[November-1841.]

The Outbreak at Caubul—Approaching Departure of the Envoy—Immediate Causes of the Rebellion—Death of Sir Alexander Burnes—His Character—Spread of the Insurrection—Indecision of the British Authorities.

Brightly and cheerfully the month of November dawned upon the retiring envoy and his successor. Macnaghten was about to lay down the reins of office, and turn his face, in a day or two, towards Bombay. Burnes, rejoicing in the thought of being “supreme at last” (but somewhat disquieted by the silence of government on the subject), was stretching out his hand to receive the prize he had so long coveted. The one was as eager to depart as the other to see the departure of his chief; and both were profoundly impressed with the conviction that the great administrative change was about to be effected under an unclouded sky.

There were others, however, who viewed with different eyes the portents that were gathering around them—others who warned the envoy and Burnes of the dangers of such a confederacy as had been formed against the British in Afghanistan. Among these was Captain Colin Mackenzie, an officer of the Madras army, whose enquiring and adventurous spirit had prompted him to seek service in Afghanistan, and who had soon recommended himself to the Envoy by his intelligence and high character for political employment. He told Macnaghten at the end of October that Akbar Khan, the ablest and most determined of Dost Mahomed’s sons, had arrived at Bameean from Bokhara, and that he surely meditated mischief. But the envoy only replied that if it were so, Oosman Khan, the Wuzeer, would have known and reported the circumstance to him. About the same time, Lieutenant John Conolly, a young relative of Macnaghten, and a member of his personal staff, told him that a rising in the city was meditated, and that the shopkeepers knew so well what was coming, that they refused to sell their goods to our people lest they should be murdered for favouring the Feringhees.

Among these, also, was Mohun Lal. Before the arrival of Captain Macgregor from the Zoormut country, he had been deputed to accompany General Sale’s camp, and on his return to Caubul, he had laid the result of his observations, whilst on that expedition, before Sir Alexander Burnes. Entering fully upon the nature and extent of the confederacy, the Moonshee emphatically declared his opinion that it would be dangerous to disregard such threatening indications of a coming storm, and that if the conspiracy were not crushed in its infancy, it would become too strong to be easily suppressed. Burnes replied that the day had not arrived for his interference—that he could not meddle with the arrangements of the Envoy; but that Macnaghten would shortly turn his back upon Caubul, and that measures should then be taken to conciliate the Ghilzyes and Kohistanees, by raising their allowances again to the point from which they had been reduced. On the 1st of November, Mohun Lal again pressed the subject of the hostile confederacy upon the expectant minister. Burnes stood up from his chair, and said, with a sigh, that the time had come for the British to leave the country;[98] but, on the same evening, he congratulated Sir William Macnaghten on his approaching departure at a period of such profound tranquillity.[99]

On that very evening the hostile chiefs met and determined, in conclave, upon the measures to be taken for the overthrow of the British power in Afghanistan. To rouse the people into action by a skilful use of the king’s name, seemed to be the safest course of procedure. But doubts arose as to whether it were wiser to enlist the loyal sympathies of his subjects, or to excite their indignation against him. It might be announced, on the one hand, that the King had given orders for the destruction of the infidels; or a report might be spread that he had declared his intention of seizing the principal chiefs, and sending them prisoners to London. It would seem that the rebels did both; and at the same time lulled the suspicions of the Envoy by frequent visits to his house, and loud assurances of friendship. Abdoollah Khan, Achekzye, announced the certainty of their expatriation in a letter to the principal Sirdars, whilst the other object was accomplished by forging the King’s seal to a document, ordering the destruction of the Feringhees, or rather, forging the document to the seal.[100] Men of different tribes and conflicting interests had made common cause against the Feringhees. Barukzye, Populzye, Achekzye, and Ghilzye chiefs were all banded together. Why they should have fixed upon that particular 2nd of November for the first open demonstration at Caubul it is not easy to conjecture. To have waited a few days would have been to have waited for the departure of the Envoy, of the General, and of a considerable body of troops from Afghanistan. The supposition, indeed, is, that however widely spread the disaffection, and however extensive the confederacy, the first outbreak was not the result of any general organisation, but was the movement only of a section of the national party. It was too insignificant in itself, and there was too little evidence of design in it, to have sprung out of any matured plan of action on the part of a powerful confederacy. What that confederacy was may be gathered from Macnaghten’s admission, that when, early in December, he met the Afghan leaders at a conference, he saw assembled before him the heads of nearly all the chief tribes in the country.

The meeting on the night of the 1st of November was held at the house of Sydat Khan, Alekozye. Foremost among the chiefs there assembled was Abdoollah Khan. By nature proud, cruel, and vindictive, this man was smarting under a sense of injuries inflicted upon him by the restored Suddozye government, and of insults received from one of Shah Soojah’s British allies. On the restoration of the King, Abdoollah Khan had been dispossessed of the chiefship of his tribe, and had ever since been retained about the Court, rather as a hostage than as a recognised officer of the government. Ever ready to promote disaffection and encourage revolt, he had seen with delight the rising of the Ghilzyes, and during their occupation of the passes had been eagerly intriguing with the chiefs. Aware of Abdoollah Khan’s designs, Burnes sent him an angry message—called him a dog—and threatened to recommend Shah Soojah to deprive the rebel of his ears. When the chiefs met together on the night of the 1st of November, this indignity was rankling in the breast of the Khan. The immediate course to be pursued came under discussion, and he at once proposed that the first overt act of violence on the morrow should be an attack on the house of the man who had so insulted him. The proposal was accepted by the assembled chiefs; but so little did they anticipate more than a burst of success at the outset, that not one of them ventured personally to take part in a movement which they believed would be promptly avenged.

Day had scarcely dawned on the 2nd of November, when a rumour reached the cantonments, and was at once conveyed to the Mission-house, that there was a commotion in the city. John Conolly, who was to have accompanied him to Bombay, was giving directions about the packing of some of the Envoy’s chattels, when an Afghan rushed wildly in, and announced that there was an insurrection in the city. Conolly went out immediately, heard the firing in the streets, and hastened to convey the intelligence to Macnaghten.[101] The Envoy received it with composure. There was nothing in it, he thought, to startle or to dismay a man with sound nerves and a clear understanding. Presently a note was brought him from Burnes. It stated that there was great excitement in the city, especially in the neighbourhood of his residence; but it spoke slightingly of the disturbance, and said that it would speedily be suppressed. Assistance, however, was sought. Burnes wanted military support; and Macnaghten, still little alarmed by the tidings that had reached him, hurried to the quarters of the General. It was thought to be only a slight commotion. And so it was—at the outset. But before any assistance was sent to Burnes, he had been cut to pieces by an infuriated mob.

The houses of Sir Alexander Burnes and of Captain Johnson, the paymaster of the Shah’s troops, were contiguous to each other in the city. On the preceding night, Captain Johnson had slept in cantonments. The expectant Resident was at home. Beneath his roof was his brother, Lieutenant Charles Burnes; and Lieutenant William Broadfoot, an officer of rare merit, who had been selected to fill the office of military secretary to the minister elect, and had just come in from Charekur to enter upon his new duties. It was now the anniversary of the day on which his brother had been slain by Dost Mahomed’s troopers, in the disastrous affair of Purwundurrah; and it must have been with some melancholy recollections of the past, and some dismal forebodings of the future, that he now looked down from the upper gallery of Burnes’s house, upon the angry crowd that was gathering beneath it.

Before daylight on that disastrous morning a friendly Afghan sought admittance to Burnes’s house, eager to warn him of the danger with which he was encompassed. A plot had been hatched on the preceding night; and one of its first objects was said to be the assassination of the new Resident. But Burnes had nothing but incredulity to return to such friendly warnings. The man went. The insurgents were gathering. Then came Oosman Khan, the Wuzeer, crossing Burnes’s threshold, with the same ominous story on his lips. It was no longer permitted to the English officer to wrap himself up in an impenetrable cloak of scepticism. Already was there a stir in the streets. Already was an excited populace assembling beneath his windows. Earnestly the Afghan minister spoke of the danger, and implored Burnes to leave his house, to accompany him to the Balla Hissar, or to seek safety in cantonments. The Englishman, deaf to these appeals, confident that he could quell the tumult, and scorning the idea of quitting his post, rejected the friendly counsel of the Wuzeer, and remained to face the fury of the mob.

But even to Alexander Burnes, incredulous of imminent danger as he was, it seemed necessary to do something. He wrote to the Envoy, calling for support. And he sent messengers to Abdoollah Khan. Two chuprassies were despatched to the Achekzye chief, assuring him that if he would restrain the populace from violence, every effort would be made to adjust the grievances complained of by the people and the chiefs. One only of the messengers returned. He brought back nothing but wounds. The message had cost the other his life.

In the meanwhile, from a gallery in the upper part of his house, Burnes was haranguing the mob. Beside him were his brother and his friend. The crowd before his house increased in number and in fury. Some were thirsting for blood; others were greedy only for plunder. He might as well have addressed himself to a herd of savage beasts. Angry voices were lifted up in reply, clamoring for the lives of the English officers. And too surely did they gain the object of their desires. Broadfoot, who sold his life dearly, was the first to fall. A ball struck him on the chest; and the dogs of the city devoured his remains.

It was obvious now that nothing was to be done by expostulation; nothing by forbearance. The violence of the mob was increasing. That which at first had been an insignificant crowd had now become a great multitude. The treasury of the Shah’s paymaster was before them; and hundreds who had no wrongs to redress and no political animosity to vent, rushed to the spot, hungering after the spoil which lay so temptingly at hand. The streets were waving with a sea of heads; and the opposite houses were alive with people. It was no longer possible to look unappalled upon that fearful assemblage. A party of the insurgents had set fire to Burnes’s stables;[102] had forced their way into his garden; and were calling to him to come down. His heart now sank within him. He saw clearly the danger that beset him—saw that the looked-for aid from the cantonment had failed him in the hour of his need. Nothing now was left to him, but to appeal to the avarice of his assailants. He offered them large sums of money, if they would only spare his own and his brother’s life. Their answer was a repetition of the summons to “come down to the garden.” Charles Burnes and a party of chuprassies were, at this time, firing on the mob. A Mussulman Cashmerian, who had entered the house, swore by the Koran that if they would cease firing upon the insurgents, he would convey Burnes and his brother through the garden in safety to the Kuzzilbash Fort. Disguising himself in some articles of native attire, Burnes accompanied the man to the door. He had stepped but a few paces into the garden, when his conductor called out with a loud voice, “This is Sekunder Burnes!”[103] The infuriated mob fell upon him with frantic energy. A frenzied moollah dealt the first murderous blow; and in a minute the work was complete. The brothers were cut to pieces by the Afghan knives.[104] Naib Sheriff, true to the last, buried their mutilated remains.

So fell Alexander Burnes. In the vigour of his years—in the pride of life—within a few feet of the goal which he had long held so steadily in view. It has been said that he predicted the coming storm; and by others again that he refused to see it. He may have warned others; but he rejected all warning himself. It was only in keeping with the character of the man that he should have been subject to such fluctuations of feeling and opinion. Sometimes sanguine; sometimes desponding—sometimes confident; sometimes credulous—he gave to fleeting impressions all the importance and seeming permanency of settled convictions, and imbued surrounding objects with the colours of his own varying mind. At one time, he could discern with intuitive sagacity the hidden dangers besetting our position in Afghanistan, and illustrate his views with an impressive earnestness which caused him to be regarded by his official superior as a wildly speculative alarmist. At another, when destruction was impending over his head—when the weapon was sharpened to immolate him—he saw nothing but security and peace; and turned away from the warnings of those who would have saved him, with an incredulous smile upon his lips. This instability was a grievous fault; and grievously he answered it. But though unstable, he was not insincere. If he deceived others, he first of all deceived himself. If he gave utterance to conflicting opinions, they were all his opinions at the time of their birth. He was a man of an eager impulsive temperament; the slightest vicissitudes of the political atmosphere readily affected his mercurial nature; and he did not always think before he spoke. Hence it is that such varying opinions have been attributed to him—all perhaps with equal truth. A passing cloud, or a transient gleam of sunshine, and Afghanistan was either in the throes of a deadly convulsion, or lapped in heavenly repose.

It was the hard fate of Alexander Burnes to be overrated at the outset and under-rated at the close of his career. It may be doubted whether justice has yet been rendered him—whether, on the one hand, what was innately and intrinsically good in him has been amply recognised, and whether on the other, the accidental circumstances of his position have been sufficiently taken into account. From the very commencement of the Afghan expedition Burnes was placed in a situation calculated neither to develop the better nor to correct the worse part of his character. In his own words, indeed, he was in “the most nondescript of situations.” He had little or no power. He had no supreme and independent control of affairs; nor had he, like other political assistants, any detached employment of a subordinate character; but was an anomalous appendage to the British mission, looking out for the chance of succession to the upper seat. In such a position he felt uneasy and unsettled; he lived rather in the future than in the present; and chafed under the reflection that whilst, in all that related to the management of public affairs, he was an absolute cypher at the Afghan court, much of the odium of unpopular acts descended upon him; and that much of the discredit of failure would attach to him if the measures, which he was in nowise permitted to shape, were not crowned with success. There is reason to think that if fairer scope had been allowed for the display of his abilities, and a larger amount of responsibility had descended upon him, he would have shone with a brighter and a steadier light, and left behind him a still more honourable name. His talents were great; his energies were great. What he lacked was stability of character. Power and responsibility would have steadied him. He would have walked with a firmer step and in a straighter course under a heavier burden of political duties. As it was, all the environments of his life at Caubul were too surely calculated to unhinge and unbalance even a more steadfast mind. It is right that all these things should be taken into account. It is right, too, that it should never be forgotten by those who would form a correct estimate of the character and career of Alexander Burnes, that both have been misrepresented in those collections of state papers which are supposed to furnish the best materials of history, but which are often in reality only one-sided compilations of garbled documents—counterfeits, which the ministerial stamp forces into currency, defrauding a present generation and handing down to posterity a chain of dangerous lies.

Burnes and his companions fell. There was a great plunder of property. The treasury of Captain Johnson, the Shah’s paymaster, was sacked. Thirsting for gold, and thirsting for blood, the insurgents undermined the walls and burnt the gateway of the house; then falling, like wild beasts, on all whom they met, and slaughtering guards and servants—men, women, and children, alike, in their indiscriminate fury—they glutted themselves with the treasure,[105] and to complete their work of mischief, burnt all the records of the office. The noise in the city was now growing louder and louder. The multitude was swelling in numbers, and waxing more terrible in excitement and wrath. But still no measures were taken to quell the riot or chastise the rioters; no troops were poured into the city; no British officer led his battalions to the charge, or opened upon the enemy with a shower of unanswerable grape. The escort, at Burnes’s house, held for some time in painful inactivity by his misplaced forbearance, had fought with a desperate energy, which, in the end, cost them their lives; and the guard at the pay-office, with scarcely less constancy and courage, had protected their charge until overwhelmed by the rush of their assailants, and slaughtered almost to a man. What could these little bands of loyal men do against the surging multitude that flooded the streets? Emboldened by impunity, the licentious crowd pushed on to new deeds of murder and rapine; and soon the whole city was in a roar of wild tumultuous excitement. Shops were gutted; houses were burned; men, women, and children, in the residences of our officers, mixed up in indiscriminate slaughter;—and all this with six thousand British troops within half an hour’s march of the rebellious city.

From the Balla Hissar the King looked down upon the disturbed city beneath him. But even from that commanding position little could be seen of what was going on below in the narrow winding streets, which scarcely presented more than an expanse of flat house-tops to the gazers from above. A report had been industriously propagated that the insurgent movement had been favoured, if not directed, by the monarch himself; but his conduct at this moment was not such as to give colour to the suspicion, which soon began to shape itself in the minds of his British supporters, and which has not even now been dislodged. He was agitated, panic-struck, but not paralysed. The only movement made, on that ill-omened November morning, to crush the insurrection at its birth, was made by the King himself. He sent out a regiment of Hindostanee troops—that regiment which was still commanded by the Indo-Briton adventurer Campbell, who had rendered Shah Soojah good service in his attempt to expel the Barukzye Sirdars.[106] Futteh Jung and the Wuzeer went with them. They moved down with some spirit upon the city; but shaped their course with such little wisdom that they were soon in disastrous flight. They should have moved along the base of the hill to the outer extremity of the short thoroughfare in which Burnes’s house was situated. But instead of this they attempted to make their way through the heart of the city, and were soon entangled with their guns in its narrow, intricate streets. Thus embarrassed, they were at the mercy of the enemy. They lost, it was said, two hundred of their number,[107] were compelled to abandon their guns, and were soon to be seen hurrying back, a disorderly rabble, to the shelter of the Balla Hissar.

In the mean while, Brigadier Shelton, with a body of infantry and artillery, had made his way to the Balla Hissar, and arrived in time to cover the retreat of Campbell’s regiment, and to save the guns from the grasp of the enemy. “Soon after my arrival,” says the Brigadier in his narrative of these proceedings, “wounded men were coming in from the city. I was then informed that they belonged to the King’s Hindostanee Pultun, which his Majesty had sent into the city with two six-pounders. I despatched the light company of the 54th N.I. to the gate of the Balla Hissar leading into the town, and soon after the remainder of the King’s Pultun and the two guns were driven in. The latter they were obliged to abandon, fortunately sufficiently under the wall to enable me to prevent the enemy from getting possession; but too near the houses for me to bring them in. I disposed a covering party accordingly, but on the enemy’s opening his fire, the Shah’s men rushed back into the gateway, and thus abandoned the enterprise.” “I mention this,” adds the Brigadier, “because it was said his Majesty was implicated in exciting the rebellion—for in such case he never would have made so noble an effort, and the only one that was made to strike at the root.”[108]

On that day nothing else was done. Deserted by his personal attendants in the hour of danger, Shah Soojah seems to have sunk into a pitiable state of dejection and alarm. The defeat of his Hindostanees had given a deeper shade to his despondency; he was incapable of acting for himself or of offering counsel to others, and all who sought his presence were struck by the anxious expression of his countenance and the feeble petulance of his manner. Nothing effective had been done, and nothing more was to be done at all on that memorable day—General Elphinstone had been talking about to-morrow, when he should have been acting to-day. And so the evening of the 2nd of November fell upon an irritable people, established and fortified in resistance by the indecision of the authorities, against whom they had erected themselves, and the inactivity of the army by which they might have been crushed.

It is the common opinion of all competent authorities that a prompt and vigorous movement, on the morning of the 2nd of November, would have strangled the insurrection at its birth. The Afghans freely admitted this. A Populzye chief who was present at the meeting at Sydat Khan’s house on the night of the 1st of November, told Major Rawlinson that not one of the chiefs, who then leagued themselves together, ventured to stir from his house until the afternoon of the following day. They expected that the first onset—the attack on the houses of Burnes and Johnson—would be successful; but they were under an equally strong conviction that the violence would be promptly avenged by the troops from cantonments, and they therefore refrained from committing themselves by taking any personal part in the Émeute. It seems to have been the impression of the majority that such an outbreak at the capital would operate as a warning which the British in Afghanistan would hardly neglect, and that we should be glad, therefore, to withdraw our forces in the spring and leave the Douranees to their own devices.[109] “Not only I, but several other officers,” says Captain Johnson, “have spoken to Afghans on the subject; there has never been one dissenting voice, that had a small party gone into the town prior to the plunder of my treasury and the murder of Burnes, the insurrection would have been instantly quashed. This was also the opinion of Captain Trevor, at that time living in the town.”[110] Captain Mackenzie has given an equally emphatic opinion to the same effect. “During our expedition into Kohistan, under General MacCaskill,” he writes, “I accompanied it, having been placed by General Pollock in charge of Shah-zadah Shapoor and the Kuzzilbash camp. In my frequent communications with Khan Shereen Khan, some of the late leaders, and other chiefs of the Kuzzilbash faction, all the circumstances of the late insurrection were over and over again recapitulated, one and all declaring positively that the slightest exhibition of energy on our part, in the first instance, more especially in reinforcing my post and that of Trevor, would at once have decided the Kuzzilbashes, and all over whom they possessed any influence, in our favour. Khan Shereen Khan also confirmed the idea that an offensive movement on the opposite side of the town by Brigadier Shelton, had it been made in the early part of the fatal 2nd of November, would at once have crushed the insurrection.”[111] Mohun Lal says, that in the first instance no more than thirty men were sent to surround Sir Alexander Burnes’s house, and that the rest were drawn thither subsequently by the hope of plunder.[112] Captain Johnson, already quoted, adds, “The mob at the first outbreak did not exceed 100 men. They however speedily increased; the plunder of my treasury, my private property and that of Sir Alexander—seeing that no steps were taken to save either the one or the other, nor even what was of more value to us at that time, the life of Sir Alexander Burnes—was too great a temptation to the inhabitants of Caubul, and when 300 men would have been sufficient in the morning to have quelled the disturbance, 3000 would not have been adequate in the afternoon.”[113]

The question, then—and it is one of the gravest that can be asked in the entire course of this historical inquiry—is, how came it that an insurrectionary movement, which might have been crushed at the outset by a handful of men, was suffered to grow into a great revolution? It is a question not to be answered hastily—not to be answered at all without the citation of all available evidence. It is fortunate that at least the facts of the case are to be ascertained with sufficient distinctness. It is certain that, on the first receipt of authentic intelligence of the outbreak in the city, Macnaghten repaired to Elphinstone’s quarters to seek military aid. Shelton, in his narrative, says, that much valuable time was lost at the outset. “The Envoy,” he writes, “must have had notice by 7 A.M., so that much valuable time was, I fear, lost by remaining quietly at home, receiving reports, instead of acting promptly and with decision.”[114] But the imputation is not warranted by the real facts of the case. “On the morning of the 2nd of November”—such is the evidence of the Envoy himself—“I was informed that the town of Caubul was in a state of commotion; and shortly afterwards I received a note from Lieutenant-Colonel Sir A. Burnes, to the effect that his house was besieged, and begging for assistance. I immediately went to General Elphinstone.”[115] General Elphinstone himself says: “On the 2nd of November, at half-past 7 A.M., I was told by Colonel Oliver that the city was in a great ferment, and shortly after the Envoy came and told me that it was in a state of insurrection, but that he did not think much of it, and that it would shortly subside.”[116] Captain Johnson, too, writes that, on receiving in cantonments intelligence of the outbreak, he went to report what he had heard to Captain Lawrence, military secretary to the Envoy. “The latter,” he adds, “had just received a note from Burnes on the subject, and was on the way to the General’s.” Thus it is established that Macnaghten lost no time in seeking the advice and assistance of the military commander.

Let us next see what was the result of the visit to the General. “I suggested,” says Macnaghten, “that Brigadier Shelton’s force should proceed to the Balla Hissar, thence to operate as might seem expedient; that the remaining troops should be concentrated in the cantonments, and placed in a state of defence, and assistance, if possible, sent to Sir A. Burnes. Before Brigadier Shelton could reach the Balla Hissar, the town had attained such a state of ferment that it was deemed impracticable to penetrate to Sir A. Burnes’s residence, which was in the centre of the city.”

General Elphinstone’s report is meagre and unsatisfactory, and does not even allude to any supposed expediency of supporting Sir Alexander Burnes:—“It was proposed,” he says, “that Brigadier Shelton, with two regiments and guns, should proceed to the Balla Hissar; and the Envoy sent his military secretary, Captain Lawrence, to intimate his wishes, and obtain the King’s sanction to this measure, the Balla Hissar being considered a commanding position, and the fittest route to enter the city..... The troops, horse artillery (four guns), with a company of the 44th Foot, the Shah’s 6th Infantry, and a wing of the 54th N. I., moved under Brigadier Shelton, about twelve o’clock, into the Balla Hissar; the rest of the troops were concentrated in cantonments, which arrangements occupied the rest of the day.”

Brigadier Shelton’s report is much more explicit and intelligible. It throws a flood of light on some of the dark places:—“On the morning of the 2nd November,” says the Brigadier, “I passed under the city wall about seven o’clock, when the cavalry grass-cutters, who were in the habit of going through the town for their grass, told me that the city gate was shut, and that they could not get in. All was quiet at this time; and I rode home, thinking some robbery might have taken place, and that the gate might have been shut to prevent the escape of the thieves. About eight or nine o’clock various reports were in circulation, and between nine and ten I got a note from General Elphinstone, reporting a disturbance in the city, and desiring me to prepare to march into the Balla Hissar, with three companies 54th N. I., the Shah’s 6th Infantry, and four guns, all I had in camp (the remainder of my brigade having been called into cantonments). I soon after got another, telling me not to go, as the King objected to it. I replied to this note, that if there was an insurrection in the city, it was not a moment for indecision, and recommended him at once to decide upon what measures he would adopt. The answer to this was, to march immediately into the Balla Hissar, where I would receive further instructions from the Envoy’s military secretary, whom I should find there. Just as I was marching off, a note came from the latter person to halt for further orders. I then sent in the engineer officer to see the cause; but he was cut down by an Afghan, in dismounting from his horse, just outside the square, where his Majesty was sitting. Soon after this the secretary himself came with orders to proceed. I then marched in, when the King asked me, as well as I could understand, who sent me, and what I came there for.[117]” He was not, indeed, allowed to operate upon the disturbed city. All that, circumstanced as he was, Shelton could do, was to cover the retreat of the Shah’s Hindostanees, who had been sent out, as we have seen, against the insurgents, and been disastrously beaten.

It is obvious, therefore, that Brigadier Shelton must be acquitted of all blame. He recommended, on the morning of the 2nd of November, prompt and decisive measures, but he was not empowered to carry them into effect. The responsibility rests with the Envoy and the General, and must be equally shared between them. It does not appear that either recognised the necessity of a prompt attack upon the disturbed quarter of the city. The Envoy, always considerate and humane—sometimes to a point of weakness—desired to spare the inhabitants of Caubul those dreadful scenes of plunder and violence which ever follow the incursion of a body of retributive troops into an offending city. But such tender mercies are often cruel. In such cases the most vigorous measures are commonly the most humane. It is hard to say how much human life would have been saved if, early on the 2nd of November, a few companies of infantry and a couple of guns had been despatched to that portion of the city where Sir Alexander Burnes and his companions were standing at bay before a contemptible rabble, which would have melted away at the approach of a handful of regular troops.

Burnes did not believe the outbreak to be a formidable one; Macnaghten did not believe it to be a formidable one; and Elphinstone was entirely swayed by the opinions of his political associates. Hence came the indecision and inactivity, which were attended with such disastrous results. Burnes and Macnaghten were right up to a certain point; but all beyond was lamentably wrong. The outbreak was not formidable in itself; but it was certain, in such “ticklish times,”[118] very soon to become formidable. There are seasons when slight indications of unrest, such as might commonly be disregarded, assume a portentous and alarming aspect, and demand all the vigilance and energy of the custodians of the public safety. Such a season had now arrived; the minds of the people were in a feverish, inflammable state, and it required very little to bring on a dangerous paroxysm of irrepressible violence and disorder. Macnaghten was unwilling to believe that the chiefs were connected with those October disturbances which had blocked up the passes between Caubul and Jellalabad, and thought that the Ghilzye rising was of a local, accidental character, with which the Caubulees had no connection, and in which they took no interest; but Brigadier Shelton has declared his conviction that the majority of the insurgents who took possession of the passes were sent out from the city, and that many of them passed through his camp at Seeah Sungh.[119]

Be this as it may, it is very certain that even an incidental outbreak in the city of Caubul ought not, at such a season, to have been regarded as a matter of light concern. But an attack upon the residence of a high political functionary could, in nowise, be looked upon as an incidental outrage, proceeding neither from political causes, nor conducing to political results. It was an emergency, indeed, that called for promptitude of action, unrestrained either by short-sighted considerations of humanity or feelings of official delicacy and reserve. Too anxious to conciliate the wishes of the King, the Envoy forbore from all aggressive measures until his Majesty had been consulted; and when he learnt that Campbell’s regiment had been sent out against the insurgents, he believed that the insurrection would be speedily put down. But in such a crisis the British minister might have acted, without any breach of official rectitude, on his own independent judgment, and taken upon himself to decide at once what was best, not only for the King, whom English money and English arms were supporting on his throne, but for what was of infinitely more importance, the honour of the British nation.

It is not difficult to understand these restraining influences; but when all due allowance is made for them, it must still be admitted that at such a time, under such circumstances, nothing short of a prompt movement upon the disturbed quarter of the city should have been counselled by the Envoy and ordered by the General. There is nothing, indeed, but the impracticability of the movement that can be urged in extenuation of its neglect. The Envoy has declared that, by the time Brigadier Shelton had reached the Balla Hissar, it was impracticable for a body of troops to penetrate to the neighbourhood of Burnes’s house. But what was impracticable then was not impracticable some time before; and Shelton would have reached the Balla Hissar much sooner, but for the respect shown to the wishes of the King, the delay in ascertaining those wishes, and the vacillating orders which his Majesty thought fit to issue on this momentous occasion. The attack on the city should have been made some hours earlier in the day. The movement may have been impracticable after the hour when Shelton reached the Balla Hissar; but why was it not made before? The only point to be decided by the Envoy and the General was, what body of troops—whether from Shelton’s camp or cantonments—could be most expeditiously despatched to the disturbed quarter of the town, and most effectually suppress the disturbance? But instead of directing all his thoughts to this one great object, the Envoy thought about the wishes of the Shah and the comforts of the people; whilst the General, too glad to be saved the trouble of thinking at all, readily adopted Macnaghten’s opinions, and believed that the fires which had broken out in the city might be left to die out by themselves.

Still it must be remembered, on the other hand, that wise after the event, we are passing sentence on the conduct of men who had not then the full information which lights us to a more correct decision; and that if they had dragooned down the insurrection at the outset, destroying innocent life and valuable property, they would certainly, by one party at least, have been impeached as incapable and dangerous alarmists. It would not improbably have been said, that they had by a precipitancy, as mischievous as it was uncalled for, turned friends into enemies, confidence into mistrust, repose into irritation, and sown broadcast the seeds of future rebellion over the whole length and breadth of the land.