Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (10 page)

Shah Shuja was not, however, the sort of man who would tolerate being detained at someone else’s pleasure, and before long he had come up with an escape plan. His first action, as after his defeat, was to ensure the safety of his womenfolk, and before escaping himself he decided to smuggle his harem out of Lahore. This he did with the help
of a Pashtun horse dealer and the Lahori traders who came to sell his women their groceries. According to traditions collected in the later
Siraj ul-Tawarikh
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He secretly purchased a number of horse-drawn wagons through some Indian women whom he had met because it was the custom in the homes of the great for them to come and go with goods for sale. In four trips, transporting ten persons at a time, the women left the city dressed in the clothes of Hindu women as if they were either going to swim in the river, as is the custom of the Hindus, or else to have an outing in the countryside. His retainers delivered his wives to Ludhiana, just over the border of the Company’s territories, as he had ordered.
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When Ranjit Singh heard that Wa’fa Begum and the other women had made their escape, ‘he bit the finger of astonishment with the teeth of regret’ and increased the number of guards to 4,000, ‘infesting every alley in the city, guarding all gates, all the mansions, even kitchens and lavatories, and especially our sleeping quarters . . . The soldiers would heat up oil and threaten torture, saying: “Give us your jewels, or else you’ll feel the heat of this boiling oil!”’ On a whim they would place Shuja in an iron cage installed in the courtyard. ‘Wherever I went, even to do my ablutions, they would watch me. The world was becoming narrower for me and my household, and we soon became tired of observing the activities of these ill-educated and low-born Sikh people.’ The Shah and his household took to reciting the verse from the Quran ‘Deliver us from the tribe of the oppressors’.

In answer to our midnight cries of despair, the following idea came as guidance: immediately below the chamber where we slept at night was the royal wardrobe, the quarters of faithful royal servants. We instructed them to make a hole in the ceiling of the lower chamber right under the bed, otherwise the guards would have noticed, and to dig a tunnel from the lower chamber under the neighbouring seven houses, all of which we had rented, breaching walls and digging through the earth. Over the course of three months, they dug through seven walls, one after another, until they reached a side-gulli near the bazaar.
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Leaving a faithful follower to take his place in his bed and disguised as a wandering dervish – ‘I polished my body and face with ashes, and made my hair messy with dreadlocks, covering it with a black turban’ – Shuja fled through the tunnel with two aides. They then made their way through the city past ‘infidel guards and other malevolent individuals who were made deaf and blind by God’.

At last we reached the main drain of the Fort, which at this season was dry. It was dark and narrow and difficult to pass through, but we were determined to get out, and commending ourselves to God and His Prophet, pushed through, getting scratched and bloodied on the way. Eventually we emerged on to the riverbank. There, servants were waiting with suitable clothes; they had also pre-paid for the boatmen and his skiff. We quickly embarked and crossed to the far side of the river. Not for a moment did we feel the discomforts and dangers of the road, as we rode and occasionally went on foot, thinking neither of food nor sleep . . . So it was that we escaped naked, with our bare existence from Lahore. But we had no material, no funds, no supplies, so were soon reduced again to a state of near-despair.
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Within a few months of his escape from Lahore, Shah Shuja made his first attempt to recover his kingdom.

Aligning himself with Ranjit Singh’s enemies among the disaffected rajahs of the Punjab Hills, Shuja planned to gather a small army, make a surprise raid on Kashmir and seize the valley. It was a smart move, and could have provided a rich base from which to begin the reconquest of his lost throne – for, as William Fraser observed, Shuja was still ‘beloved as a sovereign for his mellowness, leniency and liberality’.
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Moreover the political timing was impeccable: in the aftermath of Ranjit Singh’s raid to free Shuja, the Kashmir Valley was without a clear ruler and was disputed by several powers. But one thing Shah Shuja consistently lacked in his campaigning life was that quality which Napoleon famously remarked was most important for a general: luck.

The first disaster occurred when Shuja tried to get his finances in order and despatched a man to Lahore to bring the 150,000 rupees that he had deposited with the money-changers of the city. Ranjit Singh found out about the plan through his spies, intercepted the money and deposited it in his own treasury.
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Raising more money led to delays, giving Kashmir’s Governor time to garrison and refortify all Shuja’s likely invasion routes. By the time the Shah had succeeding in raising sufficient money to finance an army against the jewels Wa’fa Begum had smuggled out to Ludhiana, then to recruit and train the mercenary force, the secret was out and the campaigning season was over.

But Shuja disdained advice to wait until the arrival of spring. He set off with his new troops over the Jot Pass, up the Chamba Valley, just as the first of the winter snow was beginning to dust the peaks of the Himalayas. In an attempt to reach the Kashmir Valley by an unexpected and unfortified route, he decided to take his troops across the heights of the Pir Panjal. Here, on a bleak ridge high above the dark spires of the deodar forests, only a few days’ march from Srinagar, the force was caught in a blizzard. Shuja’s men found themselves trapped just below the top of the pass, blocked in by snow and exposed to the elements. ‘There was no way to advance or retreat,’ Shuja wrote later, ‘and soon no food and no water. Not knowing how to survive in the snow, the Hindustani troops began to die of the cold.’ Before long the small army was almost wiped out. Only Shah Shuja and a small group of survivors made it over the top of the pass, and hence back to the plains.
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As one British writer put it when he heard the news, ‘Misfortune seemed to follow in the footsteps of this Prince . . . It seemed as if he was but warring against his Fate, which was, over and again, to experience hardships such as fall to the lot of few men.’
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Shuja’s condition was now desperate. In disguise once again, he took an arduous and circuitous route over the mountains with his last few attendants and finally reached the British frontier post of Subbathu in the monsoon of 1816. Met at the border by a small escort, he was taken to Ludhiana. Here his harem had found shelter in a modest haveli near the principal bazaar. ‘Our cares were now forgotten,’ he wrote. ‘Giving thanks to Almighty God who, having freed us from our enemies and led us through the trackless snows, now conducted us to our friends, we passed a night for the first time with comfort, and without dread.’
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In 1816, Ludhiana was the British garrison town on the Company’s North West Frontier. From the flagpole of its Residency flew the last Union Jack between the Company’s Indian possessions and the British Embassy in St Petersburg.

Before Shah Shuja’s arrival, Ludhiana was known mainly as a centre of the flesh trade, through which girls from the Punjab Hill States and Kashmir – considered the fairest and most beautiful in the region – passed into slavery in the Sikh-controlled Punjab and Hindustan.
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Shah Shuja’s arrival with his court-in-exile began its transformation from a centre of slave dealing into a major hub of political intrigue and espionage. Over the decades to come it was to transform into the principal British listening post for the Punjab, the Himalayas and Central Asia: a place full of chancers and hoaxers, deserters, mercenaries and spies, the meeting place of the plotters and malcontents of Afghanistan, Ranjit Singh’s dominions, the disputed valley of Kashmir and the dominions of the Company.
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The Boston-born, hookah-smoking, pyjama-wearing Sir David Ochterlony was the first British Agent in Ludhiana. From there he had established the Company’s exact frontiers with Ranjit Singh. These were guarded by a regiment of Irregular Horse belonging to Ochterlony’s friend James Skinner, the dashing Rajput-Scottish warlord. From their twin bases in Hansi and Ludhiana, Skinner’s ‘Yellow Boys’ became the Company’s first North West Frontier Force, and the first line of defence against whatever might come down the Khyber or over the Sutlej.
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With their scarlet turbans, silver-edged girdles, black shields and bright yellow tunics, Skinner’s men were, according to one contemporary observer, ‘the most showy and picturesque cavaliers I have ever seen’.

When Wa’fa Begum first sent her eunuchs ahead to request asylum from the British in 1812 there had been a disagreement between Ochterlony and his colleagues about taking in the family of the fallen Shah. The Delhi Resident Charles Metcalfe, who had negotiated the Company’s original treaty with Ranjit Singh at the time of Napoleon’s planned invasion of India, argued strongly against the move, saying it would strain relations with an important ally with little benefit to the Company. It was, he wrote, ‘an event so pregnant with inconvenience, embarrassment and probable expense, as to render it extremely desirous that it should not take place, and should be discouraged by every means consistent with the observance of respect due to her rank and misfortunes’.
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Ochterlony was having none of it. He knew from personal experience what it was like to be a defeated refugee: his father was a Highland Scot who had settled in Massachusetts and fought as a Loyalist during the American Revolution. When Washington’s Patriots saw off the British, the Ochterlonys had been forced to flee to Canada; from thence, via Britain, David had entered the Company’s army in 1777. Ochterlony also knew better than most of his contemporaries the etiquette concerning the protection of Muslim women: according to Delhi gossip, he had no fewer than thirteen Indian wives and every evening during his years in Delhi was said to have taken all thirteen on a promenade between the walls of the Red Fort and the river bank, each wife on her own elephant.
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Now, with characteristic gallantry, he took up the cause of Wa’fa Begum, accusing Metcalfe of heartlessness in abandoning the fallen Queen: the Begum, he wrote, ‘was in a forlorn and helpless state . . . A foreigner, a stranger, and a woman of high birth is in misery, and has thrown herself on the protection of a government famed for its humanity and generosity. As the agent of that government I am most anxious to do every justice to its high character.’ He then added, presciently, ‘England has long afforded an asylum and support to exiled princes, and the most unexpected revolutions have restored them to their thrones under circumstances much more improbable than the restoration of Shah Shuja. In which case, though the gratitude of princes is not proverbial, the hospitality of the British government might give us a friend in a quarter where one may someday be required.’
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Ochterlony’s argument persuaded the Governor General, and the Begum was given asylum.

Wa’fa Begum and her women had limped into Ludhiana from Lahore on 2 December 1814. The one British official in the town that day reported their bedraggled arrival, and their nervousness about crossing the British frontier without passports or permissions. ‘I thought it would allay their apprehensions to send them word that they might rest assured of their personal security,’ he wrote. ‘I was sorry that I had no better accommodation to offer them than the tent I had prepared for them. They expressed their gratitude for the kind reception, but begged to decline troubling me for anything – saying that the protection of the British government was all they would ever ask or receive from us.’
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Within a few months, however, once news of her reception had spread, the number of the Begum’s dependants had increased to ninety-six, and she moved to a semi-ruinous haveli that Ochterlony found for her. As she had no means of support, Ochterlony initially paid the Begum’s bills from his own pocket. Later, he managed to secure her a small annuity from the government.

Two years later, when Shuja announced his intention of joining Wa’fa Begum, ‘from affection for our August Consort and a desire to see our friends, the illustrious English’, Ochterlony’s mix of generosity and strategic foresight again trumped Metcalfe’s caution, and he was allowed to send his assistant, William Fraser, to welcome him at the border.
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Fraser was quick to note the great changes that had taken place in the Shah since their last meeting in Peshawar. Seven years of defeat, betrayal, humiliation, torture and imprisonment had taken their toll, and it was clear that Shuja had become damaged, difficult and depressive. He was also almost pathologically determined to ensure that the façade of his royal status should be maintained despite the reality that he was now no more than what Ochterlony called ‘an illustrious fugitive’ – a refugee dependent on the charity of his former allies. But if Fraser had expected a broken man, he was to be surprised. ‘The Shah arrived at the frontier yesterday,’ he wrote to Ochterlony. ‘I am sorry to learn that he is very Ultra-Royal in his wishes and expectations. He summoned your Munshi and told him he expected that the people of the country should keep at the distance of half a coss from his person, which was a customary observance towards Majesty.’ Like the last Mughals, having lost an empire, his court became the focus of his ambitions, and the more powerless he became the more he insisted on public acknowledgement of his royal status. Yet for all the pretension, the reality of his situation was desperate: