speedily retrieved misfortune of the earthquake of February 19th. The close investment of the place by Akbar Khan thwarted the efforts of the foraging parties to obtain much needed supplies. Those efforts were not vigorous, for Sale, aware of his garrison's poverty of ammunition, was bent on a pa.s.sive defence, and steadily refused his consent to vigorous sorties. The policy may have had its abstract merits, but it was certainly unsatisfactory in this respect, that perseverance in it involved the unpleasantness of apparently inevitable starvation. General Pollock had arrived in Peshawur, and was making energetic efforts to get his force in order for the accomplishment of the relief of Jellalabad. But he foresaw serious delays, and so late as the middle of March was still unable to specify with any definiteness the probable date of his arrival at that place. The European troops in Jellalabad would be out of meat rations early in April, and Havelock's calculation was that the grain, on which mainly subsisted the native soldiers, who had been on half rations since the new year, would be exhausted before the middle of that month. Sale modified his policy of inactivity when he learned that the blockading Afghans were attempting to drive a mine under a salient of the defences, and Dennie on March 11th led out a sally, destroyed the works, and thrust back Akbar's encroachments. The general lack of vigour, however, on the garrison's part emboldened the Afghans so much that they actually grazed their flocks of sheep within 600 yards of the walls. This was too impudent, and the General consented to a raid, which resulted in the acquisition of some 500 sheep, an invaluable addition to the commissariat resources. It is worth recording that the native regiment gave up its share of the sheep to the soldiers of the 13th, on the ground that Europeans needed animal food more than did natives of India.

On April 6th the Afghan leader fired a salute in triumph for a supposit.i.tious repulse of Pollock in the Khyber. In regard to what then happened there is a strange conflict of testimony. General Sale, in a private letter written six weeks later, states: 'I made my arrangements with Macgregor to sally the next day, provided we did not hear that Pollock had forced the pa.s.s.' Akbar's salutes, and the information of spies that Pollock had fallen back, 'made us look very grave--our case desperate, our provisions nearly out, and no relief at hand. I therefore decided to play a bold stroke to relieve ourselves, and give courage to Pollock's force in case of success. If we failed in thras.h.i.+ng Akbar, we would have left our bones on the field.' Abbott's diary of April 5th and 6th records that spies reported that Pollock had been repulsed at Ali Musjid, and that the heads of three of his officers had been sent in to Akbar, whereupon 'all the commanding officers waited on the General, beseeching him to attack Akbar instantly. The 13th and the battery got all ready for work, but the old General was obstinate, and refused to act.' Backhouse's diary (April 6th) mentions that Pollock having been reported repulsed, and Akbar having fired a salute, the officers commanding corps and detachments went in a body and proposed to the General to attack Akbar instantly, but without success. 'Immediately the matter was broached, the General set his face against anything of the kind, and disagreed about every point--insisted that the enemy had 5000 or 6000 men in camp, and were too strong for us; and then, the next minute, that it was no use going out as we couldn't punish them, as they _wouldn't stand_; and concluding with usual excuse for inactivity, "It isn't our game." Words ran precious high....'

Whether spontaneously or under pressure, General Sale must have ordered a sortie in force; for at dawn of the 7th three infantry columns marched out by the Cabul gate, the right commanded by Havelock, the centre by Dennie, the left by Monteath, General Sale being in command of the whole force. Akbar, reputed about 5000 strong, was in formation in front of his camp about three miles west of Jellalabad, his left flank resting on the river, with an advanced post of 300 men in the 'patched up' fort about midway between his camp and Jellalabad. The prescribed tactics were to march straight on the enemy, with which Monteath and Havelock complied; but Dennie, whether with or without orders is a matter in dispute, diverged to a.s.sail the 'patched up' fort. The outer defences were carried, gallant old Dennie riding at the head of his men to receive his death wound. In vain did the guns for which Sale had sent batter at the inner keep, and the General abandoning the attempt to reduce it, led on in person the centre column. Meanwhile Havelock and Monteath had been moving steadily forward, until halted by orders when considerably advanced. Havelock had to form square once and again against the Afghan hors.e.m.e.n, who, however, did not dare to charge home. The artillery came to the front at the gallop, and poured shot and sh.e.l.l into Akbar's ma.s.s.

The three columns, now abreast of each other, deployed into line, and moving forward at the double in the teeth of the Afghan musketry fire, swept the enemy clean out of his position, capturing his artillery, firing his camp, and putting him to utter rout. Akbar, by seven o'clock in the April morning, had been signally beaten in the open field by the troops he had boasted of blockading in the fortress.

The garrison of Jellalabad had thus wrought out its own relief.

Thenceforth it experienced neither annoyance nor scarcity. Pollock arrived a fortnight after the das.h.i.+ng sally which had given the garrison deliverance, and the head of his column was played into its camp on the Jellalabad plain by the band of the 13th, to the significant tune 'Oh, but ye've been lang o'coming.' The magniloquent Ellenborough dubbed Sale's brigade 'the Ill.u.s.trious Garrison,' and if the expression is overstrained, its conduct was without question eminently creditable.

CHAPTER IX: RETRIBUTION AND RESCUE

It was little wonder that the unexpected tidings of the Cabul outbreak, and the later shock of the catastrophe in the pa.s.ses, should have temporarily unnerved the Governor-General. But Lord Auckland rallied his energies with creditable prompt.i.tude. His successor was on the voyage out, and in the remnant of his term that remained he could not do more than make dispositions which his successor might find of service. Every soldier of the 'Army of Retribution' was despatched to the frontier during Lord Auckland's rule. Lord Auckland appointed to the command of the troops which he was sending forward a quiet, steadfast, experienced officer of the artillery arm, who had fought under Lake at Deig and Bhurtpore, and during his forty years of honest service had soldiered steadily from the precipices of Nepaul to the rice-swamps of the Irrawaddy. Pollock was essentially the fitting man for the service that lay before him, characterised as he was by strong sense, shrewd sagacity, calm firmness, and self-command. When his superior devolved on him an undue onus of responsibility he was to prove himself thoroughly equal to the occasion, and the sedate, balanced man murmured not, but probably was rather amused when he saw a maker of phrases essaying to deck himself in his laurels. There were many things in Lord Auckland's Indian career of which it behoved him to repent, but it must go to his credit that he gave Pollock high command, and that he could honestly proclaim, as he made his preparations to quit the great possession whose future his policy had endangered, that he had contributed toward the retrieval of the crisis by promptly furthering 'such operations as might be required for the maintenance of the honour and interests of the British Government.'

Brigadier Wild reached Peshawur with a brigade of four sepoy regiments just before the new year. He was dest.i.tute of artillery, his sepoys were in poor heart, and the Sikh contingent was utterly untrustworthy. To force the Khyber seemed hopeless. Wild, however, made the attempt energetically enough. But the Sikhs mutinied, expelled their officers, and marched back to Peshawur; Wild's sepoys, behaving badly, were driven back with loss from the mouth of the pa.s.s, and Wild himself was wounded.

When Pollock reached Peshawur on February 6th, 1842, he found half of Wild's brigade sick in hospital, and the whole of it in a state of utter demoralisation. A second brigade commanded by Brigadier-General McCaskill, had accompanied Pollock, the sepoys of which promptly fell under the evil influence of Wild's dispirited and disaffected regiments.

Pollock had to resist the pressing appeals for speedy relief made to him from Jellalabad, and patiently to devote weeks and months to the restoration of the morale and discipline of the disheartened sepoys of his command, and to the reinvigoration of their physique. By kindness combined with firmness he was able gradually to inspire them with perfect trust and faith in him, and when in the end of March there reached him a third brigade, comprising British cavalry and horse-artillery, ordered forward by Lord Auckland on receipt of tidings of the destruction of the Cabul force, he felt himself at length justified in advancing with confidence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir George Pollock]

Before daylight on the morning of April 5th Pollock's army about 8000 strong, consisting of eight infantry regiments, three cavalry corps, a troop and two batteries of artillery, and a mountain train, marched from the Jumrood camping ground into the portals of the Khyber. Pollock's scheme of operations was perfect in conception and complete in detail.

His main column, with strong advance and rear-guards, was to pursue the usual road through the pa.s.s. It was flanked on each side by a chain of infantry detachments, whose a.s.signed duty was to crown the heights and sweep them clear of a.s.sailants in advance of the head of the central column. The Afreedi hill men had blocked the throat of the pa.s.s by a formidable barrier, behind which they were gathered in force, waiting for the opportunity which was never to come to them. For the main body of Pollock's force serenely halted, while the flanking columns, breaking into skirmis.h.i.+ng order, hurried in the grey dawn along the slopes and heights, dislodging the Afreedi pickets as they advanced, driving them before them with resolute impetuosity, and pus.h.i.+ng forward so far as to take in reverse with their concentrated fire the great barrier and its defenders. The clansmen, recognising the frustration of their devices, deserted the position in its rear, and rushed tumultuously away to crags and sungahs where knife and jezail might still be plied. The centre column then advanced unmolested to the deserted barricade, through which the sappers soon cleared a thoroughfare. The guns swept with shrapnel the hill-sides in front, the flanking detachments pushed steadily further and yet further forward, chasing and slaying the fugitive hillmen; and the Duke of Wellington's observation was that morning fully made good, that he had never heard that our troops were not equal, as well in their personal activity as in their arms, to contend with and overcome any natives of hills whatever.' The whole British force, in its order of three columns, the centre in the bed of the hollow, the wings on the flanking ridges, steadily if slowly moved on in the a.s.sured consciousness of victory. It was sunset before the rear-guard was in camp under the reoccupied Ali Musjid. The Sikh troops who were to keep open Pollock's communications with Peshawur moved simultaneously on Ali Musjid by a more circuitous route.

While Pollock was halted opposite the throat of the Khyber waiting for the demolition of the Afreedi barricade, the ill-starred Shah Soojah was being murdered, on his way from the Balla Hissar of Cabul to review on the Siah Sung slopes the reinforcements which Akbar Khan was clamouring that he should lead down to aid that Sirdar in reducing Jellalabad before relief should arrive. Ever since the outbreak of November Shah Soojah had led a dog's life. He had reigned in Cabul, but he had not ruled. The Sirdars dunned him for money, and jeered at his protestations of poverty.

It is not so much a matter of surprise that he should have been murdered as that, feeble, rich, and loathed, he should have been let live so long.

It does not seem worth while to discuss the vexed question whether or not he was faithful to his British allies. He was certainly ent.i.tled to argue that he owed us nothing, since what we did in regard to him was nakedly for our own purposes. Shah Soojah's second son Futteh Jung had himself proclaimed his father's successor. The vicissitudes of his short reign need not be narrated. While Pollock was gathering his brigades at Gundamuk in the beginning of the following September, a forlorn Afghan, in dirty and tattered rags, rode into his camp. This scarecrow was Futteh Jung, who, unable to endure longer his sham kings.h.i.+p and the ominous tyranny of Akbar Khan, had fled from Cabul in disguise to beg a refuge in the British camp.

Pollock's march from Ali Musjid to Jellalabad was slow, but almost unmolested. He found, in his own words, 'the fortress strong, the garrison healthy; and except for wine and beer, better off than we are.'

One princ.i.p.al object of his commission had been accomplished; he had relieved the garrison of Jellalabad, and was in a position to ensure its safe withdrawal. But his commission gave him a considerable discretion, and a great company of his countrymen and countrywomen were still in Afghan durance. The calm pulsed, resolute commander had views of his own as to his duty, and he determined in his patient, steadfast way to tarry a while on the Jellalabad plain, in the hope that the course of events might play into his hands.

Maclaren's brigade, which in the beginning of November 1841 General Elphinstone had instructed General Nott to despatch with all speed to Cabul, returned to Candahar early in December. Nott in despatching it had deferred reluctantly to superior authority, and probably Maclaren not sorry to have in the snowfall a pretext for retracing his steps. Atta Mahomed Khan, sent from Cabul to foment mischief in the Candahar regions, had gathered to his banner a considerable force. General Nott quietly waited until the Sirdar, at the head of some 10,000 men, came within five miles of Candahar, and then he crushed him after twenty minutes'

fighting. The fugitives found refuge in the camp of the disaffected Dooranee chiefs, whose leader Meerza Ahmed was sedulously trying to tamper with Nott's native troops, severe weather hindering the General from attacking him. Near the end of February there reached Nott a letter two months old from Elphinstone and Pottinger, ordering him to evacuate Candahar and retire to India, in pursuance of the convention into which they had entered. The Dooranee chiefs astutely urged that Shah Soojah, no longer supported by British bayonets, was now ruling in Cabul, as an argument in favour of Nott's withdrawal. Nott's answer was brief: 'I will not treat with any person whatever for the retirement of the British troops from Afghanistan, until I have received instructions from the Supreme Government'--a blunt sentence in curious contrast to the missive which Sale and Macgregor laid before the Jellalabad council of war. When presently there came a communication from Government intimating that the continued occupation of Candahar was regarded as conducive to the interest of the state, Nott and Rawlinson were in a position to congratulate themselves on having antic.i.p.ated the wishes of their superiors. The situation, however, became so menacing that early in March its Afghan inhabitants were expelled from the city of Candahar to the last soul; and then Nott, leaving a garrison in the place, took the field in force. The old soldier, wary as he was, became the victim of Meerza's wily strategy. As he advanced, the Afghans retired, skirmis.h.i.+ng a.s.siduously. Leaving Nott in the Turnuk valley, they doubled back on Candahar, and in the early darkness of the night of the 10th March they furiously a.s.sailed the city gates. They fired one of the gates, and the swarming ghazees tore down with fury its blazing planks and the red-hot ironwork. The garrison behaved valiantly. Inside the burning gate they piled up a rampart of grain bags, on which they trained a couple of guns loaded with case. For three hours after the gate fell did the fanatics hurl a.s.sault after a.s.sault on the interior barricade. They were terribly critical hours, but the garrison prevailed, and at midnight, with a loss of many hundreds, the obstinate a.s.sailants sullenly drew off. Nott, although urgently summoned, was unable to reach Candahar until the 12th.

Candahar was fortunately preserved, but at the end of March the unpleasant tidings came that Ghuznee, which British valour had carried by storm three years before, had now reverted into Afghan possession. The siege had lasted for nearly three and a half months. In mid-December the besiegers occupied the city in force, introduced by the citizens through a subterranean way; and the garrison, consisting chiefly of a regiment of sepoys, withdrew into the citadel. The bitter winter and the scant rations took the heart out of the natives of the warm and fertile Indian plains; but nevertheless it was not until March 6th that the garrison, under pledge of being escorted to Peshawur with colours, arms, and baggage, marched out. The unfortunates would have done better to have died a soldierly death, with arms in their hands and the glow of fighting in their hearts. As the event was, faith with them was broken, and save for a few officers who were made prisoners, most were slaughtered, or perished in a vain attempt to escape.

During his long isolation Nott's resources had been seriously depleted, and he had ordered up from Scinde a brigade, escorting much needed treasure, ammunition, and medicines. Brigadier England was entrusted with the command of this force, whose a.s.semblage at Quetta was expected about the end of March. Pending its gathering England had moved out toward the entrance of the Kojuk Pa.s.s, where he met with a sharp and far from creditable repulse, and fell back on Quetta miserably disheartened, suggesting in his abjectness that Nott should abandon Candahar and retire on him. The stout old soldier at Candahar waxed wroth at the limpness of his subordinate, and addressed to England a biting letter, ordering peremptorily the latter's prompt advance to Candahar, engaging to dry-nurse him through the Kojuk by a brigade sent down from Candahar for the purpose, and remarking sarcastically, 'I am well aware that war cannot be made without loss; but yet perhaps British troops can oppose Asiatic armies without defeat.' Thus exhorted England moved, to find his march through the Kojuk protected by Wymer's sepoys from Candahar, who had crowned the lateral heights before he ventured into the pa.s.s; and he reached Candahar without maltreatment on the 10th May, bringing to Nott the much needed supplies which rendered that resolute man equal to any enterprise.

It remained, however, to be seen whether any enterprise was to be permitted to him and to his brother commander lying in camp on the Jellalabad plain. Lord Ellenborough, the successor of Lord Auckland, had struck a firm if somewhat inexplicit note in his earliest manifesto, dated March 13th. A single sentence will indicate its tenor: 'Whatever course we may hereafter take must rest solely on military considerations, and hence in the first instance regard to the safety of our detached garrisons in Afghanistan; to the security of our troops now in the field from unnecessary risks; and finally, to the re-establishment of our military reputation by the infliction upon the Afghans of some signal and decisive blow.' Those were brave words, if only they had been adhered to.

But six weeks later his lords.h.i.+p was ordering Nott to evacuate Candahar and fall back on Quetta, until the season should permit further retirement to the Indus; and instructing Pollock, through the Commander-in-Chief, to withdraw without delay every British soldier from Jellalabad to Peshawur, except under certain specified eventualities, none of which were in course of occurrence. Pollock temporised, holding on to his advanced position by the plea of inability to retire for want of transport, claiming mildly to find discretionary powers in the Government instructions, and cautiously arguing in favour of an advance by a few marches to a region where better climate was to be found, and whence he might bring to bear stronger pressure for the liberation of the prisoners. Nott was a narrower man than Pollock. When he got his orders he regarded them as strictly binding, no matter how unpalatable the injunctions. 'I shall not lose a moment,' he wrote, 'in making arrangements to carry out my orders, without turning to the right or the left, and without inquiring into the reasons for the measures enjoined, whatever our own opinions or wishes may be.' He reluctantly began preparations for withdrawal. Carriage was ordered up from Quetta, and a brigade was despatched to withdraw the garrison of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, and to destroy the fort which Craigie had so long and valiantly defended.

It would be tedious to detail the vacillations, the obscurities, and the tortuosities of Lord Ellenborough's successive communications to his two Generals in Afghanistan. Pollock had been permitted to remain about Jellalabad until the autumn should bring cooler marching weather. Nott had been detained at Candahar by the necessity for crus.h.i.+ng menacing bodies of tribal levies, but as July waned his preparations for withdrawal were all but complete. On the 4th of that month Lord Ellenborough wrote to him, reiterating injunctions for his withdrawal from Afghanistan, but permitting him the alternatives of retiring by the direct route along his line of communications over Quetta and Sukkur, or of boxing the compa.s.s by the curiously circuitous 'retirement' _via_ Ghuznee, Cabul, and Jellalabad. Pollock, for his part, was permitted, if he thought proper, to advance on Cabul in order to facilitate Nott's withdrawal, if the latter should elect to 'retreat' by the circuitous route which has just been described.

One does not care to characterise the 'heads I win, tails you lose'

policy of a Governor-General who thus shuffled off his responsibility upon two soldiers who previously had been sedulously restricted within narrow if varying limits. Their relief from those trammels set them free, and it was their joy to accept the devolved responsibility, and to act with soldierly initiative and vigour. The chief credit of the qualified yet substantial triumph over official hesitation certainly belongs to Pollock, who gently yet firmly forced the hand of the Governor-General, while Nott's merit was limited to a ready acceptance of the responsibility of a proffered option. A letter from Nott intimating his determination to retire by way of Cabul and Jellalabad reached Pollock in the middle of August, who immediately advanced from Jellalabad; and his troops having concentrated at Gundamuk, he marched from that position on 7th September, his second division, commanded by M'Caskill, following next day. Pollock was woefully short of transport, and therefore was compelled to leave some troops behind at Gundamuk, and even then could carry only half the complement of tentage. But his soldiers, who carried in their haversacks seven days' provisions, would gladly have marched without any baggage at all, and the chief himself was eager to hurry forward, for Nott had written that he expected to reach Cabul on 15th September, and Pollock was burning to be there first. In the Jugdulluk Pa.s.s, on the 8th, he found the Ghilzais in considerable force on the heights. Regardless of a heavy artillery fire they stood their ground, and so galled Pollock's troops with sharp discharges from their jezails that it became necessary to send infantry against them. They were dislodged from the mountain they had occupied by a portion of the Jellalabad brigade, led by gallant old General Sale, who had his usual luck in the shape of a wound.

This Jugdulluk fighting was, however, little more than a skirmish, and Pollock's people were to experience more severe opposition before they should emerge from the pa.s.ses on to the Cabul plain. On the morning of the 13th the concentrated force had quitted its camp in the Tezeen valley, and had committed itself without due precaution to the pa.s.sage of the ravine beyond, when the Afghan levies with which Akbar Khan had manned the flanking heights, opened their fire. The Sirdar had been dissuaded by Captain Troup, one of his prisoners, from attempting futile negotiations, and advised not to squander lives in useless opposition.

Akbar had replied that he was too deeply committed to recede, and that his people were bent on fighting. They were not baulked in the aspiration, which a.s.suredly their opponents shared with at least equal zeal. Pollock's advance-guard was about the middle of the defile, when the enemy were suddenly discovered blocking the pa.s.s in front, and holding the heights which Pollock's light troops should have crowned in advance of the column. Akbar's force was calculated to be about 15,000 strong, and the Afghans fought resolutely against the British regiments which forced their way up the heights on the right and left. The ghazees dashed down to meet the red soldiers halfway, and up among the precipices there were many hand-to-hand encounters, in which the sword and the bayonet fought out the issue. The Afghans made their last stand on the rocky summit of the Huft Kotul; but from this commanding position they were finally driven by Broadfoot's bloodthirsty little Goorkhas, who, hillmen themselves from their birth, chased the Afghans from crag to crag, using their fell kookeries as they pursued. It was Akbar Khan's last effort, and the quelling of it cost Pollock the trivial loss of thirty-two killed and 130 wounded. There was no more opposition, and it was well for the Afghans, for the awful spectacles presented in the Khoord Cabul Pa.s.s traversed on the following day, kindled in Pollock's soldiers a white heat of fury. 'The bodies,' wrote Backhouse in his unpublished diary, 'lay in heaps of fifties and hundreds, our gun wheels crus.h.i.+ng the bones of our late comrades at every yard for four or five miles; indeed, the whole march from Gundamuk to Cabul may be said to have been over the bodies of the ma.s.sacred army.' Pollock marched unmolested to Cabul on the 15th, and camped on the old racecourse to the east of the city.

Nott, in evacuating Candahar, divided his force into two portions, the weaker of which General England took back to India by Quetta and Sukkur, while on August 9th Nott himself, with two European battalions, the 'beautiful sepoy regiments' of which he had a right to be proud, and his field guns, marched away from Candahar, his face set towards Cabul. His march was uneventful until about midway between Khelat-i-Ghilzai and Ghuznee, when on the 28th the cavalry, unsupported and badly handled in a stupid and unauthorised foray, lost severely in officers and men, took to flight in panic, and so gave no little encouragement to the enemy hanging on Nott's flank. Two days later Shumshoodeen, the Afghan leader, drew up some 10,000 men in order of battle on high ground left of the British camp. Nott attacked with vigour, advancing to turn the Afghan left. In reprisal the enemy threw their strength on his left, supporting their jezail fire with artillery, whereupon Nott changed front to the left, deployed, and then charged. The Afghans did not wait for close quarters, and Nott was no more seriously molested. Reaching the vicinity of Ghuznee on September 5th, he cleared away the hordes hanging on the heights which encircle the place. During the night the Afghans evacuated Ghuznee. Soon after daylight the British flag was waving from the citadel. Having fulfilled Lord Ellenborough's ridiculous order to carry away from the tomb of Sultan Mahmoud in the environs of Ghuznee, the supposit.i.tious gates of Somnath, a once famous Hindoo shrine in the Bombay province of Kattiawar, Nott marched onward unmolested till within a couple of marches of Cabul, when near Maidan he had some stubborn fighting with an Afghan force which tried ineffectually to block his way. On the 17th he marched into camp four miles west of Cabul, whence he could discern, not with entire complacency, the British ensign already flying from the Balla Hissar, for Pollock had won the race to Cabul by a couple of days.

For months there had been negotiations for the release of the British prisoners whom Akbar Khan had kept in durance ever since they came into his hands in the course of the disastrous retreat from Cabul in January, but they had been unsuccessful, and now it was known that the unfortunate company of officers, women, and children, had been carried off westward into the hill country of Bamian. Nott's officers, as the Candahar column was nearing Cabul, had more than once urged him to detach a brigade in the direction of Bamian in the hope of effecting a rescue of the prisoners, but he had steadily refused, leaning obstinately on the absence from the instructions sent him by Government of any permission to engage in the enterprise of attempting their release. He was not less brusque in the intimation of his declinature when Pollock gave him the opportunity to send a force in support of Sir Richmond Shakespear, whom, with a detachment of Kuzzilbash horse, Pollock had already despatched on the mission of attempting the liberation of the prisoners. The narrow old soldier argued doggedly that Government 'had thrown the prisoners overboard.' Why, then, should he concern himself with their rescue? If his superior officer should give him a firm order, of course he would obey, but he would obey under protest. Pollock disdained to impose so enviable a duty on a recalcitrant man, and committed to Sale the honourable and welcome service--all the more welcome to that officer because his wife and daughter were among the captives. At the head of his Jellalabad brigade, he was to push forward by forced marches on the track of Shakespear and his hors.e.m.e.n.

The strange and bitter experiences of the captives, from that miserable January Sabbath day on which they pa.s.sed under the 'protection' of Akbar Khan until the mid-September noon when Shakespear galloped into their midst, are recorded in full and interesting detail in Lady Sale's journal, in Vincent Eyre's _Captivity_, and in Colin Mackenzie's biography published under the t.i.tle of _Storms and Suns.h.i.+ne of a Soldier's Life_. Here it is possible only briefly to summarise the chief incidents of the captivity. The unanimous testimony of the released prisoners was to the effect that Akbar Khan, violent, b.l.o.o.d.y, and pa.s.sionate man though he was, behaved toward them with kindness and a certain rude chivalry. They remained for nearly three months at Budiabad, living in great squalor and discomfort. For the whole party there were but five rooms, each of which was occupied by from five to ten officers and ladies, the few soldiers and non-commissioned officers, who were mostly wounded, being quartered in sheds and cellars. Mackenzie drily remarks that the hards.h.i.+ps of the common lot, and the close intimacy of prison life, brought into full relief good and evil qualities; 'conventional polish was a good deal rubbed off and replaced by a plainness of speech quite unheard of in good society.' Ladies and gentlemen were necessitated to occupy the same room during the night, but the men 'cleared out' early in the morning, leaving the ladies to themselves. The dirt and vermin of their habitation were abominably offensive to people to whom scrupulous cleanliness was a second nature.

But the captives were allowed to take exercise within a limited range; they had among them a few books, and an old newspaper occasionally came on to them from Jellalabad, with which place a fitful correspondence in cypher was surrept.i.tiously maintained. They had a few packs of playing cards; they made for themselves backgammon and draught-boards, and when in good spirits they sometimes played hopscotch and blindman's-buff with the children of the party. The Sundays were always kept scrupulously, Lawrence and Mackenzie conducting the service in turn.

The earthquake which shook down the fortifications of Jellalabad brought their rickety fort about the ears of the captives. Several escaped narrowly with their lives when walls and roofs yawned and crumbled, and all had to turn out and sleep in the courtyard, where they suffered from cold and saturating dews. After the defeat of Akbar by the Jellalabad garrison on April 7th, there was keen expectation that Sale would march to their rescue, but he came not, and there were rumours among the guards of their impending ma.s.sacre in revenge for the crus.h.i.+ng reverse Akbar had experienced. Presently, however, Mahomed Shah Khan, Akbar's lieutenant, arrived full of courtesy and rea.s.surance, but with the unwelcome intimation that the prisoners must prepare themselves to leave Budiabad at once, and move to a greater distance from Jellalabad and their friends. For some preparation was not a difficult task. 'All my worldly goods,' wrote Captain Johnson, 'might be stowed away in a towel.' Others who possessed heavier impedimenta, were lightened of the enc.u.mbrance by the Ghilzai Sirdar, who plundered indiscriminately. The European soldiers were left behind at Budiabad, and the band of ladies and gentlemen started on the afternoon of April 10th, in utter ignorance of their destination, under the escort of a strong band of Afghans. At the ford across the Cabul river the cavalcade found Akbar Khan wounded, haggard, and dejected, seated in a palanquin, which, weak as he was, he gave up to Ladies Macnaghten and Sale, who were ill. A couple of days were spent at Tezeen among the melancholy relics of the January slaughter, whence most of the party were carried several miles further into the southern mountains to the village of Zandeh, while General Elphinstone, whose end was fast approaching, remained in the Tezeen valley with Pottinger, Mackenzie, Eyre, and one or two others. On the evening of April 23d the poor General was finally released from suffering of mind and body. Akbar, who when too late had offered to free him, sent the body down to Jellalabad under a guard, and accompanied by Moore the General's soldier servant; and Elphinstone lies with Colonel Dennie and the dead of the defence of Jellalabad in their nameless graves in a waste place within the walls of that place. Toward the end of May the captives were moved up the pa.s.ses to the vicinity of Cabul, where Akbar Khan was now gradually attaining the ascendant. Prince Futteh Jung, however, still held out in the Balla Hissar, and intermittent firing was heard as the weary _cortege_ of prisoners reached a fort about three miles short of Cabul, which the ladies of the proprietor's zenana had evacuated in their favour. Here they lived if not in contentment at least in considerable comfort and amenity. They had the privacy of a delightful garden, and enjoyed the freedom of bathing in the adjacent river. After the strife between Akbar Khan and Futteh Jung ceased they were even permitted to exchange visits with their countrymen, the hostages quartered on the Balla Hissar. They were able to obtain money from the Cabul usurers, and thus to supply themselves with suitable clothing and additions to their rations, and their mails from India and Jellalabad were forwarded to them without hindrance. The summer months were pa.s.sed in captivity, but it was no longer for them a captivity of squalor and wretchedness. Life was a good deal better worth living in the pleasant garden house on the bank of the Logur than it had been in the noisome squalor of Budiabad and the vermin-infested huddlement of Zandeh. But they still-lived under the long strain of anxiety and apprehension, for none of them knew what the morrow might bring forth. While residing in the pleasant quarters in the Logur valley the captives of the pa.s.ses were joined by nine officers, who were the captives of Ghuznee. After the capitulation the latter had been treated with cruel harshness, shut up in one small room, and debarred from fresh air and exercise. Colonel Palmer, indeed, had undergone the barbarity of torture in the endeavour to force him to disclose the whereabouts of treasure which he was suspected of having buried.

Akbar had full and timely intimation of the mutual intention of the British generals at Jellalabad and Candahar to march on Cabul, and did not fail to recognise of what value to him in extremity might be his continued possession of the prisoners. They had been warned of their probable deportation to the remote and rugged Bamian; and the toilsome journey thither was begun on the evening of August 25th. A couple of ailing families alone, with a surgeon in charge of them, were allowed to remain behind; all the others, hale and sick, had to travel, the former on horseback, the latter carried in camel panniers. The escort consisted of an irregular regiment of Afghan infantry commanded by one Saleh Mahomed Khan, who when a subadar serving in one of the Shah's Afghan regiments had deserted to Dost Mahomed. The wayfarers, female as well as male, wore the Afghan costume, in order that they might attract as little notice as possible.

Bamian was reached on September 3d, where the wretchedness of the quarters contrasted vividly with the amenity of those left behind on the Cabul plain. But the wretchedness of Bamian was not to be long endured.

An intimacy had been struck up between Captain Johnson and Saleh Mahomed, and the latter cautiously hinted that a reward and a pension might induce him to carry his charges into the British camp. On September 11th there was a private meeting between the Afghan commandant and three British officers, Pottinger, Johnson, and Lawrence. Saleh Mahomed intimated the receipt of instructions from the Sirdar to carry the prisoners over the Hindoo Koosh into Khooloom, and leave them there to seeming hopeless captivity. But on the other hand a messenger had reached Saleh from Mohun Lal with the a.s.surance that General Pollock, if he restored the prisoners, would ensure him a reward of 20,000 rupees, and a life pension of 12,000 rupees a year. Saleh Mahomed demanded and received a guarantee from the British officers; and the captives bound themselves to make good from their own resources their redemption money. The Afghan ex-Subadar proved himself honest; the captives were captives no longer, and they proceeded to a.s.sert themselves in the masterful British manner. They hoisted the national flag; Pottinger became once again the high-handed 'political,' and ordered the local chiefs to come to his durbar and receive dresses of honour. Their fort was put into a state of defence, and a store of provisions was gathered in case of a siege. But in mid-September came the tidings that Akbar had been defeated at Tezeen, and had fled no one knew whither, whereupon the self-emanc.i.p.ated party set out on the march to Cabul. At noon of the 17th they pa.s.sed into the safe guardians.h.i.+p of Shakespear and his hors.e.m.e.n. Three days later, within a march of Cabul, there was reached the column which Sale had taken out, and on September 21st Pollock greeted the company of men and women whose rescue had been wrought out by his cool, strong steadfastness.

Little more remains to be told. There was an Afghan force still in arms at Istalif, a beautiful village of the inveterately hostile Kohistanees; a division marched to attack it, carried the place by a.s.sault, burnt part of it, and severely smote the garrison. Utter destruction was the fate of Charikar, the capital of the Kohistan, where Codrington's Goorkha regiment had been destroyed. Pollock determined to 'set a mark' on Cabul to commemorate the retribution which the British had exacted. He spared the Balla Hissar, and abstained from laying the city in ruins, contenting himself with the destruction of the princ.i.p.al bazaar, through which the heads of Macnaghten and Burnes had been paraded, and in which their mangled bodies had been exposed. Prince Futteh Jung, tired of his vicissitudes in the character of an Afghan monarch, ceded what of a throne he possessed to another puppet of his race, and gladly accompanied the British armies to India. Other waifs of the wreck of a nefarious and disastrous enterprise, among them old Zemaun Khan, who had been our friend throughout, and the family of the ill-fated Shah Soojah, were well content to return to the exile which afforded safety and quietude. There also accompanied the march of the humane Pollock a great number of the mutilated and crippled camp followers of Elphinstone's army who had escaped with their lives from its destruction. On the 12th of October the forces of Pollock and of Nott turned their backs on Cabul, which no British army was again to see for nearly forty years, and set out on their march down the pa.s.ses. Jellalabad and Ali Musjid were partially destroyed in pa.s.sing. Pollock's division reached Peshawur without loss, thanks to the precautions of its chief; but with M'Caskill and Nott the indomitable Afghans had the last word, cutting off their stragglers, capturing their baggage, and in the final skirmish killing and wounding some sixty men of Nott's command.

Of the bombastic and grotesque paeans of triumph emitted by Lord Ellenborough, whose head had been turned by a success to which he had but scantly contributed, nothing need now be said, nor of the garish pageant with which he received the armies as they re-entered British territory at Ferozepore. As they pa.s.sed down through the Punjaub, Dost Mahomed pa.s.sed up on his way to reoccupy the position from which he had been driven. And so ended the first Afghan war, a period of history in which no redeeming features are perceptible except the defence of Jellalabad, the dogged firmness of Nott, and Pollock's n.o.ble and successful constancy of purpose. Beyond this effulgence there spreads a sombre welter of misrepresentation and unscrupulousness, intrigue, moral deterioration, and dishonour unspeakable.

PART II: THE SECOND AFGHAN WAR

CHAPTER I: THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

A brief period of peace intervened between the ratification of the treaty of Gundamuk on May 30th, 1879, and the renewal of hostilities consequent on the ma.s.sacre at Cabul of Sir Louis Cavagnari and the whole _entourage_ of the mission of which he was the head. There was nothing identical or even similar in the motives of the two campaigns, and regarded purely on principle they might be regarded as two distinct wars, rather than as successive campaigns of one and the same war. But the interval between them was so short that the ink of the signatures to the treaty of Gundamuk may be said to have been scarcely dry when the murder of the British Envoy tore that doc.u.ment into b.l.o.o.d.y shreds; and it seems the simplest and most convenient method to designate the two years of hostilities from November 1878 to September 1880, as the 'second Afghan war,' notwithstanding the three months' interval of peace in the summer of 1879.

Dost Mahomed died in 1863, and after a long struggle his son Shere Ali possessed himself of the throne bequeathed to him by his father. The relations between Shere Ali and the successive Viceroys of India were friendly, although not close. The consistent aim of the British policy was to maintain Afghanistan in the position of a strong, friendly, and independent state, prepared in certain contingencies to co-operate in keeping at a distance foreign intrigue or aggression; and while this object was promoted by donations of money and arms, to abstain from interference in the internal affairs of the country, while according a friendly recognition to the successive occupants of its throne, without undertaking indefinite liabilities in their interest. The aim, in a word, was to utilise Afghanistan as a 'buffer' state between the northwestern frontier of British India and Russian advances from the direction of Central Asia. Shere Ali was never a very comfortable ally; he was of a saturnine and suspicious nature, and he seems also to have had an overweening sense of the value of the position of Afghanistan, interposed between two great powers profoundly jealous one of the other. He did not succeed with Lord Northbrook in an attempt to work on that Viceroy by playing off the bogey of Russian aggression; and as the consequence of this failure he allowed himself to display marked evidences of disaffected feeling. Cognisance was taken of this 'att.i.tude of extreme reserve,' and early in 1876 Lord Lytton arrived in India charged with instructions to break away from the policy designated as that of 'masterly inactivity,' and to initiate a new basis of relations with Afghanistan and its Ameer.

Lord Lytton's instructions directed him to despatch without delay a mission to Cabul, whose errand would be to require of the Ameer the acceptance of a permanent Resident and free access to the frontier positions of Afghanistan on the part of British officers, who should have opportunity of conferring with the Ameer on matters of common interest with 'becoming attention to their friendly councils.' Those were demands notoriously obnoxious to the Afghan monarch and the Afghan people.

Compliance with them involved sacrifice of independence, and the Afghan loathing of Feringhee officials in their midst had been fiercely evinced in the long b.l.o.o.d.y struggle and awful catastrophe recorded in earlier pages of this volume. Probably the Ameer, had he desired, would not have dared to concede such demands on any terms, no matter how full of advantage. But the terms which Lord Lytton was instructed to tender as an equivalent were strangely meagre. The Ameer was to receive a money gift, and a precarious stipend regarding which the new Viceroy was to 'deem it inconvenient to commit his government to any permanent pecuniary obligation.' The desiderated recognition of Abdoolah Jan as Shere Ali's successor was promised with the qualifying reservation that the promise 'did not imply or necessitate any intervention in the internal affairs of the state.' The guarantee against foreign aggression was vague and indefinite, and the Government of India reserved to itself entire 'freedom of judgment as to the character of circ.u.mstances involving the obligation of material support.'

The Ameer replied to the notice that a mission was about to proceed to Cabul by a courteous declinature to receive an Envoy, a.s.signing several specious reasons. He was quite satisfied with the existing friendly relations, and desired no change in them; he could not guarantee the safety of the Envoy and his people; if he admitted a British mission, he would have no excuse for refusing to receive a Russian one. An intimation was conveyed to the Ameer that if he should persist in his refusal to receive the mission, the Viceroy would have no other alternative than to regard Afghanistan as a state which had 'voluntarily isolated itself from the alliance and support of the British Government.' The Ameer arranged that the Vakeel of the Indian Government should visit Simla, carrying with him full explanations, and charged to lay before the Viceroy sundry grievances which were distressing Shere Ali. That functionary took back to Cabul certain minor concessions, but conveyed the message also that those concessions were contingent on the Ameer's acceptance of British officers about his frontiers, and that it would be of no avail to send an Envoy to the conference at Peshawur for which sanction was given, unless he were commissioned to agree to this condition as the fundamental basis of a treaty. Before the Vakeel quitted Simla he had to listen to a truculent address from Lord Lytton, in the course of which Shere Ali's position was genially likened to that of 'an earthen pipkin between two iron pots.' Before Sir Lewis Pelly and the Ameer's representative met at Peshawur in January 1877, Shere Ali had not unnaturally been perturbed by the permanent occupation of Quetta, on the southern verge of his dominions, as indicating, along with other military dispositions, an intended invasion. The Peshawur conference, which from the first had little promise, dragged on unsatisfactorily until terminated by the death of the Ameer's representative, whereupon Sir Lewis Pelly was recalled by Lord Lytton, notwithstanding the latter's cognisance that Shere Ali was despatching to Peshawur a fresh Envoy authorised to a.s.sent to all the British demands. The justification advanced by Lord Lytton for this procedure was the discovery purported to have been made by Sir Lewis Pelly that the Ameer was intriguing with General Kaufmann at Tashkend.

Since Shere Ali was an independent monarch, it was no crime on his part to enter into negotiations with another power than Great Britain, although if the worried and distracted man did so the charge of folly may be laid to him, since the Russians were pretty certain to betray him after having made a cat's-paw of him, and since in applying to them he involved himself in the risk of hostile action on the part of the British. The wisdom of Lord Lytton's conduct is not apparent. The truculent policy of which he was the instrument was admittedly on the point of triumphing; and events curiously falsified his short-sighted antic.i.p.ation of the unlikelihood, because of the Russo-Turkish war then impending, of any _rapprochement_ between the Ameer and the Russian authorities in Central Asia. The Viceroy withdrew his Vakeel from Cabul, and in the recognition of the Ameer's att.i.tude of 'isolation and scarcely veiled hostility' Lord Salisbury authorised Lord Lytton to protect the British frontier by such measures as circ.u.mstances should render expedient, 'without regard to the wishes of the Ameer or the interests of his dynasty.' Lord Lytton took no measures, expedient or otherwise, in the direction indicated by Lord Salisbury; the Ameer, as if he had been a petted boy consigned to the corner, was abandoned to his sullen 'isolation,' and the Russians adroitly used him to involve us in a war which lasted two years, cost us the lives of many valiant men, caused us to incur an expenditure of many millions, and left our relations with Afghanistan in all essential respects in the same condition as Lord Lytton found them when he reached India with the 'new policy' in his pocket.

If the Russians could execute as thoroughly as they can plan skilfully, there would be hardly any limit to their conquests. When England was mobilising her forces after the treaty of San Stefano, and ordering into the Mediterranean a division of sepoys drawn from the three presidencies of her Indian Empire, Russia for her part was concerting an important diversion in the direction of the north-western frontier of that great possession. But for the opportune conclusion of the treaty of Berlin, the question as to the ability of sepoy troops stiffened by British regiments to cope with the mixed levies of the Tzar might have been tried out on stricken fields between the Oxus and the Indus. When Gortschakoff returned from Berlin to St Petersburg with his version of 'Peace with Honour'--Bessarabia and Batoum thrown in--Kaufmann had to countermand the concentration of troops that had been in progress on the northern frontier of Afghanistan. But the Indian division was still much in evidence in the Mediterranean, its tents now gleaming on the brown slopes of Malta, now crowning the upland of Larnaca and nestling among the foliage of Kyrenea. Kaufmann astutely retorted on this demonstration by despatching, not indeed an expedition, but an emba.s.sy to Cabul; and when Stolietoff, the gallant defender of the Schipka Pa.s.s, rode into the Balla Hissar on August 11th, 1878, Shere Ali received him with every token of cordiality and regard.

No other course was now open to Her Majesty's Government than to insist on the reception at Cabul of a British mission. The gallant veteran officer Sir Neville Chamberlain, known to be held in regard by the Ameer, was named as Envoy, and an emissary was sent to Cabul in advance with information of the date fixed for the setting out of the mission. Shere Ali was greatly perplexed, and begged for more time. 'It is not proper,'

he protested, 'to use pressure in this way; it will tend to a complete rupture.' But Sir Neville Chamberlain was satisfied that the Ameer was trifling with the Indian Government; and he had certain information that the Ameer, his Ministers, and the Afghan outpost officers, had stated plainly that, if necessary, the advance of the mission would be arrested by force. This was what in effect happened when on September 21st Major Cavagnari rode forward to the Afghan post in the Khyber Pa.s.s. The officer who courteously stopped him a.s.sured him that he had orders to oppose by force the progress of Sir Neville and his mission, so Cavagnari shook hands with the Afghan major and rode back to Peshawur.

The Viceroy sought permission to declare war immediately, notwithstanding his condition of unpreparedness; but the Home Government directed him instead to require in temperate language an apology and the acceptance of a permanent mission, presenting at the same time the ultimatum that if a satisfactory reply should not be received on or before the 20th November hostilities would immediately commence. Meanwhile military preparations were actively pushed forward. The scheme of operations was as follows: three columns of invasion were to move simultaneously, one through the Khyber Pa.s.s to Dakka, another through the Kuram valley, south of the Khyber, with the Peiwar Pa.s.s as its objective, and a third from Quetta into the Pisheen valley, to march forward to Candahar after reinforcement by a division from Mooltan. To General Sir Sam Browne was a.s.signed the command of the Khyber column, consisting of about 10,000 men, with thirty guns; to General Roberts the command of the Kuram valley column, of about 5,500 men, with twenty-four guns; and to General Biddulph the command of the Quetta force, numbering some 6000 men, with eighteen guns. When General Donald Stewart should bring up from Mooltan the division which was being concentrated there, he was to command the whole southern force moving on Candahar. The reserve division gathering at Ha.s.san Abdul and commanded by General Maude, would support the Khyber force; another reserve division ma.s.sing at Sukkur under General Primrose, would act in support of the Candahar force; and a contingent contributed by the Sikh Feudatory States and commanded by Colonel Watson, was to do duty on the Kurum line of communication. The Generals commanding columns were to act independently of each other, taking instructions direct from Army and Government headquarters.

No answer to the ultimatum was received from the Ameer, and on the morning of November 21st Sir Sam Browne crossed the Afghan frontier and moved up the Khyber on Ali Musjid with his third and fourth brigades and the guns. Overnight he had detached Macpherson's and Tytler's brigades with the commission to turn the Ali Musjid position by a circuitous march, the former charged to descend into the Khyber Pa.s.s in rear of the fortress, and block the escape of its garrison; the latter instructed to find, if possible, a position on the Rhotas heights on the proper left of the fortress from which a flank attack might be delivered. About noon Sir Sam reached the s.h.a.gai ridge and came under a brisk fire from the guns of Ali Musjid, to which his heavy cannon and Manderson's horse-battery replied with good results. The Afghan position, which was very strong, stretched right athwart the valley from an entrenched line on the right to the Rhotas summit on the extreme left. The artillery duel lasted about two hours, and then Sir Sam determined to advance, on the expectation that the turning brigades had reached their respective objectives. He himself moved forward on the right upland; on the opposite side of the Khyber stream Appleyard led the advance of his brigade against the Afghan right. No co-operation on the part of the turning brigades had made itself manifest up till dusk; the right brigade had been brought to a halt in face of a precipitous cliff crowned by the enemy, and it was wisely judged that to press the frontal attack further in the meantime would involve a useless loss of life. Sir Sam therefore halted, and sent word to Appleyard to stay for the night his further advance, merely holding the ridge which he had already carried. But before this order reached him Appleyard was sharply engaged with the enemy in their entrenched position, and in the fighting which occurred before the retirement was effected two officers were killed, a third wounded, and a good many casualties occurred among the rank and file of the native detachments gallantly a.s.sailing the Afghan entrenchments.