Return of a king, p.32
Return of a King, page 32
Once the accounts had been passed to the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John Keane, he was equally depressed. ‘We are clearly in a great scrape,’ he noted in his diary on 26 March 1841. ‘That country drains us of a million a year or more – and we only, in truth, are certain of the allegiance of the people within range of our guns and cavalry . . . The whole thing will break down; we cannot afford the heavy yet increasing drain upon us in troops and money.’ A few days later he added, ‘it will never do to have India drained of a million and a quarter annually [the real figure was actually much higher] for a rocky frontier, requiring about 25,000 men and expensive establishments to hold it’.30
Yet while policy was in confusion, and money was running out, on the ground the occupation was becoming daily entrenched, with the first and toughest of the memsahibs making the now dangerous journey through the Punjab to the Kabul cantonment. These first arrivals included Macnaghten’s socially ambitious wife Frances, along with her cat and parakeet and five attendant ayahs. This at least provided some relief to the Eden sisters, who had been trying to avoid her company ever since her husband had left her with them in Simla. Then there was Florentia Sale, the indomitable Indian-born wife of ‘Fighting Bob’, who arrived in the summer of 1841 with a grand piano and her winsome youngest daughter, Alexandrina.
Not everyone was delighted by the arrival of the women. John Magrath, the grumpy cantonment surgeon, thought Ladies Sale and Macnaghten were ‘both equally vulgar and equally scandalous’ (without, sadly, giving more details), and was also dismissive of Lady Macnaghten’s abysmal household skills. ‘I dined at the Macnaghtens’ some days ago,’ he wrote in May 1841, ‘and got a wretched dinner for my trouble of riding six miles for it.’ Alexandrina Sale, he added, was ‘ignorant and illiterate’, though he conceded that she was at least said to be ‘good tempered’.
Despite her alleged illiteracy, Alexandrina was soon being courted by half the officers in the cantonment. This Magrath put down to her ‘being the only spinster here and . . . determined to get married . . . One thing in her favour is that she could not lose by comparison.’31 Lady Sale disapproved of most of her daughter’s suitors with their sweet nothings – ‘Fair words butter no parsnips,’ she was fond of observing – but she liked the handsome Lieutenant John Sturt, the engineer who had designed the indefensible barracks, and before long Sturt was widely judged to be well ahead of the pack, much to the envy of his single colleagues.
Lady Sale had had the foresight to bring enough seeds from her garden in Karnal to fill her Kabul borders with English blooms. ‘I have cultivated flowers that are the admiration of the Afghan gentlemen,’ she was writing before long. ‘My sweet peas and geraniums are much admired and they were all eager to obtain the seed of the edible pea, which flourished well. In the kitchen garden the potatoes especially thrive.’32
It was not just the memsahibs who arrived at this time. Seeing Macnaghten reunited with his wife, Shuja now decided to bring his blind brother Shah Zaman and both their harems up from Ludhiana. This was presumably partly because he was missing them, but also because he must have calculated that it was important to move them before the Punjab got any more dangerous, or even closed completely, so cutting him off from his family.
Two young Scottish officers were deputed to the job of escorting the harems from Ludhiana to Kabul, a journey which in calmer times could have been easily accomplished in two to three weeks but which now, with the Khalsa in disarray and with many of its regiments in a state of open mutiny, was a hazardous and uncertain undertaking. To make the commission more difficult still, Shuja decided to send along with his women much of his savings and his celebrated box of Mughal jewels, and word of this soon leaked out.
George Broadfoot, who was put in charge of the caravan, was a practical, red-haired Orcadian giant whose father was the minister of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. He was assisted by his friend, the dashingly moustachioed Colin Mackenzie, originally from Perthshire, who was renowned as the most handsome young officer in the Indian army. Soon after his arrival in Calcutta, Mackenzie had won the hand of the town’s most celebrated beauty, Adeline Pattle, one of six sisters of mixed English, Bengali and French extraction, who had inherited the dazzling dark eyes and skin of their Chandernagore grandmother. The sisters had been brought up between Bengal and Versailles, where their French grandfather, the Chevalier de L’Etang, had been a page to Marie Antoinette, and they spoke Hindustani, Bengali and French among themselves. One of Adeline’s younger sisters married Lord Auckland’s adviser Henry Thoby Prinsep, which – even though Emily Eden described Prinsep as ‘the greatest bore Providence ever created’ – meant that Mackenzie had a direct link over Elphinstone and Macnaghten’s head into Lord Auckland’s council, something that would later prove extremely useful.
From their barracks at Aligarh, the two men made their way to Shah Shuja’s harem via the Taj Mahal and a stop to hunt cheetah in the jungles near Mathura. On arrival in Ludhiana they found that the caravan now consisted of ‘the old blind Shah Zaman, a host of shahzadas [princes], and a huge number of ladies of all ranks and ages, [around] 600 from the [two] zenanas [women’s quarters], with numerous attendants, together with a large amount of treasure and baggage’. In all, it made up a party of nearly 6,000 people, which together with their baggage needed 15,000 camels to transport. Yet the two young officers expected to protect this temptingly valuable and vulnerable convoy with only 500 men. To make matters worse, at the Sikh border they were met by a further ‘escort of picked troops from the Sikh army; but these were affected by the spirit of mutiny then abroad, and were a source of danger rather than protection’, wrote Broadfoot. ‘The Punjab was verging towards anarchy when we started and daily got into greater confusion as we advanced. The Mutinous troops were moving in all directions towards Lahore, and occasionally crossed our path. They had already murdered or expelled their officers before starting . . .’33 The caravan made slow progress, but by careful scouting and intelligence work, they managed to pass safely through the first two-thirds of the Sikh dominions.
Matters however took a more serious turn when they got news, just before crossing the Indus at Attock, that there had been a large-scale mutiny in Peshawar. Worse still, the four disaffected battalions – around 5,000 men – who had heard of their coming, were now blocking the road just ahead of them with all their artillery waiting in position, ‘and were intending to plunder the kafila’. To avoid having to fight on two fronts, Mackenzie broke the bridge of boats after crossing the Indus, so protecting them from their own Sikh escort. For the several days which followed there was a stand-off, until Broadfoot managed to lure the leaders of the mutineers into an ambush, and by holding them prisoner successfully negotiated a safe-passage. He then crossed around Peshawar, faced down a second stand-off with more mutinous border guards at Jamrud ‘who seized a lot of property and made an attempt of a search of the Begum’s palkees [litters]’, and eventually mounted the Khyber Pass – all without firing a shot.34
As they moved on through Jalalabad towards Kabul, both men were appalled by the state of Afghanistan, which they immediately realised was on the verge of breaking out into a major uprising. Broadfoot quickly saw how unpopular the British had become and that the existing garrison was now wholly inadequate to hold the country. ‘The army of occupation was reduced in numbers,’ he wrote, ‘part of it having been sent back to India, while what remained, instead of being concentrated in one or two important places, was scattered in small bodies over a vast country.’35 Broadfoot was also horrified by the sheer lack of knowledge displayed by the British about the Afghanistan they were trying to rule. ‘Our apathy in this respect is disgraceful,’ he exclaimed,
and so is our ignorance of the institutions and manners of the country. When a country is invaded, its resources are always used by the conquering army, the leader of which assumes the government. Lord Wellington administered the civil government of the South of France, collecting the revenues and appointing every functionary. After four years of occupation we are as little prepared to do that effectually here as in 1838; less so, for the desire to learn is diminished, as all think we are soon to quit the country . . . To acquire accurate information of the real resources of the country, the modes of collection, and the rights of the various classes in relation to the State and to each other, never seems to have been thought necessary . . . Consequently, we fail from our ignorance.36
Soon after their arrival in Kabul, the two officers were invited to meet Macnaghten and Burnes, and they told them something of their impressions. But ‘the Envoy took no notice of any of these warnings’, wrote Mackenzie, ‘and Burnes did not like to interfere further: his views were, except in the details, those of Macnaghten, and he was nearly as blind as to what was passing around him’.37 Instead, Macnaghten, ever keen on ceremonial, organised for them to be accorded a grand Bala Hisar reception by Shuja, who he said wished to thank them for safely bringing in his women and treasure, and to present them both with ‘a horse, a sword and a dress of honour’.38
Mackenzie was appalled by the whole farce, and wrote to his in-laws in Calcutta telling Thoby Prinsep that he believed the occupation in its current form was now untenable and that the whole situation was most ‘alarming . . . our gallant fellows in Afghanistan must be immediately reinforced, or they will perish’.39
While waiting for his begums to arrive, Shah Shuja had decided to turn his charm on another young woman. ‘Most sacred Queen, whose banner is the Sun,’ wrote Shuja to Queen Victoria around this time. ‘My Kind and Illustrious Sister, may the Almighty God preserve her! I had the pleasure to receive the congratulatory letter which Your Majesty, out of the excess of your kindness and friendship, wrote me conveying the joyful accounts of your health and prosperity. This caused the garden of affection to bring forth an increase of excellent fruit.’
Never had the Shah felt such fondness for Britain, he wrote, than when he received the Queen’s letter: ‘At that moment the variegated and perfumed roses of concord, and the odoriferous flowers of love, were blossoming and smiling in the parterre of my affectionate heart.’ He went on to tell the Queen what an admirer she now had on the throne of Kabul, and how much he loved her ‘mind resplendent as the Sun, the Mighty Majesty exalted as the Heavens, high as the moon, wise as Mercury, joyful as Venus whose standard is the Sun, fortunate as Jupiter of whom Mars is the Hand, Glorious as Saturn, the ornament of the Hall of Justice and Victory, the splendour of the throne of equity and protection, the brilliant full moon of the Heaven of exaltation and fame, and the Shining Star of sovereignty and fortune’.40
But, whatever feelings Shah Shuja might have for the young Queen, he was daily feeling less and less affection for her servants in Kabul, despite describing Macnaghten in his letter as ‘the high and exalted in rank, the resting place of excellence and valour, the germ of wisdom and discretion, the lofty in worth, the high in place, the distinguished and honourable councillor’. Instead the Shah, ‘regarding his position as more secure than hitherto, and feeling himself less dependent on us to maintain him in it, began to evince some impatience at our presence’, as Macnaghten’s Military Secretary George Lawrence noted. ‘He showed how irksome he felt the restraint, necessarily imposed by the Envoy, on the full exercise of his authority . . . and showed how gladly he would be free of the Envoy’s controlling supervision.’41
At the same time, Burnes was winning the argument within the British administration over the need to increase control over Shuja by replacing the loyal and influential Mullah Shakur with a more pliantly pro-British alternative. Interference in Shuja’s administration had been steadily growing for two years, and with the decision now taken to sack Mullah Shakur the real government of Afghanistan was finally taken entirely into British hands.42 Burnes, wrote Mohammad Husain Herati, favoured Mullah Shakur’s rival, ‘Uthman Khan, who had previously been known as a Barakzai loyalist. ‘This man out of mere self-interest had thrown his lot in with the English and in no way supported His Majesty – so inevitably the flames of discord rose higher. His father before him had been minister to [Shuja’s brother] Shah Zaman and, by his hostility to the Durrani khans, had contributed to the downfall of that monarch. But Macnaghten insisted on giving him the position, because it had been his father’s, without trying the aptitude or character of the candidate.’ He continued:
At the time, Mirza Imamverdi, one of the intimates of Dost Muhammad Khan, notorious for dissimulation and manipulation, who had escaped from Bukhara by pretending to be mad and tearing at his own flesh with his teeth, arrived back in Kabul. He saw no likelihood of success in joining Mullah Shakur’s establishment, but contacted ‘Uthman Khan who was working at a low level in His Majesty’s establishment and within a few days had mounted a propaganda and defamation campaign against Mullah Shakur, so effective that all the Durrani khans and common people repeated the complaints to His Majesty, and Macnaghten and Burnes pronounced: ‘The Mullah’s not up to the job – he must go!’ However much His Majesty countered that Mullah Shakur was a pious, upright and selfless man, and that a better governor could hardly be found, yet it was to no effect. So ‘Uthman Khan was appointed and awarded the title and position of Nizam al-Daula, the chief minister, with authority to decide matters throughout the kingdom. Mullah Shakur was dismissed and put under strict house arrest.
Blind to ‘the inner rottenness’ of Nizam al-Daula, Macnaghten favoured him so excessively that within months ‘he became inflated with self-conceit and began to behave towards great men and small with overbearing rudeness’. Added Herati, ‘Even in the presence of His Majesty, he failed to observe proper decorum. He undermined the older-established, respectable courtiers, both Durrani and non-Durrani, by bringing unfavourable reports about them to Macnaghten, and then determining to reduce or stop their pensions. However much they protested, and however much His Majesty supported their protests, it was all to no avail.’43
As Nizam al-Daula did not get on with Shuja, and was entirely dependent on the British for his position, even the most pro-Sadozai nobles took this as final confirmation of all they suspected: that Shah Shuja was no longer in charge of his own government, and that the British were now holding all the reins of real power. As Fayz Mohammad later put it, ‘Without the Nizam al-Daula’s consent, the Shah’s wishes would go for naught and if a soldier or peasant who had been wronged or oppressed came to the Shah and asked for justice, without Nizam al-Daula’s say-so he would receive nothing but words. This became another bit of evidence for the Barakzais who would say to people, “Aside from his title, the Shah has no say in the affairs of state.”’44
For Shah Shuja, it marked a new level of public humiliation. Continually aware of his debt to the British, he wished to show gratitude and be a loyal ally, but was far too proud a man to accept being reduced to an impotent puppet. ‘I was again called by the King this afternoon,’ wrote Burnes soon after the deposition of Mullah Shakur. It was clear, he noted, that the Shah had ‘a deep-rooted jealousy against the [new] Wazir’.
The King gave me at great length his feelings and his sufferings. He said he had not a trustworthy man in his country; that all were engaged in setting him against us, and us against him – that his enemies were allowed to continue in power – that the portion of his revenue set aside for him was not collected and paid – that his adherents were discontented – that he was kept under by us in all things, yet that they had not gone right; that a pilgrimage to Mecca was his only alternative [in other words, that he should abdicate], and that at Ludhiana he had much power as compared with this part of his reign.45
But Burnes had never taken to Shuja, or rated his abilities, and was in no mood to begin feeling sympathy now. Moreover, his boss was belatedly coming to agree. ‘An expression from Macnaghten today that Shah Shuja was an old woman, not fit to rule this people, with divers other condemnations,’ wrote Burnes in one letter. ‘Ay – see my Travels [into Bokara], and as far back as 1831, ten years ago. Still, I look upon his fitness or unfitness as very immaterial; we are here to govern for him, and govern we must.’46
Just how badly Nizam al-Daula handled the Afghan nobility became apparent shortly afterwards. At the end of August 1841, Macnaghten received a despatch from Auckland telling him that the financial breaking point had now been reached: the Company had been forced to take out a £5 million loan from Indian merchants at exorbitant rates of interest just to continue paying salaries.47 Macnaghten was ordered to make extensive and immediate cuts to expenditure. Moreover, in London a Tory government had just come to power by one vote, and the new Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, showed no wish to continue financing what he and his colleagues regarded as one of Lord Palmerston’s expensive and unnecessary Whig wars.48 Auckland, a Whig political appointee, was now seriously considering his resignation. Macnaghten was aghast: ‘If they – the Tories – deprive the Shah altogether of our support I have no hesitation of saying they will commit an unparalleled political atrocity.’ It would not only be a breach of a treaty but a ‘cheat of the first magnitude’.49
To Auckland, Macnaghten wrote in a rare protest: ‘I cannot help feeling some surprise at these repeated communications [asking for more cuts] after the many expositions I have given of the wretched state of the finances of this country and of the numerous and complicated difficulties I have had to contend with . . . I cannot do more than I have done.’ He went on to outline the trouble he was having managing the increasingly distraught Shuja. ‘Of late I have had several most distressing interviews with His Majesty, and I may safely say that the efforts I have been making towards the reduction of the public expenditure have not only been the cause of much mental distress to His Majesty, but have secured for us the hostility of all the men of influence in the country.’ In the end, however, Macnaghten as the good civil servant realised he must bow to the inevitable. ‘Your Lordship’s perpetual exhortations left me no alternative but to counsel unsparing retrenchment. The enormous expenditure already incurred I am aware necessitates the strictest economy. But what can be done with a Kingdom whose net revenues are only fifteen Lakhs [1,500,000] of Rupees per annum?’50
