Chapter LXXVII: Appendix: VI

(Referred to in Chapter LIII, Footnote 3.)

_From LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR F. ROBERTS, K.C.B., V.C., Commanding Kabul Field Force, to A.C. LYALL, ESQ., C.B., Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department._

KABUL, _22nd November,_ 1879.

1. I Have the honour to submit a brief account of an interview
which took place between the Amir Yakub Khan and myself on the
22nd October. The interview was a private and informal one; but
recent events have lent some interest to what passed on the
occasion, and I have, therefore, thought it desirable that
a report should be prepared for the information of the
Governor-General in Council.

2. After some conversation upon matters of no special importance,
the Amir introduced his father's name, and thus gave me the
opportunity I had often wished to have of leading him on to speak
naturally and unconstrainedly about Sher Ali Khan's feelings and
policy during the last ten years. I was most careful to avoid any
expression of my own views upon the subject in order that I might,
if possible, obtain from the Amir a perfectly spontaneous and
truthful account of the circumstances which led, in his opinion,
to Sher Ali's estrangement from ourselves and _rapprochement_ to
Russia. In this I think I succeeded. Yakub Khan spoke readily
and freely of all that had passed, and needed no question or
suggestion from me to declare his conviction regarding the cause
of his father's unfriendly attitude towards us during the past few
years.

3. The substance of the Amir's statement was as follows:

'In 1869 my father was fully prepared to throw in his lot with
you. He had suffered many reverses before making himself secure on
the throne of Afghanistan; and he had come to the conclusion that
his best chance of holding what he had won lay in an alliance with
the British Government. He did not receive from Lord Mayo as
large a supply of arms and ammunition as he had hoped, but,
nevertheless, he returned to Kabul fairly satisfied, and so he
remained until the visit of Saiyad Nur Muhammud to India in 1873.
This visit brought matters to a head. The diaries received from
Saiyad Nur Mahomed during his stay in India, and the report which
he brought back on his return, convinced my father that he could
no longer hope to obtain from the British Government all the aid
that he wanted; and from that time he began to turn his attention
to the thoughts of a Russian alliance. You know how this ended.

'When my father received from the Government of India the letter
informing him that a British Mission was about to proceed to
Kabul, he read it out in durbar. The members of the Russian
Embassy were present. After the reading was finished, Colonel
Stolietoff rose, saluted the Amir and asked permission to leave
Kabul. If permitted, he would, he said, travel without delay to
Tashkent, and report the state of affairs to General Kauffmann,
who would inform the Czar, and thus bring pressure to bear on
England. He promised to return in six weeks or two months, and
urged the Amir to do everything in his power meanwhile to prevent
the British Mission from reaching Kabul.

'Colonel Stolietoff never returned to Kabul. He lost no time in
reaching Tashkent, where he remained for a few weeks, and he then
started for Russia.

'The Afghan official, Mirza Mahomed Hassan Khan, generally known
as the "Dabir-ul-Mulk," who had travelled with Colonel Stolietoff
from the Oxus to Kabul, accompanied him on his return journey to
Tashkent. Here the Mirza was detained under pretence that orders
would shortly be received from the Emperor, until the news of my
father's flight from Kabul reached General Kauffmann. He was then
permitted to leave. Two Aides-de-Camp were sent with him, one a
European, the other a Native of Bokhara.

'My father was strongly urged by General Kauffmann not to leave
Kabul. At the same time the members of the Embassy were ordered to
return to Tashkent, the Doctor being permitted to remain with my
father if his services were required.

'Throughout, the Russian Embassy was treated with great honour,'
and at all stations between Mazar-i-Shariff and Kabul, orders were
given for the troops to turn out, and for a salute to be fired on
their arrival and departure.'

4. I cannot, of course, vouch for the exact words used by Yakub
Khan, but I am confident that the foregoing paragraph, which is
written from notes taken at the time, contains a substantially
accurate record of the conversation.

5. It would be superfluous for me to advance any proof of the fact
that for one reason or another Sher Ali did during the latter part
of his reign fall away from us and incline towards an alliance
with Russia. But I think the closeness of the connection between
Russia and Kabul, and the extent of the Amir's hostility towards
ourselves, has not hitherto been fully recognized. Yakub Khan's
statements throw some light upon this question, and they are
confirmed by various circumstances which have lately come to my
knowledge. The prevalence of Russian coin and wares in Kabul,
and the extensive military preparations made by Sher Ali of late
years, appear to me to afford an instructive comment upon Yakub
Khan's assertions. Our recent rupture with Sher Ali has, in fact,
been the means of unmasking and checking a very serious conspiracy
against the peace and security of our Indian Empire.

6. The magnitude of Sher Ali's military preparations is, in my
opinion, a fact of peculiar significance. I have already touched
upon this point in a former letter, but I shall perhaps be excused
for noticing it again. Before the outbreak of hostilities last
year the Amir had raised and equipped with arms of precision 68
regiments of Infantry and 16 of Cavalry. The Afghan Artillery
amounted to nearly 300 guns. Numbers of skilled artizans were
constantly employed in the manufacture of rifled cannon and
breach-loading small arms. More than a million pounds of powder,
and I believe several million rounds of home-made Snider
ammunition, were in the Bala Hissar at the time of the late
explosion. Swords, helmets, uniforms, and other articles of
military equipment were stored in proportionate quantities.
Finally, Sher Ali had expended upon the construction of the
Sherpur cantonments an astonishing amount of labour and money. The
extent and cost of this work may be judged of from the fact that
the whole of the troops under my command will find cover during
the winter within the cantonment, and the bulk of them in the main
line of rampart itself, which extends to a length of nearly two
miles under the southern and western slopes of the Bimaru hills.
Sher Ali's original design was apparently to carry the wall
entirely round the hills, a distance of nearly five miles, and the
foundations were already laid for a considerable portion of this
length. All these military preparations were quite unnecessary
except as a provision for contemplated hostilities with ourselves,
and it is difficult to understand how their entire cost could
have been met from the Afghan treasury, the gross revenue of the
country amounting only to about eighty lakhs of rupees per annum.

7. I have referred to the prevalence of Russian coin and wares
in Kabul as evidence of the growing connexion between Russia and
Afghanistan. I am unable to find proof that the Czar's coin was
introduced in any other way than by the usual channels of trade.
It is quite possible that the bulk of it, if not the whole, came
in gradually by this means, the accumulation of foreign gold in
particular being considerable in this country, where little gold
is coined. Nevertheless, it seems to me a curious fact that the
amount of Russian money in circulation should be so large. No
less than 13,000 gold pieces were found among the Amir's treasure
alone; similar coins are exceedingly common in the city bazaar;
and great numbers of them are known to be in possession of the
Sirdars. Of course English goods of all kinds are plentiful
here--that is inevitable, particularly with a considerable body
of Hindu merchants settled in the city, but Russian goods also
abound. Glass, crockery, silks, tea, and many other things which
would seem to be far more easily procurable from India than from
Russian territory, are to be found in great quantities. A habit,
too, seems to have been growing up among the Sirdars and others of
wearing uniforms of Russian cut, Russian buttons, Russian boots,
and the like. Russian goods and Russian ways seem, in fact, to
have become the fashion in Afghanistan.

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