The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (39 page)

According to his friend Mohan Lai, Burnes had viewed the situation as anything but tranquil, even if he had gravely underestimated his own personal danger that night. On the previous evening he had declared that ‘the time is not very far off when we must leave this country’. The Kashmiri took this to mean that Burnes was perfectly aware of the deepening hostility of the Afghans towards the British in their midst. However, he could equally well have been referring to the new policy towards Afghanistan which had just been announced in London. For in August of that year a Tory government led by Sir Robert Peel had replaced Melbourne’s Whig administration and had immediately set about stringent economies. Maintaining troops in Afghanistan was costing a fortune, and it was felt that Shujah should now be made to stand on his own feet, especially as the Russian threat appeared to have receded. It was proposed, therefore, that while Shujah’s own forces should be built up, the British military presence in Afghanistan, though not the political one, should be phased out. For a start, Macnaghten had been instructed to end the lavish payments he had been making to the tribes commanding the crucial passes between Kabul and British India. It was to prove a fatal move, for these previously quiescent tribes were among the first to join the insurrection.

Meanwhile, in the cantonments, instead of venturing out against the ill-armed and (as yet) ill-organised rebels, the British began preparing for a siege. It was only now that they realised their folly in agreeing to move out of the Bala Hissar. The cantonments, it transpired, were singularly ill-sited for defence, being built on low, marshy ground, overlooked by hills on all sides. They were surrounded, moreover, by orchards, which obstructed the defenders’ lines of fire and observation, while the numerous irrigation channels which criss-crossed this dead ground offered an attacker excellent cover. A mud-built wall surrounded the British position, but this was no more than waist-high in some places, providing little protection from sniper or artillery fire. Macnaghten’s engineers had warned him of this at the time of the move from the Bala Hissar, but unlike the majority of Great Game professionals he had little or no military experience, and anyway was confident that no such contingency would ever arise. He had thus ignored their advice, with the result that 4,500 British and Indian troops and 12,000 camp-followers, including some three dozen British wives, children and nannies, found themselves beleaguered in what Kaye described as little better than ‘sheep-folds on the plain’.

Had Macnaghten and Elphinstone acted decisively and promptly at the first signs of trouble they would have been in time to move the entire garrison into the Bala Hissar, with its high, protective walls. But they continued to procrastinate until it was too late to embark on such a risky undertaking. Instead, Macnaghten sought another way out of the perilous situation into which his policies had plunged them all. Using the resourceful Mohan Lai as his go-between, he set about trying to buy the support of key Afghan leaders in the hope of turning the tables on the rebellious factions and tribes. Considerable quantities of largesse were dispensed, or promised (for much of Macnaghten’s treasury was now in the hands of the mob), but it was to singularly little effect. ‘There were too many hungry appetites to appease, too many conflicting interests to reconcile,’ observed Kaye. ‘It was altogether, by this time, too mighty a movement to be put down by a display of money-bags. The jingling of the coin could not drown the voice of an outraged and incensed people.’

With the situation deteriorating by the hour, something more drastic was obviously called for. It was not long before a solution was forthcoming, though whose idea it was is unclear. Mohan Lai was authorised to offer a reward of 10,000 rupees to anyone who succeeded in assassinating one of the principal rebel leaders. The instruction, together with a list of names, was issued to him by Lieutenant John Conolly, younger brother of Arthur and a junior political officer on Macnaghten’s staff. Conolly was at that time inside the Bala Hissar, serving as liaison officer with the anxious Shujah. As elsewhere, contact was maintained by means of fleet-footed messengers, known as
cossids,
who took their lives in their hands running the gauntlet with secret dispatches concealed on them. On learning of the offer of blood-money, Macnaghten professed to be horrified by this thoroughly un-British stratagem. But he had certainly agreed to rewards being offered for the
capture
of hostile chieftains, and Kaye doubts whether Lieutenant Conolly would have acted on his own ‘in a matter of such responsibility’ without the prior approval of his chief. He concludes that Macnaghten almost certainly knew about the offer of blood-money and chose to turn a blind eye to it, even if he did not actually authorise it. As both Macnaghten and Conolly were shortly to perish, this is as near to the truth as we are likely to get.

Two rebel leaders, each high on Conolly’s list, did in fact die not long afterwards in decidedly mysterious circumstances, and claims were immediately put in for the reward. One came from an individual who insisted that he had personally shot one of the men, while the other maintained that he had suffocated the second in his sleep. Mohan Lai was not convinced by their stories, however, and the money was never paid. The Kashmiri argued that he had offered it for the men’s
heads,
and that the claimants had failed to produce these. As it turned out, their elimination did little to ease the plight of the garrison. This sudden gap in the ranks of the rebel leaders neither weakened their resolve nor divided them. For word had just reached them that Mohammed Akbar Khan, favourite son of the exiled Dost Mohammed, was on his way from Turkestan to take personal command of what had now become a full-scale insurrection against the British and their puppet ruler. This fiery warrior-prince had vowed to overthrow Shujah, expel the British and restore his father to the throne.

In the cantonments, meanwhile, things were going from bad to worse. News was coming in of the fall of outlying British posts to the rebels, with considerable loss of life, including the massacre of an entire Gurkha regiment. A number of officers had been killed and others wounded, among them Major Eldred Pottinger, the hero of Herat. The cruel Afghan winter had already begun, far earlier than usual, and food, water, medicines and morale were beginning to run low. So too, it appears, was courage, for the garrison’s one and only major assault on the rebels had ended in a humiliating and costly defeat which saw the headlong flight of the British and Indian troops back to their own lines. Kaye was to call it ‘disgraceful and calamitous’. It took place on November 23, when the Afghans suddenly moved two guns to the top of a hill overlooking the British position and began to bombard the crowded camp below.

Even General Elphinstone, who until now had expended more energy quarrelling with Macnaghten than in engaging the enemy, could not ignore this threat. He ordered a far from enthusiastic brigadier to venture forth with a force of infantry and cavalry. Having successfully seized the hill and silenced the guns, the brigadier turned his attention to the enemy-held village below. It was here that things began to go wrong. There had long been a standing order that guns must always move in pairs, but for some reason, perhaps to give himself greater mobility, the brigadier had only taken one 9-pounder with him. At first the grape-shot from this had had a devastating effect on the Afghans occupying the village, but soon it began to overheat, putting it out of action when it was most needed. As a result the attack on the village was driven back. Meanwhile the Afghan commanders had dispatched a large body of horsemen and foot-soldiers to the assistance of their hard-pressed comrades. Seeing the danger, the brigadier at once formed his infantry into two squares, massing his cavalry between them, and waited for the enemy onslaught, confident that the tactics which had won the Battle of Waterloo would prove as deadly here.

But the Afghans kept their distance, opening up a heavy fire on the tightly packed British squares with their long-barrelled matchlocks, or
jezails.
To the dismay of the brigadier’s men, easy targets in their vivid scarlet tunics, their own shorter-barrelled muskets were unable to reach the enemy, the rounds falling harmlessly short of their targets. Normally the brigadier could have turned his artillery on the Afghans, causing wholesale slaughter in their ranks, whereupon his cavalry would have done the rest. However, as Kaye observed, it seemed as though ‘the curse of God was upon those unhappy people’, for their single 9-pounder was still too hot for the gunners to use without the risk of it exploding, and in the meantime men were falling in scores to the Afghan marksmen. Then, to the horror of those watching the battle from the cantonments far below, a large party of the enemy began to crawl along a gully towards the unsuspecting British. Moments later they broke cover and flung themselves with wild cries upon their foes, who promptly turned and fled. Desperately the brigadier tried to rally his men, displaying remarkable courage in facing the enemy single-handed, while ordering his bugler to sound the
halt.
It worked, stopping the fleeing men in their tracks. The officers re-formed them, and a bayonet charge, supported by the cavalry, turned the tide, scattering the enemy. By now the 9-pounder was back in action, and the Afghans were finally driven off with heavy casualties.

The British triumph was short-lived, though, for the Afghans were quick to learn their lesson. They directed the fire of their
jezails
against the unfortunate gunners, making it all but impossible to use the 9-pounder. At the same time, from well out of range of the British muskets, they kept up a murderous hail against the exhausted troops, whose morale was once more beginning to crumble. It finally gave way when a party of Afghans, again crawling unseen up a gully, leaped unexpectedly upon them with blood-curdling screams and long, flashing knives, while their comrades kept up an incessant fire from near-invisible positions behind the rocks. This was too much for the British and Indian troops. They broke ranks and fled back down the hill all the way to the cantonments, leaving the wounded to their inevitable fate.

‘The rout of the British force was complete,’ wrote Kaye. ‘In one confused mass of infantry and cavalry – of European and native soldiers – they fled to the cantonment walls.’ In vain did General Elphinstone and his staff officers, who had watched the battle from the British lines, try to rally them and turn them back against the Afghans. They had lost all heart and discipline, not to mention 300 of their comrades. As Kaye coldly put it: ‘They had forgotten they were British soldiers.’ So intermixed were the advancing Afghans with the fleeing British that the cantonment guns could no longer be fired in safety. Had the triumphant enemy continued their pursuit, observes Kaye, the entire garrison would almost certainly have been slaughtered. But by some miracle they held back, apparently on the orders of their commander, and shortly afterwards melted away. ‘They seemed astonished at their own success,’ reported one young officer, ‘and after mutilating in a dreadful manner the bodies left on the hill, they retired with exulting shouts to the city.’

The next day, to the surprise of the British, the Afghans offered them a truce. The rebels had now been joined, amid much jubilation, by Mohammed Akbar Khan, accompanied by 6,000 fighting men. This brought the Afghan strength to something like 30,000 foot-soldiers and cavalry, thereby outnumbering the British troops by about seven to one. No doubt Akbar, with such overwhelming force behind him, would have liked to put the whole British garrison to the sword in revenge for the overthrow of his father. However, if he was to restore him to the throne, he knew he must proceed with caution, for Dost Mohammed was still securely in British hands in India. Macnaghten, for his part, realised that he had little choice but to negotiate with the Afghans if the garrison was to be saved from annihilation or starvation. But before he agreed to do so he demanded from Elphinstone a written statement declaring their situation, militarily speaking, to be hopeless, unless reinforcements, reported to be on their way from Kandahar, arrived in a matter of days. For, still hopeful of salvaging his career, he was determined to pin the blame for their predicament on Elphinstone’s ineptitude and the pusillanimity of his troops.

The general duly supplied him with what he wanted, together with a recommendation that they negotiate with the Afghans. The long catalogue of the garrison’s woes (which Macnaghten already well knew) ended thus: ‘Having held our position here for upwards of three weeks in a state of siege, from the want of provisions and forage, the reduced state of our troops, the large number of wounded and sick, the difficulty of defending the extensive and ill-situated cantonments we occupy, the near approach of winter, our communications cut off, and the whole country in arms against us, I am of the opinion that it is not feasible any longer to maintain our position in this country.’ Elphinstone’s gloom had been deepened by two further pieces of intelligence which had just reached him. The first was that Akbar had warned that any Afghan found selling or supplying food to the British would be killed instantly. The second was that the hoped-for relief expedition from the south had been forced back by heavy snowfalls in the passes, and would be unable to reach Kabul that winter.