[November—December: 1841.]

Progress of Negotiation—Arrival of Mahomed Akbar Khan—His Character—Negotiations continued—Deaths of Meer Musjedee and Abdoollah Khan—Revival of Negotiations—The Draft Treaty.

A new actor now appeared upon the stage. The advent of Mahomed Akbar Khan had been for some time expected. He had arrived from Toorkistan early in October, and was known to have been hovering about Bameean, and seemingly watching the progress of events in the neighbourhood of the Afghan capital. How far he may have sown the seeds of insurrection among the Ghilzyes is not very clearly known, but it is probable that the influence he exercised at that time was rather of a passive than of an active kind. That his presence on the borders of Afghanistan encouraged his countrymen in their career of hostility is not to be doubted; but there is little or no evidence to connect him more palpably with the earlier movements of the insurrectionary war. Whatever may have been his participation in the events of October and November, his appearance at the capital was now hailed by the insurgents with every demonstration of delight. Salutes were fired in honour of his arrival, and the chiefs waited upon him as upon one henceforth to be recognised as their leader. He was known to be a man of high courage and energy; he had approved himself a good soldier in the field; and he was the favourite son of the old Barukzye ruler, who a year before had been condemned to pine away the remainder of his life a captive in the provinces of Hindostan.

The arrival of the Sirdar was a great event. Both parties looked upon it as one that must exercise a mighty influence over the future destinies of the war. The insurgents, wanting a leader, saw in the son of Dost Mahomed one around whom they could rally, with confidence alike in his sincerity and his courage. He had the wrongs of an injured family to redress. He had a kingdom to regain. He had been an outcast and a fugitive during two years of suffering and danger, because it had pleased the British government to invade his father’s dominions and to expel the de facto rulers of the country; and now he saw opening out before him a prospect of recovering the lost supremacy of the Barukzyes, and restoring his exiled father to the Balla Hissar. All the circumstances of his past life and his present position were such as to secure his loyalty to the national cause. His inner qualities, no less than his outer environments, were of a class to rivet his hostility to the British. He was a man of an eager, impetuous nature; susceptible of good and of bad impulses, but seldom otherwise than earnest and impulsive. His education had been neglected; in his youth he had been unrestrained, and now self-control—a virtue rarely exercised by an Afghan—was wholly foreign to the character of the man. He was, indeed, peculiarly demonstrative, and sudden in his demonstrations, passing rapidly from one mood to another—blown about by violent gusts of feeling, bitterly repenting to-day the excesses of yesterday, and rushing into new excesses to-morrow. His was one of those fiery temperaments—those bold, dashing characters—which, in times of popular commotion, ever place their possessor in the front rank. But in seasons of repose he was one of the most joyous and light-hearted of men; no man loved a joke better; no man laughed more heartily, or seemed to look more cheerfully on the sunny side of life. They, who knew him before the British trode down the Barukzyes, spoke of him as a good-tempered, well-meaning young man, and little thought, when his large dark eyes were glowing with child-like eagerness, to have the full dimensions of his long spear introduced into his portrait; or his solid frame was shaking with laughter at some joke passed upon his uncomely Meerza, that he would soon become the chief actor in one of the bloodiest tragedies that has ever disgraced the history of the world.

Whilst the Afghans, with noisy demonstrations of delight, were welcoming the appearance of Akbar Khan, the British were slow to believe that his advent would deepen the embarrassments of their position. Early in November, Mohun Lal had suggested to Macnaghten the expediency of endeavouring to corrupt the Sirdar before his advance upon the capital; but the Envoy had received slightingly the proposal, and no overtures had been made to the son of Dost Mahomed before his arrival at the capital. It was believed that there was sufficient security for his forbearance in the fact that so many members of his family were prisoners in our hands; and in the game of negotiation, which was now to be carried on, it was calculated that the intervention of the Sirdar would facilitate rather than encumber our arrangements for the honourable evacuation of Afghanistan, and our safe return to the provinces which, in an evil hour, we had been so unhappily tempted to quit.

Akbar Khan appeared at Caubul; but he did not at once assume the direction of affairs. The Newab Mahomed Zemaun Khan, a cousin of the late Caubul chief, had been proclaimed King by the insurgents. All orders were sent forth in his name; and the “fatiha” was read for him in the mosques. He was a man of a humane and honourable nature, polished manners, and affable address. His nephew, Osman Khan, who is described by the Envoy as “the most moderate and sensible man” of the insurgent party, was now employed to negotiate with the British minister, and several times passed, on this errand, between the cantonment and the city. But the terms still dictated by the enemy were such as Macnaghten could not honourably accept. Day followed day; and nothing effectual was done either in council or on the field. The enemy appeared on the hills commanding the cantonments and in the village of Beh-meru, now deserted and destroyed; and the guns in the British cantonments were playing all day long upon these points. But such distant interchanges produced no result; and in the meanwhile our provisions were rapidly dwindling down. Again starvation stared the garrison in the face. With laudable zeal and activity the commissariat officers exerted themselves to obtain grain from the surrounding country; but with equal zeal and activity the enemy were striving to frustrate their efforts. Akbar Khan himself had not been many days at Caubul before he began to see that to defeat our commissariat officers was to overcome our unhappy force. Threatening death to all who might be detected in supplying our troops with any description of food, he soon baffled the best efforts of Boyd and Johnson, and again brought the question of capitulation to a simple question of supplies.

But still sanguine and confident, whilst the clouds were gathering more and more thickly around him, Macnaghten saw the skies brightening over-head, and never doubted that before long the storm would roll itself away. The letters which he wrote at this time present a remarkable contrast to those written by General Elphinstone. Whilst the General was looking around him everywhere for whatever could be made to swell the mountain of difficulty and danger that he kept so steadily before him, the Envoy was constantly arraying in the foreground every circumstance that could in any way contribute towards the chance of ultimate success. Whilst the General was discovering that “our position was becoming more and more critical,” the Envoy was perceiving that “our prospects were brightening,” and talking about “defying the whole of Afghanistan.” On the 28th of November, General Elphinstone wrote to Sir William Macnaghten, commenting on the wants and sufferings of the troops, and asking what effect the death of Abdoollah Khan would have upon their prospects: “Between ourselves,” he said, in conclusion, “I see nothing we can do but by negotiation, if such be offered, and which for the many difficulties we are surrounded with, I hope may be the case.”

Very different from the tone of this desponding letter was the spirit which at this time animated the communications of the Envoy to Mohun Lal. But there are other points besides the sanguine temperament of Macnaghten which his letters to the Moonshee tend painfully to illustrate: “The intelligence you have sent me is very encouraging,” he wrote on the 26th of November, “and I hope the nifac among the rebels will increase. Meer Musjedee’s death will probably cause the dispersion of the rebels who have come from Nijrow. Humza Khan never sent any relatives of the Ghilzye chiefs to me. Tell everybody that I have no faith in Sultan Mahomed Khan, and that I only wished to try the sincerity of his employers.” And again, on the 29th, he wrote, “We are well off for everything but supplies, and, Inshalla, we shall not be badly off for them.... The enemy appeared to-day in considerable numbers, but they did nothing, and I am sure they will never venture to attack our cantonment. If we had only provisions, which, with due exertions ought to be obtained, we should be able to defy the whole of Afghanistan for any period. I am very sorry that the deputation from Humza did not make their appearance last night, and I am anxiously expecting accounts from you showing why they did not do so.” On the following day the Envoy added a postscript to this letter, saying, “Our prospects are, I think, brightening, and if you can assist us in the way of supplies, we have nothing to fear.... I would give any money to Humza and the Ghilzyes if I had any security that they would be our friends, give us supplies, and keep open the communications.”

It will be gathered from these passages, as from others before quoted, that Macnaghten, employing Mohun Lal as his agent, was endeavouring to secure the assistance of different hostile tribes by bribing them with money and with promises. He knew that there is no stronger passion than avarice in an Afghan’s breast. But he did not turn his knowledge to profitable account. Had it been possible to deal with the Afghans as one united body, and to have corrupted them, en masse, with a few lakhs of rupees, he might have bought the safety of the force. But to bribe one party was to raise the hopes of another; and the representative of each conflicting clan believed that the amount of money he would receive would be measured by the force of his antagonism. As soon, therefore, as it was known that the money-bags of the Feringhees were being opened, and that indulgences were being bought, every one, eager to clutch the largest possible amount of purchase-money, increased the pressure of his hostility and rose in his demands. And thus the very measures by which Macnaghten sought to extricate himself from his difficulties, only made them gather more menacingly around him.

It will be gathered also from these letters, that, before the end of November, Abdoollah Khan and Meer Musjedee had both been removed by death, from the scene of their recent triumphs. General Elphinstone speaks of the death of the former; Sir William Macnaghten of the death of the latter. In the action of the 23rd of November, Abdoollah Khan had been carried wounded from the field of battle; but whether a shrapnel shot from Shelton’s one gun, or a ball from an Afghan jezail, struck down the truculent chief, is a point of history which must ever remain, as now, enveloped in obscurity and doubt. The story runs, that one of the men who had been set upon the track of the doomed chiefs, declared that he shot down his victim from behind a wall; and promised that poison should complete the work which the bullet had but partially effected. Abdoollah Khan died before a week had expired;[175] and it is said that Abdool Aziz claimed the price of blood. But Mohun Lal did not feel assured that either the traitorous bullet or the poison of the claimant had done the work of death; and the reward was refused on the plea that it had been offered for the heads of the chiefs, and the head of Abdoollah Khan had not been brought to him.

How Meer Musjedee died is not very clearly known.[176] His disappearance from the scene on which he had acted so conspicuous a part, was sudden and unexpected. A man named Mahomed Oollah swore that he had suffocated the chief in his sleep, and claimed the reward of his service. But the reward, it is said, was refused upon the same plea as was urged in the other case. The assassins, disappointed of their blood-money, were not likely to undertake any future service of the same hazardous kind, or to maintain a very discreet silence about the past. If they were employed upon such service, it is strange that their silence was not secured by a scrupulous fulfilment of the engagement by which their suborners had placed their own credit and safety in their hands. It was a perilous game, indeed, to invite disclosures by exciting the anger and hostility of the agents employed in this miserable work.

There is much obscurity still enveloping all this portion of the history of the war in Afghanistan. It is certain that at the end of November, Meer Musjedee and Abdoollah Khan died under circumstances which have been regarded, and not unreasonably, as suspicious. It is scarcely less certain that Lieutenant John Conolly, the cousin and assistant of the Envoy, instigated Mohun Lal to offer rewards for the heads of certain of the insurgent chiefs, and that Meer Musjedee and Abdoollah Khan were especially marked as the first victims. John Conolly was at this time with Shah Soojah in the Balla Hissar, and Mohun Lal was in the house of the Kuzzilbash chief. The Envoy was in the cantonments. To what extent John Conolly acted under Macnaghten’s instructions—whether he acted on his own authority, or was directed by Shah Soojah, is not very clearly known. That Conolly was in constant communication with the Envoy we have the authority of the latter for believing. “Throughout the rebellion,” he wrote, in his official report, “I was in constant communication with the Shah through my assistant, Lieutenant J. B. Conolly, who was in attendance on his Majesty in the Balla Hissar.” It has been questioned, therefore, whether Conolly, being at this time in constant communication with the Envoy, was likely, in a matter of so much responsibility, to have acted without instructions from his chief. But, on the other hand, we have Macnaghten’s specific declaration that it was never his object to encourage the assassination of the insurgents: “I am sorry,” he wrote on the 1st of December to Mohun Lal, “to find from your letter of last night that you should have supposed it was ever my object to encourage assassination. The rebels are very wicked men, but we must not take unlawful means to destroy them.”[177] In addition to this written declaration, we have the statement of Captain Skinner, to the effect that, when at a subsequent period the murder of Ameen-oollah was suggested to him by Akbar Khan, the Envoy shrank with abhorrence and disgust from the proposal, “assuring the ambassadors that, as a British functionary, nothing would induce him to pay a price for blood.”[178]

Against the specific written declaration of the Envoy himself that it was never his object to encourage assassination, coupled with the evidence of Captain Skinner, to the effect that he revolted at the very suggestion, there is nothing but bare presumption to be opposed. If presumption is to carry weight with it, in so grave a discussion as this, it may fairly be presumed that a man of a nature so humane, and of instincts so honourable, would not have encouraged or sanctioned the foul trade of secret murder, and peremptorily denied his approval of measures which he had himself originated or supported. But if he had been utterly destitute both of humanity and truth, it would still be incredible that, having encouraged the assassination of the chiefs, he should have boldly denied it to the very man whom, directly or indirectly, he had employed to hire the assassins.

On a question so grave and solemn as this, it is to be lamented that the judgment of the historian, after all conflicting evidence has been weighed and sifted, should be merely of an inferential character. The inference is, that whilst not wholly ignorant of the offers of head-money, which John Conolly, living with, and probably acting under the directions of Shah Soojah, was putting forth, through the agency of Mohun Lal, the Envoy neither suggested, nor actively encouraged, these “bloody instructions,” on which such severe comments have been passed. It has been seen that he was prepared to offer rewards in the name of the King, for the apprehension of the principal rebels; and in the heat and excitement of active warfare, it is hardly probable that, if these men had been apprehended, their offences would have been subjected to a fair and impartial judicial inquiry. Macnaghten, indeed, stated that he would recommend his Majesty to “execute them.” Such passive complicity as this, when all the circumstances by which Macnaghten was environed are fairly estimated, cannot be severely censured. We can only arrive at a just decision, in a case of so unprecedented a character as this, by weighing well all the difficulties which surrounded, all the responsibilities that weighed upon, and all the temptations that beset the Envoy. If so surrounded, so weighed upon, so beset, he did not actively interfere to arrest the questionable measures of others, which seemed to offer some means of escape from the perils which hemmed in the British army—an army fearfully sacrificed by the feebleness of the military chiefs—I confess that I cannot see that he yielded more readily to temptation than any other man of high honour would have done, when begirt with such fiery trial.

But it is a relief to turn aside from the consideration of such a question, even to the record of the imbecility of our military leaders and the sufferings of our unhappy troops.—On the 1st of December there were supplies for barely eight days’ consumption in store. The camp-followers were receiving half a pound of barley a day. The cattle were without provender. It was necessary to keep them from absolute starvation by supplying them with the twigs, the lighter branches, and the bark of trees. Some small quantities of wheat were taken from the troops to feed the cattle used in the guns. In this conjuncture, Elphinstone, who met every difficulty more than half way, and who was not likely, therefore, to be silent at such a time as this, wrote on the 1st of November, to the Envoy, saying that there was no Boosa (bran), for the cattle, and that they had been obliged to give the mountain-train yaboos some wheat to keep them alive. “I hope, therefore,” he added, “your negotiation may prosper, as circumstances are becoming extremely critical; little has been done in the way of purchase this morning. I don’t wish to croak, but think it right that you should be kept constantly informed of the real state of things. Sixty-five maunds is all that has been got in to-day; twelve maunds yesterday.”

On the same day, Captain Johnson impressed upon the Envoy that there was no time to be lost—that if a retreat on Jellalabad were to be determined upon, it should be determined upon at once, as it would be necessary to take provisions for five days with the retreating force. The Envoy assented to this; but, ever eager to clutch at any hope, however slender, of deferring the dreadful day of surrender, he added, “Let us wait two days longer—something may turn up.”

The two days passed, and nothing turned up. So the military authorities continued to press upon the Envoy, with oft-repeated urgent recommendations, for a speedy conclusion of a treaty with the enemy, enabling the British troops in safety to evacuate the country. But still the Envoy clung to the hope that something might be evolved in our favour; and delayed, in spite of their importunities from day to day, the dreadful hour of surrender. The General knew that his troops were not to be trusted. The Envoy knew this equally well; but, more jealous of the honour of his country, more hopeful and more courageous, he was unwilling to fling away a single chance which the wheel of time might throw up in his favour. In that great chapter of accidents, however, to which he so bravely turned, were written down only further disasters and degradations. On the 5th of December, the enemy, in open day, burnt the bridge which the English had thrown over the Caubul River, a quarter a mile from the cantonments. On the day after the calamitous action of the 23rd of November, the insurgents had begun to destroy it, and now they completed the work of destruction. They burnt it exultingly before the faces of our troops, who were lining the ramparts and looking idly on, as though there were no dishonour in endurance. The bridge was of little use at that season of the year, for the stream was fordable—but it was a burning disgrace to the military authorities, that with 5000 British troops at their command, and with the ramparts of the cantonments bristling with guns, they should have suffered such an insult as this to be flung in their face.

The following day was one also of humiliation. Mahomed Sheriff’s fort, which was garrisoned by a party of European and Native troops, was abandoned on the 6th of December. The enemy, a day or two before, had endeavoured to blow open the gate with powder-bags, but had not succeeded in the attempt. They might have spared themselves the trouble of the effort and the discredit of the failure. On the 6th of December, a very small party of the enemy, unperceived by the garrison, contrived to climb up the walls of the fort, from the direction of the King’s garden. They had no sooner shown their heads at the window of the room where our men were sitting, than both Europeans and natives, panic-struck and bewildered, escaped over the opposite wall, and, abandoning their bedding, arms, and ammunition, fled into the cantonments.[179] The fort was soon filled with the enemy. Not an effort was made to recapture it.[180] The guns on the ramparts played upon it all day long, and before evening one of the bastions crumbled to pieces under our fire; but the British troops remained inactive in the cantonments, submitting patiently to every new insult, as though disgrace, now become habitual, had ceased to be a burden to them.

Another blot was, at the same time, fixed upon the character of the unhappy troops. The 44th Queen’s regiment had supplied the details of the guard for the protection of the cantonment bazaar. They were now withdrawn under circumstances little calculated to raise the reputation of the corps; and some companies of the 37th Native Infantry were sent to relieve them. A brief letter on this subject, from the General to the Envoy, supplies a painful commentary on the state of the troops at this time. “Three companies of the 37th,” wrote Elphinstone, “have been ordered into the bazaar as a guard for it. Shelton wishes a support of the 44th outside. If they have any sense of shame left, they must do better, and their officers must exert themselves. S. is disposed to attribute the blame to the Sepoys—from all I hear, I fear unjustly; but this must be inquired into when we have time.”

While the troops were thus, day after day, becoming more and more demoralised and incapable, under the destroying influence of feeble and fatuous command, the General and the Envoy were in correspondence and communication relative to the course to be followed for the salvation of the British army and the British honour. The General wrote what none knew better than the Envoy, that provisions had become miserably scarce, and that he could not see how, if they continued to hold out, they could possibly escape starvation. The Civilian replied that as, if they abandoned their position, they could not carry with them more than two days’ supplies, and that there were then, on the 5th of December, nine days’ supplies, on half rations, there was no occasion for an immediate decision. He still hung upon the skirts of fortune, hoping that something might be written down, in the great chapter of accidents, in our favour. The thought of retreat was intolerable to him. All, he believed, even if no reinforcements came from Candahar, might yet be saved by a vigorous effort to concentrate the troops in the Balla Hissar. A retreat on Jellalabad, without terms, he declared to be impracticable. And if practicable, he said, it would “cover us with everlasting infamy.” Still believing in the fidelity of the King, and still, with all the generosity and the delicacy of a high-minded English gentleman, resolute not to sacrifice the interests or the honour of his Majesty, he pointed out that they could not take the King’s family with them, and that Shah Soojah would not stir without them. The internal jealousies and animosities of the chiefs rendered a retreat, under terms that would be respected, equally impracticable. So the Envoy contended that the only alternative which remained, and that the most safe as it was the most honourable, was to send the sick and wounded under cover of the night to the Balla Hissar, and then, having destroyed all the ordnance and stores that they could not take with them, to fight their way to the citadel.

Having written this to the General, Macnaghten visited him, and again urged his opinion, with equal earnestness in oral discourse. Another project suggested itself to Macnaghten. Might it not be possible to obtain provisions by force from some of the surrounding villages? A night-attack might be made on Deh-Hadjee, or a similar enterprise undertaken against Killa Bolundee. But the General had no taste for night attacks or enterprises of any kind. He was full only of objections. The Envoy took his departure, disappointed and dispirited, and soon afterwards received a letter from Elphinstone, arraying a host of obstacles to the success of all the suggested efforts for the maintenance of the national honour, and staggering at last to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done but to enter into what he called “honourable terms.”[181]

And now matters were at their worst. To what depths of humiliation our unhappy force had sunk, and with what indignation the Envoy regarded a state of things which he was powerless to avert or to remedy, a letter, written about this time to Captain Macgregor, painfully declares. “Our troops,” wrote Macnaghten, “are behaving like a pack of despicable cowards, and there is no spirit or enterprise left amongst us. The military authorities want me to capitulate, but this I am anxious to put off to the last moment. In the mean time we shall soon have to come to some decision, as we have only three days’ provision for our troops, and nothing for our cattle. We are anxiously looking out for reinforcements from Candahar. We have rumours of their approach, but nothing as yet authentic.”

But the direst peril was that of starvation, which had now become imminent. The wretched camp-followers were living upon the carcases of the camels which had been starved to death. The trees in cantonments had been stripped of all their bark and light branches to supply provender to the cattle, and were now all bare and useless. The commissariat officers, Boyd and Johnson, wrote a joint letter to the General, stating that, after much fruitless exertion, they had been compelled to adopt the opinion that provisions were no longer obtainable by purchase. It was their duty, they said, “to report, from personal knowledge of the country to the north or north-east of cantonments, the utter impossibility of obtaining, either by force or otherwise, the smallest quantity of grain or forage of any kind within a distance of from three to four miles; and, further, that within this space the whole of the forts, with the exception, perhaps, of one or two, have been evacuated by the inhabitants, and more or less destroyed by the enemy.”

Again Macnaghten and Elphinstone took counsel together on that 8th of December, and again they parted to give their opinions the shape of official correspondence. It had now become absolutely necessary that they should determine upon the course to be pursued, for good or for ill. Returned to his quarters, therefore, the Envoy wrote the following letter to the General, to bring the question to an official issue:—

To this letter General Elphinstone sent back an answer, signed also by the three senior officers under his command—Brigadiers Shelton and Anquetil, and Colonel Chambers, who were that morning in council with their chief:

Still shrinking from the dreadful thought of surrender, Macnaghten, soon after the receipt of this letter, went over to the General’s quarters, and wrung from him a reluctant promise to make one more attempt to secure supplies, by an expedition against one of the forts or villages in which they were known to be stored. A council of war was held that evening at the General’s quarters. The Envoy was present at the meeting. The commissariat officers were also in attendance. There was a long and stormy discussion. At length it was determined that on the following morning a detachment of infantry and cavalry, with a gun, should be despatched, accompanied by Captain Johnson, to the village of Khoja Rewash, some four miles from cantonments, where it was believed that a considerable supply of grain was stored. The village was to be surprised before daybreak. The inhabitants were to be called upon to sell their grain; and, in the event of their acquiescence, Captain Johnson was to purchase it. But in the event of their refusal, the village was to be carried by assault, and the grain taken by force. The detachment was to start at two o’clock, and, that there might be no delay in the departure of the force, every preparation was to be made before that hour, and the troops were to be under arms for an immediate march.

The appointed hour arrived. Captain Johnson was ready to accompany the detachment. The troops were under arms; but no preparations had been made for their departure. A bridge was to have been laid down for the passage of the cavalry and artillery, and covered with straw, that no noise might be made to rouse the suspicions of the enemy; but at two o’clock no orders had been issued, and it was evident that there were doubts and embarrassments to impede the progress of the expedition. Something was wrong, and it became known at last that the enterprise was discovered to be a dangerous one. The enemy were in force in the dilapidated village of Beh-meru, and so, just as day began to dawn, the enterprise was altogether abandoned.

In the course of the day intelligence of a cheering character was received from Jellalabad. Sale’s little garrison had sallied out and gallantly defeated the enemy. It was hoped by the Envoy and a few others, who were turning their eyes in every direction, straining to catch even the faintest ray of hope, that the improved aspect of affairs at Jellalabad would induce the military authorities to make new efforts to maintain their position. But all hope of this kind was soon dissipated. The General, fearful of the encouragement of such expectations, addressed an official letter to the Envoy, stating that the intelligence received from Sir R. Sale did not, in his opinion, after the most mature consideration, so improve their situation as to alter the sentiments expressed in his letter of the preceding day, as to the necessity of a treaty being entered into, if possible, with the enemy; but he looked upon the arrival of this account of the success obtained over the rebels as most opportune, for he considered that it could not but prove highly advantageous in our negotiations. The General could only see in the cheering news from Jellalabad another reason for entering into terms with the enemy.

All this time the Envoy had been anxiously looking for tidings of the advance of the force under Colonel Maclaren, which had been despatched from Candahar. The communications with that place had been so completely cut off, that it was not until the 10th of December that Macnaghten received intelligence from Colonel Palmer, who commanded the garrison at Ghuznee, that there was little prospect of Maclaren’s brigade making good its march to Caubul. The inclemency of the weather and the loss of baggage-cattle had been so great, that Maclaren, struggling on with difficulty, was dreading the necessity of a retrograde move. The Envoy had been eager to hold out so long as the least hope remained of receiving succour from the westward. That hope was now rapidly waning. The provisions in cantonments were almost wholly exhausted. On the morning of the 11th there was just food enough for the day’s consumption of the fighting men. The camp-followers were starving. Food was not to be obtained by purchase, for the villagers would not sell; food was not to be obtained by fighting, for the soldiers would not fight. Macnaghten had urged the nobler course, until repeated disappointments had made him despair of military success. There was now, indeed, nothing left to him but to negotiate with the enemy, or to suffer the force in cantonments to perish by the slow process of starvation before his face. He had suggested every other course to no purpose. He had resisted the importunities of the military authorities, clamouring for surrender, until there were no provisions in store for the morrow, and no hope of replenishing our empty granaries. He could not now any longer resist; so he drew out the rough draft of a treaty, and met the Afghan chiefs in conference.

The meeting took place at the distance of about a mile from the cantonments, on the banks of the Caubul river. Captains Lawrence, Trevor, and Mackenzie accompanied the Envoy, with a few troopers of the body-guard as an escort. The chiefs of all the principal tribes in the country were present. Among the leading men assembled were Mahomed Akbar Khan, Oosman Khan, Sultan Mahomed Khan, Mahomed Sheriff, Mahomed Shah Khan, and Khoda Buksh Khan, Ghilzye. The first salutations over, the Envoy drew forth the draft treaty he had prepared, and read in Persian the following articles, with their preamble, to the assembled chiefs:

Here, Akbar Khan, with characteristic impetuosity, interrupted the Envoy, saying that there was no need to furnish our force with supplies, as there was no impediment to their marching on the morrow. The other chiefs rebuked him for this interference. The remainder of the treaty was then read, as follows, without any further uncourteous interruptions; and, this ebullition over, the young Barukzye himself subsided into repose.[182]

The conference lasted two hours. The terms of the treaty were discussed with as much calmness and moderation as could have been expected, and its main stipulations were agreed to by the assembled chiefs. It was resolved that the British troops should evacuate their cantonments within three days, and that the chiefs should, in the meanwhile, send in provisions for their use. The meeting broke up, and Captain Trevor accompanied the Khans to the city, “as a hostage for the sincerity of the Envoy.”

It is scarcely necessary to write anything in vindication of the conduct of Macnaghten with respect to this early treaty. His vindication is to be found in the preceding correspondence with the military chiefs. But a few pregnant sentences, in which he has himself recorded the circumstances under which he was at last induced to throw himself upon the forbearance of the enemy, ought to be laid before the reader, embodying as they do the Envoy’s own justification of his conduct. “The whole country,” he wrote in his unfinished report, “as far as we could learn, had risen in rebellion; our communications on all sides were cut off; almost every public officer, whether paid by ourselves or his Majesty, had declared for the new governor, and by far the greater number even of his Majesty’s domestic servants had deserted him. We had been fighting forty days against very superior numbers, under most disadvantageous circumstances, with a deplorable loss of valuable lives, and in a day or two we must have perished from hunger, to say nothing of the advanced season of the year and the extreme cold, from the effects of which our native troops were suffering severely. I had been repeatedly apprised by the military authorities that nothing could be done with our troops; and I regret to add that desertions to the enemy were becoming of frequent occurrence among our troops. The terms I secured were the best obtainable, and the destruction of fifteen thousand human beings would little have benefited our country, whilst the government would have been almost compelled to avenge our fate at whatever cost. We shall part with the Afghans as friends, and I feel satisfied that any government which may be established hereafter will always be disposed to cultivate a good understanding with us. A retreat without terms would have been impracticable. It is true, that by entering into terms, we are prevented from undertaking the conquest of the entire country—a measure which, from my knowledge of the views of government, I feel convinced would never be resorted to even were the means at hand. But such a project, in the present state of our Indian finances, and the requisitions for troops in various quarters, I knew could not be entertained.”[183]

I wish that it were not more difficult to acquit the military chiefs. General Elphinstone’s correspondence contains what he conceived to be a justification of his conduct in urging Macnaghten to capitulate. Brigadier Shelton has left upon record a statement of which it is only just to his memory that it should have the full credit: “The great extent of cantonments,” he wrote in the narrative drawn up by him at Buddeeabad, “and defenceless nature of the ramparts (an officer having actually ridden over them), effectually compromised our force, by the necessity to watch and protect every foot of the works, from their extreme weakness, and the consequent danger of sending out a force of sufficient strength to ensure victory, against a numerous enemy flushed with success, while our troops were disheartened, on half-rations of parched wheat, and harassed and worn out from constant duty on the ramparts, whose weakness required their presence night and day, exposed to excessive cold by night, with little covering and less comfort. The great oversight of neglecting to bring in provisions for the winter could not be remedied. The impossibility of procuring them by force in a country studded with forts, every one of which required a regular attack, was apparent to all. The Ricka-bashee Fort, close to cantonments, cost us 200 men. What must distant ones not have cost us—sniped the whole way out and home by long rifles out of range of our fire, through snow, with the thermometer at zero? There was nothing under such circumstances dishonourable in a necessary retreat, which might have been effected before the snow fell, and whilst there were a few days’ provisions in store, with some hope of success. Had provisions been stored in cantonments for the winter, the troops would have been in better heart, and resistance made until timely assistance should arrive. The party at Jellalabad was more favoured, both in provisions and a more congenial climate.”

Posterity will not accept such apologies as these. That difficulties and dangers of no common kind beset the path of the military commanders in those Caubul cantonments is not to be gainsaid. But war is made of difficulties and dangers. It is the glory of the soldier to live in the midst of them, and to do his best to overcome them. Elphinstone and Shelton were sent to Caubul to face difficulties and dangers, not to turn away from them. The existence of the evils here set forth in such formidable array is not questioned or doubted. Some at least of them were the growth of our own weakness; for difficulties not met with energy and decision are wonderfully reproductive. They thicken around the wavering and irresolute. If, on the 10th of December, Elphinstone and Shelton, after bravely struggling, throughout six long peril-laden weeks, against the difficulties which were thronging around them, had at last succumbed to their pressure, they would have been entitled to the respect, no less than to the pity, of the world. But it was not so much that the circumstances were strong, as that the men were weak. As early as the 5th of November—three days after the first outbreak of the insurrection—Elphinstone had begun to think and to write about terms. Shelton was not much behind him in his recommendations of the same ignoble course. They were both of them brave men. In any other situation, though the physical infirmities of the one, and the cankered vanity, the dogmatical perverseness of the other, might have in some measure detracted from their efficiency as military commanders, I believe that they would have exhibited sufficient constancy and courage to rescue our army from utter destruction, and the British name from indelible reproach. But in the Caubul cantonments they were miserably out of place. They seem to have been sent there, by superhuman intervention, to work out the utter ruin and prostration of an unholy policy by ordinary human means.

It is remarkable, indeed, that the chief conduct of our military operations, in this critical conjuncture, should have been in the hands of two men so utterly unlike each other, and yet so equal in their incapacity for such command. I believe it be no exaggeration to affirm, that there were not in India two men of the same high rank equally unfitted by circumstance and by character for the command of the Caubul army. The one had everything to learn; the other had everything to unlearn. Elphinstone knew nothing of the native army. Shelton was violently prejudiced against it. Elphinstone, in a new and untried position, had no opinion of his own, but flung himself upon the judgment of any one with confidence enough to form and express one. Shelton, on the other hand, was proud of his experience, and obstinately wedded to his own opinions. Opposition irritated and enfeebled him. To overrule and to thwart him at the commencement of an enterprise entrusted to his charge was to secure its ignominious failure. Whether by accident or by design, he generally contrived to demonstrate the soundness of his own judgment, by being disastrously beaten in every attempt to carry out the projects forced upon him by the preponderating counsels of others. Had Shelton exercised the chief military control, though he might have committed some errors, he would probably have distinguished himself more than in the secondary position which he was compelled to occupy. On him was thrown the burden of the executive duties. Whilst others overruled his opinions, he was made responsible for the success of enterprises against which he protested, and with which he was the last man in the country heartily to identify himself under circumstances so irritating and depressing. It would have been impossible, indeed, to have brought together two men so individually disqualified for their positions—so inefficient in themselves, and so doubly inefficient in combination. Each made the other worse. The only point on which they agreed was, unhappily, the one on which it would have been well if they had differed. They agreed in urging the Envoy to capitulate. There was a curse upon them that clouded their brains and made faint their hearts, and moved them to seek safety in a course at once the most discreditable and the most perilous of all that opened out before them.