Return of a King Read online

  Major-General William Elphinstone (1782–1842): William Elphinstone was an elderly cousin of Mountstuart who, before being appointed as Commander-in-Chief at Kabul at the age of fifty-eight, had last seen action when he commanded the 33rd Foot at Waterloo. After years on half-pay he had returned to active service only in 1837, at the age of fifty-five, in order to pay off his growing debts. To his friends such as Lord Auckland, Elphinstone was a man of great personal charm, but he had no liking or feeling for India or the Indian troops he had to lead, and he described his sepoys as ‘negroes’. He arrived in Afghanistan suffering from severe gout and his condition got rapidly worse. General Nott described him as ‘incompetent’, an assessment that was rapidly proved all too accurate by his failure to act at the start of the uprising and his subsequent retreat into depressive indecision. He was wounded in the retreat from Kabul and after lingering for three months died of a combination of wounds, depression and dysentery at Tezin on 23 April 1842.

  Sir William Hay Macnaghten (1793–1841): Macnaghten was a bookish scholar, linguist and former judge from Ulster who had been promoted from his court room to run the Company’s bureaucracy: ‘our Lord Palmerston’, Emily Eden called him, ‘a dry sensible man, who wears an enormous pair of blue spectacles’. He was widely respected for his intelligence, but many disliked his pomposity while others questioned whether this ‘man of the desk’ was at all suited to his new job as chief adviser to the Governor General. It was Macnaghten who taught Lord Auckland to look upon Dost Mohammad as an enemy of British interests, and in collaboration with Claude Wade pushed for regime change in Kabul by aiding Shah Shuja to regain his throne. Having designed the policy of the invasion, Macnaghten asked to be sent out to Kabul to implement it, but his administration was not a success and he soon found himself sending delusionally optimistic despatches to Lord Auckland about the ‘perfect tranquillity’ of Afghanistan in the face of the anxious reports his officials were sending in from across the country. He failed to spur his generals into effective action during the rebellion of November 1841 and was killed by Akbar Khan during negotiations outside the cantonment on 23 December 1841.

  Major Claude Wade (1794–1861): Wade was a Bengal-born Persian scholar who, during his period as British agent in Ludhiana, transformed the position from just running relations with Ranjit Singh’s Sikh court to controlling a network of ‘intelligencers’ across the Himalayas and Central Asia. In this way Wade effectively turned himself into the first spymaster of the Great Game. It was Wade who first suggested using Shah Shuja to bring about regime change in Afghanistan, and partly out of a sense of competition with Alexander Burnes, who favoured an alliance with Dost Mohammad, pushed forward the policy of restoring the Sadozais to the throne. During the invasion of 1839 he was meant to lead a mixed force of Company troops and Ranjit Singh’s Punjabi Muslims up the Khyber, but he failed to gather more than a handful of Punjabis. He nevertheless forced the Khyber on 23 July. On the death of Ranjit Singh, he fell out with the Khalsa, and the Sikhs asked Auckland to have him replaced. He finished his career in the less sensitive posting of Resident in Indore, before retiring to the Isle of Wight in 1844.

  Sir Alexander Burnes (1805–41): Burnes was an energetic, high-spirited and resourceful young Highland Scot whose skill in languages won him swift promotion. He led two expeditions of exploration into Afghanistan and Central Asia in 1830–2 and 1836–8, both nominally commercial, but in reality political, gathering detailed intelligence for the Company. On the second expedition, the discovery of a rival Russian delegation also wooing Dost Mohammad of Kabul led Burnes to urge Calcutta to sign a treaty of friendship, but his advice was ignored and Lord Auckland decided instead to replace Dost Mohammad with the more pliable Shah Shuja. Burnes strongly opposed this course, but agreed to support it after he was offered a baronetcy and the position of deputy to the Envoy, Sir William Macnaghten. In Kabul, his talents were wasted as Macnaghten took sole control of the administration and he threw himself instead into the pursuit of the women of Afghanistan. In this way he made himself the hate figure he remains to this day in Afghanistan; and it was this, according to the Afghan accounts, that helped sparked the final fatal explosion in Kabul and his own gruesome death on 2 November.

  Charles Masson (1800–53): After faking his own death and deserting his regiment during the siege of Bharatpur in 1826, Masson crossed the Indus and explored Afghanistan on foot. He became the first westerner to explore Afghanistan’s archaeology, locating the remains of the great Bactrian city of Bagram and excavating Buddhist stupas. Somehow Claude Wade learned the secret of Masson’s real identity as a deserter, and before long had blackmailed him into becoming an ‘intelligencer’, so ensuring a stream of regular and accurate reports from Afghanistan. Masson assisted Burnes during his 1837–8 negotiations with Dost Mohammad, but unlike Burnes failed to find a position in the subsequent invasion and occupation, despite knowing Afghanistan better than any other Englishman. He eventually made his way back to England where he died in poverty near Potters Bar in 1853 ‘of an uncertain disease of the brain’.

  Brigadier General John Shelton of the 44th Foot (d. 1844): Shelton was a cantankerous, rude and boorish man who had lost his right arm in the Peninsular War. He was a rigid disciplinarian and known to be ‘a tyrant to his regiment’. On arrival in Kabul he soon made himself disliked in the cantonment, quickly falling out with the gentle and gentlemanly Major-General Elphinstone. ‘His manner was most contumacious from the day of his arrival,’ the General wrote later. ‘He never gave me information or advice, but invariably found fault with all that was done.’ This dysfunctional pair of commanders could not agree on a strategy at the outbreak of the uprising in November 1841, but eventually Shelton got his way and at his suggestion the Kabul army marched out of the cantonments on 6 January 1842, only to be annihilated in the snows of the high passes. Shelton was taken hostage, and later tried by court martial, but honourably acquitted. When he was thrown from his horse and died in Dublin in 1844, his men turned out on the parade and gave three cheers to celebrate his demise.

  Colin Mackenzie (1806–81): Originally from Perthshire, Mackenzie was renowned as the most handsome young officer in the Indian army. In 1841, as Assistant Political Agent in Peshawar, he went to Kabul where he was caught at the outbreak of the uprising. One of the few British officers to distinguish himself with intelligence and bravery during the fighting, he was eventually taken hostage by Akbar Khan but survived the war to raise and command a Sikh regiment on the Frontier.

  George Lawrence (1804–84): George was the elder brother of the more famous Henry and John Lawrence, both of whom later found fame as heroes of the Raj. A bright young Ulsterman, he was fast-promoted by Sir William Macnaghten to be his military secretary. As such, he fought both in the 1839 invasion and in the pursuit of Dost Mohammad, and was present at the latter’s surrender on 4 November 1840. He narrowly escaped death three times: at the outbreak of the uprising in November 1841, at the time of the murder of Macnaghten on 23 December and again during the retreat from Kabul, when he was taken hostage. He survived the war, only to be made prisoner again during the subsequent Sikh war in 1846.

  Eldred Pottinger (1811–43): Pottinger was the nephew of the spymaster of Bhuj, and Burnes’s former boss, Sir Henry Pottinger. His presence in disguise in Herat during the Persian siege of 1837–8 was probably more than fortuitous, and provided a stream of much-needed information for the British. In British accounts he is usually credited with steeling the resolve of the Heratis to defend their city, though this is not a version of events which is supported by any of the many Persian or Afghan chronicles of the siege, where Pottinger is notable for his absence. At the outbreak of the uprising in November 1841, Pottinger was besieged a second time at Charikar to the north of Kabul, and almost alone of the garrison there made it through alive to the Kabul cantonments. When the capitulation to the rebels was made, against his advice, he was one of the hostages left with Akbar Khan and was in captivity fo
r nine months, until General Pollock took Kabul in Sept 1842. He was subsequently court-martialled and although completely exonerated, received no reward for his work in Afghanistan and resigned from the Company service. He went off to stay with his uncle, Sir Henry Pottinger, in Hong Kong and there Eldred died in 1843.

  General William Nott (1782–1845): Nott was a plainspoken yeoman farmer’s son from the Welsh borders who arrived in India in 1800, and slowly worked his way up to become one of the most senior Company generals. A brilliant strategist and ever-loyal to his sepoys – ‘the fine manly soldiers’ to whom he was fiercely attached – he showed less talent in dealing with his superiors. Lord Auckland regarded him as chippy and difficult and far from a gentleman, and for this reason he was to be passed over again and again for the position of Commander-in-Chief in Kabul. He was eventually given the command of Kandahar, which he managed to keep quiet while the rest of Afghanistan was in violent revolt. He was to prove much the most effective of the British military commanders, and in August 1842 he marched across Afghanistan, defeating all the forces sent against him, and arrived in Kabul on 17 September, two days after Pollock had retaken the city. He returned to India via Jalalabad and was appointed Resident at Lucknow as a reward for his services in Afghanistan.

  Lieutenant Henry Rawlinson (1810–95): Rawlinson was a talented Orientalist who helped decipher the ancient Persian cuneiform script. It was he who, in October 1837, as part of the British military mission to Persia, first alerted the British to the Russian mission of Ivan Vitkevitch when he accidentally came across Vitkevitch and his Cossack escort in the disputed borderlands between Persia and Afghanistan. He was subsequently posted to Kandahar, where he was Political Agent with General Nott, and together with Nott formed the most capable administration in the country. He accompanied Nott on his march across Afghanistan in August 1842, only to be horrified by the war crimes committed by British troops in Kabul and Istalif. He returned via the Khyber to India, but spent the rest of his career in Persia and the Arab world.

  Sir Robert Sale (1782–1845): Sale was a veteran of the Company army known to his men as ‘Fighting Bob’ as he refused to stay at the back and always threw himself into the fiercest hand-to-hand fighting. Sale fought at the capture of Ghazni, and it was his violent punitive expeditions in Kohistan in 1840 that did much to unite the Tajiks in their opposition to the Anglo-Sadozai regime. At the end of October 1841 he was ordered back to India, punishing the Ghilzai for their resistance on the way out. As his force progressed down the Khord Kabul and Tezin passes they were caught in a series of well-executed ambushes and the expedition, which was supposed to chastise the tribesmen, ended by having a very different victim: in the narrow web of the mountain passes, the hunters found that they had now become the prey. With what remained of his force, Sale reached Jalalabad on 12 November. There his brigade remained under siege until finally breaking out and defeating Akbar Khan on 7 April 1842. They were relieved by Pollock’s Army of Retribution nine days later, and accompanied it to Kabul. On 18 September, Sale was reunited with his formidable wife, Florentia, Lady Sale (1790–1853), who had survived the Retreat from Kabul and subsequently spent nine months as a hostage of Akbar Khan. ‘Fighting Bob’ was killed three years later during the Anglo-Sikh War of 1845. Lady Sale emigrated as a widow to South Africa and died in Cape Town in 1853.

  Sir George Pollock (1786–1872): Pollock was a precise, ruthless and doggedly efficient Company general who had been in India more than thirty years when he received his orders to relieve the besieged British garrison in Jalalabad. His reputation had been built on careful planning and meticulous logistics, and he was determined not to be bullied into acting prematurely. After carefully collecting supplies in Peshawar, he forced the Khyber with his Army of Retribution, finally relieving Jalalabad on 16 April. After another pause to collect more transport and ammunition, he advanced, defeating Akbar Khan in the Tezin Pass and retaking Kabul on 16 September. After destroying Istalif, and burning much of Kabul, he withdrew from Afghanistan and was received by Lord Ellenborough at Ferozepur on 19 December 1842.

  Lord Auckland (1784–1899): George Eden, Lord Auckland, was a clever but complacent Whig nobleman. A confirmed bachelor of fifty-one, on arrival in Calcutta he knew little about Indian history or civilisation, and did little to illuminate himself about either. He knew still less about Afghanistan, and in 1838 allowed himself to be manoeuvred by his hawkish advisers into launching an entirely unnecessary invasion to replace Amir Dost Mohammad with Shah Shuja. Unwilling to commit the necessary resources to the unpopular occupation, he was wholly unprepared for the British defeats which followed. The complete destruction of the Kabul army, as Emily Eden noted, aged ‘poor George’ ten years in as many hours, and he seems to have suffered some kind of stroke. After his replacement by Lord Ellenborough, Auckland lived on in semi-disgrace in Kensington, and died aged only sixty-five in 1849.

  Lord Ellenborough (1790–1871): The son of Warren Hastings’s defence lawyer, he was a brilliant but difficult and unappealing man, whose physical appearance was so distasteful that George IV was alleged to have claimed that the very sight of Ellenborough made him sick. Ellenborough made his career out of Russophobia and was in many ways the father of the Great Game, that contest of Anglo-Russian imperial competition, espionage and conquest that engaged Britain and Russia until the collapse of their respective Asian empires. In October 1841, he was appointed Governor General to succeed Lord Auckland and arrived in India in time to take credit for the success of the Army of Retribution which allowed the British to withdraw from Afghanistan with some of their military reputation intact. He was ‘flighty and unmanageable in all matters of business’, wrote one observer, but ‘violently enthusiastic on all military matters, and they alone seem to occupy his interests or his attention’.

  OTHERS

  Count Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky (1794–1857): Governor of the Russian steppe frontier garrison at Orenburg and the Russian counterpart of Claude Wade, Perovsky determined to match British intelligence operations in Central Asia with intelligence work of his own. In Ivan Vitkevitch, he found a man who he hoped would ‘play the part of Alexander Burnes’. As soon as it became clear that the British were about to invade Afghanistan, Perovsky began lobbying to revive Russian prestige in the region by conquering the Turkman Khanate of Khiva. The Russian attack on Khiva ended as disastrously as the British retreat from Kabul would do, with Perovsky losing half his camels and nearly half his men. It put back Russian ambitions on the steppe for a generation: Khiva would not fall to Russian arms until 1872.

  Ivan Vitkevitch (1806–39): He was a Roman Catholic Polish nobleman, born Jan Prosper Witkiewicz in Vilnius, today the capital of Lithuania. Jan had helped found a secret society called the Black Brothers, an underground ‘revolutionary-national’ resistance movement begun by a group of Polish students intent on fighting the Russian occupation of their country. Witkiewicz and the five other ringleaders were arrested and interrogated, stripped of their titles and rank in the nobility and sent to different fortresses on the Kazakh steppe. At the time, Witkiewicz had just celebrated his fourteenth birthday. Witkiewicz resigned himself to his fate and decided to make the best of his situation. He learned Kazakh and Chagatai Turkish, allowed his name to be changed to the more Russian-sounding Ivan Viktorovitch Vitkevitch, and rose to become the first Russian player of the Great Game. He made two expeditions to Bukhara before being sent to Kabul to make an alliance with Dost Mohammad. Here he outmanoeuvred his British rival, Alexander Burnes, but when his alliances were countermanded by his superiors, and the British invaded Afghanistan, he returned to St Petersburg where he was found dead in a hotel room on 8 May 1839, having apparently committed suicide.

  Mohammad Shah II Qajar (1808–48) was the Qajar ruler of Persia who, by embracing a pro-Russian alliance and trying to recapture the disputed Afghan border town of Herat, helped alarm and provoke the British into their 1839 invasion of Afghanistan.

  Maharajah Ra
njit Singh (1780–1839): The brilliant and wily Sikh ruler, who created a powerful, well-organised and well-ruled Sikh kingdom in the Punjab. In 1797 he had helped Shah Zaman save some cannon lost in the mud of the River Jhelum during the chaos of the Afghan retreat, and he was given charge of much of the Punjab, although he was only nineteen years old. In the years that followed, Ranjit Singh slowly prised the lucrative eastern provinces of the Durrani Empire from his former overlord and took his place as the dominant power in the Punjab. In 1813 he seized the Koh-i-Nur from Shah Shuja and put the Shah under house arrest, but the latter succeeded in escaping the following year. During negotiations with Sir William Macnaghten in 1838, he outmanoeuvred the British and managed to turn what was planned as a Sikh expedition into Afghanistan in British interests into a British invasion in Sikh interests. He died in 1839, with the British midway through their invasion of the lands of his great enemy, Dost Mohammad.

  Mohan Lal Kashmiri (1812–77): Mohan Lal was Burnes’s invaluable munshi (secretary) and closest adviser. His father had been a munshi on the Elphinstone mission twenty years earlier, and on his return had chosen to make Mohan Lal one of the first boys in north India to be educated according to the English curriculum in the new Delhi College. Clever, ambitious and fluent in English, Urdu, Kashmiri and Persian, Mohan Lal had accompanied Burnes on his trip to Bukhara, after which he worked for some time as an ‘intelligencer’ for Wade in Kandahar. Burnes relied on and trusted Mohan Lal completely, and took him with him during the 1839 invasion as his intelligence chief. His failure to listen to Mohan Lal’s warnings about an imminent uprising led directly to Burnes’s death. During the uprising, Mohan Lal took out large loans in his own name for the benefit of Macnaghten during the siege, and again in 1842 borrowed more money to secure the release of hostages. He was never repaid the 79,496 rupees he calculated he was owed; as a result he was dogged by debt for the rest of his life. In pursuit of justice, he travelled to Britain where between attempts to lobby the Company directors he also visited Scotland, where he delivered Burnes’s journals to his family in Montrose. While in Britain he published in English a memoir of his Central Asian travels with Burnes and an enormous 900-page, two-volume biography of Dost Mohammad. He even had an audience with Queen Victoria. But the Afghan War haunted his life and effectively ended his career.