Part 29 (2/2)
But by this time all hope of peace had become precarious. On June 13, the day of opening of the Congress of Berlin, a Russian Mission, under General Stolieteff, left Samarcand for Cabul. The Ameer is said to have heard this news with deep concern, and to have sought to prevent it crossing the frontier. The Russians, however, refused to turn back, and entered Cabul on July 22[305]. As will be seen by reference to Skobeleff's ”Plan for the Invasion of India” (Appendix II.), the Mission was to be backed up by columns of troops; and, with the aim of redoubling the pressure of Russian diplomacy in Europe, the Minister for War at St. Petersburg had issued orders on April 25, 1878, for the despatch of three columns of troops which were to make a demonstration against India. The chief force, 12,000 strong, with 44 guns and a rocket battery, was to march from Samarcand and Tashkend on Cabul; the second, consisting of only 1700 men, was to stir up the mountain tribes of the Chitral district to raid the north of the Punjab; while the third, of the same strength, moved from the middle part of the Amu Daria (Oxus) towards Merv and Herat. The main force set out from Tashkend on June 13, and after a most trying march reached the Rus...o...b..kharan border, only to find that its toils were fruitless owing to the signature of the Treaty of Berlin (July 13). The same disappointing news dispelled the dreams of conquest which had nerved the other columns in their burning march.
[Footnote 305: Parl Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1878), pp.242-243; _ibid._ Central Asia, No. 1, pp.165 _et seq._]
Thus ended the scheme of invasion of India to which Skobeleff had lately given shape and body. In January 1877, while in his Central Asian command, he had drawn up a detailed plan, the important parts of which will be found in the Appendices of this volume. During the early spring of 1878, when the Russian army lay at San Stefano, near Constantinople, he drew up another plan of the same tenour. It seems certain that the general outline of these projects haunted the minds of officers and men in the expeditions just referred to; for the columns withdrew northwards most slowly and reluctantly[306].
[Footnote 306: For details see _Russia's Advance towards India_, by ”an Indian Officer,” vol. ii. pp.109 _et seq._]
A perusal of Skobeleff's plan will show that he relied also on a diplomatic Mission to Cabul and on the despatch of the Afghan pretender, Abdur Rahman, from Samarcand to the Afghan frontier. Both of these expedients were adopted in turn; the former achieved a startling but temporary success.
As has been stated above, General Stolieteff's Mission entered Cabul on July 22. The chief himself returned on August 24; but other members of his Mission remained several weeks longer. There seem to be good grounds for believing that the Ameer, Shere Ali, signed a treaty with Stolieteff; but as to its purport we have no other clue than the draft which purports to be written out from memory by a secret agent of the Indian Government. Other Russian doc.u.ments, some of which Lord Granville afterwards described as containing ”some very disagreeable pa.s.sages . . .
written subsequently to the Treaty of Berlin,” were found by Lord Roberts; and the Russian Government found it difficult to give a satisfactory explanation of them[307].
[Footnote 307: The alleged treaty is printed, along with the other doc.u.ments, in Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1881), pp. 17-30. See also Lord Roberts' _Forty-one Years in India_, vol. ii. p.477.]
In any case the Government of India could not stand by and witness the intrusion of Muscovite influence into Afghanistan. Action, however, was very difficult owing to the alienation of the Ameer. His resentment had now settled into lasting hatred. As a test question Lord Lytton sought to impose on him the reception of a British Mission. On August 8 he received telegraphic permission from London to make this demand. The Ameer, however, refused to allow a single British officer to enter the country; and the death of his son and heir on August 17 enabled him to decline to attend to affairs of State for a whole month.
His conduct in this matter was condoned by the champions of ”masterly inactivity” in this country, who proceeded to accuse the Viceroy of haste in sending forward the British Mission to the frontier before the full time of mourning was over[308]. We now know, however, that this sympathy was misplaced. Shere Ali's grief did not prevent him seeing officers of the Russian Mission after his bereavement, and (as it seems) signing an alliance with the emissaries of the Czar. Lord Lytton was better informed as to the state of things at Cabul than were his very numerous critics, one of whom, under the s.h.i.+eld of anonymity, confidently stated that the Russian Mission to Cabul was either an affair of etiquette or a means of warding off a prospective attack from India on Russian Turkestan; that the Ameer signed no treaty with the Mission, and was deeply embarra.s.sed by its presence; while Lord Lytton's treatment of the Ameer was discourteous[309].
[Footnote 308: Duke of Argyll, _The Eastern Question, _vol. ii. pp.
504-507.]
[Footnote 309: _The Causes of the Afghan War, _pp. 305 _et seq._]
In the light of facts as now known, these charges are seen to be the outcome of a vivid imagination or of partisan malice. There can be no doubt that Shere Ali had played us false. Apart from his intrigues with Russia, he had condoned the murder of a British officer by keeping the murderer in office, and had sought to push on the frontier tribes into a holy war. Finally, he sent orders to stop the British Mission at Ali Musjid, the fort commanding the entrance to the Khyber Pa.s.s. This action, which occurred on September 22, must be p.r.o.nounced a deliberate insult, seeing that the progress of that Mission had been so timed as that it should reach Cabul after the days of mourning were over. In the Viceroy's view, the proper retort would have been a declaration of war; but again the Home Government imposed caution, urging the despatch of an ultimatum so as to give time for repentance at Cabul. It was sent on November 2, with the intimation that if no answer reached the frontier by November 20, hostilities would begin. No answer came until a later date, and then it proved to be of an evasive character.
Such, in brief outline, were the causes of the second Afghan War. In the fuller light of to-day it is difficult to account for the pa.s.sion which the discussion of them aroused at the time. But the critics of the Government held strong ground at two points. They could show, first, that the war resulted in the main from Lord Beaconsfield's persistent opposition to Russia in the Eastern Question, also that the Muscovite intrigues at Cabul were a natural and very effective retort to the showy and ineffective expedient of bringing Indian troops to Malta; in short, that the Afghan War was due largely to Russia's desire for revenge.
Secondly, they fastened on what was undoubtedly a weak point in the Ministerial case, namely, that Lord Beaconsfield's speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, on November 9, 1878, laid stress almost solely on the need for acquiring a scientific frontier on the north-west of India. In the parliamentary debate of December 9 he sought to rectify this mistake by stating that he had never a.s.serted that a new frontier was the object of the war, but rather a possible consequence. His critics refused to accept the correction. They pinned him to his first words. If this were so, they said, what need of recounting our complaints against Shere Ali?
These were merely the pretexts, not the causes, of a war which was to be waged solely in the cold-blooded quest for a scientific frontier. Perish India, they cried, if her fancied interests required the sacrifice of thousands of lives of brave hillmen on the altar of the new Imperialism.
These accusations were logically justifiable against Ministers who dwelt largely on that frigid abstraction, the ”scientific frontier,” and laid less stress on the danger of leaving an ally of Russia on the throne of Afghanistan. The strong point of Lord Lytton's case lay in the fact that the policy of the Gladstone Ministry had led Shere Ali to side with Russia; but this fact was inadequately explained, or, at least, not in such a way as to influence public opinion. The popular fancy caught at the phrase ”scientific frontier”; and for once Lord Beaconsfield's cleverness in phrase-making conspired to bring about his overthrow.
But the logic of words does not correspond to the logic of facts. Words are for the most part simple, downright, and absolute. The facts of history are very rarely so. Their importance is very often relative, and is conditioned by changing circ.u.mstances. It was so with the events that led up to the second Afghan War. They were very complex, and could not be summed up, or disposed of, by reference to a single formula.
Undoubtedly the question of the frontier was important; but it did not become of supreme importance until, firstly, Shere Ali became our enemy, and, secondly, showed unmistakable signs of having a close understanding with Russia. Thenceforth it became a matter of vital import for India to have a frontier readibly defensible against so strong a combination as that of Russia and Afghanistan.
It would be interesting to know what Mr. Gladstone and his supporters would have done if they had come into power in the summer of 1878. That they blamed their opponents on many points of detail does not prove that they would not have taken drastic means to get rid of Shere Ali. In the unfortunate state into which affairs had drifted in 1878, how was that to be effected without war? The situation then existing may perhaps best be summed up in the words which General Roberts penned at Cabul on November 22, 1879, after a long and illuminating conversation with the new Ameer concerning his father's leanings towards Russia: ”Our recent rupture with Shere Ali has, in fact, been the means of unmasking and checking a very serious conspiracy against the peace and security of our Indian Empire[310].”
[Footnote 310: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1880), p. 171.]
Given the situation actually existing in 1878, the action of the British Government is justifiable as regards details. The weak point of the Beaconsfield policy was this: that the situation need not have existed.
As far as can be judged from the evidence hitherto published (if we except some wild talk on the part of Muscovite Chauvinists), Russia would not have interfered in Afghanistan except in order to paralyse England's action in Turkish affairs. As has been pointed out above, the Afghan trouble was a natural sequel to the opposition offered by Disraeli to Russia from the time of the re-opening of the Balkan problem in 1875-76; and the consideration of the events to be described in the following chapter will add one more to the many proofs already existing as to the fatefulness of the blunder committed by him when he wrecked the Berlin Memorandum, dissolved the Concert of the Powers, and rendered hopeless a peaceful solution of the Eastern Question.
CHAPTER XIV
THE AFGHAN AND TURKOMAN CAMPAIGNS
<script>