Swift action followed. The Chief Minister, the Finance Minister, the Police Chief, the Governor of Kabul and his brother, all suspected, were arrested. Nominal rolls of some Afghan regiments were found, the surrounding villages were cordoned off by troops and every man whose name appeared on the rolls was detained for trial. To overcome the reluctance of witnesses to testify, Mohammed Hayat Khan was deputed to examine them in secret and produce at the subsequent trials their depositions rather than the witnesses themselves. Thus, contrary to the principles of British justice, the accused had no way of knowing how the evidence had been extracted, or of cross-examining witnesses. Those who denied their guilt could neither bring forward evidence for their innocence nor examine witnesses. MacGregor changed his tune once he was directly involved, and his diary is a litany of criticisms of Roberts’s brutality and his own desire for justice. On 19 October, he wrote: ‘I think Bobs is the most blood thirsty little beast I know.’ On the 21st, he confided to his diary: ‘that men were being simply murdered under name of justice and only on the word of H[a]yat [Mohammed Khan], who is himself as big a scoundrel as exists’. Durand agreed with MacGregor, writing: ‘[Roberts] is a most bloodthirsty little devil too – thinks no more of hanging an Afghan than of smashing a fish insect’. The Police Chief had ordered the throwing of Guides’ bodies into the city ditch, was assumed to be involved in the massacre and despite the absence of direct evidence was duly hanged on 20 October. On that day five were executed, including a watchman (chowkidar) who had, according to witnesses, carried Cavagnari’s head from the Embassy and thrown it into the market place, and the chief Mullah who had preached holy war and also ordered bodies of the slain thrown into the ditch. Executions went on apace. Two gallows were raised, one outside the door which the Guides had defended, one in the courtyard where they had been quartered. Those found guilty were hanged in batches of ten, while the soldiers in short sleeves and smoking their favourite short pipes looked on. The prisoners met their end impassively.13
Lytton’s angry instructions echoed British feeling towards the Afghans. Howard Hensman, correspondent of the Pioneer, thought them a byword for treachery, deserving of their fate. The young Lord Melgund wrote to his mother in March 1879 that the Afghans were a terrible lot. ‘Hanging is too good for them. Their game seems to be to fall on unarmed camp followers and cut them up for the fun of the thing.’ Luther Vaughan of The Times wrote of ‘the dreadful death that had befallen one of the privates of the 92nd Highlanders’, who was sick, fell out and was probably enticed toward the gate of the village by the offer of milk or water. His body was afterwards found inside the gate, stripped and mutilated, his face and head being shattered and burnt by an explosion of powder forced into his mouth, recognizable as belonging to the 92nd by his only remaining item of clothing, regimental check socks. ‘The sight of a cold-blooded murder like this,’ wrote Joshua Duke, ‘was calculated to excite feelings of horror and revenge against the perpetrators of such an outrage [and] the mild punishment of hanging was what the headman of the village richly deserved.’14 Nonetheless, Roberts’s vindictive cruelty contrasts starkly with the later image of the kindly ‘Bobs, the soldier’s friend’, and appears to have stirred up the Afghans rather than cowing them.
The commissions officially finished on 18 November. The report sent to Simla stated that eighty-nine had been tried and forty-nine executed, although the Official History gave 163 and eighty-seven respectively. Others were executed apart from those condemned by the commission; for example, five men found by the 12th Bengal Lancers to have weapons were put to death summarily, and another five at Kabul, without trial for inciting attacks on the Shutagarden garrison. The executions fuelled Afghan hostility. ‘We are thoroughly hated and not enough feared,’ wrote MacGregor.’ George White told his brother:
My information leads me to think that the Cabulese hate us more than ever now. We have hanged a lot, 50 within the last four or five days. Nearly all on their own showing. It was thus done. Genl. Baker surrounds a village, gets hold of the head man, asks if there are any sepoys. The Mallick replies with pride, “Yes, my son is a sepoy of the first Herati regiment.” The Herati regiments were forward in attack on residency. Said son & sepoy was hanged next day with 26 others.15
As word reached India, questions were raised in the newspapers. In mid-November The Times of India reported, ‘The work of vengeance was so complete as to have become somewhat indiscriminate ... a good many innocent persons should have been hanged while [Roberts] was making up his mind as to their degree of guilt.’ The Friend of India, a Calcutta newspaper, said: ‘We fear that General Roberts has done us a serious national injury, by lowering our reputation for justice in the eyes of Europe.’ Lytton himself wrote on 5 December to Cranbrook, Secretary of State for India, that he was uneasy about what was going on, although his instructions were partly to blame. Again Roberts found himself the object of press criticism. Detailed reports of what had happened reached England. The radical Frederic Harrison wrote a damning account of ‘Martial Law in Kabul’ in the Fortnightly Review of December 1879, including a detailed account of Baker’s brigade forming a cordon round a village and demanding grain as well as guilty men. The best that Harrison could say for Roberts was that he had not behaved as badly as Russian or Turkish generals. In both Houses of Parliament there were questions and angry words. The Afghan War had brought the Liberal Peer Lord Ripon out of political retirement; he thought it was a classic example of Disraeli’s immoral statecraft. On the news of Cavagnari’s death, Ripon wrote angrily in his diary: ‘How swift the retribution has been – truly the Lord God omnipotent reigneth ... I fear the consequences may be very serious ... It is one of the few cases in which impeachment would be justified, because the Govt have sinned against right & the clearest warnings.’ He was extremely critical of Roberts’s village burning, and unimpressed by Roberts’s claims, based on correspondence found between the Amir and Kaufmann, that Yakub was plotting with the Russians. Gladstone added his voice to the critics. While Roberts was hanging Afghans, Gladstone was in Edinburgh on 25 November delivering to a packed audience a sweeping condemnation of the Afghan War among other things: ‘Remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eyes of Almighty God as can be your own.’ Disraeli’s government was to feel the consequences of Gladstone, Zulu and Afghan the next year, 1880. Meanwhile, both Roberts and the government were in a tight spot, and with Lytton’s advice he penned a brilliant reply in January 1880, which was read by Cranbrook in the Lords on 13 February. Roberts defended his force, saying martial law was necessary as the whole male population of Kabul and the surrounding area was armed and his men would have been liable to sudden attacks; he denied that prisoners taken in a fight were shot, except when they mutilated British and Indian dead; he contradicted Harrison of the Fortnightly Review who claimed no civilian correspondents were allowed to go with them. ‘Our movements were very rapid after the order for an advance on Kabul was received. This may have prevented other correspondents joining me at the time. Had any come, they would have received every assistance. Some correspondents have arrived since we reached this. No restrictions are placed upon them.’ With a straight face he went on to say the strictest discipline was maintained and there was not a single complaint against a European soldier, only a few of a trivial nature against those in Indian regiments. This was brazen indeed, but served the government well. In April 1880, George White told his brother, ‘Sir F[red].R[obert]’s part in the atrocities here deserves to be forgotten from the bravery with which he has lied about them.’ Roberts might not have been a politician, but he was a Napoleonic writer of dispatches.16
Meanwhile, he was to be faced with a military crisis. His swift arrival in Kabul gave him a month of peace, but this was the lull before the storm raised by the executions, the burning of villages and the presence of a foreign army of unbelievers. Welcome reinforcements arrived in early November, the headquarters
and two squadrons of the 9th Lancers. Hugh Gough was staggered at the amount of baggage they brought, including full-dress uniform; he was even more nonplussed when he saw camels in the rear of the column toiling along with machinery which turned out to be the regimental soda-water pistol. The regiment had no carbines. These had to be issued in a rush and the men underwent a hurried course in musketry.17 They soon put their new firearms to use.
Chapter 7
Backs to the Wall
The invader of Afghanistan may count as inevitable a national rising against him ... tribesmen and disbanded soldiers sprang to arms, the banner of the Prophet was unfurled, and the nation heaved with the impulse of fanaticism.
Archibald Forbes, Afghan Wars
We have entered into conflict with a race of tigers.
Colonel Charles Metcalfe MacGregor
As winter approached, the British and Indian soldiers at Kabul prepared for a severe drop in temperature. Mortimer Durand had his hair cropped too short to part, grew a six weeks’ beard, and wore ‘a button up shikar’ and over it at night a huge and very dirty poshteen (sheepskin). His riding breaches were inserted, not into respectable boots, but into ‘puttees’, i.e. strips of cloth rolled round the leg down to the ankle, and finally a pair of thick ammunition boots which had not seen polish since he left Simla. He managed to keep clean with ‘real English soap’ and a hole in the ground with a waterproof sheet spread over it making ‘a capital bath’.1 George White told his wife he could not understand where the intense, cold wind which blew through the tents came from, for the sky was as blue as their daughter Rosey’s eyes. White missed the girl and her mother, and was pleased to hear that Rosey had enjoyed seeing father’s dispatches in The Times and sketches of him leading his men in tartan trews in the Pictorial News. He found writing as a war correspondent for The Times a burden, but was angrier still that a Captain Norman, a young man cashiered from the Frontier Force for forgery, was writing articles headed ‘Afghanistan’. Using MacGregor’s detailed gazetteer and White’s letters, Norman could dishonestly give the impression of first-hand knowledge. White was furious with such armchair generals. ‘Roberts could sail round the lot of them. Our first object in the advance on Kabul was to get there as soon as possible and strike before the people and the soldiery ... unite[d] to oppose us.’2
Events however were soon to test White’s confidence in Roberts. As ice formed on water jugs at Kabul, Afghan temperatures were rising. The executions and the Amir’s deposition added fire to resentment. The necessity of laying in food, forage and fuel for the winter precipitated events, for Roberts had appropriated the government share of the crop to feed his troops. As in 1841, when the previous invasion of Afghanistan by the Indian Army took place, high prices paid by British commissaries on the open market caused inflation and shortages. An isolated fall of snow on 11 November warned Roberts that the collection of five months’ supplies, the amount he calculated necessary, had to be speeded up. But the local collection met increased reluctance from villagers, and there were rumours of the assembling of large bands of armed men, inspired by the cry of Jehad or holy war raised foremost by the Mullah Mir din Mummad of Ghazni, known as Mushk-i-Alam (‘Fragrance of the Universe’). He was aged about ninety, a man held in great reverence and esteem, and noted for his piety and learning. Many of the religious and legal officials in the country had been educated at his feet, and readily responded to their old teacher’s call to encourage the people to take up arms. A growing combination of national and religious feeling threatened the British position. Mushk-i-Alam was so infirm he had to be carried about on a bed, and from it distributed blessings, charms and exhortations, calling on followers of the Prophet to gird on their arms against the infidel. His chief organizer was a sirdar and popular artillery officer, Mahomed Jan, who had commanded artillery against the British at Ali Masjid in 1878 and was active at Charasia. The women of the court, including the Amir Yakub’s wife and mother, did all in their power to foment rebellion.3
Plan of Action in the Charden Valley and the Siege of Sherpur
The Ghilzais launched a series of attacks on the garrison left on the Shutagardan, Roberts sent out troops in relief and the Kabul to Khyber route having been opened, the pass was abandoned and its garrison moved to Ali Khel and Kabul. On 23 November, two squadrons of cavalry sent to bring in a prominent Ghilzai chief, Bahadur Khan, who had refused to sell forage or grain, were fired on and compelled to retire. In retaliation, Roberts led out a force that smashed corn bins, seized livestock, set alight houses and stores of corn. Three days later Baker visited the village of Beni-Badam – ‘Benny be-damned’ to the Gordon Highlanders -with cavalry, was received with friendliness, and offered food for men and forage for horses. Suddenly two large bodies of armed men were seen hurrying to cut off his retreat, and only by hard fighting did Baker and his men escape. As November drew to a close, reports grew of opposition and insurrection, and friendly Afghans warned British officers of impending attack. The bankers and merchants of Kabul confidently asserted that a night assault upon the cantonment was imminent. Roberts was sanguine and keen to maintain the confidence and morale of his officers, giving a large picnic in early December in the Deh Mazung gorge, to which all officers were invited. After the picnic there was a paper chase which finished up near the ground over which the British and Indian cavalry were to charge so desperately a few days afterwards. General Daud Shah, former Afghan Commander-in-Chief, followed the chase and appeared thoroughly to enjoy it.4
Despite warnings, Roberts found great difficulty gathering intelligence, and little knew the extent of the uprising. Patrols went out, but the conditions were bitter. Bivouacking near a village where Baker and his men were almost caught, George White found his beard, ‘now a long one with streaks of silver in it’, covered with icicles. Roberts sent reassuring telegrams back to India, ordered the Corps of Guides from the Khyber to reinforce his men and improved the defences at Sherpur. On 7 December, he held a council of war, and set out his intelligence that there were three Afghan armies in the field, approaching from the north, west and south. He resolved on a pincer movement, MacPherson marching due west from Sherpur, Baker south from Kabul, turning through the Wardak Valley and sweeping northwards to meet MacPherson coming south-westwards; Roberts himself would remain with the rest atbase. To cloak these operations a grand review of the whole garrison was to be held, ostensibly to present medals to four men of the Highlanders for gallantry at Peiwar Kotal. This went well and Roberts’s Chief-of-Staff, MacGregor, thought that the impressive appearance of the force and of its commander on his famous grey, ‘Vonolel’, must give the Afghans pause for thought.5 Nonetheless, dividing the small force was risky. Roberts’s diary of Tuesday, 9 December records: ‘a busy, anxious day, conflicting reports of the enemies movements’. He was to be so busy on the 10th that there was no entry.
MacPherson had barely started to move when he was ordered to halt, and allow insurgent forces to advance deeper into ambush and Baker to close the trap. The delay was fortunate as further intelligence reached MacPherson that there were greater numbers than reported. In fact, Roberts had much underestimated the forces facing MacPherson, not 1,500-2,000, but 10,000. When it was reported that Afghan forces from Ghazni were moving up to join those from Kohistan, north of Kabul, Roberts ordered MacPherson to leave his cavalry and horse artillery under Massy at Kila Ashar and move quickly against the Kohistanis. On the morning of the 10th, MacPherson, following orders, succeeded in breaking up a large concentration of tribesmen with little loss to his troops. Massy failed to intercept the enemy with cavalry from Kila Ashar, and the Afghans escaped into neighbouring hills and villages, or towards their allies in the direction of Arghandah.
Roberts then ordered both MacPherson, now 9 miles northwest of Sherpur, and Baker, 20 miles to the south-west, to march early on the 11th towards Arghandah, where the force from Ghazni under the leadership of Mohammed Jan was thought to be. Thus, if Mohammed Jan resumed his march on Kabul
, he would find Baker in his rear, MacPherson on his left and the balance of Roberts’s force in his front. If he stayed where he was, he would be attacked simultaneously from opposite directions. Massy was ordered to move his cavalry directly along the Kabul-Argandah road, keeping in communication with MacPherson, but not to join battle until MacPherson himself was engaged.
The Chardeh Plain, an amphitheatre surrounded by mountains, densely cultivated with orchards and market gardens, seamed with streams and watercourses fringed with willows and poplars, with scattered villages and hamlets, was bad ground for horse artillery or cavalry. Roberts and his Chief of Staff MacGregor judged Massy to be slothful and incompetent, and the former only agreed to employ him after he begged to take part. On the night of the 10th, Roberts gave him explicit instructions on the map exactly what to do, and particularly in view of the broken countryside, to stick to the road with guns and horse.
Massy instead proved Roberts’s misgivings by deciding to cut several miles off the journey, leaving the road and marching across country, having weakened his small force by sending roughly a quarter of it to find MacPherson. He was 5 miles from MacPherson and closer to Arghandah than the other two columns when his scouts reported large numbers of Afghans. There was the sound of drumming and considerable commotion. Massy topped a small rise and saw, before his astounded eyes, Mohammed Jan’s entire army, some 10,000 tribesmen, spread out in an arc before him, opposed to his own puny force of 300 lancers and four light field guns. The enemy came on in heavy masses covered by a line of skirmishers about 2 miles in length, the red and white standards of the mullahs dotting the line in front, and a few horsemen on rear and flanks. They had no guns, but kept up a ceaseless fire with rifles, the bullets singing over the heads of the British and Indians. Massy’s force returned fire, first with the guns, and then adding the fire of thirty 9th Lancers’ Martini-Henry carbines, but this had no effect on the advancing masses. Nor could he easily retreat over the broken country. Four miles away, at Sherpur, Roberts heard artillery firing and, aware that something had gone amiss with his plans, galloped out with his personal staff as fast as their horses would carry them. When he arrived at approximately 11.00 a.m. the situation was critical. He sent messages back to Sherpur for two companies of Highlanders and for Gough to hold the Nanachi Gorge towards which they were being pressed and told Massy to delay the Afghans as long as possible to give MacPherson time to arrive. Mortimer Durand, who was with Roberts, watched the 9th and the 14th Bengal Lancers wheel into line, break into a trot and disappear in a cloud of dust into the Afghan horde. Scant seconds later the squadrons came back out ‘in a shapeless mass’, utterly broken and galloping for all they were worth. The numerous watercourses in the valley greatly impeded guns and horse. Roberts made a stand with the guns in the small village of Bhagwana, but with ammunition running low, he was obliged to retreat under cover of a cavalry charge. The villagers emerged and joined the fight, their headman attacking Roberts himself, who was only saved by the intervention of an unhorsed trooper of the 1st Bengal Lancers. ‘The 9th [Lancers] were completely out of hand,’ wrote Durand, ‘scattered in twos and threes all over the country. The 14th Bengal Lancers rallied fairly and kept together. But it was a rapid retreat uncommonly like a rout.’ Eventually the guns, which had come into action at first without Massy’s knowledge and moved forward off the road which offered their best escape route, were driven into a deep ditch fringed with poplars, stuck fast and had to be spiked and abandoned. Major Smith-Windham who commanded the battery galloped straight into Sherpur and announced that the cavalry were destroyed, the guns lost and the only chance was an immediate retreat.
The March to Kandahar- Roberts in Afghanistan Page 12