History of the War in Afghanistan. Sir John William Kaye

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      CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      [1837–1838.]

      Policy of the British-Indian Government—Our Defensive Operations—Excitement in British India—Proposed Alliance with Dost Mahomed—Failure of Burnes’s Mission considered—The claims of the Suddozye Princes—The Tripartite Treaty—Invasion of Afghanistan determined—Policy of the Movement.

      Whilst the Persians were pushing on the siege of Herat to an unsuccessful termination, and the Russians were extending over them the wings of encouragement and assistance, the English in India were devising measures for the security of their own dominions, which seemed to be threatened by these movements on the frontier of Afghanistan.

      But what these measures were to be it was not easy to determine. It was believed that the danger was great and imminent. There was a Persian army, under the command of the “King-of-Kings” himself, investing Herat, and threatening to march upon Candahar and Caubul. There were Russian diplomatists and Russian engineers in his camp, directing the counsels of the Shah and the operations of the siege. The Barukzye Sirdars of Afghanistan were intriguing with the Persian Court; and far out in the distance, beyond the mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh, there was the shadow of a great northern army, tremendous in its indistinctness, sweeping across the wilds and deserts of Central Asia, towards the frontiers of Hindostan.

      The remoteness of the countries in which these incidents were passing, might have reconciled our Anglo-Indian statesmen to dangers of a character so vague, and an origin so distant; but the result of all these disturbing rumours was an after-growth of new perils springing up almost at our very doors. The Native States on our own borders were beginning to evince signs of feverish unrest. From the hills of Nepaul and the jungles of Burmah came mutterings of threatened invasion, which compelled the British-Indian Government to look well to their lines of frontier. Even in our own provinces, these rumours of mighty movements in the countries of the north-west disquieted the native mind; there was an uneasy, restless feeling among all classes, scarcely amounting to actual disaffection, and perhaps best to be described as a state of ignorant expectancy—a looking outwards in the belief of some coming change, the nature of which no one clearly understood. Among our Mussulman subjects the feeling was somewhat akin to that which had unsettled their minds at the time when the rumoured advent of Zemaun Shah made them look for the speedy restoration of Mahomedan supremacy in Hindostan. In their eyes, indeed, the movement beyond the Afghan frontier took the shape of a Mahomedan invasion, and it was believed that countless thousands of true believers were about to pour themselves over the plains of the Punjab and Hindostan, and to wrest all the country between the Indus and the sea from the hands of the infidel usurpers. The Mahomedan journals, at this time, teemed with the utterances of undisguised sedition. There was a decline in the value of public securities: and it went openly from mouth to mouth, in the streets and the bazaars, that the Company’s Raj was nearly at an end.

      The dangers which threatened the security of our Anglo-Indian Empire, in 1837–38, were seen through the magnifying medium of ignorance, and greatly exaggerated in the recital. But the appearance of the Persian army before Herat; the presence of the Russian officers in the Persian camp; and the intrigues of the Barukzye Sirdars of Afghanistan, were, at all events, substantial facts. It was little doubted that Herat would fall. There seemed, indeed, no possibility of escape. The character of Mahomed Shah was well known; and it was not believed that, having conquered Herat, he would there stop short in his career of conquest. It had been long officially reported, by Mr. Ellis and others, to the Anglo-Indian Government, that Mahomed Shah encouraged very extensive ideas of Afghan conquest, and that the Russian officers about his Court were continually exerting themselves to foster the flame of his ambition. It seemed probable, therefore, that Herat, having fallen into the hands of Mahomed Shah, the Persian monarch would either push on his conquests to Candahar and Caubul, or, having transferred the Heratee principality to the hands of the Candahar Sirdars, and rendered Dost Mahomed such assistance in his wars against the Sikhs as would make him, in effect, the vassal of Persia, would erect, in Afghanistan, a platform of observation which might serve as the basis of future operations to be undertaken, not only by the Persians themselves, but also by their great northern allies.

      It was plainly the policy of the British Government to preserve the independence of Afghanistan, and to cement a friendly alliance with the ruler or rulers of that country. But it was not very easy to discern how this was to be effected. Our Indian statesmen had never exhibited any very violent friendship for the Barukzye Sirdars. Lord William Bentinck had refused to connect himself in any way with the politics of Afghanistan; but he had suffered Shah Soojah to raise, in 1833–34, an army of invasion under the shadow of the British flag, and had done everything but openly assist the enterprise he was undertaking for the recovery of his lost dominions. Some nice ideas of legitimacy and usurpation, suggested by our own position in India, may have closed the sympathies of our Anglo-Indian rulers against men who were simply the de facto rulers of Afghanistan, and who laboured under the imputation of having rather acquired their dominions by right of conquest than possessed them by right of birth. The British-Indian Government had not concerned itself for a quarter of a century about the government of the Douranee Empire; but it now appeared that, because Zemaun Shah had threatened to invade India, and Shah Soojah had demonstrated his incapacity to maintain himself in security on the throne, and to preserve the integrity of his dominions, the English in India, when they thought of establishing a friendly and a permanent power in the country beyond the Indus, turned to the Suddozye Princes as the fittest instruments for the furtherance of these ends. Even in 1833–34 it was plain that the success of Shah Soojah would have delighted our Indian statesmen. Though we declined to aid him in a very substantial manner, our sympathies went with him; and now again it was obvious that we had very little desire to conciliate the friendship of the Barukzye Sirdars, who had long been eager for a closer alliance with the great European power beyond the waters of the Sutlej, but who had always been condemned to have their advances coldly received.

      Before Mahomed Shah had advanced upon Herat, the British Minister at the Court of Teheran, well acquainted with the ambitious projects of the Persian monarch, had earnestly pressed upon the attention of the British Government the expediency of some counteracting movement in the country between Persia and Hindostan. And when it was known to Mr. M’Neill that Lord Auckland had despatched Captain Burnes upon a mission to the Court of Dost Mahomed, he wrote a long confidential letter to that officer, setting forth the advantages of subsidising the Ameer, and placing both Herat and Candahar under his rule. The letter was dated March 13th, 1837. “I sincerely wish,” wrote Mr. M’Neill, “if the Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan and you come to a good understanding, that he were in possession of both Candahar and Herat.”[209]

      And again, in the same communication, he wrote more explicitly: “Dost Mahomed Khan, with a little aid from us, could be put in possession of both Candahar and Herat. I anxiously hope that aid will not be withheld. A loan of money would possibly СКАЧАТЬ