The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Illustrated Edition). Robert Thomas Wilson

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      AKBAR KHAN.

      relief of Jelalabad, Shah Soojah was assassinated by the adherents of his elder brother—a man, like himself, far advanced in years. The position of Nott at Candahar was precarious, but, when at length relieved, he was able to join Sale and Pollock in an advance on Cabul, where they resolved to avenge the injuries of their countrymen. The chief command was in the hands of Nott, who showed himself a thoroughly capable officer. His first proceeding was to retake Ghizni, and on the 17th of September all three divisions effected their junction at Cabul. It is lamentable to be obliged to add that the city was pillaged by our infuriated soldiers, though perhaps not with the sanction of their commanders, and that needless destruction and slaughter marked the path of the avenging army.

      The English prisoners, including the women and children, had during their captivity been frequently moved about from place to place, often in the most terrible extremities of weather, and under circumstances of great hardship; but when the British army arrived at Cabul, they were on their way back to that city. General Elphinstone had died on the 23rd of April; the other members of the party were alive and well. On the 12th of October, the invaders left Cabul, and again, as on the occasion of their advance, passed through defiles still rendered terrible by the whitening bones of their comrades. The greater part of Jelalabad was destroyed, together with the fortifications; Ali Musjid, in the Khyber Pass, was blown into the air; and Afghanistan was entirely evacuated by our troops before the close of 1842. The policy of Lord Auckland was now completely reversed by his successor, Lord Ellenborough, whose term of office had commenced on the 28th of February. In announcing the withdrawal of the British forces from Afghanistan (which he did in a proclamation dated from Simla on the 1st of October), Lord Ellenborough observed that “to force a sovereign upon a reluctant people would be as inconsistent with the policy as it is with the principles of the British Government.” That, no doubt, was the only just position to assume; but it should have been assumed three or four years earlier, and England would then have been spared one of the greatest and most humiliating disasters in the long course of her history. Our interposition had entailed infinite misery on ourselves and on the Afghans, and it had been absolutely unproductive of any good whatever. The country which we had taken under our protection, and from which we had been ignominiously expelled, was now in a state of anarchy, and, as that anarchy was of our own creation, it behoved us to do something towards the restoration of order. Dost Mahomed was set at liberty by the Anglo-Indian Government; and he whom we had refused to recognise in 1838, whom we had driven forth in 1839, and whom we received as a prisoner in 1840, was in 1843 restored to the throne which he seems to have had a legitimate claim to fill. His reign was thus divided into two parts, and the division is marked by a wide river of human blood.

      After a tragedy, it was formerly the custom to play a farce. One might almost suppose that the principle involved in this theatrical usage had influenced the mind of Lord Ellenborough in a certain exploit which he performed, in a very demonstrative spirit, shortly after the conclusion of the Afghan war. When Sultan Mahmoud took the Hindoo city of Somnauth, in 1025, he carried away with him the gates of the vast temple dedicated to the god Soma, the idols of which he had shattered and cast down. These trophies were taken to the Imperial city of Ghizni, from which Mahmoud ruled his wide possessions; and there they had remained, or something like them had been preserved, during a period of more than eight hundred years. Lord Ellenborough was a man of great ability, but of somewhat grandiose and theatrical tastes, even in the management of practical affairs. He therefore determined to bring back the so-called Gates of Somnauth to the place whence they had been originally removed. The act would have been foolish enough, even had the genuineness of the gates been entirely beyond dispute, which was very far from the case. The Mohammedans could not but have felt insulted by the restoration of anything connected with a gross idolatry, formerly destroyed by one of the most illustrious of Moslem sovereigns; while the Hindoos were simply reminded of their ancient disgrace and humiliation. These considerations, however, were absent from the mind of Lord Ellenborough, or disregarded by him; and on the 16th of November, 1842, he issued a sonorous proclamation to all the princes, chiefs, and people of India. “My brothers and my friends,” he said, “our victorious army bears the gates of the Temple of Somnauth in triumph from Afghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of Sultan Mahmoud looks upon the ruins of Ghizni. The insult of eight hundred years is at last avenged. The gates of the Temple of Somnauth, so long the memorial of your humiliation, are become the proudest record of your national glory,—the proof of your superiority in arms over the nations beyond the Indus. To you, princes and chiefs of Sirhind, of Rajwarra, of Malwa and Guzerat, I shall commit this glorious trophy of successful war. You will yourselves, with all honour, transmit the gates of sandal-wood through your respective territories to the restored Temple of Somnauth.” On the 14th of January, 1843, the gates were carried into Delhi in state, under a canopy of crimson and gold; but the proceedings afterwards created great annoyance in England, and were made the subject of animated Parliamentary debates.

      Again we must revert to tragedy, for it is impossible to pass over, in the events of this period, some terrible circumstances which occurred in Bokhara, and of which two of our own countrymen were the victims. Colonel Stoddart had been sent a few years previously to the Persian camp before Herat, to insist that Persia must abandon the siege of that important position. СКАЧАТЬ