[November: 1840-September: 1841.]

Yar Mahomed and the Douranees—Season of Peace—Position of the Douranees—The Zemrindawer Outbreak—Conduct of Yar Mahomed—Departure of Major Todd—Risings of the Douranees and Ghilzyes—Engagements with Aktur Khan and the Gooroo—Dispersion of the Insurgents.

The remainder of the month of November passed away in peace and tranquillity. The Envoy began now for the first time to taste the blessings of repose, and to enjoy the advantages of leisure. But his active mind was soon again busily at work. Dost Mahomed had surrendered; but the Sikhs had not been coerced. The time for the “macadamisation” of the Punjab seemed now to have arrived. To the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces of India, he wrote on the 24th of November, of the “piping times of peace, so unfavourable to the exercise of the epistolary art,” and of the “cards which played so beautifully into his hands.” “This is the time,” he added, “for a subsidiary force in the Punjab, and for the cession of the districts to the west of the Indus. We are clearly not bound any longer by the Tripartite treaty, and so I have told Lord Auckland; but I don’t think his Lordship’s ambition will aim at more than keeping matters on their present footing. We start for Jellalabad in three or four days; and it is high time we should do so, as the weather is becoming bitterly cold here. We shall now have a little time to devote to the affairs of the country, and I trust its condition will be soon as flourishing as its poor resources will admit.”[59]

Before the end of November, the Court were on their way to their winter quarters at Jellalabad. On the morning of the 13th they reached that place. The Envoy found Sir Willoughby Cotton still there, but “anxious to get away;” and Captain Macgregor, the political agent in charge of the district, surrounded by a motley crew of the chiefs of the country, who seemed to look up to him as their common father. In the enjoyment of a little rest from pressing anxieties, the Envoy began to turn his thoughts to the domestic administration of the country. “We have hitherto,” he wrote to the Private Secretary of the Governor-General, “been struggling for existence, without any leisure to turn to the improvement of the administration.”[60] And very little of this leisure was even now vouchsafed to him. Though Dost Mahomed was on his way to the provinces of India, and the winter snows had now set in, the struggle for existence was still going on, and more fiercely than ever. The Ghilzyes and Kohistanees had already risen up against the government of the Shah and his supporters; and now the Douranees were breaking out into revolt.

It has been shown, that on the reappearance of Shah Soojah at Candahar, the Douranees, enfeebled and prostrated by their Barukzye oppressors, clustered around the throne, and sought from the restored monarch the privileges and immunities which had been wrested from them by the Sirdars. Uncertain, at that time, of the ultimate success of the expedition, and eager to swell the number of his adherents, the Shah was willing to grant, and more willing still to promise. He made certain remissions of taxation in favour of the tribes; but he entrusted the execution of these new popular measures to the old unpopular agency; and the Parsewan revenue-collectors, who had oppressed the tribes during the reign of the Sirdars, were still left to exercise their hated calling under the King.

The experiment of giving is a dangerous one. In the ordinary concerns of human life, it is found that the shortcomings of those who give bring down upon them more hatred and more reproach than the withholdings of those who give not. It is perilous to raise hopes not to be fulfilled. The Douranees had looked for much from the restoration of the Shah; and they were disappointed. They had patiently submitted to the exactions and oppressions of the Barukzyes—but the imperfect liberality of the Suddoyze monarch irritated them past endurance. They looked upon the Barukzyes as their natural enemies, and they submitted when they knew that they had no power of resistance. But believing that it was the wish of the restored government of the Shah to conciliate and encourage them, they demonstrated their dissatisfaction in a violent and offensive manner, with the strongest assurance in their mind that their grievances would be redressed. Under the Barukzyes such a course would have been worse than useless, for their spasms of painful unrest were pleasing to the Sirdars. But as it seemed that the Shah desired to please them, they strove to evince, by most unmistakeable signs, that they were not pleased; and broke out into rebellion.[61]

In Zemindawer, a district which lies to the north-west of Candahar, symptoms of inquietude began to evince themselves at the end of 1840. At this time, the affairs of Candahar and its neighbourhood were, as regards all European superintendence, under the charge of Major Rawlinson. This officer, who had been employed for some years in Persia,[62] and on the rupture of our friendly relations with that state, necessarily remanded to India, had been so strongly recommended, for his intimate acquaintance with the languages, the people, and the politics of the East, as well as for his general aptitude and intelligence, by Sir John M‘Niell to Lord Auckland, that the Governor-General ordered him to proceed to Caubul, to be employed under Macnaghten. In the early part of 1840 it had been proposed to despatch Rawlinson and Arthur Conolly on a mission to the camp of the Russian General Peroffski, but the breaking up of the Khivan expedition caused this project to be abandoned; and another field of activity was opened out to Rawlinson in a region less inhospitable and remote. The supervision of affairs at Candahar had hitherto been entrusted to Major Leech; but Leech had given offence to the Envoy by the dilatoriness with which he had sent in his accounts, and it had seemed good to Macnaghten to remove him from his post.[63] He could not have appointed a better man than Rawlinson to fill it. So, on the 4th of July, he sent to that officer the Shah’s official notification of his appointment as political agent at Candahar.

The command of the troops at Candahar was in the hands of Major-General Nott. He was an old Sepoy officer of good repute; a man of some talents, but blunt address—an honest, plain-spoken soldier, not always right, but always believing himself to be right—hearty, genuine, and sincere. His faults were chiefly those of temper. He had not been well used. Sir Henry Fane had recognised his merits; but Sir John Keane, who was accused of fostering a narrow-minded prejudice against the Company’s service, had superseded him in a manner which had greatly incensed the General himself, and the army to which he belonged.[64] Labouring under a strong sense of the injustice that had been done him; feeling that his worth had not been duly appreciated, or his services duly rewarded; seeing much in the general management of the affairs of the distracted country in which his lot had been cast to excite his unqualified disapprobation; and being, moreover, constitutionally of an irritable temperament, he sometimes said and wrote what was calculated to offend others; and as the political officers were the especial objects of his dislike, he was in no favour at the Residency. Macnaghten declared that the general’s conduct frequently embarrassed him, and recommended, therefore, his recall. But it was felt that Nott was a fine soldier; and, though the Government eventually listened to the Envoy’s counsel in this matter, they were slow to remove him from a sphere in which his energy and decision were likely to be so serviceable to the state. And, perhaps, it was felt that, in his political colleague at Candahar, Nott had a man of excellent temper, of great tact and forbearance, and that the difficulty was much lessened by so fortunate an association.

Such were the men upon whom, at the beginning of 1841, devolved the duty of looking this Douranee outbreak fairly in the face. The task that fell to Nott’s share was the easier of the two. He had simply to beat the enemy in the field. The insurgents of Zemindawer had risen up against a party of the Shah’s horse, who had been sent out to support the revenue officers, and had defeated and dispersed them. A detachment, therefore, was ordered out against them, under Captain Farrington. On the morning of the 3rd of January they came up with the rebels. The Douranee horse, some 1200 or 1500 strong, showed a bold front; but the fire of Hawkins’s guns was too hot for them, and they began to waver. The infantry well completed what the cavalry had well begun; the insurgents were driven from their position, and were soon broken and dispersed. And so, for the time, the military officer had done his work, and with good success. The political officer had a more difficult duty to perform. Rawlinson was called upon to elucidate the causes of the dissatisfaction of the Douranees, and to recommend the best means of quenching the dangerous spirit of revolt. The causes, doubtless, were numerous, and there were some which lay far beneath the surface. Both in private letters to Macnaghten and in a masterly official report, to which allusion has been made, Rawlinson probed them to their very depths—but his views were not in accordance with those of the Envoy, and his warnings were disregarded.

Macnaghten had at first been willing to believe that this revolt of the Douranees had risen out of the tyrannical interference of unpopular revenue-administrators, which had left them in a mood of mind favourable in the extreme to the designs of any discontented or factious chief who had objects to gain, or resentments to gratify, by stirring the country into rebellion. “Aktur Khan,” he wrote to Mr. Colvin, “was disappointed in not getting the chiefship of Zemindawer; and he found the people in a temper to aid his rebellious projects, owing to the oppressions practised by the Wakeel.” But he was slow to believe that there was any general feeling of disaffection in the country; that the double government we had established was essentially and necessarily unpopular; or that such occasional outbreaks as he was condemned to witness were the results of anything more than personal and accidental circumstances, from which no general conclusions were to be drawn. He never believed that there was any nationality among the Afghans, or that the presence of the stranger and the Infidel in their land could be a sore continually to fester and to throb.

Still less did he believe it possible that our presence in Afghanistan could be hateful to the King himself, who owed everything to us. But it was reported, and believed by many in the neighbourhood of Candahar, that Shah Soojah had secretly fomented the rebellion of the Douranees. The Shah shook with rage, when this story was told him, and vowed that the man, to whom its authorship had been traced, should pay the penalty of his mendacity by having his tongue cut out at the root. “And I really think,” said Macnaghten, “there would be no harm in depriving the rascal of his ears.” But there were others who believed then and afterwards, that the old king was as eager as any one of his subjects, to see the white-faced intruders swept from the face of the land; and that he yearned to be in deed, as well as in name, supreme in the Douranee Empire.

To have acknowledged either the unpopularity of our occupation of Afghanistan, or the faithlessness of the King, would have been to have acknowledged the entire failure of our policy. So Macnaghten still continued to seek for accidental causes of the popular discontent, and to talk of superficial remedies. “My own impression is,” he wrote to Mr. Colvin, on the 5th of February, “that matters will revert to a wholesome state as soon as ever the incubus of apprehension is removed from the body of the people; and this will be effected by the simple recall of the obnoxious Parsewan managers.” But there was another source to which, at this time, he was fain to attribute the inquietude of Western Afghanistan. He suspected, and not without reason, that the disaffection of the Douranees had been fomented by the intrigues of Yar Mahomed. The suspicion soon rose into knowledge. There were undeniable proofs that the Heratee Wuzeer had been writing inflammatory letters to the Douranee chiefs. He had sent a delegate, named Nussur-ood-deen Khan, into the Zemindawer country, with letters to each of the principal Douranee chiefs, and one of them had forwarded to Lieutenant Elliot, Rawlinson’s assistant, a copy of the seditious missive, which ran to the following effect:

Let each of you assemble his followers, and go in to Aktur Khan in Zemindawer, and be ready and prepared, for I have moved out of Herat; and from Meshed, troops 10,000 strong, with twelve guns and two lakhs of rupees, are marching to our assistance. At latest, I shall arrive at Bukhwa by the end of the month Mohurram. Let not any Douranee chief of those now assembled disperse his followers, for I am most assured of coming to join you.

The fact was not to be doubted; but it was in no way the cause of the disorder. It merely aggravated the external symptoms of a deeply-seated disease. Vexatious and embarrassing as was this intelligence, there was worse behind to astound the Envoy, and make him cry out more and more bitterly against the authorities, who had thwarted his long cherished desire to play the “great game.” Suddenly there came upon him tidings that the outrages and the exactions—the treachery and the insolence—of Yar Mahomed had reached such a pitch, that Todd had broken up the British Mission, and set his face towards Candahar.

The Wuzeer had long been accommodating his demands to every change in the political barometer. Unfortunately, those changes had indicated little but the depressed circumstances of our position in Afghanistan. The disaster of Major Clibborne; the fall of Khelat; and the progress of Dost Mahomed on the Hindoo-Koosh, were adverse circumstances which encouraged the Wuzeer to rise in his demands for more money, and even to meditate aggressive movements of a more palpable character than any which had yet been undertaken against the power of Shah Soojah and his supporters. At one time he contemplated an attack upon Candahar, and was anxious that his intentions should be known to the British Mission. The surrender of Dost Mahomed had, however, somewhat checked his presumption; and the descent upon Candahar was postponed.

The knowledge of the Zemindawer outbreak soon caused the project to be revived. Having despatched an emissary to the disaffected country to keep alive the spirit of revolt, Yar Mahomed at the same time sent, secretly and suddenly, a deputation to the Persian governor at Meshed, seeking pecuniary assistance from his government, promising to expel the British mission from Herat, and urging him to unite in an attack on Candahar, whilst the communications between that place and Caubul were cut off by the snow.

This last glaring act of perfidy excited Todd to retaliate. He believed that there was a point of forbearance beyond which it would be disgraceful to his country to descend; so he determined to suspend the payment of the allowance[65] which had been granted to the state; and, taking advantage of the presence of a large body of troops in Upper Sindh, announced, on the 1st of February, his intention to the Wuzeer. But Yar Mahomed, at this time, was intent on playing a “great game.” He believed that his deputation had been favourably received at Meshed; he believed that the Douranees were again working themselves into rebellion; and he had abundant faith in the continued forbearance of the British government. So he played, with his accustomed craft, for a large stake; and little heeded the consequences of failure. The one object of all his intrigues was to obtain money—money for the state—money for himself. On the 8th of February he came forward with a string of specific demands. He asked for two lakhs of rupees to pay his own debts; he asked for an increased monthly allowance to his Government, to be guaranteed for a year; he asked for further improvement of the fortifications of Herat at the expense of the British Government; he asked for loans of money to enable Herat to recover possession of its lost territories, the troops to be subsisted in the field at our expense; and he asked for a written agreement to relieve him “from all apprehension for the future.” He knew well what he merited at our hands, and years afterwards justified his conduct to the British Mission, on the ground that he dreaded the influence of our officers, and felt that his very existence was at stake.

To these extravagant demands Todd gave an answer regulated by his knowledge of the forbearing course, which his Government desired him to pursue. He told the Wuzeer that before he could comply, even in a modified form, with such requests, he should require some guarantee that such concessions would not be thrown away. Yar Mahomed had some time before declared his willingness to admit a British garrison into Herat. If this were now done, some of his demands might be granted. Yar Mahomed clutched at this; but turning the proposed garrison into a British force to be located in the valley of Herat, declared that, on the payment of two lakhs of rupees, he would give his assent to the measure. Never had he the shadow of an intention of fulfilling his part of the contract—but he wanted the money. His sincerity was soon tested. Todd demanded that the Wuzeer’s son should be sent to Ghiresk, there to await an answer from the Government of India, and to escort, if the measure were approved, the British troops to Herat; and it was added, that on the Sirdar’s arrival at that place the money demanded would be paid. But Yar Mahomed at once refused his assent to Todd’s proposal. He required the immediate payment of the money or the departure of the Mission. So the British agent chose the latter alternative, and turned his back upon Herat.

Never before, perhaps, had the British Government been so insulted and so outraged in the person of its representatives. Shah Kamran, at a private audience, told one of the officers of the Mission that, but for his protection, “not a Feringhee would have been left alive;” and asked if he did not deserve some credit for not acting towards Todd and his companions as the Ameer of Bokhara had acted towards Colonel Stoddart. Yar Mahomed had intercepted Todd’s letters to Candahar. He had been for some time in an habitual state of intoxication. The seizure of the persons of the British officers, and the plunder of their property, had been openly discussed by the Wuzeer and his profligate friends, and there is little doubt that, if the Mission had remained longer at Herat, the members of it would have been subjected to indignities of the worst kind.

The Mission left Herat, and halted for a time at Ghiresk. When the tidings of its abrupt departure reached Lord Auckland at Calcutta, he was roused into a state of very unwonted exacerbation. He was not a hasty man—he was not an unjust one. But on this occasion he committed an act both hasty and unjust. He at once repudiated the proceedings of Major Todd at Herat; and removed him from political employment.

“I am writhing in anger and in bitterness,” he wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor of Agra, “at Major Todd’s conduct at Herat, and have seen no course open to me, in regard to it, but that of discarding and disavowing him; and we have directed his dismissal to the provinces. What we have wanted in Afghanistan has been repose under an exhibition of strength, and he has wantonly, and against all orders, done that which is most likely to produce general disquiet, and which may make our strength inadequate to the calls upon it. I look upon a march to Herat as perfectly impracticable; and if it were not so, I should look upon it, under present circumstances, as most inexpedient. We have taught Yar Mahomed to be more afraid of us than of the Persians. It is possible that, when he has been left a little time to himself, he will be more afraid of the Persians than of us—but, in the mean time, the state to which things have been brought is a cause of much anxiety and more apprehension to me.”

That, in one sense, the Heratee Mission failed, is certain; but, there were some of Todd’s measures which did not fail, and it is not to be forgotten that on his own responsibility he despatched Abbott and Shakespear to Khiva, and the good that was done by these Missions was often in the retrospect a solace to him in after days, when smarting under the injustice of his masters.[66] Substantial benefits, too, were conferred on the people of Herat—benefits still remembered with gratitude, and seldom spoken of without some expression of respect and admiration for their benefactors. The unceasing charities and the blameless lives of the officers of the Mission raised the character of the British nation as it was raised in no other part of Afghanistan. But Lord Auckland never forgave the diplomatic failure. Todd’s departure from Herat was inopportune; for, although he had no reason to believe the settlement of our differences with Persia was any nearer to its consummation than it had been for some time, they were then on the eve of adjustment. Had he known this, he would have braved everything and remained at Herat, encouraged by the thought that the re-establishment of our amicable relations with Persia would effectually cripple the power and restrain the audacity of the Heratee minister. Remanded to his regiment, Todd proceeded to join it at the head-quarters of the Artillery at Dum-Dum. “Equal to either fortune,” he fell back upon the common routine of regimental service, and, in command of a company of Foot Artillery, devoted himself with as much earnest and assiduous zeal to the minutiÆ of military duty, as he had done, a year before, to the affairs of the Herat Mission. It has often been said that political employ unfits a man for regimental duty; but Major Todd, from the time that he first rejoined his regiment to the hour of his death, never slackened in his attention to his military duties; and, perhaps, in the whole range of the service, there was not a more zealous, a more assiduous—in other words, a more conscientious regimental officer than the old antagonist of Yar Mahomed. The trait of character here illustrated is a rarer one than may be supposed. Nothing in his political life became him like the leaving of it. There are few who know how, gracefully, to descend.

It is not improbable that these years of regimental duty were the happiest period of his life. Shortly after his return to the Presidency, from which he had so long been absent, he married; and in the enjoyment of domestic happiness, such as has rarely been surpassed, he soon forgot the injustice that had been done to him. Cheerfully doing his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him, respected and beloved by all who had the means of appreciating the simplicity of his manners, the kindness of his heart, the soundness of his intelligence, and the integrity of his conduct, he found that, in exchanging the excitement of a semi-barbarous Court for the tranquillity of cantonment life and the companionship of a gentle and amiable wife, the barter, though not self-sought, had been greatly to his advantage.

Being appointed to the command of a horse-field battery, stationed at Delhi, he left Dum-Dum for the imperial city, where he continued to serve, until, shortly before the Sikh invasion, he attained that great object of regimental ambition, the command of a troop of horse-artillery. In the Upper Provinces, he had more than once been disquieted by the illness of his young and fondly-loved wife; but the heavy blow, which was to prostrate all his earthly happiness, did not descend upon him until within a few days of that memorable 18th of December, 1845, which saw the British army fling itself upon the Sikh batteries at Mudkhi. He was called away, as he touchingly said, “from the open grave,” to be plunged into the excitement of battle. It was at Ferozshuhur that D’Arcey Todd, broken-hearted, with a strong presentiment of his approaching end, declaring that he “only wished to live that the grace of God and the love of Christ might prepare him to leave a world in which there could be no more joy for him,” led his troop, a second time, into action, and perished in the unequal conflict: and among the many who fell on that mournful day, there was not a braver soldier or a better man.

On receiving intelligence of Todd’s departure from Herat, Macnaghten’s first impulse had been to muster all his available resources, and relying greatly on the “big guns,” to make an immediate demonstration in the direction of Herat, beating up the rebels on the Helmund, and “crushing Aktur Khan” on our way to the western frontier. He wrote to Rawlinson to prepare for the siege; he wrote to Ross Bell in Scinde to send up all the heavy guns in his part of the country, applying to the commissary at Forezpore for draft bullocks, if they were not to be obtained more readily; and he wrote to the Supreme Government to send “as large a force as might be available, and as speedily as possible, to Candahar, even if an attack on Herat should not be meditated.” He was eager for the opinions of every competent authority regarding the facilities of an immediate movement on Herat. “Is there any chance,” he wrote to Rawlinson, “of our mustering heavy guns and force sufficient to attack the place this year?” “What does Todd say of the best season for operations, and what aid does he hope we might obtain from people in and around Herat?” “What does Sanders think of the means at our command for subduing Herat?” “You may imagine,” he wrote, in another letter to the same correspondent, “how anxious I am to hear of Todd’s safety, and to learn the particulars of his departure from Herat, and the proximate cause of that important event, as well as his and your, and Sanders’ opinion, as to the practicability of operations against Herat this season. I suppose if the force were to move from Candahar by the middle of May, it would be time enough. But will the requisite battering train be then forthcoming? And shall we then have a quantum suff of grain and camels?” “The Governor-General,” added the Envoy, “will, I fear, if possible, do nothing.”

In this conjecture, at least, Macnaghten’s sagacity was not at fault. Against an armed interference with the affairs of Herat, Lord Auckland had always steadfastly set his face. It was his belief that it was necessary to establish ourselves firmly in Afghanistan before operating upon Herat; but Macnaghten always declared that there was no possibility of achieving the former object until the latter had been accomplished, and was always clamorous for the re-annexation of Herat to the dominions of Shah Soojah. His instructions, however, were imperative. Even after the departure of the Mission, the Governor-General counselled a mild and forbearing course. “I cannot,” he wrote to Macnaghten, “apprehend organised invasion from Herat, though there may be a foray on the frontier, which will not have the effect of making the advent of Yar Mahomed popular in Zemindawer. I think it, however, more likely that you will have to deal with letters and agents than with troops; and you ask me in what manner you are to receive overtures which may be made to you by Yar Mahomed. I would receive them calmly and coldly, but not repulsively. I would show no impatience to renew a Mission to Herat. I would have it to be understood that the stoppage of the allowances was unauthorised, and that the detachment of a brigade to the citadel of Herat was not desired, and would not have been acceded to by the British Government, but that the conduct of the Vizier has given great offence, and that we can regard Herat with no confidence or friendly feeling until there shall have been on the side of that state an entire change of policy. I can only repeat, therefore, what I have said very many times within the last two years: That you must be strong in Afghanistan before you can hope to exercise a wholesome influence upon Herat; and I am glad that you are giving your attention to the condition of the internal government of the country.”

But although the supreme authorities at Calcutta would not countenance a movement upon Herat, it was manifest at Candahar that the aggressive designs of Yar Mahomed, who contemplated the seizure of Ghiresk, and the hostile demonstrations of the Douranees in the western districts, rendered active operations on our part a matter of immediate necessity. So Rawlinson wrote officially to the General that it appeared to him “of first-rate importance that the insurrection in Zemindawer should be crushed before the acquisition of any further strength could render its co-operation of essential service to the Wuzeer of Herat in his projected advance.” “I also consider,” he added, “that the strengthening of our position on the Helmund, and the indication of readiness on our part to meet any such advance, would be the most effectual way of checking the movement, and of frustrating its object.”[67] An intercepted letter from Aktur Khan, announcing his intention to move from Zemindawer directly upon Candahar, if encouraged by the tribes occupying the intervening country, had been brought in to the Political Agent, and it was obvious, therefore, that no time was to be lost.

So a force was sent out to the Zemindawer country to beat up Aktur Khan’s quarters, or to intercept his advance. The political conduct of the expedition was entrusted to Lieutenant Elliot, Rawlinson’s assistant; and ably he did his duty. It was not our policy to beat the Douranees in battle. It never could be our policy in that country to shed the blood of the tribes. The submission, not the destruction, of Aktur Khan was now the object to be attained; and, as the chief was believed to muster not more than 1300 followers, it was deemed probable that the advance of our force would determine him, in the diplomatic language of the day, to “come in.” Intimations of his willingness to submit to terms met Elliot as he advanced. An interview was arranged between them. In the camp of the Douranee Sirdar, Atta Mahomed, the young English “Political” met Aktur Khan, and received his submission. A conditional pardon was granted to the disaffected chief, some concessions were made, and a dress of honour was conferred upon him. The most important condition on his part was, that he should disband his followers, and as it was believed that he would fulfil his promise in this respect, hope was entertained that the Zemindawer country would be tranquillised without further shedding of blood. But, Rawlinson saw plainly that the advantage which we had gained would be short-lived. “I do not anticipate,” he wrote to Macnaghten, “that by the conciliatory treatment recommended by Lieutenant Elliot, we gain any other advantage than that of temporary tranquillity; and however prudent therefore it may be at present to induce the rebel chief of Zemindawer to abstain from disorders by the hope of obtaining through his forbearance substantial personal benefits, I still think that when the danger of foreign aggression is removed, and efficient means are at our disposal, the rights of His Majesty’s government should be asserted in that strong and dignified manner which can alone ensure a due respect being paid to his authority.”[68]

And not the Douranees only, but the Ghilzyes also in Western Afghanistan were, in the spring and summer of 1841, revolting against the authorities of Shah Soojah and his Feringhee supporters. Lieutenant Lynch, an officer of the Bombay army, who had served in Persia with the rank of major, was in political charge of the country about Khelat-i-Ghilzye. The restlessness and disaffection of the tribes he attributed to the fact that the families of some of their chief people, who, after the operations against them in 1839, had fled for safety to the Sikh frontier, had at the instigation of the British Envoy, been seized and cast into captivity. But, whatever may have been the more remote cause, there was in this spring of 1841, a proximate source of irritation in the fact, that the English were rebuilding the fortress of Khelat-i-Ghilzye, which lies between Caubul and Candahar, with the design of posting there a strong garrison to overcome the circumjacent tribes. This movement had been regarded with great jealousy by the Ghilzyes; and the tribes in the immediate neighbourhood had assumed an insolent and defiant attitude. About two miles from Khelat-i-Ghilzye, was a small fort, bristling with armed men. As Lynch was riding past it, some of the people came out, and brandishing their swords defied him to attack them. It was thought that if this insolence were allowed to pass unnoticed, more serious acts of aggression might be anticipated. So the troops at Khelat-i-Ghilzye were summoned to attack the fort. Aided by Captain Sanders of the engineers, Captain Macan, who commanded one of the regiments of Shah Soojah’s force, led his Hindostanees against the rebellious stronghold, and captured it after a brave resistance. The chief and many of his followers were slain in the conflict, and the irritation of the Ghilzyes was greater than before.

It was a gallant military exploit, but a great misfortune; and Lynch, whether he had judged rightly or wrongly that the exigencies of the occasion demanded that he should chastise the people who had insulted him, was condemned both at Caubul and Calcutta. The Envoy wrote that he had “foreseen the likelihood of the Ghilzyes resenting the erection of a fort in the heart of their country;” but asked, “Why should we go and knock our heads against mud-forts? Why should we not have waited till the Ghilzyes chose to attack us?” Lord Auckland declared his opinion that Major Lynch’s proceedings had been “marked by a vapouring and needless parade, most likely to produce popular excitement.” And a little later, Burnes, in a letter full of wise humanity, wrote to Lynch; more in sorrow than in anger, saying, “I am one of those altogether opposed to any further fighting in this country, and I consider that we shall never settle Afghanistan at the point of the bayonet.... As regards the Ghilzyes, indeed, immense allowance ought to be made for them; they were till within three generations the Kings of Afghanistan, and carried their victorious arms to the capital of Persia. It is expecting too much, therefore, to hope for their being at once peaceful subjects; and as they exhibited so much indisposition to the King’s Government, it was, I think, right to build a fort at Khelat-i-Ghilzye, and thus bridle them, thereby enabling us, in the heart of the Ghilzye country, to protect those who were disposed to join us, and gradually undermine our enemies.... Had I been by, I would have said, ‘Build Khelat-i-Ghilzye, and pardon all kinds of insolence, for those who win may laugh.’”

Major Lynch was removed from office. When all the circumstances of the case came to be known, the Envoy took a more favourable view of his conduct. But, whether it were right or wrong in itself, its results were unfortunate. They could not be otherwise. It was the inevitable consequence of such proceedings that the bitterness and the turbulence of the Ghilzyes should wax greater than before, and that soon the aspect of affairs in the neighbourhood of Khelat-i-Ghilzye should render more dragooning necessary for the maintenance of the authority of the Shah. It was expected that the whole country would rise up against Macan’s detachment; so reinforcements were urgently called for from Candahar. The hot weather had by this time set in, and Nott was unwilling to expose his troops to the burning sun. But the political necessity was said to be great; Macan was in his danger; and no troops could be spared from Caubul.

So Colonel Wymer, a good and successful officer, with 400 men of his own regiment (the 38th Sepoys), four horse-artillery guns, and a party of Christie’s horse, took the field in the month of May. The Ghilzyes, eager for the conflict, moved down from Khelat-i-Ghilzye to meet our advancing troops; and, on the 19th, gave them battle. Night was beginning to fall when they came up with Wymer’s camp at Assiai-Ilmee. A Ghilzye chief of high estate, named Gool Mahomed, known as the “Gooroo,” who had threatened Keane’s army nearly two years before, was at the head of the tribes. They came on with unwavering gallantry, but were met with a heavy fire from Hawkins’s guns, which, served with equal rapidity and precision, committed mighty havoc in their ranks. Upon this, the Ghilzyes, resolutely intending to attack simultaneously both flanks and the centre of Wymer’s force, divided themselves into three columns; and, coolly and deliberately, they came down sword in hand to the charge. Wymer had an extensive convoy to protect. His movements, therefore, were crippled; and he was compelled to stand on his defence. But the destroying grape from the guns, and the steady musketry fire of the Sepoys, sent back the Ghilzye swordsmen again and again reeling under the iron shower. For five busy hours continued that mortal struggle; and then the Ghilzyes gave way. They had greatly outnumbered our party, and they left many dead on the field. All night long, too, the moving lights announced that many more, both of killed and wounded, were carried off to their camp.

Whilst in this manner efforts were being made to tranquillise the Ghilzyes, the proceedings of Aktur Khan and the Douranees were again exciting the apprehensions of the Envoy. In spite of all our conciliatory efforts, they had not been quieted. The chief, it has been seen, had outwardly tendered his allegiance to the King, and had received a dress of honour, with an assurance from our political officers that the past would be forgotten. The revenue officers, whom the Douranees detested, had been removed. The old earless minister, Moollah Shikore, had been replaced by Oosman Khan, a younger, an abler, and a more honest man; and Macnaghten was contemplating other fiscal reforms than those which he had already sanctioned, and hoping to restore the tribes to their allegiance. But their disaffection was too deeply rooted to be operated upon by such measures. The entire system of government was offensive to them. The presence of the British was a perennial source of irritation. What they regarded as their legitimate influence had been usurped by the Feringhees; and they were soon ready again to appear in the field, and cross their sabres with the foreign bayonets.

It was obvious, indeed, as the month of May wore to an end, that, unable to obtain all that he wanted for himself, Aktur Khan was still our bitter and implacable foe. Instead of disbanding his followers, he was collecting them for another struggle. Irritated by this, Macnaghten wrote to Rawlinson (May 31) as he had before written in the case of Dost Mahomed, that if he could seize Aktur Khan, he would recommend his execution. “I think,” he said, “you should strain every nerve to lay hold of that indomitable Moofsid, Aktur Khan, and that if you can seize him, the Prince should be recommended to execute him.... I further think that a reward of 10,000 rupees should be offered for the apprehension of Aktur Khan.” But it was still difficult to persuade the Envoy that the country was in an unsettled state. The Ghilzyes and the Douranees were both in arms against the authority of the Shah and his supporters. The whole country of Western Afghanistan was in a fearful state of unrest. Rawlinson, at Candahar, who saw clearly at this time the frail tenure by which we held our position in Afghanistan, was continually warning the Envoy of the dangers which loomed so largely before him. But Macnaghten only censured his correspondent for his “unwarrantably gloomy views,” and denounced everything that was said about the unsettled state of the country as an “idle statement.” How unwilling he was to believe that the clouds were gathering over his head, may be gleaned from his correspondence with Rawlinson at this time. On the 13th of June he wrote a long letter, in which he thus emphatically declared his opinions:

Your letter of the 7th arrived this morning. I don’t like reverting to unpleasant discussions, but you know well that I have been frank with you from the beginning, and that I have invariably told you of what I thought I had reason to complain. This may be confined to one topic—your taking an unwarrantably gloomy view of our position, and entertaining and disseminating rumours favourable to that view. We have enough of difficulties and enough of croakers without adding to the number needlessly. I have just seen a letter from Mr. Dallas to Captain Johnson, in which he says the state of the country is becoming worse and worse every day. These idle statements may cause much mischief, and, often repeated as they are, they neutralise my protestations to the contrary. I know them to be utterly false as regards this part of the country, and I have no reason to believe them to be true as regards your portion of the kingdom, merely because the Tokhees are indulging in their accustomed habits of rebellion, or because Aktur Khan has a pack of ragamuffins at his heels. As I have said before, there is nothing in these matters which might not have been foreseen, or which ought to cause us the slightest uneasiness. We will take such precautions as shall prevent the Ghilzyes from annoying us; and this is all that is requisite for the present. We may safely leave the rest to time. As to the documents protesting against the appointment of Sunmud, I look upon them as pure fudge. Send for the Janbaz. Let them make a forced march by night, and come in the rear of Aktur. Seize the villain, and hang him as high as Haman, and you will probably have no more disturbances. The Janbaz may remain out while the collections are going on, if necessary. I have already explained to you that I never intended offering a reward for Aktur’s head, nor should I approve of encouraging the man who has a blood-feud with him to put him out of the way. This, besides being objectionable, would be superfluous, because his enemy must know that we could not be otherwise than gratified at the removal of so atrocious a traitor. With regard to the Tymunees, all I meant was, that they should be encouraged to seize Aktur if he attempted to take refuge in their territory, and I thought that a large pecuniary reward would be necessary to overcome their natural scruples to such a proceeding.[69]

But these Douranee children were now again to be corrected. Though “all was content and tranquillity from Mookoor to the Khybur,” it was necessary that our troops should be continually in the field. And it was not always child’s play in which they were summoned to engage. Aktur Khan was, at the end of June, still in arms before Ghiresk, with a body of three thousand men, and it was necessary to strike a blow at the rebel chief. Macnaghten saw the necessity of “tolerating his audacity no longer,” and although he, at first thought that a “judicious use of the Janbaz would extirpate the villain,” he consented to send out a regular force against the rebel chief to “hunt him to the world’s end.”

So Woodburn, a fine dashing officer, who commanded one of the Shah’s regiments, was sent out against him, with his own corps (the 5th Infantry), two detachments of Janbaz, or Afghan Horse, under Hart and Golding, and some guns of the Shah’s Horse Artillery, under Cooper. On the 3rd of July he found the enemy posted on the other side of the Helmund river; mustering, it was said afterwards, six thousand men, in six divisions, with a Moollah, or priest at the head of each, and with each a standard, bearing the inscription, “we have been trusting in God; may he guide and guard us!”[70] Woodburn tried the fords, but they were impassable. Hart, however, had passed them at another point, but, finding himself unsupported, he returned. This was in early morning. Four hours after noon the enemy struck their camp, and soon afterwards commenced the passage of the river. Woodburn made his arrangements for their reception. The Douranees made a spirited attack, but Woodburn’s infantry, well supported by Cooper’s guns, met them with too prompt and sure a fire to encourage them to greater boldness. The Janbaz, already graduating in treachery and cowardice, covered themselves with that peculiar kind of glory which clung to them to the end of the war. It was a busy night. The enemy far outnumbered Woodburn; but the steady gallantry of his gunners and his footmen achieved the success they deserved. Before daybreak the enemy had withdrawn. It would have been a great thing to have followed up and dispersed the rebels, but with all the country against him, and a body of horse at his back on which no reliance could be placed, it would have been madness to make the attempt. So Woodburn, having written for reinforcements, pushed on to Ghiresk, whence he wrote that he believed the rebellion was far more extensive than was supposed, and that the population of Candahar were quite as disaffected as the rebels on the banks of the Helmund.

The month of August, however, found the Envoy still cheerful and sanguine. The convulsions of the Douranees and the spasms of the Ghilzyes were regarded by him as the accompaniments only of those infantine fevers which were inseparable from the existence of the tribes. In vain Rawlinson, with steady eye watching those symptoms, and probing with deep sagacity the causes of the mortal ailments out of which arose all those fierce throes of anguish, protested that throughout Western Afghanistan there was a strong national feeling against us; and that difficulties and dangers were coiling their serpent folds around us with irresistible force. Macnaghten still asked what we had to fear, and thus, on the 2nd of August, addressed his less sanguine colleague:

The Douranee children, however, required more chastisement. No man could have done more than Woodburn did with his means; but those means were insufficient. It was the custom then, both against the Ghilzyes and the Douranees, to send out detachments sufficiently large to accomplish, with the aid of their guns, small victories over the enemy, and so to increase the bitterness of their hostility, without breaking their strength. Aktur Khan was still in arms. Banded with him was Akrum Khan, another Douranee chief, inspired with like bitter hatred of the restored monarch and his Feringhee allies. A force under Captain Griffin, who had been sent to reinforce Woodburn at Ghiresk, now went out against them. It was strong in the mounted branch. Eight hundred sabres, three hundred and fifty bayonets, and four six-pounder guns, followed Griffin into the field of Zemindawer. On the 17th of August he came up with the insurgents. It was a moment of some anxiety. The Janbaz had not by their conduct under Woodburn won the confidence of the British officers. Nott always mistrusted them, and the feeling was, not unreasonably, shared by others.[72] But here they were associated with the men of the King’s regular cavalry, and they may have felt the danger of defection. Be the cause what it may, they did not shrink from the encounter. The enemy were strongly posted in a succession of walled gardens and small forts, from which they opened a heavy matchlock fire upon our advancing troops; but the fire of our guns and musketry drove them from their inclosures, and then the cavalry, headed by the young Prince Sufder Jung, who had something more than the common energy of the royal race, charged with terrific effect, and utterly broke the discomfited mass of Douranees. The victory was a great one. Aktur Khan fled. The Douranees were disheartened; and for a time they sunk into the repose of feebleness and exhaustion.

The Ghilzyes, too, had received another check. Colonel Chambers, early in August, had been sent out against them, with a party of his own regiment, (the 5th Light Cavalry), the 16th and 43rd Sepoy Regiments, and some details of Irregular Horse. He came up with the enemy on the morning of the 5th; but before he could bring the main body of his troops into action, a party of his cavalry had fallen upon them and scattered them in disastrous flight. There was nothing left for them after this but submission; and soon the chief instigator of the movement had “come in” to our camp.

Under the influence of these victories, Macnaghten’s confidence rose higher and higher. The Douranees were broken, and the Ghilzyes had submitted “almost without a blow.” Aktur Khan had fled, and the “Gooroo” had surrendered. Now, indeed, the Envoy thought that he might report “all quiet from Dan to Beersheba.” If anything caused him a moment’s inquietude, it was the thought that Akbar Khan, the favourite son of Dost Mahomed, was still abroad, hovering about Khooloom. With something that now seems like a strange presentiment, he wrote that “the fellow would be after some mischief, should the opportunity present itself.” It was on the 20th of August that, writing to Mr. Robertson, he thus expressed himself:

But, although the Envoy thus on the 20th of August, wrote to his private friends in the provinces of India that all was quiet from Dan to Beersheba, he was at this very time making arrangements for the despatch from Candahar of a large force to the Tereen and Dehrawut country on the north-western frontier of Afghanistan. “The northern districts,” he wrote to General Elphinstone on the 21st of August, “have been in a state of rebellion, and the chiefs of those districts (of whom one Akrum Khan is the head) have refused to wait upon His Majesty’s representative; have been in constant correspondence with the rebel Aktur Khan, and have assembled a considerable number of armed followers, with a view to defy His Majesty’s authority. The arrival of the 16th and 43rd regiments of Native Infantry will admit of a force being detached from that garrison; and I am officially made acquainted with the opinion of the political agent at Candahar to the effect that it is necessary to send an expedition into the disturbed districts, with a view either to expel the offending chiefs or to enforce their submission.”

So, orders were sent to Candahar for the equipment of another force for field-service, with instructions to complete the necessary work in the least possible space of time, in order that three regiments of Native Infantry, which were under orders to leave the serene and prosperous country, might turn their faces towards India at the beginning of November. By the end of the first week of September the force was ready to commence its march—a difficult, toilsome and hazardous march into an unknown country. Two regiments of the Company’s Bengal Infantry (the 2nd and 38th), a regiment of the Shah’s cavalry, two Horse-Artillery guns of the same service, a company of European Artillery with two 18-pounder guns, and a detachment of Sappers, composed the force. It was in good condition; well equipped at all points; and it started with a month’s supplies.

The force was commanded by Colonel Wymer. Nott saw it depart with mortification and regret which he did not desire to conceal. Some time before he had received instructions from head-quarters not to leave Candahar, where his presence was conceived to be expedient; and he still believed that those instructions were in force. Eager, therefore, as he was, to place himself at the head of his men, he deemed it to be his duty, as a soldier, to remain in garrison while he delegated the command to another. But while to the officer he had selected to take the envied post he issued comprehensive instructions for his guidance in the field, he, at the same time, wrote to the officer commanding in Afghanistan, respectfully expressing his “deep regret that so large a portion of the force under his orders should be despatched on what might prove to be a difficult service, without his being permitted to assume the command.” The answer returned to this last letter entirely removed all restrictions on Nott’s movements; so the general at once prepared himself to take command of the force.

In the meanwhile the troops had marched. The political conduct of the expedition had been entrusted to Lieutenant Elliot, who had been summoned for this purpose from Khelat-i-Ghilzye, where he had been placed on the removal of Lynch. Every effort had been made to obtain reliable information relative to the country which they were about to traverse; but the want of local knowledge was severely felt, and the difficulties of the march, encumbered as was the force with heavy guns, was greater than had been anticipated. Nott joined the force on the 23rd of September; and they pushed on into the Dehrawut country. But it was soon apparent that so formidable a display of force would achieve without bloodshed the objects of the expedition. Early in the month of October many of the principal Douranee chiefs were in Nott’s camp. They had never before seen our regular troops, which now, paraded and exercised before them, made a strong impression on their minds. They gazed at and handled our heavy guns with wondering apprehension, and confessed that they had no desire to test their quality. It was said throughout the war, that our guns were the best “politicals,” but Elliot’s diplomacy was not unsuccessfully exerted, and the chiefs professed their willingness to proceed to Caubul and make submission to the Shah.

But there was one who refused to submit. The indomitable spirit of Akrum Khan was proof against all promises and all threats. He did not come into Nott’s camp; but held aloof, still eager, it was said, to give us battle. It was our policy to seize the rebel chief; and this was now to be done. One of his own countrymen undertook to betray him. It was suspected that the man had no real intention to lead us to the lair of the hostile Douranee; but, after the manner of his nation, to obtain money from us and then to lead our troops astray. But Elliot grasped the proposal, with a tenacity of purpose which baffled all fraud and defeated all evasion. He went to the general, and obtained his permission to send a regiment of Janbaz, under John Conolly, to beat up the quarters of Akrum Khan. There was little expectation in camp that the forces would be successful. But Conolly did his work well. It is said that the feet of the guide were tied under his horse’s belly to prevent his escape. A rapid march brought them to a small fort, where Akrum Khan was preparing to betake himself to the hills. A few hours’ delay would have been fatal to the success of the expedition. But now its great object was attained. The rebel Douranee was surprised, seized, and carried back, a prisoner, to Nott’s camp. The expedition had scarcely occupied thirty-six hours.

The rest is soon told. The unfortunate chief was carried a doomed captive to Candahar. Macnaghten, whose letters written at this time show how all his finer feelings had been blunted by the rude work in which he was engaged, had persuaded the King that it was necessary to make a terrible example of some of the disturbers of the public peace. Prince Timour was then the governor of Candahar. He had recently been sent to the western capital to take the place of his brother Futteh Jung, whose detestable character had rendered his removal necessary; and the change was one greatly for the better. Timour was a man of respectable reputation; mild, indolent, and compliant. He governed according to the behests of his English supporters, and had little will of his own. He now directed or authorised, under instructions from Caubul, the execution of the Douranee prisoner; and so Akrum Khan was blown from a gun.

Before the end of October, Nott had returned to Candahar with the greater part of the force; and Lieutenant Crawford had been despatched to Caubul with the Douranee chiefs who had tendered their submission. There was now really a prospect of tranquillity in Western Afghanistan; for both the Ghilzye and the Douranee confederacy had been crushed; and the facility with which we had moved our regular troops and our heavy guns into the most difficult parts of the country had demonstrated to the turbulent tribes the difficulty of escaping the vengeance of the Feringhees, and had produced a good moral effect among people who had before only known us from report.