The Dark Defile Read online

  As he had no doubt anticipated, his plea was ignored. The talks continued against a background of opulent Sikh hospitality with military reviews, gunnery displays and much drinking of fiery spirits. All the time, reports were arriving of the deteriorating situation at Herat, including rumors that a large Russian force was on the way to help the Persians. Fear that two world powers—Britain and Russia—might be about to confront each other on his doorstep convinced Ranjit Singh yet further to throw in his lot with the British and agree to the detailed terms of the new tripartite treaty proposed by Macnaghten.

  The enemies of one would be the enemy of all. Shah Shuja was to renounce all rights to Peshawar, Kashmir and other former Afghan territories appropriated by the Sikhs as well as, in return for an agreed payment by the emirs, all claims to suzerainty in Sind. He was to pay Ranjit Singh a large sum of money—the word tribute was not used—in return for which, to enable Shah Shuja to save face, the Sikhs would keep five thousand troops at the ready to be sent to Shah Shuja’s assistance in times of need. Shah Shuja was also to send annual gifts to Ranjit Singh, including “55 high-bred horses of approved colour and pleasant paces,” turbans, shawls, rice and large amounts of Afghanistan’s famous fruit, which, it was specified with a gourmet’s attention to detail, should include “musk melons of a sweet and delicate flavour … grapes, pomegranates, apples, quinces.”

  Shah Shuja would “oppose any power having the desire to invade the British and Sikh teritories by force of arms to the utmost of his ability.” He was also to promise not to negotiate with any foreign power unless sanctioned by the British and the Sikhs and not to encroach into Persia. As regards Herat, if Shah Shuja’s nephew Kamran survived the Persian onslaught, he would be allowed to continue to rule there. In return for these concessions, British and Sikh troops would support Shah Shuja’s invasion of his homeland, and he would be given funds to levy and equip an effective army, which would be trained and led by British officers from the company’s army. On 26 June Ranjit Singh put his name to the new treaty, and Macnaghten set off to Ludhiana to coax Shah Shuja to sign as well.

  In Herat, meanwhile, food and fuel were almost exhausted, and the population was starving and fever-ridden in the searing summer heat. On 24 June Pottinger thought that the city was about to fall when a determined Persian bombardment was followed by a simultaneous attack on the city’s five gates. Though the attacking Persian columns, now said to be directed by Count Simonich himself, were repulsed from four of the gates, at the fifth they broke through. As Afghan troops fought desperately to hold off the Persians, Pottinger ran to the breached gate to see what was happening. On the way, he met Yar Mohammed. But far from attempting to rally his troops, some of whom were beginning to slink away, the vizier seemed to have given up. Lowering his bulky body, he sat down in despair, and according to Pottinger, it took all his energy to rouse him to action. Yar Mohammed got to his feet again, yelled at his men to hold their ground and for a while they obeyed, but as the Persians pushed forward, the vizier wavered once more. Pottinger seized his arm and, reviling him as a coward, dragged him toward the fighting around the gate. Suddenly Yar Mohammed became a man possessed, laying into his troops with a wooden staff and driving them forward like cattle to overwhelm the astonished attackers who fled back to their camp.

  Unaware, of course, of the latest developments at Herat, Macnaghten was warmly welcomed by Shah Shuja in Ludhiana, which he reached on 15 July. Though the former king was startled by the extent of the concessions expected of him, excitement at the prospect of regaining his throne overruled his misgivings and he accepted the tripartite treaty without amendment, assuring Macnaghten that his supporters would rally to him. However, he insisted that his own troops must restore him to the throne, wisely pointing out that “the fact of his being upheld by foreign force alone could not fail to detract, in a great measure, from his dignity and consequence.”

  The invasion strategy discussed with both Shah Shuja and Ranjit Singh was that the former with his newly recruited British-officered army should pass down the Indus through Sind, whose emirs would have little choice but to cooperate while being, in Burnes’s words, “squeezed like an orange” for funds to support the expedition. Subsequently the army would push up through the Bolan Pass to Quetta, Kandahar and then on to Kabul, while the Sikhs, accompanied by Shah Shuja’s eldest son, Timur, would advance through the Khyber Pass. Auckland had originally envisaged only a minor role for British troops. However, his thinking and that of Macnaghten had changed. Reasonably enough, Auckland had begun to doubt whether Shah Shuja, who had thrice failed to retake his throne and whose military successes had been few, could succeed against Dost Mohammed, especially since he would be allied with the Afghans’ traditional enemies, the Sikhs, which would have a unifying effect on the normally disputatious and divided Afghans. At the same time, Ranjit Singh had been subtly suggesting to Macnaghten that his men had little experience of fighting in the manner required to force the Khyber Pass and might require British assistance. He feared terrible carnage and confessed that he doubted his men “could be induced to march over the corpses of their countrymen.”

  Auckland sought the advice of Sir Henry Fane, his experienced military commander in chief, on the extent of direct British military involvement. Fane had pronounced views on intervention over the Indus: “Every advance you might make beyond the Sutlej to the westward, in my opinion adds to your military weakness.” Instead, Britain should consolidate its position in India: “Make yourselves complete sovereigns of all within your bounds. But let alone the far west,” he had advised earlier that year. However, if the politicians had decided that an invasion was to go ahead, Fane considered the British had to be there in full and sufficient force to ensure success, especially if the army might in addition be required to dislodge the besieging Persians from Herat, which at the time seemed possible.

  Thus by late August 1838 the reluctant Fane was already informing the regiments that were to make up the superbly titled Army of the Indus. They were to include both “native” and European regiments of the East India Company’s armies as well as some Queen’s regiments of the British army posted to India. A total of six regiments of cavalry and eighteen battalions of infantry, together with artillery, engineering and other support, were readied for the campaign. British officers began to recruit and train the levies who were to form Shah Shuja’s army, while Auckland selected the political officers who were to accompany the expedition. Claude Wade was to go with the Sikh army. Burnes’s hopes were high that he would be selected to accompany Shah Shuja. In late July, arriving at Simla to pay his respects to Lord Auckland, he wrote to his brother: “We are now planning a grand campaign to restore the Shah to the throne of Kabul … What exact part I am to play I know not, but if full confidence and hourly consultation be any pledge, I am to be chief. I can plainly tell them that it is aut Caesar aut nullus [I’ll be Caesar or nothing], and if I get not what I have a right to, you will soon see me en route to England.”

  Burnes, however, was not to be Caesar. Instead, Auckland decided that Macnaghten, older and more experienced in the workings of the administration, should be “Envoy and Minister on the part of the Government,” while Burnes would be chief political officer to Commander in Chief Sir Henry Fane and go in advance of the British expeditionary force to conciliate the rulers through whose territories it would pass. Auckland softened Burnes’s disappointment by hinting that once Shah Shuja was firmly on his throne and Macnaghten returned to India, Burnes would replace him. Burnes was also mollified by receiving a double promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel and a knighthood. The ambitious thirty-three-year-old—now Sir Alexander Burnes—thought no more of going home.

  On 9 September 1838 the Persians broke off their siege of Herat and departed, meaning that one of the major reasons for the campaign into Afghanistan—the Russian-backed Persian menace—had disappeared. This did nothing to disrupt British plans. Indeed, three weeks earlier John Colvin, Aucklan
d’s assistant, had written that “no result of the siege of Herat will delay the Shah’s [Shuja’s] expedition with our direct support,” while a few days later Auckland himself stated that even if Herat held out, “I shall not be the less convinced that the Government is acting wisely.” The truth was that, though the outcome of the siege would influence the number of British troops to be sent into Afghanistan, Herat had become an irrelevance. The British were set on invasion.

  The Persian withdrawal from Herat was the result of robust action by the British against both the Russians and the Persians. Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston had protested formally to the Russian foreign secretary, Count von Nesselrode, about the incitement by Count Simonich and his agents of the Persians and others in the region. Not wishing at this time openly to confront Britain in Persia or elsewhere, von Nesselrode effectively disowned many of the actions of both Simonich and his agents, making flimsy excuses for others. But most important, he asserted that Russia would now use all its influence to restrain the Persian shah and would do everything possible to preserve the peace in Central Asia. As a result, Count Simonich was recalled to Russia. Vickovich, returning to St. Petersburg from Kabul and expecting to be congratulated, found himself dismissed as “an adventurer … who, it was reported, had been lately engaged in some unauthorised intrigues at Kabul and Kandahar.” According to the Russians, Vickovich retreated to his bedroom and shot himself in the head with his service pistol, although some British journalists of the time suggested that he had been murdered by the Russian government to prevent him from revealing the extent of Russian intriguing.

  Following John McNeill’s previous severing of his relations with the Persian shah over his attack on Herat in early June, Auckland had, at McNeill’s prompting, dispatched a battalion of soldiers and marines in two ships from Bombay to the Persian Gulf as a show of force. The troops had occupied the strategically situated island of Karrack (Kharg)—close to the Persian mainland near Bushire—whose Persian governor had capitulated immediately. By July grossly exaggerated reports of the scale of the British landing on Karrack were filtering through to the Persians encamped with their shah outside Herat. Profiting from them, McNeill dispatched Charles Stoddart back to the shah’s camp to inform him bluntly that the British would no longer tolerate any attempt by the Persians to take Herat or indeed to occupy any other part of Afghanistan and to warn him that his country risked full-scale invasion if he did not comply with British wishes. The shah took the point, observing to Stoddart, “The fact is, if I don’t leave Herat, there will be war, is not that it?” Stoddart replied, “all depends upon your Majesty’s answer.” Two days later, the shah dissembled to Stoddart that had he realized his advance on Herat might upset the British, “we certainly would not have come at all.” Thus by early September Stoddart had been able to report that “the Shah has mounted his horse ‘Ameerj’ and is gone.”

  On 1 October, several weeks before receiving official confirmation that the Herat siege was over, Auckland issued the so-called Simla Manifesto—his justification for invasion. The document placed the entire blame on Dost Mohammed in an interpretation of events so twisted it could have been penned by the Red Queen in the yet-to-be-written Alice in Wonderland. According to one of the young British heroes of the campaign to follow, it used the words justice and necessity “in a manner for which there is fortunately no precedent in the English language.”

  Dost Mohammed was accused of “sudden and unprovoked” aggression at Jamrud against Britain’s “ancient ally” the Sikhs—despite the fact that Ranjit Singh had been the aggressor by seizing Peshawar. In striking contrast to the reality of Dost Mohammed’s continuing solicitations of Britain as his ally in the region, he was charged with collusion with the Persians and with nurturing “schemes of aggrandizement and ambition, injurious to the security and peace of the frontiers of India.” The manifesto further declared that “he openly threatened, in furtherance of those schemes, to call in every foreign aid which he could command. Ultimately he gave his undisguised support to the Persian designs in Afghanistan.” Dost Mohammed and his Barakzai brothers—the rulers at Kandahar—had proved from their “disunion and unpopularity” that they were “ill-fitted under any circumstances to be useful allies to the British government,” and so long as Kabul remained under Dost Mohammed’s government, the British “could never hope that the interests of our Indian Empire would be preserved inviolate.”

  The manifesto maintained that Britain needed an ally on its western frontier who was “interested in resisting aggression and establishing tranquillity”—identifying Shah Shuja, who, while in power, “had cordially acceded to the measures of united resistance to external enmity which were at that time judged necessary by the British Government.” The manifesto asserted in direct contradiction of all the sparse available information “his popularity throughout Afghanistan had been proved” and that “pressing necessity as well as every consideration of policy and justice warranted their espousing his cause.” The document ended on a flourish. Shah Shuja, it promised, “will enter Afghanistan surrounded by his own troops, and will be supported against foreign interference and factious opposition by a British army … and when once he shall be secured in power, and the independence and integrity of Afghanistan established, the British Army will be withdrawn.” The governor-general rejoiced that by these actions he would be assisting “in restoring the union and prosperity of the Afghan people.”

  The manifesto nowhere mentioned Russia, perceived both in London and India as the real enemy behind the actions of the shah of Persia and the alleged threat from Dost Mohammed. In a private letter to the British ambassador in Moscow Palmerston had said, “Auckland has been told to take Afghanistan in hand and make it a British dependency … we have long declined to meddle with the Afghans but if the Russians try to make them Russian we must take care that they become British.” However, Russia was a major power, and Britain was enmeshed in a diplomatic struggle to contain its ambitions in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and elsewhere at the expense of the Ottoman Turks. For Auckland to have cited Russia in a document attempting to justify war and invasion (although neither word is mentioned in the context of the British action) would have been embarrassing to the government in London, and the gentle and gentlemanly Auckland was not the man to embarrass them. He crafted his manifesto to cast the British action as a regional one designed to protect Britain’s regional interest and not a strategic or imperial one with global repercussions.13

  The contradictory and hypocritical manifesto was widely published in the British and Indian press and instantly condemned by many who understood the true situation in India and Afghanistan. The clamor intensified when official confirmation came that the Persians had withdrawn from Herat. Macnaghten hastily drafted a fresh note for Auckland, issued on 8 November, stating that the governor-general would continue “to prosecute with vigour the measures which have been announced, with a view to the substitution of a friendly for a hostile power in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan, and to the establishment of a permanent barrier against schemes of aggression upon our north-west frontier.”

  Though the time consumed by communication and the pressure of events had prevented Auckland from obtaining prior sanction from London for each step of his strategy as it had evolved, Prime Minister Lord Melbourne and his cabinet in Britain and the governor-general and his advisers in India were in agreement about what had to be done. To Lord Palmerston it had become a question of who was to be master of Central Asia. When in December 1838 Melbourne and Palmerston received the Simla Manifesto that Auckland had sent home—with a humble cover letter suggesting others could judge it but he would only say, “I could have made it stronger if I had not had the fear of Downing Street before my eyes and thought it right to avoid direct allusion to Russia”—they approved it.

  The East India Company’s Court of Directors was more nervous at the prospect of war in its name. The directors had earlier warned Auckland to make no decision
on Afghanistan until he knew the outcome of the siege at Herat, but he had disregarded their advice. Now they had no choice. The British law that regulated the relationship between government and company required them to agree to the proposals put to them by the Board of Control under its president, Sir John Hobhouse. Twenty years later, he would confess to the House of Commons, “The Afghan war was done by myself; the Court of Directors had nothing to do with it.”

  Many of the population, caught up in Russophobia, supported the invasion decision. The Times welcomed it as well, condemning “the Russian fiend” who “from the frontiers of Hungary to the heart of Burmah and Nepal … has been haunting and troubling the human race, and dilligently perpetrating his malignant frauds … to the vexation of this industrious and essentially pacific [British] empire.”

  As the future prime minister Lord Salisbury wrote, opinion was polarized: “You must either disbelieve altogether in the existence of the Russians, or you must believe that they will be in Kandahar next year. Public opinion recognises no middle holding ground.” Among the many knowledgeable and experienced dissenters from the invasion decision as unlikely to achieve its aim of increasing the security of India’s north-west frontier, was Mountstuart Elphinstone, who, thirty years earlier had led the first British delegation to Afghanistan, and who wrote to Burnes, “You will guess what I think of affairs in Kabul … If you send 27,000 men up the Durra-i-Bolan [Bolan Pass] to Kandahar (as we hear is intended), and can feed them, I have no doubt you will take Kandahar and Kabul and set up [Shah] Shuja; but for maintaining him in a poor, cold, strong, and remote country, among a turbulent people like the Afghans, I own it seems to me to be hopeless.” He continued, not being afraid, unlike the manifesto, to mention Russia, “If you succeed, I fear you will weaken the position against Russia. The Afghans were neutral, and would have received your aid against invaders with gratitude—they will now be disaffected and glad to join any invader to drive you out.”