Part 30 (1/2)
”The Forward Policy--in other words, the policy of endeavouring to extend our influence over, and establish law and order on, that part of the [Indian] Border, where anarchy, murder, and robbery up to the present time have reigned supreme, a policy which has been attended with the happiest results in Baluchistan and on the Gilgit frontier--is necessitated by the incontrovertible fact that a great Military Power is now within striking distance of our Indian possessions, and in immediate contact with a State for the integrity of which we have made ourselves responsible.”--LORD ROBERTS: Speech in the House of Lords, March 7, 1898.
The operations at the outset of the Afghan War ended with so easy a triumph for the British arms that it is needless to describe them in much detail. They were planned to proceed at three points on the irregular arc of the south-eastern border of Afghanistan. The most northerly column, that of General Sir Samuel Browne, had Peshawur as its base of supplies. Some 16,000 strong, it easily captured the fort of Ali Musjid at the mouth of the Khyber Pa.s.s, then threaded that defile with little or no opposition, and pushed on to Jelalabad. Around that town (rendered famous by General Sale's defence in 1841-2) it dealt out punishment to the raiding clans of Afridis.
The column of the centre, acting from Kohat as a base against the Kurram Valley, was commanded by a general destined to win renown in the later phases of the war. Major-General Roberts represented all that was n.o.blest and most chivalrous in the annals of the British Army in India.
The second son of General Sir Abraham Roberts, G.C.B., and born at Cawnpore in 1832, he inherited the traditions of the service which he was to render still more ill.u.s.trious. His frame, short and slight, seemed scarcely to fit him for warlike pursuits; and in ages when great stature and st.u.r.dy sinews were alone held in repute, he might have been relegated to civil life; but the careers of William III., Luxemburg, Nelson, and Roberts show that wiriness is more essential to a commander than animal strength, and that mind rather than muscle determines the course of campaigns. That the young aspirant for fame was not deficient in personal prowess appeared at Khudaganj, one of the battles of the Mutiny, when he captured a standard from two sepoys, and, later on the same day, cut down a third sepoy. But it was his clear insight into men and affairs, his hold on the principles of war, his alertness of mind, and his organising power, that raised him above the crowd of meritorious officers who saved India for Britain in those stormy days.
His achievements as Deputy a.s.sistant Quartermaster-General at Delhi and elsewhere at that time need not be referred to here; for he himself has related them in clear, life-like, homely terms which reveal one of the sources of his personal influence. Englishmen admire a man who is active without being fussy, who combines greatness with simplicity, whose kindliness is as devoid of ostentation as his religion is of mawkishness, and with whom ambition is ever the handmaid of patriotism.
The character of a commander perhaps counts for more with British troops than with any others, except the French; and the men who marched with Roberts from Cabul to Candahar, and from Paardeberg to Bloemfontein, could scarcely have carried out those feats of endurance for a general who did not possess both their trust and their love.
The devotion of the Kurram column to its chief was soon put to the test.
After advancing up that valley, girt on both sides with lofty mountains and scored with numerous gulleys, the force descried the Peiwar Kotal Pa.s.s at its head--a precipitous slope furrowed only in one place where a narrow zigzag path ran upwards through pines and giant boulders. A reconnaissance proved that the Afghans held the upper part in force; and for some time Roberts felt the gravest misgivings. Hiding these feelings, especially from his native troops, he spent a few days in reconnoitring this formidable position. These efforts resulted in the discovery by Major Collett of another practicable gorge further to the north leading up to a neighbouring height, the Peiwar Spingawi, whence the head of the Kotal might possibly be turned.
To divide a column, comprising only 889 British and 2415 native troops, and that too in face of the superior numbers of the enemy, was a risky enterprise, but General Roberts determined to try the effect of a night march up to the Spingawi. He hoped by an attack at dawn on the Afghan detachment posted there, to turn the main position on the Kotal, and bring about its evacuation. This plan had often succeeded against Afghans. Their characteristics both in peace and war are distinctly feline. p.r.o.ne to ease and enjoyment at ordinary times, yet, when stirred by l.u.s.t of blood or booty, they are capable of great feats of swift fierce onset; but, like all men and animals dominated by sudden impulses, their bravery is fitful, and is apt to give way under persistent attack, or when their rear is threatened. The cat-like, stalking instinct has something of strategic caution, even in its wildest moods; it likes to be sure of the line of retreat[311].
[Footnote 311: General [Sir] J.L. Vaughan, in a Lecture on ”Afghanistan and the Military Operations therein” (December 6, 1878), said of the Afghans: ”When resolutely attacked they rarely hold their ground with any tenacity, and are always anxious about their rear.”]
The British commander counted on exploiting these peculiarities to the full by stalking the enemy on their left flank, while he left about 1000 men to attack them once more in front. Setting out at nightfall of December 1, he led the remainder northwards through a side valley, and then up a gully on the side of the Spingawi. The ascent through pine woods and rocks, in the teeth of an icy wind, was most trying; and the movement came near to failure owing to the treachery of two Pathan soldiers in the ranks, who fired off their rifles in the hope of warning the Afghans above them. The reports, it afterwards transpired, were heard by a sentry, who reported the matter to the commander of the Afghan detachment; he, for his part, did nothing. Much alarm was felt in the British column when the shots rang out in the darkness; a native officer hard by came up at once, and, by smelling the rifles of all his men, found out the offenders; but as they were Mohammedans, he said nothing, in the hope of screening his co-religionists. Later on, these facts transpired at a court-martial, whereupon the elder of the two offenders, who was also the first to fire, was condemned to death, and the younger to a long term of imprisonment. The defaulting officer likewise received due punishment[312].
[Footnote 312: Lord Roberts, _Forty-One Years in India_, vol. ii. p. 130 _et seq_.; Major J.A.S. Colquhoun, _With the Kurram Field Force, 1878-79_, pp. 101-102.]
After this alarming incident, the 72nd Highlanders were sent forward to take the place of the native regiment previously leading; and once more the little column struggled on through the darkness up the rocky path.
Their staunchness met its reward. At dawn the Highlanders and 5th Gurkhas charged the Afghan detachment in its entrenchments and breastworks of trees, and were soon masters of the Spingawi position. A long and anxious time of waiting now ensued, caused by the failure of the first frontal attack on the Kotal; but Roberts' pressure on the flank of the main Afghan position and another frontal attack sent the enemy flying in utter rout, leaving behind guns and waggons. The Kurram column had driven eight Afghan regiments and numbers of hillmen from a seemingly impregnable position, and now held the second of the outer pa.s.ses leading towards Cabul (December 2, 1878). The Afghans offered but slight resistance at the Shutargardan Pa.s.s further on, and from that point the invaders looked down on valleys that conducted them easily to the Ameer's capital[313].
[Footnote 313: Lord Roberts, _op. cit._, vol. ii. pp. 135-149; S.H.
Shadbolt, _The Afghan Campaigns of 1878-80_, vol. i. pp. 21-25 (with plan).]
Meanwhile equal success was attending the 3rd British column, that of General Biddulph, which operated from Quetta. It occupied Sibi and the Khojak Pa.s.s; and on January 8, 1879, General Stewart and the vanguard reached Candahar, which they entered in triumph. The people seemed to regard their entry with indifference. This was but natural. Shere Ali had ruined his own cause. Hearing of the first defeats he fled from Cabul in company with the remaining members of the Russian Mission still at that city (December 13), and made for Afghan Turkestan in the hope of inducing his northern allies to give active aid.
He now discovered his error. The Czar's Government had been most active in making mischief between England and the Ameer, especially while the diplomatic struggle was going on at Berlin; but after the signature of the Treaty of Berlin (July 13, 1878), the natural leaning of Alexander II. towards peace and quietness began by degrees to a.s.sert itself. The warlike designs of Kaufmann and his officials in Turkestan received a check, though not so promptly as was consistent with strict neutrality.
Gradually the veil fell from the ex-Ameer's eyes. On the day of his flight (December 13), he wrote to the ”Officers of the British Government,” stating that he was about to proceed to St. Petersburg, ”where, before a Congress, the whole history of the transactions between myself and yourselves will be submitted to all the Powers[314].” But nine days later he published a firman containing a very remarkable letter purporting to come from General Stolieteff at Livadia in the Crimea, where he was staying with the Czar. After telling him that the British desired to come to terms with him (the Ameer) through the intervention of the Sultan, the letter proceeded as follows:--
But the Emperor's desire is that you should not admit the English into your country, and like last year, you are to treat them with deceit and deception until the present cold season pa.s.ses away. Then the Almighty's will will be made manifest to you, that is to say, the [Russian] Government having repeated the Bismillah, the Bismillah will come to your a.s.sistance. In short you are to rest a.s.sured that matters will end well. If G.o.d permits, we will convene a Government meeting at St. Petersburg, that is to say, a Congress, which means an a.s.semblage of Powers. We will then open an official discussion with the English Government, and either by force of words and diplomatic action we will entirely cut off all English communications and interference with Afghanistan, or else events will end in a mighty and important war. By the help of G.o.d, by spring not a symptom or a vestige of trouble and dissatisfaction will remain in Afghanistan.
[Footnote 314: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 7, (1879), p. 9. He also states on p. 172 that the advice of the Afghan officials who accompanied Shere Ali in his flight was (even in April-May 1879) favourable to a Russian alliance, and that they advised Yakub in this sense. See Kaufmann's letters to Yakub, in Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No.
9 (1879).]
It is impossible to think that the Czar had any knowledge of this treacherous epistle, which, it is to be hoped, originated with the lowest of Russian agents, or emanated from some Afghan chief in their pay. Nevertheless the fact that Shere Ali published it shows that he hoped for Russian help, even when the British held the keys of his country in their hands. But one hope after another faded away, and in his last days he must have come to see that he had been merely the catspaw of the Russian bear. He died on February 21, 1879, hard by the city of Bactra, the modern Balkh.
That ”mother of cities” has seen strange vicissitudes. It nourished the Zoroastrian and Buddhist creeds in their youth; from its crowded monasteries there shone forth light to the teeming millions of Asia, until culture was stamped out under the heel of Genghis Khan, and later, of Timur. In a still later day it saw the dawning greatness of that most brilliant but ill-starred of the Mogul Emperors, Aurungzebe. Its fallen temples and convents, stretching over many a mile, proclaim it to be the city of buried hopes. There was, then, something fitting in the place of Shere Ali's death. He might so readily have built up a powerful Afghan State in friendly union with the British Raj; he chose otherwise, and ended his life amidst the wreckage of his plans and the ruin of his kingdom. This result of the trust which he had reposed in Muscovite promises was not lost on the Afghan people and their rulers.
There is no need to detail the events of the first half of the year 1879 in Afghanistan. On the a.s.sembly of Parliament in February, Lord Beaconsfield declared that our objects had been attained in that land now that the three chief mountain highways between Afghanistan and India were completely in our power. It remained to find a responsible ruler with whom a lasting peace could be signed. Many difficulties were in the way owing to the clannish feuds of the Afghans and the number of possible claimants for the crown. Two men stood forth as the most likely rulers, Shere Ali's rebellious son, Yakub Khan, who had lately been released from his long confinement, and Abdur Rahman, son of Ufzal Khan, who was still kept by the Russians in Turkestan under some measure of constraint, doubtless in the hope that he would be a serviceable trump card in the intricate play of rival interests certain to ensue at Cabul.
About February 20, Yakub sent overtures for peace to the British Government; and, as the death of his father at that time greatly strengthened his claim, it was favourably considered at London and Calcutta. Despite one act at least of flagrant treachery, he was recognised as Ameer. On May 8 he entered the British camp at Gandarnak, near Jelalabad; and after negotiations, a treaty was signed there, May 26. It provided for an amnesty, the control of the Ameer's foreign policy by the British Government, the establishment of a British Resident at Cabul, the construction of a telegraph line to that city, the grant of commercial facilities, and the cession to India of the frontier districts of Kurram, Pis.h.i.+n, and Sibi (the latter two are near Quetta). The British Government retained control over the Khyber and Michnee Pa.s.ses and over the neighbouring tribes (which had never definitely acknowledged Afghan rule). It further agreed to pay to the Ameer and his successors a yearly subsidy of six lakhs of rupees (nearly 50,000)[315].
[Footnote 315: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 7 (1879), p. 23; Roberts, _op. cit._ pp. 170-173.]
General Roberts and many others feared that the treaty had been signed too hastily, and that the Afghans, ”an essentially arrogant and conceited people,” needed a severer lesson before they acquiesced in British suzerainty. But no sense of foreboding depressed Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, the gallant and able officer who had carried out so much of the work on the frontier, when he proceeded to take up his abode at Cabul as British Resident (July 24). The chief danger lay in the Afghan troops, particularly the regiments previously garrisoned at Herat, who knew little or nothing of British prowess, and whose fanaticism was inflamed by arrears of pay. Cavagnari's Journal kept at Cabul ended on August 19 with the statement that thirty-three Russians were coming up the Oxus to the Afghan frontier. But the real disturbing cause seems to have been the hatred of the Afghan troops to foreigners.