Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844. Various
might err, as heavily we believe him to have done, in his estimate of Affghanistan and the Affghan condition: he had untrue notions of what the Affghans needed, and what it was that they could bear: but his critics, Indian and domestic, were not in error by default merely of philosophic views as to the state of society in Affghanistan; they erred by want of familiarity with the most prominent usages of eastern economy. Lord Auckland was wrong, only as whole masses of politicians are wrong in Europe; viz. by applying European principles to communities under feelings and prejudices systematically different. But his antagonists were wrong as to palpable facts.
Thirdly, If we pass from the motive to the execution of the motive, from the purpose to the means of effecting it, we are compelled to say that Lord Auckland's government adopted for its primary means the most extravagant that could have been devised; viz. the making itself a party to the financial torture of the land.
Fourthly, When local insurrection had arisen, whether directed (as every body assumes) against the abuses of a system introduced by ourselves, or (as we assert) proper to the land, and hereditary to the morbid condition of Affghan society—we shall expose the feeble and inadequate solution yet offered by any military guide for the tragical issue of these calamities. Kohistan, or particular cases, need not detain us; but, coming at once in medias res as to Cabool itself, we shall undertake to show, that as yet we have no true or rational account of the causes which led to the fatal result. What! four thousand five hundred regular troops, officered by Englishmen—a number which, in the last eighty years, had shown itself repeatedly able to beat armies of sixty thousand men, armies having all the appurtenances and equipments of regular warfare—was this strong column actually unable to fight its way, with bayonet and field artillery, to a fortress distant only eighty miles, through a tumultuary rabble never mustering twenty thousand heads?2 Times are altered with us if this was inevitable. But the Affghans, you will say, are brave men, stout and stout-hearted, not timid Phrygian Bengalees. True—but at Plassy, and again, forty years after, at Assye, it was not merely Bengalees, or chiefly such, whom we fought—they were Rohillas, Patans, Goorkhas, and Arabs; the three first being of Affghan blood, quite as good as any Barukzye or Ghilzye, and the last better. No, no—there is more to tell. The calamity ascends to some elder source than the imbecility of General Elphinstone, or the obstinacy of Brigadier Shelton. Others than the direct accomplices in that disaster are included in its guilt; some of the hitherto known only as the slain who have suffered by the insurrection, and as the survivors who have denounced it. Amongst them lie some of those impeached by the circumstances. So far we might add little to the satisfaction of the public; to see the rolls of the guilty widening would but aggravate the sorrow of a calamity which now it could do nothing to diminish. But oftentimes to know the persons concerned in a great disaster, is a step to knowing something of its causes. And this we will venture to say—that, in defiance of all professional pedantry incident to military men and engineers, the reader is likely to be of opinion that we, at a distance of 7000 miles, have pointed out capital blunders, ensuring ruin and forming temptations to conspiracy, which Lieutenant Eyre, a principal artillery officer on the spot, has failed to notice; and if he failed to notice them in his book à fortiori, he must have failed to notice them officially, whilst yet it would have been in time. There were those things done in Cabool by the "fantastic tricks" of men dressed in authority, which, placed in their proper light, go far to explain all the horrors that ensued. We know not whether they made "the angels weep," or rather made the devils laugh, when hovering over Coord Cabool: but this we know, that they are likely to make the hair stand on end of all considerate men in this land of energetic foresight.
Fifthly, It may be asked, What is the moral of this dreadful affair? What inferences in the way of warning are to be drawn from it? This is a topic untouched by all the writers on the Affghan war. But undoubtedly the Cabool reverse was not more fitted to fix attention as a judgment for the past than as a warning for the future; not more as being (or being thought) the reaction from a public wrong, authorized by English councils, than as a premonitory case, showing us what may be expected under the recurrence of similar circumstances. Circumstances altogether similar are not likely to recur in two centuries; but circumstances only in part similar, a commander-in-chief incapacitated by illness, or a second-in-command blind with infatuation, might easily recur in critical or dreadful emergencies. Such circumstances did happen in the Nepaul campaigns; imbecility in more leaders than one, as abject as that at Cabool. And though it could not lead to the same awful results where there had not been the same elaborate preparation of folly, and upon ground so much nearer to the means of rectification, still it was then sufficient to tarnish the lustre of our arms for the time, and, under worse circumstances, would menace worse misfortunes. Neither is this all; there are other infirmities in our eastern system than the vicious selection of generals.
But all the topics proper to this fifth head will fall more naturally under a paper expressly applying itself to India; and for the present we shall confine ourselves to the previous four.
I. And first, then, as regards the original motive assigned for the Affghan expedition. What profit in prospect, or what danger in reversion, moved us to so costly an enterprise? We insist singly on its cost, which usually proves a sufficient sufflamen in these days to the belligerent propensities of nations. Cicero mentions the advocate by name who first suggested the question of Cui bono, as a means of feeling backwards in a case of murder for the perpetrator. Who was it that had been interested in the murder? But the same question must be equally good as a means of feeling forwards to the probable wisdom of a war. What was the nature of the benefit apprehended, and who was to reap it? The answer to this very startling question, in the case of the Affghan expedition, stood thus for a long time on the part of our own unofficial press—that the object had been to forestall Russia, driving with headlong malice en route for the Indus, by surprising her advanced guard in Kohistan. Certainly, if the surprise were all, there might be something plausible in the idea. If the Russians should ever reach Kohistan, we will answer for their being exceedingly surprised at finding an English camp in that region for the purpose of entertaining themselves. In reality no lunatic projector, not Cleombrotus leaping into the sea for the sake of Plato's Elysium, not Erostratus committing arson at Ephesus for posthumous fame, not a sick Mr Elwes ascending the Himalaya, in order to use the rarity of the atmosphere as a ransom from the expense of cupping in Calcutta, ever conceived so awful a folly. Oh, playful Sir John Mandeville, sagacious Don Quixote, modest and ingenious Baron Munchausen!—ye were sober men, almost dull men, by comparison with the tête exaltée from some upper element of fire, or limbo of the moon, who conceived this sublime idea of leaping forward by a thousand miles, to lay salt on the tail of a possible or a conceivable enemy. The enemy—the tail—the salt—these were all in nubibus; the only thing certain was the leap, and the thousand miles. And then, having achieved this first stage on the road, why not go on to St Petersburg, and take the Czar by the beard? The enormity of this extravagance showed from what mint it came. Ever since we have harboured the Czar's rebels in England, there has been a craze possessing our newspaper press, that Russia was, or might be, brewing evil against India. We can all see the absurdity of such reveries when exemplified by our quicksilver neighbour France, bouncing for ever in her dreams about insults meditated from the perfidious England; but we are blind to the image which this French mirror reflects of our own attitude towards Russia. One hundred and fifty years ago, the incubus which lay heavy on the slumbers of England was the Pope; of whom Swift remarked, that constantly his holiness was seen incog. under one disguise or other, drinking at gin-shops in Wapping, and clearly proved to be spying out the nakedness of the land. In our days the Pope has vanished to the rear of the English phantasmagoria, and now lies amongst the [Greek: neknôn amenêna kasêna]. But not, therefore, is England without her pet nightmare; and that nightmare is now the Czar, who doubtless had his own reasons lately for examining the ground about Windsor and Ascot Heath—fine ground for the Preobasinsky dragoons. How often in this journal have we been obliged to draw upon these blockheads, and disperse them sword in hand! How, gentlemen, (we have said to them in substance,) if you must play the fool as alarmists, can you find no likelier towers for menacing Calcutta with thunder storms than those of arctic St Petersburg; between which cities lies an interspace equal to both tropics? We remember, as applicable to this case, a striking
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