The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (22 page)

Working wherever possible at night to avoid arousing the hostility of the locals, they reached Lahore, Ranjit Singh’s capital, five months after entering the mouth of the Indus. In addition to charting the river, which involved taking discreet soundings of its muddy depths, they had proved by their arrival that the Indus system was navigable up to that point, 700 miles from the coast, though only for flat-bottomed craft like their own. There, provided Ranjit Singh agreed, British goods could be unloaded and carried overland into Afghanistan and across the Oxus to the markets of Turkestan.

The five horses, which had miraculously survived the heat and other discomforts of the long voyage, caused a sensation among the court officials sent to the frontier to welcome them to the Punjab. ‘For the first time,’ Burnes noted, ‘a dray horse was expected to gallop, canter and perform all the evolutions of the most agile animal.’ Further astonishment was to follow when their massive feet were inspected. On it being discovered that just one of their shoes weighed four times that of a local horse, Burnes was asked whether one of these might be sent ahead to Lahore. ‘The curiosity was forthwith dispatched,’ he observed, ‘accompanied by the most minute measure of each of the animals for Ranjit Singh’s special information.’ The coach too, with its lining of blue velvet, drew similar admiration from his officials, and hauled by the five huge horses (‘little elephants’, the locals christened them), this now set out overland for the capital.

A dazzling reception awaited Burnes in Lahore, Ranjit being as anxious to maintain cordial relations with the British as they were to keep on the right side of their powerful Sikh neighbour.. For his highly trained and well-equipped army was thought in Calcutta to be almost a match for the Company’s own forces, although neither side had any wish to put this to the test. The only cause for concern in London and Calcutta was Ranjit’s health, and the inevitable struggle for power which would follow his death. One of Burnes’s tasks was to report on the ruler’s expectation of life, and on the political mood of the kingdom.

‘We passed close under the walls of the city,’ he wrote afterwards, ‘and entered Lahore by the palace gate. The streets were lined with cavalry, artillery and infantry, all of which saluted as we passed. The concourse of people was immense; they had principally seated themselves on the balconies of houses, and preserved a most respectful silence.’ Burnes and his companions were next led across the outer courtyard of the royal palace to the main entrance to the throne room. ‘While stooping to remove my shoes,’ he reported, ‘I suddenly found myself in the arms and tight embrace of a diminutive, old-looking man.’ He realised to his astonishment that it was the mighty Ranjit Singh himself who had come forward to greet his guest, an unprecedented honour. The maharajah now led Burnes by the hand to the interior of the court where he seated him on a silver chair before the throne.

Burnes presented Ranjit Singh with a letter from Lord Ellen-borough. Sealed in an envelope made from cloth of gold, and bearing the British royal coat-of-arms, it conveyed a personal message to the Sikh ruler from William IV. Ranjit ordered it to be read aloud. ‘The King’, Lord Ellenborough had written, ‘has given me his most special command to intimate to your Highness the sincere satisfaction with which his Majesty has witnessed the good understanding which has for so many years subsisted, and which may God ever preserve, between the British Government and your Highness.’ Ranjit Singh was clearly delighted, and even before it was finished gave orders for a thunderous artillery salute – sixty guns, each firing twenty-one times – to be discharged to make his pleasure known to the people of Lahore.

Next, with Burnes at his side, Ranjit was taken to inspect the five dray horses, which were waiting patiently in the heat outside, together with the new state coach. Clearly pleased with this spectacular gift from the English sovereign, he called out excitedly to court officials as one by one the horses were led past him. The following morning Burnes and his party attended a military review, with five regiments of infantry drawn up in line. Burnes was invited by Ranjit to inspect his troops, who were dressed in white with black cross belts, and armed with locally made muskets. The regiments now manoeuvred for Ranjit’s guests, ‘with an exactness and precision’, Burnes noted, ‘fully equal to our Indian troops.’ Ranjit asked him many questions about military matters, and in particular whether British troops could advance against artillery.

In all, Burnes and his companions were to spend nearly two months as Ranjit’s guests. There were endless military parades, banquets and other entertainments, including long sessions spent imbibing with Ranjit a locally distilled ‘hell-brew’ of which the latter was extremely fond. There was also a troupe of Kashmiri dancing girls, forty in number and all dressed as boys, to whom the one-eyed ruler (he had lost the other from smallpox) appeared similarly addicted. ‘This’, he confided to Burnes with a twinkle, ‘is one of my regiments, but they tell me it is the only one I cannot discipline.’ When the girls, all strikingly beautiful, had finished dancing, they were whisked away on elephants – much to the disappointment of the youthful Burnes, who also had a weakness for comely native girls.

There was plenty of time, too, for serious discussion on political and commercial matters, which was the real purpose of their coming. Burnes was profoundly impressed by the wizened old Sikh who, despite his diminutive size and unattractive appearance, had gained the respect and loyalty of this warrior people, every one of whom towered over him in stature, for so long. ‘Nature’, Burnes wrote, ‘has indeed been sparing in her gifts to this personage. He has lost an eye, is pitted by the small-pox, and his stature does not exceed five feet three inches.’ Yet he commanded the instant attention of all around him. ‘Not an individual spoke without a sign,’ Burnes noted, ‘though the throng was more like a bazaar than the Court of the first native prince in these times.’

Like all native rulers, however, he could be ruthless, although he claimed that during his long reign he had never punished anyone by execution. ‘Cunning and conciliation’, Burnes wrote, ‘have been the two great weapons of his diplomacy.’ But how much longer would he remain in power? ‘It is probable’, reported Burnes, ‘that the career of this chief is nearly at an end. His chest is contracted, his back is bent, his limbs withered.’ His nightly drinking bouts, Burnes feared, were more than anyone could take. However, his favourite tipple – ‘more ardent than the strongest brandy’ – appeared to do him no harm. Ranjit Singh was to survive another eight years – greatly to the relief of the Company’s generals, who saw him as a vital link in India’s outer defences, and a formidable ally against a Russian invader.

Finally, in August 1831, laden with gifts and compliments, Burnes and his companions crossed back into British territory, making for Ludhiana, the Company’s most forward garrison town in north-west India. There Burnes met briefly a man whose fate was to be closely bound to his own – Shah Shujah, the exiled Afghan ruler, who dreamed of regaining his lost throne by toppling its present occupant, the redoubtable Dost Mohammed. Burnes was not impressed by this melancholy-looking man who was already turning to fat. ‘From what I learn,’ he noted, ‘I do not believe that the Shah possesses sufficient energy to set himself on the throne of Cabool.’ Nor, Burnes felt, did he appear to have the personal qualities or political acumen to reunite so turbulent a nation as the Afghans.

A week later Burnes reached Simla, the Indian government’s summer capital, where he reported to Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, on the results of his mission. He had shown that the Indus was navigable for flat-bottomed craft, whether warships or cargo-boats, as far north as Lahore. As a result of this discovery it was decided to proceed with plans to open up the great waterway to shipping, so that British goods could eventually compete with Russian ones in Turkestan and elsewhere in Central Asia. Bentinck therefore dispatched Henry Pottinger, now a colonel in the political service, to begin negotiations with the emirs of Sind over the passage of goods through their territories. Ranjit Singh, Burnes reported, would present no problems. Apart from being friendly towards the British, he would also benefit from this passing trade. Burnes’s superiors were delighted with the results of his first mission, and no one more so than the Governor-General who, on Sir John Malcolm’s recommendation, had chosen him for it. He was commended by Bentinck for the ‘zeal, diligence and intelligence’ with which he had carried out his delicate task. At the age of 26, Burnes was already on his way to the top.

Having won the Governor-General’s ear and confidence, Burnes now put forward an idea of his own for a second, more ambitious mission. This was to reconnoitre those hitherto unmapped routes to India lying to the north of the ones which Arthur Conolly had explored the previous year. He proposed travelling first to Kabul, where he would seek to establish friendly links with Ranjit Singh’s great rival Dost Mohammed, and at the same time endeavour to gauge the strength and efficiency of his armed forces and the vulnerability of his capital. From Kabul he intended to proceed through the passes of the Hindu Kush and across the Oxus to Bokhara. There he hoped to do much the same as in Kabul, returning to India via the Caspian Sea and Persia with a mass of military and political intelligence for his chiefs. It was a highly ambitious scheme, for most people would have settled for either Kabul or Bokhara, not both.

Burnes expected strong opposition to his proposal, not least because of his junior rank and the extreme sensitivity of the region. It came as a pleasant surprise therefore when in December 1831 he was informed by the Governor-General that approval had been given for him to proceed. Burnes was soon to discover the reason for this. The timing of his suggestion could not have been better. In London the new Whig Cabinet under Grey was beginning to feel as uneasy as the Tories about the growing strength and influence of the Russians, both in Europe and in High Asia. ‘The Home Government’, Burnes wrote to his sister, ‘have got frightened at the designs of Russia, and desired that some intelligent officer should be sent to acquire information in the countries bordering on the Oxus and the Caspian . . . and I, knowing nothing of all this, come forward and volunteer precisely for what they want.’

He immediately set about making plans for the journey and choosing suitable companions – one Englishman and two Indians. The former was a Bengal Army doctor named James Gerard, an officer with a taste for adventure and with previous experience of travel in the Himalayas. One of the Indians was a bright, well-educated Kashmiri named Mohan Lai. He was fluent in several languages, which would come in useful when oriental niceties had to be observed. It would also be one of his tasks to record much of the intelligence gathered by the mission. The other Indian was an experienced Company surveyor named Mohammed Ali who had accompanied Burnes on the Indus survey and had already proved his worth. In addition to these three, Burnes brought his own personal servant who had been with him almost since his arrival in India eleven years earlier.

On March 17, 1832, the party crossed the Indus at Attock, turning their backs on the Punjab, where they had enjoyed Ranjit Singh’s hospitality and protection, and prepared to enter Afghanistan. ‘It now became necessary to divest ourselves of almost everything which belonged to us,’ Burnes was to write, ‘and discontinue many habits and practices which had become a second nature.’ They disposed of their European clothing and adopted Afghan dress, shaving their heads and covering them with turbans. Over their long, flowing robes they wore cummerbunds, from which they hung swords. But they made no attempt to conceal the fact that they were Europeans – returning home to England, they claimed, by the overland route. Their aim was to try to melt into the background, and thus avoid attracting unwelcome attention; ‘I adopted this resolution’, Burnes explained, ‘in an utter hopelessness of supporting the disguise of a native, and from having observed that no European traveller has ever journeyed in such countries without suspicion and seldom without discovery.’

Robbery, he believed, was their greatest danger, and the expedition’s small treasury was divided among its members for concealment on their persons. ‘A letter of credit for five thousand rupees’, Burnes wrote, ‘was fastened to my left arm in the way Asiatics wear amulets.’ His passport and letters of introduction were attached to his other arm, while a bag of gold coins hung from a belt beneath his robes. It was also agreed that Gerard should not dispense free medicines for fear that this might give the impression that they were wealthy. In Afghanistan, where every man carried a weapon and coveted the property of strangers, one could not afford to be off one’s guard for a second.

They had been warned that if they attempted the Khyber Pass they would be unlikely to get through alive, so instead they crossed the mountains by a longer and more tortuous route. After passing safely through Jalalabad, they took the main caravan route westwards towards Kabul. All around them as they rode were snow-capped mountains, while in the far distance could be seen the mighty peaks of the Hindu Kush. Their problems proved fewer than they had feared, and one bitterly cold night they were allowed to sleep in a mosque, although the villagers knew they were infidels. ‘They do not appear to have the smallest prejudice against a Christian,’ Burnes wrote, and nowhere did he or Dr Gerard attempt to conceal their religion. Nonetheless they were cautious, and most careful not to cause offence. ‘When they ask me if I eat pork,’ Burnes was to write, ‘I of course shudder and say it is only outcasts who commit such outrages. God forgive me! For I am very fond of bacon and my mouth waters when I write the word.’