by Craig Murray
The council lasted right through to the early hours. Suddenly there was a huge rumble, followed by a sharp increase in the previously sporadic firing. At first the chiefs were silent, looking at each other, then one or two started to leave, and there was a panicked rush and wild shouting. The British were in the fortress!
The injustice of a war exists alongside individual heroism. The capture of Ghazni within forty-eight hours of arrival, in two hours of assault, was a major achievement by the British Indian Army. Ghazni had twenty-five-foot walls built on a steep thirty-foot mound, the whole surrounded by a wet ditch, with numerous bastions, and additional walls to screen from artillery, plus strategically placed high towers and an inner citadel.
The day before the army reached Ghazni, a nephew of Dost Mohammed, Abdul Rashid Khan Barakzai, had come over to the British camp. Abdul Rashid had been sent with his younger brother by Dost ostensibly to join the defenders of Ghazni, but also as a species of hostage. Haidar Khan swiftly executed the younger of his two cousins. Abdul Rashid had been in written contact with Mohan Lal, though one of the latter’s messengers had been caught and executed in Ghazni. Abdul Rashid now made good his escape disguised as a Ghazi. He arrived in the British camp with a dozen followers and was taken to Burnes, who was struck by Abdul’s physical resemblance to Dost.
Abdul explained that only the Kabul gate had not been built over. Burnes went to Keane with this vital intelligence. Keane was relieved, but sent engineers under Captain Thomson to assess the information – which could have been a trap – and do a thorough survey of the defences. This the party did at considerable risk, with shot kicking up dust all round them. Thomson confirmed Burnes’ intelligence, seeing a horseman exit by the gate. The only practical way to attack without artillery was to blow in the Kabul gate with gunpowder.
This simple approach was fraught with difficulties. The approach to the fort’s gate was down a narrow alley between two walls which projected out to defend it. Handling sacks of gunpowder in battlefield conditions was tricky; and even if the gate were blown, to assault a well-defended fortress through a single small entrance was a desperate undertaking.
The storm that evening was an unexpected piece of British luck. It confused sound and provided plenty of distraction. Captain Peat and Lieutenants Durand and McLeod, with three sergeants and eighteen sappers, crept up to the gates, passing right below the sentries twenty feet above them, who were lighting ‘bluefire’ illuminations but only on the parapets; if a single one had been thrown onto the road below, it would have been a disaster for the attack. The final few yards across the bridge, the stacking of the leather bags of powder and laying of the fuse, were conducted by Henry Durand, who was dizzy with fever, and the sergeants. They were finally spied and fired upon from the parapet, but nobody was hit. There were lower breastworks from which the little party would have been easily annihilated, but these were unoccupied. On reaching the gates, Durand saw, through chinks between the planks, guards smoking on the other side, just a yard from him as he started to lay down eighteen sacks of powder. Three minutes later, he lit the seventy-foot fuse – which failed and he had to return and light again after scraping it with his fingernails.
Concerned that the gates may have been reinforced, the engineers used too much powder, bringing down the entire bastion. They were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off. The assaulting party then had to scramble over a large mound of stone blocks and confused rubble. HM’s 13th Foot led, white crossbelts removed so they did not show up in the dark. They were joined by the grenadier companies from HM’s 2nd and 17th and the Bengal European Regiment.
The storming party was thus entirely British, in the nineteenth-century sense encompassing Ireland, which was well represented including by the heroic Colonel Dennie who led the forlorn hope. They met fierce resistance from equally heroic Afghans brandishing swords.
After desperate hand-to-hand fighting, the light companies found themselves in pitch dark inside the gate but with internal walls blocking further progress and increasing numbers of Afghans surging up to attack. Engineer Captain Peat had been dashing forward to check on the delay caused when the fuse went out, and had thus been caught by the explosion. He staggered back to the supporting column of the 2nd and 13th, commanded by ‘Fighting Bob’ Sale. As a result of Peat’s muddled account, which indicated the light companies had been repulsed, a bugler sounded the retreat at Sale’s instruction.15
So 200 men were progressing into the city, but nobody was following. In the ten minutes before the confusion cleared and Sale’s column carried on, the breach became choked with Afghan swordsmen. Sale found himself pinned down by an Afghan, before Captain Kershaw ran him through. Once this melee resolved, resistance crumbled and the citadel was not defended. The sack of the city from house to house was not occasioned by fighting. The last fortified house surrendered after the demand was met for the trusted ‘Sikunder Burnes’ to take personal charge of the women and protect them from rape.16
Perhaps 1,000 Afghans were killed, while British casualties were light – seventeen dead and 171 wounded; 1,600 Afghans were taken prisoner, perhaps 1,000 escaped. Those numbers can only indicate a massacre by the British forces after the city was taken. Dennie described it as a ‘[d]isgusting slaughter’.17 Other British accounts are more circumspect, but you can read atrocity between the lines:
There was an upper-roomed house to the right […] where a Company of H.M.’s 17th Foot killed 58 Affghans. There was a heap of straw here, some stray shot struck it, a movement was observed, a shower of balls was poured in, the straw fired, only one man escaped, and he was shot close to the burning mass.18
Alexander was present throughout the brief siege. He wrote of Keane: ‘He and I get on well and I was under fire with him at Ghuznee for 3 days, and at least can vouch for him being a cool and steady soldier. What a grand affair that was […]’19 Keane had outraged the Afghans by setting up his headquarters in the tomb of Futth Khan Barakzai, Dost Mohammed’s brother. Mohan Lal wrote ‘Lord Keane and his staff, as well as Sir Alexander Burnes and myself, stood upon the steep hill, which was frequently fired upon from the garrison, and Colonel Parsons was slightly wounded by a ball which just missed me.’20 Keane’s despatch on the battle included a paragraph on Burnes, but this was removed because Burnes was a ‘political’ and therefore not officially part of the army.21
The next day, when Haidar Khan was found in the city, he was handed over to Burnes’ custody, which Keane noted ‘an arrangement very agreeable’ to Haidar Khan.22 He slept in Lal’s tent next to Burnes’ own, with armed guards, but was treated with courtesy. His dependants were kept separately in a house but also under Burnes’ care. Haidar’s wife reminded Alex that in 1832 in Kabul, when she was fourteen, he had come with Dr Gerard to treat her sore eyes. Eventually, Haidar Khan was sent back to India with Keane when the latter handed over command. Keane agreed his request to go to Bombay, where he lived on a handsome allowance, socialising in the highest circles, eventually returning to Afghanistan after the war.
Keane’s triumph was celebrated in London; he became Lord Keane of Ghazni, and Ghazni medals were struck for all who had taken part. Richmond Shakespear wrote to James Outram, both having been there: ‘I think Sir J Keane’s making his fortune by blowing open the gates of Ghazni instead of receiving censure for leaving his siege guns at Candahar is one of the most amusing instances of good luck that can be found either in truth or fiction.’23
There were vital practical benefits to the British Army, who captured the large supplies stockpiled for the garrison plus 1,000 good horses. The Company’s famed iqbal appeared irresistible. To reinforce this message, Auckland ordered twenty-one-gun salutes fired at every British post throughout India.
The advance guard of Afzul Khan’s relieving column reached Ghazni just a few hours after the British had taken it. They were astonished that the ‘impregnable’ stronghold had fallen so quickly. Afzul panicked. At this stage the Afghans did not understand
that three-quarters of the British horde moving upon them were non-combatants. Afzul Khan sped back towards Kabul, abandoning his guns, elephants and baggage at Urghundi, just six miles from Ghazni. Dost Mohammed was coming up behind with 6,000 Qizilbash. When it became plain that they were also planning to desert him, he fled north towards Bamian with 2,000 loyal horsemen.
Dost had a few years earlier brutally brought Kohistan under government control, and enforced taxes on the district. Kohistan had risen for Shuja behind Dost once he left Kabul. Burnes, through Mohan Lal, had sent the Kohistani chief Ghulam Khan Popalzai a bribe of Rs40,000. Ghulam had spread further British bribes around numerous Kohistani chiefs, and paid Rs8,000 to Kabul’s Sunni religious leader, Hafiz Ji, son of the deceased Mir Waiz. Hafiz had been close to Burnes during the Kabul negotiations, where Burnes had tested the waters on using the Sunni leadership against Dost’s Shia links.24 Burnes had prepared for the British invasion throughout Afghanistan with carefully targeted bribes, secretly delivered on inch-square paper notes of hand, signed by Burnes, redeemable on the Bengal government through Shikarpur bankers. In Kabul the Hindu banker Pokur had been caught by the Emir dealing in them, but treated fairly leniently with a fine and imprisonment.
The British left the 16th NI to garrison Ghazni, with small detachments of artillery and cavalry in support, and prepared to march on Kabul. On 28 July Jabbar Khan rode to the British camp. Burnes – to whom dealings with the Barakzai family were always delegated – greeted his old friend and escorted him to camp. Their meeting in these new circumstances was ‘painful to both’ and there were tears in Jabbar’s eyes.25 The nawab had not come to surrender, but to offer terms which the two discussed as they rode in together. These were what Burnes had suggested to Macnaghten in April 1838 – that Dost would step down for Shuja to take the throne, but that Dost should be vizier, which he now claimed, with some justice, as his hereditary right.
With the road to Kabul open, there was no way that Macnaghten or Shuja would agree. But the meeting was memorable for the question which Jabbar boldly put to Shuja:
If you are to be King, what use is the British army here? If the British are to rule over this country, what use are you?
The same question might have been asked of President Karzai in our generation – another Dourani ruler supported by Western occupiers, from the same Popalzai khail as Shuja.26
Shuja attempted to win over the nawab with estates and honours, but Jabbar replied that he must follow his brother’s fortunes. The British considered his conduct ‘noble’.27 But Jabbar was incensed at Macnaghten’s gratuitous refusal of a request that his niece, Haidar Khan’s wife, should be handed over to him, and also at hearing the screams of an Afghan woman in a British tent.28
Deserted by his army, his realm lost, Dost Mohammed focused his fury on the enemy he knew best; Alexander Burnes. ‘The greatest error in my life lay in this,’ he exclaimed, ‘that I allowed the English deceiver to escape with his head.’29 James Outram was sent north in pursuit of the fleeing Emir, but was handicapped by his ally Haji Khan Kakar, who constantly delayed the pursuit, hedging his bets again. Dost, having eluded Outram, established himself in the ruined city of Balkh, nominally subject to the khan of Bokhara.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Mission Accomplished
The British Army pushed forward from Ghazni to Kabul. Burnes rode with Cureton’s reconnaissance party of 200 HM’s 16th Lancers. They quickly secured the twenty-eight cannon abandoned by Afzul Khan and unchallenged cantered for three days until they entered Kabul through unguarded gates. As organised by Burnes, Ghulam Khan Popalzai had already entered the city with his Kohistani force and proclaimed Shuja. On arrival, Burnes procured a cartload of the best fruit, and with a block of ‘clear bright ice as hard as flint and brilliant as diamond’; he sent it to his friends in the Bombay contingent who were still marching to Kabul. As Shuja progressed in more stately fashion, large bodies of the army of Dost Mohammed and Afzul Khan adhered to Shuja’s ranks, including the Qizilbash en masse.
At 3pm on 7 August 1839, a grand procession entered Kabul’s Kandahar gate and wended its way to the Bala Hissar. It was led by Shuja on a magnificent white horse, accompanied by a cloud of mounted courtiers. Then came General Keane, William Macnaghten and Sir Alexander Burnes, followed by other senior officers. Burnes was in diplomatic uniform, not the army colonel’s uniform worn on the march, but ‘a cocked hat fringed with ostrich feathers, a blue frock coat with raised gold buttons, richly embroidered on the collar and cuff, epaulettes not yielding in splendour to those of a field-marshal, and trowsers edged with very broad gold lace’. Just behind Mohan Lal rode in ‘a new upper garment of very gay colours, and under a turban of very admirable fold and majestic dimensions, and was one of the gayest and most sagacious and successful persons in the whole cortege’.1
A squadron of dragoons, a troop of horse artillery and a squadron of lancers formed the imposing escort. Crowds had gathered to watch; but the onlookers were curiously silent. As they entered the Bala Hissar, Kabul’s great fortress, the great drums above the gatehouse, a prerogative of Timurid and Mughal royalty, beat out a royal salute. Jinjals cracked in response from the backs of eighty kneeling camels in the courtyard. When they reached the palace, Shuja wept to see its dilapidation. His brother Zeman had earlier restored it to some of the glory it had enjoyed in the days of Shah Jahan. The more practical Dost Mohammed had improved the defences and removed features which impeded fire, including knocking down the Chehel Sihun, or ‘pavilion of the forty pillars’2 where Shuja had delighted with his wives and written poetry. Shuja’s tears hardly endeared him to the accompanying British officers.
Burnes’ informants in Central Asia had brought him the first definite news of the Russian expedition against Khiva. Danilevsky and Perovsky were to attack with 7,000 men, although departure was postponed three months as scouts found the oases dry on the long desert route. For Burnes and Macnaghten, the invasion of Afghanistan appeared the beginning of the scramble for Central Asia and they began to consider further British advances. Macnaghten longed to propel the Army of the Indus to the Oxus, but Burnes believed such an advance impossible with the existing forces. Privately he was sympathetic to the Russians, and opposed to British occupation in Afghanistan. He wrote to a friend on 19 November of the Russian advance on Khiva:
She has the right to relieve her enslaved countrymen; and if she have the power, why should she have so long hesitated? But the time she has chosen for this blow is an awkward one. I hold, however, that the man who recommends the cantonment of a British or an Indian soldier west of the Indus is an enemy to his country.3
Macnaghten drafted a letter to Auckland, which he showed to Keane, stating that the Bombay brigade would return to India by Kelat, where they would depose Mehrab Khan. The Bengal brigade would meantime remain in Afghanistan, stationed chiefly at Kabul. An expeditionary force would be sent across the Hindu Kush to Balkh and Bokhara, with the object of freeing Stoddart, putting pressure on Dost and forestalling Russian influence along the Oxus. The draft apologised that it had been impossible to consult Auckland in advance due to the need to push on before winter set in. Keane was horrified at the proposal to extend British forces over 500 more miles of difficult terrain. He sent the letter back with regrets that he could not be party to it. This killed the draft, and the expedition into Turkestan.
The British invasion was supposed to be a pincer movement. But by mid-July Wade’s Khyber force had still not moved, due to Sikh prevarication following Ranjit’s demise, and difficulties in rendering the Shahzada Timur’s troops effective. The Army of the Indus was in Kabul and Wade was still building defensive stockades to protect his unready force.4
The Afghans, too, were beginning to have their doubts about their invaders. They had not realised that non-combatants outnumbered soldiers by four to one, and the tonnage of books, wines, silver plate and porcelain outweighed the tonnage of cannon. But they learnt. George Lawrence, on his way to
join Macnaghten as military secretary, was disconcerted to be told by an Afghan noble:
you are an army of tents and camels; our army is one of men and horses. What could induce you to squander crores of rupees in coming to a poor rocky country like ours, without wood or water, and in order to force on us a Kumbukht (unlucky person) as a king, who the moment you turn your own backs will be upset by Dost Mahommed our own king?5
On 26 August a party of irregular Afghan horse cantered up to where Burnes was staying in Kabul. After a brief parley, Burnes’ guard opened the gates and admitted them to the garden. His Arab bodyguard warily fanned out from the door, but then started clapping and embracing the horsemen’s leader, an imposing bearded man in travel-stained robes with a large white turban and bright red cummerbund in which was stuck a heavy Afghan sword or tulwar. Dr Percival Lord had arrived, having galloped ahead of Wade and the Shahzada’s contingent. After a wash and change, Burnes accompanied Lord to report to Keane and Macnaghten and that evening Burnes, Lord, Outram and Dr Kennedy sat down to one of Burnes’ comradely dinners, and the wines flowed.6