The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (45 page)

There was nothing very new in Duhamel’s plan. After considering the various alternative routes, all of which had been pointed out long before by Kinneir and others, he settled for a crossing of the Caspian to Astrabad, to be followed by an overland march to Herat. This, he believed, offered the shortest and least exhausting route for the invading troops, since it avoided deserts, mountains and major rivers, not to mention warlike tribes, some or all of which barred the other approaches. The final thrust, which would be made by Duhamel’s hoped-for joint force of Russian, Persian and Afghan troops, would be launched from either Kabul or Kandahar. His own preference was for the former, since this led via the Khyber Pass to Lahore and Delhi, whose large native populations might be expected to throw in their lot with their ‘liberators’. In the event, the general’s plan was never put to the test. Already the war was beginning to go badly for the Russians, and no troops could be spared for such an adventure. Whether, in fact, it would ever have stood a chance of succeeding appears improbable. It seems highly unlikely that those two ancient adversaries, Persia and Afghanistan, would have agreed to forget their differences and join forces, let alone allow a Russian army to march across their domains. After all, they had no better reason to trust the Russians than they had the British. Even with such co-operation, moreover, the military authorities in Calcutta were confident that an invasion force could be destroyed. But Duhamel was right on one point. As the British were soon to discover, there was indeed an ‘enemy within’.

If the general’s plan achieved nothing for his own country, it was to provide British hawks with valuable political ammunition when word of it and another somewhat similar scheme leaked out. Here was damning evidence that St Petersburg, despite its frequent denials, still had designs on India. One cannot but be struck by the number of these invasion plans which somehow reached British ears over the years. It could well have occurred to the Russian military that there was profit to be gained from such leaks, since they obliged the British to garrison more troops in India than would otherwise have been necessary. After all, it was not only the British who were playing the
Bolshaya Igra,
the Great Game.

But if the British had their Achilles’ heel in India, the Russians had theirs in the Caucasus where the local Muslim tribes were still holding out fiercely against the might of the Tsar. Because of the demands of the war in the Crimea, however, the Russian forces in the Caucasus had been drastically reduced. This was the moment, urged the hawks in London and Calcutta, to play Britain’s trump card. Not only should arms be sent to the gallant Imam Shamyl and his followers, but also troops. For ever since the days of Urquhart, Long-worth and Bell, who had given them such encouragement, not to mention false hopes, the tribesmen had been begging for British help, while Shamyl had even written to Queen Victoria, though in vain. ‘An English corps operating in Georgia,’ observed one British commentator, ‘with the aid of Turkey and Persia, and backed by Shamyl and his hardy mountaineers, would certainly have driven the Russians back beyond the Caucasus.’ Others saw the war with Russia as a chance to strike at the Russian fortresses being built along the Syr-Darya. This would not involve the use of British troops at all, it was argued. Arms and advice supplied to the local tribal leaders would enable them to turn the tables on the isolated and weakened Russian posts on the steppe, ‘driving them back to the frontiers they occupied at the commencement of the century’, as one advocate put it.

However, just as St Petersburg had shied away from Duhamel’s plan, the British baulked at similar schemes directed against the Russians, although for different reasons. With the horrors of the Afghan adventure still fresh in everyone’s minds, there was an acute reluctance to meddle again in the affairs of the Muslim states of Asia, even by invitation. This cautious new approach was to become known as the doctrine of ‘masterly inactivity’, in sharp and obvious contrast to the aggressive ‘forward’ policy which, with such disastrous results in Afghanistan, had preceded it. Also the French were beginning to suspect that they had been dragged into the conflict in the Crimea in order to further British interests in the East, and London was most anxious to avoid doing anything which might appear to justify this suspicion. In fact, by now, the war was going very much in favour of the British and French. In September 1854 they had laid siege to Sebastopol, Russia’s great naval stronghold on the Black Sea, since it was considered that its capture and destruction would secure Turkey’s continued independence. The struggle was to last for 349 days and result in heavy casualties and much suffering on either side. But as the Russian surrender became inevitable, Tsar Nicholas, whose attack on Turkey had begun the war, sank deeper and deeper into despair. He finally died in the Winter Palace, from where he had personally commanded the Russian forces, on March 2, 1855. Officially the cause was said to be influenza, but many believed that he had taken poison rather than witness the defeat of his beloved army.

Following the surrender of Sebastopol, and a threat by Austria to join in against him, the new Tsar, Nicholas’s son Alexander, agreed to a preliminary peace settlement on February 1, 1856. This was finalised a few weeks later at the Congress of Paris, called to settle the entire Eastern Question. The principal aim of the victors was to keep the Russians out of the Near East, and the harshest terms imposed on the losers concerned the Black Sea area. All warships, naval bases and other fortifications were banned from its waters and shores. While applying equally to all nations, this obviously hit the Russians hardest. At the same time the Black Sea ports were to be opened to the merchant ships of all countries, a somewhat belated victory for David Urquhart, James Bell and others involved in the celebrated
Vixen
affair of twenty years earlier. The Russians also surrendered the mouth of the Danube, the captured Turkish towns of Batum and Kars, and the northern Balkan territories they had occupied, as well as renouncing claims to a religious protectorate over Christians living in the Sultan’s domains.

Inevitably, the hawks were dissatisfied, but Britain had achieved her main objectives. The Black Sea was now effectively neutralised, and Turkey’s integrity guaranteed by the leading European powers. Russia’s ambitions in Europe and the Near East had been blocked, and fifteen years were to pass before St Petersburg declared that it no longer considered itself bound by the Paris agreement, and began once again to build a powerful Black Sea fleet. Meanwhile, smouldering with resentment at their humiliation, the Russian generals once again turned their attention to the war against Shamyl and his followers in the Caucasus, determined this time to crush them once and for all. But if the British thought that their own immediate troubles were over, they were in for a disappointment. All of a sudden Afghanistan, the problem which would not go away, was back in the news.

On the outbreak of the Crimean War, the Shah of Persia, who had no great love for either the British or the Russians, found himself in a quandary over which side, if either, to ally himself to. He had hoped that, in exchange for his support, the British might help him to regain from the Russians his lost Caucasian territories. Instead they advised him to remain strictly neutral. Aware, however, that he was under strong pressure from the Russians, whom he greatly feared, to join in the war on their side by marching into eastern Turkey, the Indian government swiftly dispatched a warship to the Persian Gulf as a warning. It worked, and Persia remained neutral throughout the war. Russian machinations continued, however. In the hope of fomenting a war between Britain and Persia, St Petersburg worked on the Shah to lay claim once again to Herat, so crucial to India’s defence, while the British were involved in the Crimea. Finally he was persuaded, believing that the British were less concerned now over Herat’s ownership. By the time he set out, though, it was too late for the move to be of any benefit to the Russians, for the outcome of the war in the Crimea had already been decided.

Herat fell to the Persians on October 25, 1856, after only a brief siege. The news, which took a whole month to reach India, caught the British by surprise, despite the warnings of Dost Mohammed in Kabul that the Persians were planning such an adventure. He had asked for arms and other assistance from India so that he could repel any Persian incursions into Afghanistan, but in vain. For London, while instructing the Governor-General to maintain cordial relations with Kabul, ordered him to avoid at all costs interfering in the country’s internal affairs. By the time it changed its mind it was too late. The Persians, nonetheless, had to be driven out, and quickly, lest Herat become an outpost for intrigue against India, or ultimately a base for invasion. For it had not been forgotten that the Russians had a long-standing agreement with Teheran under which they were entitled to establish consulates anywhere in the Shah’s domains that they wished. The British had two options. Either they could march an army, with Dost Mohammed’s agreement, through Afghanistan, and drive the Persians back across the frontier, or they could dispatch a naval task force to the Gulf and bombard the Shah’s ports until he saw sense and withdrew.

The current Governor-General, Lord Canning, was strongly opposed to forward policies – ‘especially for India, which cannot raise the money to pay for them’ – and particularly averse to sending troops into Afghanistan, even as part of a joint force shared with Dost Mohammed. ‘I believe it to be impossible’, he wrote, ‘for an English army to show itself in that country without at once alienating the common herd of the people, who do not care a straw for Herat but who have a lively recollection of 1838 and all that followed.’ It was decided therefore to send a mixed naval and military force to the Gulf, as had been done to good effect when the Persians had laid siege to Herat seventeen years earlier. At the same time a state of war was proclaimed by the Government of India. A formal declaration of war by Britain would have meant the recall of Parliament, then in recess, and Palmerston, now Prime Minister, knew that this recourse to gunboat diplomacy would prove unpopular, even among his Cabinet, so soon after the costly war with Russia. Indeed, when news of the expedition reached Britain there were anti-war demonstrations in a number of cities there.

After a brief but intensive bombardment, Bushire surrendered to the British on December 10, 1856. As the Union Jack was raised over the city the British troops gave a resounding cheer. Believing this to be the signal for a massacre, the defenders and other inhabitants fled into the desert. However, there was no ill-feeling among the attackers towards the Persians. The real culprits, most felt, were elsewhere. As one British gunner put it to his officer when the bombardment commenced: ‘That’s one in the eye for the Russians, sir!’ But British belligerency did not have the immediate effect which Palmerston had hoped for. Two further engagements proved necessary before the Shah bowed to the inevitable, and agreed once again to withdraw from Herat, this time abandoning all claims to it. This was most fortunate for the British in India, who at that moment found themselves facing an internal upheaval which threatened their very survival.

The Indian Mutiny had been incubating for some time, though few had foreseen it. Among those who did was Eldred Pottinger. Not long before his death he wrote to a friend: ‘If the Government does not take some decided steps to recover the affections of the Army, I really think a single spark will blow the sepoys into mutiny.’ However, most of the British in India were convinced that the native soldier was, as one officer put it, ‘perfectly happy with his lot, a cheerful, good-natured fellow, simple and trustworthy.’ Details of the Mutiny, which broke out on May 10, 1857, at Meerut, are beyond the scope of this narrative. Like the Crimean War and the Persian Gulf expedition, it was not part of the Great Game, even if some hawks suspected Russian or Persian agents of having a hand in it. Indeed, the Persians were reported to be openly boasting of this. But even if the Russians were not involved, they did not hesitate to try to take advantage of it.