The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (32 page)

The sudden and unexpected loss of Ghazni proved a devastating blow to Dost Mohammed. A 5,000-strong Afghan cavalry force commanded by his son, which he had sent to try to halt the advancing British, turned back rather than face annihilation. Everywhere Dost Mohammed’s supporters began to melt away, preferring to watch developments from the sidelines. On June 30, 1839, Keane resumed his march, and a week later, opposed only by a line of abandoned cannon, the British appeared before the walls of Kabul. Dost Mohammed, they found, had fled, and the capital surrendered without a shot being fired.

The following day, with Macnaghten, Keane and Burnes riding at his side, Shah Shujah entered the city he had not seen for thirty years. His robes glinting with precious stones, he was borne through the streets on a magnificent white charger, its trappings embellished with gold. ‘The jingling of moneybags, and the gleaming of the bayonets of the British,’ observed Kaye, ‘had restored him to the throne which, without these glittering aids, he had in vain striven to recover.’ But nowhere was there any sign of the rapturous welcome which Macnaghten had so confidently forecast. ‘It was more like a funeral procession,’ added Kaye, ‘than the entry of a King into the capital of his restored dominions.’ Palmerston, however, was delighted with Auckland’s neat exhibition of kingmaking. ‘The glorious success of Auckland in Afghanistan’, he wrote, ‘will cow all Asia and make everything more easy for us.’

Lord Auckland’s original plan had been for the British force to be withdrawn as soon as Shujah had been safely restored to his throne, and was cocooned by his own officials and protected by his own troops. However, it was now clear even to Macnaghten that he remained anything but secure while the able Dost Mohammed remained at large. A cavalry force led by one of Keane’s best commanders was sent out to try to capture the deposed king, but returned to Kabul empty-handed after a month. A subsequent pursuit proved similarly fruitless. Only months later was Dost Mohammed to hand himself over to the British who – to the fury of Shujah, who wanted to ‘hang him like a dog’ – treated him with the utmost respect and sent him into honourable, albeit temporary, exile in India.

In the meantime, in Kabul, the British settled down to the daily routine of garrison life. Race-meetings were organised, business flourished in the bazaars as the British and Indian troops spent their earnings there, and the families of some of the officers began to travel up from India to join them in this exotic new hill-station. Among them was Lady Macnaghten, bringing with her crystal chandeliers, vintage wines, expensive gowns and scores of servants. General Keane, who had been given the title of Lord Keane of Ghazni by Queen Victoria, now returned to India with a major portion of the task-force. But a substantial part remained in Kabul, with smaller contingents at Ghazni, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Quetta, to protect British lines of communication with India. However, if Macnaghten was confident that Shujah could be maintained on his throne by force of British arms, Keane was certainly not. ‘I cannot but congratulate you on quitting this country,’ he remarked to Lieutenant Durand, who was due to return to India, ‘for, mark my words, it will not be long before there is here some signal catastrophe . . .’

In late August 1839, two disturbing pieces of intelligence reached the British garrison in Kabul. The first was that Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Stoddart, who had been sent to Bokhara to reassure the Emir about British intentions in Afghanistan, had been arrested and thrown unceremoniously into a pit filled with vermin. The second, even more worrying item of news was that a large Russian expedition was on its way southwards from Orenburg to seize the khanate of Khiva.

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The Race for Khiva

Ever since William Moorcroft’s visit to Bokhara fourteen years earlier, concern had been growing in St Petersburg over British designs on Central Asia and its markets. By the autumn of 1838, this disquiet matched that of London and Calcutta over Russia’s incursions into the regions surrounding India. In October of that year, shortly before learning of the British plan to replace Dost Mohammed with their own puppet, Count Nesselrode wrote to his ambassador in London to brief him on St Petersburg’s fears. He warned him of ‘the indefatigable activity displayed by English travellers to spread disquiet among the peoples of Central Asia, and to carry agitation even into the heart of the countries bordering our frontier’. Chief among these troublesome travellers was Alexander Burnes, who was clearly intent on undermining Russian influence in Central Asia and replacing it with that of Britain, and also on driving out Russian goods in favour of British ones. ‘For our part,’ Nesselrode insisted, ‘we ask nothing but to be allowed to partake in fair competition for the commerce of Asia.’

The ink was hardly dry on his letter when the news reached St Petersburg of Britain’s proposed invasion of Afghanistan. And if that were not alarming enough, it was followed shortly by the ill-tidings that British action in the Gulf had forced the Shah to withdraw from Herat, thus removing any hopes that Russia might have had of gaining a surrogate foot-hold there. Realising that there was little or nothing they could do about either of these British moves, the Russians decided instead to embark on a bold initiative of their own. This was to seize Khiva, an old dream of theirs, before the British began to venture north of the Oxus, not merely with agents, but with armies and caravans of merchandise. With Britain behaving so aggressively in Afghanistan, the Russians could hardly have asked for a better moment to make their own first major thrust into Central Asia. Nor was their excuse for it easy to fault. Its officially proclaimed aims were to free the many Russian and other slaves known to be held by the Khivans, to punish the Turcoman raiders and slavers who regularly plundered the native caravans bearing Russian goods, and to replace the ruler – just as the British were doing in Afghanistan – with a compliant candidate of their own who would forswear the barbaric practices of his predecessor.

Even Burnes found it difficult to criticise these aims, although it was obvious to him and to his fellow hawks that the Russian advance southwards would not end there. Bokhara and Merv would probably be the next victims, with Herat after that. The only way to prevent this happening would be for British troops, using their newly won base at Kabul, to get there first. It was Macnaghten’s view that Balkh, the crucial bridgehead on the Oxus, should be seized in the coming May, when the passes of the Hindu Kush would be free of snow. From there a swift and effective blow could be struck against Bokhara, where Britain’s envoy, Lieutenant-Colonel Stoddart, was being held prisoner in appalling conditions by the cruel and tyrannical Emir. Next, before the Russians or the Persians could get their covetous hands on it, Herat should be taken into permanent British care. Having come so far, there seemed little point in not taking full advantage of it if the Russians were bent on seizing Khiva. It was classic forward school reasoning. Veterans of the Great Game began to feel that their hour of destiny had come at last.

What finally decided the Russians to press ahead with the seizure of Khiva was a wild (and totally false) report which reached them via Bokhara that a twenty-five-strong British mission had arrived in Khiva with offers of military assistance. On instructions from St Petersburg, General Perovsky, the commander-in-chief at Orenburg, immediately set about assembling a force consisting of 5,200 infantry, cavalry and artillery. He hoped to keep his intention secret until the very last moment. Apart from not wishing to alert the Khivans to his coming, he had not forgotten how one young British subaltern had foiled their plans at Herat, and had no wish for anything like that to happen again. Finally he wanted to see the British fully committed to their Afghan adventure, so that they would be in no position to protest about similar kingmaking activities by St Petersburg at Khiva. In case rumours began to leak out about the preparations, the expedition was to be officially described as a ‘scientific’ one to the Aral Sea, which lay on its route. Indeed, in the coming years ‘scientific expeditions’ were frequently to serve as covers for Russian Great Game activities, while the British preferred to send their officers, similarly engaged, on ‘shooting leave’, thus enabling them to be disowned if necessary.

In the event the Russians found it impossible to maintain secrecy for very long. As we have seen, the British first learned of Perovsky’s preparations in the summer of 1839, three months before the expedition’s departure. The warning had come from Khiva itself, after rumours reached the Khan’s ears through his efficient network of spies. There are two versions of how it travelled from there to Herat, where there were still British officers stationed following the Shah’s withdrawal. According to one, the Khan of Khiva, in a state of panic, sent an envoy post-haste to the Heratis to beg assistance, knowing that they had successfully held off the Persians and their Russian advisers. According to the British account, it was one of their own native agents who had returned from Khiva with the news that a Russian army – rumoured to be 100,000 strong – was about to set out from Orenburg. In any event, on hearing of it, Major d’Arcy Todd, the senior British officer at Herat, at once dispatched messengers to Teheran and Kabul to alert his superiors to the danger. In the meantime, he determined to do whatever he could from Herat to prevent Khiva from falling into the hands of the Russians.

It being impossible for him to desert his own post, he decided to dispatch Captain James Abbott, a resourceful officer on his staff, to Khiva to offer to negotiate with the advancing Russians on the Khan’s behalf. If the Khan could be persuaded to release all his Russian slaves, then St Petersburg would no longer have any excuse for advancing into Khivan territory. The threat to the Khan’s throne, not to mention that to British India, might thus be removed. It was Abbott’s task to convince the Khan of the urgent need to jettison the slaves before Perovsky advanced too far to turn back. Wearing Afghan dress, and with the fate of Colonel Stoddart, the last British officer to be sent to one of the Central Asian khanates, very much in mind, Abbott set off alone for Khiva, 500 miles away to the north, on Christmas Eve 1839.

Meanwhile, 1,500 miles to the north, General Perovsky had also departed for Khiva. Accompanied by more than 5,000 troops, both Russian and Cossack, he was followed by a train of 10,000 camels bearing their ammunition and equipment. Before setting out on their long and gruelling march across steppe and desert, the general had assembled his men in Orenburg’s main square and read out a special order of the day. ‘By command of His Majesty the Emperor,’ he declared, ‘we are going to march against Khiva.’ Although rumours of their destination had long been rife, this was the first that the troops had been told officially of the expedition’s objective. Hitherto they had been informed that they were to serve as an escort to a scientific mission to the Aral Sea. ‘Khiva’, the general continued, ‘has for many years tried the patience of a strong but magnanimous power, and has at last brought down upon itself the wrath which its hostile conduct has provoked.’ Honour and glory would be their reward, he told them, for braving danger and hardship to rescue their brethren who were languishing in bondage. Thorough preparations, however, had been made for the journey, and these, together with their own determination to reach Khiva, would ensure them victory. ‘In two months, with God’s help,’ he promised, ‘we shall be in Khiva.’

At first everything went according to plan. The early winter months had been deliberately chosen because of the intense heat of the desert in summer and the difficulty of obtaining water for so large a force along the 1,000-mile route. It was the general’s aim to reach Khiva before the worst of the Central Asian winter closed in on them in February. Nonetheless, the cold came as something of a shock to men who, in the words of the official report of the expedition, ‘had always lived in warm houses, and rarely ventured out of doors except when hunting or performing short journeys’. At night in their felt tents the Russians covered themselves from head to foot with their sheepskin coats to protect their noses and other extremities from frostbite. Even so the men’s breath and sweat caused their hair and moustaches to freeze to their sheepskins, and when they rose in the mornings ‘it took them a considerable time to disentangle themselves’. Fortunately, however, the troops were extremely hardy and soon began to adjust to the sub-zero temperatures.