The March to Kandahar- Roberts in Afghanistan

by Rodney Atwood

  The friendship of Roberts and Stewart, and their wives, had begun in August 1852 when the then Lieutenant Frederick Roberts, coming up-country to join his father on the North-West Frontier, was able to help a cavalcade of ladies and children in distress, among them Mrs Donald Stewart, en route to her husband at Lahore after a summer at Simla. Stewart and Roberts served together on the staff at Delhi during the Indian Mutiny. Stewart’s letters record his pleasure at having Roberts with him on the Abyssinian Expedition and at Roberts’s appointment to serve with him on the Lushai expedition in Assam. Their wives shared hospitality and on the death of relations gave one another emotional comfort. The friendship was strengthened when the couples stayed together in the Commander-in-Chief’s quarters at Fort William in Calcutta, as the Abyssinia expedition loaded and prepared to sail. On the evening of 1 November, as a fierce wind rose, they abandoned plans to go to the opera. The wind reached cyclone force, the opera house was unroofed and Calcutta half flooded. The Stewarts and Robertses were woken by the terrific storm, the windows burst open and rain poured in. As the two officers struggled in vain to shut the windows, they were driven with their wives by wind and rain out of each room in turn, ending up in a little box room about 10 feet wide in the middle of the house. On land, there was great destruction, but less so in the harbour. As morning came, the storm subsided and loading continued; Roberts’s suggestion of using a novel system of stowage was effected, whereby every unit embarking had its own equipment and transport complete.12

  In Abyssinia Napier had to organize supplies and transport for an immensely difficult march of 420 miles rising to an altitude of 9,000 feet in a harsh tropical climate. Two piers 900 feet long were constructed and a railway laid to the camp 12 miles inland. Reservoirs were constructed for water supplies and stores, and transport animals assembled. Roberts’s system of loading up of transports for the Division of which he was Staff Officer enabled the units to disembark complete with ammunition, equipment, rations, stores and transport, ready to march straight away from the beach., and as the troops set forth he remained as beach-master, ensuring smooth movement of stores to construct a road and keep the force supplied with necessities. Napier reached Magdala well before the rainy season, the King committed suicide and the prisoners were freed. The expedition re-embarked with the loss of only thirty-four men out of 12,000. Napier was sufficiently impressed with Roberts’s services to choose him to take home the dispatches, a mark of particular distinction.

  Napier, raised to the peerage as Baron Napier of Magdala and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army in succession to Mansfield in 1870, was the first of Roberts’s important patrons and henceforth followed his career with interest. Roberts’s next service was in late 1871, organizing a punitive expedition against the Lushai people of Assam. He had his first experience of command in action, leading his troops by a turning movement against an enemy stockade and then using his guns to drop a couple of shells into their village. The hostage was recovered and the troops returned before the onset of the rains. Recognized as the most promising officer in his department, in 1873 and 1874 he was acting Quartermaster General. On 1 January 1875, aged forty-two, he was promoted substantive colonel and became Quartermaster General, India, with the temporary rank of major general. To Napier, he wrote appreciatively: T have always hoped to be at the head of the Quartermaster General’s Department, but I never anticipated getting the appointment so soon, and I feel that my advancement is entirely owing to your Excellency’s great indulgence and kind assistance.’ Napier had written to the Duke of Cambridge that the post ‘could not be better filled’, and remained a lasting influence on Roberts. It was Napier’s tireless efforts on behalf of the ordinary soldier, both Indian and British, which Roberts wished to emulate. He noted that no commander-in-chief carried out inspections with more thoroughness, that on the hottest day he would toil through barrack after barrack and satisfy himself that soldiers were properly cared for. Napier pioneered temperance against alcohol to improve soldiers’ behaviour. After Roberts’s success in the opening stages of the 2nd Afghan War, Napier sent congratulations from Gibraltar where he was military governor: T always tell everyone that you are not a bit lucky but that your success is the natural result of good ability, good courage and an unfailing determination to see everything that was possible and to study everything that could fit you for your present position.’13

  In the year of the Lushai Expedition the Roberts-Stewart connection was strengthened when the latter fell ill and was nursed back to health at Simla by the Robertses. He told his wife that he had recovered to enjoy ‘much better health than he had been in for many years’ and bought Nora Roberts a beautiful Trichinopoly bracelet. ‘It is a very small return for all their kindness and attention to me since I came here,’ he wrote to Mrs Stewart. T attribute my recovery almost entirely to their watchfulness and care of me, and I am very sure that no one else except yourself would have taken such trouble with a sick friend.’14 Later Stewart was to repay Roberts with more than a bracelet.

  These were years in which, despite busy military service, Roberts was also a happy family man. He and his wife purchased a new home at Simla, ‘Snowdon’, which was to be theirs until 1892, when it was bought by the British government as the Commander-in-Chief’s residence, and was later enlarged by Kitchener. Their three surviving children, Aileen, Freddie and Edwina, were born in 1870, 1872 and 1875 respectively. Roberts recorded that his wife had had much trouble in his absence in Assam, having been at death’s door herself, and nearly losing their son at Umballa three weeks after his birth. In early January 1874, he received by telegram the sad news of his father’s death within a few months of his ninetieth birthday.

  Political developments in the 1870s were to bring Roberts and the British Empire into violent contact with the North-West Frontier and Afghanistan. Lord Mayo, a man of great charm and personal qualities, was appointed Viceroy in 1869 and had invited the Afghan Amir Sher Ali to Amballa, treated him well and afterwards assisted him in helping to secure Russian recognition of the Oxus as the northern Afghan frontier. In the 1870s this settlement was threatened by international events and Mayo’s rule was cut short by a seven-inch kitchen knife wielded by a Pathan fanatic on a visit to the Andaman Islands in February 1872. Roberts’s friend Stewart was horrified and mortified, as he was in charge of military arrangements on the island, but no blame attached to him as he had warned Mayo not to visit Mount Harriet amidst the convicts at night.15 Mayo’s successor was Northbrook, an astute businessman, head of the banking family, Baring, who, although less colourful than his predecessor, followed his policies. When there was the threat of famine in Bihar, Northbrook sent Sir Richard Temple who commenced relief works and improvised transport for the distribution of huge quantities of rice, working chiefly by using military and police officers. Many lives were saved, but the cost to the state was enormous: £61/2 million.

  Northbrook was less successful in his handling of Afghan relations. He proposed to the Amir to send a British mission to announce the results of British arbitration between the Afghans and the Shah of Iran over a disputed border. Sher Ali said he did not want British officers to enter his country and sent a trusted and experienced minister, Said Nur Mohammed, to meet Northbrook at Simla in July 1873. There Northbrook suggested that the Anglo-Russian agreement meant Sher Ali could spend less on defence. Nur Mohammed replied that his master had no faith in Russian promises nor in British assurances of support, for if they would not stand up for him in the border dispute against Iran, a country which was weak, how would they stand up for him against the much stronger Russia. Sher Ali’s exasperation at the British increased when Northbrook attempted to intercede on behalf of his difficult eldest son, Sirdar Yakub Khan, whom the Amir had arrested in early 1874. Northbrook’s major failure was not signing an offensive-defensive alliance with Sher Ali, a step which put India on the road to the 2nd Afghan War.

  For advocates of a more active policy, Sir Henry Rawlins
on, a friend of Roberts, Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of Bombay, and Sir Robert Napier advocated a more active approach. Northbrook’s ‘master inactivity’, as they deemed his policy, would in their view lead to disaster. Without diplomatic agents at Kabul and Herat, and a reliable source of intelligence on events in central Asia, British India might be caught by surprise by Russian infiltration. ‘Masterly inactivity’ meant that British officers did not enter Afghanistan, none were stationed there, and ignorance and prejudice prevailed among British policy-makers in India who lacked knowledge of the country and understanding of its people.

  It was another of Roberts’s Indian Army acquaintances, Colonel Charles Metcalfe MacGregor, soldier-explorer and Deputy Quartermaster General, who argued most strongly. MacGregor, who had extensive knowledge of mountain warfare and of the topography of the North-West Frontier and states beyond, saw that Russian military reforms after the Crimean War and taking strategic Khiva in 1873 threatened India. To prevent Russia seizing key strategic points such as Merv and Herat, and stirring up revolt in India – a second Mutiny – should be aims of British policy in India. Roberts joined MacGregor in the mid-1870s in urging upon the Indian government a more forward-looking policy towards Afghanistan. The best defence of India was well forward of her borders.16 This advocacy coincided with the election of a British government sympathetic to these views and the arrival at Bombay of an active new Viceroy, a handsome, flamboyant diplomat and poet who was to be Roberts’s next patron.

  Chapter 3

  War in Afghanistan

  Nearly every invasion of India has come from Kandahar.

  Major Waller Ashe

  The critical state of affairs in Central Asia demands a statesman. I believe, if you will accept this high post, you will have an opportunity not only of serving your country, but of obtaining an enduring fame.

  Disraeli to Lord Lytton

  The ground was laid for the 2nd Afghan War and Roberts’s rise to fame by a change of government in London. In 1874 Disraeli and the Conservatives took office. A brilliant opportunist with little detailed knowledge of foreign or imperial matters, Disraeli sensed that England was ‘really more of an Asiatic Power than a European’, and conferred the title of Empress on Queen Victoria in 1876. When the Khedive of Egypt sold his shares in the Suez Canal Company, Disraeli arranged their purchase against the opposition of cabinet colleagues; the French-built Suez Canal was a life-line of empire, four-fifths of ships passing through it being British. He identified the Conservatives with patriotism and imperialism, feelings which reached a high point in the Eastern Crisis of 1878. His policy reflected a growing English interest in empire and the cultivation of ties with overseas people of British stock. Sir Charles Dilke in his book Greater Britain published in 1868, and the historian J.A. Froude, were early advocates of this ‘new imperialism’. Disraeli wished to assert British interests and the security of British possessions overseas; he did not necessarily want wars. The conflicts with the Zulus in Natal and with the Afghans were brought about by his imperial pro-consuls, undeterred by telegraphic communication with a reluctant cabinet.1

  The Liberal Viceroy Northbrook could not agree with the new Secretary of State for India, Lord Salisbury, over tariff reductions and over Salisbury’s plan to send an envoy to Kabul, and resigned a year early in 1876. His successor, after a number of possible candidates refused, was Lord Lytton, son of the novelist Bulwer Lytton. He had no Indian background, was a diplomat and man of letters, handsome, witty of speech and bohemian in habit, with a talent for flamboyance and powers of expression like Disraeli’s. He was without racial prejudice, a quality bound to appeal to moderns, but his apparent nonchalance, hiding his serious aims, could be mistaken for frivolity. Calcutta society was to be horrified by his endless smoking of cigarettes, his inveterate flirting, his demonstrative affection for Indians. Conversely Lady Lytton with her diplomatic experience supported her husband with style, transforming the ‘dull and coarse’ viceregal court and becoming a benefactress of female education, especially the zenanas of Indian princes. Salisbury approved the choice with reservations, writing to Disraeli: ‘Lytton – with an occasional bilious fit – will be better than any other candidate you have at your disposal.’ Disraeli told Salisbury, ‘We wanted a man of ambition, imagination, some vanity and much will – and we have got him.’ The consequences were to be greater than either Disraeli or Salisbury imagined.2

  Disraeli’s arrival at 10 Downing Street and Lytton’s at Bombay led to Roberts’s meteoric rise in the nine years following 1876. In that year he was a substantive colonel and local or temporary major general, but virtually unknown outside the Bengal Army, and had only commanded troops briefly. By 1885 he was the Indian Army Commander-in-Chief and Sir Garnet Wolseley’s rival as the most famous late Victorian general. When Lytton arrived, Roberts had travelled to Bombay to say goodbye to Napier. Roberts was not the man to let a patron depart without thanks, but the visit to Bombay gave him a chance to meet the new Viceroy, who had arrived on the steamer Orontes, having read on the voyage out a paper on Afghanistan which Roberts had written for Napier.

  His Excellency received me very kindly, telling me he felt that I was not altogether a stranger, as he had been reading during the voyage a paper I had written for Lord Napier, a year or two before, on our military position in India, and the arrangements that would be necessary in the event of Russia attempting to continue her advance south of the Oxus. Lord Napier had sent a copy of this memorandum to Lord Beaconsfield [Disraeli], by whom it had been given to Lord Lytton.

  Thus Roberts caught the eye of the new Viceroy, who may also have heard Napier’s high opinion of him. ‘From that moment,’ wrote Roberts, ‘Lord Lytton was my friend. The “Forward Policy” which I advocated was the policy that appealed to him.’3 Roberts benefited greatly from Lytton’s favourable first impression, was included in his small entourage of favourites and given a series of important tasks. The first of these was as one of the organizers of the Imperial Durbar to proclaim the Queen Empress of India on New Year’s Day, 1877. Sixty-three ruling princes and 100,000 people heard the proclamation. General Sir Bindon Blood in his autobiography recorded the care taken by Roberts as Quartermaster General in preparing for the event. He held a meeting of the Bengal Sappers and Miners in early October beforehand to co-ordinate arrangements. A few days before the Durbar there was an extraordinary storm which lasted twenty-four hours, about 17 inches of rain fell, the roads were badly cut up and in places destroyed, mud walls in houses and elsewhere fell down, and the whole scene of the event looked as if there had been an earthquake. Blood adds: ‘However, needless to say, under Colonel Roberts’ direction everything was spick and span when the date arrived for the commencement of the imperial Assemblage!’ Roberts’s skilful organization further impressed Lytton.

  The key feature of the Durbar was the ceremonial display of loyalty and fealty to the Queen-Empress by India’s princes and maharajahs, who still held a third of the sub-continent and whose loyalty was to be a pillar of the Raj. The series of events went well, except that the firing of the feu de joie stampeded the elephants. Luckily no one was hurt. The march past of the native contingents a day or two after the inspection of Indian Army troops was the most picturesque procession Blood had ever seen: horsemen in chain armour with inordinately long lances, others with cuirasses of leather and long straight swords, uniforms of all sorts and colours, and over 1,000 elephants. Within a few years, recorded Blood wistfully, change replaced these romantic figures by more efficient but far less picturesque arrangements. The celebrations across India for the proclamation were huge, comprising military reviews, medal investitures, a 101-gun salute, fireworks, speeches, a massive state banquet, pension increases, restoration of decommissioned mosques to religious use, amnesties to release thousands of prisoners, and the cancellation of all debts of under 100 rupees. Schools were renamed, statues erected and large sums donated to famine relief. Lytton’s spectacle satisfied Salisbury’s two criteri
a: ‘gaudy enough to impress the orientals, yet not enough to give hold for ridicule here, and furthermore the pageant hid “the nakedness of the sword on which we really rely”‘. It also won over the princes, the Maharaja of Indore praising the Durbar as a symbol of national cohesion: ‘India has been until now a vast heap of stones,’ he told Lytton. ‘Now the house is built and from the roof to the basement each stone of it is in its right place.’4

  Unfortunately the Durbar coincided with the failure of rains over half of the Madras Presidency – 200,000 square miles with a population of thirty-six million – and the beginning of the worst famine in nineteenth-century India. The Durbar’s glitter and lavishness shone in ironic contrast to the suffering of many. Lytton claimed that having imperial governors at hand enabled him to concert measures. He responded with energy, rushing emergency stocks, sending Sir Richard Temple who had experience of famine to deal with the crisis, and touring Madras himself. But the fall of rain in May and June 1877 did not help matters, the railways and irrigation had not extended sufficiently to have an effect, foodstuffs gathered could not be transported quickly, and the prolonged famine took the lives of over five million people. If such a tragedy could be said to have a good side, it was that measures including the implementation of a Famine Insurance Fund, laying aside cash each year for emergency measures, were imposed. Lytton believed that in the long run railways and irrigation schemes would overcome famine, but the event cast a shadow over his Viceroyalty 5