The Dark Defile Read online

  However, on 18 September, a day when Macnaghten had never felt “so much harassed in body and mind,” came a turn for the better. If the British had been uncertain of Dost Mohammed’s intentions, he had been similarly anxious about theirs, writing to a chief, “For God’s sake, tell me the news! Will the Feringhees run or fight?” Unclear also of the exact British whereabouts, he had begun advancing toward Bamiyan. When Dennie in turn learned that some of the emir’s men had been sighted, he concluded they could only be an advance party and sent troops and artillery to confront them, before following himself with further troops. After rendezvousing with his own men, together they encountered their enemy in a narrow valley. Dennie realized by their numbers that this was no advance guard but Dost Mohammed’s entire force. He ordered his artillery to fire on the densely packed mass of enemy cavalry. Dost Mohammed’s six thousand Uzbek horsemen fled, leaving behind tents, baggage, kettledrums, standards and his only artillery piece. He himself only escaped destruction or capture because of the speed of his horse, but many of his followers were pursued and cut down.

  Macnaghten could breathe again, and when the news reached Auckland he wrote to London praising “this brilliant achievement … which with reference to the small number of our troops engaged … cannot fail to be productive of the best moral effect.” In the aftermath of the emir’s flight, Dr. Percival Lord persuaded the wali of Kulum, one of the most important local tribal leaders, to withdraw his support from Dost Mohammed. The emir, though, remained defiant, claiming he was as indestructible as a wooden spoon: “You may throw me hither and thither, but I shall not be hurt.” He must have been heartened when an entire recently and locally recruited regiment of Shah Shuja’s infantry took advantage of the disturbances to desert to him. Their defection reinforced Burnes’s view that “Sheets of foolscap are written in praise of the Shah’s contingent, and, as God is my judge I tremble every time I hear of its being employed … Shah Shuja never can be left without a British army, for his own contingent will never be fit for anything.”

  Meanwhile in Kabul, despite news of the rout of Dost Mohammed’s men at Bamiyan, the atmosphere remained tense. Atkinson believed that had Dost Mohammed been able to get close to Kabul, “our game with our handful of troops would have been a desperate one.” So many soldiers had been sent north that the city itself had been left vulnerable. “Great excitement prevailed everywhere. Our camp was about two miles from the Balla Hissar, and we had constantly an alarm that a night attack would be made upon us; picquets were strengthened and a sharp look-out was kept … In the Balla Hissar, artillery was placed, and the gates and magazine were doubly guarded. During the whole of September and October, the city continued in a state of extreme agitation; armed men in the streets, sharpening their swords at the cutlers’ shops, looked fierce and threatening; and day after day a revolt was whispered to be at hand. Under such circumstances, no one could feel at ease. The Kizzilbashis and Afghans who had joined the Shah were in dismay, and with good reason, for should the conspiracy meet with even temporary success, their heads would soon have been severed from their bodies, or their bowels ripped up.”

  He described how an “active system of espionage” was set up “to discover the plans of the conspirators … known to be meditating mischief.” Learning of a plot to seize Shah Shuja during one of the visits he was fond of making to a garden two miles from the citadel, the British discouraged him from going there, while across the city key plotters were arrested. According to Atkinson, this “had a talismanic effect … their followers, as is generally the case in eastern conspiracies, became at once paralyzed and powerless.”

  Deciding that Kohistan had to be subdued before the situation there grew any worse, in late September Macnaghten dispatched a brigade under “Fighting Bob” Sale. His mission was to discourage the chiefs from supporting Dost Mohammed as well as to punish them for having defied orders to muster levies and pay taxes by destroying the many fortresses and strongholds studding the valleys of Kohistan. This demonstration of military might was to go hand in hand with a softer, subtler approach. Alexander Burnes and Mohan Lal, accompanying Sale, were to send agents into the forts and villages to try to bribe Dost Mohammed’s adherents to desert his cause. However, despite their efforts and though by late October Sale had reduced several forts to rubble, the main rebel chiefs were at large and, as Macnaghten had always feared, joined forces with Dost Mohammed.

  The situation appeared grave when, on 2 November 1840, an advance party of Sale’s cavalry unexpectedly encountered Dost Mohammed and several hundred horsemen in the valley of Purwandurrah, north of Kabul. The emir ordered his men to attack, and in response Captain Fraser, leading the British forces, commanded, “Front! Draw swords!” Yet though the British officers charged toward the enemy, not all their troops followed. Two squadrons of the Second Bengal Native Cavalry dawdled behind, then, seeing their officers—including Dr. Lord, who had been accompanying the party as an observer—cut down in fierce fighting, turned and fled. Some of Dost Mohammed’s men pursued the escaping cavalry for more than a mile, while the emir with the rest of his force almost reached the British infantry and artillery positions. However, Dost Mohammed decided not to expose his men to the guns and, ordering a retreat, galloped away victorious, blue standard fluttering. Alexander Burnes was so alarmed that he at once dispatched a messenger to Macnaghten urging him to recall all troops immediately to Kabul to resist what he predicted would be a full-scale rising in Kohistan on behalf of Dost Mohammed.

  According to Atkinson, an eyewitness, two days later Macnaghten was taking his customary evening ride and pondering Burnes’s advice. As he was approaching the gate of his residence “a horseman, passing his escort … rode suddenly up to him, and said, ‘Are you the Envoy?’ ‘Yes, I am the Envoy.’ ‘Then,’ rejoined the horseman, ‘here is the Emir.’ ‘What Emir? Where is he?’ ‘Dost Mohammed Khan!’ was the reply.” The amazed Macnaghten then saw “the very ex-chief himself alighting from his horse, and claiming his protection. The whole scene was truly electrical.” Macnaghten invited Dost Mohammed to accompany him into the residence. When the envoy asked him why he had defied the will of the British government for so long, he replied that it was his fate—he could not control destiny.

  Dost Mohammed’s decision to surrender himself at this critical point is puzzling. Perhaps, having won the encounter at Purwandurrah, he had decided that honor was satisfied and that there was no point continuing to resist a more powerful enemy. Perhaps he had simply grown weary or fallen into the despondency to which Josiah Harlan claimed he was prone. The Reverend Gleig concluded that Dost Mohammed “felt that for the present his game was played out.” Later Afghan historians would blame him for giving up at the very moment when the British were vulnerable and he might have gone on to rally mass support against them, but he had probably not fully appreciated how exposed the British were at the end of long supply and communication lines to India.

  For the moment, the emir seemed genuinely relieved to be in British custody. He offered Macnaghten his sword, commenting that he had no further use for it, but the envoy just as graciously begged him to keep it. In fact, Dost Mohammed had taken the precaution, while on his way to Kabul to surrender, of exchanging his own fine sword for the more ordinary blade of his attendant. Atkinson, observing the fallen leader closely, thought that he looked haggard and careworn. Instead of the tall, spare, handsome man he had imagined from the accounts of others, Dost Mohammed “[is] on the contrary, robust, and large-limbed; his nose is sharp and aquiline; his eye-brows are highly-arched, and his forehead falls back at a striking angle. His moustache and beard are grey. They had not been dyed, he said afterwards, from the time he quitted Kabul.” However, he was clearly not without vanity, saying to Macnaghten, “They told me you were an old man; but I do not think so; how old are you?” When Macnaghten replied that he was nearly fifty, Dost Mohammed responded, “Ah! That is just my age.” He was, in fact, nearer sixty. Macnaghten ordered a tent to be
pitched in the gardens for Dost Mohammed, who, after eating a hearty meal after the sun had gone down since it was Ramadan, slept soundly. Macnaghten’s military secretary Captain George Lawrence, who kept guard during the night, found him deep asleep every time he checked on him.

  The next day, as the astonishing news spread throughout the city that Dost Mohammed was in British custody, Atkinson noticed Kabul had become suddenly tranquil, “totally free from the least trace of agitation.” Dost Mohammed was not to remain there for long. On 12 November Sir Willoughby Cotton left with some of his forces for Jalalabad, where he intended to winter with Shah Shuja. With him went Dost Mohammed, beginning his journey into exile in India. Shah Shuja had refused to see the emir before his departure, which probably spared both of them some embarrassment. Shah Shuja had, of course, wanted his enemy dead. He had told Lawrence that several of his men had offered to bring in Dost Mohammed and had asked slyly, “If in apprehending the Emir, it should so happen that he should be killed, what then would be the Envoy’s opinion?”

  WHILE DOST MOHAMMED had still been at large, Macnaghten had declared that “no mercy should be shown to the man who is the author of all the ills that are now distracting the country” and had mentioned the possibility of his execution. However, with Dost Mohammed safely in custody, Macnaghten made clear to Shah Shuja that there was no question of executing the man whom he was treating more as a guest than a prisoner. Indeed, Macnaghten had undergone an extraordinary change of heart, praising the emir as “a wonderful fellow” and asking Auckland to treat him generously. As if his earlier disputes with Burnes over the respective merits of the two rulers had never occurred, he wrote urging that Dost Mohammed should be treated “with liberality,” saying Shah Shuja “had no claim upon us. We had no hand in depriving him of his Kingdom, whereas we ejected the Dost, who never offended us, in support of our policy of which he was the victim.” Burnes had an affectionate meeting with Dost Mohammed before the latter departed Kabul, and gave his old friend an Arab horse.

  Meanwhile, as the emir left his erstwhile capital behind him, Atkinson noticed that he talked incessantly and seemed “exceedingly cheerful.” He even asked Atkinson, a skilled artist, to draw his likeness but returned to a pet subject: “You must make my beard black. It is now much shorter than it used to be for since my troubles began, no attention has been paid to it, and it has not been dyed.” Although Atkinson captured the vivid yellow of his turban, the emir complained that “his beard did not look black enough.”

  At Peshawar, Dost Mohammed was joined by a huge number of family members—318 according to the meticulous records of the British officer in charge of them—including nine wives, thirteen sons, seven daughters, ten grandchildren and all their attendants and slaves. From there the party continued on the journey into protective custody in India, where, the following May in Calcutta, Dost Mohammed would be one of Auckland’s most honored guests at the birthday ball for Queen Victoria. However, though Dost Mohammed had formally ordered his eldest and favorite son, Akbar Khan, to surrender to the British, he had refused to obey—perhaps as his father had intended he should. He was still free somewhere beyond the Hindu Kush.

  Chapter Ten

  For God’s sake clear the passes quickly, that I may get away.

  —MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM ELPHINSTONE, OCTOBER 1841

  With Afghanistan apparently quiescent following Dost Mohammed’s surrender, Macnaghten planned to devote more time to improving the country’s internal government, especially the raising of revenue. “We have hitherto been struggling for existence without any leisure to turn to the improvement of the administration,” he wrote to the governor-general’s private secretary John Colvin in November 1840.

  However, his hope of leisure was illusory. In late 1840 the Douranee tribes around Kandahar rebelled. Under the Sadozais they had once enjoyed special privileges, but Dost Mohammed had squeezed them relentlessly for taxes. With the restoration of the Sadozai Shah Shuja they had expected better, and indeed he had promised it. However, despite Shah Shuja’s assurances, the Douranees found themselves still oppressed by the same tax gatherers as before.

  The rebellion was also a sign of a wider dissatisfaction in Afghanistan with a “double” system of government, in which an Afghan king ruled but only nominally and at the pleasure of foreign and infidel invaders who held his reins. The tribal chiefs were particularly opposed to British meddling with the feudal arrangements for levying irregular cavalry. Under Afghan tradition the ruler gave the chiefs subsidies in return for which they promised to equip and train a certain number of cavalrymen to fight on his behalf. The chiefs made a good profit from the difference between what they received and their actual additional costs. However, Macnaghten, by nature a centralizer and a bureaucrat, was interfering in these arrangements.

  He had several reasons for doing so, all seemingly sensible if the effects on the chiefs were ignored. He knew that before the British could safely withdraw from Afghanistan, Shah Shuja had to be provided with troops more immediately available and more reliable and effective than the feudal cavalry. In addition, Macnaghten wanted to save Shah Shuja money; paying for cavalry levies was expensive, and Shah Shuja could not afford it. Macnaghten complained that the king’s revenue was “hardly enough for the maintenance of his personal state,” and yet the Indian government was “perpetually writing … that this charge and that charge [was] to be defrayed out of his ‘Majesty’s resources!’ God help the poor man and his resources.” Reducing the feudal levies and the creation of new cavalry corps, paid for by and dependent on the British, were means of eroding the power of the chiefs, who derived status as well as money from the number of troops they provided, and of relieving the financial pressures on the king. All this, and the perceived British aim of eventually replacing the feudal cavalry, angered the chiefs.

  Macnaghten, however, failed to appreciate the depths of the chiefs’ concern. When the Douranees rebelled, he dismissed them as “perfect children,” just as Burnes had done, and continued that they “should be treated as such. If we put one naughty boy in the corner, the rest will be terrified. We have taken their plaything, power, out of the hands of the Douranee chiefs, and they are pouting a good deal in consequence.”

  General Nott, the commander in Kandahar, was given the job of disciplining the naughty children. On 3 January 1841 his men defeated fifteen hundred Douranee horsemen, who fled across the Helmand River. However, though the Douranee insurgents had been scattered, their rebellion was not over. Evidence soon emerged that their leader, Aktur Khan, was plotting with Herat’s vizier, Yar Mohammed, who had, indeed, helped incite their original rebellion. At the same time, Yar Mohammed was yet again courting the Persians, even though the British were still paying him hefty sums in return both for promises that Herat would not collude with other states and in the as-yet-unfulfilled hope of their being allowed to station a British garrison in the city. When Yar Mohammed demanded still more money, making it insultingly clear he would cooperate no further until it was paid, in February 1841 Major D’Arcy Todd, the political officer who had replaced Eldred Pottinger in Herat, decided unilaterally to withdraw the British mission. Hearing the news, Macnaghten, who continued to believe the British could never be truly secure in Afghanistan until they had annexed Herat, immediately sought permission to dispatch a force there, which would also hunt down Aktur Khan and his rebels. However, the normally acquiescent Lord Auckland castigated Todd for his actions and refused to sanction any campaign against Herat, again telling Macnaghten he “must be strong in Afghanistan” before any such venture could be contemplated.

  Macnaghten regretfully abandoned the campaign against Herat but still had Aktur Khan to deal with. The Douranee leader was coaxed into making terms under which he agreed to disband his followers in return for a conditional pardon and some fiscal concessions, among them an end to the detested system of billeting tax collectors on communities until they paid what the collectors demanded. He also insisted on the r
eplacement of Shah Shuja’s chief minister and tax gatherer, the corrupt, earless and avaricious Mullah Shakur, whom the British had long distrusted anyway.

  The terms notwithstanding, Macnaghten’s political officer at Kandahar, Major Henry Rawlinson, rightly anticipated that all that had been gained was “temporary tranquillity.” Indeed, Aktur Khan was soon gathering forces for a renewed struggle. When Rawlinson warned that however many times the British beat the Douranees, doing so would only aggravate the widespread national feeling against the British, Macnaghten reproved him for his “unwarrantably gloomy view,” warning against “idle statements” that might “cause much mischief” and complaining that “we have enough of difficulties and enough of croakers without adding to the number needlessly.” The Douranees were mere “ragamuffins,” and there was no national feeling against the occupying forces. He advised Rawlinson to view matters with a little more couleur de rose—one of his favorite expressions.

  A rebellion by the Ghilzais of western Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 1841, provoked by the British appropriation and rebuilding of a fortress at Khelat-i-Ghilzai in their heartlands, did not alter Macnaghten’s views. Neither did a further Douranee rebellion at the end of which Aktur Khan was again put to flight. To Macnaghten, Douranee and Ghilzai discontent were minor flare-ups and not signs of more concerted resistance to come. On 20 August 1841, with both tribes apparently peaceable, he famously boasted in a letter to friends, “The country is perfectly quiet from Dan to Beersheba.” Elsewhere he wrote, “All things considered, the perfect tranquillity of the country is to my mind perfectly miraculous. Already our presence has been infinitely beneficial in allying animosities and pointing out abuses … we are gradually placing matters on a firm and satisfactory basis.”