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

by George Bruce

  After some argument he relented enough to agree that all the artillery but six guns should be handed over to him, and that married men and their families should be exchanged for the present hostages. In this form he returned the treaty that day, 24 December, to Elphinstone — together with a written accusation that Sir William Macnaghten had been guilty of a deliberate breach of faith that had cost him his life.

  In a spirit both cynical and treacherous in view of what was later to occur, the document was headed:

  ‘Agreement of peace that has been determined upon with the frank English gentlemen, to which engagement, if they consent and act accordingly, on the part of the heads and leaders of Afghanistan hence-forward no infractions will occur to their friendly engagements.’

  The document — its contents were harsh — stipulated that ‘the going of the gentlemen shall be speedy’ — that General Sale’s army at Jellalabad should march previous to the army at Kabul and proceed to Peshawar. Akbar Khan or Mahommed Oosman Khan would escort the army of the English to ensure that no harm came to it on the way. All cash, gold or silver must be surrendered.

  It ended cruelly: ‘If any of the Frank gentlemen have taken a Musselman wife, she shall be given up. If there be any questions about any article, send a note quickly by the bearer.’

  Then, as now, Christmas Day was celebrated by British forces overseas no less heartily than at home, but, Vincent Eyre noted lugubriously: ‘a more cheerless Christmas Day perhaps never dawned upon British soldiers in a strange land; and the few whom the force of habit urged to exchange the customary greetings of the season, did so with countenances and in tones indicative of anything but merriment.’

  But Christmas Day in fact brought good news. The political officers Macgregor and Mackeson had written to Macnaghten from Jellalabad and Peshawar respectively to say that a relief force had already marched from India and they urged Macnaghten to hold out to the last. As his deputy, Pottinger received the letters. Elphinstone had already requested him as senior political officer, to carry on negotiations with the chiefs. Pottinger had reluctantly agreed, but had at once found himself faced with terms which would throw the whole army upon the mercies of the bloodthirsty tribesmen and the killing winter.

  Armed now with this letter, Pottinger — a tough, determined officer who had twice already shown his metal — now declared that the only honourable course would indeed be to hold out to the last at Kabul or force an immediate retreat to Jellalabad. No confidence could in any case be placed in any treaty with the chiefs, he said, and to bind the hands of the Government of India by promising to leave the country merely to save their own lives and property would be inconsistent with their duty.

  But Pottinger’s dose of cold, honest realism did nothing to halt the rush to self-destruction upon which Elphinstone and his staff were bent.

  Elphinstone called another council of war at which Pottinger, still suffering from his wounds, urged that the entire force and followers should sally out of the cantonments and fight its way up to the Bala Hissar and there hold out until the arrival of the reinforcements which they at last knew were on the march from India.

  But if he hoped in this way to rouse the General from his invalid lethargy into acceptance of his plan, he was disappointed. The General was unable to make up his mind one way or the other, but Brigadier Shelton opposed it.

  ‘We were prevented from going into the Bala Hissar by the obstinacy of Brigadier Shelton who declared the attempt impracticable,’ says Pottinger in his official report. ‘I pointed out the very doubtful character of any engagement we might make with the heads of the insurgents, the probability they could not make it good; and begged that they would spare us the dishonour and government the loss which any negotiations must entail.

  ‘In a council of war held at the General’s house — Shelton, Anquetil, Chambers, Grant and Bellew present — everyone voted to the contrary; so seeing I could do nothing, consented.’

  So Pottinger began to make arrangements with the chiefs again, including the payment of 12½ lakhs (£125,000) which they claimed Macnaghten had before his death promised them for safe conduct of the troops to Peshawar. ‘I would willingly,’ wrote Pottinger, ‘have avoided the payment of such; but the enemy, by stopping our supplies obliged me to suffer the imposition, as the military authorities were urgent to prevent a renewal of hostilities, cost what it might.’

  Captain Lawrence, Macnaghten’s military secretary, then a prisoner, was released on 27 December, for the purpose of preparing the money bills for the Chiefs for a final total of £140,000, but Lawrence refused to be tricked in this matter. ‘I stipulated,’ he writes, ‘that the bills should be cashed only on the presentation of certificates from our political agent at Peshawar of the safe arrival there of our troops, and took care to warn the bankers of the city of this part of the stipulation. This prevented the bills being marketable in Kabul, and the chiefs consequently could raise nothing on them.’

  The ratified treaty was sent in to the British on New Year’s Day, 1842, bearing the seals of the eighteen Afghan chiefs. ‘At the present happy moment,’ said the preamble, ‘to put away strife and contention and avert discord and enmity, the representatives of the great British nation… have concluded a comprehensive treaty… which they have confided to the hands of the Afghan nobility, that by it the chain of friendship may be strengthened…’

  Thus rubbing salt into the British wounds it stipulated that the troops should ‘speedily quit the territories of Afghanistan… and shall not return’ and they must start twenty-four hours after receiving the animal transport. The troops at Kandahar under General Nott and at Jellalabad under General Sale were also to march out of the country immediately. The Kabul force would be allowed to take with them ‘six horse-artillery guns and three mule guns, and the rest, by way of friendship, shall be left for our use. And all muskets and ordnance stores in the magazine shall, as a token of friendship, be made over to our agents.’

  Elphinstone, who did at least refuse to hand over the women as hostages, had not only committed his own force to surrender and retreat but also the other two British forces in Afghanistan, both under the command of determined generals. It will be seen how these generals, Nott in Kandahar, and Sale in Jellalabad, reacted to this illegal act.

  Meanwhile, warnings from Afghan friends began to reach the troops in Kabul that no trust should be placed in Akbar Khan’s promise of safe conduct through the mountain passes. Mohan Lal warned Pottinger that unless the chiefs’ sons accompanied the British as hostages they were all doomed.

  An Afghan friend revealed to Captain Johnson that Akbar Khan had sworn to secure the English women as hostages for the safe return of his own wives and family — and to kill every British soldier except one, whom he would allow to reach Jellalabad to tell him his comrades had all been slaughtered.

  ‘Whether we go by treaty or not,’ Lady Sale wrote realistically on 28 December, ‘I fear but few of us will live to reach the provinces.’ Her contempt for the treaty was swiftly justified. Armed tribesmen loitering around the defences still persistently attacked drovers bringing in grain and other provisions, against which robbery the British were ordered to take no action — the staff officers were frightened of offending the chiefs. Having surrendered under the treaty several hundred barrels of gunpowder, a great number of muskets and all but six guns, the British now received no food.

  And in the cantonments the troops were already living from hand to mouth. To try to keep warm in a temperature which at night approached zero, furniture was broken up and burned. Lady Sale wrote of her last meals at Kabul being cooked on a fire of wood from their tables and chairs. ‘We are to depart without a guard, without money, without provisions, without wood,’ she lamented.

  Shah Shuja still held, out in the Bala Hissar with his 860 women, whom he was said to have warned that if the cantonment fell into rebel hands he would poison. Hearing now that the British had in effect capitulated, he made a final appeal to El
phinstone ‘if it were well to forsake him in his hour of need and to deprive him of the aid of that force which he had hitherto been taught to consider as his own?’

  But for all that it implied of British honour and his own life or death, he might as well have appealed to the 860 ladies. Elphinstone and Shelton were fixed in their determination to quit Afghanistan as soon as the chiefs provided the escort and to leave Shah Shuja to whatever fate befell him.

  ‘The snow was falling heavily and all our Hindustanees looked cold and miserable,’ Captain Lawrence noted. ‘Crowds of Afghans were bartering all sorts of curiosities in exchange for articles the officers and men wished to get rid of to lighten their baggage.

  ‘I gave my cocked hat to one fellow who instantly clapped it on his head and galloped off to the city, narrowly escaping being shot by his friends, who fired at him supposing him to be a British officer… Few of the Afghans credited the report of our intended departure, not supposing we could be so insane as to leave our position. Many among them, friendly to us, freely expressed their amazement, or shook their heads doubtfully, when informed we were actually to retreat.’

  Orders were published on 4 January that the army would march next day, when the first bugle would blow at 6 a.m., but these orders were later countermanded because the Afghan escort was not yet ready.

  Then came an offer of help that could yet save the army — from the Kohistanee tribe on 3 December to Captain Sturt, who had married Lady Sale’s daughter during the halcyon days of the Kabul occupation. Sturt, though a junior officer, was in charge of fortifications and defences and so of importance. He had consistently opposed the policy of retreat in favour of either an attack on Kabul or occupation of the Bala Hissar.

  The Kohistanees’ agent promised that if the British hung on for three more days they would supply rations and guarantee to attack and fire Kabul within this period. They also promised to escort reinforcements up to Kabul from Jellalabad, offering to furnish four of their chiefs as hostages for the implementation of their offer. Moreover, they swore that the Kabul chiefs were false and intended to destroy the British in the mountains. As for payment — the British word would do.

  Sturt must well have seen this apparently safe offer as the silver lining in the grim and threatening cloud which had overhung them for the last few weeks. Here was their best chance yet of saving themselves, for a powerful attack on the city by this tribe, backed up by sorties both from the cantonments and the Bala Hissar could not but succeed.

  In a state of what must have been great hope and excitement he took the news to his military chiefs. Lady Sale said: ‘The reply he received was, “It was better to keep the matter quiet; as in the present state of things it might, if known, cause excitement.”’

  The General and Shelton had now thrown away their last chance of avoiding disaster.

  Orders were published on 4 January that the army would march for Jellalabad next day, but these orders were again countermanded because the Afghan escort was still not yet ready. Meantime, the cold grew worse — in Lady Sale’s sitting-room at nine o’clock in the morning on 4 January the temperature fell to 11 degrees Fahrenheit even with a blazing fire of bits of the last chairs.

  The next day Sturt made an opening in the cantonment defences through which the army and camp-followers could march out. Shah Shuja now sent a secret messenger to Lady Macnaghten urging her to withdraw from the army, who, he said, would all be destroyed, and come with as many other women as wished into the safety of the Bala Hissar.

  Pottinger, when Lady Macnaghten told him of this, in a last effort to fend off disaster, proposed to Captain Lawrence ‘to urge General Elphinstone when the force marched out of cantonments, to order them to move straight into the Bala Hissar, without previously saying a word to anyone, instead of proceeding by the road leading to Jellalabad, provided I thought the King would receive us into the Bala Hissar’.

  It was a clever move and might have saved many lives.

  ‘I replied,’ says Lawrence, ‘that I was sure His Majesty would be delighted at such a movement, and volunteered to ride on in advance and announce our coming. Pottinger and I then communicated with General Elphinstone.

  ‘“Can you guarantee us supplies?” the General demanded.

  ‘“We cannot guarantee, but we are pretty sure of sufficient supplies.”

  ‘“No, we retreat!” was the General’s decision.’

  It was final. Orders were issued for each fighting-man to take three days’ provisions in his haversack and forty rounds of ammunition in his pouch and the force to be ready to march the following morning, 6 January, at daybreak.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The bugles blew at first light on this fateful day. It was clear, frosty and very cold, the thermometer well below freezing point and the snow nearly a foot deep. About 4,500 fighting-men and 12,000 male camp-followers, apart from thousands of wives and children, assembled ready to move off in the intense cold.

  Sick or pregnant women and Lady Macnaghten were to be borne by Indian bearers through the deep snow in either palanquins or dhoolies. Lady Sale, Mrs. Sturt and one or two other wives, rode ponies; children would ride on the saddle in front or behind.

  Lady Sale noted: ‘Taj Mahommed (an Afghan friend) says that Mrs. Sturt and I must wear neemchees (sheepskin coats) over our habits — common leather ones — and turbans, and ride mixed in with the suwars (camel drivers); not to go in palkees or keep near the other ladies, as they are very likely to be attacked.’

  Jellalabad lay 90 miles over the mountains to the west of Kabul, which was some 6,000 feet above sea-level. After crossing the Kabul River the route entered the Khoord-Kabul Pass, rising through this narrow precipitous gorge to about 9,000 feet for some five miles, to Khoord-Kabul. It then wound upwards for another 1,000 feet to Tezeen, a fort eight or nine miles to the west, through two more rocky passes and across several tributaries of the Tezeen River. The route then continued through some of the wildest mountains in the world, through the Jugdulluk Pass, Sourkab, Gandamuk and Futtehabad, descending gradually to 2,000 feet and the milder climate of Jellalabad — throughout, a stony, icy track rather than a road, littered with boulders that had fallen or been heaved down from the peaks above.

  General Elphinstone was now committing to this wintry hell a weak and dispirited force, encumbered by 12,000 undisciplined camp-followers, in face of the national uprising of a nation which traditionally lived on loot and murder.

  He intended on the first day to march early to reach Koord-Kabul, and the next day another 15 miles to Tezeen, both to get out of the coldest and snowiest region quickly and to escape attacks by the tribesmen, believed not yet to have gathered along the route. But the General himself caused delays that upset these plans from the start.

  Brigadier Shelton had ordered the baggage to be loaded by moonrise so that a start could be made by 8 a.m., but in the cantonments at this hour everyone still waited and shivered. Since dawn Captain Sturt had been struggling waist-high in the icy river water, directing the removal of boulders from the bed so that gun-carriages could be placed there to make a platform for a bridge — for this, though the river was easily fordable, the General had insisted upon.

  Sturt had seen the river-bed cleared and had since been hindered by the General’s foolish order that permission for the gun-carriage to be taken to the river must be obtained from him — even Shelton, his second-in-command, was not authorised to give this authority, and eventually he went to the General to obtain it.

  ‘The order was for the baggage to assemble at 8 a.m.,’ wrote Shelton in his report. ‘At that hour I went to Elphinstone’s quarters, to beg he would let the carriages of the gun-wagons go out to form a foot-bridge for the infantry over the Kabul River, about 300 yards from the cantonments — and got offended for my trouble. He was just sitting down to breakfast.’

  Sturt and his men waited in their freezing clothes by the river. The vast crowd of troops and camp-followers froze in the cantonmen
t parade ground in the snow and the General sat down to breakfast. Finally, he gave the necessary order, the gun-carriages were taken to the river, Sturt’s men heaved them into place one beside the other in the swirling water and put the planks in place to make the bridge.

  By half past nine the promised Afghan escort had still not arrived, and the vast assembly of men, women and children waited in a temperature below zero.

  It was decided to march without further delay, presumably on Elphinstone’s orders, and not long after half past nine, bugles rang out, drums beat and the advance guard marched out into the snowy plain, led by 600 redcoats of the British 44th Regiment, 220 Indian sappers, 100 sabres of Irregular Horse and three 3-pounder mountain guns, all commanded by Brigadier Anquetil.

  Next followed Captain Lawrence, in charge of the party of women and children on ponies, and in palanquins on the shoulders of Indian bearers staggering under their burden through the snow. Remembering the warning they had received, Lady Sale and her daughter, Mrs. Sturt, without a word quickly left the other women, rode up to Captain Hay and mingled themselves with his Indian cavalry. Progress in the deep snow was slow. ‘Mrs. Sturt and I rode with the horsemen through the river,’ wrote Lady Sale, ‘in preference to attempting the rattling bridge of planks laid across the gun-carriages.’ By half past eleven the advance had gone barely a mile.

  Now Afghan horsemen appeared and the mass of thousands of terrified camp-followers suddenly surged among the marching troops, so that officers could barely keep sight, let alone control of their men in the confusion. Frightened of fording the river, the camp-followers jostled and fought to cross by the bridge; many of them fell in the river and drowned at once.

  The main column of troops under Brigadier Shelton now converged on this struggling mass — three Horse Artillery 9- pounder guns, 500 sabres of Captain Anderson’s Horse, 650 bayonets of the 37th Native Infantry, 700 bayonets of the 5th Native Infantry, the sick, the wounded and the long, long column of several hundred bullocks and camels carrying rations, ammunition, gunpowder, equipment and baggage.