by George Bruce
Mr. Prinsep, another member of the Governor-General’s Council, put on record his view that it was intolerable that Sir William Macnaghten should support the Shah in extravagant spending or revenue regardless of the general welfare. Having conquered Afghanistan, he said, Britain had a duty to ensure that justice was done and the revenue was properly administered.
Auckland, now somewhat anxious about the trend of things, did, however, urge Macnaghten to tell the Shah bluntly that his expenses, especially those of his personal guard and his court must be cut. He said he failed to understand why the Shah could not pay for his own government when his revenue was greater than that of the former ruler, Dost Mahommed, and while Britain paid for his army.
Macnaghten at first resisted these requests. ‘His Majesty’s revenue is little more than 15 laks (£150,000) per annum,’ he wrote, ‘hardly enough for the maintenance of his personal state, and yet the government below are perpetually writing to me that this charge and that charge is “to be defrayed out of His Majesty’s resources”. God help the poor man and his resources!!’ he exploded.
But under pressure, Macnaghten was forced to change his attitude. He now began in his turn to put pressure on the Shah to economise. It led to a breach between them in the middle of 1841 and Macnaghten, who earlier had nothing but praise for the Shah was now writing that Shuja ‘is an old woman, not fit to rule these people’. And the political officers took over more and more of the government of the country.
Shah Shuja responded by complaining in a letter of 17 July 1841 to the Governor-General that the British took no notice of his advice, followed unsound policies, left him with little control over the country’s administration and in general were given to ‘unlimited interference’. Thus while doing what seemed the right thing, the British were alienating their only possible Afghan allies — Shuja’s followers, few as they were.
Earlier in the year Major Rawlinson had warned Macnaghten that south-west Afghanistan, where General Nott was about to send a force to attack Uktar Khan’s force of 6,000 men, had become a nest of rebellion. Despite their traditional hostility for each other, some of the Durani chiefs were even combining with the Ghilzyes, showing thus the intensity of their dislike for the British.
Macnaghten answered then that he was taking ‘an unwarrantably gloomy view… We have enough of difficulties and enough of croakers without adding to the number needlessly.’
He went on: ‘These idle statements may cause much mischief, and repeated as they are, they neutralise my protestations to the contrary. I know them to be utterly false as regards this part of the country and I have no reason to believe them to be true as regards your portion of the kingdom, merely… because Uktur Khan has a pack of ragamuffins at his heels.’
He recommended that the Afghan mercenary cavalry, the Janbaz, should join with the British force, make a forced march by night, come in the rear ‘seize the villain and hang him as high as Haman and you will probably have no more disturbances’. The Janbaz could remain out while revenue collections in the region were going on, he recommended. With his accustomed efficiency, General Nott again defeated Uktur Khan and the Ghilzyes.
Macnaghten now expected reinforcements to replace General Sale’s brigade, which was about to return to India. Nott’s defeat of the Duranis and Ghilzyes had also increased his confidence; an4 by the end of August he knew officially that he was soon to leave Kabul to take up in Bombay the great position as Governor which meant so much to him. Macnaghten began to feel he could leave the country in a settled state, and with his head held high.
True, large forces of troops were still out in the west pacifying Duranis who refused to submit; and Akrum Khan, the chief who had joined in rebellion with Uktur Khan, was still at liberty.
Macnaghten now decided to use unconventional methods to seize him and bribed a tribesman to take Captain John Connolly to his hiding-place. The informant’s ankles were tied beneath his horse’s belly so that he could not escape, and the party surprised the chief and carried him to Kandahar. There he was handed over to Shuja’s son, Prince Timour, the Governor, who had him blown from the mouth of a gun to settle matters for good.
Macnaghten joyfully made ready to leave now, and Elphinstone, who had resigned his command already, because he felt himself too ill to bear it, prepared to go with him.
Burnes had been concerned about the trend of events in Afghanistan for months past and even more, worried about his own future. ‘I am now a highly paid idler,’ he had complained in a letter to his brother, ‘having no less than 3,500 rupees a month as Resident at Kabul and being, as the lawyers call it, only counsel, and that, too, a dumb one — by which I mean that I give paper opinions, but I do not work them out.’
But now that Macnaghten’s post seemed about to fall to him, Burnes saw better days approaching. There would be more worthwhile things than to write long memorandums which his chief ignored, and spend his days amusing himself with his Kashmiri girls. The day was coming when he would rule in Afghanistan. So dazzled must Burnes have been by this prospect that he forgot that many of the chiefs looked upon him as the man whose professions of friendship three years earlier had paved the way for the British invasion — a man therefore, whom they were bound to kill. So Burnes waited contentedly for Macnaghten’s departure and what he saw as his own triumph.
Macnaghten, by the end of August, had decided that harsher policies were now needed towards the rebellious chiefs if he wanted to leave the country settled and quiet. A few months before he had called them ‘perfect children’, but now he spoke of them as ‘without exception the most worthless and faithless wretches I ever knew’. To the political officer in the region of Helmund, Lieutenant Elliot, he wrote that execution and confiscation of lands were to be used against the turbulent Duranis. And on 29 August he told Rawlinson that ‘the Durani chiefs who have been in rebellion must be effectively humbled… We must never dream of conciliation. Terror is the only instrument which they respect. These fellows must be crushed…!’
In this mood, in mid-September, Macnaghten embarked upon a new policy towards the chiefs that served as a detonator for the dynamite to which their state of mind could be likened. Lord Auckland had urgently been pressing him to economise, including especially cuts in the big stipends paid to many chiefs. Macnaghten objected that these payments, amounting to £8,000 yearly for the Ghilzyes, were fair compensation for stopping their traditional privilege of robbing convoys and caravans along the mountain passes in their various regions and that ‘we should be found in the end to have made a cheap bargain’.
But wishing, in the last week or two before leaving, to please the authorities in India and England, he summoned the Ghilzye chiefs to Kabul and told them that while they would still be held responsible for robbery within their lands, their monies would be drastically cut.
The chiefs objected, but vainly. Angrily, they fled Kabul, held secret meetings, took oaths upon the Koran to support each other in a confederation of rebellion and agreed upon a plan for war.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Now intent on war against the English, the Ghilzyes thronged the mountain passes between Kabul and Jellalabad and cut communications with India by the Khyber route.
At first, Macnaghten saw it as a small-scale rising which could be put down easily enough, but he confessed in a letter to Major Rawlinson on 3 October 1841 that he was ‘suffering a little anxiety’ about the Ghilzyes.
When more information about the extent of their rising reached him he grew more concerned and revealed to Rawlinson on 7 October: ‘The eastern Ghilzyes are kicking up a row about deductions which have been made from their pay. The rascals have completely succeeded in cutting off our communications for the time being, which is very provoking to me at this juncture; but they will be well trounced for their pains…’
The glittering prize of the Bombay governorship was dangling within Macnaghten’s reach, but he was becoming worried that it might after all elude him. He told Rawlinson
on 11 October: ‘No sooner have we put down one rebellion than another starts up. The Eastern Ghilzyes are now in an uproar and our communications with Jellalabad are completely cut off… Only imagine the impudence of the rascals in having taken up a position with four or five hundred men in the Khoord-Kabul Pass, not 15 miles from the capital. I hope they will be driven out today or tomorrow, but the pass is an ugly one to force. This… is particularly provoking just as I am about to quit Afghanistan.’
It must have been, for warnings of gathering danger were widespread. Major Pottinger, then political officer in Kohistan, had come to Kabul especially to warn the Envoy that a rising there was inevitable; strong forces had been sent at once to crush it. Uktur Khan was again awaiting his chance at Bamian, joined now by Akbar Khan, the fiery son of Dost Mahommed, who, driven by implacable hatred of the English, had turned down offers of a big pension in exile for the life of a fugitive.
In Kabul itself, officers and men were now openly attacked in the city. Dr. Metcalfe owed his escape from Afghan swordsmen to the speed of his horse, Captain Waller was wounded by a pistol shot, an infantryman was found with his throat cut and an Afghan stole up to a sentry post of the Horse Artillery in the night and shot dead a young trooper.
On 4 October, Captain Gray, returning to India with an escort of 400 loyal Afghans, was fiercely attacked in the Koord-Kabul Pass. But Mahommed Uzeem Khan, chief of the escort, led Gray over the mountains by a little-known track and eluded the Ghilzyes.
Having done so, he frankly told him that all Afghanistan were determined to make one cause and to murder or drive out every Feringhee (European) in the country — the whole country, and Kabul itself was ready to break out.
Gray wrote Sir Alexander Burnes telling of the apparent volcano upon which the British were all too calmly sitting and Burnes wrote to Uzeem Khan a letter of acknowledgement and thanks. But despite this alarming revelation from a chief who had in the past proved his complete reliability, and despite other information in the hands of the British, the advance detachment of General Sir Robert Sale’s brigade was to march for India on 9 October as though the country was indeed as peaceful as England.
This detachment, commanded by Colonel Monteith, consisted of some 800 men of the 35th Native Infantry, a squadron of 150 men of the 5th Cavalry, two 9-pounders under Captain Dawes and a detachment of Captain George Broadfoot’s sappers. Broadfoot was one of three brothers, sons of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, one of whom, James, had already been killed in the cavalry charge against Dost Mahommed’s force at Purwandurrah. All three were to die fighting in Afghanistan. George, red-haired and, surprisingly, a wearer of thick pebble spectacles, had used a mixture of paternal benevolence and severe military discipline to hammer his 600 Indians, Ghurkas and Afghans into a force of accomplished light troops skilled in siege and entrenching methods.
Ordered to join Colonel Monteith’s force with 100 of his sappers, the pedantic Broadfoot tried to obtain precise instructions as to the equipment his men would need.
The story of this attempt sheds a revealing light on the appalling disarray into which military organisation had already fallen between the fumbling hands of General Elphinstone and the all too dexterous one of Macnaghten.
Broadfoot first sought information from Colonel Monteith, who said that he had not received any orders himself and could not therefore give any. He declined to apply to Macnaghten for instructions as he knew ‘these people’ too well and that it was not their habit to consult or instruct the commanders of expeditions.
Instead of using his own judgement, Broadfoot then went to General Elphinstone, whom he found ill in bed, but who nevertheless received him with ‘his usual cheerful kindness’. He insisted on getting up, though he needed support to walk into his visiting room and was for half an hour so much exhausted by his efforts to attend to business that Broadfoot was sorry he had come at all.
The General said that all he knew was Macnaghten’s instructions to send Monteith off with the given number of men. He had no information about the forts that might be encountered, or if any engineer was going as well. He left it to Broadfoot to decide what stores and tools to take with him, and he declined to refer to Macnaghten a military matter that should have been left entirely to he himself.
Broadfoot managed, however, to extract a note from Elphinstone to Macnaghten saying that what Broadfoot wanted to know was reasonable: whether there were to be hostilities or not, with whom, the strength and position of the enemy, and whether there would be forts to be taken and destroyed.
Macnaghten then quite fairly told the pedantic Broadfoot that being no prophet he could not tell whether there would be fighting, but that he would find out about the forts and would agree to whatever equipment the General felt was needed, and with this in a note he sent Broadfoot back to the General.
This very reasonable answer for some reason hurt the General who then complained bitterly of having been ‘degraded from a general to the “Lord-Lieutenant’s head constable” ’. He agreed, perhaps foolishly, that Broadfoot should see the Envoy again. This time, with the red-haired, meticulous Scot peering at him through his thick spectacles, Macnaghten declared that the General was fidgety, but Broadfoot insisted that until he knew what he would be expected to do he could make no preparations.
It was a stupid remark — Broadfoot too had caught the habit of the army and political officers of scoring off each other. Broadfoot should have been ready for anything in the disturbed conditions then prevailing, but Macnaghten patiently sent for his intelligence officers so that Broadfoot could try to find out what he wanted to know for himself.
Broadfoot then began to question the tactical plans and Macnaghten, who so far had endured it all patiently, at last lost his temper — he had given his orders and as to Broadfoot and his sappers, twenty men with pickaxes would do, for they were only wanted to pick stones from beneath the gun-wheels.
‘Are those your orders?’ Broadfoot demanded.
‘No,’ answered Macnaghten. ‘It is only my opinion, given at the General’s request and yours. The General is responsible and must decide as to the number of sappers and tools that must When Broadfoot, having left him, against returned from the General with still another protest in this futile but damaging row, Macnaghten rightly refused to listen any more and told Broadfoot that if he feared an attack, he need not go — there were other officers. Broadfoot was nothing if not brave and at this insult, he made a polite bow and went. Macnaghten softened the blow by running after him and shaking his hand.
Broadfoot still was not satisfied. He went again to the General, whom he found, not surprisingly, ‘lost and perplexed’. But at last even Elphinstone must have had enough. He gave Broadfoot the order at last which either Colonel Monteith or he should have given in the first place — to use his own judgement.
And finally, the sick old man entreated: ‘If anything occurs, and in case you have to go out, for God’s sake clear the passes quickly, that I may get away. For, if anything were to turn up, I am unfit for it, done up body and mind, and I have told Lord Auckland so.’
In this revealing confession are the reasons for the whole chapter of disastrous mistakes by which Elphinstone ultimately was soon to bring the force to its knees before the Afghans.
General Nott had at last been summoned from Kandahar to assume command, but Elphinstone and Auckland between them had delayed this decision too long. And so incompetence lost to the British the one man who could have saved them, for the tribes were now on the march.
Colonel Monteith left Kabul with the advance early on 9 October 1841 — a force of some 100 troops encumbered with the usual five or six thousand camp-followers and the long string of baggage camels. He pitched his tents in the late afternoon on open ground near the village of Bootkak, with a range of hills that rose into mountains on his right and the mouth of the pass through them about a mile off.
He was sharply attacked that night by the Ghilzyes. They were beaten off, though not wi
thout some losses in men, and camels with valuable loads. Many of the attackers turned out to be armed retainers of chiefs living in Kabul in the very shadow of the British headquarters. These armed men had left Kabul and returned through Brigadier Shelton’s camp; but they had not been stopped or questioned.
Macnaghten, hearing of the attack early next day, ordered General Sale to march before dawn on the 11th, earlier than had been planned, to clear the passes with the 13th Light Infantry and some 300 irregular cavalry. But there was an acute shortage of transport animals and so, says Gleig, ‘the men undertook cheerfully to carry their own knapsacks and the officers sacrificed without hesitation every article of private baggage which it might have been inconvenient to move.
‘The men packed one spare shirt only, one pair of socks, one spare pair of boots and their blue trousers together with their soap, towel and cooking utensils and 40 rounds of ammunition instead of the usual 60, the balance being carted on company animals. Thus more lightly equipped than usual they swung along at so brisk a pace that they arrived at Monteith’s camp in time for breakfast.’
Shortly after dawn next day General Sale’s troops began to force the pass. The Afghans let the column enter some distance into the long and dangerous defile and then opened a storm of fire from behind the sheltering rocks above. Here and there men began to fall. The British bugles blared, the leading infantrymen scaled the precipices and returned the fire as the column marched steadily forward. The Afghans retreated — soon the column was able to make its way through the rest of the pass more or less unhindered, though casualties had been quite heavy at the start of the fighting.