The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (37 page)

All this time the authorities in London and Calcutta had been wrestling with the problem of how to free their envoy from this monster’s grip. Originally Macnaghten had been in favour of sending a punitive force to Bokhara from Kabul, but Lord Auckland, the Governor-General, was opposed to British troops venturing any further into Central Asia. Moreover, antagonism towards the British, and their puppet ruler Shah Shujah, was beginning to grow in Afghanistan, and Macnaghten needed all the troops he had to contain possible trouble there. Nor was the Cabinet in London anxious to embark on any fresh adventures in Asia, already having enough on its hands there and elsewhere. In addition to its heavy commitment in Afghanistan, in China the first of the Opium Wars was well into its second year, while nearer to home there were serious troubles brewing with both France and the United States. The plight of a comparatively junior British officer in a remote town in Central Asia did not figure high on Palmerston’s list of priorities, although diplomatic efforts to secure his release continued through the good offices of the Turks and others, albeit unavailingly.

Stoddart’s friends protested that he had been callously abandoned by the British government to the caprices of an evil tyrant. Reports that he had been forced to renounce Christianity and embrace Islam caused particular outrage. But their demands for action went unheeded, and as the winter of 1841 – Stoddart’s third as Nasrullah’s prisoner – approached, his prospects looked bleak indeed. Then, in November of that year, something happened which was to bring him fresh hope. For there rode into Bokhara, on a one-man rescue mission, a fellow British officer and veteran of the Great Game, Captain Arthur Conolly.

Conolly had been travelling in Central Asia on official government business. It had long been his dream to reconcile and unite, under British protection, the three quarrelling khanates of Turkestan – Khiva, Bokhara and Khokand. Such an arrangement, he was convinced, would not only bring Christian civilisation to this barbaric region, but would also serve, together with a friendly Afghanistan, as a protective shield for northern India against Russian encroachments. The total abolition of slavery throughout Turkestan would remove any remaining pretexts for interference by St Petersburg. It seemed, on the face of it, an attractive idea, and Conolly found no shortage of backers, especially in London where few people had any real grasp of Central Asian politics. Members of the Board of Control were particularly attracted to his ideas for opening up the waters of the Oxus to steam navigation. Not only would the natives have the benefits of Christianity bestowed upon them, but they would also be able to buy British goods in their bazaars.

There were others, however, who strongly opposed Conolly’s grandiose scheme. Among them was Sir Alexander Burnes. From his own experience of dealing with Asian potentates, he saw little prospect of Conolly bringing about any kind of alliance between these three disputatious neighbours. And even if he were to succeed, Burnes asked, ‘is England to become security for barbarous hordes some thousands of miles from her frontier?’ Ultimately, Burnes insisted, Russia could only be restrained in Central Asia through London putting strong pressure on St Petersburg, and not by means of vague alliances with capricious and treacherous khans. For although Burnes belonged to the forward school, he was less of a hawk than many imagined, and considered the British presence in Afghanistan quite forward enough.

Conolly, however, was a man not easily deterred. Using his considerable powers of persuasion, he gradually overcame all opposition. At first the Governor-General, Lord Auckland, had been hesitant about letting him go, believing that the Khivan disaster had removed any immediate Russian threat in the region. He therefore saw no point in getting unnecessarily involved there, or in needlessly provoking St Petersburg into retaliatory action. However, in the face of powerful pressure from London, and from Macnaghten in Kabul, he finally agreed to the venture, though with one important proviso. Conolly was to urge the three khans to resolve their ancient differences and to unite against the Russians. He was to try to persuade them of the urgent need to abolish slavery and introduce other humanitarian reforms in order to remove any pretext for a Russian attack on them. But under no circumstances was he to offer them British protection or assistance against the Russians.

He left Kabul for Khiva on September 3, 1840, with a considerably reduced brief, but intent nonetheless on changing the course of Central Asian history. He was to have been accompanied by Henry Rawlinson, but at the last moment the latter was required elsewhere in Afghanistan, which, as it turned out, proved fortunate for him. Conolly’s journey to Khiva was uneventful, and he was well received by the Khan, who held the British in high regard following the visits of Abbott and Shakespear. But Conolly’s visionary proposals for a voluntary Central Asian federation, and far-reaching social reforms, found no favour with him. The Khan clearly had no wish for any sort of an alliance with either Bokhara or Khokand. He seemed, moreover, to have lost his earlier fears of the Russians sending another invasion force against him now that he had freed their slaves. Disappointed, Conolly proceeded to Khokand, where he was also well received. But here too he failed to interest the Khan in an alliance with either of his neighbours. Indeed, at that very moment, the Khan was about to go to war with the Emir of Bokhara.

So far, as Burnes and others had warned, Conolly had achieved nothing beyond gathering useful intelligence on the latest political situation in Central Asia. Only one hope now remained of justifying his mission, and that was to secure the release of the unfortunate Stoddart. During his two-month stay in Khokand, Conolly had somehow managed to make contact with Stoddart, who was enjoying one of his spells of relative freedom. The latter sent him a message to say that the Emir would not be averse to his visiting Bokhara. ‘The favour of the Ameer’, he informed Conolly, ‘is increased in these days towards me. I believe you will be well treated here.’ They were fateful words. Little did Stoddart realise that he was being used by the wily Nasrullah to lure his fellow officer into a trap. For the Emir, whose spies had been following Conolly’s movements, was convinced that the Englishman was conspiring with his enemies, the khans of Khiva and Khokand, to have him overthrown.

In October 1841, despite warnings from both khans to keep well clear of Bokhara, Conolly set out for the holy city, 400 miles away to the south-west, convinced that he could use his formidable powers of persuasion on the Emir to obtain Stoddart’s freedom. It was a foolhardy venture, but Conolly, like most Great Game players, was not lacking in boldness or physical courage. There is another factor, impossible to ignore, which may have affected his judgement and led him to take an excessive risk. A few months before setting out on his journey, Conolly had been turned down for a rival by the woman he had dearly hoped to marry. He had been profoundly hurt by this, and it is possible that as a result he did not care too much whether he returned from his mission or not. Whatever the truth, he entered Bokhara on November 10, travelling via Tashkent so as to avoid being caught up in the war about to break out between the Emir and his neighbour.

Stoddart, pathetically thin after his months of privation, was overwhelmed at seeing Conolly. At first the Emir received the newcomer politely, but soon his mood began to change. This was apparently due to his failure to receive a reply to a friendly letter he had dispatched months earlier to Queen Victoria. This lapse he interpreted either as an intended slight, which caused him to lose face before his court officials, or as evidence that Stoddart and Conolly, who claimed to represent the Queen, were impostors and therefore, as he had suspected all along, spies. Neither was his mood improved when finally there arrived from Lord Palmerston (of whom he had naturally never heard) a note advising him that his letter had been passed to Calcutta for attention. To Nasrullah, who was under the firm belief that his kingdom was every bit as powerful as Great Britain, this appeared to be a deliberate snub. Had Stoddart and Conolly known that a second note, this time from the Governor-General, would soon be on its way, their sense of betrayal and abandonment by their superiors would have been complete. For this described them, inexplicably, not as British envoys but as ‘private travellers’, and demanded their immediate release. But when it eventually reached Nasrullah it was far too late to cause them any further harm. What finally sealed their fate was news reaching Bokhara from Kabul of a catastrophe which had befallen the British in Afghanistan.

Animosity towards the British in Shah Shujah’s newly restored capital had been building up for months, although they themselves had been slow to recognise it. As experienced political officers, Sir William Macnaghten and Sir Alexander Burnes should have been aware of what was going on in Afghan hearts and minds, but relations between the two men had become badly strained. Burnes was to describe himself in a letter to a friend as ‘a highly paid idler’, whose advice was never listened to by his chief. Macnaghten, moreover, had largely lost interest in his present task, for he was shortly due to leave Afghanistan to take up the much-coveted Governorship of Bombay, his reward for successfully placing the British puppet on the throne. The last thing he wished to admit was that anything was amiss. Burnes, waiting to take over from him, and in the meantime having little to do, was too busy enjoying himself to notice the warning signs.

He was not alone in this. Ever since their arrival in Kabul two years earlier, the British had been making themselves thoroughly at home there. Kabul’s exotic situation and invigorating climate had attracted the wives, and even the children, of British and Indian troops up from the hot and dusty plains of Hindustan. Every kind of entertainment was laid on, from cricket to concerts, steeplechasing to skating, with some of the Afghan upper classes joining in the fun. Much of what went on, particularly the womanising and drinking, was to cause great offence to the Muslim authorities and the devout majority. At the same time punitive action, often very severe, was taken against those tribes refusing to submit to Shujah’s (but effectively Macnaghten’s) rule, while others were bribed into submission with lavish helpings of gold, or ‘subsidies’ as they were officially termed. On November 3, 1840, realising that further resistance to the British was futile, Dost Mohammed had voluntarily surrendered to Macnaghten, and had been sent into exile in India. This had moved Macnaghten, impatient to begin his new job in Bombay, to report to Lord Auckland that Afghanistan – to use his own now celebrated phrase – was quiet ‘from Dan to Beersheba’. All things considered, he remarked to one of his staff, ‘the present tranquillity of this country is to my mind perfectly miraculous’.

Not everyone, however, was as easily persuaded as Macnaghten. Among the first to realise the mounting danger was Major Henry Rawlinson, who had very nearly accompanied Conolly to Bokhara, and who was now the political agent at Kandahar. ‘The feeling against us’, he warned in August 1841, ‘is daily on the increase and I apprehend a succession of disturbances . . . Their mullahs are preaching against us from one end of the country to the other.’ Another of Macnaghten’s politicals to sense this growing hostility was Eldred Pottinger, now a major and operating among the tribes to the north of Kabul. Their leaders, he reported, were preparing for a general uprising against Shah Shujah and the British. But Macnaghten, fearful lest Lord Auckland order him to stay on in Kabul, refused to listen to such forebodings. Both men, he persuaded himself, were merely being alarmist.

There were plenty of reasons for this antagonism towards the British and Shah Shujah. For one thing the presence of so many troops had hit the pockets of ordinary Afghans. Because of the increased demand for foodstuffs and other essentials, prices in the bazaar had soared, while taxes had risen sharply to pay for Shujah’s new administration, not to mention his lavish personal lifestyle. Moreover, the British showed no signs of leaving, despite earlier assurances. It looked more and more as though the occupation would be permanent, as indeed some of the British were beginning to think it would have to be if Shujah was to survive. Then there was the growing anger, especially in Kabul, over the pursuit and seduction of local women by the troops, particularly the officers. Some Afghan women even left their husbands to move in with wealthier and more generous lovers, while there was a regular traffic in women to the cantonments. Strong protests were made, but these were ignored. Murderous feelings towards the British possessed those who had been cuckolded – some of them men of considerable influence. ‘The Afghans’, Sir John Kaye, the historian, was to write, ‘are very jealous of the honour of their women, and there were things done in Caubul which covered them with shame and roused them to revenge . . . It went on until it became intolerable, and the injured then began to see that the only remedy was in their own hands.’ Nor did they have to wait for very long. All that was needed now was for someone to light the fuse.