Retreat from Kabul: The First Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-1842 (Conflicts of Empire)

by George Bruce

  ‘I have the honour to acquaint your Lordship,’ he began boastfully, ‘that the army under my command has succeeded in performing one of the most brilliant acts it has ever been my lot to witness during my forty-five years in the four quarters of the globe in the capture by storm of the strong and important fortress and citadel of Ghazni yesterday.’

  Glossing over the fact that he himself had endangered the army, Keane said that he ‘did not hesitate a moment as to the manner in which our approach and attack upon the place should be made… At daylight on the 22nd I reconnoitred Ghuznee in company with the chief Engineer… for the purpose of making all arrangements for carrying the place by storm…’

  Keane, who disliked Dennie — as he did all his best officers — went on to give the credit for entering Ghazni to Brigadier Sale, whose fumbling had in fact endangered the operation.

  After this lie he went on to hand out congratulations and praise to all the other officers who took part in the operation except Dennie, merely in an off-handed way giving him his ‘best acknowledgements’ and thus effectively preventing the political and military authorities from knowing the truth. Such was the way of this hardly likeable general.

  His report brought a protest from Dennie. In a letter to a friend that eventually was published in a Calcutta newspaper he modestly wrote: ‘I am… more than usually stung at the ingratitude practised in this business, because I know good fortune or Providence did give me a great and important post on that day, upon which, perhaps, depended the safety and very existence of our army; who, had I failed, or even been checked as the rear column after me was, must all have met the common fate of certain destruction.

  ‘The whole country was up and millions were at hand and all around us to cut off our baggage, food and every supply… who only waited… for the first symptom of disaster for their slaughter to commence.’

  The victory was hailed as a great and extraordinary triumph both by the authorities in India and — to make an unpopular war more acceptable — by the Whig politicians in England. In a House of Commons eulogy Sir Robert Peel absurdly described it as ‘the most brilliant achievement of our arms in Asia’.

  Dost Mahommed, 90 miles away over the mountains in Kabul, heard the news of Ghazni’s fall at five o’clock that day through swift horsemen stationed every eight miles along the route. It had been thought impregnable. Shocked and alarmed he assembled his chiefs, received from them their not very reliable assurances of loyalty and then sensibly sent his brother Nawab Jubbar Khan to try to negotiate reasonable terms from Shah Shuja and the British.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The fall of the fortress of Ghazni was a turning-point for the British. Their army had been saved, the two chief cities of Afghanistan were in their hands and, as a result, many of the chiefs in Dost Mahommed’s camp were bound to come over to them. The way ahead, which only a few days before had looked so desperate, now seemed all set for victory.

  The Nawab Jubbar Khan, the emissary, brought an offer of surrender on condition that Dost Mahommed, as the brother of the murdered Futteh Khan, should be given the hereditary office of Vizier, or chief minister, held for so long in the past by his family.

  It could possibly have been an acceptable way out of a costly campaign. Most of the chiefs would have agreed without more fighting; Dost Mahommed could have been bound to guarantee the loyalty of the tribes and thus reinforced Shah Shuja, where he was weakest, while the Dost’s own powers could possibly have been limited, to keep him in check.

  Moreover, having shown their strength, the British could have marched back to India with their basic aim accomplished. This would have been little more of a gamble than the alternative policy of unconditional surrender, repression of hostile tribesmen and an army of occupation dependent upon easily cut lines of communication.

  But the pitfalls of thus putting Shuja in the Dost’s hands were too obvious. Macnaghten rejected the terms, conceding nothing and offering the Amir only ‘honourable asylum’ in the British dominions, that is, exile and open captivity in India.

  Jubbar Khan answered bluntly that Dost Mahommed had no intention of surrendering his freedom and throwing himself on the bounty of the British Government. Indeed, he remarked, had the outlook for him been less hopeless than it was, he would sooner have thrown himself upon British bayonets.

  Before riding away he asked Macnaghten: ‘If Shah Shuja is really our king, what need has he of your army and name? You have brought him here with your money and arms. Well, leave him now with us Afghans and let him rule us if he can.’

  He then rejoined Dost Mahommed with the news. Any chance of negotiations had now faded and Dost Mahommed sought to whip up the courage and loyalty of his wavering chiefs. Keane, instead of pushing on at once, rested for a week in Ghazni, then marched on 30 July 1839, leaving behind a garrison of about 1,200 men and 30 guns. Keane seems at this time to have tried to balance his lack of military judgement by overenforcement of discipline. He now excelled himself in a characteristic order stating that any camp-follower ‘found destroying grain or injuring cultivation… will be hanged. The Provost Marshal and his assistants are required to have at hand the means of giving effect to this order’ — they were to travel armed with a hangman’s rope.

  Hearing from his brother the rejection of his offer, Dost Mahommed now marched his uncertain army from Kabul down towards Urgendeh, in the path of the invaders. He drew up his troops and his guns there on 1 August, intending however, to make a last stand at Maidan on the Kabul River near by, where the terrain would have been very much in his favour.

  The Amir had won his kingdom, in the traditional Afghan way, by the sword, and ruled it after his own nature with severity tempered by justice. But time had so blurred the misfortunes of Shuja’s reign of thirty years before, that many of the chiefs — especially now that the Shah had now returned with a great and victorious army — thought of it in comparison as a golden age.

  Dost Mahommed’s authority began to fade like the Afghan summer. Now that his son Akbar Khan had returned from the Kyber, his forces totalled 13,000 cavalry and infantry and thirty guns, mainly 6- and 9-pounders, but with insufficient reserves of ammunition for a set battle with the British. Had this force been willing to fight a war of hit-and-run tactics it might soon have worn down the far-flung invaders into ultimate defeat. But the Dost evidently believed that his only chance lay in an immediate clash with them and now came the final misfortunes for this self-made ruler. Having pledged loyalty to him the perfidious chiefs refused to fight. Neutrality seemed the wiser course towards the old king, Shuja, with the powerful army and the well-filled treasure-chest.

  Dost Mahommed made one last effort to restore his authority, riding among them Koran in hand and haranguing them in the name of the Prophet not to dishonour themselves by deserting him for the wicked former monarch who had defiled the country by filling it with infidels. ‘If,’ he is reported to have said, ‘you are resolved to be traitors to me, at least enable me to die with honour. Support the brother of Futteh Khan in one last charge against these Feringee dogs. In that charge he will fall. Then go and make your terms with Shah Shuja.’

  But this fervent appeal brought no response, and that same evening Dost Mahommed, his family and 600 faithful followers fled towards friendlier territory, leaving the guns in position in the valley at Urgendeh. Keane, the next day, 3 August, at Shiekabad, where he had halted to concentrate his forces, heard the news from the renegade chiefs who arrived at the camp to pay homage to their new ruler.

  An American military adventurer, the self-styled General Harlan, who was in Dost Mahommed’s camp at this time, says that the Amir was not just deserted by his followers but robbed as well. ‘A crowd of noisy disorganised troops,’ he relates, ‘insolently pressed close up to the royal pavilion — the guard had disappeared — the groom holding the Prince’s horse was unceremoniously pushed to and fro — a servant audaciously pulled away the pillow which sustained the Prince’s arm — another comme
nced cutting a piece of the splendid Persian carpet — the beautiful praying rug of the Prince was seized on by a third… “Take all,” said he, “that you find within, together with the tent.”

  ‘In an instant the unruly crowd rushed upon the pavilion — swords gleamed in the air and descended upon the tent — the canvas, the ropes, the carpets, pillows, screens, etc., were seized and dispersed among the plunderers.’

  Harlan’s report has the ring of truth and shows how little regard for anything but loot had these tribes whom the British hoped to convert into faithful allies.

  Keane, after some hesitation, now decided to try to capture Dost Mahommed. Captain Outram volunteered and was given command of a force of 14 British officers, 100 cavalry and 2,000 of the Shah’s Afghan cavalry, all under the guidance of Haji Khan, the chief who had deserted to Shah Shuja at Kandahar.

  But only a few hundred of the Afghan troops arrived at the hour appointed, and when the small force finally started, Haji Khan delayed its advance by every possible trick. Eventually, Outram led the pursuers 15,000 feet up into the snowy mountains of the Hindu Kush, but Haji Khan — who had made working for both sides into a fine and subtle art — caused more delays and enabled Dost Mahommed to escape. He was arrested for his efforts when the pursuing party returned later to Kabul.

  Keane himself marched on towards the capital, sending Major Cuerton and 200 Lancers on in advance to seize Dost Mahommed’s artillery — found to be twenty-three guns mostly worn out, some even dangerous to fire, but loaded and sighted to front, rear and flanks. A quantity of powder and shot, with ammunition wagons, tumbrils and gun-bullocks were also captured.

  Lieutenant Warburton, who listed this artillery, thought it useless. ‘The shot is hammered iron,’ he reported, ‘and so uneven that unless weighed their weight could not be told. They are chiefly much under 6-pounder shot… With regard to the other stores nothing was of the slightest service, except the old iron of the carriages, and the axle-trees, also good as old iron only, and to which purpose they have been appropriated.’

  The army joyfully marched on, crossed the Kabul River on 6 August and camped three miles west of the city in the late afternoon.

  Shah Shuja formally entered the next day as a British puppet king to take possession of the throne of his ancestors. It was a great occasion. An escort of Lancers, Dragoons, Artillery and Infantry were paraded in review order on the road leading to Kabul. A royal salute was fired as His Majesty approached the escort, and the squadrons saluted him as he passed, after which they wheeled up and followed in procession to the entrance to the town.

  Wearing a coronet above his turban, a jewelled girdle and bracelets, with his long dyed-black beard carefully combed and reaching to his waist, the new Shah rode a white charger whose harness glittered with gold and precious stones. William Macnaghten, in full diplomatic regalia, as the British Envoy accredited to the King, rode beside him, followed by General Sir John Keane, Sir Alexander Burnes and a vast procession of other officers. Sabres flashed at the head of the procession, artillery rumbled and bayonets glittered at the rear.

  The return of Shah Shuja in August 1839 kindled no enthusiasm among the crowds who out of curiosity lined the narrow winding streets. The chiefs mostly stayed away and the citizens neither salaamed nor shouted acclaim, but merely rose to their feet to look hard and long at the monarch whom thirty years ago they had overthrown and who was now forced on them by the armed unbelievers.

  When the steep slopes of the palace and fortress of the Bala Hissar had been ascended, the Shah led the way through the gardens, and with pathetic eagerness into the palace. He wept openly at the neglect and dilapidation that faced him, explaining to his sons and grandsons how fine it had all been when he was a young man, thirty years ago.

  Such was the fateful home-coming of Shah Shuja; and with it the Army of the Indus had after a march of 1,527 miles arrived at its final destination.

  One of Macnaghten’s first acts in Kabul was to persuade Shah Shuja to institute an order of the Durani Empire — which Afghanistan at the height of its power had been called — in three classes, like the Order of the Bath, to be presented to officers from the Commander-in-Chief and political agents downwards. A splendid state durbar was held for the presentation. It turned out to be something of a farce, according to the chief surgeon, Dr. Kennedy.

  The Shah sat in the ruined garden of a courtyard, his throne an old camp chair, and behind him stood two fat eunuchs, each holding a dish. ‘Up to this extraordinary dumb show we marched,’ says Kennedy, ‘and we were all ranged behind and on the right of the camp chair with the King in it.

  ‘When all was ready… Sir John Keane stepped before the said camp chair with the King in it and gravely dropped on his knees before the Durani Emperor. One of the fat eunuchs waddled to the front and uncovered his dish in which was the decoration and ribbon of “the order of the Durani Empire”.

  ‘The Emperor with great difficulty stuck it on and Sir John’s coat being too tight, it cost him some effort to wriggle into the ribbon: but the acorn in time becomes an oak and Sir John was at last adorned… A Knight Grand Cross of the Durani Empire. The decoration required eloquence; and Sir John, standing before the Emperor, delivered himself of a speech in which there was a great deal about “hurling a usurper from the throne” — at which my uncle Toby might perhaps have whistled his lillibullero.

  ‘Mr. Macnaghten and General Cotton were next invested and Sir Alexander Burnes and Sir Martin Wade were told that they were created Knights Grand too, but that the goldsmith had not been able to make the decorations in time for them… Lord Auckland was created a Knight Grand Cross also. How Colonel Pottinger escaped can only be explained by the wonderful good fortune that has attended that gentleman through life.

  ‘The Grand Crosses being created, the Knights Commanders and Companions were to be invested, but the decorations had not been made; and it was clear that if there was to be a kneeling and tow-tow for each there would be no end of it, so an officer… shouted out the names of the “men whom the king delighted to honour”.

  ‘The decoration of the order is a Maltese cross, a bad imitation of the Guelphic order of Hanover; and it was the more absurd to give a Christian’s most sacred religious badge… because the arabesque star of six points, which forms the ornament of the historic gates of the tomb of Mahmoud of Ghazni, would have been so peculiar and appropriate an emblem… The ribbon, “party per pale vert and gules” is in good taste and when manufactured in England will no doubt be very ornamental.’

  Meantime, in a letter to Lord Auckland, Governor-General, officially informing him that Shah Shuja had taken possession of the throne, General Keane remarked dryly: ‘I trust we have thus accomplished all the objects which your Lordship had in contemplation, when you planned and formed the Army of the Indus, and the expedition into Afghanistan.’

  In due course Lord Auckland published a General Order thanking Keane and the army: ‘The plans of aggression by which the British empire in India was dangerously threatened, have, under Providence, been arrested. The Chiefs of Kabul and Kandahar, who had joined in hostile designs against us, have been deprived of power, and the territories which they ruled have been restored to a friendly monarch…’

  How empty were these pretentious words events would soon prove.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The invasion’s object had been achieved. Shah Shuja was restored to the throne, the country was occupied as well as could be with garrisons in Kandahar and Ghazni, and an army at Kabul. The ‘independence and integrity’ of Afghanistan, to which Lord Auckland had referred in his manifesto justifying the campaign, seemed to be assured and according to its terms British troops should now be withdrawn.

  But Dost Mahommed was still at large, a likely focus of rebellion should conditions favour the growth of one. And though the Shah sat on the throne of his ancestors once more, both he and Macnaghten never doubted that he could be kept there only by British bayonets. Even Lord Auc
kland had made the painful discovery that though a certain number of chiefs had declared allegiance to Shuja, most of the people were hostile.

  He wrote to Macnaghten to say that he wanted to see the troops back in India and the cost of the campaign ended, but this must not be done while there was any risk of losing all that had been won by leaving before the Shah had a grip on the country. Macnaghten, who wanted a large army in Afghanistan, agreed; it was decided to return to India the smaller Bombay force and for the time being to keep most of the large Bengal one to support the Shah. A new Russian threat, potentially dangerous for India was to make this arrangement rather more permanent.

  The next twelve months would be the decisive ones for the Shah — and for the British — since by their policies many of the Afghans who in the early autumn of 1839 were uncertain about their future allegiance could be won over or driven into hostility.

  In theory the Shah was now an independent monarch, but from the very first days of the occupation Macnaghten became the real ruler, with ambitious young political officers — mostly inexperienced young army officers seconded for the purpose — appointed throughout the country and able to call upon the army to enforce Macnaghten’s orders.

  Of the whole field of government, Shah Shuja was allowed only the collection of revenue and taxes and the administration of civil and criminal law. He had no voice whatsoever in foreign policy or in internal security — that is, in the pacification of those turbulent tribes who at any time might rise and dispute his rule.

  Nor, apart from his personal guard of several hundred, had he any power over his own armed forces. In September 1839 these amounted to 4,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and two troops of Bengal artillery — all commanded by British officers and under Macnaghten’s sway. This army — except for the Shah’s bodyguard — was, moreover, paid by the British, this presumably being the only sure way to see that the troops got their money.