Retreat from Kabul: The First Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-1842 (Conflicts of Empire) Read online

  RETREAT FROM KABUL

  GEORGE BRUCE

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  CHAPTER ONE

  General Sir John Keane was carried behind the cavalry advance guard in a palanquin borne by relays of Hindu bearers across the plains, mountains and deserts of Afghanistan during the march from India. He was followed by a groom leading his charger and, in a long procession that stretched for 30 or 40 miles across country, by his staff officers, by columns of lumbering horse-drawn artillery, by more cavalry, endless lines of red-coated infantry and the still longer lines of lurching supply and baggage camels intermingled with the host of thousands of camp-followers.

  Like a great migrating tribe, the army had marched on Ghazni, in central Afghanistan, at 4 a.m. on 21 July 1839, but four hours later, the fortress which dominated the route to Kabul was still not in sight. Shrugging aside normal military prudence and his dislike for riding horseback, General Keane had then called for his charger, mounted stiffly and, according to Major Hough, Deputy Advocate-General, had ordered his staff officers and a cavalry escort to accompany him on a reconnaissance far ahead of the army across the plain towards Ghazni. Certainly the risks he and his staff faced in this impetuous ride from Afghan marksmen who might be hidden about the plain were great. But Keane’s misgivings must have been too strong to be ignored, and with good reason.

  He had left his heavy artillery 200 miles behind at Kandahar, and those guns, the 18-pounders, were the only ones capable of blasting a way in for the infantry through walls at Ghazni that might be 15 or 20 feet thick.

  Keane’s political officers had told him that the Afghans were friendly and would open the gates of the fortress to the British invaders. And his artillery and engineer officers had reported that the walls of the fortress were so weak that the 9-pounder guns and the 24-pounder howitzers could together knock them down if the citizens there were to oppose him. Brigadier Stevenson, commanding artillery, had, moreover, insisted that the transport animals were too weak after the long journey from India to pull the 60-hundredweight 18-pounders and their wagons loaded with nearly a thousand shells.

  The terrain ahead of Kandahar, where these discussions had taken place, was far easier than that already traversed, so there was no real substance in this argument. And Ghazni, the Daroos-Sultunut-i-Ghazni — ‘seat of the Sultan’s power’ — was renowned throughout southern Asia for the strength of its fortifications, in contrast to his officers’ belief, based on secondhand information, that they were tumbledown.

  Yet a month ago, when his army was halted at Kandahar, Keane had allowed his subordinates to persuade him, and in what was reported to have been a characteristic flash of temper had let them have their own way and had ordered his heavy artillery to be left behind.

  But his predicament was far worse than the admittedly serious one of lack of heavy artillery. The army was dangerously short of food as well. Impetuously, Keane had led his troops and their long train of camp-followers into the middle of a hostile country with insufficient rations either to keep them there or to march them out again.

  And now, he had food for his fighting-men for two days only — on half-rations.

  This scarcity must have been frightening on top of his lack of heavy artillery. It meant that he must somehow seize the fortress and commandeer its provisions within two days.

  A siege was out of the question.

  To bypass Ghazni and march on towards Kabul, the capital, was impossible too, because Dost Mahommed, the ruler he was to depose, had an army in the field somewhere ahead. Keane could not risk leaving another army behind him in the fortress, ready to stream out and attack him in the rear directly he engaged Dost Mahommed. Nor could he retreat with rations for but two days across country where he would face continual attacks.

  These facts must have hounded and oppressed General Keane appallingly as he rode with his staff officers towards the crest of the last hill that overlooked the fortress, where he would be able to judge of its strength for himself and put to the test the alleged friendship of its inhabitants.

  A heavy, somewhat dropsical man who rode his horse badly, Sir John Keane was commanding the Anglo-Indian Army of the Indus. It had been formed at the word of Lord Auckland, Governor-General of India, to invade Afghanistan, the wildest, and — from the military point of view — the most difficult country in southern Asia. Keane’s objectives were the overthrow of the present ruler, Dost Mahommed Khan, and his replacement on the throne by Shah Shuja-ool-Mulk, a former king whom the Afghans had expelled some years before.

  When Keane reached the crest of the last rise the fortress burst into view a mile or two away. ‘It looked formidable with its fortifications rising up, as it were, on the side of a hill,’ noted Major Hough, who was at Keane’s side.

  Keane, through his telescope, could see the massive fortifications, about 70 feet high, built on a steep mound about 120 feet high surrounded by a wide moat — a very much bigger and stronger place than had been put to him by Captain Thomson, his engineer — and in good repair.

  No record exists of what Keane said to Brigadier Stevenson and Captain Thomson at that moment, but neither by nature not habit was he inclined to control his feelings. The scene must have been an explosive one.

  His only hope was that the Afghans in the fortress would turn out to be friendly, or could be bribed to be. If not, it would certainly seem that he and his army were doomed.

  And at that moment hope returned. One of the political officers, Sir Alexander Burnes, said in a message to Keane that he had just learned that the Afghans had completely abandoned the fortress. This was strange news from the very man who earlier had insisted that they would stay and welcome the British, but there was a chance it could prove true and Keane rode with his staff on towards the orchards and gardens that lay on the plain at the foot of the hill, about a mile from the fortress.

  But when they were about 600 yards from the gardens this hope too vanished in sudden puffs of smoke followed by sharp reports and the slow whistle near by of almost spent bullets — hardly likely action from a friendly or from an abandoned fortress.

  It must have been a very unhappy moment for Keane. He had allowed himself to be talked into treating the occupation of Ghazni as an insignificant episode in the ‘military promenade’ which Lord Auckland, the Governor-General of India, had light-heartedly called the entire invasion.

  Now he was faced by a massive fortress which he had no guns powerful enough to breach; which he was unable to mine owing to the surrounding moat; which was imp
ossible for his infantry to scale and to which he couldn’t lay siege because he had only two days’ food supply.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Startling though General Keane’s incompetence is, far from being singular it is part of a pattern of political and military ineptitude in the conduct of this war that is almost beyond belief. Afghanistan was, and probably still is, one of the hardest countries to invade in the world. In all directions it is ribbed by high mountain ranges cut by narrow passes. Most of its surface is mere rock and though the mountain valleys are very fertile only about five per cent of the total surface is cultivable. It is hot in summer and intensely cold in winter. In the first half of the nineteenth century there were no roads, only narrow stony tracks made during centuries by the feet of animals and men.

  In theory Afghanistan was then a monarchy, but the Shah at Kabul was never in the nation’s history more than the Khan of the most warlike tribe and his authority no more than what he could maintain by diplomatic intrigue and military force.

  There were four main tribes composing this feudal society: the Duranis, the Khyberees, the Belooches and the Ghilzyes, the last numerically the strongest and capable of putting some 40,000 fighting-men in the field. The tribesmen held rather than owned the land, and paid their chiefs for it in kind, in cash and, when called upon, by military duties, as did the chiefs in their turn to the Shah.

  Like the chiefs of the Scottish clans, the Afghan chiefs inherited their powers, but still needed to be accepted by both the Shah and the tribal councils of elders, upon whose collective agreement their power depended. A chief could be overthrown either by the Shah or by an alliance of his followers.

  Rather than a unified kingdom, Afghanistan at this time was more like a confederation of independent tribal republics, with the Shah ruling in the towns and countryside through governors and troops, but with less influence in the remote mountainous areas.

  When the nation faced invasion, or if foreign war was planned, the chiefs gathered with the Shah in public council to debate a policy. Once this was agreed, they were expected to obey the Shah’s orders implicitly, but when the danger or the need had passed, they again ruled more or less as they wished in their own territories. And whatever the power of the Shah, a tribe never refused hospitality and shelter to a fugitive — to do so would have meant deep disgrace.

  The Shah also obtained revenue by taxing merchants and tradesmen and — when he could enforce it — the chiefs and their followers as well. Some of this money he used, when persuasion or threats failed, to purchase the agreement of the tribes to freedom of transit for merchants through the mountain passes that crossed their traditional strongholds.

  The great masses of the townsfolk belonged to none of the main tribes. They were descended from the different races who, like the Persians, had at one time and another penetrated the country and established temporary supremacy. But the Shah’s court was Afghan, of the four tribes, as indeed was the army, the chiefs of whom were usually the largest land-holders.

  The vices of the Afghans were at this time the primitive ones of revenge, avarice, cruelty, rapacity and jealousy; their virtues love of freedom, faithfulness to friends, kindness to dependants and, when well led or inspired by fanaticism, considerable bravery. Colonel Dennie, who was later to die at their hands, wrote prophetically of them: ‘Their whole life is one of violence, rapine and murder. They know no law but force and the sword; and every man among them is armed from head to foot, a state which they never quit by day or night so insecure is life and property among them and so little dare they trust each other.’

  The British diplomat Mountstuart Elphinstone, noted in contrasting tone: ‘An European coming among them would scarce fail to admire their martial and lofty spirit, their hospitality and their bold and simple manners. He would admire their strong and active forms, their fair complexions and European features, their industry and enterprise… and above all the independence and spirit of their institutions. They endeavour to maintain that all Afghans are equal.

  ‘I once strongly urged on a very intelligent old man… the superiority of a quiet and secure life under a powerful monarch, to the discord, the alarms and the blood which they owed to their present system. The old man replied with great warmth… “We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood — but we will never be content with a master.”’

  Discord, alarms and blood — these form the pattern of Afghan history and it is worth going back to the turn of the eighteenth century to see how from it Dost Mahommed emerged as the ruler the British now sought to overthrow.

  In 1800 Zemaun Shah reigned, son of Timour Shah and grandson of the illustrious Ahmed Shah who extended the boundaries of Afghanistan and gave the Dhouranee Empire its name. Zemaun Shah had numerous brothers from his father’s countless wives, but in history the most significant of them were the two who became Mahmoud Shah and Shah Shuja.

  Zemaun Shah spent much of his rule alternately marching armies to threaten the north-west frontier of India and rushing them back to defend his throne against brotherly would-be usurpers. The British, knowing nothing of the state of chaos and disorganisation that ruled in Afghanistan, let themselves be needlessly alarmed by the threats of what seemed an exceedingly warlike race, which they tried to counter by cultivating the friendship of Persia — an attack on Afghanistan from that quarter, they reflected, would discourage Zemaun Shah from marching on India.

  The real ruler of Afghanistan at this time was, however, the Vizier, or chief minister, Wuffadar Khan, successor to Poyndah Khan, the equally powerful but more able vizier to Timour Shah and briefly to Ahmed Shah as well. But Zemaun Shah had preferred the more devious Wuffadar, had spurned Poyndah, the hereditary vizier, and allowed him to be murdered by Wuffadar.

  In Afghanistan, where revenge was one of the highest virtues, it was not so easy to get rid of an enemy. Poyndah Khan had no less than twenty-one sons, of whom the eldest was Futteh Khan, and in the heart of this formidable leader, and his brothers, revenge for their father’s death became the first object in life.

  In 1801 Futteh Khan persuaded Prince Mahmoud to combine with him in an attempt to overthrow Zemaun Shah, who was Mahmoud’s brother. Under Futteh Khan’s leadership they occupied the southern capital, Kandahar, then defeated Zemaun Shah and took possession of the throne in Kabul. Wuffadar Khan was immediately executed and honour was satisfied. Shah Zemaun was then dealt with more mercifully — his eyeballs were punctured with a dagger. A blind ex-king could do no harm.

  But there was to be no let-up in discord. When he heard the news, the Shah’s other brother, Shuja-ool-Mulk, at once proclaimed himself Shah of Afghanistan and occupied Kabul when Mahmoud was busy fighting elsewhere, but lacking in soldierly qualities, he failed to consolidate and was easily thrown out by Futteh Khan. Not long after, in 1803, exploiting the discontent that Mahmoud’s rule had sown, Shuja — who was thirty-five years later to become the British puppet King — again defeated the Shah’s troops and entered Kabul in triumph.

  Mahmoud was his prisoner and according to tradition Shuja should now have blinded him, but he let the fallen Shah keep his sight — and soon paid dearly for this act of mercy. Futteh Khan had meanwhile escaped to organise insurrection again, and making another mistake, Shuja stupidly made no move to come to terms with this dangerous and influential kingmaker.

  The next several years of Shuja’s reign were marked by the usual discord, alarms and blood — the outcome of a reign distinguished by foolish mercy towards rebellious khans and cruel oppression of the peasantry. Eventually, in 1809, when tribal chiefs and people had grown to hate Shuja’s very name, Futteh Khan — still faithful to the deposed Mahmoud — overthrew Shah Shuja and placed Mahmoud on the throne again. Shuja fled with what wealth he could lay hands on, and turned up at the court of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler.

  In exchange for promises of help and some financial aid, Ranjit Singh procured from him the famed Kohinoor diamond — it now adorns
the British crown — but the promised help failed to materialise. The Shah was stripped of everything he possessed and eventually, after many vicissitudes, entered India as a beggar and threw himself upon the mercy of the British.

  The illustrious Futteh Khan now reigned supreme at the court of the King, Mahmoud Shah, but this power had made him many enemies. One of his younger brothers at this time was Dost Mahommed, fourteen, son of a relatively humble woman. Serving Futteh Khan as a menial, he brought water and lit his hookah, but being a subtle and ambitious youth, listened carefully and spoke little. One day, hearing that one of Futteh Khan’s inveterate enemies was in the city, he went out and struck him down and killed him in broad daylight. Futteh Khan recognised a kindred spirit and Dost Mahommed became a firm favourite.

  When the all-powerful Futteh Khan decided later to subdue the Persian tribes who were then nibbling away at the western frontier, he gave Dost Mahommed his first military assignment — the seizure of the independent principality of Herat in the same region, from Shah Mahmoud’s son Prince Kamran.

  It was a move which heralded unwisely that Futteh Khan and his brothers now outshone the Shah in the Afghan firmament. But in zeal and effrontery, Dost Mahommed now outshone Futteh Khan. Starting with treachery, he gained entry to the city by posing as a friendly emissary of Futteh Khan, then massacred the unsuspecting palace guards, seized the Prince, put all who resisted to the sword, robbed the treasury and finally violated the royal harem, or zenana. There, among other abominations, he seized the jewelled waistband of Prince Kamran’s favourite wife and in a spasm of greed tore it from her body.

  After this memorable night’s work Dost Mahommed took fright at the vengeance he knew would be exacted and fled with his loot to far-off Kashmir, ruled by another brother, Azim Khan. Prince Kamran’s wife had meantime made him swear an oath of vengeance and Futteh Khan was chosen as the appropriate recipient of the humiliated Prince’s thirst for revenge.