My dearest Amy,
Many happy Christmases to you and the little ones. I hope you are as jolly as I am. I was getting bored with the situation here some time ago but we are having rare times of it now ... On 23rd December half an hour before day break ... the cry of ‘Allah, Allah’ from thousands of throats told that on this, the last day of the Moharram, the full tide of the Jehad was to be hurled against the followers of the Christian God, and with such fury that the 48 hours that had to elapse before their great festival should see not one of them left to hail the Natal Morn of their Prophet.
White was pleased to assure his wife that he and Fred Roberts were enjoying Christmas.21
* Those of Persian descent.
Chapter 8
Kandahar to Kabul
General Stewart has displayed the qualities of a very talented general, and has understood that ultimate military success is not attained by chance military triumphs only, of whatever kind they may be, but chiefly after careful preparation.
Major General L.N. Soboleff
What designs Lytton may have harboured with respect to Kashmir, I cannot tell. It would not surprise me to find that schemes were in preparation by the late Govt, for the annexation of the moon.
Lord Ripon
Roberts and the other commanders were fertile with expedients throughout the cold winter to keep the troops’ morale high: skating and sliding, fresh snowballs for ammunition in mimic warfare attacking and defending forts, minstrel bands giving concerts, and a pantomime for which Roberts’s ADC Neville Chamberlain wrote the topical songs. Things picked up with the arrival of supplies of champagne in early February. When spring brought milder weather, there were steeplechases, polo and cricket, canoeing with home-made craft and fishing, but always with a wary eye and a ready sentry. When Colour Sergeant Hector MacDonald of the Gordons was commissioned for his courageous service, the men of his company carried him shoulder high to the officers’ quarters, their piper at their head. The officers of his Regiment presented him with a sword, the sergeants with a dirk.1
One event was less pleasant: the recall of Brigadier General Massy. Roberts had found him wanting in the advance to Kabul, and the events of 11 December clinched matters. He submitted his account of events and hoped that, although Massy should not be employed in the field, and certainly not again with him, another job might be found for him. Massy’s own rather feeble defence pleaded that the country across which he had passed, ignoring Roberts’s strict orders, was unsuitable to cavalry and guns. Haines, the Commander-in-Chief, found that events of 11 December ‘shew [sic] Brigadier-General Massy to have been as wanting in judgment as in military appreciation of the circumstances in which he was placed’, noting that he ‘dismounted thirty lancers with carbines to stop the advance of ten thousand men’. His conduct led to loss of life and of the four guns, although Haines did not judge that this had led to the failure of Roberts’s plan. He refused to agree to Roberts’s plea for alternative employment, feeling that ‘an officer who has failed so seriously in the field cannot be considered as fit for any responsible command of troops.’2
Massy was relieved and sent back to India, but he had powerful friends who influenced Cambridge, the Commander-in-Chief, he was eventually promoted Major General and given command in Ceylon. Roberts was doubtless keen to deflect blame for the reverse on 11 December 1879, but that Massy was unequal to a tight situation was certain. MacGregor had written to Greaves, the Adjutant General at Whitehall, to say that Massy was quite unfit to command anything in the field. Charles Gough wrote:
It is a bad business altogether, there is no doubt he is incompetent, not a single cavalry man speaks well of him, and he allows the most favourable opportunities to slip without taking advantage of them, still the matter will make so much noise and he has been so outrageously puffed in some of the papers, that these same people will assuredly take up the case and as regards the loss of the ground on the 11th December there will be a good deal to be said on both sides of the question.
Gough had a point: Massy was a bungler whom Roberts was well rid of, but the blame for the defeat on 11 December was not his alone. In showing clemency, Cambridge echoed Roberts’s request. On 26 March, Cambridge wrote to Haines saying he was ‘grieved beyond measure of his [Massy’s] having made such a mess of his duties more than once’, but hoped another post could be found. He did not know Massy personally and said that his views were based on Massy’s ‘good reputation as an officer’. George White would have snorted with contempt. On 30 April, Cambridge, having persuaded Haines to reinstate Massy to a brigade, admitted: ‘I do not say that Brigadier General Massy has proved himself a first rate cavalry general,’ but thought Roberts must share the blame of 11 December. Cambridge appears to have bowed to a storm in the press, raised by Massy’s friends, and the whole episode caused Roberts considerable worry, his continued protestations that he cared not what the press said testifying to the opposite. In his papers is preserved an article from the Civil & Military Gazette of 21 May 1880, proof of the influence of Massy’s supporters, claiming that ‘an officer in high position’ had said that if Cambridge ‘could have his way Roberts would be shelved for good’ and that a War Office official had stated, ‘There was nothing to save Roberts [because the] facts were so strongly against him.’ Added to the storm that had broken over his head following the Kabul executions, this made it an anxious time for a commander who, despite his underestimation of Mohammed Jan and his political mistakes, had won a series of convincing victories and occupied the enemy’s capital. That Massy was ‘wanting in military instinct, prompt decision and quick action’ cannot be gainsaid.3
As important as military conditions were political ones. On 26 December, Roberts issued a proclamation, giving amnesty to all those who submitted quickly except key leaders. The Military Court was re-established. In England public interest in the justice or injustice of the executions was suspended as everyone followed the fighting at Sherpur with bated breath, but a meeting of the Peace Society on 29 December called upon people to repudiate a system of terrorism, and Charles Spurgeon, celebrated Baptist preacher, made a similar attack four days later. A memorial signed by John Morley, Joseph Chamberlain, J.A. Froude, the Bishops of Oxford and Exeter, and the Duke of Westminster, among others, was sent to the Prime Minister calling for an end to the invasion of Afghanistan.
Both Roberts and Lytton were thoroughly disturbed. Durand reported that it was a trying time for the former, with telegrams from Calcutta, one from Colley:
saying the hangings had been causing much excitement at home and that Roberts must be careful – another from Lyall about the deportation of prisoners, which was of a very cutting and disapproving character ... The telegram wound up with a strong warning to avoid undue severity in dealing with insurgents and treat them as belligerents not rebels. The little man was much upset by it all and talked of resigning if no longer supported.
Durand noted how the Liberals were taking up the question and the India Office requested a full explanation for use in Parliament. Roberts followed his earlier letters of defence by a detailed report of 27 January which reached the War Office on 12 March, listing in detail the eighty-seven men formally reported executed up to 26 December 1879. He claimed that the imposition of martial law benefited the Afghans by giving peace and order; it was necessary to control the natural Afghan fanaticism. By banning the carrying of arms on pain of death it protected British troops. His report reflected advice from Lytton, who suggested that he should refer to the necessity of safeguarding his force, and from the political officer Lepel Griffin. Lytton had sent Griffin to Kabul to find a way out of the political impasse.4
The report was received in London less than a fortnight before Parliament was dissolved. The last years of Disraeli’s great ministry had not matched his earlier imperial success. Isandhlwana and the Kabul massacre seemed to prove his forward policy overseas a disaster. Gladstone launched his famous Midlothian attack on the Bulgarian massacres wi
th his equally well-known pamphlet The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East written in three days while he was in bed with lumbago. The atrocity was Gladstone’s opportunity to re-enter politics and launch a moral crusade. The quarrel between ‘Turks’ and ‘Bulgarians’ introduced a venom into English politics and lay in large part behind Queen Victoria’s almost pathological dislike of Gladstone. Afghan events confirmed radical mistrust of Disraeli, and determined the Liberals to make his foreign and imperial policy their main object of attack in the coming election. Supported by the immense wealth of his aristocratic colleague, Rosebery, Gladstone began his famous Midlothian campaign on 24 November 1879 and ended it a fortnight later. He reckoned he had addressed over 85,000 people and The Times printed about as many words of his speeches. His theme was the enunciation of ‘the right principles of foreign policy’, and Roberts’s burning of Afghan villages was one of his targets. The economic slump and the fall in grain prices which hit farmers were also Disraeli’s misfortune. Whether there really was a late nineteenth-century ‘Great Depression’ has been much debated by historians, but contemporaries certainly believed in one. Many characteristics of late Victorian Britain, including the imperialism and jingoism, stemmed from the belief that Britain was falling behind her rivals. The immediate beneficiaries in 1880 were Gladstone and his party – the Liberals won the general election and outnumbered the Conservatives in the new House of Commons by 353 seats to 238. The Liberal government did not act directly against Roberts for the executions, but the Viceroy was a major target of criticism. Lord Hartington, who was to be Secretary of State for India, described Lytton as ‘the incarnation and embodiment of an Indian policy which is everything an Indian policy should not be’. Accordingly, when the result of the polls was known, that incarnation and embodiment resigned. The new government appointed Lord Ripon as Viceroy, a severe critic of Lytton’s policy, drawn out of retirement by events at Kabul.5
Many of the soldiers in the field agreed with Roberts’s measures. Two days after lunching with Roberts at Kabul, Charles Gough wrote to his wife:
There have been no atrocities, the executions that have taken place have been in retribution of the attack on the residency, or of people concerned in cutting up our wounded but I don’t think any ‘executions’ have taken place except for the above. If any prisoners have been shot I can only say it was a mistake making them prisoners, they never spare, and reprisal becomes absolutely necessary among such brutes so as to strike terror into them. It is a mercy in the end and leads to less bloodshed. They are the most bloodthirsty villains going.
Donald Stewart was unusual thinking that shooting men, just because they resisted the British, was unjust and unwise, but he too shared a common view of the Afghans and their erstwhile Amir as treacherous. He believed an account from Sirdars of Kandahar claiming that Yakub could have saved the Embassy if he had shown a particle of pluck.6
Whether clemency rather than executions would have mollified the Afghans must be doubted; they remembered the British debacle of 1842 all too well. Roberts’s troops controlled only the territory their guns covered. Lytton and Stewart feared that the native Indian army was being worn out through arduous picket and escort duties. With military impasse, a political settlement had to be found and even before the election Lytton sought to find a way. He instructed Lepel Griffin: ‘I see no reason why you should not, as soon as you reach Kabul, set about the preparation of a way for us out of that rat-trap.’ He stressed the need to settle matters before the harvest, to separate Afghanistan into three or more separate provinces and retain a permanent British garrison at Kandahar or close by. Sovereignty over an independent Kandahar was offered to a Barakzai prince, Sher Ali, whose father had been a Sirdar driven out in 1839. Sher Ali accepted after cautious negotiations and was installed as Wali or local ruler in mid-May 1880. Meanwhile, there was uncertainty about Herat. It was not to be made independent or brought under British control, for this would alienate Persia and drive her into the Russian camp. But in a reversal of previous policy the British said that if the Shah of Persia could occupy it they would not object. At the same time planning went ahead for the final military campaign. Stewart was to march from Kandahar to Kabul via Ghazni, traversing an area not hitherto crossed by the British. Roberts was to undertake operations in Kohistan and Bamian, and for this he would evacuate Sherpur for a smaller camp, and receive reinforcements and 3,800 camels. No sooner had the plan been approved than it began to fall apart because of transport difficulties: Roberts for example had 1,000 camels fewer than needed.7
There was fierce Afghan resistance to any movement, and the almost daily grind of resisting attacks on pickets, convoys and outposts imposed a heavy strain on the troops. The Political Officer at Kandahar, Oliver St John, came up with the solution: Abdur Rahman. This son of Sher All’s brother and rival, Afzal Khan, had been involved in the struggle for the Afghan amirship in the 1860s, trying to place his father on the throne of Kabul, but was defeated in 1868, driven into exile and in 1870 reached Tashkent, where General Kaufmann gave him permission to reside and obtained a pension of 25,000 per annum for him from the Tsar. He remained a pensioner of the Russians until at the end of 1879 they gave him financial aid and 200 breech-loading rifles, 2,000 rounds of ammunition and field equipment for 100 infantry and 100 cavalry. Thus accoutred he marched south to stake his claim. For Lytton supporting this ‘ram caught in a thicket’, as he biblically* termed him, was a leap in the dark, but he had been at his wit’s end to find a satisfactory way to end the war. He still believed his policy had scored some successes – the Khyber and Bolan Passes in British hands, Baluchistan peaceful and friendly, Kandahar under Wali Sher Ali, and the Afghan state broken up. Once a friendly ruler was secure at Kabul, the troops could go home. Neither Lytton nor St John yet grasped that their new candidate was an extremely able politician and had had long years of exile in Samarkand to plan his tactics. Even before a conciliatory letter from Griffin reached him, he was in touch with Kohistan chiefs, claiming that he was ready to lead a holy war against the infidel British unless they listened to him.8
As arranged, at the end of March, Stewart handed over the command at Kandahar to Major General Primrose and set forth for Kabul with 7,249 soldiers, 7,272 camp followers and more than 11,000 animals. The march was overshadowed subsequently by the drama of Roberts’s march in the reverse direction five months later. Whereas Stewart’s took place during an election, Roberts’s had the eyes of the Empire on it. Stewart was launching himself into the unknown and was forced to live off the country, with supplies short. He had experience having already taken a force 400 miles to Kandahar in the middle of winter through a dismal waste. This time empty villages and scorched earth en route showed the Afghans were spoiling for a fight. On 19 April, in the hills at Ahmed Khel, Stewart deployed for an expected attack. He had not long to wait. An enormous mass of Afghan soldiers and irregulars with standards formed on the hilltops, horsemen rode along the ridge with the intention of sweeping to the rear of Stewart’s line to attack the baggage, and successive waves of swordsmen on foot, stretching right and left, rushed out, with cavalry on the flanks, seeming to envelop his column. The Afghan attack led by fanatical Ghazis, determined to sacrifice their own lives, threatened to overwhelm Stewart’s force, the danger increased by his tactical error in ordering the 59th Regiment to a fresh position so that they were struck by the wave of Afghan swordsmen while still forming up and without bayonets fixed. Part of the cavalry stampeded in panic, rolled over the medical dressing station and came within a few yards of Stewart’s headquarters. He and his staff drew their swords to defend themselves.
Superior discipline and firepower reasserted themselves. In an hour-long battle, Stewart’s force drove off the attack, losing seventeen killed and 124 wounded. Losses were kept to a minimum by the discipline of the regiments, the 3rd Gurkhas suffering no casualties through forming company squares quickly and correctly. The Afghans left 1,200 bodies thickly strewn on the
ground. Captain Elias, an eyewitness, wrote: ‘Anyone with a semblance of a heart under his khaki jacket could not help feeling something akin to pity to see them advancing with their miserable weapons in the face of our guns and rifles, but their courage and their numbers made them formidable.’ Stewart had not conducted the battle particularly well, in contrast to his management of the march, and in a country ideal for cavalry and horse artillery, gave no pursuit.9
He continued his march to Ghazni, where news of his victory ensured a respectful reception. Then came intelligence that Mushk-i-Alam and Mohammed Jan were raising forces to avenge Ahmed Khel. Stewart decided on quick action, and despatched Brigadier General Palliser with two cavalry and four infantry regiments, supported by artillery. Palliser found the enemy’s vanguard entrenched in walled villages and informed his commander. Stewart brought forward the bulk of his forces and ordered an immediate attack on the enemy’s left flank. The Afghans were routed with a loss to Stewart of only two dead and three wounded. Although the action was a small one, the moral effect was sufficient to disperse the gathered tribesmen without their offering further resistance, while Stewart continued his march in fine weather.10
Roberts had despatched from Kabul a force under Major General Ross to meet Stewart. Ross’s column was attacked and his sappers’ road-making operations hindered, but it reached Stewart’s on 27 April. Stewart’s column marched to the Logar Valley while their commander continued with Ross and his troops towards Kabul. On 1 May he rode ahead of his column and met Roberts who came out to see him ‘looking very jolly and well’. He reached the capital on 2 May and took over command. ‘Bobs, Griffin and all the swells came out to meet me this morning; very pleasant. Cabul looks very pretty just now, and everything is going right except as regards political affairs.’ Although Roberts and Lepel Griffin had worked together amicably, Stewart was determined not to delegate political authority. As a tactician, Stewart may have been inferior to Roberts, but his political acumen at Kandahar had proved much superior, peace being kept at the city, aided by a good autumn crop. On 8 May, he sent Roberts and Baker on an expedition to gather supplies and secure communications. Roberts had written to his old friend: ‘If there is one man in India I would and could serve under – it is you.’ But he saw his subordination as a rebuke; moreover, the Liberal election victory hung over them. To his wife Stewart wrote that it had ‘put a sad damper on all our spirits. We think it quite possible that there may be a complete change of policy. If the Liberals gain the day, everything that is being done here may be upset.’11 But already Abdur Rahman was taking events out of their control. In mid-April, as Roberts informed Stewart, the aspiring Amir was advancing through Kohistan, gaining strength and appealing on the advice of his Afghan followers to the religious feelings of his countrymen. He played his cards well, called himself Amir, claimed that he had come to save his country, and head a religious war if necessary, but nonetheless felt no enmity for the British and would be glad to make friends with them if practicable. He sent circulars and letters to chiefs and sirdars, and his support grew. In his memoirs he wrote: ‘I was unable to show my friendship publicly to the extent that was necessary: because my people were ignorant and fanatical. If I showed any inclination towards the English, my people would call me an infidel for joining hands with infidels.’12
The March to Kandahar- Roberts in Afghanistan Page 14