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

by George Bruce

  The sands were running out. By noon the next day, 22 December, no grain had arrived — nor had the Ghilzye chiefs declared themselves on the side of the Shah and the British.

  There was still hope, but Macnaghten must have realised that he was on a knife edge — that his own life would be forfeit if Akbar Khan heard about his double-dealing. So that evening, to lull Akbar’s suspicions, he made him a lordly gift of his wife’s splendid carriage, with a pair of fine horses.

  Remembering too that the chief had said he would like a handsome pair of double-barrelled holster pistols belonging to Captain Lawrence, he asked Lawrence for them as a personal favour. ‘I naturally demurred strongly to giving up my pistols,’ Lawrence relates, ‘as it was no time to part with such useful weapons; but as Sir William made it a personal favour I could not of course decline.’

  Macnaghten sent the pistols to Akbar, and thus, armed unknowingly his own executioner. Such was the savage irony of the presentation, for he had hoped that the gift would make him more friendly.

  Hoping he had lulled Akbar’s suspicions, Macnaghten then wrote to Mohan Lal asking him to warn the Ghilzyes not to send in any grain yet after all. ‘The sending of grain just now would do more harm than good to our cause; and it would lead the Barukzyes to suppose that I am intriguing with a view of breaking my agreement; but I can never break that agreement so long as all the Khawanen wish me to stand by it. Pray thank our friends, nevertheless, for their kind attention to our interest. I wish very much to please them and am sorry my treasury is so empty.’

  Scarcely was this ink dry than in a ferment he wrote again. ‘I have already written to you begging that the Ghilzye chiefs should send no grain tonight. They should first openly declare themselves… If they do not do so I must stand by my agreement… If while our present agreement lasts I were to receive a large supply of grain from the Ghilzyes, suspicion would be raised that I intend to break my engagement, and wish to keep the troops here, in spite of the wishes of all the chiefs to the contrary.

  ‘It would be very agreeable to stop here for a few months instead of having to travel through the snow; but I must not consider what is agreeable, but what is consistent with our faith…’

  Macnaghten the day before had asked that the Ghilzyes should first send grain and then declare themselves; and the very next day, on second thoughts, he begged that they should not do so until they had openly allied themselves with the British. The cause of this turn-about was a note from Mohan Lal warning him that Akbar Khan was now plotting against him and that he should place no faith in anything Akbar now said.

  In his efforts to save the British force Macnaghten had overplayed his hand and had been warned, for Akbar Khan now suspected his scheme to set some of the tribes against him. He determined to test Macnaghten’s honesty of purpose. No doubt recalling the rumour that the Envoy had already offered money for the chiefs’ heads, he set a trap that would uphold Macnaghten’s integrity or expose his treachery.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Akbar commissioned two reliable followers to seek an audience with Macnaghten with details of a treacherous scheme, advantageous to the British, that would simultaneously advance Akbar at the expense of his fellow chiefs. To ensure that his two envoys would see Macnaghten, he had them escorted by Captain Skinner, a political officer who had been trapped in the city at the start of the insurrection and who recently had been living there under Akbar’s protection. Skinner, says Colin Mackenzie, was ‘commonly called “Gentleman Jim” from his more than usually pleasing manners and his cultivated mind’.

  Macnaghten, who had recently left the tent in the cantonments in which since the start of the insurrection he had been living and had returned to the comfort of his own house just outside the ramparts, admitted them and talked privately to Skinner while the two Afghans waited in another room. In a jesting fashion, Skinner said that he was the bearer of a message from Akbar Khan ‘of a portentous nature’ and that he felt as one ‘loaded with combustibles’.

  Macnaghten, by now doubtless exhausted by the strain of his life-and-death intrigues no less than the appalling ruin of the whole situation, grasped as quickly at this hint as a drowning man at a piece of driftwood. The waiting Afghans were invited into the room to tell Macnaghten about Akbar’s plot.

  Akbar and the Ghilzyes, the envoys said, should unite with the British troops, seize Mahmoud Khan’s fort and Ameenoollah Khan, one of Akbar’s fellow rebel chiefs, decapitate him and present his head to Macnaghten for a large sum of money.

  Macnaghten at once turned down this part of the plot — it was against the customs of his country, he protested, to pay blood money. The Afghans seemed to accept this, then proposed that Shah Shuja would stay on as Shah, with Mahomed Akbar as his Vizier, and the British too would stay until the spring, when they would withdraw as though by their own free will. Ameenoollah should be merely thrown into prison.

  Akbar Khan was to receive a cash payment of £300,000 and an annuity of £40,000.

  The plot won over Macnaghten. It offered all the things he wanted — the ultimate success of the policy of restoring the Shah to the throne, with which he was so closely identified; avoidance of the threat of death in the snow-bound passes that now hung over the army’s head and his own; and the chance of his own departure for India.

  Without even stopping to consider whether it was treachery he staked everything on it.

  Paper and ink were sent for; the Envoy wrote his agreement in Persian and signed it. The Afghans thanked him profusely, took the paper and returned with it and Captain Skinner through the snow to Akbar Khan in the waiting city.

  Dost Mahommed’s son now had on this incriminating document the name of the man whom he knew to be one of the architects of his father’s ruin and exile. Macnaghten had given Akbar all the evidence he needed that he was capable of double-dealing — that Akbar and the other chiefs had repeatedly during the last few days broken their word to Macnaghten and the British worried him not at all. British confusion and ineptitude had enabled Akbar and his friends to overcome them. Now they feared that at the last moment the wily Macnaghten might still prevail against them. So they planned their counter-action to prevent it, a snare for the Envoy.

  Macnaghten was to meet Akbar Khan next day to effect the plan. He went in the morning to Elphinstone and let him into the secret. The General asked vaguely what part the other, the Barukzye chiefs, were to play and Macnaghten answered that they were ‘not in the plot’. To Elphinstone the word ‘plot’ was alarming — he said he did not like the sound of it. Was there no fear of treachery?

  ‘Leave it to me — I understand these things better than you do,’ Macnaghten replied brusquely. ‘I wish you to have two regiments and two guns ready, as speedily and as quietly as possible, for the capture of Mahmoud Khan’s fort. The rest you may leave to me.’

  They parted, but at the eleventh hour a little of Elphinstone’s good sense returned. He felt that something sinister was afoot and at once sat down and dashed off a note to Macnaghten setting out his fears. ‘I hope there is no fear of treachery,’ he warned. ‘The sending of two guns and two regiments away would divide our force… What guarantee have we for the truth of all that has been said? I only mention this to make you cautious as to sending away part of our force. Perhaps it is unnecessary with you, who know these people so well…’

  Elphinstone’s letter was for some reason undelivered; yet it would have been ineffectual, for even the tearful pleading of his own wife failed to keep Macnaghten from the meeting. But there was to be a final encounter between the two leaders. Macnaghten had asked Captains Trevor, Mackenzie and Lawrence to accompany him with an escort of ten troopers to the meeting with Akbar Khan. As they were leaving the cantonment, according to Lawrence, the General met them and again warned of treachery.

  Macnaghten answered: ‘If you will at once march out the troops and meet the enemy, I will accompany you, and I am sure we shall beat them. As regards these negotiations, I have
no faith in them.’

  Elphinstone shook his head. ‘Macnaghten, I can’t — the troops are not to be depended on,’ he said.

  These were the last words that passed between them. The two regiments and the guns were not available as the cavalcade rode out of the cantonment, but Macnaghten rode on, remarking how strange it was that although both the General and Shelton knew the critical state of affairs they should have nothing ready. ‘But it is of a piece with all the rest,’ he added bitterly.

  Not to have the troops and guns ready would turn out to be Elphinstone’s most tragic blunder yet.

  Macnaghten now remembered that the covetous Akbar had sought as another gift a fine Arab horse belonging to Captain Grant, one of Elphinstone’s staff officials, who, for a large sum, had agreed to sell it to Macnaghten. Captain Mackenzie returned to cantonments and had the horse brought out, while Macnaghten now for the first time told Captains Lawrence and Trevor, who were also accompanying the part, the details of Akbar’s scheme. Lawrence at once felt uneasy about it and he too warned of treachery. Macnaghten surprised them both.

  ‘Treachery!’ he answered. ‘Of course there is, but what can I do? The General has declared his inability to fight, we have no prospect of aid from any quarters, the enemy are only playing with us and not one article of the treaty have they fulfilled, and I have no confidence whatever in them. The life I have led for the last six weeks, you, Lawrence, know well; and rather than be disgraced, and live it all over again, I would risk a thousand deaths. Dangerous it is, but if it succeeds it is worth all the risks. Success will save our honour and more than make up for the risks.’

  The party had now reached a bank beside the swift-flowing Kabul river, 500 yards east of the south-eastern corner of the cantonment, where Akbar Khan, Mahomed Shah Khan, Sultan Jan, Khoda Buksh Khan, Azad Khan and several other chiefs awaited. The salutations — ‘Salaam Aleikoon’ — ‘Peace be with you!’ were uttered behind the heavy beards.

  Macnaghten said cheerfully to Akbar Khan: ‘Sirdar Sahib, here is Grant Sahib’s horse for you, as you wished.’

  ‘Thanks be to you,’ Akbar said cordially, ‘and also for Lawrence Sahib’s pistols, which you see I am wearing. Shall we now dismount?’

  Sir William agreed, some horse rugs were spread on a small mound sloping towards the river, which was freer from snow than the surrounding ground. Macnaghten, elegant in his formal black frock-coat, black top-hat and tight grey trousers, sat down between Trevor and Mackenzie, in brilliant red coats and tall black shakoes. The chiefs, in high turbans and sheepskin poshteens, sat down opposite.

  ‘At first on dismounting I stood behind him,’ says Lawrence, ‘but on being importuned by Mahomed Shah Khan to be seated, I knelt on one knee, the escort being drawn up a short distance in the rear.’

  A large number of armed Afghan retainers had by now gathered round, and Macnaghten, at Lawrence’s instance, asked if they could be sent some distance away, as the meeting was confidential. ‘No, we are all in the same boat and Lawrence Sahib need not be the least alarmed,’ Akbar Khan answered.

  Akbar Khan opened the conference by abruptly asking the Envoy if he were ready to carry out what had been agreed the previous evening. ‘Why not?’ Macnaghten answered. The crowd of armed Afghans now crowded round more closely and Lawrence again remarked that if the conference were to be secret they should be removed. Some of the chiefs made as if to lash out with their whips at them, but Akbar Khan again objected — ‘No, we are all in the same boat,’ he repeated.

  Macnaghten and the three officers were then suddenly seized violently from behind. ‘I heard Akbar call out, “Begeer! Begeer!” (Seize! Seize!),’ relates Mackenzie, ‘and turning round I saw him grasp the Envoy’s left hand with an expression on his face of the most diabolical ferocity. I think it was Sultan Jan who had hold of the Envoy’s right hand. They dragged him in a stooping posture down the hillock, the only words I heard poor Sir William utter being — “Az barae Khoda!” — “For God’s sake!”’

  The swords and pistols of Lawrence, Mackenzie and Trevor were snatched from their sides. ‘If you value your life come along with me,’ growled Mahomed Shah Khan to Lawrence. The three were forced to mount each behind one of the chiefs while swarms of Afghans waving swords tried to attack them, yelling that they should be given up as a koorban — a sacrifice — in revenge.

  The ten British escorting troops, frightened by the crowd of several hundred armed Afghans, galloped off back to the cantonments at the first sign of violence. Lieutenant Le Geyt had no choice but to follow them to try to get help, leaving Macnaghten struggling on the ground with Akbar, and Lawrence, Mackenzie and Trevor carried off on horseback. A few seconds later two pistol shots rang out.

  Colin Mackenzie tells how, carried off behind Gulam Moyan-ud-din, a former chief of Kabul police, he ran the gauntlet of blows and sword thrusts from a mob now mad for their blood. ‘Ascending a slippery bank, the horse fell,’ he relates, ‘and I now received a heavy blow on the head from a bludgeon, which fortunately did not quite deprive me of my wits…

  ‘How I reached the spot where Mahommed Akbar was receiving the congratulations of the multitude I know not; but I remember a fanatic rushing on me and twisting his hand in my collar until I became exhausted from suffocation.’

  But the chiefs struck out with their swords and drove Mackenzie’s attackers back. Mahommed Akbar then turned to him and growled in a tone of triumph — ‘You’ll seize my country, will you!’

  No doubt in a fever of exultation at his triumph, he rode off on some urgent mission and Mackenzie’s captor hurried him a few hundred yards west of the cantonments to Mahommed Shereef’s fort. Here he was put into a room under guard and shortly joined by Captain Lawrence, also somewhat dazed and bruised from blows.

  Aminoollah Khan, the chief who was to have been seized and imprisoned under the terms of the plot suddenly blustered in. ‘We’ll blow you from the guns — any death will be too good for you,’ he shouted. Not long after he had gone a blunderbuss was thrust through the window and fired at them — thrust aside just in time by their keepers. Then a bleeding human hand severed at the wrist was brandished at the window. ‘We saw that it belonged to a European, but we were not aware that it was the hand of the poor Envoy,’ says Mackenzie.

  Seemingly it was Akbar’s intention to capture Magnaghten with the other three, and hold him as a hostage or use him to force punitive terms on the Indian Government. But Macnaghten had reportedly thrown him to the ground and Akbar in a fury shot him with the pistols Macnaghten had given him as a gift.

  So died Sir William Macnaghten, the scholar and administrator whom ambition led to turn man of action. There is something memorable in the cool courage with which he struggled on alone to try to save the British by sowing discord in the Afghan camp — to try to win by diplomacy after the General with an army had failed through incapacity.

  Captain Trevor was killed, too — though he would have lived had he remained one of Akbar’s hostages. A fanatical priest leading a rabble of Ghaznis — religious fighters — heard an Afghan shout — ‘That dog is Trevor’ — and cut at him with his sabre. Trevor fell a bloody corpse beneath a whirl of blows.

  In the cantonments all this time, General Elphinstone had characteristically done nothing. Le Geyt galloped back, but the news of the attack on Macnaghten, noted Vincent Eyre, who was watching on the ramparts, ‘instead of rousing our leaders to instant action, seemed to paralyse their faculties; and although it was evident that our Envoy had been basely entrapped, if not actually murdered before our very gate, and though even now crowds of Afghans, horse and foot, were seen passing… in hostile array… not a gun was opened upon them; not a soldier was stirred from his post…; treachery was allowed to triumph in open day; the murder of a British Envoy was perpetrated in the face and within musket-shot of a British army…’

  But not content with his death, the Ghazni fanatics hacked off Macnaghten’s head, paraded it in triumph through the city, dr
agged his mutilated body through the streets and finally hung it up for all to see in the great bazaar.

  Elphinstone, in face of this outrage, defiantly ordered the troops to stand to arms. They may have expected that at last their General had regained his senses and would attack the city by night to avenge Macnaghten and save their women and their children. But no such thing occurred. ‘The garrison was got ready and remained under arms all day,’ General Elphinstone wrote in his official report. And that, after letting the Envoy go to his death, was all. General Elphinstone was quite unmoved.

  The Afghans, too, seemingly expected that the British would attack in revenge, for, as Lieutenant Melville noted, ‘At 9 p.m. a great disturbance was heard towards the city, horrible shouts and cries, with rattling of musketry…’

  The Afghans were making psychological warfare — certain that before dawn the crash of musket volleys and the steady tread of the iron-shod boots of the redcoats would be heard in Kabul’s streets.

  But all thoughts of attack had long since left the minds of Elphinstone and Shelton. The defences were manned; nothing more. ‘Our military chiefs,’ says the historian Kaye, ‘had settled down into the belief that now it had become their duty only to suffer.’

  And from this date on, 23 December 1841, suffer they would for Elphinstone’s feebleness, and suffer to the last man.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Akbar Khan now became intransigent. Mackenzie and Lawrence were given Afghan turbans, tunics and baggy trousers to wear and taken under a strong guard to Nawab Zemaun Khan’s house in the city, where they found Akbar waiting for them. In a transparent attempt to justify Macnaghten’s murder by a violent tirade against the British he accused them of treachery and said that the terms must now include the delivery as hostages of all the married families and the surrender of all the British guns, ammunition and money.