Читать книгу History of the War in Afghanistan - Sir John William Kaye - Страница 18

Table of Contents

[July—October, 1838.]

The Simlah Manifesto—The Simlah Council—Influence of Messrs. Colvin and Torrens—Views of Captains Burnes and Wade—Opinions of Sir Henry Fane—The Array of the Indus—The Governor-General’s Manifesto—Its Policy considered.

It is obvious that, in all the negotiations detailed in the preceding chapter, the paramount idea was that of an alliance between Runjeet Singh and Shah Soojah, guaranteed by the British Government, and a conjoint expedition into Afghanistan from the two sides of Peshawur and Shikarpoor, to be undertaken by the armies of the Lahore ruler and the Suddozye Prince. It was hinted to Runjeet Singh that events might be developed, which would render necessary the more active co-operation of the British army; but Shah Soojah, who was desirous above all things that the British should not take the foremost part in the coming expedition, was led to believe that, assisted by a few British officers, he would be left to recover for himself his old dominions, and that he would by no means become a puppet in the hands of his Feringhee allies.[248]

But these moderate views were about now to be expanded into a political scheme of far wider scope and significance. Whilst Macnaghten was negotiating the tripartite treaty at Lahore and Loodhianah, John Colvin and Henry Torrens remained at Simlah, as the scribes and counsellors of the Governor-General. To what extent their bolder speculations wrought upon the plastic mind of Lord Auckland it is not easy, with due historical accuracy, to determine. But it is generally conjectured that the influences then set at work overcame the scruples of the cautious and peace-loving statesman, and induced him to sanction an enterprise of a magnitude commensurate with the bold and ambitious views of his irresponsible advisers. The direct influence mainly emanated from John Colvin. It is probable, indeed, that the counsels of a man so young and so erratic as Henry Torrens would have met with no acceptance from the sober-minded nobleman at the head of the government, but for a circumstance which gave weight to his opinions and cogency to his advice. By all the accidents of birth and early associations, as well as by the bent of his own genius, the young civilian was a true soldier. The son of a distinguished officer and an approved military teacher, he had graduated, whilst yet a boy, in the learning of the camp, and his after studies had done much to perfect his acquaintance with the tactics and strategy of modern warfare. He possessed, indeed, the very knowledge which the other members of the Simlah Council most wanted; and hence it was that he came to exercise considerable influence over Lord Auckland, more perhaps through his brother secretaries than directly brought to bear upon the mind of the Governor-General himself. It was urged that the expedition, if entrusted entirely to Shah Soojah and the Sikhs, would set in disastrous failure; and there was at least some probability in this. Runjeet Singh was no more than lukewarm in the cause; and the Sikhs were detested in Afghanistan. Lord Auckland shrunk from the responsibility of despatching a British army across the Indus; but, warned of the danger of identifying himself with a slighter measure promising little certainty of success, he halted, for a time, between two opinions, and slowly yielded to the assaults of his scribes.[249]

There were two other men then on the frontier whose opinions Lord Auckland had been naturally desirous to obtain. Captain Burnes and Captain Wade were at least acquainted with the history and politics of Afghanistan, and they had freely placed their sentiments on record. It has been advanced that the course of policy eventually pursued was in accordance with the views of these two officers. It is important, therefore, that it should be clearly ascertained what those views actually were.

On the 20th of July Captain Burnes joined the Simlah Council. On the 29th of May, whilst halting at Peshawur, he had received a letter from Mr. Macnaghten, instructing him to proceed at once to join the British Mission, and in obedience to the summons had started at once on his downward journey. In the middle of June he had joined the camp of the British Envoy at Lahore, and taken part in the later deliberations which had preceded the acceptance by Runjeet Singh of the terms proposed by the British Government; and on the departure of the Mission for Loodhianah had proceeded to join Lord Auckland and his advisers at Simlah.[250]

Burnes had already placed his opinions on record. At Hussan Abdool he had received Macnaghten’s letter calling upon him for his views regarding the best means of counteracting the hostile influence of the Barukzye chiefs, and on the 2nd of June he had despatched a long demi-official letter, stating the policy which, under the then existing circumstances, he conceived it expedient to adopt, “not,” in his own emphatic words, “what was best; but what was best under the circumstances, which a series of blunders had produced.”

It is plain that no advice offered by Burnes could have had any effect upon the question of the restoration of Shah Soojah. Macnaghten, on reaching Adeenanuggur, had determined not to await the arrival of the agent from Caubul before stating the views of the British Government to Runjeet Singh. He had, indeed, given the Maharajah the option of participating in an expedition for the restoration of Shah Soojah before he had received, either orally or by letter, the recommendations of Captain Burnes. When Burnes joined the British Mission, our Government was irretrievably committed to a course of policy which he either might or might not have supported. If he had any influence on the future out-turn of events, it was rather as the adviser of Runjeet Singh[251] than as the adviser of the British Mission. The fatal offer had been made to the Maharajah before Burnes joined the Mission camp.

What Burnes really recommended, as the growth of his own free and unfettered opinion was, that the case of Dost Mahomed should be reconsidered, and that the British Government should act with him and not against him. “It remains to be reconsidered,” he wrote,[252] “why we cannot act with Dost Mahomed. He is a man of undoubted ability, and has at heart a high opinion of the British nation; and if half you must do for others were done for him, and offers made which he could see conduced to his interests, he would abandon Russia and Persia to-morrow. It may be said that opportunity has been given him; but I would rather discuss this in person with you, for I think there is much to be said for him. Government have admitted that he had at best a choice of difficulties; and it should not be forgotten that we promised nothing, and Persia and Russia held out a great deal.” But Burnes had been asked for his advice, not regarding the best means of counteracting Persian or Russian influence in Afghanistan, but the best means of counteracting Dost Mahomed; and he gave it as his opinion, that if Dost Mahomed were to be counteracted, the restoration of Shah Soojah was a more feasible project than the establishment of Sikh influence at Caubul. Captain Wade had declared his conviction that the disunion of the Afghan chiefs was an element of security to the British; but this opinion Burnes controverted, and pronounced himself in favour of the consolidation of the Afghan Empire. “As things stand,” he wrote, “I maintain that it is the best of all policy to make Caubul in itself as strong as we can make it, and not weaken it by divided forces. It has already been too long divided. Caubul owed its strength in bygone days to the tribute of Cashmere and Sindh. Both are irrevocably gone, and while we do all we can to keep up the Sikhs, as a power east of the Indus, during the Maharajah’s life or afterwards, we should consolidate Afghan power west of the Indus, and have a king, and not a collection of chiefs. Divide et impera is a temporising creed at any time; and if the Afghans are united, we and they bid defiance to Persia, and instead of distant relations we have everything under our eye, and a steadily progressing influence all along the Indus.”

Such were the general views that Burnes enunciated, in the knowledge that the Simlah Cabinet had determined on the deposition of Dost Mahomed. In fulfilment of the object thus contemplated, he recommended that the empire should be consolidated under Shah Soojah, rather than under Sultan Mahomed or any other chief. He believed that the restoration of the ex-King could be accomplished with the greatest facility, at a very trifling expenditure of the resources and display of the power of the British Government. “As for Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, personally,”[253] he wrote, “the British Government have only to send him to Peshawur with an agent, and two of its own regiments as an honorary escort, and an avowal to the Afghans that we have taken up his cause, to ensure his being fixed for ever on the throne. The present time is perhaps better than any previous to it, for the Afghans, as a nation, detest Persia, and Dost Mahomed having gone over to the Court of Teheran, though he believes it to be from dire necessity, converts many a doubting Afghan into a bitter enemy. The Maharajah’s opinion has only, therefore, to be asked for the ex-King’s advance on Peshawur, granting him, at the same time, some four or five of the regiments which have no Sikhs in their ranks, and Soojah becomes King. He need not move from Peshawur, but address the Khyburrees, Kohistanees of Caubul, and all the Afghans from that city, (stating) that he has the co-operation of the British and the Maharajah, and with but a little distribution of ready money—say, two or three lakhs of rupees—he will find himself the real King of the Afghans in a couple of months. It is, however, to be remembered always, that we must appear directly, for the Afghans are a superstitious people, and believe Shah Soojah to have no fortune—but our name will invest him with it.”

Such were the sanguine expectations of Captain Burnes, and the very moderate policy which he was inclined to recommend, on the presumption that all amicable relations with Dost Mahomed had now been repudiated by the British Government. The opinions of Captain Wade were scarcely less in accordance with those which found favour in the Simlah Council-Chamber. It had ever been the belief of this officer that the consolidation of Afghanistan would prove injurious to British interests. He had insisted that it was the wisest policy to support the existing rulers, and to encourage the disunion among them. Of Dost Mahomed, personally, Captain Wade entertained no favourable opinion. He underrated both the character of the man and his influence over his countrymen; but so little was he disposed to counsel the subversion of the existing rule in Afghanistan, that he was always willing to endeavour to bring about an arrangement with Dost Mahomed, by recommending Runjeet Singh to accept the overtures of the Ameer.[254] It was his opinion, that if the consolidation of the country were to be attempted at all, it would be more expedient to support the claims of Shah Soojah than of Dost Mahomed; but he regarded the restoration of the Shah only as a last resort, and would rather have seen the Barukzye chiefs left quietly in their own possessions. Indeed, in the very letter of the 1st of January, 1838, on which so much stress has been laid, Captain Wade, even in the printed version, says: “Shah Soojah’s recognition could only, however, be justified or demanded of us, in the event of the prostration of Herat to the Persian Government;” and in the unprinted portion of this letter the writer says: “I can see nothing in the state of parties at present in the Punjab to deter us from pursuing a line of policy” (in Afghanistan), “every way consistent with our engagements, our reputation, and our interests—viz., that of recognising the present holders of power, and discouraging any ambitious schemes of one party to the detriment of another.” And in conclusion, Captain Wade sums up what he believes to be the true policy of the British, declaring that “if Dost Mahomed is kept, as he now is, at Caubul, whether as a Governor of the province, under Shah Soojah, or in independence of him, and Peshawur be restored to Sultan Mahomed, or remain as at present, we might not only be safe from disturbances, or any sudden inroads from the western powers, but be enabled to secure the integrity of the Sikh nation as far as the Indus, and would mould these people and their already more than half-disciplined troops to our wishes.”[255] Captain Wade over-estimated the popularity of Shah Soojah. He was in constant receipt of information to the effect that the Douranees and other tribes were eager for his return; and he did not, perhaps, sufficiently consider that the Afghans always long for what they have not, and are seldom unripe for revolution. But although he believed it would be safer to attempt to re-establish the integrity of Afghanistan under Shah Soojah than under Dost Mahomed, he thought that it would be better policy still to leave untouched the disunion and antagonism of the Barukzye Sirdars.

Such, read by the light of their unmutilated despatches, were the genuine opinions of Burnes and Wade. But the Simlah Council had more ambitious views, and were disposed towards more extensive plans of operation. First one project, then another, had been discussed. It had been debated, firstly, whether the movement on Candahar could be undertaken by the Shah’s raw levies, supported only, as originally intended, by a British army of reserve at Shikarpoor; and secondly, whether some two or three regiments of British troops would not be sufficient to escort the Shah’s army into the heart of his old dominions. Both of these projects were abandoned.

Sir Henry Fane was at this time commander-in-chief of the British forces in India. He had pitched his tent at Simlah, and was in frequent consultation with the Governor-General. He was a fine old soldier of the Tory school, with very strong opinions regarding the general “shabbiness” of all Whig doings, and a strenuous dislike of half-measures, especially in military affairs. It is believed that he did not approve of the general policy of British interference in the affairs of Afghanistan,[256] but he was entirely of opinion that it was the duty of government, in the conjuncture that had arisen, either not to interfere at all, or to interfere in such a manner as to secure the success of our operations. Always by nature inclined towards moderate measures, the Governor-General for some time resisted the urgent recommendations of those who spoke of the formation of a grand army, drawn from our own regular establishment, to be headed by the commander-in-chief in person, and marched upon Candahar, perhaps upon Herat itself. But Lord Auckland was never the most resolute of men. His own confidential advisers had long been endeavouring to convince him of the necessity of adopting more vigorous measures. The commander-in-chief was not only recommending such measures, but insisting upon his right, as the first military authority in the country, to determine the number of British troops to be employed, and the manner of their employment. And the ministers of the Crown, fortified by the knowledge that the expenses of the war would fall upon the treasury of the East India Company, and that they would not be called by the British people to account for any expenditure, however lavish, upon remote warlike operations, which the public might easily be persuaded to regard as the growth of the most consummate wisdom, were exhorting Lord Auckland to adopt effectual measures for the counteraction of Russian intrigue and Persian hostility in the countries of Afghanistan. So, after some weeks of painful oscillation, Lord Auckland yielded his own judgment to the judgment of others, and an order went forth for the assembling of a grand army on the frontier, to be set in motion early in the coming cold weather, in support of Shah Soojah and his levies; to cross the Indus; and to march upon Candahar.

In August, the regiments selected by the commander-in-chief were warned for field-service, and on the 13th of September he published a general order, brigading the different components of the force, naming the staff-officers appointed, and ordering the whole to rendezvous at Kurnaul. The reports, which all through the dry summer months had been flitting about from cantonment to cantonment, and making the pulses of military aspirants, old and young, beat rapidly with the fever of expectancy, now took substantial shape; and everywhere the approaching expedition became the one topic of conversation. Peace had reigned over India for so many years, that the excitement of the coming contest was as novel as it was inspiriting. There was not an officer in the army who did not long to join the invading force; and many from the distant Presidency, or from remote provincial stations, leaving the quiet staff-appointments which had lapped them long in ease and luxury, rushed upwards to join their regiments. Even in that unpropitious season of the year, when the country was flooded by the periodical rains, corps were set in motion towards Kurnaul, from stations as low down as Benares, and struggled manfully, often through wide sheets of water, to their destination at the great northern rallying point. There had been no such excitement in military circles since the grand army assembled for the reduction of Bhurtpore; and though the cause was not a popular one, and there was scarcely a mess-table in the country at which the political bearings of the invasion of Afghanistan were discussed without eliciting the plainest possible indications that the sympathies of our officers were rather with the Barukzye chief than the Suddozye monarch, there was everywhere the liveliest desire to join the ranks of an army that was to traverse new and almost fabulous regions, and visit the scenes rendered famous by the exploits of Mahmoud of Ghuzni and Nadir Shah.

The army now warned for field-service consisted of a brigade of artillery, a brigade of cavalry, and five brigades of infantry. Colonel Graham was to command the artillery; Colonel Arnold the cavalry; whilst the brigades of infantry were assigned respectively to Colonels Sale and Dennis, of the Queen’s; and Colonels Nott, Roberts, and Worseley, of the Company’s service. The infantry brigades were told off into two divisions under Sir Willoughby Cotton, an old and distinguished officer of the Queen’s army, who had rendered good service in the Burmese war, and was now commanding the Presidency division of the Bengal army, and Major-General Duncan, an esteemed officer of the Company’s service, who was then in command of the Sirhind division of the army, and was therefore on the spot to take the immediate management of details.

The regiments now ordered to assemble were her Majesty’s 16th Lancers, 13th Infantry, and 3rd Buffs; the Company’s European regiment; two regiments of Native light cavalry, and twelve picked Sepoy corps.[257] Two troops of horse artillery and three companies of foot, constituted the artillery brigade; and some details of sappers and miners, under Captain Thomson, completed the Bengal force. The usual staff-departments were formed to accompany the army,[258] the heads of departments remaining in the Presidency whilst their deputies accompanied the forces into the field.

Whilst the Bengal army was assembling on the northern frontier of India, under the personal command of Sir Henry Fane, another force was being collected at Bombay. It was composed of a brigade of cavalry, including her Majesty’s 4th Dragoons, a brigade of artillery, and a brigade of foot, consisting of two Queen’s regiments (the 2nd Royals and 17th Foot) and one Sepoy corps. Major-General Thackwell commanded the cavalry; Major-General Wiltshire the infantry; and Colonel Stevenson the artillery brigade. Sir John Keane, the commander-in-chief of the Bombay army, took command of the whole.

Such was the extent of the British force warned for field-service in the autumn of 1838. At the same time another force was being raised for service across the Indus—the force that was to be led by Shah Soojah into Afghanistan; that was to be known distinctively as his force; but to be raised in the Company’s territories, to be commanded by the Company’s officers, and to be paid by the Company’s coin.

To this army was to have been entrusted the work of re-establishing the authority of the Suddozye Princes in Western Afghanistan; but it had now sunk into a mere appendage to the regular army which the British-Indian Government was about to despatch across the Indus; and it was plain that, whatever opposition was to be encountered, the weight of it would fall, not upon Shah Soojah’s raw levies, but upon the disciplined troops of the Indian army that were to be sent with them, to secure the success of the otherwise doubtful campaign. Whatever work there might be in store for them, the recruiting went on bravely. For this new service there was no lack of candidates in the Upper Provinces of India. The Shah himself watched with eager pride the formation of the army which was to surround him on his return to his own dominions, but was fearful lest the undisguised assumption of entire control by the British officers appointed to raise his new regiments should deprive him of all the éclat of independence with which he was so anxious to invest his movements. It was, indeed, no easy matter, at this time, to shape our measures in accordance with the conflicting desires of the old king, who wished to have everything done for him, and yet to appear as though he did it himself. To Captain Wade was entrusted the difficult and delicate duty of managing one who, by nature not the most reasonable of men, was rendered doubly unreasonable by the anomalous position in which he found himself after the ratification of the tripartite treaty. It was difficult, indeed, to say what he was at this time. At Loodhianah he had hitherto been simply a private individual. He had held no recognised position. He had been received with no public honours. He had gone hither and thither, almost unnoticed. He had excited little interest, and met with little attention. Some, perhaps, knew that he had once been an Afghan monarch, and that he received four thousand rupees a month from the British Government as a reward for his incapacity and a compensation for his bad fortune. Beyond this little was known and nothing was cared. But now, suddenly, he had risen up from the dust of Loodhianah as a recognised sovereign and framer of treaties—a potentate meeting on equal terms with the British Government and the Maharajah of the Punjab. He could not any longer be regarded as a mere tradition. He had been brought prominently forward into the light of the Present; and it was necessary that he should now assume in men’s eyes something of the form of royalty and the substance of power.

It was natural that, thus strangely and embarrassingly situated, the Shah should have earnestly desired to bring his sojourn at Loodhianah to a close, and to launch himself fairly upon his new enterprise. The interval between the signing of the treaty and the actual commencement of the expedition was irksome in the extreme to the expectant monarch. It was plain that he could not move without his army; he therefore did his best to expedite its information. Constantly attending the parade where the work of recruiting was going on, he desired personally to superintend both the payment and the enlistment of his men; and was fearful lest a belief should become rooted in the public mind that he was not about to return to Afghanistan as an independent Prince, ruling his own people on his own account. The tact and discretion of Captain Wade smoothed down all difficulties. Whilst preventing such interference on the part of Shah Soojah as might embarrass the movements of the British officers appointed to raise and discipline his regiments, he contrived to reconcile the mind of the King to the system in force by directing that certain reports should be made to him on parade, and at other times through an appointed agent, of the number of men enlisted into his service, and the amount of pay that was due to each.[259] At the same time, it was suggested to the commanding officer of the station that, as one entitled to the recognitions due to royalty, the Shah should be saluted by the troops when he appeared in public. The suggestion was promptly acted upon; and the King, whose inveterate love of forms and ceremonies clung to him to the end of his days, rejoiced in these new demonstrations of respect, and bore up till his time of trial was over.

In the meanwhile Lord Auckland, having thus mapped out a far more extensive scheme of invasion than had ever been dreamt of, a few months before, in his most speculative moments, was thinking of the agency which it was most desirable to employ for the political management of the ensuing campaign. It had been determined that a British Envoy should accompany Runjeet Singh’s army by the Peshawur route, and that another should accompany Shah Soojah’s camp on its march towards the western provinces of Afghanistan. There was no difficulty in naming the officer who was to superintend the demonstration to be made by the Sikh troops through the formidable passes of the Khybur. Captain Wade was nominated to this office. He was to be accompanied by the eldest son of Shah Soojah, the Prince Timour, a man of respectable character, but not very brilliant parts, whose presence was to identify the Sikh movement with the immediate objects of his father’s restoration, and to make obvious to the understandings of all men that Runjeet Singh was acting only as Shah Soojah’s ally.

But it was not so easy to determine to whom should be entrusted the difficult and responsible duty of directing the mind of Shah Soojah, and shaping, in all beyond the immediate line of military operations, the course of this great campaign. It seemed at first that the claims of Alexander Burnes could not be set aside. No man knew the country and the people so well; no man had so fairly earned the right to be thus employed. But it soon appeared to Burnes himself, sanguine as he was, that Lord Auckland designed to place him in a subordinate position; and chafing under what appeared to him a slight and an injustice, he declared that he would either take the chief place in the British Mission, or go home to England in disgust.[260] But these feelings soon passed away. It had been debated whether the chief political control should not be placed in the hands of the commander-in-chief; and Sir Henry Fane, naturally favouring an arrangement which would have left him free to act as his own judgment or his own impulses might dictate, wished to take Burnes with him as his confidential adviser. But this plan met with little or no encouragement. The Governor-General appreciated Burnes’s talents, but mistrusted his discretion. He thought it advisable to place at the stirrup of Shah Soojah an older head and a steadier hand. Men, who at this time watched calmly the progress of events, and had no prejudices and predilections to gratify, and no personal objects to serve, thought that the choice of the Governor-General would fall upon Colonel Henry Pottinger, who had been familiar from early youth with the countries beyond the Indus, and was now in charge of our political relations with the Court of Hyderabad, in Sindh. But Lord Auckland had no personal knowledge of Colonel Pottinger. There was little identity of opinion between them; and the Governor-General recognised the expediency of appointing to such an office a functionary with whom he had been in habitual intercourse, who was necessarily, therefore, conversant with his views, and who would not scruple to carry them out to the utmost.

The choice fell on Mr. Macnaghten. It seems, at one time, to have been the design of the Governor-General to associate this gentleman with the Commander-in-Chief, in a kind of Commission for the management of our political relations throughout the coming expedition;[261] but this idea seems to have been abandoned. It was finally determined that Mr. W. H. Macnaghten should be gazetted as “Envoy and Minister on the part of the Government of India at the Court of Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk.” And at the same time it was resolved that Captain Burnes should be employed, “under Mr. Macnaghten’s directions, as Envoy to the chief of Kelat or other states.” It was believed, at this time, that Shah Soojah having been reseated on the throne, Macnaghten would return to Hindostan, leaving Burnes at Caubul, as the permanent representative of the British-Indian Government at the Court of the Shah. It was this belief that reconciled Burnes to the subordinate office which was conferred upon him in the first instance, and made him set about the work entrusted to his charge with all the zeal and enthusiasm which were so conspicuous in his character.[262]

And so Burnes was sent on in advance to smooth the way for the progress of the Shah through Sindh, whilst Macnaghten remained at Simlah to assist the Governor-General in the preparation of the great official manifesto which was to declare to all the nations of the East and of the West the grounds upon which the British Government had determined to destroy the power of the Barukzye Sirdars, and to restore Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk to the throne of his ancestors.

On the 1st of October the manifesto, long and anxiously pondered over in the bureau of the Governor-General, received the official signature and was sent to the press. Never, since the English in India first began the work of King-making, had a more remarkable document issued from the council-chamber of an Anglo-Indian viceroy. It ran in the following words, not one of which should be omitted from such a narrative as this: