Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843

General Nott, meanwhile, in pursuance of his secret orders from the Supreme Government, had been making preparations for abandoning Candahar; and, on the 7th and 8th of August, the city was accordingly evacuated, both by his corps and by the division of General England—the Affghan prince, Seifdar-Jung, being left in possession of the place. The routes of the two commanders were now separated. General England, with an immense train of luggage, stores, &c., directed his march through the Kojuck Pass to Quettah, which he reached with little opposition;—while Nott, with a more lightly-equipped column, about 7000 strong, advanced by Khelat-i-Ghiljie against Ghazni. This offensive movement appears to have taken the Affghans at first by surprise; and it was not till he arrived within thirty-eight miles of Ghazni that General Nott found his progress opposed (August 30) by 12,000 men under the governor, Shams-o-deen Khan, a cousin of Mohammed Akhbar. The dispersion of this tumultuary array was apparently accomplished (as far as can be gathered from the extremely laconic despatches of the General) without much difficulty; and, on the 6th of September, after a sharp skirmish in the environs, the British once more entered Ghazni. In the city and neighbouring villages were found not fewer than 327 sepoys of the former garrison, which had been massacred to a man (according to report) immediately after the surrender; but notwithstanding this evidence of the moderation with which the Affghans had used their triumph, General Nott, (in obedience, as is said, to the positive tenor of his instructions,) "directed the city of Ghazni, with the citadel and the whole of its works, to be destroyed;" and this order appears, from the engineer's report, to have been rigorously carried into effect. The mace of Mamood Shah Ghaznevi, the first Moslem conqueror of Hindostan, and the famous sandal-wood portals of his tomb, (once the gates of the great Hindoo temple at Somnaut,32) were carried off as trophies: the ruins of Ghazni were left as a monument of British vengeance; and General Nott, resuming his march, and again routing Shams-o-deen Khan at the defiles of Myden, effected his junction with General Pollock, on the 17th of September, at Cabul; whence the united corps, together mustering 18,000 effective men, were to take the route for Hindostan through the Punjab early in October.

Such have been the principal events of the brief but brilliant campaign which has concluded the Affghan war, and which, if regarded solely in a military point of view, must be admitted to have amply vindicated the lustre of the British arms from the transient cloud cast on them by the failures and disasters of last winter.

The Affghan tragedy, however, may now, we hope, be considered as concluded, so far as related to our own participation in its crimes and calamities; but for the Affghans themselves, "left to create a government in the midst of anarchy," there can be at present little chance of even comparative tranquillity, after the total dislocation of their institutions and internal relations by the fearful torrent of war which has swept over the country. The last atonement now in our power to make, both to the people and the ruler whom we have so deeply injured, as well as the best course for our own interests, would be at once to release Dost Mohammed from the unmerited and ignominious confinement to which he has been subjected in Hindostan, and to send him back in honour to Cabul; where his own ancient partisans, as well as those of his son, would quickly rally round him; and where his presence and accustomed authority might have some effect in restraining the crowd of fierce chiefs, who will be ready to tear each other to pieces as soon as they are released from the presence of the Feringhis. There would thus be at least a possibility of obtaining a nucleus for the re-establishment of something like good order; while in no other quarter does there appear much prospect of a government being formed, which might be either "approved by the Affghans themselves," or "capable of maintaining friendly relations with neighbouring states." If the accounts received may be depended upon, our troops had scarcely cleared the Kojuck Pass, on their way from Candahar to the Indus, when that city became the scene of a contest between the Prince Seifdar-Jung and the Barukzye chiefs in the vicinity; and though the latter are said to have been worsted in the first instance, there can be little doubt that our departure will be the signal for the speedy return of the quondam Sirdars, or rulers of Candahar, (brothers of Dost Mohammed,) who have found an asylum in Persia since their expulsion in 1839, but who will scarcely neglect so favourable an opportunity for recovering their lost authority. Yet another competitor may still, perhaps, be found in the same quarter—one whose name, though sufficiently before the public a few years since, has now been almost forgotten in the strife of more mighty interests. This is Shah Kamran of Herat, the rumours of whose death or dethronement prove to have been unfounded, and who certainly would have at this moment a better chance than he has ever yet had, for regaining at least Candahar and Western Affghanistan. He was said to be on the point of making the attempt after the repulse of the Persians before Herat, just before our adoption of Shah-Shoojah; and his title to the crown is at least as good as that of the late Shah, or any of his sons. It will be strange if this prince, whose danger from Persia was the original pretext for crossing the Indus, should be the only one of all the parties concerned, whose condition underwent no ultimate change, through all the vicissitudes of the tempest which has raged around him.

Nor are the elements of discord less abundant and complicated on the side of Cabul. The defeat of Tazeen will not, any more than the preceding ones, have annihilated Akhbar Khan and his confederate chiefs:—they are still hovering in the Kohistan, and will doubtless lose no time in returning to Cabul as soon as the retreat of the English is ascertained. It is true that the civil wars of the Affghans, though frequent, have never been protracted or sanguinary:—like the Highlanders, as described by Bailie Nicol Jarvie, "though they may quarrel among themselves, and gie ilk ither ill names, and may be a slash wi' a claymore, they are sure to join in the long run against a' civilized folk:"—but it is scarcely possible that so many conflicting interests, now that the bond of common danger is removed, can be reconciled without strife and bloodshed. It is possible, indeed, that Futteh-Jung (whom the last accounts state to have remained at Cabul when our troops withdrew, in the hope of maintaining himself on the musnud, and who is said to be the most acceptable to the Affghans of the four sons33 of Shah-Shoojah) may be allowed to retain for a time the title of king; but he had no treasure and few partizans; and the rooted distaste of the Affghans for the titles and prerogatives of royalty is so well ascertained, that Dost Mohammed, even in the plenitude of his power, never ventured to assume them. All speculations on these points, however, can at present amount to nothing more than vague conjecture; the troubled waters must have time to settle, before any thing can be certainly prognosticated as to the future destinies of Affghanistan.

The kingdom of the Punjab will now become the barrier between Affghanistan and our north-western frontier in India; and it is said that the Sikhs, already in possession of Peshawer and the rich plain extending to the foot of the Khyber mountains, have undertaken in future to occupy the important defiles of this range, and the fort of Ali-Musjid, so as to keep the Affghans within bounds. It seems to us doubtful, however, whether they will be able to maintain themselves long, unaided, in this perilous advanced post: though the national animosity which subsists between them and the Affghans is a sufficient pledge of their good-will for the service—and their co-operation in the late campaign against Cabul has been rendered with a zeal and promptitude affording a strong contrast to their lukewarmness at the beginning of the war, when they conceived its object to be the re-establishment of the monarchy and national unity of their inveterate foes. But the vigour of the Sikh kingdom, and the discipline and efficiency of their troops, have greatly declined in the hands of the present sovereign, Shere Singh, who, though a frank and gallant soldier, has little genius for civil government, and is thwarted and overborne in his measures by the overweening power of the minister, Rajah Dhian Singh, who originally rose to eminence by the favour of Runjeet. At present, our information as to the state of politics in the Punjab is not very explicit, the intelligence from India during several months, having been almost wholly engrossed by the details of the campaign in Affghanistan; but as far as can be gathered from these statements, the country has been brought, by the insubordination of the troops, and the disputes of the Maharajah and his Minister, to a state not far removed from anarchy. It is said that the fortress of Govindghur, where the vast treasures amassed by Runjeet are deposited, has been taken possession of by the malecontent faction, and that Shere Singh has applied for the assistance of our troops to recover it; and the Delhi Gazette even goes so far as to assert that this prince, "disgusted with the perpetual turmoil in which he is embroiled, and feeling his incapacity of ruling his turbulent chieftains, is willing to cede his country to us, and become a pensioner of our Government." But this announcement, though confidently given, we believe to be at least premature. That the Punjab must inevitably, sooner or later, become part of the Anglo-Indian empire, either as a subsidiary power, like the Nizam, or directly, as a province, no one can doubt; but its incorporation at this moment, in the teeth of our late declaration against any further extension of territory, and at the time when the Sikhs are zealously fulfilling their engagements as our allies, would be both injudicious and unpopular in the highest degree. An interview, however, is reported to have been arranged between Lord Ellenborough and Shere Singh, which is to take place in the course of the ensuing summer, and at which some definitive arrangements will probably be entered into, on the future political relations of the two Governments.34

The only permanent accession of territory, then, which will result from the Affghan war, will consist in the extension of our frontier along the whole course of the Sutlej and Lower Indus—"the limits which nature appears to have assigned to the Indian empire"—and in the altered relations with some of the native states consequent on these arrangements. As far as Loodeana, indeed, our frontier on the Sutlej has long been well established, and defined by our recognition of the Sikh kingdom on the opposite bank;—but the possessions of the chief of Bhawulpoor, extending on the left bank nearly from Loodeana to the confluence of the Sutlej with the Indus, have hitherto been almost exempt from British interference;35 as have also the petty Rajpoot states of Bikaneer, Jesulmeer, &c., which form oases in the desert intervening between Scinde and the provinces more immediately under British control. These, it is to be presumed, will now be summarily taken under the protection of the Anglo-Indian Government:—but more difficulty will probably be experienced with the fierce and imperfectly subdued tribes of Scindians and Belooches, inhabiting the lower valley of the Indus;—and, in order to protect the commerce of the river, and maintain the undisputed command of its course, it will be necessary to retain a sufficient extent of vantage-ground on the further bank, and to keep up in the country an amount of force adequate to the effectual coercion of these predatory races. For this purpose, a place d'armes has been judiciously established at Sukkur, a town which, communicating with the fort of Bukkur on an island of the Indus, and with Roree on the opposite bank, effectually secures the passage of the river; and the ports of Kurrachee and Sonmeani on the coast, the future marts of the commerce of the Indus, have also been garrisoned by British troops.

It has long since been evident36 that Scinde, by that principle of unavoidable expansion to which we had so often had occasion to refer, must eventually have been absorbed into the dominions of the Company; but the process by which it at last came into our hands is so curious a specimen of our Bonapartean method of dealing with reluctant or refractory neutrals, that we cannot pass it altogether without notice. Scinde, as well as Beloochistan, had formed part of the extensive empire subdued by Ahmed Shah, the founder of the Doorani monarchy; but in the reign of his indolent son Timour, the Affghan yoke was shaken off by the Ameers, or chiefs of the Belooch family of Talpoor, who, fixing their residences respectively at Hydrabad, Meerpoor, and Khyrpoor, defied all the efforts of the kings of Cabul to reduce them to submission, though they more than once averted an invasion by the promise of tribute. It has been rumoured that Shah-Shoojah, during his long exile, made repeated overtures to the Cabinet of Calcutta for the cession of his dormant claims to the suzerainté of Scinde, in exchange for an equivalent, either pecuniary or territorial; but the representations of a fugitive prince, who proposed to cede what was not in his possession, were disregarded by the rulers of India; and even in the famous manifesto preceding the invasion of Affghanistan, Lord Auckland announced, that "a guaranteed independence, on favourable conditions, would be tendered to the Ameers of Scinde." On the appearance of our army on the border, however, the Ameers demurred, not very unreasonably, to the passage of this formidable host; and considerable delay ensued, from the imperfect information possessed by the British commanders of the amount of resistance to be expected; but at last the country and fortress were forcibly occupied; the seaport of Kurrachee (where alone any armed opposition was attempted) was bombarded and captured by our ships of war; and a treaty was imposed at the point of the bayonet on the Scindian rulers, by virtue of which they paid a contribution of twenty-seven laks of rupees (nearly £300,000) to the expenses of the war, under the name of arrears of tribute to Shah-Shoojah, acknowledging, at the same time, the supremacy, not of Shah-Shoojah, but of the English Government! The tolls on the Indus were also abolished, and the navigation of the river placed, by a special stipulation, wholly under the control of British functionaries. Since this summary procedure, our predominance in Scinde has been undisturbed, unless by occasional local commotions; but the last advices state that the whole country is now "in an insurrectionary state;" and it is fully expected that an attempt will erelong be made to follow the example of the Affghans, and get rid of the intrusive Feringhis; in which case, as the same accounts inform us, "the Ameers will be sent as state-prisoners to Benares, and the territory placed wholly under British administration."

But whatever may be thought of the strict legality of the conveyance, in virtue of which Scinde has been converted into an integral part of our Eastern empire, its geographical position, as well as its natural products, will render it a most valuable acquisition, both in a commercial and political point of view. At the beginning of the present century, the East-India Company had a factory at Tatta, (the Pattala of the ancients,) the former capital of Scinde, immediately above the Delta of the Indus; but their agents were withdrawn during the anarchy which preceded the disruption of the Doorani monarchy. From that period till the late occurrences, all the commercial intercourse with British India was maintained either by land-carriage from Cutch, by which mode of conveyance the opium of Malwa and Marwar (vast quantities of which are exported in this direction) chiefly found its way into Scinde and Beloochistan; or by country vessels of a peculiar build, with a disproportionately lofty poop, and an elongated bow instead of a bowsprit, which carried on an uncertain and desultory traffic with Bombay and some of the Malabar ports. To avoid the dangerous sandbanks at the mouths of the Indus, as well as the intricate navigation through the winding streams of the Delta, (the course of which, as in the Mississippi, changes with every inundation,) they usually discharged their cargoes at Kurrachee, whence they were transported sixty miles overland to Tatta, and there embarked in flat-bottomed boats on the main stream. The port of Kurrachee, fourteen miles N.W. from the Pittee, or western mouth of the Indus, and Sonmeani, lying in a deep bay in the territory of Lus, between forty and fifty miles further in the same direction, are the only harbours of import in the long sea-coast of Beloochistan; and the possession of them gives the British the undivided command of a trade which, in spite of the late disasters, already promises to become considerable; while the interposition of the now friendly state of Khelat37 between the coast and the perturbed tribes of Affghanistan, will secure the merchandise landed here a free passage into the interior. The trade with these ports deserves, indeed, all the fostering care of the Indian Government; since they must inevitably be, at least for some years to come, the only inlet for Indian produce into Beloochistan, Cabul, and the wide regions of Central Asia beyond them. The overland carrying trade through Scinde and the Punjab, in which (according to M. Masson) not less than 6500 camels were annually employed, has been almost annihilated—not only by the confusion arising from the war, but from the absolute want of means of transport, from the unprecedented destruction of the camels occasioned by the exigencies of the commissariat, &c. The rocky defiles of Affghanistan were heaped with the carcasses of these indispensable animals, 50,000 of which (as is proved by the official returns) perished in this manner in the course of three years; and some years must necessarily elapse before the chasm thus made in the numbers of the species throughout North-western India can be supplied. The immense expenditure of the Army of Occupation, at the same time, brought such an influx of specie into Affghanistan, as had never been known since the sack of Delhi by Ahmed Shah Doorani—while the traffic with India being at a stand-still for the reasons we have just given, the superfluity of capital thus produced was driven to find an outlet in the northern markets of Bokhara and Turkestan. The consequence of this has been, that Russian manufactures to an enormous amount have been poured into these regions, by way of Astrakhan and the Caspian, to meet this increasing demand; and the value of Russian commerce with Central Asia, which (as we pointed out in April 1840, p. 522) had for many years been progressively declining, was doubled during 1840 and 1841, (Bombay Times, April 2, 1842,) and is believed to be still on the increase! The opening of the navigation of the Indus, with the exertions of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce to establish depots on its course, and to facilitate the transmission of goods into the surrounding countries, has already done much for the restoration of traffic in this direction, in spite of the efforts of the Russian agents in the north to keep possession of the opening thus unexpectedly afforded them; but it cannot be denied that the "great enlargement of our field of commerce," so confidently prognosticated by Lord Palmerston, from "the great operations undertaken in the countries lying west of the Indus," has run a heavy risk of being permanently diverted into other channels, by the operation of the causes detailed above.

Before we finally dismiss the subject of the Affghan war and its consequences, we cannot overlook one feature in the termination of the contest, which is of the highest importance, as indicating a return to a better system than that miserable course of reduction and parsimony, which, for some years past, has slowly but surely been alienating the attachment, and breaking down the military spirit, of our native army. We refer to the distribution, by order of Lord Ellenborough, of badges of honorary distinction, as well as of more substantial rewards, in the form of augmented allowances,38 &c., to the sepoy corps which have borne the brunt of the late severe campaign. Right well have these honours and gratuities been merited; nor could any measure have been better timed to strengthen in the hearts of the sepoys the bonds of the Feringhi salt, to which they have so long proved faithful. The policy, as well as the justice, of holding out every inducement which may rivet the attachment of the native troops to our service, obvious as it must appear, has in truth been of late too much neglected;39 and it has become at this juncture doubly imperative, both from the severe and unpopular duty in which a considerable portion of the troops have recently been engaged, and from the widely-spread disaffection which has lately manifested itself in various quarters among the native population. We predicted in July, as the probable consequence of our reverses in Affghanistan, some open manifestation of the spirit of revolt constantly smouldering among the various races of our subjects in India, but the prophecy had already been anticipated by the event. The first overt resistance to authority appeared in Bhundelkund, a wild and imperfectly subjugated province in the centre of Hindostan, inhabited by a fierce people called Bhoondelahs. An insurrection, in which nearly all the native chiefs are believed to be implicated, broke out here early in April; and a desultory and harassing warfare has since been carried on in the midst of the almost impenetrable jungles and ravines which overspread the district. The Nawab of Banda and the Bhoondee Rajah, a Moslem and a Hindoo prince, respectively of some note in the neighbourhood of the disturbed tracts, have been placed under surveillance at Allahabad as the secret instigators of these movements, "which," (says the Agra Ukhbar) "appear to have been regularly organized all over India, the first intimation of which was the Nawab of Kurnool's affair"—whose deposition we noticed in July. The valley of Berar, also, in the vicinity of the Nizam's frontier, has been the scene of several encounters between our troops and irregular bands of insurgents; and the restless Arab mercenaries in the Dekkan are still in arms, ready to take service with any native ruler who chooses to employ them against the Feringhis. In the northern provinces, the aspect of affairs is equally unfavourable. The Rohillas, the most warlike and nationally-united race of Moslems in India, have shown alarming symptoms of a refractory temper, fomented (as it has been reported) by the disbanded troopers of the 2d Bengal cavalry,40 (a great proportion of whom were Rohillas,) and by Moslem deserters from the other regiments in Affghanistan, who have industriously magnified the amount of our losses—a pleasing duty, in which the native press, as usual, has zealously co-operated. One of the newspapers printed in the Persian language at Delhi, recently assured its readers that, at the forcing of the Khyber Pass, "six thousand Europeans fell under the sharp swords of the Faithful"—with other veracious intelligence, calculated to produce the belief that the campaign must inevitably end, like the preceding, in the defeat and extermination of the whole invading force. The fruits of these inflammatory appeals to the pride and bigotry of the Moslems, is thus painted in a letter from Rohilcund, which we quote from that excellent periodical the Asiatic Journal for September:—"The Mahomedans throughout Rohilcund hate us to a degree only second to what the Affghans do, their interest in whose welfare they can scarcely conceal.... There are hundreds of heads of tribes, all of whom would rise to a man on what they considered a fitting opportunity, which they are actually thirsting after. A hint from their moolahs, and the display of the green flag, would rally around it every Mussulman. In March last, the population made no scruple of declaring that the Feringhi raj (English rule) was at an end; and some even disputed payment of the revenue, saying it was probable they should have to pay it again to another Government! They have given out a report that Akhbar Khan has disbanded his army for the present, in order that his men may visit their families; but in the cold weather, when our troops will be weakened and unfit for action, he will return with an overwhelming force, aided by every Mussulman as far as Ispahan, when they will annihilate our whole force and march straight to Delhi, and ultimately send us to our ships. The whole Mussulman population, in fact, are filled with rejoicing and hope at our late reverses."