[June-November: 1840.]

The last Struggles of Dost Mahomed——The British in the Hindoo-Koosh—— The Ameer’s Family—— Occupation of Bajgah—— Disaster of Kamurd—— Escape of Dost Mahomed——Feverish State of Caubul—— Dennie’s Brigade—— Defeat of the Ameer—— Sale in the Kohistan—— The Battle of Purwandurrah—— Surrender of Dost Mahomed.

It is time that to these regions of the Hindoo-Koosh attention should now again be directed. The little force which had been despatched thither in the autumn of 1839, and had wintered among the caves of Bameean, was by the coming in of spring released from its inactivity. It was not Lord’s policy to be quiet. There was Jubbar Khan with the family of Dost Mahomed at Khooloom. Already it has been seen that the reception of these people had been the subject of correspondence between Lord and Macnaghten. But Jubbar Khan halted between two opinions. The winter passed away. The spring passed away. And still he remained with his brother’s family at Khooloom. The Wullee, or chief, of that place was still true to the cause of the Ameer; and he permitted the Newab to maintain this numerous party by levying the transit duties of the place.

This was a state of things which, in the opinion of Lord and Macnaghten, had already lasted long enough. They were eager to bring the Newab to a decision. So, at the end of May, or the beginning of June, a party was sent out under Captain Garbett, ostensibly for the purpose of reconnoitring the passes to the north of our position at Bameean. But there was, doubtless, another object in view. It was believed that such a demonstration would have the effect of quickening the movements of Jubbar Khan, who had more than once been on the point of starting for the British post, but, overcome by irresolution, had struck his tents and returned. Already had some of the party of refugees left their asylum at Khooloom, and sought the hospitality of the British. Azim Khan, one of the Ameer’s sons, had “come in;” and some of the women and children, too, had passed on towards Caubul. But the Newab himself still vacillated; and it was believed that a forward movement of our troops would stimulate him to come to a decision.

The movement had the desired effect. At all events, Jubbar Khan set out for Bameean. Nor was this the only noticeable result of the reconnaissance. Beyond the valley or glen of Kamurd, which stretches northward from Syghan across the great mountain-range, lay the isolated fortress of Bajgah. When our reconnoitring party came upon this place, to their surprise they found it deserted. It belonged to one Syud Mahomed, who now appeared, and declared that he had vacated it for the express purpose of making a tender of the fort to the British, as an outpost that might be of great service to them. A small party of infantry were accordingly placed in the fort, and the circumstance was immediately reported to Dr. Lord. Lord grasped at the offer; and in the strongest terms recommended both to Cotton and Macnaghten the permanent occupation of the post. His arguments prevailed; and on the 29th of June the Shah’s 4th Regiment, under Captain Hay, was sent to garrison this isolated fort. On the 3rd of July, Jubbar Khan arrived at Bameean with the remaining members of the Ameer’s family, and a large party of retainers.

It soon became obvious that the occupation of Bajgah was a mistake. Sturt, the engineer, who had been sent up to survey the passes, pronounced upon its unfitness as a military post. It was plain, too, that the temper of the surrounding tribes was very different from that of the population about Bameean. At the latter place the soldiery and the peasantry were on the best possible terms. About Bajgah the people looked upon the new comers with a jealous eye. All the efforts of Captain Hay to establish a friendly intercourse between himself and the inhabitants failed. They would not bring in grain; they would not bring in forage. Soon their hostility began to evince itself in a more alarming manner. “On the extreme summits of the northern hills overlooking Bajgah, were frequently seen groups of horsemen, apparently watching the movements of the people in the deep glen below.”[49]

Unfortunately, at this time Hay, the only officer at Bajgah, was incapacitated by sickness. So he sent to Syghan for Lieutenant Golding; and on the 2nd of August sent out a party of two companies, under Sergeant Douglas, to escort that officer to Bajgah. They performed their march without interruption, and at night bivouacked under the walls of a fort held by one Sula Beg. The chief received them with an outside show of friendliness; and then despatched a message to another chief, Baba Beg, of Ajur, saying, “See! I have the Feringhees in a dieg (caldron). They are ready to your hand. If you are not here by noontide to-morrow, I will yield up my fort to them.”

Morning came. There was no appearance of the party whom they had been sent to meet; so Douglas was preparing to return to Bajgah, when a heavy matchlock fire was opened on his men, from the fort and the surrounding orchards; and presently a party of Oosbeg horsemen appeared in sight, and charged down upon the little band, who met and repulsed the attack. It was a fine thing then to see the bold front which Douglas and his men showed to the enemy, as they made their way, exposed to a heavy matchlock fire, through the dense orchards and wilderness of gardens. But many fell on the retreat; and many more would have fallen, for their ammunition was well-nigh gone, had not Sturt suddenly appeared with two more companies of the same sturdy Goorkha Regiment,[50] and rescued them from inevitable destruction. The enemy turned and fled; and Sturt and Douglas returned to Bajgah.

The evil tidings of this disaster soon reached Caubul. It was a time of deep anxiety. As this month of August advanced, the perplexities which distracted the mind of the envoy, gathered around him more closely and more tormentingly. A series of small but mortifying failures, of which this Bajgah affair was one, not without a significance of their own, kept him in a constant state of excitability, and left him neither rest of body nor serenity of mind. On the 12th of August he wrote to Major Rawlinson, saying, “There has been an awkward business near Bajgah, owing to the incapacity of the officer in command of the 4th or Ghoorka Regiment. He has allowed a company to lose thirty or forty men, killed and wounded, I think but little of this affair. Lord has gone off to put things to rights. Macgregor has failed also in his efforts to set matters to rights in Bajore. His invincibles have been vanquished, and he has lost a gun. All these little accidents happening at once are enough to disgust one; but, Inshallah! the Company’s Nusseeb will prove superior to them all.”

A week later, and it had become still more apparent that, even in the very neighbourhood of the capital, sedition was weaving plots for the subversion of the authority of the Shah; and that the Sikhs were intriguing from a distance for the restoration of Dost Mahomed. On the 19th of August, the envoy wrote to the same correspondent, that he had “intercepted a letter which, if genuine (as he had every reason to believe it to be), implicated many chiefs in meditated insurrection in favour of Dost Mahomed.” It distinctly stated too, that Nao Nahal Singh had promised pecuniary aid in furtherance of the design. “I am now just going to his Majesty,” he added, “to consult as to what should be done.” It was time, indeed, that the King and the envoy should take counsel together. Dost Mahomed had escaped from Bokhara.

For a while the fugitive Ameer had tasted the bitterness of close confinement in the city of Bokhara. His sons, Afzul Khan and Akbar Khan, shared his captivity. We know how the Khan of this inhospitable place is wont to treat his Christian guests. His Mahomedan visitors, whom he at first received with an outside show of kindness, were dealt with somewhat more leniently. But the natural ferocity of the man was not to be kept down. Dost Mahomed nearly became the victim of a treacherous murder. Baffled in this attempt on the life of his prisoners, and not daring openly to slay them, the Bokhara Ameer kept them for a time under strict surveillance, forbidding them even to repair to worship in the mosques. This inhospitable treatment seems to have called forth a remonstrance from the Shah of Persia, in consequence of which greater liberty was allowed to the unfortunate Princes. They made the most of the relaxation, and effected their escape. Many romantic incidents are told about this flight from Bokhara. The horse, on which the Ameer fled, fell exhausted by the way-side. So he transferred himself to a caravan, which he chanced to overtake, and escaped detection only by dyeing his beard with ink. The Wullee of Khooloom, with unshaken fidelity, opened his arms to receive his old ally, and placed all his resources at his command.

It was not long before the Ameer again found himself at the head of a considerable force. His family, with the exception of the two sons who had shared his captivity in Bokhara, were in the hands of the British. He knew the danger of his determined course, and when reminded that his wives and children were in our power, sorrowfully replied, “I have no family; I have buried my wives and children.” As the Oosbeg fighting men flocked to the standards of Dost Mahomed and the Wullee of Khooloom, the hopes of the former seemed to rise; and his determination to strike a vigorous blow for the recovery of his lost empire, gathered strength and consistency. To have cut up the Bameean detachment, and emerging from the Hindoo-Koosh, to have appeared on the plains below flushed with victory, raising the old war-cry in the name of the Prophet, and profiting by the unpopularity of Shah Soojah and his supporters, in that part of the country, would have been a noble achievement—one which would have rendered easy his triumphant progress to the very walls of the capital. He determined to make the effort; and early in September advanced upon Bameean, with a force of six or eight thousand men.

The month of September brought with it no mitigation of the anxieties of the envoy. From the country beyond the Hindoo-Koosh came exaggerated tidings of the successful progress of Dost Mahomed. “It is reported to-day,” wrote Macnaghten on the 3rd, “that all Toorkistan is in arms against the Feringhees and the Moofsids (rebels) here are very hard at work. It is certain that Hybuk has fallen to the Dost, and it is probable that Codrington will have to retire on Syghan. I put the best face on matters, and a slight success which our troops had at Bajgah over a party of the enemy, furnishes me with the foundation of a good story.”

But this good story soon became a bad one. On the 30th of August the Oosbegs had attacked Bajgah; and the Goorkhas under Codrington, aided by Rattray with some Afghan horse, had driven back the assailants. But it was plain that this isolated post, in the midst of a hostile population, was no longer tenable. It was expedient, therefore, to fall back upon Syghan. So Bajgah was evacuated. The Goorkhas commenced their retreat; and then it was pronounced that Syghan could not be held against a large body of hostile troops. It was determined, therefore, that they would fall back upon Bameean. They lost everything upon the retreat. We had pushed on our outposts to those remote points, only to abandon them disastrously on the first appearance of the enemy.

But there was something far worse than this. A regiment of Afghan infantry had been raised, and Captain Hopkins commanded it. It was the commencement of an attempt to establish a national army for the support of the throne. Its loyalty was now to be put to the proof, by placing it within the reach of all those sinister influences which were most likely to undermine it. The result may be readily anticipated. The atmosphere of the Hindoo-Koosh, and the contiguity of Dost Mahomed, were fatal to the fidelity of the corps. The Afghan soldiers, headed by their commandant, Saleh Mahomed,[51] deserted their colours; and a number of them joined the enemy.

Day after day, the tidings brought to Macnaghten were more and more distressing. All Afghanistan seemed ripe for revolt. “We are in a stew here,” he wrote to Rawlinson on the 6th of September, “perhaps greater than the occasion warrants; but our situation is far from comfortable. It is reported that the whole country on this side the Oxus, is up in favour of the Dost, who, with the Wullee, is certainly advancing in great strength; so much so that our troops have been obliged to fall back upon Bameean, whilst we have a formidable band of conspirators in the city, and the Kohistan is ripe for revolt. These matters of course engross my serious attention, and I have about fifty chits to answer every half-hour..... We are wretchedly weak, having only three infantry regiments, including one of the Shah’s. We have been compelled to send off the 35th to reinforce the garrison at Bameean, but still we are strong enough, I hope, in a fair field, to lick all the Moofsids that could be brought against us.”

Macnaghten’s worst fears were confirmed. Caubul now seemed to be on the eve of an insurrection. On the 9th, the Envoy, in preturbation of mind, wrote again to Rawlinson at Candahar: “The town is in a very feverish state. Some people are shutting up their shops; others, sending their families away; and some active measures must be taken for stopping the panic. We have taken possession of the gate of the Balla Hissar by a guard from Craigie’s regiment, and brought the mountain train inside the citadel. The apparently insignificant fact of Mesdames Trevor and Marsh having come up to the Balla Hissar from the town, has created a great sensation. We are sending out a party to watch the Charekar Pass, and Sanders goes with them; so that between force and conciliation and intrigue (in which art, I am sorry to tell you, I have now taken my degree), I hope we shall be more than a match for the Dost. But I have an anxious time of it, as you may imagine.”

But in the midst of all these perplexities he thought still of the “great game”—of the annexation of Herat and the subjugation of the Punjab—and chafed under the restraints which Lord Auckland had imposed upon him. “I had a letter,” he wrote, “from Lord Auckland yesterday, and from that I gather that his Lordship’s intentions are essentially pacific, both as regards Herat and the Punjab. Oh! for a Wellesley or a Hastings at this juncture. By a most ingenious process, he has substituted the cause for the effect, or rather the effect for the cause. He says, so long as we are continually agitating the question of taking possession of Peshawur and Herat, we cannot expect honest co-operation from the powers owning those places; thus overlooking, or affecting to overlook, the fact, that but for the dishonesty of those powers the question would never have been contemplated by us. This drivelling is beneath contempt. I shall now send up the proofs I have obtained (and they are tolerably strong) of the perfidy of the Sikhs without note or comment, and leave the rest to Providence. I shall adopt the same course with regard to the intrigues of Yar Mahomed.”

Day after day, the clouds gathering over Caubul grew denser and darker. An open enemy was in the field, and a false friend—our ally of the famous Tripartite treaty—was insidiously pushing his intrigues up to the very gates of the Balla Hissar. On the 12th of September, Macnaghten, weary and dispirited, wrote to the Governor-General, saying:—“I am much fatigued, having been severely worked the whole day; but I write these few lines just to apprise your Lordship that affairs in this quarter have the worst possible appearance. The whole Kohistan is reported to be ripe for revolt, though possibly in this there may be some exaggeration; and we hear of resolutions to rise in other parts of the country. But the worst news of all is that received from Dr. Lord this morning, to the effect that an entire company of Captain Hopkins’s corps has gone off with its arms and accoutrements to join Dost Mahomed Khan, and it is fully expected that their example will be followed by the whole regiment. Dost Mahomed Khan is said to be advancing with his entire force; but Dr. Lord’s intelligence seems very defective. I have just had a note from Sir W. Cotton, in which he observes: ‘I really think the time has now arrived for you and I to tell Lord Auckland, totidem verbis, that circumstances have proved incontestably that there is no Afghan army, and that unless the Bengal troops are instantly strengthened, we cannot hold the country.’ I have long since, and strongly and repeatedly, urged my opinion that another brigade should be sent to us. I have also pointed out that there is no such thing as an Afghan army, and I have incessantly urged my earnest opinion to the effect that our position here would be most perilous unless a stop were put to Sikh intrigues. They have now been allowed to go on till the country is thoroughly convulsed by them. Up to this moment Syud Mahomed Khan, one of the Barukzye triumvirate, is carrying into effect his iniquitous designs against his Majesty’s Government. Caubul is full of Sikh emissaries, and letters were yesterday intercepted from the Sikh agent to the address, amongst others, of Nao Nehal Singh, which clearly shows the animus by which the Sikhs are actuated towards their allies of the Tripartite treaty. The Sikh agent acknowledged the letters were his own. He did not know they had been opened.”

The 18th of September was a memorable day. It was the turning-point of our fortunes in Afghanistan. On that day the anxieties of the British minister were at their height. Never was the aspect of affairs more threatening—never was there so little to cheer and encourage the perplexed political chief. The pale cast of despondency was over all his thoughts. His physical and mental energies were alike beginning to fail. “At no period of my life,” he wrote on that 18th of September, “do I remember having been so much harassed in body and mind as during the past month. Nor is my uneasiness yet much lessened. The Afghans are gunpowder, and the Dost is a lighted match. Of his whereabouts we are wonderfully ignorant. I have no hope that he will attack Bameean, and I have great fear that he will throw himself into the Kohistan, where, it is said, the whole country will rise in his favour. But I am weary of conjecture; and we must make the best preparation we can against every possible contingency. Not the least of my vexations arises from our inability to depute Shah-zadah Timour at the present moment. But his presence in the Kohistan is indispensably necessary. He sets out this evening attended by all the chivalry of Caubul.”

But upon that very 18th of September—perhaps whilst the British minister, in perturbation and despondency of mind, was tracing these very lines, and looking, with painful forebodings of evil, for intelligence from the Hindoo-Koosh, the detachment of troops, long shut up in those dreary mountain fastnesses, now re-inforced from Caubul, were achieving a great and decisive victory over the forces of Dost Mahomed and the Wullee of Khooloom, and changing the entire aspect of affairs in those remote Caucasian regions.

On the 14th, the reinforcements under Brigadier Dennie had reached Bameean. It was currently reported that, on that day, Dost Mahomed would attack our position. Nothing, however, was seen of his army, and contradictory reports of his movements continued to pour into camp. From the stories which were circulated at Bameean, and the contents of the letters divulged by the neighbouring chiefs, it appeared that the Ameer had not yet fully determined whether to make a descent upon our detachment, or to avoid the contest. From Kamurd he wrote to one chief: “For God’s sake, tell me the news! Will the Feringhees run or fight?” To the Sirdars of the Afghan corps that has just before deserted, he wrote that all Toorkistan had joined him, and that he had 40,000 men at his call. In all his letters he declared that he had taken up arms for the honour of his religion, and called upon all true believers to flock to the holy standard of the Prophet.

Brigadier Dennie’s first measure, upon reaching Bameean, was to disarm the apostate Afghan corps. He then began to bethink himself of marching upon Syghan to meet the advancing troops of the Ameer. But the enemy were then nearer than he anticipated. On the evening of the 17th, he obtained intelligence to the effect that some advanced bodies of cavalry were “entering the valley from the great defile in our front,” six miles from Bameean; and on the following morning it was reported that they had attacked a friendly village which had claims to the protection of our troops. The Brigadier resolved, therefore, to expel them. It was believed that they constituted the advanced guard of the Ameer’s army under his son Afzul Khan. On the morning of the 18th, a detachment was ordered out to drive the enemy from the valley. Soon after eight o’clock, two horse-artillery guns under Lieutenant Murray Mackenzie, two companies of the 35th Native Infantry, two companies of the Goorkha corps, and about 400 Afghan horse, marched out to meet the enemy. About half an hour afterwards, Dennie, with two more companies of the Native Infantry regiment, and two also of the Goorkha corps, followed in support of the advanced detachment. Instead of coming merely upon the advance of the enemy, the Brigadier found an army in his front.

But in spite of the slender force at his command, and the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, Dennie did not hesitate for a moment. His men were eager to advance; and he himself was full of confidence and courage. The enemy had got possession of a chain of forts reaching to the mouth of the defile, and were collected in bodies round the several forts, and upon the hills on either side of the valley. Mackenzie’s guns began to play upon them. A little while the Oosbegs stood the fire; but the guns were nobly served, and the shrapnel practice told with terrific effect on dense bodies of men who had nothing to give back in return. The Oosbegs fell back, and, as they retreated, the guns were pushed forward; and first from one distance, then from another, opened a destructive fire upon the wavering disconcerted enemy. The Oosbeg force was soon broken to pieces; and our cavalry were then let slip in pursuit. Following the disordered masses for some miles along the defile, they cut down large numbers of the enemy, and dispersed them in all directions. Dost Mahomed and his son are said to have owed their lives to the fleetness of their horses.

Intelligence of this victory soon reached Caubul, and was received with the liveliest emotions of joy by the British Resident. His spirits rose at once. Again he began to look at the present without alarm, and into the future without despondency. Never was a victory so much wanted as in that month of September, and never did one promise so many good results.

“The Dost had only one weapon,” wrote Macnaghten on the 21st, to Major Rawlinson, “that was religion, and he certainly wielded it most skilfully. I think the Oosbegs will now abandon him. Lord has offered handsome terms to the Wullee, and should this fail, I am not without hope that Meer Mahomed Beg will seize the present opportunity of revenging himself on his old enemy.”

The attempt to detach the Wullee of Khooloom from his alliance with Dost Mahomed was crowned with complete success. Doubtless Mackenzie’s guns were the great suasive power. The battle of Bameean must have shown the Oosbeg chief the hopelessness of further resistance; and as Dennie was moving on to Syghan, it was prudent to come at once to terms. Lieutenant Rattray was sent forward to arrange a meeting between the Wullee and Dr. Lord; and on the 28th of September, on the summit of the Dundun-i-Shikun, the British political agent and the Oosbeg chief entered into engagements, by which the latter bound himself not to harbour or assist Dost Mahomed, or any member of his family. The country to the south of Syghan was ceded to Shah Soojah; that to the north of it to the Wullee; and a telescope, which he said had been promised, and which he was hurt at not having received before, was given to the latter in completion of the bargain.

But these favourable results were but local and incidental. “I am like a wooden spoon,” said Dost Mahomed; “you may throw me hither and thither, but I shall not be hurt.” Defeated on the Hindoo-Koosh, he reappeared in the Kohistan. Disaffection was rife throughout that part of the Douranee Empire. The chiefs had begun to feel the evils of the new revenue system, or rather the manner of its administration, which rendered the tax-gatherer something more than a name. Supported by British power, the executive officers of the Shah no longer stood in awe of the petty chieftains, who soon began to murmur against the change of government, and to lay all their grievances at the door of the Feringhees. Thus irritated and exasperated, they were in a temper to welcome back the Barukzye Sirdar. More than one fortress was in the hand of a recusant chief; and it was apprehended that the presence of Dost Mahomed would set the whole country in a blaze.[52]

In such a conjuncture it became necessary to do something in the Kohistan. But it was not easy to determine what. A blow was to be struck, and the chapter of accidents was to determine how and in what direction it should fall. Accordingly, in the last week of September, a force under Sir Robert Sale was ordered to take the field. Sir Alexander Burnes accompanied it, and directed its movements. At the entrance of the Ghorebund Pass was a fortified village, and a chain of detached forts, belonging to a hostile chief, who was known to be in league with the fugitive Ameer. The name of this place was Tootundurrah. On the 29th of September, Sale invested the enemy’s position. The resistance was very slight. The fire of our guns and the advance of the infantry column soon compelled its evacuation, and the place was speedily in possession of the British troops. The success was complete, and would have been cheaply purchased; but one fell there, who, mourned in anguish of spirit by the Envoy, was lamented by the whole force. Edward Conolly, a lieutenant of cavalry, one of three accomplished and enterprising brothers, who had followed the fortunes of their distinguished relative, Sir William Macnaghten, and obtained employment under the British Mission, had on that very morning joined Sale’s force as a volunteer. He was acting as aide-de-camp to the General; when, as the column advanced, he was struck down by a shot from the enemy’s position. The bullet entered his heart. “My mind was in too disturbed a state all day yesterday,” wrote the Envoy on the 1st of October, “to admit of my writing to you. Poor Edward Conolly (Arthur’s next brother) has been killed by a dubious hand at a petty fortress in Kohistan. Never did a nobler or a kinder spirit inhabit a human frame. Poor fellow! he was shot through the heart, and I believe he was the only individual on our side killed during the operations of the 29th, when three forts belonging to the chief rebel in the country were taken. The whole of the chiefs of the Kohistan have now taken to flight. This is a result I by no means anticipated; my wish was to punish some, and to conciliate others. As it is, I fear that Dost Mahomed Khan will now be received by them with open arms. There never was such a set of villains. They came in here, and bound themselves to serve the Shah under the most solemn oaths conceivable, and yet they had not returned to their homes half an hour before they reopened their correspondence with Dost Mahomed. Their punishment became indispensable, for they would shortly have had Dost Mahomed amongst them; and now there is a possibility of their having imbibed so wholesome a terror of our arms as to prevent their ever again assuming an offensive attitude.”[53]

Having destroyed the defences of Tootundurrah, Sale advanced on the 3rd of October to the attack of Joolgah—another fortified position held by the Kohistanee rebels. The walls of this place were too thick to be easily breached, and too high to be easily escaladed. The guns were light; the scaling ladders were short; and the enemy on the crest of the breach offered the most determined resistance. The storming party, led by Colonel Tronson, of the 13th Light Infantry, advanced to the attack with a desperate gallantry worthy of a more distinguished success. Many of the leading men were shot dead in the breach; the struggle to effect a lodgment was ineffectual; and the column was eventually withdrawn. Repulsed, but not disheartened by failure, the British troops were preparing to renew the attack, when the enemy, dreading the recommencement of hostilities, left the fort in the hands of the besiegers. The works were destroyed; and so far the movement was successful—but the failure of the assault deeply mortified the Envoy. “I have bad news to send you,” he wrote on the 4th of October; “our arms have met with a reverse at Joolgah in the Kohistan.[54] A storm and escalade was attempted, but it would not do. The enemy evacuated the place in the evening; but I fear that the whole of the Moofsids (rebels) have escaped...... Burnes represents the country as being in a very unsettled state; and I fear that it will be necessary for his Majesty to remain in Caubul this winter. I intend to write and tell Lord Auckland that he must send us reinforcements vi the Punjab. The Dost was last heard of at Kanjau; but I have no doubt of his soon entering Nijrow. Would it be justifiable to set a price on this fellow’s head? We have intercepted several letters from him, from all of which it appears that he meditates fighting with us so long as the breath is in his body.”

During that month of October, to the annoyance and embarrassment of the political officers and the discomfort of the troops, Dost Mahomed was flitting about from place to place, with no intelligible plan of action to give it any shape and consistency to our counter-operations. Various were the reports which reached the British camp; various the accounts of the nature of his movements and the number of his adherents. Many of these were of the most conflicting character;—and the best-informed officers in the British camp were beset with doubt and perplexity. On the 11th of October it was known that the Ameer was in the valley of Ghorebund. “I believe that there can be little or no doubt,” wrote Macnaghten to Lord Auckland, on the following day, “of Dost Mahomed’s having entered Ghorebund, and of his being at this moment within forty or fifty miles distance from Caubul. It is impossible to say what may be the effect of his coming into this neighbourhood. But I apprehend very serious consequences, for both the town of Caubul and the country are ripe for revolt. Dr. Lord writes that, as soon as Dost Mahomed heard of Mr. Rattray’s approach, he said he would not remain to be sold to the Feringhees, and immediately took the road to Ghorebund. I cannot ascertain how many men he has with him—some accounts say ten thousand, others, three hundred. The last is, I dare say, nearer the mark—but what I dread is, the effect of his incessant intrigues (whilst he is so near us) upon the minds of the population.”

Such, indeed, at this time, were the gloomy forebodings which overshadowed the minds of the political chiefs, that they predicted the necessity of concentrating the troops in the Balla Hissar of Caubul, and actually began to talk of making preparations for a siege. Guns were mounted on the citadel to overawe the town. The guards were everywhere increased. The Bameean detachment was ordered to return to the capital with all possible despatch. And Macnaghten began to talk about “submitting to the disgrace of being shut up in Caubul for a time.” It was, indeed, a critical moment. It has been seen that the Envoy had begun to contemplate the expediency of setting a price on the Ameer’s head. It is a proof alike of the dangers that beset our position in Afghanistan, and the disturbing effects they had wrought upon the minds of our political ministers, that such was the exasperation produced by the apparent success of Dost Mahomed, even upon the kindly nature of the Envoy, that he talked about “showing no mercy to the man who was the author of all the evil now distracting the country.” Shah Soojah had long been eager to “hang the dog;” and now, in conversation with Macnaghten, he taunted him with his mistaken leniency. “I suppose you would, even now,” said the King, “if I were to catch the dog, prevent me from hanging him.” “It will be time enough,” said the Envoy, “to talk about that when your Majesty has caught him.” The British minister was about to take his leave, when the Shah arrested him, and said: “You know I have from the first expressed to you a mean opinion of my own countrymen. If you want further proofs, look at that from my own brother.” He then placed in the Envoy’s hands an intercepted letter to the address of the Barukzye chief, Sultan Mahomed, proposing that, with his aid, and that of the Sikhs, Shah Zemaun should be placed on the throne, as Shah Soojah had made over the country to the dominion of infidels. The letter bore the seal of the old blind king himself. It was on the following day that the Envoy wrote to the Governor-General that no mercy should be shown to the Ameer; but he added, “should he be so fortunate as to secure the person of Dost Mahomed, I shall request his Majesty not to execute him till I can ascertain your Lordship’s sentiments.”[55]

In the mean while, the force under Sir Robert Sale had moved, in pursuit of the Ameer, into the Nijrow country. On the 18th they were encamped near Kardurrah; and on the 20th were meditating an attack on the place. The Envoy, who watched their proceedings with extreme anxiety, was impatient of the seeming dilatoriness of their movements; and wrote to one of his colleagues: “Burnes and Sale, with nearly 2000 good infantry, are sitting down before a fortified position about twenty miles distant, and are afraid to attack it. The enemy made an attack upon them the night before last—killed and wounded some of our people, and got off unscathed. All this is very bad.” But it was not in reality so bad as it seemed to the perplexed and anxious minister at Caubul. Whilst he was writing, preparations were in progress for an attack, on the following day. On the morning of the 21st the force was ready and eager for action. But as the troops advanced, fresh and in good spirits, upon Kardurrah, a party of villagers met them with tidings to the effect that the enemy had abandoned their position, and that the place was without an inhabitant. If any feelings of mortification welled up on the discovery that the garrison had escaped our toils, they very quickly subsided. It was plain that the enemy had made a great mistake, and that the British force had providentially been delivered from a great danger. The position that the “rebels” had abandoned was one of uncommon strength, and, had it been defended with any spirit, could only have been carried, if at all, after a large expenditure of life.

Dost Mahomed was now in the Nijrow country. His cause seemed to gather strength. Even some of Shah Soojah’s soldiers deserted their British officers and flocked to the Ameer’s standard. On the 27th of October he broke ground, and moved down towards the capital. On the 29th, intelligence of his movements having reached the British camp at Bhag-alum, the force marched out to intercept the enemy. The two following days were employed by the engineer officers in reconnoitring and surveying the surrounding country; and on the 1st of November the force encamped before Meer-Musjedee’s fort. Here it was ascertained that they were in the neighbourhood of the enemy, and preparations were made to give battle to the Ameer and his adherents.

On the 2nd of November—a day which has obtained a melancholy celebrity in the annals of the English in Afghanistan—the British force came at last in sight of the enemy. The army of the Ameer was posted in the valley of Purwandurrah. The Nijrow hills were bristling with the armed population of a hostile country. Unprepared for the conflict, Dost Mahomed had no design, on that November morning, of giving battle to the Feringhees. An unexpected movement precipitated the collision. On the first appearance of the British troops the Ameer evacuated the village of Purwandurrah and the neighbouring forts; and was moving off to a position on some elevated ground commanded by a steep hill to the rearward, when, at the suggestion of Dr. Lord, the British cavalry were moved forward to outflank the Afghan horse.

It was a clear bright morning. The yellow foliage of autumn glittered like gold in the broad sunlight. The opposite hills were alive with the enemy. The crisp fresh air, so bracing and invigorating to the human frame, seemed to breathe confidence and courage. Dost Mahomed, who, since his defeat at Bameean, had been often heard of, but never seen, by the British troops, and who seemed to elude the grasp of the Army of Occupation like an ignis fatuus, was now actually within their reach. It ought to have been an hour of triumph. It was one of humiliation. The Afghans were on the hills skirting one side of the pass; the British troops were on the opposite declivity. Dost Mahomed saw our cavalry advancing, and from that moment cast behind him all thought of retreat. At the head of a small band of horsemen, strong, sturdy Afghans, but badly mounted, he prepared to meet his assailants. Beside him rode the bearer of the blue standard which marked his place in the battle. He pointed to it; reined in his horse; then snatching the white lunghi from his head, stood up in his stirrups uncovered before his followers, and called upon them, in the name of God and the Prophet, to drive the cursed Kaffirs from the country of the faithful. “Follow me,” he cried aloud, “or I am a lost man.” Slowly, but steadily, the Afghan horsemen advanced. The English officers, who led our cavalry to the attack, covered themselves with glory. The native troopers fled like sheep. Emboldened by the craven conduct of the British cavalry, the Afghan horsemen rode forward, driving their enemy before them, and charging right up to the position of the British, until almost within reach of our guns.[56] The Afghan sabres told, with cruel effect, upon our mounted men. Lieutenants Broadfoot and Crispin were cut to pieces. A treacherous shot from a neighbouring bastion brought Dr. Lord to the ground; and the dagger of the assassin completed the work of death. Captains Fraser and Ponsonby, whose gallantry has never been surpassed even in the annals of old Roman heroism, still live to show their honourable scars; and to tell, with mingled pride and humiliation, the story of that melancholy day.

In front of our columns, flaunting the national standard, the Afghans stood for some time masters of the field, and then quietly withdrew from the scene of battle. Sir Alexander Burnes, awed by this disaster, wrote to Sir William Macnaghten that there was nothing left for the force but to fall back upon Caubul, and implored the Envoy there to concentrate all our troops. Sir William received the letter on the 3rd of November, as he was taking his evening ride in the outskirts of the city. His worst forebodings seemed to be confirmed. Little did he know what thoughts were stirring in the breast of the Ameer. Dost Mahomed, in the very hour of victory, felt that it was hopeless to contend against the power of the British Government. He had too much sagacity not to know that his success at Purwandurrah must eventually tend, by moving the British to redouble their exertions, rather to hasten than to retard the inevitable day of his final destruction. He quitted the field in no mood of exultation; with no bright visions of the future before him. He had won the last throw, but the final issue had ceased to be a matter of speculation. The hour in which, with dignity and grace, he might throw himself upon the protection of his enemies, now seemed to have arrived. He had met the British troops in the field, and, at the head of a little band of horsemen, had driven back the cavalry of the Feringhees. His last charge had been a noble one; he might now retire from the contest without a blot upon his name.

So thought the Ameer; as was his wont, taking counsel of his saddle. None knew in the British camp the direction he had taken; none guessed the character of his thoughts. On the day after the victory of Purwandurrah he was under the walls of Caubul. He had been four-and-twenty hours in the saddle; but betrayed little symptoms of fatigue. A single horseman attended him. As they approached the residence of the British Envoy, they saw an English gentleman returning from his evening ride. The attendant galloped forward to satisfy himself of the identity of the rider, and being assured that the Envoy was before him, said that the Ameer was at hand. “What Ameer?” asked Macnaghten. “Dost Mahomed Khan,” was the answer; and presently the chief himself rode up to the British minister. Throwing himself from his horse, Dost Mahomed saluted the Envoy, said he was come to claim his protection, and placed his sword in Macnaghten’s hand. But the Envoy returning it to him, desired the Ameer to remount. They then rode together into the Mission compound—— Dost Mahomed asking many eager questions about his family as they went. A tent having been pitched for his accommodation, he wrote letters to his sons, exhorting them to follow his example and seek the protection of the British Government.

He seemed to have become reconciled to his fate. He had no wish, he said, to escape. Force, indeed, would not drive him to abandon the refuge he had voluntarily sought. With Macnaghten he conversed freely of his past history; and raised, by the recital alike of his doings and his sufferings, the strongest feelings of admiration and compassion in the Envoy’s breast. Every effort was made to soothe the Ameer’s feelings; and he soon became serene and cheerful. A report that it was the design of our government to banish him to London, disturbed his equanimity for a time; but he was soon reassured by the promises of the Envoy, and began to look forward with hopefulness to a life of repose and security in the Company’s dominions. A few days after his surrender, his eldest son, Afzul Khan, came into the British camp.

A prisoner, but an honoured one, Dost Mahomed remained some ten days at Caubul, during which time all the leading officers of the garrison paid him the most marked attention. Men, who kept aloof from Shah Soojah, as one to be religiously avoided, were eager to present themselves before the unfortunate Ameer, and to show that they respected him in his fallen fortunes. He received his visitors with courtesy, and conversed with them with freedom. Seated on the ground, he desired them to be seated; and seemed to take pleasure in the society of the brave men who did him honour. Captain Nicolson, an officer of distinguished gallantry and great intelligence, whose early death on the banks of the Sutlej is to be deeply deplored, having been selected by Sir W. Macnaghten to fill the difficult and delicate office of custodian to the fallen prince, acted, on these occasions, as interpreter. It may be doubted whether a single officer quitted his presence without drawing a comparison between the Ameer and the Shah, very much to the disadvantage of the latter. The King refused to see his prisoner, alleging that he would not be able to bring himself to show common civility to such a villain. “This is well,” said the Envoy, writing to the Private Secretary of the Governor-General, “as the Dost must have suffered much humiliation in being subjected to such an ordeal.” All the natural kindliness of the Envoy now set in towards the fallen prince, and all the courtesies of the English gentleman were freely bestowed upon him.

On the 12th of November, 1840, Dost Mahomed Khan, under a strong escort,[57] commenced his journey towards the provinces of India; and two months afterwards Macnaghten wrote:

“I trust that the Dost will be treated with liberality. His case has been compared to that of Shah Soojah; and I have seen it argued that he should not be treated more handsomely than his Majesty was; but surely the cases are not parallel. The Shah had no claim upon us. We had no hand in depriving him of his kingdom, whereas we ejected the Dost, who never offended us, in support of our policy, of which he was the victim.”[58]

And so Macnaghten, in a few lines of irrepressible truth and candour, denounced the injustice of the policy of which he himself had been one of the originators. It is possible, too, that Lord Auckland may have felt that Dost Mahomed “never offended us,” but that we had victimised him; for he received the Prince he had deposed with becoming hospitality and respect, and burdened the revenues of India with a pension in his favour of two lakhs of rupees.