The Dark Defile
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222 “vile … astonishing … government”: Quoted in D. Crane, Men of War, p. 179.
222 “a faithless … assassination”: Proclamation of 31 January 1842, Norris, The First Afghan War, pp. 387–88.
222 “to re-enter … described”: Colvin to Clerk, 31 January 1842, AUCK 37707, folio 134.
223 “horror … happened … irretrievable … the tone … Kabul”: 18 February 1842, AUCK 37707, folios 187–88.
223 “the disastrous … troops”: Ellenborough to Peel, 21 February 1842, ELLEN PRO 30.12.89.
223 “greatly depressed”: Auckland to Hobhouse, 1 February 1842, AUCK 37707, folio 188.
223 “rested … placed”: Quoted in Kaye, History, vol. 3, p. 192.
224 “there must … both”: Quoted in Norris, The First Afghan War, p. 395.
224 “a tissue … Britain”: Captain H. Tuckett, quoted in J. Cunningham, The Last Man, p. 125.
224 “Our enemies … degradation”: Wellington to Ellenborough, 31 March 1842, Norris, The First Afghan War, pp. 397–98.
224 “We shall … retribution”: Peel to Ellenborough, 6 April 1842, ELLEN PRO 30.12.37.
225 “this is … infidels”: Quoted in M. E. Yapp, “Revolutions of 1841–2 in Afghanistan,” Bulletin of the London School of Oriental Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, 1964, p. 356.
226 “Fancy … do it”: Quoted in Cumming, A Six Years’ Diary, p. 185.
226 “sinking Islam”: Quoted in Yapp, “Revolutions of 1841–2 in Afghanistan,” p. 353.
226 “to be … midnight”: E. Teer, The Siege of Jellalabad, p. 30.
227 “at last … re-established”: 21 April 1842, ELLEN PRO 30.12.89.
227 “They had not … o’comin’ ”: Major General Sir T. Seaton, From Cadet to Colonel, pp. 213–14.
227 “useless … controversy … He had … certificate”: Cunningham, The Last Man, p. 127.
228 “intended … surrender … I … surrender”: Quoted in Seaton, From Cadet to Colonel, pp. 214–15.
230 “in a solemn … earthquakes, Brigadier”: P. Macrory, Kabul Catastrophe, p. 248.
230 “to hold … falling”: J. Brasyer, Memoirs, p. 11.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
232 “The object … Afghans”: ELLEN PRO 30.12.98.
232 “peremptory order … like … thunderclap”: Quoted in Sir J. W. Kaye, History of the War in Afghanistan, vol. 3, p. 203.
232 “I felt … ours”: Quoted in P. Macrory and G. Pottinger, The Ten-Rupee Jezail, p. 174.
233 “signal … Afghans”: Quoted in ibid., p. 192.
233 The much amended drafts of Ellenborough’s letter to Pollock are in ELLEN PRO 30.12.89.
233 “I trust … powers … would be … world”: 13 May 1842, quoted in Kaye, History, vol. 3, p. 199.
235 “My father … Mussalman”: Quoted in H. Mackenzie, Storms and Sunshine of a Soldier’s Life, p. 347.
235 “acknowledged murderer … deceived … destroyed … so great a criminal”: 15 May 1842, ELLEN PRO 30.12.98.
236 “miserably … weak”: V. Eyre, The Military Operations of Kabul, p. 318.
236 “we shall … safe”: All quotations in this paragraphs are from Ellenborough’s letter of 7 June 1842, ELLEN PRO 30.12.89.
236 “stand alone”: Quoted in Macrory and Pottinger, The Ten Rupee Jezail, p. 173.
237 “[Ellenborough’s] want … inexcusable”: Quoted in P. Macrory, Kabul Catastrophe, p. 254.
237 “the case … prohibit it”: 6 July 1842, ELLEN PRO 30.12.89.
237 “in triumph … disaster”: Ibid.
237 “The governor-general … prefer”: All quotes in this paragraph are from Ellenborough’s letters of 23 and 29 July 1842, ELLEN PRO 30.12.98.
238 “eager … anywhere”: E. Teer, The Siege of Jellalabad, p. 36.
239 “an endless … along”: Quoted in Journal of the Society for Historical Research, vol. 55, 1977, p. 83.
239 “literally … countrymen”: Augustus Abbott, quoted in Macrory and Pottinger, The Ten-Rupee Jezail, p. 179.
240 By 12 September … before them”: All quotes in these two paragraphs are from F. G. Greenwood, Narrative of the Late Victorious Campaigns in Afghanistan, pp. 212–13, 217–19.
241 “awful … recognisable”: Major General Sir T. Seaton, From Cadet to Colonel, pp. 222–23.
243 “had thrown … rescue them?”: Quoted in Kaye, History, vol. 3, p. 349.
243 “thrusting … place … she … another”: Colonel Sir R. Warburton [Mrs. Warburton’s son] Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879–1898, p. 5.
244 “a splendid … glass”: J. Brasyer, Memoirs, p. 12.
244 “the cry … town”: Major Rawlinson, quoted in Kaye, History, vol. 3, p. 369.
244 “I have … country”: Quoted in P. G. Fredericks, The Sepoy and the Cossack, p. 118.
244 “strewn … conversation!”: Diary of N. Chamberlain, 15 October 1842, quoted in G. W. Forrest, Life of Field-Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain, p. 153.
245 “so … humiliation”: Kaye, History, vol. 3, p. 350.
EPILOGUE
246 “1st … outbreak”: P. Macrory, Kabul Catastrophe, p. 267.
247 “The calamity … requite’ ”: Sir J. W. Kaye, History of the War in Afghanistan, vol. 3, p. 402.
247 Henry Lushington … again and again”: Quotes in these two paragraphs are from H. Lushington, A Great Country’s Little Wars in England, Afghanistan and Scinde, pp. 24, 27, 75, 124 and 168.
248 “This … hostile”: H. B. Hanna, The Second Afghan War, vol. 1, p. 1.
248 Outside Britain … Hong Kong: Further details of the United States’ reaction are contained in Dr. L. Marshall’s article “American Public Opinion and the First Afghan War,” Pakistan Journal of American Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, March 1984, pp. 1–11.
250 “They would … anything”: Burnes, quoted in Sir J. W. Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers, vol. 2, p. 65.
253 “introducing … Company … We … be”: Quoted in D. S. Richards, The Savage Frontier, pp. 58–59.
256 “I … country”: Quoted in J. Stewart, Crimson Snow, p. 216.
257 In the summer … EMBASSY: All quotes in this paragraph are from Richards, The Savage Frontier, p. 84.
258 “Remember … own”: Quoted in F. Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. 3, p. 595.
258 “[I] … India”: Quoted in Richards, The Savage Frontier, p. 101.
259 “Young … shame”: There are several different versions of these verses. See L. Dupree, Afghanistan, p. 411 and D. Loyn, Butcher and Bolt, p. 120.
260 Winston Churchill … sight”: All quotes in this paragraph are from W. S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, pp. 126–27.
260 “September … revives”: Ibid., pp. 114–15.
262 Part … hand”: All quotes in this paragraph are from ibid., pp. 165 and 188.
262 “There is … people”: Quoted in J. Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 418.
262 “Burning … revenge”: Quoted in D. Loyn, Butcher and Bolt, p. 160.
262 “placed … Paradise”: Quoted in ibid., p. 147.
262 “As … thawed”: Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, p. 192.
264 “One … west”: Quoted in Richards, The Savage Frontier, p. 163.
268 “Do you … Shah Shuja?”: Quoted in Loyn, Butcher and Bolt, p. 272.
Footnotes
1 One of the earliest governors of Madras was Elihu Yale, who acquired in India the fortune out of which he founded the university that bears his name.
2 By the start of the First Afghan War improvements to communications were close but not yet in place. In 1837 Samuel Morse exhibited his first electric telegraph in New York, and in 1838 the British ship Sirius was the first to steam continuously across the Atlantic.
3 Among Tipu’s prized possessions, seized by the British, was a near life-size mechanical model of a tiger consuming an English soldier. It is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
4 A young British officer, Captain Arthur
Conolly, probably coined the term the Great Game in the 1830s before losing his life playing it, but Rudyard Kipling popularized it. His world of secret agents and assassins, disguises and subterfuge, concealed messages and forged letters evoked in novels such as Kim was reasonably accurate, if pervaded with some of the romanticism that often clouded British perceptions of the region and its people.
5 Colin Mackenzie, a British officer who later met Zaman Shah, reported, “He still goes through the ceremony of having a glass held up before him during his toilette,” even though he had been blind for many years. “So great a man cannot be vulgarly blind! This trifling trait shows the animus of his race, which is that of insane pride.”
6 Punjab means “Land of the Five Rivers” and comes from the Persian panj, meaning “five,” and ab, meaning “waters,” because five tributaries of the Indus flow through it. The drink punch also derives from the word panj because it has five ingredients: rum, sugar, lemon, water and spice.
7 Scots made a disproportionately large contribution to the making and the running of the British Empire at all levels.
8 The horses are said to have soon died from a mixture of overfeeding and inactivity.
9 These are the statues recently destroyed by the Taliban, though Burnes noted that they had already suffered damage.
10 The name Zerafshan means “gold-bearing.” The river also flows past Samarkand.
11 The next person to display it and to call himself Amir-al-Mominin would be Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, in 1996.
12 The British Museum in London has many specimens collected by Masson, including 6,200 coins.
13 In a similar way, in the twentieth-century the Western powers would be reluctant to name China and Russia as their enemy formally when engaging in proxy wars.
14 The origin of the name Brown Bess isn’t certain, although some claim it derives from an order by the Duke of Wellington to his soldiers at Waterloo to paint their gun barrels brown so the enemy would not be alerted to troop movements by seeing them gleaming in the sun.
15 The majority of British soldiers were illiterate, but for those who were not and were willing to carry the extra weight in their packs, newly available novels included works by Charles Dickens such as The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.
16 Suttee—the rite whereby living wives and concubines joined their dead husbands on their funeral pyres, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not—was practiced by Sikhs and Hindus but had been outlawed in British India.
17 Shrapnel shells—devices which explode in flight, scattering lead shot and other lethal materials—were invented by the British artillery officer Henry Shrapnel in the 1790s.
18 Another young British officer, Captain James Abbot, had earlier tried but failed to secure the release of the Russian slaves at Khiva. Abbot later had a successful military career in British India. Abbottabad, where Osama Bin Laden was killed, was named for him.
19 The Hazaras, who inhabit western Afghanistan, are believed by some to be the descendants of the Mongol cavalry of Genghis Khan. As an ethnic minority and as Shia Muslims in a country where the majority follow Sunni Islam, they were traditionally servants, even slaves, and were and are still looked down on by other tribes.
20 Updating monetary values is notoriously difficult, but if one uses the Bank of England calculator, £1.25 million equates to £108 million in today’s values, or $178 million if converted at current exchange rates.
21 Auckland is often blamed for specifically instructing Macnaghten to take this step but in fact only argued for economy, learning of the particular measure after the event.
22 In early 2009, U.S. vice president Joseph Biden is said to have suggested to President Karzai in a similar vein that he was little more than “mayor of Kabul.”
23 An Irish private would later claim to have spotted one of the men in Jalalabad. Perhaps more confident in his powers of identification than he should have been, he would administer his own justice by holding him facedown in a deep pool until he drowned.
24 Pottinger told Mackenzie that he had earlier heard Akbar Khan—unaware that Pottinger understood both languages—shout, “ ‘Slay them’ in Pashtu, though he called to them to stop firing in Persian.”
25 According to Lady Sale, among others, Akbar Khan had predicted that only one survivor would reach Jalalabad. It is possible that he engineered this outcome. He was certainly intelligent enough to appreciate its potential effect on British morale.
26 So convinced had the Afghans become of English duplicity and cunning that Taliban troops in 2005 nicknamed one of their leaders “Mullah Dadullah”—“The Lame Englishman”—on account of his war wound and particular deviousness.
27 The term conspiracy of optimism was used by a recent former British ambassador in Kabul to describe current official perceptions of the present coalition intervention.
28 Auckland was strongly criticized on his return to Britain. However, after a further change of government he again became First Lord of the Admiralty. He died unexpectedly on New Year’s Day, 1849.
29 Napier never sent the punning telegram consisting of the single word PECCAVI, which was an invention of the humorous magazine Punch. Recipients would at once have recognized the word as Latin for “I have sinned” and realized Napier was actually saying, “I have Sind.”
30 Lady Sale died in 1853 in Cape Town.
31 During one of the running engagements, a British officer, General Hugh Gough, was saved from a bullet by a suit of chain mail, probably but not certainly the last British soldier to be saved by personal armor until the advent of Kevlar and similar modern body armor.
32 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes identify Dr. Watson on their first meeting as a veteran of the Second Afghan War, and in the 1960s, much to Afghan surprise, the “Baker Street Irregulars” asked the bemused Afghans to place a monument to the fictional Dr. Watson on the Maiwand battlefield.
33 According to current on-the-spot reporters, some of the frontier villages that suffered most in the fighting with the British at that time are among those that have given the greatest support to Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters.
34 Many of the insurrection’s leaders were mullahs. Some, such as Mullah Sadullah in Swat—nicknamed by the British “the Mad Fakir”—were Muslims of the Wahhabi sect.
35 The long history of British meddling in Persia goes some way toward explaining why, instead of, as many others have done, seeing Britain as a kind of secondary force in the Middle East and Afghanistan, Iran’s propaganda quite often portrays Britain as a cunning and malevolent old lion manipulating a stronger but less sophisticated United States.
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