History of the War in Afghanistan. Sir John William Kaye

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СКАЧАТЬ distant rumours of an Afghan invasion had disturbed the strong mind of Lord Wellesley, much had been learnt both in India and in England concerning the countries between the Indus and the Oxus. The civil and military services of the East India Company, numbering in their ranks, as they ever have done, men of lofty enterprise and great ability, had, since the commencement of the century, brought, by their graphic writings, the countries and the people of Central Asia visibly before their home-staying countrymen. Before the close of the eighteenth century, but one English traveler—a Bengal civilian, named Forster—had made his way from the banks of the Ganges across the rivers of the Punjab to the lakes of Cashmere, and thence descending into the country below, had entered the formidable pass of the Khybur, and penetrated through the defiles of Jugdulluck and Koord-Caubul to the Afghan capital, whence he had journeyed on, by Ghuznee, Candahar, and Herat, to the borders of the Caspian Sea. The journey was undertaken in 1783 and the following year; but it was not until some fifteen years afterwards, that the account of his travels was given to the world. Honourable alike to his enterprise and his intelligence, the book exhibits at once how much, during the last seventy years, the Afghan Empire, and how little the Afghan character, is changed.

      The great work of Mountstuart Elphinstone, published some fifteen years after the appearance of Mr. Forster’s volume, soon became the text-book of all who sought for information relating to the history and geography of the Douranee Empire. But Elphinstone saw little of the country or the people of Afghanistan; he acquired information, and he reproduced it with marvellous fidelity and distinctness, and would probably not have written a better book if he had travelled and had seen more. It was left for a later generation to explore the tracts of country which were unvisited by the ambassador; and for a later still to elicit encouragement and reward.

      Years passed away before government began to recognise the value of such inquiries. When Mr. Moorcroft, of the Company’s Stud-Department, a man of high courage and enterprise, accompanied by Mr. Trebeck, the son of a Calcutta lawyer, set out in 1819, in the mixed character of a horse-dealer and a merchant, upon his long and perilous journey; spent the last six years of his life in exploring the countries of Ladakh, Cashmere, Afghanistan, Balkh, and Bokhara; and died at last in the inhospitable regions beyond the Hindoo-Koosh, nothing but absolute discouragement and opposition emanated from a government that had not the prescience to see the importance of such investigations.[109]

      In 1828 Mr. Edward Stirling, an officer of the Bengal civil service, being in England on furlough, undertook to return to India by the route of Khorassan and Afghanistan. From Sir John Macdonald, the Resident Minister at Teheran, he received every encouragement and assistance; but the Indian Government looked slightingly upon his labours, and neglected the man. The information he had acquired was not wanted; and he was put out of employment, because he had over-stayed, by a few weeks, the period of his leave of absence. Those were days when no thought of an invasion from the westward overshadowed the minds of our Indian statesmen.[110] But when, a few years afterwards, a young officer of the Bengal cavalry, named Arthur Conolly—a man of an earnest and noble nature, running over with the most benevolent enthusiasm, and ever suffering his generous impulses to shoot far in advance of his prudence and discretion—set out from London, proceeded, through Russia, across the Caucasus, and thence through Persia and Khorassan, accompanying an Afghan army from Meshed to Herat, and journeyed on from the latter place to Candahar, and, southward, through Beloochistan and Sindh to India, there was little chance of the information which he collected on his travels being received with ingratitude and neglect. The period which elapsed between the time when those travels were completed and the date at which their written results were given to the world, deprived Arthur Conolly of some portion of the credit which he might otherwise have received, and of the interest which attached to his publication. Another officer had by this time made his way by another route, through the unexplored regions of Central Asia, and laid before the government and the country an account of his wanderings. On him, when Lord Auckland bethought himself of despatching a commercial agent to Caubul, the choice of the Governor-General fell.

      Born in the year 1805, at Montrose, and educated in the academy of that town, Alexander Burnes proceeded to Bombay at the early age of sixteen, and, at a period of his career when the majority of young men are mastering the details of company-drill, and wasting their time in the strenuous idleness of cantonment life, had recommended himself, by his proficiency in the native languages, to the government under which he served. Whilst yet in his teens, he was employed to translate the Persian documents of the Suddur Court, and, at the age of twenty, was appointed Persian interpreter to a force assembled for a hostile demonstration against Sindh, rendered necessary by the continued border feuds which were disturbing the peace of our frontier. In a little while he became distinguished as a topographer no less than as a linguist; and as a writer of memoirs, and designer of maps of little-known tracts of country, soon rose into favour and repute. Attached to the department of the Quartermaster-General, he was employed upon the survey of the north-western frontier of the Bombay Presidency, and shortly afterwards was appointed Assistant Political Agent in Cutch, a province with which he had made himself intimately acquainted. In the young officer a spirit of enterprise was largely blended with the love of scientific research. He was eager to push his inquiries and to extend his travels into the countries watered by the Indus and its tributaries—the fabulous rivers on the banks of which the Macedonian had encamped his victorious legions. It was not long before occasion offered for the gratification of his cherished desires. A batch of splendid English horses had been despatched, in 1830, to Bombay, as a present to Runjeet Singh; and Sir John Malcolm, then Governor of that Presidency, selected Alexander Burnes to conduct the complimentary mission to Lahore.[111] Instructed, at the same time, to neglect no opportunity of acquiring information relative to the geography of the Indus, he proceeded through the country of the Ameers of Sindh, though not without some obstruction, from the jealousy and suspicion of the Talpoor rulers.[112] At the Sikh capital he was received with becoming courtesy and consideration. The old lion of the Punjab flung himself into the arms of the young British officer, and retained him as an honoured guest for a month. Leaving Lahore, Burnes crossed the Sutlej, and visited Loodhianah, where, little dreaming of the closer connexion which would one day exist between them, he made the acquaintance of the ex-King, Soojah-ool-Moolk, and his blind brother, Zemaun Shah. “Had I but my kingdom,” said the former to Burnes, “how glad I should be to see an Englishman at Caubul, and to open the road between Europe and India.”

      From Loodhianah the traveller proceeded to Simlah, to lay an account of his journeying and its results at the feet of the Governor-General. Lord William Bentinck was then recruiting his exhausted energies in the bracing climate of that hill station. He received the traveller with kindly consideration, and listened to his narrations with interest and attention. Full of enthusiasm, with his appetite for enterprise stimulated by his recent adventures, Burnes pressed upon the Governor-General the expediency of extending the fields of geographical and commercial inquiry upon which he had entered, and succeeded in obtaining the sanction of the Governor-General to an expedition into Central Asia, to be undertaken under the patronage of Government, but not avowedly in connection with any public objects. He set out on his overland journey to England ostensibly as a private traveller, but protected by passports designed to show that he was travelling under the countenance of the government which he served.

      Accompanied by Dr. Gerard, an assistant-surgeon on the Bengal establishment; by a young native surveyor, named Mahomed Ali; and by Mohun Lal, a Hindoo youth of Cashmerian descent, who had been educated at the Delhi College, and patronised by Mr. Trevelyan, Burnes set out on his long and perilous journey. Starting at the commencement of the new year of 1832, the travellers crossed the Punjab, and proceeded by the route of Peshawur and Jellalabad to Caubul. Here they were hospitably received by Dost Mahomed. The character of the Caubul chief and of the Afghan nation impressed themselves favourably upon the mind of Alexander Burnes. Of the latter he spoke as a simple-minded, sober people, of frank, open manners, impulsive and variable almost to childishness. He had seen and conversed with Shah Soojah at Loodhianah, and declared his conviction that the exiled Prince had not energy sufficient to empower him to regain his throne, or tact sufficient to enable him to keep it. The character of the Barukzye Sirdar now presented, in the eyes of the English officer, a favourable contrast to that of the СКАЧАТЬ