Chapter I (2)

It was on the 10th of March that the Bengal column reached Dadur, which lies at the mouth of the Bolan Pass. Whatever doubts may before have been entertained regarding the provisionary prospects of the Army of the Indus, they were now painfully set at rest. Major Leech had been long endeavouring to collect supplies for the army at this place; but, in spite of all his zeal and all his ability, he had signally failed. Mehrab Khan of Khelat, under whose dominion lay the provinces through which the army was now passing, had thrown every impediment in the way of the collection of grain for our advancing troops. The prospect, therefore, before them was anything but an encouraging one. At Dadur they found themselves, on the 10th of March, with a month’s supplies on their beasts of burden. Cotton saw that there was little chance of collecting more; so he determined to push on with all possible despatch.

On the 16th he resumed his march; and entered the Bolan Pass. Burnes had gone on in advance with a party under Major Cureton, to secure a safe passage for the column; and had been completely successful. The Beloochee authorities rendered him all the aid in their power;[301] and when Cotton appeared with his troops on a clear, still morning, at the mouth of the defile, there was little likelihood of any obstacle being opposed to his free progress. But the baggage-cattle were falling dead by the way-side; the artillery horses were showing painful symptoms of distress. The stream of the Bolan river was tainted by the bodies of the camels that had sunk beneath their loads. The Beloochee freebooters were hovering about, cutting off our couriers, murdering stragglers, carrying off our baggage and our cattle. Among the rocks of this stupendous defile our men pitched their tents; and toiled on again day after day, over a wretched road covered with loose flint stones, surmounting, at first, by a scarcely perceptible ascent, and afterwards by a difficult acclivity, the great Brahoo chain of hills. The Bolan Pass is nearly sixty miles in length. The passage was accomplished in six days. They were days of drear discomfort, but not of danger. A resolute enemy might have wrought mighty havoc among Cotton’s regiments; but the enemies with which now they had to contend were the sharp flint stones which lamed our cattle, the scanty pasturage which destroyed them, and the marauding tribes who carried them off. The way was strewn with baggage—with abandoned tents, and stores; and luxuries which, a few weeks afterwards, would have fetched their weight twice counted in rupees, were left to be trampled down by the cattle in the rear, or carried off by the plunderers about them.

Happy was every man in the force when the army again emerged into the open country. The valley of Shawl lay before them, a favoured spot in a country of little favour. The clear crisp climate braced the European frame; and over the wide plain, bounded by noble mountain-ranges, intersected by many sparkling streams, and dotted with orchards and vineyards, the eye ranged with delight; whilst the well-known carol of the lark, mounting up in the fresh morning air, broke with many home associations charmingly on the English ear.[302] On the 26th of March the Bengal column reached Quettah-“a most miserable mud town, with a small castle on a mound, on which there was a small gun on a rickety carriage.”[303] Here Sir Willoughby Cotton was to halt until further orders. Starvation was beginning to stare his troops in the face.

Seldom has a military commander found himself in the midst of more painful perplexities than those which now surrounded Cotton. It seemed to be equally impossible to stand still or to move forward. His supplies were now so reduced, that even upon famine allowances his troops could not have reached Candahar with provisions for more than a few days in store; and to remain halted at Quettah would necessarily aggravate the evil. There appeared to be no possibility of obtaining supplies. All the provisions stored in Quettah and the surrounding villages would not have fed our army for many days. In this painful conjuncture, Cotton acted with becoming promptitude. He despatched his Adjutant-General to Sir John Keane for orders, whilst Burnes proceeded to Khelat to work upon the fears or the cupidity of Mehrab Khan; and, in the meanwhile, reduced to the scantiest dole the daily supplies meted out to our unfortunate fighting men and our more miserable camp-followers.[304] These privations soon began to tell fearfully upon their health and their spirits. The sufferings of the present were aggravated by the dread of the future; and as men looked at the shrunk frames and sunken cheeks of each other, and in their own feebleness and exhaustion felt what wrecks they had become, their hearts died within them at the thought that a day was coming when even the little that was now doled out to them might be wholly denied.

Burnes hastened to Khelat. He was courteously received. He found Mehrab Khan an able and sagacious man. Suspicious of others, but with more frankness and unreserve in his character than is commonly found in suspicious men, the Khan commented freely on our policy—said, with prophetic truth, that we might restore Shah Soojah to Afghanistan, but that we should not carry the Afghan people with us, and that we should, therefore, fail in the end; and then, after launching into an indignant commentary on the ingratitude of Shah Soojah, for whom he had suffered much and reaped nothing in return, he proceeded to set forth the evils which had resulted to him and his people from the passage of the British army through his dominions.[305] “The English,” he said, “had now come, and by their march through his country, in different directions, destroyed the crops, poor as they were; helped themselves to the water which irrigated the lands, made doubly valuable in this year of scarcity;”-“but he had stood,” he added, “quiescent, and hoped from the English justice, from the Shah justice; hoped that his claims might be regarded in a proper light, and he for ever relieved from the mastery of the Suddozye Kings.” He then spoke freely and fluently of our policy in Central Asia, of the position in which we had placed ourselves at Herat by supporting such a miscreant as Yar Mahomed, and of the failure of our negotiations at Caubul and Candahar. “I might have allied myself,” he said, “with Persia and Russia—but I have seen you safely through the great defile of the Bolan, and yet I am unrewarded.”

Burnes had brought with him the draft of a treaty, which, on the following day, he sent to the Khan. He had made it a condition of all peaceable negotiation with the Beloochee Prince, that he should wait upon Shah Soojah in his camp—a condition which Mehrab Khan disliked and resisted, and from which he could extricate himself only by pleading sickness. The treaty, by which the supremacy of Shah Soojah was distinctly acknowledged, bound the British Government to pay Mehrab Khan a lakh and a half of rupees annually, in return for which the Khan engaged to “use his best endeavours to procure supplies, carriage, and guards to protect provisions and stores going and coming from Shikarpoor, by the route of Rozan, Dadur, the Pass of Bolan, through Shawl to Koochlak, from one frontier to another.”

Mehrab Khan affixed his seal to the treaty. But he disliked the bargain he had made. He was altogether suspicions of Shah Soojah and the Suddozyes. He was by no means certain of the success of the present enterprise. He believed that, by paying homage to the Shah, he would raise up a host of powerful enemies, and plunge himself into a sea of ruin. Striving to allay the apprehensions of the Khan, Burnes made some trifling concessions, which were not without their effect; and then proceeded to press upon him the subject which at that moment was of most immediate importance to British interests—the matter of supplies; and earnestly pointed out the imperative necessity of every possible exertion being made by the Khan to provide them. But it was easier to suggest such provision than to make it. Mehrab Khan said that he would do his best—that he would place men at Burnes’s disposal to proceed to Nooshky and other places, where the crops were nearly ripe (”and,” said Burnes, parenthetically, “he has done so”)—that he would “give grain in Gundava and Cutchee, and if we would send for our stores at Shikarpoor to Dadur, he would actively aid in passing them through the Bolan—that he might also aid us at Moostung in getting a small quantity of grain; but that there was really very little grain at Khelat, or in the country—that he had reduced his escort to wait on the Shah to 1000 men, on account of the scarcity—and that he could not then furnish the grain, but each man must bring his own.” “This intelligence,” wrote Burnes to Macnaghten, “is very distressing in our present position; but my inquiries serve to convince me that there is but a small supply of grain in this country, and none certainly to be given us, without aggravating the present distress of the inhabitants—some of whom are feeding on herbs and grasses gathered in the jungle. It is with some difficulty we have supported ourselves, whilst the small quantities we have procured have been got by stealth. This scarcity is corroborated by a blight in last year’s harvest. Under such circumstances, the only way of turning the Khan to account is in supplying sheep; and here he can and is willing to assist us to a great extent. Probably 10,000 or 15,000 may be procured; and arrangements are now being made for purchasing and sending them down to Shawl.”[306]

In the meanwhile, the Shah’s Contingent and the Bombay division of the Army of the Indus were making their way through Sindh.[307] Greatly straitened for carriage, it had been for some time doubtful whether the whole of the Shah’s army would be able to proceed to Candahar. There had been a disposition on the part of Sir Willoughby Cotton to look with contempt upon the Suddozye levies, and to make the King and his regiments play a part in the coming drama, by no means in accordance with the estimate which Macnaghten had formed of their importance. And now Sir John Keane seemed equally inclined to throw into the background the King, the Envoy, and the Contingent. But Macnaghten had claimed for the Shah a prominent place in the coming operations,[308] and the military chief had yielded to his representations, and even placed at his disposal a number of baggage-cattle which he greatly needed for his own force. Anxious to conciliate the commander of the army, and never unmindful of the public interests, the Envoy gratefully declined the offer.[309] Keane was, at that time, “in a wretched plight for want of cattle,” and the Bengal Commissariat were compelled to supply him largely both with camels and grain.

Sir Willoughby Cotton had suggested to Macnaghten the expediency of a movement upon Khelat; but the Envoy was then little inclined to take the same unfavourable view of the conduct of Mehrab Khan, which Cotton, smarting under the privations to which his force had been subjected, was prone to encourage. “With regard to moving upon Khelat,” he wrote on the 15th of March to the Bengal General, “I am not prepared at present to take upon myself the responsibility of that measure; and I am in great hopes that Sir Alexander Burnes will be able to arrange everything satisfactorily.”[310] The further he advanced, indeed, the more obvious it became that the Khan of Khelat had just grounds of complaint against the English army. Everywhere traces of the devastation—much of it unavoidable devastation—which our advancing columns had left behind them, spoke out intelligibly to him; and he plainly saw how extremely distasteful both our officers and our measures had become to the Beloochees. Pondering these things, he sate down and wrote the following letter to Lord Auckland—a significant letter, which shows how early had burst upon Macnaghten the truth, that only by a liberal expenditure of money was there any hope of reconciling to our operations the chiefs and people beyond the Indus:

Camp Bagh, _March 19_.

I found the Khelat authorities in the worst possible humour. Our enemies have evidently been tampering with them, and they had good cause for dissatisfaction with us; their crops have been destroyed, and the water intended for the irrigation of their fields has been diverted to the use of our armies. A great portion of these evils was perhaps unavoidable, but little or no effort seems to have been made either to mitigate the calamity or to appease the discontent which has been created by our proceedings. Our officers and our measures are alike unpopular in this country, and I very much fear that Sir A. Burnes may be led, by vague rumours of the Khan’s unfriendly disposition, to recommend offensive operations against him. In what difficulties we might be involved by such a proceeding it would be impossible to foretell. My most strenuous efforts have been day and night directed towards reconciling all persons of influence to our operations; and in this I have been successful; but considerable sums must be expended, not only in remunerating the people for the severe losses they have sustained, but in bribing the authorities. Your Lordship may rely upon it, that I shall not expend one rupee of the public money more than I deem indispensably necessary; but here we are quite at the mercy of the Beloochees. This very day, had they been inimically inclined, they might with the greatest ease have turned an inundation into our camp, which would have swept away our entire force and everything belonging to us. The change in the demeanour of the authorities since yesterday is wonderful. They are now our devoted servants, and the Vizier has promised to write off instantly to his master at Khelat, advising him to give us his entire and unqualified friendship and support. Sir John Keane is in a wretched plight for want of cattle, and I cannot help thinking he has been neglected in a very unwarrantable manner by the Bengal authorities.... I went out myself this morning to see what damage had been done to the crops. The devastation is grievous; but the interest which the people saw me take in their complaints has done more to pacify them than I ever expected. Another source of great dissatisfaction has been the seizure by our troops of different individuals, and even families, on the plea of being robbers. This I have done all in my power to remedy.[311]

More and more sensible, after every march, of the miserable country through which he was passing, and the difficulties which now beset the expedition, Macnaghten was anxious to push on with all possible expedition. But Sir John Keane, who was in the rear with the Bombay column, dreading the assemblage, on the same spot, of so large a body of troops as would be brought together by the junction of the three forces, urged upon him the expediency of halting, whilst his Excellency went forward to ascertain the chances of finding forage and provisions in the Bolan Pass. So the Shah and his Contingent halted for a few days at Bagh,[312] whilst Sir John Keane pushed on with his escort. On the 28th of March, the King, the Minister, and the Commander-in-Chief were all assembled together at Dadur. “Their united camps displayed all the pomp and circumstances of a triple head-quarter.” The passage of the Bolan was accomplished without difficulty, and on the 4th of April, Sir Willoughby Cotton, having ridden out with his staff from Quettah, greeted the General-in-Chief and his companions as they were resting at the entrance to the Shawl Valley, after the fatigues of the passage through the defile. The tidings which he had to communicate were of the gloomiest hue. He reported that his men were on quarter-rations, and that there was every prospect of the army, as it entered Afghanistan, being opposed at every step. Macnaghten, however, more sanguine, was already beginning to think and to write about the means of disposing of the Barukzye Sirdars. On that 4th of April he wrote to the Governor-General a letter, which indicates the tone of his own feelings and of those of the Afghan Prince:

_April, 4, 1839._

We are now encamped within ten miles of Shawl. Sir Willoughby came in here this morning, and talks in a most gloomy strain of his prospects. He says he has but twelve days’ supplies, and his men are already on quarter-rations. We cannot reckon on being at Candahar under a fortnight, and it will go hard with us if we cannot get supplied in the meantime from other quarters. Sir Willoughby is a sad croaker; not content with telling me we must all inevitably be starved, he assures me that Shah Soojah is very unpopular in Afghanistan, and that we shall be opposed at every step of our progress. I think I know a little better than this. My accounts from Candahar lead me to believe that the religious excitement is subsiding, and that the Sirdars are only thinking how they can make good terms for themselves; or, failing that, how they may best contrive to effect their escape. It will be as well not to reduce them to desperation; for though they cannot oppose us in the field, yet they make sad havoc with our supplies. Large bands of camel-plunderers kept hovering over our line of march, and it certainly looks as if they had been incited by some one of influence. The mistakes and contretemps which are constantly occurring in our motley camp, require the exercise of much patience and discrimination. The Shah is in good health and spirits; but says he never had so much trouble and bother in his lifetime as he has met with during this campaign. The reason is obvious; the people on former occasions helped themselves to everything they wanted, and no complaint was permitted to approach the sacred person of his Majesty. His opinion of the Afghans as a nation is, I regret to say, extremely low. He declares that they are a pack of dogs, one and all, and, as for the Barukzyes, it is utterly impossible that he can ever place the slightest confidence in any one of that accursed race. We must try and bring him gradually round to entertain a more favorable opinion of his subjects. I cannot yet say how the Barukzye chiefs shall be disposed of, but I am decidedly of opinion that it would be a wise measure to get them quietly out of Afghanistan and pension them, if we can do so at an expense not exceeding a lakh of rupees per annum. If they oppose us and are taken, the Shah must, I imagine, be permitted to do what he likes with them short of putting them to death; and his own human nature is a sufficient security that he will not proceed to extremities.[313]

On the 6th of April, Sir John Keane fixed his head-quarters at Quettah, and assumed the personal command of the army. Reviewing all the circumstances of his position, he came to the determination to push forward with all possible despatch to Candahar. There was no prospect of obtaining supplies through the agency of Mehrab Khan. Already was the Envoy convinced of the treachery of that Prince—already was he beginning to talk about dismembering the Khanate of Khelat, and annexing the provinces of Shawl, Moostung, and Cutchee to the Douranee Empire. On that day he wrote to the Private Secretary of the Governor-General:

Camp Quettah, _April 6, 1839._

* * * Sir John Keane has represented to me in the strongest terms the necessity for moving on. The fact is, the troops and followers are nearly in a state of mutiny for food, and the notion of waiting for such a person as Mehrab Khan, who has done his best to starve us, seems utterly preposterous. I trust the Governor-General will see fit to annex the provinces of Shawl, Moostung, and Cutchee to the Shah’s dominions. This would be the place for cantoning a British regiment. It is so cold now that I can hardly hold my pen, and the climate is said to be delightful all the year round. I am certain the annexation could be made without the slightest difficulty.... Now for Candahar. The game is clearly up with the Sirdars. I had a letter from the triumvirate yesterday, brought by Syud Muhun Shah, whom they have sent to treat, or rather to get the best terms for themselves they can. As to opposition, it is quite clear that they look upon that as hopeless, and they have not even the power to retreat. I am unwilling to reduce them to desperation, and shall try and get the Shah to make some provision for them; but he is very loth to do so. Their demands now are extravagant beyond measure; but I do not think that a lakh of rupees per annum, distributed among the three brothers, would be too much for the King to give, if they agreed upon that to sink into the retirement of private life. Notwithstanding all the croaking about Shah Soojah’s want of popularity, feel certain that my prediction will be verified, and that his Majesty will be cordially welcomed by all classes of the people.[314]

On the 7th of April the army resumed its march.[315] On the 9th it was at Hykulzye, a spot rendered famous in the later annals of the war. From this place Macnaghten wrote again to the same correspondent:

Camp Hykulzye, _April, 9_.

* * * I have reason to believe that the Sirdars of Candahar are at their wit’s end. They make resolutions one day and break them the next. But all accounts concur in reporting that they are abandoned by the priesthood, and that if there is any religious feeling extant, it is all in favour of Shah Soojah. In a fit of desperation the last resolve of Kohun-dil-Khan is stated to be, that he will make a night attack on our camp with about 2000 followers who are still attached to his person. This I fully believe to be fudge. The whole of the force, from Sir W. Cotton downwards, are infected with exaggerated fears relating to the character of the King and the prospects of the campaign. They fancy that they see an enemy in every bush. The Khan of Khelat is our implacable enemy, and Sir J. Keane is burning with revenge. There never was such treatment inflicted upon human beings as we have been subjected to on our progress through the Khan’s country. I will say nothing of Burnes’s negotiations. His instructions were to conciliate, but I think he has adhered too strictly to the letter of them. The Commander-in-Chief is very angry. I would give something to be in Candahar; and there, _Inshallah_, we shall be in about a week; but, in the meantime, this union of strictly disciplined troops with lawless soldiers is very trying to my patience. With a less tractable king than Shah Soojah the consequences might be fatal. I have references every minute of the day, and we are compelled to tell his Majesty’s people that they must not touch the green crops of the country. This they think very hard, and so I believe does the King, but he has, nevertheless, forbidden them. Supplies are now coming in, but they are yet very dear—2½ seers of flour for a rupee! But this price will, no doubt, daily fall. The great thing is to give people confidence. All the villages in the Khan of Khelat’s territory were deserted at our approach, and not a soul came near us, except with the view of plundering and murdering our followers. The instant we crossed the frontier the scene was entirely changed. The inhabitants remained in their villages, and have manifested the greatest possible confidence in our justice and good faith. Is it possible to conceive that the difference of feeling in the Khelat country has not been brought about by design? * * *

Macnaghten was naturally of a sanguine temperament. Civilians seldom estimate military difficulties aright. It is true that our political difficulties were melting away. The Candahar Sirdars, deserted and betrayed, seemed to have given themselves up to despair, and there was little chance of the progress of our army being disputed by an Afghan force. But the scarcity, which had pressed so severely on our troops, and had nearly destroyed our horses, was not less a reality because no enemy appeared to educe all the disastrous results which were likely to flow from such deterioration of the _physique_ of our army. The army of the Indus surmounted the Kojuck Pass as safely as it had traversed the Bolan. The Shah, with his Contingent, was now in advance, leading the way, as it became him, into his restored dominions; and many of the chiefs and people of Western Afghanistan were flocking to his standard.[316] There were not wanting those who said that, if there had been any prospect of opposition at Candahar, the King and his levies would not have been the first to appear under the walls of the city. But authentic intelligence had reached Macnaghten, to the effect that Kohun-dil-Khan and his brothers had fled from Candahar—that there was no union among the Barukzye brotherhood—and that, if a stand were to be made at all, the battle-field would be nearer the northern capital. The way, indeed, was clear for the entry of the Suddozye monarch; so he pushed on in advance of Sir John Keane and his army, to receive, it was said, the homage of his people. Money had been freely scattered about; and the Afghans had already begun to discover that the gold of the Feringhees was as serviceable as other gold, and that there was an unfailing supply of it. Early in the campaign, Macnaghten had encouraged the conviction that the allegiance of the Afghans was to be bought—that Afghan cupidity would not be proof against British gold. So he opened the treasure-chest; scattered abroad its contents with an ungrudging hand; and commenced a system of corruption which, though seemingly successful at the outset, wrought, in the end, the utter ruin of the policy he had reared.[317]