The Dark Defile Read online

  In fact, informed by Nawab Jubbar Khan that his proposed peace terms had been rejected, Dost Mohammed had advanced at the head of thirteen thousand troops, including tribal chieftains and mercenaries and accompanied by thirty guns, to the narrow valley of Arghundee. Here he had ridden through the ranks, brandishing a copy of the Koran and exhorting his men to rid the country of the infidel invaders and their puppet king, against whom his clerics had issued a fatwa. However, with the Army of the Indus so close, his chiefs had refused to fight, and the mercenaries he had recruited had slipped away from the camp. That same night, 2 August, accompanied by his son Akbar Khan, whom he had recalled from keeping watch on the Khyber Pass, other family members and a few hundred still-loyal supporters, he rode north for the Hindu Kush, leaving his camp to be looted while those who had once vowed loyalty to him hurried away to declare allegiance to Shah Shuja.

  Keane dispatched a combined contingent of British cavalry and Shah Shuja’s levies under Captain James Outram to pursue Dost Mohammed and another force to secure his abandoned guns. Meanwhile, on 6 August the Army of the Indus camped within three miles of Kabul. The soldiers gorged on “peaches, apples, plums, pears and grapes … all equal to any hot-house fruit in England,” and Mohan Lal gazed upon “emerald-like gardens … intersected and washed as they are by brooks of crystal-like water,” which had captivated him on his earlier visits to Kabul.

  Hearing of the safe arrival of the Army of the Indus at Kabul, Sir Jasper Nicolls, the new commander in chief in India, wrote in his journal, “We may fairly say that the game is over.”

  Chapter Seven

  Be silent, pocket your pay, do nothing but what you are ordered, and you will give high satisfaction. They will sacrifice you and me, or anyone, without caring a straw … I can go a good way, but my conscience has not so much stretch as to approve of this dynasty. But, mum—let that be between ourselves.

  —ALEXANDER BURNES, 1839

  On the afternoon of 7 August 1839, mounted on a white charger with saddle and bridle embellished with gold and at the head of his levies and the Army of the Indus, Shah Shuja approached the city he had not seen for thirty years. He was wearing a jeweled coronet. According to Henry Havelock, yet more jewels sparkled on his arms and chest, while around his waist was “a broad and cumbrous girdle of gold in which glittered rubies and emeralds not a few.” Riding close to the king were Keane, Macnaghten and Burnes, the latter pair in the full diplomatic dress of “a cocked hat fringed with ostrich feathers, a blue frock coat with raised buttons, richly embroidered on the collar and cuffs, epaulettes not yielding in splendour to those of a field-marshal, and trousers edged with very broad gold lace.” Mohan Lal, also on horseback, was wearing “a new upper garment of very gay colours” and “a turban of very admirable fold and majestic dimensions.”

  As the procession entered Kabul’s narrow streets, Havelock thought that “never was any town seen more closely thronged by men; of women, glimpses only could be caught as they peeped furtively from the tops of houses. The extent of the population and the eagerness of all ranks to behold the spectacle, was as apparent in the few open spaces of the city as in the narrow lanes, the passages of the covered bazaars, and on the bridge of the clear and rapid Kabul River. An ocean of heads was spread in every direction. They were for the most part cleanly and becomingly turbaned. The features of the spectators were generally comely, and all lighted up with the emotion of curiosity.”

  However, like many of the British, he was struck by the subdued mood. There was none of the noisy shouting that would have come from a British crowd. He decided it was not only because the Afghans were, like other Muslims, “grave, sedate, and slow in their demeanour” but because “the prevailing feeling was not one of much affection for Shah Shuja, who will probably as a ruler be less popular than the ex-Emir.” The army surgeon Kennedy also found the king’s reception unenthusiastic: “I can honestly say that the Kabulis did not fling him either a crust or a nosegay, or shouted a single welcome that reached my hearing: a sullen surly submission to what could not be helped, and an eager determination to make the most that could be made of existing circumstances, and turn them to account, appeared to be the general feeling.”

  The procession ascended toward the Balla Hissar, built on a commanding promontory overlooking the eastern approaches to the city. Henry Havelock described it as both “the royal palace and fortress” of Kabul. The complex was about half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide; its lower portion housed barracks and stables, while on the highest point sat the citadel itself, overlooking the royal palace amid its spacious gardens. As the cavalcade advanced into the Balla Hissar, Kennedy described how “a tremendous discharge of camel artillery—jinjals [small cannon] fixed on swivels and mounted on camels—saluted our entrance into the citadel, and as they were fired at random, in the very midst of the procession, the helter-skelter and confusion of the horses of the staff officers and the native horsemen was anything but agreeable: most happily no accident occurred.”

  Arriving outside his former palace, Shah Shuja could not contain his excitement. Havelock described him rushing up the great staircase and running “with childish eagerness from one small chamber to another,” but weeping at what he took as signs of neglect and damage during the Barakzais’ tenure there, especially the removal of the little pieces of mirror-glass once set into the walls to reflect the flickering candlelight and the sparkle of gems. In fact, the palace was not in good condition, and in forthcoming days Shah Shuja would narrowly escape being crushed to death when the rafters of his audience chamber collapsed shortly after he had left to go to pray. Several weeks later, on 3 September, Shah Shuja was reunited with his son Timur, who arrived with Claude Wade and their army, having marched through the Khyber Pass from Peshawar. This meant that the shorter communication route to India through the Khyber Pass, rather than around through the Bolan Pass, was now open.

  The Army of the Indus settled in an encampment connected to the city by a narrow road “hemmed in by huge masses of rock on the left hand and dense groves of mulberry-trees on the right bordering the Kabul River.” This road soon thronged with “men from the city hawking about camp, grapes, apples, melons, silks, furs and calling out most vociferously as if determined to compel us to buy,” an officer noted. Many soldiers were curious to venture into the city of which they had heard so much, but “owing to instances of irregularities committed by Europeans entering Kabul,” officers were instructed to issue passes only to soldiers “on whose sobriety and steadiness dependence can be placed.” One of the problems was the cheap wine and fiery brandy that were readily available despite the reformed Dost Mohammed’s prohibition of alcohol. The moralistic Baptist and teetotaller Havelock feared the citizens of Kabul would soon learn “the difference between Britons drunk and Britons sober.”

  The army surgeon James Atkinson paid his first visit to the city on 10 August, marveling at the magnificent fruit piled up in shops “little better than sheds.” He watched cooks preparing kebabs, confectioners making sweetmeats, gun makers, swordsmiths and farriers making guns, tulwars and horseshoes, while the carpet and silk dealers peddled rugs, furs, lace and chintz. It seemed to him that “nothing could exceed the industry that appeared everywhere around us; everybody employed and intent on his calling.” Crossing a bridge over the Kabul River that ran through the city, he saw that, though some thirty yards wide, at this time of year it was only a foot deep. Kabul’s Grand Bazaar, built in the early seventeenth century of burned brick richly painted with images of fruit and trees, was “a gem amidst the edifices of mud” that surrounded it. In fact, the city’s great markets formed the main thoroughfares linking the residential areas with one another.

  Kabul reminded Atkinson of Paris because people “[live] a good deal out of doors, and eat their meals constantly at the benches, where the cooks, a numerous class, fry their kebabs, and are as expert and active as a French artist in the subterraneous kitchen of a café. Then there are the ic
e-shops and falood shops, where you see the rugged Afghan regaling on summer dainties, crunching a lump of ice, with the usual quantity of cherries, grapes, or other fruit, and a goodly portion of his brown cake of bread, everything of the kind being what is called dog-cheap.”

  However, Atkinson deplored the “most disgusting” public baths, dismissing the Afghans as “generally an exceedingly dirty people” with “a sort of hydrophobia, a horror of water in its capacity of cleansing the person.” He was also unimpressed by the people’s houses of timber and sun-dried brick: “The middle part of the city is a collection of dwellings, two and three stories high, with almost inaccessible zigzag streets and blind alleys, a black offensive gutter creeping down the centre of the greater part of them. Walls across, with gateways, are common in all the streets, so that, by closing the doors, the city is divided into numerous distinct quarters of defence. The roofs of the houses have commonly a parapet-wall round them, to allow the women of the family to take an airing unveiled, and they are generally also applied to the nastiest of purposes.” These warrenlike residential areas were known as mahallas, where a maze of narrow, winding, dead-end alleys, or kuchas, led to the individual houses, built like fortified dwellings with bare external walls, only one point of entry or exit and, at the heart, a secluded inner courtyard.

  While his troops explored Kabul, Auckland was already planning their withdrawal. He had meant it when, in the Simla Manifesto, he had promised that as soon as Shah Shuja was back on his throne and “the independence and integrity of Afghanistan” established, the Army of the Indus would return to India. Two weeks after Shah Shuja’s delighted return to his palace within the Balla Hissar, Auckland—although still awaiting confirmation that the Army of the Indus had safely arrived in Kabul—was already writing to Macnaghten of his hopes for the speedy return of the regiments to India. In fact, Auckland intended to withdraw the entire Bombay contingent and some of the Bengal forces almost immediately, leaving only a single brigade as a token of British support for Shah Shuja.

  Before Auckland’s letter reached Kabul in September, Sir John Keane had independently reached similar conclusions, that most of the British forces could return swiftly. However, as the weeks passed, those in Kabul came to see that this would be impossible. Among the reasons was the failure to capture Dost Mohammed as he fled toward the Hindu Kush. The force led by Captain James Outram that had set out in pursuit had been led on a wild goose chase by the Afghan chief Haji Khan Kakur, who had accompanied him in command of two thousand of the shah’s cavalry and was a supposedly knowledgeable guide. Haji Khan Kakur had, it seems, decided to keep his future options open by allowing Dost Mohammed sufficient time to disappear into the lands of the independent Uzbek tribes beyond the mountains. Outram wrote to Macnaghten that Haji Khan Kakur was guilty of “either the grossest cowardice or the deepest treachery” and clearly believed the latter. On 18 August Outram and his men returned crestfallen to Kabul, where Keane told the officers that “he had not supposed there were thirteen such asses in his whole force!” Haji Khan Kakur was accused of deliberate deceit and banished to India.

  Initially Macnaghten and Keane were not especially concerned that Dost Mohammed was still at large. However, by September Dr. Percival Lord—Burnes’s erstwhile traveling companion, who had been dispatched north toward the Hindu Kush as a political officer to gather intelligence—was sending alarming reports that the emir was attempting to raise the tribes beyond the Hindu Kush to fight on his behalf. As a precaution Keane, to whom Auckland had given authority to vary troop dispositions, decided after discussion with Macnaghten to retain the principal portion of the Bengal division in Afghanistan under Sir Willoughby Cotton. The decision disappointed many of the officers who were eager to leave a place where, as shown by the exorbitant prices realized at an auction of the possessions of a deceased brigadier, seeming necessities such as wine and cigars were scarce.

  Before any troops departed, a bizarre ceremony was enacted. Macnaghten had persuaded Shah Shuja to inaugurate the Order of the Douranee Empire, after the name by which the Afghan Empire had been known in its heyday under Shah Shuja’s forebears. An earlier idea had been to call it the Order of the Douree Douranee so that, as the army surgeon Kennedy wrote, “the knights were to have written themselves ‘D. D.’; but some wicked wag announced it to mean ‘the dog and duck!’ so it was changed.” Shah Shuja sat on an old camp chair wearing a yellow tunic, billowing crimson gown and a purple velvet crown and flanked by two stout eunuchs, each bearing a dish. The ceremony commenced with Sir John Keane kneeling before the king. Then, as Kennedy described, “one of the fat eunuchs waddled to the front and uncovered his dish, in which was the decoration and ribbon of the ‘Order of the Douranee Empire.’ The Emperor with great difficulty stuck it on; and Sir John’s coat being rather too tight, it cost him some effort to wriggle into the ribbon: but the acorn in time becomes an oak, and Sir John was at last adorned … a Knight Grand Cross of the Douranee Empire!” Macnaghten and Cotton were invested next, but Burnes was told he would have to wait for his decoration because the goldsmiths had not been able to work fast enough. Neither were decorations ready for the fifty or so officers created Knights Commander and Companions, but a cavalry officer of the Bengal army read out their names, at which each man stepped forward and bowed to the king.

  In Calcutta, Lord Auckland had issued his own, less flamboyant congratulations in the form of a General Order lauding Keane and the Army of the Indus and exulting that “the plans of aggression by which the British empire in India was dangerously threatened, have, under Providence, been arrested. The Chiefs of Kabul and Kandahar, who had joined in hostile designs against us, have been deprived of power, and the territories which they ruled have been restored to the government of a friendly monarch.” Later in London, the British government would make its own awards to those deemed to have engineered the first victorious campaign of young Queen Victoria’s reign. Auckland was to become an earl. Keane’s reward was a barony, Macnaghten’s a baronetcy and Wade’s a knighthood.

  On 18 September Major General Willshire left for India at the head of the Bombay Division. His orders were to divert en route to punish the khan of Khelat, who was judged, not entirely fairly, to have reneged on his promises to supply and assist the Army of the Indus as it had advanced through the Bolan Pass. In mid-November Willshire’s forces arrived before the walls of Khelat—a citadel nearly as strong as Ghazni—and stormed it, losing one in seven of his men in the process. The khan was discovered with a musket ball through his heart, a fate that Mohan Lal thought exceeded his crime. A young British sublieutenant, William Loveday, moved by a request from one of the khan’s retainers for a shroud to cover his dead master, donated a brocade bedcover that he had purchased in “days of folly and extravagance at Delhi.” A rival claimant to Khelat was installed, who, as the price for his throne, agreed to the annexation of Khelat’s richest provinces to the kingdom of Afghanistan, just as Macnaghten had recommended to Lord Auckland. To “assist” Khelat’s new ruler, Loveday was appointed his adviser. However, the dead khan’s young son Nussar Khan had escaped and would soon return in force to challenge these cosy new arrangements.

  Claude Wade was the next to depart homeward, taking with him those of Prince Timur’s levies who were no longer considered necessary and the six thousand Sikhs who were returning to an increasingly unstable homeland, now that Ranjit Singh was dead. The unrequired contingents of the Bengal Division left on 15 October with Keane. He was glad to be going, but something deeper than mere satisfaction at departing a wild and alien place seems to have been going through his mind. He famously remarked to Lieutenant Durand, hero of the storming of Ghazni, who was returning to India with him, “I wished you to remain in Afghanistan for the good of the public service, but since circumstances have rendered that impossible, I cannot but congratulate you on quitting the country; for mark my words, it will not be long before there is here some signal catastrophe!” Perhaps in making his gloom
y prophesy he had in mind the recent murder of Lieutenant Colonel Herring and some of his men, ambushed by Ghilzai tribesmen while escorting a treasury convoy to Kabul from Kandahar.

  On the very eve of departure another of Keane’s officers, Lieutenant Colonel Macdonald, wrote to a friend, “Shah Shuja, I am sorry to say, is not popular and to maintain him on the throne it was absolutely necessary to have left some of our troops in support of him. It is to be hoped that it will be otherwise by and by and that we will be able to leave him to ‘the holy keeping’ of his own subjects.”

  AS THE DUST clouds raised by the last of the departing troops finally settled, those left behind took stock of their situation and responsibilities. The total number of regiments left in Afghanistan was one Queen’s regiment—the Thirteenth Light Infantry—seven regiments of the Bengal Native Infantry and one of Native Cavalry with between seventy to eighty artillery pieces. Their task, which they were to share with Shah Shuja’s soldiers, was to garrison the principal cities of his kingdom—Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Quetta, Ghazni—and guard other strategic positions such as the approaches to the passes. The Reverend Gleig estimated the total strength “of armed men, natives, and foreigners” at some twenty thousand.

  It was a modest force for the task it faced, especially when dispersed around the country. Twenty-eight-year-old Lieutenant Vincent Eyre—a capable and handsome officer who was among those remaining in Kabul—called the forces left behind “a miserable moiety” and complained that troops had been precipitately withdrawn “before any steps had been taken to guard against surprise by the erection of a stronghold on the approved principles of modern warfare” or to secure the lines of communication with India hundreds of miles away. Sir John Keane had, he wrote bitterly, “left behind him, in fact, an army whose isolated position and reduced strength offered the strongest possible temptation to a proud and restless race to rally their scattered tribes in one grand effort to regain their lost independence.”