The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

by Peter Hopkirk

  Although the defenders had no way of knowing it, two British forces were at that moment racing to get to Chitral, one from the south and the other from the east. When word of the garrison’s plight first reached India, preparations for an expedition to Swat and Chitral had been proceeding at a somewhat leisurely pace, for Robertson was not thought to be in any immediate danger. The enemy, moreover, had been given until April 1 to withdraw, which it was rather assumed they would. But as intelligence began to come in that Robertson and his small party were now under siege, and that the ammunition convoy from Gilgit had been ambushed, leaving two officers in Sher’s hands, this complacency turned to something little short of panic. The vision of a handful of British officers, with their loyal native troops, holding out against overwhelming odds in a remote and picturesque fortress, brought to mind the recent tragedy in the Sudan. ‘It is Khartoum all over again,’ declared The Graphic. Those with slightly longer memories remembered Burnes, Macnaghten, Cavagnari, Conolly, Stoddart and other victims of oriental treachery beyond India’s frontiers. With dread visions of the main relief party arriving too late, as had happened at Khartoum, the defence chiefs decided to send ahead a second, smaller column from Gilgit.

  There were by now growing fears in Gilgit that the troubles might spread eastwards from Chitral. The only troops therefore who could be spared from garrison duties were 400 Sikh Pioneers. Although mainly used for road-building, these sturdy men were also trained soldiers who had shown themselves to be formidable fighters. Furthermore, they were commanded by an extremely able and experienced frontier soldier, Colonel James Kelly. Even so, despite the addition of forty Kashmiri sappers and two mountain guns, it was a pitifully small force for so crucial a mission. However, the day was saved by the unexpected offer of 900 irregulars by those erstwhile adversaries of Britain, Hunza and Nagar. ‘Splendid men,’ one of Kelly’s officers called them. ‘Hardy, thickset mountaineers, incapable of fatigue.’ The offer was gratefully accepted, and in Gilgit they were issued with modern rifles. So that they would not be mistaken for the enemy, each man was given a strip of red cloth to wrap around his cap. One hundred of them were attached to Kelly’s force, while the rest were deployed to guard the passes while British backs were turned.

  Kelly had little or no time in which to prepare his force or make any plans. His orders were to leave at once, for if Robertson and his men were to avoid the fate of General Gordon, every day, perhaps every hour, was crucial. Ahead lay a forced march, often through deep snow and across some of the harshest terrain in the world, of more than 200 miles. Every man’s hand would be against them, and every pony-track and gorge commanded by sharpshooters from the heights above. Kelly’s force, which took no tents to enable it to travel at maximum possible speed, left Gilgit on March 23. One week later, the main relief column, 15,000 strong and commanded by Major-General Sir Robert Low, marched northwards from Peshawar. The race for Chitral was on.

  Accompanying Low’s force was Captain Francis Younghusband, who had served for a while in Chitral as a political officer, and who had been invited by The Times to act as its special correspondent with the expedition. After some hesitation the authorities had agreed to this, as he was officially on leave at the time. Unlike some, Younghusband did not suspect the Russians of being behind the crisis, but he regarded the expedition’s mobilisation as a rehearsal for crushing any future Russian moves against India’s northern frontiers. The force, consisting of three infantry brigades, two cavalry units, four batteries of mountain guns and numerous smaller units, was regarded by many as unnecessarily large and unwieldy for a task in which speed was more crucial than fire-power. Nonetheless it made rapid progress once it had started, overwhelming several strongly defended enemy positions in a succession of swift engagements. On April 3, Low’s men stormed the 3,500-foot Malakand Pass, leading into Swat, and held by 12,000 of Umra Khan’s Pathan warriors. The latter were taken partly by surprise following a feint attack made against a parallel pass further to the west. They fought with great ferocity and bravery, but they faced some of Britain’s finest infantry regiments, including the King’s Royal Rifles and the Gordon Highlanders, and were finally forced to flee, leaving behind many dead and wounded. British casualties in this key engagement amounted to only seventy killed and wounded.

  Two days later a squadron of Guides Cavalry caught a party of 2,000 of the enemy out in the open, cutting down many of them and putting the rest to flight at little cost to themselves. On April 13, a battalion of Guides Infantry engaged a far stronger enemy force, killing 600 of them for the loss of only a dozen of their own ranks, although these included their own colonel, shot through the stomach while standing in full view of the enemy issuing orders. Four days after that, their morale rapidly crumbling, Umra Khan’s followers prepared to make a stand at his palace-stronghold at Munda. However, finding themselves facing overwhelming odds, they soon melted away into the hills. Inside the fortress, Low’s officers came upon a letter from a Scottish firm based in Bombay offering Umra Khan, in Younghusband’s words, ‘every luxury in the way of arms and ammunition, from Maxim guns at 3,700 rupees, down to revolvers at 34’. None, in fact, had been delivered, for British political officers had got wind of it, and the firm had been ordered to leave India.

  Worryingly, there was still no news of the beleaguered garrison at Chitral. For all anyone knew, Robertson and his men might already have been slaughtered. Nor was there any word of the progress of Colonel Kelly. However, with Munda now in their hands, the only remaining obstacle between Low’s triumphant troops and their objective was the 10,000-foot, snow-filled Lowarai Pass, the southern gateway to Chitral. Once they were across that, then it would merely be a race against time, not to mention against Kelly’s little force advancing from the east. For, with the entire nation looking anxiously on, Low and his officers were determined to be the first to reach Chitral.

  All this time, Kelly and his men had been painfully making their way across the mountains. At first they had not encountered any opposition, the Chitralis never suspecting that anyone would attempt this formidable route at that time of year. On March 30 the column crossed the snowline, 10,000 feet up, and the going began to get progressively worse. As they trudged on upwards, amid heavy snowfalls, the men were issued with tinted glasses to prevent blindness. At night, having no tents, the troops slept in the open. This was too much for the coolies who had been hired to carry the expedition’s rations, and during the first night in the snow they deserted, together with their laden ponies. However, they were forcibly rounded up and from then on kept under close guard. Still there was no sign of the enemy.

  Two marches ahead lay the first real test – the 12,000-foot Shandur Pass. To cross this, with their two mountain guns, everyone knew would prove an awesome, perhaps even impossible, undertaking. At their first attempt they were driven back, for the exhausted mules carrying the guns and ammunition soon found themselves in difficulties. Already two of them had nearly been lost, together with their vital loads, after rolling down a 100-foot decline into deep snow. For the men things were little easier. Already soaked to the skin, and some of them beginning to suffer from frostbite, they found themselves sinking into the snow, in places up to their armpits. Had the Chitralis been guarding the pass, the entire force might well have been massacred. Two days later, on April 3, they tried again. This time Kelly divided the column into several parties. First to head for the snow-blocked pass were 200 hardy Sikh Pioneers. Their job was to cut a way through for the guns. These were to follow next day, borne on makeshift sledges fashioned by Kelly’s engineers. Late that night, after an anxious twelve-hour wait, word came back that the Sikhs had got through. It had been an appalling journey, and it left the force temporarily divided on either side of the pass, and therefore extremely vulnerable. Early next morning began the slow and hazardous task of dragging the guns over. At times they had to be lifted from the sledges and borne physically through the waist-deep snow. But by nightfall it was done.
>
  It was a remarkable feat, accomplished by sheer grit and fine leadership, though not without cost, for the following day Kelly’s doctors treated no fewer than fifty-five cases of snow-blindness and frostbite. Miraculously, however, there was still no sign of the enemy, and two days later the rest of the force was safely across the Shandur Pass. They were now only sixty miles from Chitral, but from here they would have to fight every inch of the way, for the following day the enemy suddenly became aware of their presence. Hitherto the Chitralis had devoted all their efforts to the siege, and latterly to the threat posed by Low’s advancing force. Kelly’s mountain guns were to more than prove their worth in the struggle which followed, and by April 13 he had driven the enemy from their two main positions on the approach route to Chitral. Five days later, although there was still no word from the beleaguered garrison, his men found themselves within two marches of it, and with every sign that the enemy had fled.

  Meanwhile, inside the fortress, things had reached a very low ebb, with no news of a relief expedition being on the way. Many of the troops were ill or wounded, and the officers were reduced to eating their horses to keep up their strength. No one could escape the appalling stench of putrefying animal carcases and the faeces and urine of the several hundred inmates. Then, quite suddenly, it was over. The first that Robertson knew of the enemy’s collapse was on the night of April 18, when it was reported that a man had crept up to the wall outside and had called out, though no one caught his words. The man then retreated into the darkness, evidently fearing that he would be fired at. A little later, though, he returned, and this time the troops manning the wall did hear what he said. ‘Word flashed through the fort that all our besiegers had fled,’ wrote Robertson in his account of their ordeal. But he was taking no chances that night, suspecting it almost certainly to be a trick.

  At first light the next morning he sent out a heavily armed party to ascertain the truth. It did not take them long to confirm that the enemy had indeed vanished – nor to discover why. A message was hurriedly sent off to Kelly, and that night a reply was received from him saying that he hoped to reach Chitral the following day. Even after his column had crossed the Shandur Pass, the Chitralis had remained convinced that so small a force would never be able to drive them from their strongholds, which they considered to be unassailable. Umra Khan, moreover, had promised to send Sher 2,000 more of his Pathans so that they could together launch a final assault on the fortress, but these had not materialised, being desperately needed in the south. With that Sher and his remaining followers had fled. The siege, which had lasted a month and a half and cost the lives of forty-one of the defenders, was over.

  Kelly’s force marched into Chitral on April 20 to find Robertson and his men resembling ‘walking skeletons’. The Gilgit column had won the race, for the vanguard of General Low’s force was still struggling over the Lowarai Pass. Although the enemy had fled, no one doubted that it was Kelly’s bold dash across the mountains, and his brilliantly fought engagements, which had forced the Chitralis to abandon the contest. When word of the garrison’s relief reached London, Kelly’s feat was lauded by the newspapers as ‘one of the most remarkable marches in history’, a judgement with which few would disagree. The first to reach Chitral from the south, just one week later and riding far ahead of Low’s troops, were Captain Younghusband, temporarily of The Times, and his friend Major Roderick Owen, representing the Lucknow Pioneer. They had carefully avoided seeking Low’s permission to ride thus through hostile territory, knowing full well that this would have been refused. That night they dined with Robertson and Kelly over a precious last bottle of brandy in the house which had been Younghusband’s own residence back in Aman-ul-Mulk’s day, and more recently had served as Sher’s headquarters. The fanatical bravery of the enemy, especially of the Pathans, was highly praised by the British officers. But the real heroes, all agreed, were the sturdy Sikh Pioneers, men of the lowliest caste, who, serving under both Robertson and Kelly, had fought with extraordinary fortitude and professionalism. The worse conditions had become inside the fortress, and the heavier the enemy’s fire, the keener the Sikhs had been to get to grips with them. It was they, Younghusband wrote later, who had really saved the garrison.

  Not long afterwards word reached Chitral that Umra Khan, too, had fled the field. Accompanied by eleven mule-loads of treasures from his palace, he had crossed safely into Afghanistan, out of reach of his pursuers. Before doing so, though, he had freed the two British subalterns who had been seized at the polo match and entrusted to him by Sher. They had been well treated, and he had even apologised to them for the devious way in which they had been captured. ‘Umra Khan’, observed Robertson, ‘had behaved like a gentleman.’ He was, moreover, to prove luckier than his Chitrali ally Sher. Ten days after fleeing his capital, Sher had the misfortune to run into one of his foes, who starved him into surrender before handing him over to the British, together with 1,500 of his followers. He was marched off to exile in India, where he was to declare bitterly of Umra Khan: ‘I don’t ever want to set eyes on him again. He destroyed us with promises – and fled like a fox.’ Needless to say, from his bolt-hole in Afghanistan, Umra Khan had much the same to say about him.

  At home the nation was euphoric over the news from Chitral, for everyone had been fearing the worst. Surgeon-Major Robertson, the doctor turned political, was at once rewarded with a knighthood by an overjoyed Queen Victoria. Kelly was recommended for one, but instead was made ADC to the Queen and given a GB. Even if he failed to get the knighthood which many believed he deserved, Kelly will always be remembered among soldiers for his celebrated forced march across the mountains with his ragtag army. In addition, eleven DSOs were awarded, not to mention the VC won by Surgeon-Captain Henry Whitchurch for carrying back a dying fellow officer after the disastrous reconnaissance at the outset of the siege. Finally, there were decorations and awards for a number of native officers and men who had distinguished themselves, while all ranks who had taken part in the affair were given an extra six months’ pay and three months’ leave. It may only have been ‘a minor siege’, as Robertson modestly subtitled his own account of it, but those who took part in it included one future field-marshal, at least nine future generals and a number of knights. From a career point of view, Chitral was clearly a good place to have on one’s CV.

  The crucial question now arose of what to do with Chitral. Should it be annexed like Hunza, or be restored to independence under a ruler friendly to Britain? The issue was to become the subject of heated debate in military and political circles, with the forward school inevitably at loggerheads with those who favoured masterly inactivity. Hunza had been occupied to keep it out of Russian hands, and so had Chitral. But even during the previous month or so circumstances had changed dramatically in the Pamir region. Going almost unnoticed amid the drama surrounding the siege, London had concluded a deal with St Petersburg which finally settled the frontier between Russian Central Asia and eastern Afghanistan. The Pamir gap, moreover, which had for so long worried British strategists, had at last been closed. With Abdur Rahman’s approval, a narrow corridor of land, previously belonging to no one and stretching eastwards as far as the Chinese frontier, now became Afghan sovereign territory. Although no more than ten miles wide in places – the closest that Britain and Russia had yet come to meeting in Central Asia – this corridor ensured that nowhere did their frontiers touch. Admittedly it left the Russians in permanent possession of most of the Pamir region. But the British were aware that if St Petersburg decided to seize this area, they were virtually powerless to prevent it. At least, from Britain’s point of view, there was now an officially agreed frontier beyond which St Petersburg could not advance – except, of course, in time of war.

  This settlement naturally had a close bearing on the question of Chitral. The forward school argued that because the new frontiers brought the Russians even closer to the passes leading to Chitral and northern India, the need to hold on to the ter
ritory was greater than ever. The Indian government also subscribed to this view, informing London that it proposed to establish a permanent garrison in Chitral, and build a strategic road to it across the Malakand Pass from Peshawar. For the only other way of getting troops from India to Chitral in the event of a crisis was via Gilgit, and even in late spring, as Kelly had found, this route was still blocked by snow (as indeed was the road leading up to Gilgit from India). However, despite these arguments in support of retention, the Liberal Cabinet of Lord Rosebery had made up its mind not to become entangled again with Chitral. It therefore overruled Calcutta’s decision, decreeing that neither troops nor political officers were to be stationed there. Among the reasons given for this was the enormous expense of maintaining such a garrison, and also of building and protecting a road which would run for nearly 200 miles through hostile, Pathan-controlled territory. Furthermore, London argued, such a road might prove to be a two-edged weapon, serving invader as well as defender.