[August-December: 1839.]

Dawn of the Restoration—Difficulties of our Position—Proposed Withdrawal of the Army—Arrival of Colonel Wade—His Operations—Lord on the Hindoo-Koosh—Evils of our Policy—Defective Agency—Moollah Shikore—Our Political Agents—Operations in the Khybur Pass—The Fall of Khelat.

Restored to the home of his fathers, Shah Soojah was not contented. Even during the excitement of the march to Caubul he had complained of the narrow kingdom to which he was about to return; and now, as he looked out from the windows of his palace over the fair expanse of country beneath him, he sighed to think that the empire of Ahmed Shah had been so grievously curtailed.

Very different, indeed, was the Douranee Empire, over which the sceptre of Shah Soojah was now waved, from that which his father had handed down to Zemaun Shah and his brothers, to be sacrificed by their weakness and disunion. The kingdom, which had once extended from Balkh to Shikarpoor, and from Herat to Cashmere, had now shrunk and collapsed. On every side its integrity had been invaded. Cashmere and Mooltan had fallen to the Sikhs; Peshawur had been wrested from the Afghans by the same unscrupulous neighbour; the independence of Herat had been guaranteed to a branch of the Royal family; the Beloochees had asserted pretensions unknown in the times of Ahmed Shah; the petty Princes on the northern hill-frontier no longer acknowledged their allegiance to Caubul. In whatsoever direction he turned his eyes, he beheld the mutilations to which the old Douranee Empire had been subjected; and yearned to recover some of the provinces which had been severed from the domain of his fathers.

But the kingdom to which he had been restored was more extensive than he could govern. There were many difficult questions to be solved, at this time; the first and the most important of which related to the continuance of his connexion with his Feringhee allies. The British Government had now done all that it had undertaken to do. It had escorted Shah Soojah to his palace gates, and seated him upon the throne of his fathers. In accordance with Lord Auckland’s manifesto, the time had now arrived for the withdrawal of the British army. But it was obvious that the British army could not yet be withdrawn. The Shah had no hold upon the affections of his people. He might sit in the Balla Hissar, but he could not govern the Afghans. Such, at least, was the conviction which by this time had forced itself upon Macnaghten’s mind. If the British Minister had ever contemplated the early abandonment of the restored King, the idea had now passed away. The Shah himself felt no confidence in his own strength. He did not believe that the power of Dost Mahomed was irretrievably broken, but still saw him, in imagination, flitting about the regions of the Hindoo-Koosh, raising the Oosbeg tribes, and pouring down for the recovery of Caubul.

There were objections, many, and weighty, to the continued occupation of Afghanistan by British troops—objections of one kind, which the Shah acknowledged and appreciated; and objections of another, which every statesman and soldier in India must have recognised with painful distinctness. But the experiment of leaving Shah Soojah to himself was too dangerous to be lightly tried. The Shah would fain have rid himself of British interference and control, if he could have maintained himself without British support; and the British Government would fain have withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan, if it could have relied upon the power of the Shah to maintain himself. But to leave the restored Suddozye to be dethroned and expelled, after the homeward march of the troops that had restored him, would have been to court an enormous failure, which would have overwhelmed our government with disgrace. Neither was the restoration sufficiently popular in itself, nor was there sufficient stability in the character of the King to warrant so hazardous an experiment. If the policy of the Afghan invasion had not been based upon error, the experiment would not have been a hazardous one. But the very acknowledgment of the Shah’s inability to maintain himself after the departure of the British army, was a crushing commentary on the assertions put forth in the great October manifesto. The truth was not to be disguised. The “adoration” which had greeted the Shah on his return to his long-lost dominions, was found to be a delusion and a sham. The palace of his fathers had received him again; but it was necessary still to hedge in the throne with a quickset of British bayonets.

So thought Lord Auckland. He had given his mind long and painfully to the subject, and had written an elaborate minute, reviewing all the circumstances of our position in Afghanistan after the entry of the Shah into the country. Macnaghten had been settled little more than a month in Caubul when a copy of this minute, dated Simlah, August 20, was put into his hands. There was nothing unintelligible in it. Ably written, clearly worded, it enunciated, in unmistakeable paragraphs, the views of the Governor-General, and left Macnaghten, even had he been disposed to follow an opposite course, which he was not, no alternative but to retain a portion of the troops, and himself to abide at Caubul as controller of the Shah. Lord Auckland saw plainly the advantages of withdrawing the Army of the Indus. India could ill afford the abstraction of so large a body of disciplined troops, and it was probable that their services might be required in less remote regions; but he could not purchase the advantages of their withdrawal at the price of the failure of the Afghan expedition.

It was the opinion of the Governor-General at this time, that although the British army could not with safety be wholly withdrawn, a force consisting of some five or six regiments of all arms would be sufficient to keep Shah Soojah upon his throne. The Bombay troops were to be withdrawn, en masse, by the Bolan Pass; and a portion of the Bengal army by the route of Jellalabad and the Khybur. The posts at which it was expedient to plant the remaining troops were, in the opinion of the Governor-General, the two chief cities of Caubul and Candahar; and the principal posts on the main roads to Hindostan—Ghuznee and Quettah, on the West, and Jellalabad and Ali-Musjid on the East. The orders which Sir John Keane had issued, before the Governor-General’s minute had reached Caubul, anticipated with much exactness the instructions of the Governor-General. A brigade under Colonel Sale was to remain in Afghanistan. Sir John Keane was to take the remainder of the Bengal troops back to India by the Khybur route; and General Willshire was to lead the Bombay column down by the western line of the Kojuck and the Bolan.

Such were the intentions both of the Supreme Government and the local authorities, when Prince Timour arrived at Caubul, accompanied by Captain Wade, and the little force that had made good his entry into Afghanistan by the eastern passes. It was on the 3rd of September that Cotton, Burnes, and other British officers, with a guard of honour, went out to receive the Prince. With befitting pomp, the procession made its way through the narrow streets of Caubul to the Balla Hissar; and there were those who said that the gaiety of the heir-apparent and his cortÈge fairly shone down the King’s.

Wade had done his duty well. The magnitude of the operations to the westward has somewhat overlaid the more modest pretensions of the march through the eastern passes; and it may be doubted whether the merit of the achievement has ever been fully acknowledged. Viewed as the contribution of the Sikh Government towards the conquest of Afghanistan, it is absolutely contemptible. Runjeet lay dying when the troops were assembling; and his death was announced before they commenced their march. He was the only man in the Sikh empire who was true at heart to his allies, and all genuine co-operation died out with the fires of his funeral pile. To Wade this was embarrassing in the extreme. But the greater the inefficiency of the Sikh demonstration, the greater the praise that is due to the English officer who triumphed over the difficulties thrown in his way by the infidelity of his allies.

Wade found himself at Peshawur with a motley assemblage of Hindoos, Sikhs, and Afghans, on the good faith of a considerable portion of whom it was impossible to rely. The Prince himself was soon found to be an absolute cypher. His most remarkable characteristic was, to speak paradoxically, that he had no character at all. He was a harmless, respectable personage, with an amount of apathy in his constitution which was sometimes advantageous to those in whose hands he placed himself; but which, at others, engendered an amount of impracticability that was very embarrassing and distressing. It was plain that, whatever was to be accomplished, must be accomplished by the energy of the British officers. Left to themselves, the Sikhs, aided by the Afghans who had joined the standard of the Prince, would never have forced the Khybur Pass. This formidable defile was supposed to be, if vigorously defended, impassable; and the long halt at Peshawur had given the Afreedis, if they were not inclined to sell the passage, abundant time to mature their defensive operations, and Akbar Khan, who was coming down from Caubul to oppose the march of Wade and the Sikh auxiliaries, every opportunity of perfecting his plans.

It was not until the 25th of July that Wade and Prince Timour found themselves before Ali-Musjid. The Afreedis, on that and the preceding day, had made some show of resistance; and our troops—the regulars under Captain Farmer, and the irregulars under Lieutenant Mackeson,[1]—had done good service; whilst Colonel Sheikh Bassawan, with the Sikh auxiliaries, had exhibited an amount of zeal which had won the confidence of the British officers. So closely now did Wade invest the place, so determined was the attitude he had assumed, and so successful was the play of his guns,[2] that on the night of the 26th the garrison evacuated the fortress; and on the following morning the allies took possession of Ali-Musjid in the name of the Shah. The Ameer’s son had not come down to its defence.

There was little more work for Wade and his auxiliaries. Akbar Khan, who had pitched his camp at Dakha—a place to the south of Jellalabad—had now broken it up and retired to join his father, who had by this time discovered that the greater danger was to be apprehended from the western line of attack, and had therefore recalled his son to the capital. The Shah-zadah and his party, therefore, advanced without further opposition. Opposite Dakha, on the other side of the Caubul river, was the fort of Lalpoorah, where dwelt Sadut Khan, chief of the Momund tribe. His conduct had evinced strong feelings of hostility to the Suddozye Princes. He was now, therefore, to be reduced, and his chiefship conferred on another. Throughout our entire connexion with Afghanistan, it was seldom our good fortune to select fitting objects whereon to lavish our bounty. It was generally, indeed, our lot to set up the wrong man. But the case of Tora-baz Khan, who was appointed to the chiefship of Lalpoorah, was one of the few fortunate exceptions to this calamitous rule. In this man we found a faithful ally; and when misfortunes overtook us, he was not unmindful of the benefits he had received at our hands.

On the 3rd of September, Wade and the Shah-zadah reached Caubul. The operations of the motley force which they had led through the difficult passes of Eastern Afghanistan have been dwarfed, as I have said, by the more ostentatious exploits of Sir John Keane’s bulkier army; but it is not to be forgotten, that it was in no small measure owing to the operations of Wade’s force that the resistance offered to Keane’s army was so slight and so ill-matured. It was long before Dost Mahomed ceased to regard the movement through the Khybur with greater anxiety than that of the main army along the western route. Akbar Khan and his fighting men never met Wade in the field; but they were drawn away from the capital at a time when they might have done good service in the West; and it is in no small measure owing to this division of the Ameer’s military strength, that he was unable to offer any effectual resistance to the march of the British army from Candahar. Nor, when we take account of the circumstances which facilitated our success at the outset of the war, ought it ever to be overlooked that Wade, from his forward position at Peshawur, was enabled to open a correspondence with parties at Caubul favourable to the restoration of the monarchy, and to win over many adherents to the Shah before he approached his capital. It was in no small measure owing to Wade’s diplomacy, carried on mainly through the agency of Gholam Khan, Populzye, that the Kohistanees were induced to rise against the Ameer.[3] These were important services. Wade carried on the work with much address; and there were able men associated with him.[4] But the whole affair was a melancholy illustration of the lukewarmness, if not of the positive infidelity, of our Sikh allies. It was plain that, thenceforth, we were to expect little from their alliance, but ill-concealed attempts to thwart and baffle the policy to which they were parties.

The month of September passed pleasantly over the heads of the officers of the Army of the Indus. The fine climate, the fair scenery, and the delicious fruits of Caubul, were all things to be enjoyed, after the sufferings and privations of the long and toilsome march from Hindostan. Then there were shows, and spectacles, and amusements. The troops were reviewed; and the officers rode races; and the Shah, ever delighting in pageantry and parade, established an order of knighthood, and held a grand Durbar, at which the ceremony of investure was performed with becoming dignity and grace. And the officers, happy in the belief that they were soon about to turn their backs on Afghanistan for ever, went about purchasing memorials of their visit to Caubul, or presents to carry back to their friends.

But the hopes of many were doomed to disappointment. On the 18th of September, the Bombay column commenced its march to India, by the route of the Kojuck and the Bolan; and it was believed that a large portion of the Bengal troops would soon be in motion towards the provinces, along the eastern country just traversed by Colonel Wade. A country in which wine was selling at the price of 300 rupees a dozen, and cigars at a rupee a piece,[5] was not one in which the officers of the army were likely to desire to pitch their tents for a sojourn of any long continuance. When, therefore, it began to be reported among them that the original intentions of withdrawing the troops, with the exception of a single brigade, had been abandoned, there was a general feeling of disappointment. The official order was looked for with anxiety; and on the 2nd of October it appeared.[6] The principal portion of the division was to be left in Afghanistan, under Sir Willoughby Cotton; and only a comparatively small detachment was to march to the provinces with Sir John Keane. A week afterwards, orders were issued for the disposition of the troops, and the military occupation of Afghanistan was complete.[7]

A change so great as this in the military arrangements, consequent on the restoration of Shah Soojah, could only have been brought about by a belief in the presence of some new and pressing danger. Dost Mahomed had been driven across the Hindoo-Koosh; but it was believed that he might there be hospitably received by some of the petty Oosbeg chiefs, between Bameean and Balkh; and that he might, united with them, gather sufficient strength to encourage him to turn his face again towards the South, and to sweep down upon the country which had been wrested from him. It had not, at first, been conceived that the prospect of the Ameer’s recovery from the heavy blow which had descended upon him, was sufficiently imminent to indicate the necessity of making any preparations upon a large scale to arrest his return to Afghanistan. But it was considered expedient to send a detachment of the Shah’s troops, with some field artillery, to Bameean, the extreme frontier station of the Shah’s dominions. Accordingly, on the 12th of September, a detachment had marched for the Hindoo-Koosh. A troop of Native Horse Artillery, which had just come in from Candahar, formed the most remarkable portion of this little force. The difficulties of the road to be traversed were such as no European artillery had ever before encountered.[8] But, in spite of this, the 4th troop, 3rd Brigade of Horse Artillery, under Lieutenant Murray Mackenzie (leaving its captain dead at Caubul), made good its way to Bameean; and the Shah’s Goorkha regiment, with other irregular details, accompanied it to its dreary winter-quarters in the mountainous recesses of the great Caucasian range.

Upon the policy of this movement I cannot pause to speculate. I believe that the system of planting small detachments in isolated positions was one of the great errors which marked our military occupation of Afghanistan. But something more was designed than this. It was in contemplation to send a larger force to explore the mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh. Dr. Percival Lord, who had been one of Burnes’s companions on the “Commercial Mission” to Caubul, had just returned to the Afghan capital with the force under Colonel Wade; and now that it was considered desirable to despatch a political officer to the Oosbeg frontier, it was but natural that Lord, who had visited the neighbourhood of Koondooz in 1837-1838, should have been selected for the duty. Lord went; but had not been long absent from Caubul when he returned, with exaggerated stories of the success of Dost Mahomed among the petty chiefs of the Hindoo-Koosh, and of a great movement which was about to be made for the re-establishment of the supremacy of the Ameer. Upon this, Macnaghten, who had begun to doubt the extreme popularity of Shah Soojah, and the safety of confiding his protection and support to the handful of British troops which it was originally intended to leave in Afghanistan, made a requisition to Sir John Keane for a stronger military force, and turned Dr. Lord’s story to account in the furtherance of his own views.

It was easy to issue orders for the maintenance of a large body of British troops in Afghanistan; but it was not so easy to house the regiments thus maintained. The winter was before them. They could not remain encamped on the plain around Caubul. It became, therefore, matter of anxious consideration how accommodation was to be provided for so large a body of regular troops. The subject, indeed, had pressed upon the attention of the political and military chiefs before the brigade, which was originally to have been left in the country, had swelled into a division; and the engineer officers had been called into council, and had given the only advice that was likely to emanate from competent military authority. Lieutenant Durand—a gallant soldier and an able scientific officer—saw at once the importance of posting the troops in the Balla Hissar.[9] And there, in the winter of that year, they were posted, to be removed in the following autumn to the fatal cantonments which by that time were springing up on the plain.

The city of Caubul is situated between two ranges of lofty hills, along the ridges of which run lines of loop-holed walls, with here and there small obtruding towers, or bastions, too weak and too extended to be serviceable for purposes of defence. It is said to be about three miles in circumference. The Balla Hissar stands on a hill, overlooking the city. There are, strictly speaking, two Balla Hissars; the lower of which, on our first entry into Caubul, was in a rickety and decayed state, and could not have stood for an hour against British artillery. Both were commanded by the walled hills above them. The upper Balla Hissar, or citadel, commands the whole of the city and the suburbs. The lower Balla Hissar, which is surrounded by a shallow but rather deep ditch, commands only part of one of the bazaars—the Shore bazaar—two large forts (Mahmoud Khan’s and the Beenee Hissar), and the road to Jellalabad. The houses of the town are mostly flat-roofed; the streets for the most part narrow and tortuous. The most important feature of it is the great bazaar, built, or commenced, by Ali Murdan Khan—a mart for the produce of all the nations of the East.[10]

The Bombay division of the Army of the Indus marched from Caubul on the 18th of September; and on the 15th of October, Sir John Keane, with the troops destined for Bengal, set out for the provinces by way of the eastern passes. The Shah had by this time begun to think of escaping from the severity of the Caubul winter, and reposing in the milder climate and more tranquil neighbourhood of Jellalabad. The sweets of restored dominion had not gratified him to the extent of his anticipations. He was, indeed, a disappointed man. He sighed as he declared that the Caubul he had revisited was not the Caubul of his youth; his kingdom seemed to have shrivelled and collapsed; and even of these shrunken dominions, fettered and controlled as he was, he was only half a king. It was plain that, in the eyes of his subjects, his connexion with the Feringhees had greatly humiliated him. But he wanted the English money and the English bayonets, and was compelled to bear the burden.

Macnaghten was to accompany the King to Jellalabad; and, in the meanwhile, Burnes was to be left in political charge of Caubul and the neighbourhood. The people seemed to be settling down into something like quiescence. If there were little enthusiasm among them, they seemed at first to be outwardly contented with the change. Cupidity is one of the strongest feelings that finds entrance into the Afghan breast. The boundless wealth of the English had been a tradition in Afghanistan ever since the golden days of Mountstuart Elphinstone’s mission. Money had been freely scattered about at Candahar; and it was believed that with an equally profuse hand it would now be disbursed at Caubul. It is true that the military chest and the political treasury had been so indented upon, that when the army reached the capital there was a painful scarcity of coin.[11] But there were large supplies of treasure on the way. The jingling of the money-bag was already ravishing their ears and stirring their hearts. They did not love the Feringhees; but they delighted in Feringhee gold.

This was a miserable state of things; and even the influence of the gold was limited and short-lived. After the outbreak at Caubul, when Mohun Lal was secreted in the Kuzzilbash quarters, he heard the men and women talking among themselves, and saying that the English had enriched the grain-sellers, the grass-sellers, and others who dealt in provisions for man and beast, whilst they reduced the chiefs to poverty, and killed the poor by starvation. The presence of the English soon raised the price of all the necessaries of life. This was no new thing. If a flight of Englishmen settle in a French or a Belgian town, it is not long before the price of provisions is raised. But here was a Commissariat department, with a mighty treasury at its command, buying up all the commodities of Caubul, and not only paying preposterous sums for everything they purchased, but holding out the strongest inducement to purveyors to keep back their supplies, in order to force a higher range of prices.

Even from this early date everything was working silently against us. The inherent vice of the course of policy which we had initiated was beginning to infect every branch of the administration. The double government which had been established was becoming a curse to the whole nation. The Shah and his officers ostensibly controlled all the departments of civil administration; but everywhere our English officers were at their elbow, to counsel and suggest; and when it was found necessary to coerce the disobedient or punish the rebellious, then it was British authority that drew the sword out of the scabbard, and hunted down offenders to the death. Bound by treaty not to interfere in the internal administration of the country, the British functionaries were compelled to permit the existence of much which they themselves would never have initiated or allowed in provinces subject to their rule; but they were often called upon to enforce measures, unpopular and perhaps unjust; and so brought down upon themselves the opprobrium which was not always their due. It could hardly be said that the King possessed a government of his own, when the control of the army and the exchequer was in the hands of others. England supplied the money and the bayonets; and claimed the right to employ them both according to her own pleasure. It would have been a miracle if such a system had not soon broken down with a desolating crash, and buried its authors in the ruins.

It was said prophetically by more than one statesman, that our difficulties would begin where our military successes ended. Englishmen and Afghans alike said that it was easy to restore Shah Soojah to the throne, but difficult to maintain him upon it. It was, from the first, only a question of time—only a question how long such a system could be propped up by the strong arm and the long purse of the king-makers. No amount of wisdom in the agents of such a policy could have saved it from ultimate ruin. Sooner or later it must have fallen. If there had been nothing else indeed to bring it to the ground, the utter exhaustion of the Indian treasury must have given it its death-blow.

To have placed Shah Soojah on the throne, and to have left him again to be driven back an outcast and a fugitive, to seek an asylum in the provinces of India, would have been a failure and a disgrace. It was the object of the British Government, therefore, to hedge him in a little longer with our authority, and to establish him more firmly on the throne. But so far from these being synonymous terms, and co-existent states of being, they were utterly antagonistic and irreconcileable. The more we surrounded the King with our authority, the less firmly he was fixed on the throne. It might have been sound policy to have continued the occupation of Afghanistan, if our continuance there had tended to secure the supremacy of the Shah, and to establish him in the affections of the people; but it was not in the nature of things that the effect of the experiment should not have been diametrically the reverse.

So prodigious an anomaly was the system itself, that, except so far as it affected the period of its dissolution, retarding or expediting it by a few months or a few years, the agency employed in the vain attempt to uphold it was a matter of little moment. But that agency was assuredly not of a character to enhance the chances even of its temporary success. Shah Soojah had brought from Loodhianah one Moollah Shikore[12]—a man who had shared his exile, and acted as his confidential agent. He was old, and enfeebled by age. His memory was gone; so were his ears. For some offence against his Majesty in former days, he had forfeited those useful appendages. A happy faculty of remembering the persons and personal histories of men, is one of the most useful ingredients in the character of a statesman, and it is one which, in rare exuberance, some of our greatest statesmen have possessed. But it was said of this Moollah Shikore, that men whom he had seen on one day he forgot on the next.[13] The King had abundant faith in his loyalty, and confidence in his personal attachment. The man had managed the stunted household of the royal exile with such address, that it was believed that he could now manage the affairs of his master’s restored dominions. So he was made minister of state. They called him Wuzeer. But his master did not acknowledge the title, and the British did not call him by it. “Bad ministers,” wrote Burnes, “are in every government solid grounds for unpopularity; and I doubt if ever a King had a worse set than Shah Soojah.” The system itself was rotten to the very core; and the agency employed was, perhaps, the corruptest in the world. Had there been much more vitality and strength in the system, Moollah Shikore and his deputies would soon have given it its death-blow.

But though feeble in other respects, this Moollah Shikore was not feeble in his hatred of the British. The minister oppressed the people. The people appealed to the British functionaries. The British functionaries remonstrated with the minister. And the minister punished the people for appealing.[14] The Shah and the Moollah chafed under the interference of the British. But they loved the British money; and they required the support of the British bayonets. And so bravely for a time worked the double government at Caubul.

Whilst such was the state of things at the supreme seat of government, there was little less to create dissatisfaction in the internal administration of Candahar. The principal revenue officers were two Sheeahs, the sons of that Hussein Khan, the obnoxious minister whom Shah Zemaun had put to death. Their names were Mahomed Takee Khan and Wulloo Mahomed Khan. Cradled in intense enmity to the Douranees, they had grown into unscrupulous persecutors of the tribes. Selected by the Barukzye Sirdars as willing agents of those humiliating and enfeebling measures by which they sought to extinguish the vitality of the Douranees, they entered upon their work in a ruthless and uncompromising spirit, and plied the instruments of their office with remarkable success for the persecution and degradation of their enemies. The hatred with which the Douranees regarded these men was too deep to suffer them to embrace with complacency any measures, however conciliatory in themselves, of which the old Barukzye tools were the executors. Such unpopular agents were enough to render distasteful the most popular measures. The Douranees were, indeed, greatly disappointed. Do what they would, they could not obtain a paramount influence in the state. The door was closed against them by the British janitors who kept watch around the palace; and the chiefs soon began to chafe under the foreign intrusion which deprived them of all ascendancy in the councils of the restored monarch, and prevented them from regaining the full extent of those financial privileges which they had enjoyed under his Suddozye predecessors.[15]

And so it happened that, from the very dawn of the Restoration, unpopular and unscrupulous Afghan agents were employed to carry out a monstrous system. Of a very different character were the British agents upon whom now devolved the duty of watching the proceedings of the native executive, and, without any palpable acknowledged interference, virtually controlling it. The political agents scattered about Afghanistan have drawn down upon themselves a larger measure of vituperation than perhaps has ever descended upon any body of British functionaries. They were mixed up with an unholy and a disastrous policy, and perhaps some little of the evil that subsequently developed itself may be attributed to their personal defects; but, on the whole, they were not unwisely chosen, and it is doubtful if other men would have done better. At all events, when Burnes, Conolly, Leech, Pottinger, Todd, Lord, and others, who had previously made themselves acquainted with the country and the people, were sent to overlook the progress of affairs in different parts of Afghanistan, it cannot be said that no care was taken to select our agents from among the officers who were most qualified by previous experience to perform the new duties devolving upon them. Macnaghten’s assistants were, for the most part, men of local experience and proved activity. The Governor-General had imparted to the Envoy his ideas of the manner in which it would be most expedient to employ them.[16] And it may be doubted whether, if the system itself had not been so radically defective, it would have ever broken down under the agency which was commissioned to carry it into effect.

Such, traced in dim outline, were some of the elements of decay planted deep in the constitution of the political system which we were attempting to carry out in Afghanistan. Always of a sanguine temperament, and one whose wish was ever father of his thoughts, Macnaghten did not see that already the seeds of a great and sweeping revolution were being sown broadcast across the whole length and breadth of the land. He was prepared, and it was right that he should have been, for local and accidental outbreaks. The Afghans are a turbulent and lawless people, little inclined to succumb to authority, and have a rough way of demonstrating their dislikes. Had he expected the authority of the Shah to be universally established in a few weeks, the British Envoy would have manifested a deplorable ignorance of the national character; but little less was the ignorance which he manifested, when he believed that the system of government he was countenancing could ever establish the country in tranquillity, and the King in the affections of the people. There were others who saw clearly that such a system was doomed to set in disaster and disgrace;[17] but Macnaghten, when he accompanied the Court to Jellalabad, carried with him no forebodings of evil. He believed that the country was settling down into quietude under the restored monarchy; and so little, indeed, did he think that any danger was to be apprehended, that he encouraged his wife to join him in Afghanistan, and sent a party of irregular horsemen under Edward Conolly to escort her from the provinces of India.

But already was he beginning to have some experience of the turbulent elements of Afghan society, and the difficulty of controlling the tribes. In the West, the Ghilzyes had been demonstrating the unruliness of their nature ever since Shah Soojah re-entered Afghanistan; and, shortly after his restoration to the Balla Hissar of Caubul, Captain Outram had been sent out against them, and had achieved one of those temporary successes which, in a country like Afghanistan, where blood is ever crying aloud for blood, can only perpetuate the disquietude of a disaffected people. And now in the East, the passes of the Khybur were bristling with the hostile tribes. The Khybur chiefs had always turned to good account the difficulties of the passage through their terrible defiles. They opened the highway in consideration of certain money-payments from the Caubul rulers. The sums paid under the Suddozye Kings had been reduced by the Barukzye Sirdars; but on his restoration, Shah Soojah, who, in a day of difficulty, had sought and found a refuge among the Khyburees, now promised to restore to the tribes the privileges which they had enjoyed under his fathers. But the Shah had acted in this matter without the authority or the knowledge of Macnaghten, and the chiefs were little likely to receive the amount which the King had agreed to pay to them. Incensed by what they considered a breach of faith, they rose up against the small detached parties which Wade had left at different posts between Peshawur and Jellalabad.[18] Ali-Musjid was attacked, but not taken. Ferris, who commanded the garrison, repulsed them with heavy loss. But a battalion of Nujeebs, entrenched in the vicinity of the fort, was cut up by an incursion of the mountaineers.[19] The appearance of Sir John Keane, with the residue of the Army of the Indus, quieted for a time the turbulent tribes. But when the column had cleared the pass, they harassed the detachments sent to the relief of Ali-Musjid,[20] and a force under Colonel Wheeler was therefore sent out from Jellalabad to overawe the refractory mountaineers, and support the negotiations in which Mackeson was engaged. The Khyburees attacked his baggage, hamstrung his camels, and thus contrived to sweep some booty into their hands. Wheeler’s operations were for a time successful; but it was not until Macnaghten himself appeared on the scene, and recognised, in view of their formidable defiles, the expediency of conciliating by sufficient money-payments these troublesome clans, that they sunk into temporary quiescence.

It was at Avitabile’s hospitable table in the Goorkhutra of Peshawur, that Macnaghten received intelligence of the fall of Khelat. The health of the victors was drunk with delighted enthusiasm, manifesting itself in the “three times three” of a good English cheer. All the circumstances of the capture of the stronghold were discussed with deep interest to a late hour. It was told how, on the morning of the 13th of November, General Wiltshire, with the 2nd and 17th Queen’s Regiments, the 31st Bengal Native Infantry, with two howitzers, four of the Shah’s six-pounder guns, and a detachment of local horse, found himself before Khelat. It was plain that Mehrab Khan was in no mood to submit to the terms dictated to him. He had at first doubted the intentions of the British to move against his stronghold, and had been slow to adopt measures of defence. But when he knew that our troops were advancing upon Khelat, he prepared himself, like a brave man, to meet his fate, and flung defiance at the infidel invaders. Khelat is a place of commanding strength. The citadel rises high above the buildings of the town, and frowns menacingly on its assailants. On the north-west of the fort were three heights, which the Khan had covered with his infantry, supported by five guns in position. The engineer officers reported that, until these heights were carried, it would be impossible to proceed against the fortress. Orders were then given for the attack. It was Willshire’s hope that the enemy might be driven down to the gates of the fortress, and that our stormers might rush in with them. Gallantly the hills were carried; gallantly the guns were captured. The infantry advanced under a heavy fire from the British artillery. The shrapnel shot from Stevenson’s batteries fell with too deadly an aim among the Beloochee footmen for them to hold their position on the hills. They fled towards the walls of the fortress, and our infantry pushed hotly after them. But not in time were they to secure an entrance; the gates were closed against their advance.

The artillery was now brought into play. The infantry, compelled to protect themselves against the heavy fire poured in from the rocks, sheltered themselves behind some ruined buildings, whilst our batteries, planted on the heights, opened upon the gate and the neighbouring defences. Two of Cooper’s guns were brought within a distance of 200 yards; and whilst the gunners fell under the matchlock fire of the enemy, played full upon the gate. At last it gave way. Pointing his hand towards the gate, Willshire rode down to show the infantry that an entrance was ready for them. Rising at once from their cover, they rushed in with a loud hurrah. Pennycuick and his men were the first to enter. The other companies soon followed, until the whole of the storming column were within the walls of Khelat. Onward they struggled manfully towards the citadel. Every inch of ground was obstinately disputed. But at last the citadel was won. There was a desperate resistance. Sword in hand, Mehrab Khan and some of his principal chiefs stood there to give us battle. The Khan himself fell dead with a musket-ball through his breast. Eight of his principal ministers and Sirdars fell beside him. From some inner apartments, of difficult approach, a fire was still poured in upon our people; and it was not until Lieutenant Loveday, an assistant of the British agent, went up to them alone, that they were induced to surrender.[21] Loveday received them as prisoners; and then proceeded to rescue from captivity the aged mother and other female dependents of an old rival, whose claims were to be no longer denied.

Nussur Khan, the chief’s son, had fled. A considerable amount of prize property was collected; an old pretender to the throne, known as Shah Newaz, who had for some time been hanging on to the skirts of Shah Soojah and his allies, was set up in his place; and the provinces of Shawl, Moostung, and Cutchee, which had long been sentenced to spoliation, were stripped from the old dominions of the Khan of Khelat, and annexed to the territories of Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk. The Shah had been hankering after an extension of empire; and it was determined that the much-coveted aggrandisement should be conceded to him in the direction of Upper Sindh.

It is possible that, whilst all these circumstances were being narrated and discussed at Avitabile’s dinner-table, there may have been present one or two officers much troubled with self-questionings regarding the justice of these proceedings. But the general opinion, all throughout Afghanistan and India, was that this Mehrab Khan had been rightly punished for his offences. Few knew distinctly what these offences were. There was a general impression that he had been guilty of acts of indescribable treachery; and that during the passage of the British army through Beloochistan, he was continually molesting our advancing columns. It was the fashion to attribute to the wickedness of Mehrab Khan all the sufferings which afflicted the Army of the Indus on its march to Candahar, the scarcity which pressed so heavily upon man and beast, and the depredations of the marauding Beloochees. The very barrenness of the country, indeed, was by some laid at his door. It was not very clearly seen, at this time, that the Army of the Indus was at least as much the cause, as it was the victim of the scarcity in Beloochistan. When our troops passed through the dominions of the Khan of Khelat, there was already, as has been shown by Burnes’s admissions, a scarcity in the land; and our vast moving camp increased it. The safe passage of the Bolan Pass was effected through the friendly agency of the Brahoo chief. And we have it emphatically, upon the authority of Macnaghten, that the progress of the Army of the Indus through the country of Mehrab Khan was attended by much devastation—that a great injury was inflicted upon the people—and that nothing would have been easier than for the Khan to have destroyed our entire force. Such was the language of our diplomatists up to the end of March; but in April, Burnes recommended the castigation of the Khan of Khelat; and Mehrab Khan was doomed to be stripped, on the first convenient opportunity, of his territory, and deprived either of his liberty or his life. The evidence of Mehrab Khan’s treachery is not sufficiently strong to satisfy me that the British righteously confiscated his principality and sacrificed his life. He was surrounded by traitors. When his stronghold was entered, it was seen that the servants he had trusted had the means of betraying their master; and it was clear, to all who investigated the charges against him with judicial impartiality, that he had been betrayed. It was clear that many of the offences imputed to him were to be ascribed rather to the machinations of his secret enemies than to his own enmity and bad faith. But he had been early doomed to destruction. The recommendations of the British diplomatists in Afghanistan had been adopted by the Governor-General; and the deposition of Mehrab Khan, and the annexation of Shawl, Moostung, and Cutchee, had been decreed in the Simlah Council Chamber.[22] It was true that Shah Soojah had, in the hour of need, been succoured by Mehrab Khan. A statesman in whom the kindly instincts of humanity were so strong as in Lord Auckland, was not likely to forget the obligations which so essential a service at such a time imposed upon the restored monarch.[23] But the graceful suggestion of the Governor-General was lost; and the Khan lived just long enough to curse himself for his folly in having opened his arms to receive the Suddozye pretender, when he fled, baffled and beaten, from the battle-field of Candahar. For that act of hospitality he paid, five years afterwards, with his life.

Whether any thoughts of this kind arose to dash the pleasure of those who toasted the victors of Khelat at Avitabile’s dinner-table, can only be conjectured; but all present acknowledged that the capture of Mehrab Khan’s stronghold was a great military exploit. The native soldiery are said to have esteemed it more highly than the capture of Ghuznee, for they had been wisely allowed to participate in the honour of the exploit. Sir John Keane had been much censured for composing his storming column entirely of European companies. The exclusiveness of the act seemed to imply mistrust in his Sepoy regiments, and did not raise the General in the estimation of their officers. It was a subject, therefore, of general congratulation throughout the Company’s army, that a Native regiment had shared with two of the Ghuznee storming corps the glory of the assault upon Khelat, and had proved themselves well worthy of the confidence that had been placed in them.

And so Sir John Keane and General Willshire returned to India. The “Army of the Indus” was broken up, and soon there came from England the welcome announcement that the successes of the campaign had been duly appreciated by the Sovereign, and the chief actors duly rewarded. Lord Auckland was created an Earl; Sir John Keane rose up as Baron Keane of Ghuznee; Mr. Macnaghten took his place in history as Sir William Macnaghten, Baronet; Colonel Wade became thenceforth Sir Claude Wade, Knight; and a shower of lesser distinctions, of brevets and Bath-honours, descended upon the working officers, whose gallantry had contributed so largely to the success of this memorable campaign.