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

by George Bruce

  Some of Burnes’s servants now offered to carry him away wrapped up in a tent, as if they were carrying plunder, like many other people in the street seemed to be, but this, too, Burnes refused — he said he could not leave Broadfoot and his brother. Mohan Lal saw flames leap up round the front of the house and the firing and the shouting grew louder.

  The flames spread to the room where Burnes and his brother were waiting for British troops to save them. They went out into the garden to escape the flames. Broadfoot, presumably dead by now, was left in the room so that his body would be burnt and saved from mutilation. A few Afghans now burst into the garden.

  Charles Burnes killed six of them with his sword before he fell and was cut to pieces. Alexander Burnes seems to have believed his eloquence might yet prevail and began to address them, but on the death of his brother he abandoned all hope. Says Mohan Lal: ‘He opened up his black neckcloth and tied it on his eyes that he should not see from whom the death blows struck him. Having done this he stepped out of the door and was cut to pieces by the furious mob.’

  Mohan Lal — employed by Macnaghten but much attached to Burnes — left his house when the blaze began, to seek help, but was seized and would have been killed but for the arrival of Prince Mohammed Zaman Khan, who rescued him, took him in and ‘placed me among his ladies, who, having received some assistance from me some time before, brought me a sumptuous dish of pulav for my breakfast. To enjoy such hospitality from the hands of the Afghan fair on other occasions would have been an unexpected and highly valued nourishment, but at the present disastrous moment every grain of rice seemed to choke me in the throat and I refused to touch the dish.’

  Later, on the roof of the Prince’s house, he saw Burnes’s mansion smouldering and the mob tearing baulks of timber from it. When the fire was out Naib Sherrif entered the garden. He found the limbs and torsos of the two Burnes and buried them there.

  The conspirators had worked quickly, for by now the mob had swollen from a few hundred to one or two thousands armed with swords andjezails, yelling for plunder and blood of infidels. The house of paymaster Captain Johnson — who luckily had slept that night in the cantonments — was a veritable gold mine and they fell on it like wolves on their prey.

  ‘The insurgents gained possession of my treasury by undermining the wall,’ Johnson related, ‘and my house by setting fire to the gateway. They murdered the whole of the guard (one subardar and 28 sepoys, besides non-commissioned officers); all my servants (male, female and children); plundered my treasure to the amount of £17,000, burnt all my office records for the past three years, which comprise unadjusted accounts to nearly one million sterling and possessed themselves of all my private property, amounting to upwards of ten thousand rupees (£1,000).’ It was about the worst that could happen to a paymaster’s home.

  Soon the whole city was in a tumult. Vigorous military action by the British could still have crushed the insurrection. The Kabulees were terrified of the redcoats and constantly expected the tramp of marching feet and the crash of disciplined volleys. ‘They are coming — they are coming!’ was heard on all sides, and they waited in terror.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Captain George Lawrence, military secretary to Sir William Macnaghten, was out walking at 7 a.m. on 2 November when he heard the sound of firing and was told in the cantonments that there had been a rising in the city. He sought out the Envoy, whom he found some time later arguing with General Elphinstone and his staff officers.

  One of them handed Lawrence a note from Burnes begging for troops to be sent — no action had yet been taken though the note had arrived some time before. Lawrence’s opinion was sought and he suggested that a regiment should be marched straight to the city to rescue Burnes, disperse the mob and seize the chiefs responsible.

  Here was the first turning-point, for through such action, even if only out of mercy for Burnes, the British could have saved themselves untold suffering, but already among Elphinstone and his staff a kind of moral paralysis had set in. ‘My proposal was at once set down as one of pure insanity and under the circumstances utterly unfeasible,’ Lawrence says.

  So the first of many fateful decisions to do nothing was taken, and Burnes was left to his miserable fate. Brigadier Shelton was merely ordered to have his force ready to move not into Kabul but into the Bala Hissar, if the Shah agreed to it. Lawrence was ordered to ride the two miles to the fortress to inform Shuja of this useless request and he galloped off with an escort of four troopers.

  After twice being attacked on the way he reached the Bala Hissar safely and was ushered into the presence of the Shah, who was walking up and down before his throne in great agitation.

  ‘Is it not just what I always told the Envoy would happen if he would not follow my advice?’ Shuja exclaimed, referring to his wish, refused long ago by the Envoy, that he should be allowed to seize and execute the rebellious chiefs.

  Lawrence then requested that Brigadier Shelton should be allowed to occupy the Bala Hissar with his brigade. ‘Wait a minute,’ the King replied, ‘my son Futty Jung and the prime minister, Mahomed Usman Khan, have gone down into the city with some of my troops. I have no doubt they will suppress the tumult. Sir Alexander Burnes, I am happy to say, has escaped.’

  Lawrence waited, as the King wished. He saw from reports that from time to time came in that Futty Jung’s efforts to restore order seemed at first successful, reflecting that ‘the gallantry of that young prince, with his undisciplined levies, was nearly accomplishing what ere then we should have effected ourselves’.

  Elphinstone, so far, had done nothing but talk, chiefly about action he felt it was impossible to take — such as taking up the gauntlet the insurgents had thrown down and crushing the challenge to authority while it was still in an early stage.

  Brigadier Shelton was at last ordered to take his brigade up to the Bala Hissar, but Elphinstone sent him a note countermanding this. It was followed by another note ordering him to march there immediately; he would receive further orders there from Captain Lawrence, the Envoy’s military secretary.

  He was marching off when Elphinstone again ordered him to halt. In a fury of impatience Shelton now sent Lieutenant Sturt, General Sale’s son-in-law, to ride up to the fortress and find out the reason for the delay.

  In Kabul meantime, apparent immunity spurred on the Afghans to fresh arson and plunder and only the Shah’s small force sought to check it. The tumult grew, the flames spread — shops were gutted, houses burned, anyone, man, woman or child suspected of friendship with the infidels was slaughtered. But no British companies, skilled though they were in street fighting, arrived to stop it, though only two miles away in the cantonments more than 6,000 of them were ready.

  ‘The state of supineness and fancied security of those in power in cantonments,’ Lady Sale wrote angrily in her diary, ‘is the result of deference to the opinions of Lord Auckland, whose sovereign will and pleasure it is that tranquillity do reign in Afghanistan… Most dutifully do we appear to shut our eyes to our probable fate.’

  Captain Sturt, Lady Sale’s son-in-law, who on Brigadier Shelton’s command had ridden off unescorted and had run the gauntlet of Afghan attacks, reached the gate of the hall of audience of the palace safely. He dismounted and was about to enter the palace when an Afghan leaped out of the crowd, stabbed him three times in the face and throat and fled. ‘Sturt,’ says Lawrence, ‘rushed into the court, sword in hand, bleeding profusely and crying out that he was being murdered. The King calling his Master of the Horse, desired him, on pain of losing his head, immediately to search out and arrest the assassin. I washed and staunched poor Sturt’s wounds and he was sent back in one of the King’s palanquins, under a strong escort to the camp.’

  There his wife and his mother-in-law took him into their charge. His wounds were painful but not dangerous, and with the extraordinary vitality of the nineteenth-century soldier he was soon to recover.

  The King’s followers now urged him
to recall his son and his Vizier from the city — their lives were too valuable to be lost. Asked his opinion, Lawrence answered: ‘Let them stay where they are, they can do much good.’ He silently lamented that our troops were not there as well, aiding them, as they should have been.

  But the King, frightened for his son’s life, sent a messenger recalling both the Prince and the prime minister, Usmin Khan. Lawrence related: ‘The latter, a bold, uncompromising man came in panting from the fray and, greatly excited, said in an angry tone to the King — “By recalling us just in the moment of victory your troops will be defeated, and evil will fall on all.”’

  Usmin Khan had uttered an unerring prophecy, but no one there, not even Lawrence, comprehended the awful truth of his words.

  The Shah and his courtiers argued and wrung their hands. The Prince and Usmin Khan swore and grew angry. Lawrence, desperate to see something done, and aware that Shelton was still waiting for the word to advance to the fortress, persuaded the Shah to send him with an escort to give the word, so that in the Bala Hissar Shelton would be well placed to attack the city.

  The Shah agreed and Lawrence galloped the two miles to the Seeah Sung camp — north of the Bala Hissar and two miles east of the main cantonments on the other side of the Kabul River. ‘I reached the Seeah Sung cantonment unhurt,’ he says, ‘and Shelton, under my instructions, set out at once… with a force consisting of a squadron of the 5th Light Cavalry, a company of the 44th Foot, a wing of the 54th Native Infantry, four Horse Artillery guns and the Shah’s 6th Infantry.’

  Lawrence returned now to Macnaghten, at the mission compound beside the cantonments. Elphinstone, still conferring with his staff, had decided against a full-scale attack on the city — the only move which could have saved the day. Lawrence obtained permission from Macnaghten to return to the Bala Hissar and Sir William agreed, directing Captains Troup and Johnston with a strong escort to go with him.

  They reached it about 3 p.m. and found the Shah still walking about the court surrounded by his officers, debating what should be done. Lawrence heard the thump of artillery and the crackle of jezails near by. He sought out Shelton — he was directing the fire on the city from two of his guns. ‘Shelton, on my joining him,’ Lawrence recalls, ‘seemed almost beside himself, not knowing how to act and with incapacity stamped on every feature of his face.’ Lawrence knew him as a strict disciplinarian, intelligent and personally brave, but apt to condemn all measures which he himself hadn’t initiated.

  He recalls that Shelton now asked what he should do. ‘Enter the city at once,’ Lawrence urged.

  ‘My force is inadequate, and you don’t appear to know what street firing is,’ Shelton protested.

  ‘You asked my opinion and I have given it. It is what I would do myself,’ Lawrence said.

  Rounds from the Afghan jezails whined past their ears, whisked Captain Macintosh’s hat off his head, and in reply the iron 9-pounders belched red flame, rent the air, threw their shot targetless into the city.

  Lawrence pleaded that two of the guns should be placed on a platform high up on the fortress so that they could fire with effect at the limited area of the revolt — an easier target from above. The Brigadier agreed and ordered Captain Nicholls to take up the guns, but Nicholls argued that the slope was too steep for horses.

  Lawrence lost patience and turning to the Brigadier exclaimed: ‘Really, sir, if you allow your officers to make objections instead of obeying, nothing can be done. We had better unyoke the horses and two companies of the Shah’s own Native Infantry will soon put the guns in position.’

  The Shah’s troops manhandled the guns up the slope and soon they were again thumping shells into the city.

  The Shah himself, who had witnessed all this, now sharply asked Lawrence why Shelton’s troops did not act instead of standing around while every moment the rebellion grew stronger. Lawrence thought he was ‘deeply annoyed’ — remarkable restraint while his kingdom was going up in flames.

  ‘Shelton well knew the King’s anxiety that he should take active measures for quelling the disturbance, but he was in fact quite paralysed and would not act,’ Lawrence says. Shelton, of course, had received no orders to attack from General Elphinstone.

  Indeed, for the General the crunch had already come, earlier in the day. From so irrevocable and violent an act as a full-scale attack he had turned weakly away, preferring inaction and hope instead.

  Shelton, though he fully understood how urgent it was to attack, was hardly likely in face of this to commit his troops in a dangerous role, knowing that heavy losses were inescapable and that with the bad feeling there was between him and the General he would be blamed if he were defeated and blamed too if he won.

  So the artillery blasted the city, the infantry stood to arms and waited, the King continued annoyed and Lawrence took leave of him — ‘as it happened for the last time’ — and returned to the cantonments escorted by the cavalry.

  The sharp crackle of jezail fire down in the city grew louder. Shelton sent an officer to reconnoitre — the Shah’s troops were retreating after heavy losses while under fire from roof-top marksmen. Shelton sent a company of sepoys to cover their retreat and the defeated force came safely into the fortress.

  Oft criticised by the British, the Shah was yet the only person in authority who at this time made any attempt to crush the rising. He failed because his commander tried to force a way to the heart of the city through the narrow streets to where Burnes was under attack. Lawrence believed that had he entered by the wider main thoroughfare he would have arrived there with less opposition and probably have saved both Burnes and the Treasury, as well as putting down the revolt in the Shah’s name and thus restoring his authority.

  Meanwhile, all that Elphinstone had done down in the cantonments was to recall to Kabul the 37th Native Infantry left by Sale to guard the lines of communications and issue orders to strengthen the cantonments against attack. Lieutenant Vincent Eyre of the Bengal Artillery placed every available gun in position round the perimeter — some 3,200 yards in extent.

  But Sale had taken most of the guns and four had gone up to the Bala Hissar with Shelton. Eyre found only a pathetic little arsenal left in the magazine — six 9-pounders, three 24-pounder howitzers, one 12-pounder howitzer and three 5½-inch mortars, with which to defend a total of 3,200 yards. And there were not enough artillerymen to man even these efficiently, only 80 Punjabis — ‘very insufficiently instructed and of doubtful fidelity’, Eyre decided.

  Late in the day while the looting and burning in the city still raged, Elphinstone sent a worried note to Sir William Macnaghten — who, with his wife had now moved into a tent in the cantonments so as to lessen the area to be defended. ‘My dear Sir William,’ Elphinstone wrote. ‘Since you left me I have been considering what can be done tomorrow. Our dilemma is a difficult one. Shelton, if reinforced tomorrow, might, no doubt, force in two columns on his way towards the Lahore gate, and we might from hence force that gate and meet them. But if this were accomplished what shall we gain? It can be done, but not without very great loss, as our people will be exposed to the fire from the houses the whole way. Where is the point you said they were to fortify near Burnes’s house? If they could assemble there, that would be a point of attack; but to march into the town, it seems, we should only have to come back again; and as to setting the city on fire, I fear, from its construction, that it is almost impossible. We must see what the morning brings and then think what can be done…’

  The old General’s state of hopeless confusion stands out as clear as daylight in this worried note, in which he suggests what could be done only to find reasons for not doing it. His lack of urgency, his total failure to come to grips with the danger can only be called tragic. He had confessed his incapacity — ‘done up, fit for nothing’ — but self-esteem alone prevented him handing over to a younger, fitter man.

  In the evening, news of the death of Burnes, his brother and William Broadfoot, and the loo
ting of Johnson’s treasure was confirmed. It left Elphinstone unmoved — not even sympathisers and friends like the artillery officer Vincent Eyre noted any feelings of regret or remorse. Still less did he resolve to crush this challenge to his authority at its outset.

  And so the British allowed 2 November to pass in apathy and confusion while the Afghans gained confidence and determination. News of the rising was carried swiftly throughout the entire region. Hundreds of tribesmen seized jezails, rode from their villages into Kabul, assembled beneath the rebel banners and swore on the Koran to defeat the infidel invaders.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Throughout the night of 2 November the sharp rattle of musketry heralded that two of the British forts were braving all the attacks the Afghans could muster. Captain Trevor, with his wife and seven children in one fort on the outskirts of the city, and Captain Mackenzie in another, fought on grimly, but no help was sent them. Like Burnes, they were disregarded.

  At 3 a.m. a heavy burst of firing was heard from the Seeah Sung hills, about two miles east of the cantonments. Drums beat the alarm; scouts said a large force approached.

  The whole garrison stood to arms and peered into the darkness, expecting that a powerful Afghan army would make a chupao, or night attack. Then came the cheering sound of British bugles and soon the welcome news that the force was the 37th Native Infantry, some 1,000 men under Major Griffiths.

  Recalled only the day before from a post in the Khoord-Kabul Pass, they had for twelve hours successfully fought off the attacks of 3,000 Ghilzyes right up to Kabul. ‘They had by their bold bearing and discipline utterly baffled their enemies,’ noted George Lawrence, ‘arriving in perfect order with their followers, tents and baggage, having had only two or three sepoys and one officer wounded.’