The Dark Defile

by Diana Preston

  Akbar Khan himself was in bed. He received them courteously, assuring them that Macnaghten and Trevor were both well, though Mackenzie noticed “a constraint in his manner.” They were then shown into another room, where Captain Skinner was being held, and at last received confirmation of Macnaghten’s fate. Lawrence rushed forward to seize Skinner’s hands. “But being startled by the gravity of his looks,” Lawrence recounted, “I asked him ‘what was the matter?’ ‘Matter!’, he replied, ‘Don’t you know?’ ‘No!’ said I: ‘nothing more than that we have been lucky enough to escape with our lives, and are prisoners.’ ‘The Envoy is dead,’ said Skinner, slowly and solemnly. ‘I saw his head brought into this very courtyard.’ ” He also told Lawrence and Mackenzie that the envoy’s mutilated body had been “dragged through the city, and his head stuck up for all to gaze upon in the Char Chowk [Grand Bazaar], the most frequented and open part of Kabul.”

  Skinner was convinced that Akbar Khan himself had killed Macnaghten using one of the pistols the envoy had given him and that had previously been Lawrence’s. Though Akbar Khan never formally admitted his guilt and even Lawrence later had doubts, he likely was the instigator of Macnaghten’s death. Mohan Lal reported that he later heard Akbar Khan privately boasting “that he was the assassin of the Envoy” and also claimed that Akbar Khan had confessed his guilt in a letter. However, whether it had always been his intention to kill rather than capture the envoy, and whether he killed him by accident or perhaps in the grip of what Lieutenant Eyre called his “tiger passions,” is less certain. An account by Akbar Khan’s cousin in a letter that later fell into British hands rings true: “The Sirdar [Akbar Khan] at last said to the Envoy; ‘Come, I must take you to the Nawab’s.’ The Envoy was alarmed and rose up. Mohammed Akbar seized him by the hands saying: ‘I cannot allow you to return to cantonments.’ The Sirdar wished to carry him off alive, but was unable; then he drew a double-barrelled pistol from his belt, and discharged both barrels at the Envoy, after which he struck him two or three blows with his sword, and the Envoy was thus killed on the spot.”

  The day after Macnaghten’s death, the Afghan chiefs sought to revive negotiations with the British. Akbar Khan, Amenoolah Khan and other leaders dispatched a letter to the cantonments together with a draft treaty stating the terms on which they would allow the British army safe conduct to Peshawar. The British were immediately to quit Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Jalalabad, while Dost Mohammed and his family were to be allowed to return to Afghanistan. Shah Shuja could stay or go as he chose. There was also to be a further exchange of hostages, and the British were to pay the chiefs large sums as the price for being allowed to travel unmolested through the passes.

  Before dispatching the draft treaty, the chiefs had shown it to some of the British officers they were holding. Disguised in Afghan robes for their safety—a device that fooled no one so that their escort had to beat off a “savage mob who yelled and screamed on all sides” demanding their blood—Mackenzie and Lawrence had been smuggled from Akbar Khan’s house to that of Nawab Zaman Khan, where they had found not only a gathering of the chiefs but also Captains Conolly and Airey, given up as hostages a few days earlier. Conolly confirmed Skinner’s report that Macnaghten’s body was dangling for all to see in the Grand Bazaar, adding that Trevor’s corpse was also on display.

  Led by Akbar Khan, the chiefs vehemently accused the captives “of treachery and everything that was bad,” insisting that the overtures they had made to Macnaghten had only been a test of his good faith—a test he had failed. Discussion then moved to the treaty. The chiefs told their captives they “would now grant us no terms save on the surrender of the whole of the married families as hostages, all the guns, ammunition and treasure.” The officers attempted to persuade the chiefs to modify their demands and in particular to convince them that to surrender their women would be “utterly abhorrent to our feelings and at variance with our customs.” They succeeded in the latter, and, for the moment at least, that demand was removed. Lawrence was also allowed to write a short letter to Lady Sale informing her of the deaths of Macnaghten and Trevor and enclosing another from Conolly to Lady Macnaghten. Lawrence and Mackenzie were then taken back to Akbar Khan’s house.

  THE ARRIVAL OF these letters on Christmas Eve—the day that the chiefs sent in the new draft treaty—finally convinced Elphinstone that the envoy was dead. He turned to Eldred Pottinger, still suffering from the wounds he had received during his flight from Charikar. In Pottinger’s own words, “[I was] hauled out of my sick room and obliged to negotiate for the safety of a parcel of fools who were doing all they could to ensure their destruction” and “would not hear my advice.” As he soon discovered, there was little to negotiate. Though Pottinger and others urged an immediate assault on Kabul, Elphinstone and his senior officers, including Brigadiers Shelton and Antequil, were convinced there was no alternative but to accept the humiliating terms set out in the treaty.

  Emboldened by this supine acquiescence, the chiefs at once increased their demands, this time going well beyond the terms agreed previously with Macnaghten. All the money in the British treasury was to be turned over to them. The British were to surrender most of their artillery and all their spare muskets. In addition, the chiefs returned to their demand that all the senior married men with their women and children should remain as hostages until Dost Mohammed and the other Afghan prisoners held by the British arrived safely in Kabul. Once again, Elphinstone’s inclination was to agree to everything that was asked. He even contemplated handing over female hostages, offering two thousand rupees a month to any man who would surrender his wife. According to Lady Sale, Captain Anderson’s response was that “he would rather put a pistol to his wife’s head and shoot her,” while her own son-in-law, Lieutenant Sturt, declared that she and his wife would “only be taken at the point of the bayonet.” Only Lieutenant Eyre offered himself, his wife and child as hostages “if it was to be productive of great good.” Faced by such resistance, Elphinstone told the chiefs he could never consent to such a measure.

  On 26 December messengers working for the British brought letters into the cantonments addressed to Macnaghten from political officers at Jalalabad and Peshawar. They reported that reinforcements were on their way from India. Pottinger seized on this news to try once more to convince Elphinstone to resist the Afghan demands. He also argued that the Afghan chiefs were disunited and that Shah Shuja’s position was strengthening. Elphinstone was sufficiently swayed to summon a council of war, at which Pottinger pleaded with the military command not to negotiate with the enemy. They had no right, he said, to bind the hands of the British government by committing it to withdrawing from Afghanistan or to order Sale in Jalalabad and Nott in Kandahar to abandon their posts. He pointed out that Nott had been designated commander in chief—a fact that his inability to get to Kabul did not alter—so that Elphinstone had no authority over him anyway. Neither, Pottinger insisted, did they have any right to expend huge sums of public money to buy their own safety. Furthermore, the enemy was clearly not to be trusted and would probably betray them. The only sensible—and honorable—courses were either to occupy the Balla Hissar and attempt to hold out there or to abandon their baggage, fight their way over ninety miles to Jalalabad and there await the promised reinforcements from India.

  Elphinstone was almost convinced by Pottinger’s arguments, but Shelton was not. He insisted that neither of Pottinger’s plans was practical and that the safety of the British force was worth paying any sum of money for. The other senior officers agreed, and Elphinstone ordered Pottinger to resume negotiations with the chiefs to conclude the treaty, despite his view that they would thereby “be dishonoured and disgraced and the stigma of cowardice fixed on us ever.” Lady Sale was similarly depressed that the only options the military leaders would contemplate were “a disgraceful treaty or a disastrous retreat.”

  On 29 December a haggard Captain Lawrence arrived in the cantonments, disguised as an Afghan with a
floppy turban “leaving only an eye exposed” and in Lady Sale’s view looking “ten years older from anxiety.” Pottinger had secured his release by insisting that the bills to be drawn on the government of India to enable the payment of the huge sums demanded by the chiefs must be signed by Lawrence as Macnaghten’s secretary. Lawrence got down to work but took care to stipulate that the bills could be cashed “only on the presentation of certificates from our political agent at Peshawar of the safe arrival there of our troops.”

  The Afghans continued to pressure the British, demanding the immediate surrender of their artillery with the exception of the few pieces they were to be allowed to keep. Pottinger, still hoping something might occur to avoid capitulation, procrastinated, handing over the guns two by two on successive days. However, there was little he could do. He and other officers and men could only watch as muskets, ammunition and wagons were also surrendered to the Afghans, together with fresh hostages. Captains Walsh, Drummond, Warburton and Webb joined the other British officers in captivity, though on their arrival in Kabul Captains Skinner and Mackenzie were allowed to return to the cantonments. Warburton must have been worrying about his pregnant Afghan wife, a cousin of Akbar Khan, whom he had not seen since Burnes’s murder on 2 November. That day he had been in the cantonments when the mob besieged his house, where his wife was, and set it alight, and he had little way of knowing where she was or even whether she was still alive.

  The wounded and the sick—many of the latter had frostbitten toes, fingers, noses and cheeks, for which, according to Colin Mackenzie, the harassed army doctors found the traditional Afghan remedy of a cold poultice of cow dung “most efficacious”—and two doctors to care for them were sent into captivity in the city on 29 and 30 December because there was insufficient transport to take them on the retreat. On New Year’s Day 1842, after Elphinstone had insisted Pottinger write to Sale ordering him to withdraw from Jalalabad, the ratified treaty bearing the seals of eighteen chiefs finally arrived in the cantonments. The text contained everything the Afghans had demanded except the surrender of British families. In return they guaranteed the British forces safe passage out of their country. Mackenzie described how a miserable Pottinger “signed the treaty in soldierly obedience, knowing full well that he would be held responsible for that which was the work of others.”

  The first article of the treaty demanded “that the British troops shall speedily quit the territories of Afghanistan and march to India, and shall not return; and twenty-four hours after receiving the carriage-cattle [camels and ponies] the army shall start.” In fact the British had been making efforts to prepare for what would be a ninety-mile trek in subzero temperatures through snow that already lay at least a foot deep around Kabul and would be far deeper in the passes. Ghazis milled about outside, harassing merchants and sometimes attempting to rush the cantonment gates. Captain Johnson captured the daily indignities and obstacles in his diary: “Very busy, buying camels and yaboos [ponies] … The Ghazis still infest our gates and insult us in every possible way—stop our supplies coming in from the town and abuse and ill-treat those who bring them. No notice taken by our military leader.” He complained that “the chiefs say they cannot control their men, and that if their people misbehave themselves at our gates, or around our walls, we must fire upon them. No orders, however, given by General Elphinstone to punish our insulting foe, who naturally attribute our forbearance to dastardly cowardice.”

  As the British forces struggled to make their preparations while awaiting the provisions promised by the chiefs, warnings flooded in just as they had before the murders of Burnes and Macnaghten. Johnson wrote: “Several of my native friends from the city come daily to see me. And all agree, without one dissenting voice, that we have brought the whole of our misfortunes upon ourselves, through the apathy and imbecility displayed at the commencement of the outbreak. They also tell me that our safety on the retreat depends solely on ourselves—that no dependence is to be placed on the promises of any of the chiefs, and more especially Mohammed Akbar Khan. Every one of them will now … do his utmost to destroy us.” Mohan Lal, from his hiding place in the city, was also warning that the chiefs were not to be trusted and that the British would be attacked as soon as they left the cantonments. Lady Sale noted a report “that the chiefs do not mean to keep faith: and that it is their intention to get all our women into their possession; and to kill every man except one, who is to have his hands and legs cut off, and is to be placed with a letter in terrorem at the entrance of the Khyber passes, to deter all Feringhees from entering the country again.” A further warning stated that Akbar Khan “would annihilate the whole army, except one man, who should reach Jalalabad to tell the tale.”

  As the first days of January passed in a mood of bleak foreboding, conditions in the bitterly cold cantonments were miserable. Every night the soldiers and civilians expected orders to march the next day, but they did not come. Whether for genuine practical reasons or because they saw advantages in further weakening the British by delaying their retreat, the chiefs kept asserting that they had neither completed the arrangements necessary to ensure the safety of the retreating British force nor gathered sufficient provisions. Shah Shuja, who had already warned Lawrence that the chiefs were not to be trusted, sent a messenger to the cantonments, to try to persuade Lady Macnaghten on no account to ride on the retreat but to seek sanctuary “with as many ladies as would accompany her” in the Balla Hissar. When Pottinger learned of this, he persuaded Lawrence to join him in making one final attempt to convince Elphinstone that, on moving out of the cantonments, the entire force should march at once for the protection of the Balla Hissar, where the king would be bound to admit them. Elphinstone’s response was “Can you guarantee us supplies?” When the officers said they could not although they were “pretty sure of sufficient supplies,” Elphinstone replied, “No, we retreat!”

  On the evening of 5 January, although the chiefs had still not sent either the promised supplies or strong escort to protect the retreating column from the ghazis, Elphinstone decided, against the advice of Pottinger and others, to wait no longer. He ordered every fighting man to carry three days’ provisions in his rucksack and for the entire force to be ready to march at daybreak. He also ordered Sturt to cut an opening through the eastern ramparts of the cantonments to provide an additional exit point for the troops and camp followers. That night, Sturt wrote a letter to his father-in-law, Brigadier Sale, in which he revealed his apprehension about the coming retreat: “We shall have a fight—but courage! Man will not help us—God only can.”

  With his mind set firmly on departure, Elphinstone seems to have had little regard for the fate of Shah Shuja, who, realizing that the British were about to abandon him, wrote plaintively to Brigadier Antequil, the commander of his forces, asking “if it were well to forsake him in the hour of need.” The British could salve their consciences by arguing that the treaty provided for Shah Shuja to depart with them if he wished, but sensibly enough the king had no intention of leaving the relative safety of the Balla Hissar to risk himself in the passes. With his protectors deaf to his appeals and on the point of marching, his best, indeed only, hope for the moment was to seek an accommodation with the chiefs and hope they would observe it. Lady Sale had no sympathy for him, writing coldly of what she suspected would be his fate if he stayed: “The Afghans do not wish to put him to death, but only to deprive him of sight.”

  On that final night in Kabul, Lady Sale, whose last few meals had been cooked “with the wood of a mahogany dining-table” as furniture was broken up for firewood, was inspecting a selection of books her son-in-law hoped to save by sending them to a friend in the city. She picked up a volume by the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell, by chance opening it at a poem whose words were to haunt her “day and night.” It was Campbell’s “Hohenlinden,” of which the final verse read:

  Few, few shall part where many meet.

  The snow shall be their winding sheet;

&n
bsp; And every turf beneath their feet

  Shall be a soldier’s sepulchre.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The spectacle then presented by that waving sea of animated beings, the majority of whom a few fleeting hours would transform into a line of lifeless carcasses to guide the future traveller on his way, can never be forgotten.

  —LIEUTENANT VINCENT EYRE, 8 JANUARY 1842

  Though the first bugle sounded at five A.M., not until around nine A.M. on the bright, frosty morning of Thursday, 6 January did the first British troops leave the cantonments to begin their long-anticipated retreat. Though Shelton had wanted all the baggage loaded and prepared by moonrise, it was not ready until eight A.M., while Elphinstone—still vainly hoping for the promised Afghan escort—declined to order the retreat to begin until pressed by Captain Mackenzie.

  Brigadier Antequil commanded the vanguard, which was followed by the main column including the baggage train under Brigadier Shelton, and then the rear guard. The only artillery the Afghans had agreed to allow the British to take—six horse artillery guns and three mule-borne mountain guns—were divided between the three groups. The retreating force comprised 4,500 fighting men, of whom 690 were European, 2,840 sepoy infantry and 970 sepoy cavalry. They were accompanied by 12,000 camp followers, who, Lieutenant Eyre wrote, “proved from the very first mile a serious clog upon our movements, and … the main cause of our subsequent misfortunes.”