[January-April: 1842.]

The Last Days of Shah Soojah—State of Parties at Caubul—Condition of the Hostages—the Newab Zemaun Khan—Letters of Shah Soojah—His Death—Question of his Fidelity—His Character and Conduct considered.

It is time that I should pause in the narration of the retributory measures of the British-Indian Government, to dwell, for a little space, upon the events at Caubul which succeeded the departure of Elphinstone’s army. It had been rumoured throughout India—and the rumour had created no little astonishment in the minds of those who had believed that the Caubul insurrection was a movement against the Feringhees and the King—that ever since the departure of the former Shah Soojah had continued to occupy the Balla Hissar, and had been recognised as the supreme authority by the very men who had recently been in arms against him. And the rumour was a perfect echo of the truth. Ever since the departure of the British army Shah Soojah had reigned at Caubul.

He had reigned at Caubul, but he had not ruled. His power was merely nominal. The chiefs wanted a puppet; and in the unhappy Shah they found the only one who was ever likely to stand between them and the vengeance of the British nation. Day after day they made their salaam to him in the Balla Hissar; but so imperfect even was their outward recognition of his regal dignity, that money was still coined in the name of the Newab Zemaun Khan. The Newab, who had been raised to the sovereignty by the voice of the chiefs soon after the first outbreak of the insurrection, had cheerfully resigned the honour that had been thrust upon him, and accepted the office of Wuzeer. Ameen-oollah Khan was appointed Naib, or deputy. For a little time there was some outward show of harmony; but there was no real union between the King and the chiefs. The Barukzyes spoke scornfully of the King; and the King could not refrain from expressing his mistrust of the whole tribe of Barukzyes. Ameen-oollah Khan, openly swearing allegiance to both, seems to have held the balance between the two opposing factions, and was in reality the most influential man in the state. He had amassed, by fraud and violence, large sums of money, which the other chiefs, straitened as they were by an empty treasury, and unable to carry out any great national measure, would fain have made him disgorge. From the Shah himself they contrived to extort some three or four lakhs of rupees; but when Akbar Khan wrote pressing letters to Caubul for guns and ammunition, that he might lay siege to Jellalabad, no one would move without pay, and money was not forthcoming.

All parties were jealous of each other; and especially jealous of the rising power of Akbar Khan. The young Barukzye was in Lughman; and the elder chiefs at Caubul, even if they had possessed the money to enable them to answer these emergent indents upon their military resources, would have been little inclined to send him the reinforcements and munitions for which he was continually writing. They talked about raising an army of their own, and opposing the retributory march of the British through the Khybur Pass; but the want of money presented an insuperable obstacle to any military movement on a scale that would afford a prospect of success. The Shah himself talked openly in Durbar about standing forward as defender of the faith, and declaring a religious war against the Kaffirs; but he privately assured Conolly that he was heart and soul with the British, and he wrote long letters to the Governor-General, Clerk, Macgregor, and others, declaring his inviolable fidelity, and eagerly clamouring for money.

In the mean while the English hostages remained under the protection of Mahomed Zemaun Khan. Nothing could exceed the kindness of the good old man. Faithful among the faithless, he was resolute to defend the Christian strangers at all risks; and never, when the popular clamour ran highest, and other men of note were thirsting for the blood of the captives, did he waver for an instant in his determination to shield the helpless Feringhees from the malice of his remorseless countrymen. He was a Barukzye chief—a near relative of Dost Mahomed Khan; and there was not among the Sirdars of all the tribes one in whom the spirit of nationality glowed more strongly and more purely. But whilst the independence of his country was as dear to him as to any of his brethren, he did not burn with that fierce hatred against the English which broke out in other places, nor did he ever, in the advancement of the most cherished objects of his heart, stain his patriotism with those foul crimes from which elsewhere there was little shrinking. Regarding with abhorrence the conduct of those who had betrayed our unhappy people, he himself did all that, single-handed, he could do, to atone for the cruelty of his countrymen; and no father could have treated his children more kindly than the good Newab cherished and protected the English hostages who found a sanctuary in his house.

But it was necessary, whilst the excitement ran so high at Caubul, and there was a prospect of violent contention among the chiefs, to do something more than this. Ameen-oollah Khan never slackened in his exertions to obtain possession of the persons of the hostages. Having tried every kind of stratagem, and failed to secure them by fraud, he would have resorted to open violence. It was necessary, therefore, to oppose force to force; so the Newab raised an army of his own. His pecuniary resources were limited; but he did not hesitate to spend his little store freely in entertaining followers. Mainly for the protection of the English gentlemen he raised a body of 1000 footmen, whom he armed with English bayonets; another body of 1000 horse, and some Jezailchees—in all, about 3000 men. The English guns, too, were in his possession, and he refused to yield them up to the Shah.[75]

The King regarded his proceedings with mistrust. There was no sort of cordiality between them. The old Suddozye and Barukzye strife seemed about to be renewed with all its pristine vigour. At last the Shah, about the middle of the month of March, corrupted the commandant of the Newab’s army, who went over with all his followers to the Balla Hissar. This event, which threatened entirely to change the state of parties at the capital, threw all Caubul into a ferment. The shops were closed; the people began to arm themselves. The Newab demanded the restoration of his troops; but the King only yielded a conditional assent. He appears at this time to have been entirely in the hands of Ameen-oollah Khan; and he replied, that if the hostages were sent to the house of the Loghur chief, the recreant commandant should be sent there at the same time. The Newab, however, resolutely refused to give up the English gentlemen. The proposal seems to have strengthened Conolly’s suspicions of the fidelity of Shah Soojah. It nearly cost the hostages their lives.

It now seemed that Caubul was about to become the theatre of internecine strife. The gates of the Balla Hissar were half closed, and the Shah never ventured beyond them. The chiefs were all mustering retainers. The King was endeavouring to cast suspicion on the nationality of the Newab; and the Newab’s party were doubting the fidelity of the King. The Populzye leaders of the insurrection clustered round the monarch, but he had neither popularity nor power. Money he had; but making an outward show of poverty, he resolutely refused to produce it; and the people began to abuse him for his parsimony. In this conjuncture he continued to write to the British authorities, declaring that he could do anything for them if they would only send him money; but the British authorities were deaf to his entreaties, and only sent him advice.[76]

But the difficulties of the Shah were now drawing to a close; his days were numbered. Whilst he was awaiting the receipt of answers to his letters, the excitement in Caubul was increasing—the division among the chiefs was becoming more and more irreconcilable. Horribly perplexed and bewildered, anxious at once to appear in the eyes of his countrymen true to the national cause, and to retain the good-will of the English by some show of fidelity to them, he fell into every kind of inconsistency, was suspected by both parties, and either way was rushing on destruction. At last the chiefs called upon him to prove his sincerity by placing himself at the head of all the available troops, and marching down upon Jellalabad. The Shah yielded a reluctant consent; and, on the 29th of March sent round his criers to proclaim that he was about to march southward on the 31st; that the chiefs were to accompany him, and to send out their tents on the preceding day. The summons was scantily obeyed. The Kuzzilbash chief declared that as neither the King nor the minister had supplied him with money, he could not move. The King said that he had no confidence in the chiefs, and that, therefore, he would not go, but that Ameen-oollah might go for him. And so the expedition was postponed. In the mean while, Akbar Khan was writing urgent letters to Caubul clamouring for reinforcements, and urging that it was wretched policy to be eternally at variance with one another—quarrelling for money and quarrelling for rank—instead of making common cause against the hated Feringhees.[77]

After a pause of a few days the King again consented to march. His suspicion of the Barukzyes, however, was not easily to be allayed. Nor was it wholly without reason. Even impartial lookers-on prophesied that if he left Caubul he would either be murdered or blinded by the Barukzyes.[78] Aware of these suspicions, the Newab sent his wife to Shah Soojah with a sealed Koran, assuring the King with a solemn oath that the Barukzyes and other chiefs would be true to him. Fortified by this assurance, the Shah moved out of the Balla Hissar on the 4th of April, but before nightfall returned to the palace, determined on the following morning to review his troops and then to start for Jellalabad. Rising early on the morning of the 5th, he arrayed himself in royal apparel, and, accompanied by a small party of Hindostanees, proceeded under a salute, in a chair of state, towards his camp, which had been pitched at Seeah-Sungh. But Soojah-ool-dowlah, the son of the Newab, had gone out before him, and placed in ambush a party of Jezailchees. As the Shah and his followers were making their way towards the regal tent, the marksmen fired upon them. The volley took murderous effect. Several of the bearers and of the escort were struck down; and the King himself killed on the spot. A ball had entered his brain. Soojah-ool-dowlah then rode up; and as he contemplated his bloody work, the body of the unhappy King, vain and pompous as he was to the very last, was stripped of all the jewels about it—the jewelled dagger, the jewelled girdle, the jewelled head-dress; and it was then cast into a ditch.

The news of the King’s murder spread like wildfire. Great was the consternation. Futteh Jung, the second son of the Shah, on receiving the sad tidings of his father’s death, made with all speed towards the Balla Hissar; but the gates were guarded; so he turned back and sought refuge in the fort of Mahomed Khan, Bayat. That night however, Mahomed Khan, in concert with Ameen-oollah, who held the Balla Hissar, restored the Prince to the palace; and they agreed to proclaim him King. The body of Shah Soojah was recovered, and for some days it lay in state. The royal family declared that until sentence had been passed upon the murderer it should not be buried. The Moollahs were assembled to expound the punishment due to so atrocious an offender; and they pronounced, on the authority of their religious books, that the murderer of the King should be stoned to death. But Ameen-oollah Khan interposed. He said that it was not a time to carry out such a sentence; all parties were bound to league themselves together to fight against the Feringhees; and intestine animosities ought therefore to be forgot.

To no one were the circumstances of the Shah’s death a source of deeper horror and regret than to the good old Newab, the father of the murderer. He is said to have sworn an oath never again to see his son beneath his roof, or to suffer him to be named in his presence.[79] Various circumstances have been assigned as the proximate causes of the murder of the unfortunate Shah. It was said that he had drawn down upon himself the increased animosity of the Barukzyes, by appointing to the command of the army a son of Ameen-oollah Khan. Akbar Khan, too, had recently been wounded by an accidental shot from a Pesh-Khidmut, or attendant, which was said to have been designed to take the life of the Sirdar; and it had been rumoured that Shah Soojah had bribed the man to make the murderous attempt. That the Newab Zemaun Khan was not implicated in the foul transaction, all men are willing to believe; but it was intended to strengthen the party of which he was then the acknowledged chief. It was the consummation of the great strife which for forty years had been raging between Shah Soojah and the Barukzye Sirdars. Indeed, it would have been little in accordance with the general tenor of Afghan history if this unfortunate Prince had not died a violent death. After so eventful a life, it would have been strange indeed if he had sunk to rest peaceably on his bed.

Among the obscurer points of Afghan history, there is not one more obscure than that which involves the question of the fidelity of Shah Soojah. That doubts were cast upon his sincerity has been already shown. Conscious of this, he entered upon a defence of his conduct in a series of letters to the British authorities which I have now given to the world. Written hastily, and under the influence of strong excitement, they carry very little conviction with them. The main object of these letters appears to have been the extraction of money from the British treasury. The Shah continued to assert, that having no money he had no power, but that if money were sent to him he would be able to do great things for his late allies. Death makes many revelations. The death of Shah Soojah revealed the mendacity and the avarice of the man. Some twenty lakhs of rupees, besides jewels of large value, were found to have been in his possession when he died.[80] This disagreeable circumstance, though by no means conclusive against the general fidelity of the Shah, certainly will not predispose the inquirer to take an unduly favourable view of his conduct.

It must, however, be always kept steadily in view, that the circumstances of Shah Soojah’s position were such as to surround him with an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion. That the chiefs made use of the King’s name at the outset of the insurrection, and produced an inflammatory document said to bear the royal seal, is one of the most notorious facts in the entire history of the war. The seal was genuine, but the document was a supposititious one. Nothing is more common, in times of popular excitement, than for the Afghans to endeavour to injure one another by giving currency to forged instruments. It was to the last degree improbable that, at this time, Shah Soojah should have committed himself by putting the seal to any documents which might have fallen into the hands of his European allies, and laid bare the blackness of his treachery. But that he would have been glad to have cast off the Feringhee alliance, and to have ruled without the restraint of our superintendence and interference, is not to be questioned. He may, therefore, have regarded with inward satisfaction the progress of the insurrectionary movement, and rejoiced in its ultimate success; but he does not appear to have been more than a passive instrument in the hands of others. It was obviously his policy to appear all things to all people. He could not venture to take any decided course. He never in the prime of life had been conspicuous for manliness of character; and now, in his old age, he was more than ever a waverer and a waiter upon fortune. Perhaps, I should not err if I were to say that he was true neither to his own countrymen nor to his British allies. He was prepared to side with either the one or the other, according to the direction in which the tide of success might be seen to flow. He had no affection for the English; but he dearly loved English money. He knew the value of British aid; but he would fain have had it from a distance. From the very first he had disliked the obtrusive manner in which it had been forced upon him. He wanted the prestige of British support without the incumbrance of British control. To retain our friendship, and yet to rid himself of our presence, was unquestionably the desire of the Shah; but it is doubtful whether his desire would ever have shaped itself into any overt acts of hostility against the government which had restored him to the throne of his fathers. He was not deficent of gratitude, even if there had been anything to call it forth;[81] but he had sufficient sagacity to know that his political existence was dependent upon the will of the British Government. And he was cautious not to do anything to provoke its vengeance. The chiefs believed, at the commencement of the November outbreak, that though the insurrection would soon be crushed, such a manifestation of popular feeling would in all probability cause the British authorities to tremble for the safety of their position, and induce them to evacuate the country in the ensuing spring. Encouraging a similar belief, Shah Soojah may have regarded with inward satisfaction the outbreak of the revolution. But he was surprised and alarmed by the rapidity of its progress; and was wholly unprepared for the sanguinary termination of his connection with his Christian allies. That he was in a state of painful depression and prostration throughout the entire period of the insurrection is not to be questioned; and it is scarcely less certain that he never wholly recovered from the terror which then bewildered him. The irruption culminated somewhat too violently for a man of Shah Soojah’s temperament; and when he found what a convulsion had been raised around him, he shrunk back in dismay. On either side dangers and difficulties started up in his path. He strove to save himself by doing little, and being to all outward seeming the friend both of the Afghan insurgents and their European foes. Duplicity is never long successful. Doubted by both parties, the king became an object of general contempt. He trimmed between the two contending hosts, and escaped the rocks on neither side of the vessel.

On such a question as this, it is right that the opinions of the leading political officers, who were best acquainted with the character and the conduct of the Shah, and had the best opportunities of investigating the circumstances of the Caubul insurrection, should be summarily recorded. “To my mind,” wrote Captain Mackeson to Mr. Clerk, “there has ever appeared but little doubt that his Majesty Shah Soojah was, in the commencement, the instigator of the Caubul insurrection. Had the first blow struck by the rebels been effectual, his Majesty might, perhaps, have thrown off the mask earlier; but our troops in cantonments held their position though surrounded by foes without number, whilst those in the Balla Hissar held his Majesty in check. Nay, the chances were at one time so much in favour of our success, that his Majesty discarded his own instruments, refusing all their solicitations to place himself at their head. To such an extent did he carry his reluctant adherence to us, that at length the rebels, in their turn, were obliged to seek for a leader among the Barukzyes. His Majesty then husbanded his own resources, allowing the Barukzyes and our people to fight out the battle. Sir William Macnaghten would not have treated with Mahomed Akbar Khan had he not been convinced of the treachery towards us of Shah Soojah.”[82]

Captain Macgregor’s opinion coincides, but with some amount of qualification, with that of the last witness. “I agree with you” (Mackeson), he wrote, “in thinking that the Shah was more or less implicated in the insurrection; but when he saw that it took such a serious turn, I really believe that he repented—even so soon as he heard of Burnes’s assassination, and of the massacre of the other officers in the city. His Majesty pressed Sir William to remove all the British troops into the Balla Hissar, which in itself looked like a friendly feeling towards us.”[83]

The opinion of Major Rawlinson sets in an opposite direction. It throws a side-light from Candahar on the conduct of the Shah at this time. “From everything I can learn, I should say that the Shah was certainly well inclined to us; and, if assured of our again placing confidence in him, would cordially support our advance. He has certainly done as little as he could, keeping up appearances with the Mussulman party, to complicate our position at this place, and I learn that for some time past the prevalent opinion in the Douranee camp has been that the Shah desired our success.”[84]

Captain Mackenzie’s opinion, as to the conduct and motives of the Shah, involves some considerations not noticed by others: “The king highly esteemed and loved Macnaghten personally, as indeed all the Afghans did who came into direct intercourse with that accomplished and courteous English gentleman. Macnaghten’s chivalrous consideration for the proud but dependant monarch, who felt his somewhat false position keenly, had been unvarying and unremitting: perhaps more so than the public interests warranted. But we can afford to admire the high tone and delicacy of the envoy’s motives, especially as few public functionaries are likely to be misled by similar knightly scruples. The king more than once openly discussed with Macnaghten the likelihood of attempts to sow dissension between them, by the propagation of reports of his want of faith towards his British allies, and he always added: “You are yourself aware that you are as necessary to me as my nails are to my fingers.” Burnes was a man of totally different temperament from Macnaghten, and his demeanour towards the king was neither conciliatory nor deferential. It is not saying too much, that the king hated him; he was aware that his friend the Envoy was about to depart from Caubul, thus leaving him in Burnes’s hands; and after a careful consideration of the character of his proceedings from first to last, of the nature of the motives by which he was generally actuated (i. e. petty and personal), and also of the opinion of many of the most intelligent Afghans, the most probable conjecture is, that Shah Soojah was aware of the plot and combination against himself and the Feringhees before the outbreak; that he hoped it would be sufficient to detain Macnaghten in the country, but not enough to baffle our military power; and that, when he became thoroughly alarmed on the morning of the 2nd of November, he did his best to quell the insurrection, and openly expressed his astonishment and disappointment at the apathy and inefficiency of the English leaders and their troops. He can scarcely, with due consideration for the peculiarities of the Asiatic mind, and the desperate circumstances of his position, be judged by the European standard of honour and morality, if he subsequently temporised with the dominant Barukzyes. He well knew what he had to expect at their hands, and he fully anticipated the fate which afterwards overtook him.”[85]

But of all the officers connected with the British Mission, John Conolly was the one who enjoyed the best opportunities of arriving at a correct estimate of the conduct of the Shah. During the insurrection he was in attendance on the king at the Balla Hissar, and he was at Caubul up to the time of his death. Conolly’s opinions are on record. He seems at one time to have entertained the strongest possible conviction that the Shah was true to his British allies. “I believe,” he wrote on the 17th of January, “that he is heart and soul in our interest; and it is contrary to all reason to suppose otherwise.” But by the 15th of February his belief in the fidelity of the Shah seems to have been shaken; for he wrote to Macgregor: “It is generally believed and asserted throughout the town that his Majesty instigated the late rebellion. I have never been able to prove the accusation, though I cannot but think that he was, directly or indirectly, the cause of the revolution.” A month afterwards, writing still more distinctly to General Pollock, he cast further doubts on the fidelity of the Shah. “I would suggest,” he said, “that some direct understanding be come to with his Majesty. It is generally believed that he caused the late rebellion; and his conduct lately has been strange, to say the least of it. He tried to raise a popular tumult against us, hoping thereby to ruin the Newab. He did not interest himself in any way about our sick when their wretched, helpless condition was formally represented to him in a petition from me—added to the circumstance alluded to of his telling our host to send us to Ameen-oollah, who is our most bitter enemy. He is, moreover, surrounded by the Populzye leaders of the late insurrection, whose persons, I presume, our government will demand. I have not received a letter from him for a month; but the fear of being suspected of being in communication with us may be the cause of his disregard of us.” And again, at the end of the month, writing to Major Rawlinson, he said: “The king is generally abused, and reported as the instigator of the late rebellion. He has proved himself, I think, unworthy of our friendship. If we are not able to prove his villany, his cunning will, no doubt, prompt him to side with us on the near approach of our troops, for he is well aware that his subjects would seize him if he ventured out of the Balla Hissar. He is, as the Afghans say, like grain between two mill-stones.”[86]

Many more passages might be cited from the correspondence of our political officers, to show the opinions entertained at this time by those most competent to determine the question of the Shah’s fidelity. But, after all, the question remains an open one. The future historian may still lose himself in a sea of conjecture. From the facts before us, and from all that is known of the character of Shah Soojah, the inference is, as I have said, that the king was faithful neither to his own countrymen nor to his British allies. He was at best a poor creature. He had few good qualities. But it should in justice be remembered, that he was surrounded by circumstances against which an abler and a better man might have struggled in vain. He had long been greatly perplexed and embarrassed by the anomalies of his position. He was tired of playing the part of the puppet; and had begun to long for an opportunity either of becoming king indeed, or of throwing down the trappings and the cares of royalty, and ending his days in the calm security of his old asylum at Loodhianah. He used to say that Macnaghten did all the good that was done in Afghanistan—and all the evil too; for that he himself did nothing. Unpopular measures of which he was not the author were executed in his name; he was compelled outwardly to sanction much of which he inwardly disapproved; he saw dangers thickening around him without the power of averting them, and painfully felt that he had always been a cipher, and had now become a hissing and a reproach.

Under the directorship which we had forced upon him, Shah Soojah was not happy. He was altogether a disappointed man. He did not find the sweets of restored dominion what he expected them to be. He was an isolated being. The sympathies neither of the Afghans nor of the English were with him. All men suspected him. None loved him. When, therefore, he talked about leaving Caubul, he was probably not insincere; but he may have thought sometimes that if the English would leave Caubul, he might enjoy his sovereignty more. If to have desired to rid himself of an incubus, which sate so heavily upon him, was to be faithless to the British, Shah Soojah was unquestionably faithless; but this is a kind of infidelity so common to humanity of all ranks and in all places, that to record it against the Shah is only to say that he was a man.

But as regards the actions of the King, it is to be observed that Shah Soojah was not a man of action. His early life had been one rather of strenuous passiveness than of genuine activity. Since the British had taken him in hand, he had actually done nothing. When the insurrection burst over Caubul, he sate down and waited. After the departure of the British, he sate down and waited. He was afraid of both parties; and unwilling to declare himself openly until he could clearly see how the contest would end. He had not strength of mind sufficient to keep him faithful to any one. He was not even true to himself. The question is less a question of fact than of character. The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the idiosyncrasy of the man. He had led a very eventful life; but the vicissitudes of his career had not strengthened his character. Anything decided, active, or energetic, was not to be expected from him. The infirmity of age was now superadded to the infirmity of purpose which had characterised his greener manhood; and if he had taken any decided part in the great contest which followed the outburst of the Caubul insurrection, it would have been an inconsistency at variance with the whole tenor of his past life. As it was, the conduct of the man in this crisis was in keeping with all that was known of his character and his antecedents. Shah Soojah was not a hero; and he did not play a heroic part. The British Government had picked him out of the dust of Loodhianah, simply as a matter of convenience to themselves; and they had no reason to complain that, in a great and imminent conjuncture, he thought less of their convenience than his own. He proved himself at the last to be very much what we had helped to make him. We could not expect him to be an active workman, when we had so long used him as a tool.