by Craig Murray
Cotton was still furious at Macnaghten’s criticism of his move on Haidarabad. It was a bad time for Macnaghten now to suggest that 1,000 of his contingent’s camels be given to the Shah’s force. Cotton exploded. Macnaghten recorded: ‘I was distinctly told that I wanted to assume the command of the army; and that he, Sir Willoughby, knew no superior but Sir John Keane, and that he would not be interfered with etc. etc.’ Burnes managed to reconcile the two over a hearty dinner. Macnaghten acknowledged that ‘we parted at a late hour last night very good friends.’6
Keane and the Bombay contingent had still not arrived. Cotton, under pressure from Macnaghten and Burnes, without reference to Keane, set off with the Bengal contingent for the Bolan pass on 23 February with 85 per cent of the total available carriage, leaving Shah Shuja’s levies marooned at Shikarpur. The Bengal column found very little food on the march and the following Bombay force, virtually none. The latter had never had sufficient baggage animals, and partly depended on boats for carrying its equipment up the Indus. Their camels were delayed by another extraordinary interference by Pottinger in Burnes’ arrangements, again noted by Dr Kennedy: ‘Colonel Pottinger prohibited the camels for the Bombay Division collected at Deesa from crossing half the distance of the same [Thar desert] route, and compelled them to march seven hundred miles round by Arrysir, and Bhooj, and Luckput, and through Sind, instead of three hundred miles across, via Balmeer!’7 As with Karachi, so in the Thar desert, Pottinger intervened to prevent the army using supply routes Burnes had personally surveyed.
As Cotton led the Bengal contingent into Cutch Gandava, it was travelling along roads freshly cut by Baluch levies of the Khan of Kelat under the supervision of Robert Leech. Burnes himself was ahead of the force. At Rojihan, he oversaw the construction of a deep well, faced with brick. From this point they were in desert; by the time they got to the Bolan pass, the army had already come close to disaster. Wrote Colonel Dennie:
Desert will hardly describe the aspect of that fearful tract, where no sign of animal or vegetable life is to be found; and as for the heat you […] can form no conception of it […] I shudder to look back at what I and those with me underwent. The tract of country above described is by the nations of India considered as the hottest in the world. The Persians […] [say]: ‘Oh Allah! Wherefore make hell when thou hast made Dadur?’ Colonel Thompson […] died instantly in his tent, and Lieutenant Brady fell dead in the same manner, their bodies turning as black as charcoal.8
After four days, at Bushor, the cavalry commander urgently consulted Major Thomson; the horses were already suffering due to lack of forage and water and he suggested the cavalry turn back. A hay store at Jandira, collected by Burnes and Sayyid Mahommed Sherif, the Governor of Gundava, had been attacked by marauders. Thomson persuaded the commander they should press on, as a retrograde movement would inspire resistance.
In the eighty miles between Jandira and the Ustar, the only water of any use to the army was at Rojihan. It was Burnes’ efforts, riding with the Adjutant-General Major Craigie, Mohan Lal and Mahommed Sherif, which somehow bought enough water and provisions to get the army across, suffering but not destroyed. This was extremely exerting and very dangerous, with long rides in a small party ahead of the main force while active bands of local resistance were already harassing the British. Burnes usually rode by night, preceded by meshalchis who held in one hand a roll of flaming flax and in the other a skin bottle of oil to pour on the torch.
Burnes instructed Leech to ride on to Sebi and cut the dam there, releasing water into the Nari river in the path of the British forces, but also devastating the agricultural economy of the region. It should be stated in fairness that the British were meticulous in paying out agricultural compensation for damages down to payments to individual farmers. The growing cereal crops were destroyed for forage; the British Army advanced like a plague of locusts. In every field of green grain, an officer of the Quartermaster-General’s department marked off specific portions for named corps of the army. Each regimental Quartermaster issued duplicate chits to the farmer and to Headquarters for the crops consumed. The farmer was then paid in coin by the Executive Commissariat officer of Brigade. Every day these officers would face disputes over entitlement to compensation, and the British showed a systematic bias towards the peasant against his landlord. But as surprisingly well-motivated as this was, a few coins were not going to assist the farmer when all food and water reserves had been destroyed over a wide area. The passing army brought starvation, disease and ruin.
Leech had constructed offshoot canals from the Nari around Bushori, and though the water did not reach Cotton and the first brigade of the Bengal division on time, it did trickle down to assist the rest of the army. Burnes instructed over 100 new wells dug between Bushori and Mirpore. Arriving at Mirpore the army found him encamped in a stupa, snatching a few hours of archaeological excavation. He informed Cotton that 100 Jokrani tribesmen were on a maraud to attack baggage. Such raiding parties, splitting into smaller units and lying in ambush, were difficult to combat.
Isolated detachments or supplies were now picked off. An attack on a hospital wagon provoked fury, and orders were given to take pre-emptive action. This led to attacks on locals whose probable hostility had not taken any active form, and Burnes became alarmed this could prompt general resistance; he remonstrated with Cotton that his orders were ‘bloodthirsty and calculated to bring about a blood feud’.9 Burnes still hoped that the invasion might pass without much violence. He believed his distribution of bribes meant that it would be ‘a triumph without bloodshed’ providing the British maintained their discipline.10
By the time the hungry army reached Dadur at the entrance to the Bolan pass on 6 March 1839, not 10 per cent of the supplies expected from Mehrab had arrived, despite Mehrab’s brother, now assisting Burnes, writing Mehrab a remonstrance. This was by chance delivered with a missive from Shuja containing a threat to depose Mehrab Khan and replace him with a rival, Nawaz Khan, in Shuja’s camp.
Leech recruited 200 Baluch cavalry as a flying column, to protect the baggage and stem the flood of desertions. As supplies grew scarce and the situation more dangerous, drovers, dhoolie bearers, grooms, grass cutters and others were deserting, many taking animals or loot with them. Flogging was prescribed for salaried non-combatants who tried to leave, and Leech was authorised to pay his men Rs5 for every deserter captured. Leech was obliged to tell Cotton there were no new supplies of grain for the next march, through the Bolan pass itself.
He persuaded Cotton to promulgate a declaration, requiring all troops and followers to ‘be careful not to interfere with, or insult the prejudices of, the people of the country through which we are about to pass’. The order specified that only Muslims may enter a mosque and that wayside flags and other objects of religious significance must not be touched. Fruit trees must not be used for forage, nor the women of the country ‘interfered with’. Officers were to ensure that these instructions were explained to all troops, and given out in all bazaars and civilian lines.11 Sadly, the British did not live up to these standards.
Arthur Conolly had noted that the Bolan streams were fed only by autumn rainfall, and became foetid pools: ‘In summer the sun acting upon these pent-up waters, causes a pestilent air, and the road between Quetta and Dadur is shut. Native cossids are indeed to be found whose poverty will tempt them to carry letters, but they often remain on the road as food for hyenas.’12
The road was precisely that along which the British now marched 19,000 troops, 40,000 camp followers and 40,000 animals, from March to late May, in a drought and famine. The consequences were predictably hideous.
Before a fortnight was through, troops were on half rations and eventually quarter rations, even as they struggled to cross high mountain passes with artillery, baggage and equipment. By the time they won through to Quetta, three-quarters of the 40,000 baggage animals were rotting corpses stretching a gruesome path across Baluchistan. The soldiers’ sufferings
were made worse as, owing to the shortage of carriage, each infantryman was carrying thirteen pounds more than usual.
Colonel Alexander Burnes was the first member of the Army of the Indus to enter the Bolan pass, riding alongside Major Cureton of the 16th Lancers, who commanded one troop of lancers and three companies of native infantry, plus all of the sappers, miners and engineers. The British expected the pass to be defended, especially by snipers – Burnes was at the position of maximum danger.
It was inevitable that the army passing would bring conflict with Mehrab. Burnes was Envoy to Kelat. It was a sign of Burnes’ still rising standing with Auckland and the military establishment that on 11 February 1839 a young officer was ‘placed at the disposal of the Envoy to Kelat’13 – Alex’s youngest brother Charlie, who thus left the 17th Bombay NI to join the more remunerative Political Service.
Nepotism was the norm in British India – Henry Pottinger had his nephew Eldred assisting him, Auckland’s nephew William Osborne was his aidede-camp and Macnaghten was reported to by three Conolly nephews. The Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Henry Fane, had both Lieutenant Colonel Henry Fane and Lieutenant Henry Fane as aides-de-camp. Sir John Keane had his son Lieutenant E A W Keane. One of Major-General Willoughby Cotton’s aides was Captain Willoughby Cotton. But to exercise this patronage required a certain standing, which Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes had now achieved. His arrangement for Charlie gave him great pleasure. Charlie received the very substantial annual salary of £720.
Alex had secured Charlie’s career. He had brought his sisters out to India, and found them husbands. It is probable that he had himself paid for their passages, trousseaux and possibly dowries. He noted in his will that he was not leaving anything to his married sisters as he had given them over Rs15,000 each already.14 He left his unmarried sister Cecilia £1,000, or half that if she meantime married. He had also given a substantial sum to his brother Davie to set up his private medical practice in London.15
Burnes was constantly receiving reports from his agents, and when the Bengal division finally struggled to the head of the Bolan pass, he was able to relay that the Dil Khan brothers at Kandahar had not raised any force to defend the Shawl or Pishin valleys, and so far taken no measures to defend Kandahar, rather concentrating on removing their personal fortunes. At the very summit of the Bolan, the engineers with Burnes in advance blasted out an old animal track with gunpowder, increasing the width from three to twelve feet. They thus cut out the last steep incline of an ascent that had already killed thousands of baggage animals, and reduced the distance by three miles. The blasting continued right up to the passing of the first column.
The largest population centre on the route through Kelat – Quetta – had just 500 houses.16 The entire population of the province of Shawl – the most fertile through which the army passed – did not exceed 20,000. The land was incapable of sustaining the pressure placed on it by the British army. The region between Bolan and Quetta was named Dasht-i bi Daulat, ‘poverty-stricken plain’. Eighteen months after the British army first passed along the route, this is Masson’s description:
So entirely had the country been devastated that I could no longer recognise it […] Villages, then flourishing, had ceased to exist; those remaining were destitute of their attendant groves of trees and even the very waste had been denuded of the jangal of small trees and shrubs […] the road […] was now well marked by the skeletons of camels […] whose bleached […] bones too well described it.17
Macnaghten wrote to Auckland:
They had good cause for dissatisfaction […] their crops have been destroyed, and the water intended for the irrigation of their fields has been diverted to the use of our armies […] little […] effort seems to have been made either to […] appease the discontent […] Sir A Burnes may be led, by vague rumours of the Khan’s unfriendly disposition, to recommend offensive operations against him. In what difficulties we may be involved […] it would be impossible to foretell […] considerable sums must be expended, not only in compensating the people for their losses but in bribing the authorities […] damage […] done to the crops […] is grievous […]18
Macnaghten wrote of the Bolan pass on 23 March 1839, ‘The Bombay force is nearly on the point of starvation – this is a wretched country […] It may be said to produce nothing but plunderers; but with the knowledge we now have of it, we may bid defiance to the Russian hordes as far as this route is concerned.’19 It was rather late to be concluding that a Russian attack on British India was impractical.
On 19 March, Cotton with ‘Fighting Bob’ Sale’s brigade arrived at Sir-i-Ab, ten miles from Quetta, where Burnes, Cureton and the vanguard were waiting. Brigadier Arnold’s brigade arrived on the 23rd and General Nott’s on the 24th. Cotton had orders to wait for Keane and the Bombay division, which would take weeks. The lack of supplies was critical. Burnes tried to convince the British staff that Mehrab Khan was genuine, even if he had limited control over his nominal subjects. There was scepticism in the army, and rumour that grain, stores and carriage had been removed by Mehrab to Kelat. Burnes left on 24 March with Lieutenants Simpson and Pattison, Mohan Lal and the Governor of Quetta, and an escort of only one NCO and fifteen yellow-jacketed irregulars of Skinner’s Horse to ride the eighty-eight mountainous miles to the fortress of Kelat. The half-starving army awaited the outcome anxiously.
Cotton moved forward on 27 March to make camp at Quetta proper. There Leech had found but two days’ supply of grain. Arriving at Mustung, between Quetta and Kelat, Burnes was able to find no grain or forage; the inhabitants pled the poor harvests. He sent back a negative report to Cotton, who despatched Major Craigie back through the Bolan pass to Keane at Dadur, to impress on Keane the urgent necessity for Cotton to move his forces on to more fertile regions on the road to Kabul. Craigie returned with the news that Keane had refused permission, as Macnaghten insisted the British must not enter Afghanistan before Shuja, who was with Keane. Keane intimated he would press on and reach Cotton in a week.
Burnes was met a day’s ride from Kelat by the Khan’s fifteen-year-old son, Nassir, and escorted in by him. Alex wished to tie Mehrab Khan down to a new treaty, and persuade him to come to Quetta and do obeisance to Shah Shuja. Burnes found Mehrab afraid of assassination by Shuja, or exile by the British. Burnes informed him that the British proposed that he should hold his territory as tributary to Shuja, on the same terms as in the reign of Ahmed Shah. Supplies for the army would be paid for.
On 30 March 1839 Burnes wrote to Auckland reporting Mehrab’s observations of Dost Mohammed:
a man of resource and ability; and though we could easily put him down through the Shah Soojah […] we could never win over the Affghan nation by it […]
‘Wait,’ said he, ‘till sickness overtakes your troops – till they are exhausted with fatigue from long and harassing marches, and from the total want of supplies; wait till they have drank of many waters; and wait, too, till they feel the sharpness of the Affghan swords.’20
These trenchant views echoed Burnes’ own forebodings, and he described Mehrab as ‘a man of no ordinary shrewdness and vigour of mind’.21 In their next conversation he told Burnes:
Shah Shoojah ought to have trusted the Afghans to restore him; whereas he is essaying to deluge the land with Hindoostanees, an insult which his own people will never forgive him […] You English may keep him by force upon the musnud, but as soon as you leave the Kingdom […] he will never be able to resist the storm of national and religious animosity which is already raised against him in the breasts of Afghans.22
Mehrab could offer nothing more for the army’s immediate needs than 10,000 sheep. Burnes wrote to Macnaghten: ‘my inquiries have served to convince me that there is but a small supply of grain […] and none, certainly, to be given to us, without aggravating the present distress of the inhabitants – some of whom are feeding on herbs and grasses […] This scarcity is corroborated by a blight in last year’s harvest.’23 Lieutena
nt Simpson was with Burnes and in charge of a large sum of money; he attempted to buy stores between Kelat to Quetta, but none was to be had at any price. Simpson was inclined to believe the rumours that Mehrab was stockpiling somewhere.
A treaty was agreed by Burnes and Mehrab in Kelat on 28 March 1839.
Article 1
As Naseer Khan and his descendants […] held possession of the country of Khelat, Kutchee, Khurasan, Mekran, Kedge, Bea, and the port of Soumeeanee in the time of the lamented Ahmed Shah Dooranee, they will in future be masters of their country in the same manner.
Article 2
The English Government will never interfere between the Khan, his dependants, and subjects, particularly lend no assistance to Shah Newaz […]
Article 3
As long as the British army continues in the country of Khurasan, the British Government agrees to pay to Mehrab Khan the sum of one and a half lakhs of Company’s Rupees […]
Article 4
In return for this sum the Khan, while he pays homage to the Shah and continues in friendship with the British nation, agrees to use his best efforts to procure supplies, carriage and stores […]24
Burnes left to return to the army, leaving Mohan Lal to finalise matters with Mehrab and escort him in to Shuja. Masson thought Burnes had miscalculated, as Mehrab was insulted at being dealt with by a munshi, and claimed that Mohan made himself ridiculous by pretending influence with Auckland, and attempting to purchase a high-class slave girl. Masson viewed Burnes’ respect for Mohan Lal as ‘indulgent’, while Burnes valued and trusted Lal: it is doubtful anyone could have overcome Mehrab’s distrust of Shuja.
The new treaty broke down immediately. What actually happened is a mystery. During Burnes’ return to Quetta, his party was possibly attacked. Masson stated that he read a letter by Burnes to a friend, in which Burnes said that Mehrab had the party waylaid, in order to steal back the treaty. He added that Burnes told him that two or three of his party were wounded.25 Lal contradicted Masson, stating Burnes did not have the treaty in his possession.