The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80. Archibald Forbes
and through the centuries have abated little of their untamed ferocity. They had rejected Macnaghten's advances, and had attacked Shah Soojah's camp on the day before the fall of Ghuznee. Outram, in reprisal, had promptly raided part of their country. Later, the winter had restrained them from activity, but they broke out again in the spring. In May Captain Anderson, marching from Candahar with a mixed force about 1200 strong, was offered battle near Jazee, in the Turnuk, by some 2000 Ghilzai horse and foot. Andersen's guns told heavily among the Ghilzai horsemen, who, impatient of the fire, made a spirited dash on his left flank. Grape and musketry checked them; but they rallied, and twice charged home on the bayonets before they withdrew, leaving 200 of their number dead on the ground. Nott sent a detachment to occupy the fortress of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, between Candahar and Ghuznee, thus rendering the communications more secure; and later, Macnaghten bribed the chiefs by an annual subsidy of £600 to abstain from infesting the highways. The terms were cheap, for the Ghilzai tribes mustered some 40,000 fighting men.
Shah Soojah and the Envoy returned from Jellalabad to Cabul in April 1840. A couple of regiments had wintered not uncomfortably in the Balla Hissar. That fortress was then the key of Cabul, and while our troops remained in Afghanistan it should not have been left ungarrisoned a single hour. The soldiers did their best to impress on Macnaghten the all-importance of the position. But the Shah objected to its continued occupation, and Macnaghten weakly yielded. Cotton, who had returned to the chief military command in Afghanistan, made no remonstrance; the Balla Hissar was evacuated, and the troops were quartered in cantonments built in an utterly defenceless position on the plain north of Cabul, a position whose environs were cumbered with walled gardens, and commanded by adjacent high ground, and by native forts which were neither demolished nor occupied. The troops, now in permanent and regularly constructed quarters, ceased to be an expeditionary force, and became substantially an army of occupation. The officers sent for their wives to inhabit with them the bungalows in which they had settled down. Lady Macnaghten, in the spacious mission residence which stood apart in its own grounds, presided over the society of the cantonments, which had all the cheery surroundings of the half-settled, half-nomadic life of our military people in the East. There were the 'coffee house' after the morning ride, the gathering round the bandstand in the evening, the impromptu dance, and the burra khana occasionally in the larger houses. A racecourse had been laid out, and there were 'sky' races and more formal meetings. And so 'as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away.'
Macnaghten engaged himself in a welter of internal and external intrigue, his mood swinging from singular complacency to a disquietude that sometimes approached despondency. It had come to be forced on him, in spite of his intermittent optimism, that the Government was a government of sentry-boxes, and that Afghanistan was not governed so much as garrisoned. The utter failure of the winter march attempted by Peroffski's Russian column across the frozen steppes on Khiva was a relief to him; but the state of affairs in Herat was a constant trouble and anxiety. Major Todd had been sent there as political agent, to make a treaty with Shah Kamran, and to superintend the repair and improvement of the fortifications of the city. Kamran was plenteously subsidised; he took Macnaghten's lakhs, but furtively maintained close relations with Persia. Detecting the double-dealing, Macnaghten urged on Lord Auckland the annexation of Herat to Shah Soojah's dominions, but was instructed to condone Kamran's duplicity, and try to bribe him higher. Kamran by no means objected to this policy, and, while continuing his intrigues with Persia, cheerfully accepted the money, arms and ammunition which Macnaghten supplied him with so profusely as to cause remonstrance on the part of the financial authorities in Calcutta. The Commander-in-Chief was strong enough to counteract the pressure which Macnaghten brought to bear on Lord Auckland in favour of an expedition against Herat, which his lordship at length finally negatived, to the great disgust of the Envoy, who wrote of the conduct of his chief as 'drivelling beyond contempt,' and 'sighed for a Wellesley or a Hastings.' The ultimate result of Macnaghten's negotiations with Shah Kamran was Major Todd's withdrawal from Herat. Todd had suspended the monthly subsidy, to the great wrath of Kamran's rapacious and treacherous minister Yar Mahomed, who made a peremptory demand for increased advances, and refused Todd's stipulation that a British force should be admitted into Herat. Todd's action in quitting Herat was severely censured by his superiors, and he was relegated to regimental duty. Perhaps he acted somewhat rashly, but he had not been kept well informed; for instance, he had been unaware that Persia had become our friend, and had engaged to cease relations with Shah Kamran—an important arrangement of which he certainly should have been cognisant. Macnaghten had squandered more gold on Herat than the fee-simple of the principality was worth, and to no purpose; he left that state just as he found it, treacherous, insolent, greedy and independent.
The precariousness of the long lines of communications between British India and the army in Afghanistan—a source of danger which from the first had disquieted cautious soldiers—was making itself seriously felt, and constituted for Macnaghten another cause of solicitude. Old Runjeet Singh, a faithful if not disinterested ally, had died on June 27th, 1839, the day on which Keane marched out from Candahar. The breath was scarcely out of the old reprobate when the Punjaub began to drift into anarchy. So far as the Sikh share in it was concerned, the tripartite treaty threatened to become a dead letter. The Lahore Durbar had not adequately fulfilled the undertaking to support Prince Timour's advance by the Khyber, nor was it duly regarding the obligation to maintain a force on the Peshawur frontier of the Punjaub. But those things were trivial in comparison with the growing reluctance manifested freely, to accord to our troops and convoys permission to traverse the Punjaub on the march to and from Cabul. The Anglo-Indian Government sent Mr. Clerk to Lahore to settle the question as to the thoroughfare. He had instructions to be firm, and the Sikhs did not challenge Mr. Clerk's stipulation that the Anglo-Indian Government must have unmolested right of way through the Punjaub, while he undertook to restrict the use of it as much as possible. This arrangement by no means satisfied the exacting Macnaghten, and he continued to worry himself by foreseeing all sorts of troublous contingencies unless measures were adopted for 'macadamising' the road through the Punjaub.
The summer of 1840 did not pass without serious interruptions to the British communications between Candahar and the Indus; nor without unexpected and ominous disasters before they were restored. General Willshire, with the returning Bombay column, had in the previous November stormed Mehrab Khan's ill-manned and worse armed fort of Khelat, and the Khan, disdaining to yield, had fallen in the hopeless struggle. His son Nusseer Khan had been put aside in favour of a collateral pretender, and became an active and dangerous malcontent. All Northern Beloochistan fell into a state of anarchy. A detachment of sepoys escorting supplies was cut to pieces in one of the passes. Quetta was attacked with great resolution by Nusseer Khan, but was opportunely relieved by a force sent from another post. Nusseer made himself master of Khelat, and there fell into his cruel hands Lieutenant Loveday, the British political officer stationed there, whom he treated with great barbarity, and finally murdered. A British detachment under Colonel Clibborn, was defeated by the Beloochees with heavy loss, and compelled to retreat. Nusseer Khan, descending into the low country of Cutch, assaulted the important post of Dadur, but was repulsed, and taking refuge in the hills, was routed by Colonel Marshall with a force from Kotree, whereupon he became a skulking fugitive. Nott marched down from Candahar with a strong force, occupied Khelat, and fully re-established communications with the line of the Indus, while fresh troops moved forward into Upper Scinde, and thence gradually advancing to Quetta and Candahar, materially strengthened the British position in Southern Afghanistan.
Dost Mahomed, after his flight from Cabul in 1839, had soon left the hospitable refuge afforded him in Khooloom, a territory west of the Hindoo Koosh beyond Bamian, and had gone to Bokhara on the treacherous invitation of its Ameer, who threw him into captivity. The Dost's family remained at Khooloom, in the charge of his brother Jubbar Khan. The advance of British forces beyond Bamian to Syghan and Bajgah, induced that Sirdar to commit himself and the ladies to British protection. Dr. Lord, Macnaghten's political officer in the Bamian district, was a rash although well-meaning man. The errors he had committed since the opening of spring had occasioned disasters to the troops whose dispositions he controlled, and had incited the neighbouring hill tribes to active disaffection. In July Dost Mahomed made his escape from Bokhara, hurried to Khooloom, found its ruler and the tribes full of zeal for