Chapter II: 1837-1839 (3)

The month of July was not distinguished by any great activity on the part of the besiegers. The siege, indeed, now began to assume the character of a blockade. The question of surrender had become a mere question of time. It seemed impossible much longer to protract the defence. Yar Mahomed, with all the resources of unscrupulous cruelty at his command, could not extort sufficient money from his victims to enable him to continue his defensive operations with any prospect of success. But it appeared to him, as it did to Pottinger, expedient to postpone the inevitable day of capitulation, in the hope that something might yet be written down in their favour in the “chapter of accidents,” out of which so often had come unexpected aid. Yar Mahomed looked for the coming of an Oosbeg army. He had long anxiously expected the arrival of a relieving force from Toorkistan; and scarcely a day had passed without some tidings, either to elevate or depress him, of the advent or delay of the looked-for succours. Pottinger, though unwilling to encourage in others expectations which might not be realised, was inwardly convinced that something of a decisive character respecting the intentions of his own government must soon be heard, and that the knowledge of those intentions would have an effect upon the Afghan garrison and the Persian camp very advantageous to the former. With the object, therefore, of gaining time, the Wuzeer renewed his exertions to raise money for the payment of the troops. Assemblies of the chiefs were held, at which every practicable method of recruiting their exhausted finances was discussed. The Sirdars addressed themselves to the discussion as men wholly in earnest, determined to do their best.[196] The resolutions of the chiefs in this conjuncture surprised and delighted Pottinger, who was little prepared for the unanimity with which they determined on protracting the defence. “With open breaches, trembling soldiery, and a disaffected populace, they determined to stand to the last. How I wished,” exclaimed Pottinger, “to have the power of producing the money!”

The plan which was at last resolved upon—one which threw into the hands of a single chief the power of seizing the property of whomsoever he thought fit to mulct for the service of the state—under a written pledge from the other chiefs not to interfere, as had been their wont, for the protection of their own friends, threw the city into such confusion, and produced so many appeals to the assembly of chiefs, that Pottinger, anxious to establish a less arbitrary system of levying contributions, suggested that all who voluntarily brought their money would be reimbursed, at his recommendation, by the British Government. But money came in slowly. The difficulties of the garrison seemed to thicken around them. Negotiations were, therefore, again resumed, with a determination at last to bring them to an issue; and messengers were constantly passing and repassing between the city and the Persian camp.

But in the mean while, far beyond the walls of Herat, events were taking shape mightily affecting the issue of the contest. Lord Auckland, who had watched with much anxiety the progress of affairs in the West, had, in the course of the spring, determined on despatching an expedition to the Persian Gulf, to hold itself in readiness for any service which Mr. M’Neill might deem it expedient to employ it upon, “with a view to the maintenance of our interests in Persia.” Instructions to this effect were forwarded to Bombay. In conjunction with Sir Charles Malcolm, the chief of the Indian navy, the Bombay Government despatched the _Semiramis_ and _Hugh Lindsay_ steamers, and some vessels of war, with detachments of the 15th, 23rd, and 24th Regiments, and the Marine battalion, to the Persian Gulf; and instructed the resident, Captain Hennell, to land the troops on the island of Karrack, and concentrate the squadron before it. On the 4th of June, the _Semiramis_ steamed out of the Bombay harbour, and on the 19th anchored off Karrack. The troops were immediately landed. The governor of the island, greatly alarmed by the coming of the steamer and the fighting men, but somewhat reassured by the appearance of Captain Hennell, said that the island and everything it contained, himself and its inhabitants, were at the disposal of the British Resident; and at once began to assist in the disembarkation of the troops.

The demonstration was an insignificant one in itself; but by the time that intelligence of the movement had reached the Persian camp, the expedition, gathering new dimensions at every stage, had swollen into bulk and significance. The most exaggerated reports of the doings and intentions of the British soon forced themselves into currency. The Persian camp was all alive with stories of the powerful British fleet that had sailed into the gulf, destroyed Bunder-Abassy and all the other ports on the coast, taken Bushire, and landed there a mighty army, which was advancing upon Shiraz, and had already taken divers towns in the province of Fars. Nothing could have been more opportune than the arrival of these reports. Mr. M’Neill was making his way towards the frontier, when intelligence of the Karrack expedition met him on the road. About the same time he received letters of instruction from the Foreign-office, issued in anticipation of the refusal of Mahomed Shah to desist from his operations against Herat; and thinking the hour was favourable, he resolved to make another effort to secure the withdrawal of the Persian army, and to regain for the British Mission the ascendancy it had lost at the Persian Court.

Fortified by these instructions from the Foreign-office, Mr. M’Neill despatched Colonel Stoddart to the Persian camp, with a message to the Shah. The language of this message was very intelligible and very decided. The Shah was informed that the occupation of Herat or any part of Afghanistan by the Persians would be considered in the light of a hostile demonstration against England; and that he could not persist in his present course without immediate danger and injury to Persia. It was stated, that already had a naval armament arrived in the Persian Gulf, and troops been landed on the island of Karrack, and that if the Shah desired the British Government to suspend the measures in progress for the vindication of its honour, he must at once retire from Herat, and make reparation for the injuries which had been inflicted upon the British Mission.

On the 11th of August, Colonel Stoddart arrived in the Persian camp. Repairing at once to the quarters of the minister, he found the son of the Candahar chief and a party of Afghans waiting in the tent. The Hadjee, on his return, received him with courtesy and friendliness, and fixed the following day for an interview with the Shah. Stoddart went at the appointed hour. The King was sitting in a raised room, up six or seven steps. Beckoning to the English officer to come up more closely to him, he welcomed him with much cordiality, and listened to the message from the British Government. Taking advantage of a pause in the recital, the King said: “The fact is, if I don’t leave Herat, there will be war, is not that it?” “It is war,” returned Stoddart; “all depends upon your Majesty’s answer—God preserve your Majesty!” The message, written in the original English, was then given to the King. “It is all I wished for,” he said. “I asked the minister plenipotentiary for it; but he would not give it to me. He said he was not authorized.” “He was not authorized then,” returned Stoddart; “but now he has been ordered to do it. No one could give such a message without especial authority from his Sovereign.” The Shah complained that the paper was in English, which he could not understand; but said that his Meerzas should translate it for him, and then that he would give a positive answer to its demands. Two days afterwards Stoddart was again summoned to the royal presence. “We consent to the whole of the demands of the British Government,” said the Shah. “We will not go to war. Were it not for the sake of their friendship, we should not return from before Herat. Had we known that our coming here might risk the loss of their friendship, we certainly would not have come at all.”[197] The English officer thanked God that his Majesty had taken so wise a view of the real interests of Persia; but hinted to the Foreign Minister as he went out, that although the Shah’s answer was very satisfactory, it would be more satisfactory still to see it at once reduced to practice.

Whilst, in the Persian camp, Mahomed Shah was promising the English diplomatists to withdraw his army from Herat, an officer of the Russian Mission—M. Goutte, who had approved himself an adept in intrigue—was busying himself in Herat to bring about an arrangement that would give a colour of victory to the achievements of the investing force. If Kamran could have been persuaded to come out and wait upon Mahomed Shah in token of submission, the army might have been withdrawn with some show of credit, and the Russian Mission might have claimed a diplomatic victory. The Afghans were not, in their present reduced state, disinclined to acknowledge the supremacy of Mahomed Shah, and to consent that Kamran should visit the Persian monarch at Ghorian: but the Russian envoy demanded that he should come out of Herat, and make his obeisance to the King of Kings, as a preliminary to the withdrawal of the Persian army.[198]

This was on the 17th of August. On the morning of the 18th, Yar Mahomed sent a messenger to Pottinger, requesting his attendance at the Wuzeer’s quarters. The English officer was received with coldness almost amounting to discourtesy. Scarcely a word was spoken to him whilst the levee lasted; but when the assembly broke up, Pottinger, in a tone of voice that showed he was not to be trifled with, asked him why he had sent for him if he had nothing to communicate and nothing to ask. The Wuzeer took him by the hand and was about to leave the room; when Pottinger, arresting his progress, demanded a private interview. The room was cleared. The young English officer and the Afghan Sirdar sate down together, and were soon in friendly discourse. Yar Mahomed, the most plausible and persuasive of men,[199] soon stilled the tempest that was rising in Pottinger’s breast. All patience and gentleness now, he was ready to submit to any rebuke, and to utter any apology. They were soon in earnest conversation, as friends and brothers, regarding the general condition of the garrison and its available resources. The Wuzeer declared that “he regretted much the step he was obliged to take, but that indeed no alternative was left him—that every resource which even tyranny commanded was exhausted—that he dared not lay hands on the property of the combatants, though many of them had large funds.” The chiefs, he declared, were misers. The eunuch, Hadjee Ferooz, he said, could easily contribute two lakhs of rupees towards the expenses of the war, and the Shah might contribute ten; but neither would advance a farthing. “They are all,” he said, “equally niggardly. They have money, but they will not advance it. When their wives are being ravished before their faces, they will repent of their avarice; but now it is impossible to convince them of the folly and the danger of the course they are pursuing. With such people to deal with, and the soldiery crying out for pay and subsistence, how can I hold out longer by force?” He consented, however, to protract the negotiations to the utmost—to amuse the Persians—and to gain time. And in the mean while, he extracted from the weak and unresisting all that he could wring from them by torture. On the night after this conference with Pottinger, the Moonshee-Bashee died under the hands of the torturers.

The struggle, however, was now nearly at an end. The movements in the Persian camp appear, at this time, to have been but imperfectly known within the walls of Herat. Whilst Mahomed Shah was making preparations for the withdrawal of his army, Yar Mahomed and the Afghan Sirdars were busy with their financial operations for the continuance of the defence. A Finance Committee was appointed. Kamran was told that he must either provide money for the payment of the soldiery, or authorise the Committee to set about their work after their own manner. Eager to save his money, he sacrificed his people, and armed the Committee with full powers to search the houses of the inhabitants, to order the expulsion of all who had less than three months’ provisions, and to take from those who had more all that they could find in excess. The Topshee-Bashee, or chief artilleryman, to whom the executive duties of the Committee were entrusted, contrived to extort from the inhabitants several days’ food, and a large supply of jewels, with which he enriched the Wuzeer and himself. It was always believed that the former had amassed large sums of money during the siege; that he had turned the scarcity to good account, by retaining in his own coffers no small portion of the coin which he had wrung by torture from the wretched inhabitants. Now when the soldiery, lacking the means of subsistence, entered upon a course of plundering that threw the whole city into confusion, the Wuzeer, whilst issuing a proclamation forbidding such irregularities, and declaring severe penalties for the offence, allowed a continuation of the license to his own people, that he might avoid the necessity of paying them at his own cost. It is not strange, therefore, that when reports were circulated throughout the city that the Persian army was about to move, the _Soonee_ Parsewans, scarcely less than the _Sheeahs_, should have received the intelligence, some with sorrow, and some with a forced incredulity, “preferring the miseries of the siege with the ultimate prospect of the city being taken and sacked, to the raising of the siege and the prospect of Kamran’s and Yar Mahomed’s paternal government.” “All I wonder,” said Pottinger, recording this fact, “is, that not a man is to be found among them bold enough to terminate their miseries by the death of their oppressors.”[200]

But it was now becoming every day more obvious that Mahomed Shah was about to break up his camp. Some countrymen came into Herat and reported that the Persians were collecting their guns and mortars, and parking them as though in preparation for an immediate march. Parties of horsemen also had been seen moving out of camp. Others brought in word that the enemy had destroyed their 68-pounders, were assembling their carriage-cattle, and were about to raise the siege. The English, it was said, had taken Shiraz; but the Persians in the trenches, declaring that they were ready for another assault, cried out, that though the English army had advanced upon that city, the Prince-Governor had defeated it. All kinds of preposterous rumours were rife. Some asserted that the Russians had attacked and captured Tabreez; others that the Russians and English had formed an alliance for the overthrow of Mahomedanism, and the partition of the countries of the East between the two great European powers. But amidst all these rumours indicating the intended retrogression of the Persian army, the garrison was kept continually on the alert by alarming reports of another attack; and it was hard to say whether all these seeming preparations in Mahomed Shah’s camp were nor designed to lull the Heratees into a sleep of delusive security, and render them an easier prey.

But the month of September brought with it intelligence of a more decided character. There was no longer any doubt in Herat, that Mahomed Shah was breaking up his camp. Letters came in from the Persian authorities intimating the probability of the “King-of-Kings” forgiving the rebellion of Prince Kamran on certain conditions which would give a better grace to the withdrawal of the Persian monarch. To some of these, mainly at Pottinger’s suggestion, the Heratees demurred; but on the 4th of September, the Persian prisoners were sent into camp; and the Shah-in-Shah promised Colonel Stoddart that the march of the army should commence in a few days. There was, indeed, a pressing necessity for the immediate departure of the force. “The forage in camp,” wrote Colonel Stoddart to Mr. M’Neill, “will only last for five or six days more, and as messengers have been sent to turn back all cafilas, no more flour or grain will arrive. The advanced guard under Humza Meerza leaves camp on Friday evening.”

Everything was now ready for the retreat. The guns had been withdrawn from their advanced positions, and were now limbered up for the march. The baggage-cattle had been collected. The tents were being struck. The garrison of Herat looked out upon the stir in the Persian camp, and could no longer be doubtful of its import. The siege was now raised. The danger was at an end. Before the 9th of September, the Persian army had commenced its retrograde march to Teheran; and on the morning of that day the Shah mounted his horse “Ameerj,” and set his face towards his capital.

To Mahomed Shah this failure was mortifying indeed; but the interests at stake were too large for him to sacrifice them at the shrine of his ambition. He had spent ten months before the walls of Herat, exhausting his soldiery in a vain endeavour to carry by assault a place of no real or reputed strength. He had succeeded only in reducing the garrison to very painful straits; and had retired at last, not as one well-disposed to peaceful negotiation and reasonable concession, submitting to the friendly intervention of a neutral power, and willing to wave the chances of success; but as one who saw before him _no_ chance of success, and was moved by no feeling of moderation and forbearance, but by a cogent fear of the consequences resulting from the longer prosecution of the siege. On the whole, it had been little better than a lamentable demonstration of weakness. The Persian army under the eye of the sovereign himself, aided by the skill of Russian engineers and the wisdom of Russian statesmen, had failed, in ten months, to reduce a place which I believe, in no spirit of national self-love, a well-equipped English force, under a competent commander, would have reduced in as many days.

The real cause of the failure is not generally understood. The fact is, that there was no unity in the conduct of the siege. Instead of devising and adhering to some combined plan of operations, the Sirdars, or Generals, under Mahomed Shah, to whom the prosecution of the siege was entrusted, acted as so many independent commanders, and each followed his own plan of attack. The jealousy of the chiefs prevented them from acting in concert with each other. Each had his own independent point of attack, and they would not even move to the assistance of each other when attacked by the Heratees in the trenches. Except when Mahomed Shah insisted on a combined assault, as on the 24th of June, and the Russian minister directed it, there was no union among them. Each had his own game to follow up; his own laurels to win; and was rather pleased than disappointed by the failures of his brethren. It was not possible that operations so conducted should have resulted in anything but failure. But it was the deliberate opinion of Eldred Pottinger, expressed nearly two years after the withdrawal of the Persian army, that Mahomed Shah might have taken Herat by assault, within four-and-twenty hours after his appearance before its walls, if his troops had been efficiently commanded.[201]

Whether Mahomed Shah ever rightly understood this matter I do not pretend to know, but he felt that it was necessary to make an effort to patch up the rents which this grievous failure had made in his reputation. So he issued a firman, setting forth all the great results of his expedition to the eastward, and attempted to demonstrate, after the following fashion, that he gained a victory, even at Herat:-“At last,” so ran the royal proclamation, “when the city of Herat existed but in name, and the reality of the government of Kamran was reduced to four bare walls, the noble ambassadors of the illustrious British Government, notwithstanding that three separate treaties of peace between the two governments of England and Persia, negotiated respectively by Sir Harford Jones, Sir Gore Ouseley, and Mr. Ellis, were still in force, disregarding the observance of the conditions of these treaties, prepared to undertake hostilities, and as a warlike demonstration, despatched a naval armament with troops and forces to the Gulf of Persia. The winter season was now approaching, and if we protracted to a longer period our stay at Herat, there appeared a possibility that our victorious army might suffer from a scarcity of provisions, and that the maintenance of our troops might not be unaccompanied with difficulty; the tranquillity of our provinces was also a matter of serious attention to our benevolent thoughts; and thus, in sole consideration of the interest of our faith and country, and from a due regard to the welfare of our troops and subjects, we set in motion our world-subduing army upon the 19th of _Jumady-al-Akber_, and prepared to return to our capital.... During the protracted siege of Herat, a vast number of the troops and inhabitants had perished, as well from the fire of our cannon and musketry as from constant hardship and starvation; the remainder of the people, amounting to about 50,000 families, with a large proportion of the Afghan and Persian chiefs, who had been treated with the most liberal kindness by the officers of our government, and who being compromised, could not possibly, therefore, hold any further intercourse with Yar Mahomed Khan, marched away with us, with zealous eagerness, to the regions of Khain and Khorassan, and there was no vestige of an inhabited spot left around Herat.”

But although the failure of Mahomed Shah is mainly to be attributed to the jealousy, and consequent disunion, of his generals, it would be an injustice to the garrison of Herat not to acknowledge that they owed their safety, in some measure, to their own exertions. Their gallantry and perseverance, however, were not of the most sustained character, and might have yielded to the assaults of the Persians if there had been any union among the assailants. They gathered courage from the languid movements of the besiegers; and, surprised at the little progress made by the once dreaded army of Mahomed Shah, they came in time to regard themselves as heroes, and their successful sorties as great victories. When, on the other hand, the Persians really attempted anything like a combined movement against their works, the garrison began to lose heart, and were with difficulty brought to repulse them. To what extent they were indebted to the unfailing constancy and courage of Eldred Pottinger, has been set forth, but I believe very imperfectly, in this narrative of the siege. Enough, however, has been shown to demonstrate that, but for the heroism of this young Bombay artilleryman, Herat would have fallen into the hands of Mahomed Shah. The garrison were fast breaking down, not so much under the pressure from without as the pressure from within. The chiefs were desponding—the people were starving. But still the continued cry of Eldred Pottinger was, “A little longer—a little longer yet.” When the chiefs talked of surrender—when they set forth the hopelessness of further efforts of defence—he counselled still a little further delay. His voice was ever for the manlier course; and what he recommended in speech he was ever eager to demonstrate in action. Yar Mahomed did great things at Herat. It would be unjust to deny him the praise due to his energetic exertions in the prosecution of the defence, however unscrupulous the means he employed to sustain it. But his energies failed him at last; and it was only by the powerful stimulants applied by his young European associate that he was supported and invigorated in the great crisis, when the fate of Herat was trembling in the balance. There was one true soldier in Herat, whose energies never failed him; and History delights to record the fact that that one true soldier, young and inexperienced as he was, with no knowledge of active warfare that he had not derived from books, rescued Herat from the grasp of the Persian monarch, and baffled the intrigues of his great northern abettor.[202]

About these intrigues something more should be said. No sane man ever questions the assertion that Russian diplomatists encouraged Mahomed Shah to undertake the expedition against Herat, and that Russian officers aided the operations of the siege. No reasonable man doubts that, so encouraging and so aiding Persia in aggressive measures against the frontier of Afghanistan, Russia harboured ulterior designs not wholly unassociated with thoughts of the position of the British in Hindostan. At all events, it is certain that the first word, spoken or written in encouragement of the expedition against Herat, placed Russia in direct antagonism with Great Britain. “The British minister at Teheran was instructed to dissuade the Shah from such an enterprise; urging reasons of indisputable force, and founded upon the interests of the Shah himself. But the advice given by the Russian ambassador was all of an opposite tendency. For while Mr. M’Neill was appealing to the prudence and the reason of the Shah, Count Simonich was exciting the ambition and inflaming the passions of that Sovereign; whilst the one was preaching moderation and peace, the other was inciting to war and conquest; and whilst the one pointed out the difficulties and expense of the enterprise, the other inspired hopes of money and assistance.”[203]

Such, very plainly stated, in grave, official language, had been the relative positions of Russia and Great Britain. But when Lord Durham, in 1837, was directed to seek from the Russian minister an explanation of conduct so much at variance with the declarations of the Muscovite Government, the answer was, that if Count Simonich had encouraged Mahomed Shah to proceed against Herat, he acted in direct violation of his instructions.

But for a man disobeying the instructions of an arbitrary government, Simonich acted with uncommon boldness. He advanced to the Persian ruler 50,000 tomauns, and promised, that if Mahomed Shah took Herat, the balance of the debt due by Persia to Russia should be remitted. Thus encouraged, Mahomed Shah advanced upon Herat. How Simonich followed M’Neill to the Persian camp, and how he thwarted the efforts of the British diplomatist to bring about an accommodation of the differences between the two contending states, and how Russian officers subsequently directed the siege, has been already shown. It has been shown, how a Russian agent guaranteed a treaty injurious to British interests, between Mahomed Shah and the Sirdars of Candahar. It has been shown, too, how a Russian agent appeared at Caubul, and how he endeavoured to detach Dost Mahomed from an alliance with the British, and to encourage him to look for support from the Persian King and his Muscovite supporters.

Considering these things, the British Government asked whether the intentions of Russia towards Persia and Afghanistan were to be judged from Count Nesselrode’s declarations, or from the actions of Simonich and Vickovich. The answer was, that Vickovich had been despatched to Caubul on a “Commercial Mission,” and that, if he had treated of anything but commerce, he had exceeded his instructions; and that Simonich had been instructed, not only to discourage Mahomed Shah from prosecuting the expedition against Herat, but to withdraw the Russian-deserter regiment, which formed no insignificant portion of the invading army. “Not upon the cabinet of Russia,” it was said, “can fall the reproach of having encouraged or suggested that fatal enterprise.”[204] The proceedings of the agents were repudiated. Vickovich, being a person of no account, was remorselessly sacrificed, and he blew out his brains. But an apology was found for Count Simonich. It was said that he only assisted a friendly state when in extreme difficulty, and that any English officer would have done the same.[205]

There was some truth in this. At all events, when it was added by the Russian minister that his government had more reason to be alarmed by the movements of Great Britain, than Great Britain by the movements of Russia; and that England sought to monopolise the privilege of intrigue in Central Asia, it was difficult for any candid and unprejudiced observer of events to comment harshly upon the injustice of the imputation. When, too, some time afterwards, Baron Brunow said to Sir John Hobhouse, “If we go on at this rate, the Cossack and the Sepoy will soon meet on the banks of the Oxus,”[206] it would have been hard to have laid the contemplated collision wholly to the account of the restlessness of the Czar. True it is, that the policy of Russia in the East had been distinguished for its aggressive tendencies;[207] and it is equally true, that in the plenitude of our national self-love, we encouraged the conviction that Great Britain had conquered the entire continent of Hindostan by a series of purely defensive measures. Looking merely at the recognised policy of the East India Company, the distinction may be admitted. For a century have this great body been steadfastly setting their face against the extension of their empire; but their empire has been extended in spite of them, and their agents have been less pacific than themselves. The general tendency of the Eastern policy worked out by the English in India, has not been purely defensive, and they are, perhaps, the last people in the world entitled to complain of the encroachments of their allies. England and Russia seemed at one time to be—and, perhaps, they are still—approaching each other on the vast Central-Asia battle-field; but when the account between the two great European states comes to be struck, it is doubtful whether History will set down against the Muscovite power any greater transgression than that which it is the object of these volumes to record.[208]