The Dark Defile (29 page)

With the other chiefs clustering close around so that they could hear, Akbar Khan asked Macnaghten whether he was still prepared to abide by what he had agreed the preceding night, to which Macnaghten replied, “
Why not!
” Mackenzie, Lawrence and Trevor meanwhile found themselves being engaged in conversation by various Afghans chatting to them of this and that. As Mackenzie later wrote, one of them was an old acquaintance who “betrayed much anxiety as to where my pistols were, and why I did not carry them on my person.” Alarmed by the “unusually large numbers of armed men” starting to crowd around, Lawrence suggested to Macnaghten that as the conference was supposed to be a secret one, they should be told to pull back. Macnaghten complained to Akbar Khan, who replied, “
Oh
, we are all in the same boat, and Lawrence Sahib need not be the least alarmed.”

Suddenly Macnaghten and the three officers found themselves grabbed from behind and their arms pinioned as Akbar Khan yelled, “
Bigir! Bigir!
” (Seize! Seize!). Glancing wildly about him, Mackenzie saw Akbar Khan “grasp the Envoy’s left hand, with an expression on his face of the most diabolical ferocity,” while another chief grabbed his right hand. Then “they dragged him in a stooping posture down the hillock, the only words I heard poor Sir William utter being,
‘Az barai khuda!’
—(‘For God’s sake!’). I saw his face, however, and it was full of horror and astonishment.” Mackenzie himself was soon surrounded by “a circle of
ghazis
with drawn swords and cocked jezails,” while the acquaintance with whom he had just been conversing was holding a pistol to his temple. Together with Trevor and Lawrence, he was dragged by his captors through a mass of hostile tribesmen shouting “Kill the Kafir[s]” and “Why spare the accursed!” and demanding that they be given up as
koorban
—a sacrifice.

The three officers were bundled onto horses behind riders who forced their way through crowds of Afghans who, according to Lawrence, were “
armed to the teeth
.” They wheeled their mounts on the frozen snowy ground that was “slippery as glass” to try and dodge the saber thrusts and blows from the butts of jezails aimed at their prisoners. Trevor, who had brought his young and numerous family to safety in the cantonments at the start of the insurrection, was on this occasion not so fortunate. The horse carrying him away stumbled, and he fell, to be at once cut to pieces by a man exclaiming, “
Suggee
, Trevor” (Die, dog Trevor). (Trevor had been especially detested by some Afghans for his role in reforming the levying of cavalry.) Mackenzie and Lawrence, however, got away thanks to the skill of their abductors. Mackenzie described how at one point his captor unwound his turban—“the last appeal a Musalman [Muslim] can make”—to beg the attackers to spare his captive’s life. Meanwhile, the small British escort, seeing what was happening, had bolted back to the cantonments. Only one man—Rajput Ram Singh—rushed forward sword in hand but was cut to pieces.

Lawrence and Mackenzie were taken to the Mahmud Khan Fort, where, according to Mackenzie, Akbar Khan had also arrived and was “receiving the gratitude of the multitude.” Suddenly a
ghazi
rushed at Mackenzie and tried to strangle him. Akbar Khan drove the man off with his sword but then turned to Mackenzie to sneer “in a tone of triumphant derision, ‘
Shuma mulk-i-ma me-girid!
(
You’ll
seize my country, will you!).’ ”

Chapter Fourteen

Man will not help us—God only can.

—LIEUTENANT JOHN STURT, ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE, 5 JANUARY 1842

Those watching from the ramparts of the cantonments could see that the supposed peace conference—just over a quarter of a mile away—had descended into tumult. Nevertheless, as Lawrence wrote, “Not a man was despatched to ascertain the exact truth. Nor a party sent out to reconnoitre; no sortie made, nor even a gun fired, though bodies of the enemy’s horse and foot were seen hurrying from the place of conference … and several officers declared they could see distinctly through their field-glasses two bodies lying on the ground.” Another officer, Lieutenant Warren, even claimed to have seen Macnaghten fall to the ground and Afghans “
hacking at his body.
” However, the usually pessimistic, fatalistic Elphinstone preferred to believe the account of Macnaghten’s fleeing escort, who, doubtless wishing to escape censure for deserting him, insisted that he and his companions had been seized, bound and carried off into the city. Elphinstone dispatched his adjutant general, Captain Grant, to assure the commanding officer of each regiment that though
ghazis
had disrupted the conference, the envoy and his colleagues were safe in the city and would soon return.

But, as the hours passed and there was no firm news of Macnaghten, few in the cantonments doubted that something terrible had occurred. Despite the pleas of many junior officers for an immediate attack on the city, all Elphinstone did was to ensure that “the garrison was got ready and remained under arms all day,” as he himself wrote. He also ordered the arrest of any high-ranking Afghans who had come into the cantonments to trade. The order caused chaos with Afghans scrambling over the icy ground to get away. By evening a great noise rose from the city, which sepoy Sita Ram likened to “the noise of the wind before a storm.” It was the
ghazis
readying themselves to resist the attack they thought the British would surely mount to avenge Macnaghten’s murder. Elphinstone, however, interpreted the yelling as a warning that the Afghans themselves were about to attack and ordered his troops to man the defenses. No assault came, and the night passed uneasily as rumor and counter-rumor flew around the cantonments.

Meanwhile Lawrence and the badly bruised Mackenzie had been subjected to a terrifying ordeal since their capture and incarceration in a dungeon in the Mahmud Khan Fort. As Lawrence later recalled, “[We] sat down together in a corner of the room, but the mob on the outside soon discovered us, and coming up to the small grated window, commenced cursing us and spitting at us through the bars, calling on the soldiers who were guarding us to deliver us up to them as a sacrifice. A severed human hand, clearly that of a European, was then held up for us to look at, while they shrieked out, ‘Your own will soon be in a similar plight.’ A blunderbuss was then passed through the bars, and was just about being fired, when one of our guard struck it up. Towards nightfall the crowd of bloodthirsty wretches gradually melted away.”

Not long after, the captives were visited by several chiefs, “who spoke kindly to us, assuring us no harm would befall us” and who asserted that Macnaghten and Trevor were safe in the city. The mood changed with the arrival of Amenoolah Khan, who threatened the two officers “
with instant death, saying:
‘We’ll blow you from guns; any death will be too good for you.’ ” However, he eventually departed, and toward nightfall Lawrence and Mackenzie’s jailors, having “
in a gentlemanly manner
” relieved them of their watches and rings, gave them sheepskin cloaks to keep out the cold and shared their food with them, after which they lay down. Mentally and physically exhausted, they soon fell sound asleep, but just after midnight they were roused and taken into the city to Akbar Khan’s house through streets “
as silent and deserted as a city of the dead.
”

Akbar Khan himself was in bed. He received them courteously, assuring them that Macnaghten and Trevor were both well, though Mackenzie noticed “a constraint in his manner.” They were then shown into another room, where Captain Skinner was being held, and at last received confirmation of Macnaghten’s fate. Lawrence rushed forward to seize Skinner’s hands. “But being startled by the gravity of his looks,” Lawrence recounted, “I asked him ‘what was the matter?’ ‘Matter!’, he replied, ‘Don’t you know?’ ‘No!’ said I: ‘nothing more than that we have been lucky enough to escape with our lives, and are prisoners.’ ‘The Envoy is dead,’ said Skinner, slowly and solemnly. ‘I saw his head brought into this very courtyard.’ ” He also told Lawrence and Mackenzie that the envoy’s mutilated body had been “dragged through the city, and his head stuck up for all to gaze upon in the Char Chowk [Grand Bazaar], the most frequented and open part of Kabul.”

Skinner was convinced that Akbar Khan himself had killed Macnaghten using one of the pistols the envoy had given him and that had previously been Lawrence’s. Though Akbar Khan never formally admitted his guilt and even Lawrence later had doubts, he likely was the instigator of Macnaghten’s death. Mohan Lal reported that he later heard Akbar Khan privately boasting “that he was the assassin of the Envoy” and also claimed that Akbar Khan had confessed his guilt in a letter. However, whether it had always been his intention to kill rather than capture the envoy, and whether he killed him by accident or perhaps in the grip of what Lieutenant Eyre called his “tiger passions,” is less certain. An account by Akbar Khan’s cousin in a letter that later fell into British hands rings true: “
The Sirdar
[Akbar Khan] at last said to the Envoy; ‘Come, I must take you to the Nawab’s.’ The Envoy was alarmed and rose up. Mohammed Akbar seized him by the hands saying: ‘I cannot allow you to return to cantonments.’ The Sirdar wished to carry him off alive, but was unable; then he drew a double-barrelled pistol from his belt, and discharged both barrels at the Envoy, after which he struck him two or three blows with his sword, and the Envoy was thus killed on the spot.”

The day after Macnaghten’s death, the Afghan chiefs sought to revive negotiations with the British. Akbar Khan, Amenoolah Khan and other leaders dispatched a letter to the cantonments together with a draft treaty stating the terms on which they would allow the British army safe conduct to Peshawar. The British were immediately to quit Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Jalalabad, while Dost Mohammed and his family were to be allowed to return to Afghanistan. Shah Shuja could stay or go as he chose. There was also to be a further exchange of hostages, and the British were to pay the chiefs large sums as the price for being allowed to travel unmolested through the passes.

Before dispatching the draft treaty, the chiefs had shown it to some of the British officers they were holding. Disguised in Afghan robes for their safety—a device that fooled no one so that their escort had to beat off a “
savage mob who yelled and screamed on all sides
” demanding their blood—Mackenzie and Lawrence had been smuggled from Akbar Khan’s house to that of Nawab Zaman Khan, where they had found not only a gathering of the chiefs but also Captains Conolly and Airey, given up as hostages a few days earlier. Conolly confirmed Skinner’s report that Macnaghten’s body was dangling for all to see in the Grand Bazaar, adding that Trevor’s corpse was also on display.

Led by Akbar Khan, the chiefs vehemently accused the captives “
of treachery and everything that was bad,
” insisting that the overtures they had made to Macnaghten had only been a test of his good faith—a test he had failed. Discussion then moved to the treaty. The chiefs told their captives they “would now grant us no terms save on the surrender of the whole of the married families as hostages, all the guns, ammunition and treasure.” The officers attempted to persuade the chiefs to modify their demands and in particular to convince them that to surrender their women would be “
utterly abhorrent to our feelings and at variance with our customs.
” They succeeded in the latter, and, for the moment at least, that demand was removed. Lawrence was also allowed to write a short letter to Lady Sale informing her of the deaths of Macnaghten and Trevor and enclosing another from Conolly to Lady Macnaghten. Lawrence and Mackenzie were then taken back to Akbar Khan’s house.

THE ARRIVAL OF these letters on Christmas Eve—the day that the chiefs sent in the new draft treaty—finally convinced Elphinstone that the envoy was dead. He turned to Eldred Pottinger, still suffering from the wounds he had received during his flight from Charikar. In Pottinger’s own words, “
[I was] hauled out of my sick room and obliged to negotiate for the safety of a parcel of fools who were doing all they could to ensure their destruction” and “would not hear my advice.
” As he soon discovered, there was little to negotiate. Though Pottinger and others urged an immediate assault on Kabul, Elphinstone and his senior officers, including Brigadiers Shelton and Antequil, were convinced there was no alternative but to accept the humiliating terms set out in the treaty.

Emboldened by this supine acquiescence, the chiefs at once increased their demands, this time going well beyond the terms agreed previously with Macnaghten. All the money in the British treasury was to be turned over to them. The British were to surrender most of their artillery and all their spare muskets. In addition, the chiefs returned to their demand that all the senior married men with their women and children should remain as hostages until Dost Mohammed and the other Afghan prisoners held by the British arrived safely in Kabul. Once again, Elphinstone’s inclination was to agree to everything that was asked. He even contemplated handing over female hostages, offering two thousand rupees a month to any man who would surrender his wife. According to Lady Sale, Captain Anderson’s response was that “he would rather put a pistol to his wife’s head and shoot her,” while her own son-in-law, Lieutenant Sturt, declared that she and his wife would “only be taken at the point of the bayonet.” Only Lieutenant Eyre offered himself, his wife and child as hostages “
if it was to be productive of great good.
” Faced by such resistance, Elphinstone told the chiefs he could never consent to such a measure.

On 26 December messengers working for the British brought letters into the cantonments addressed to Macnaghten from political officers at Jalalabad and Peshawar. They reported that reinforcements were on their way from India. Pottinger seized on this news to try once more to convince Elphinstone to resist the Afghan demands. He also argued that the Afghan chiefs were disunited and that Shah Shuja’s position was strengthening. Elphinstone was sufficiently swayed to summon a council of war, at which Pottinger pleaded with the military command not to negotiate with the enemy. They had no right, he said, to bind the hands of the British government by committing it to withdrawing from Afghanistan or to order Sale in Jalalabad and Nott in Kandahar to abandon their posts. He pointed out that Nott had been designated commander in chief—a fact that his inability to get to Kabul did not alter—so that Elphinstone had no authority over him anyway. Neither, Pottinger insisted, did they have any right to expend huge sums of public money to buy their own safety. Furthermore, the enemy was clearly not to be trusted and would probably betray them. The only sensible—and honorable—courses were either to occupy the Balla Hissar and attempt to hold out there or to abandon their baggage, fight their way over ninety miles to Jalalabad and there await the promised reinforcements from India.