Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844

But why do we notice personal considerations at all, in a case where public relations to Affghanistan should naturally be paramount? We notice them, because our own press dwelt on personal qualities almost exclusively; and since this Cabool tragedy will make the whole Affghan policy immortal, we are anxious, by dispersing the cloud of calumny connected with the object of our choice, to clear the ground for a juster estimate of what was either good or erroneous in our further conduct. Not that personal accomplishments of mind or of body were unimportant in a ruler of simple half-barbarous men; nor again is it to be denied that Dost Mahommed, from advantages of age, (forty-five years against the seventy of the Shah,) and from experience more direct and personal, would, under equal circumstances, have been the better man. But the circumstances were not equal. The Dost could not have been more than a provincial ruler in the land; consequently he could not have undertaken that responsibility for the whole which formed the precise postulate of our Indian government.

Yet because the Dost could not meet our purposes, is it true that the Shah could? That is the point we are going to consider; and to have postponed this question to a question of personalities, even if those personalities had been truly stated, is specifically the error which vitiated all the speculations of our domestic press. We say then, that Shah Soojah had a primâ facie fitness for our purposes which the Dost had not; Soojah was the brother, son, and grandson of men who had ruled all Affghanistan; nay, in a tumultuary way, he had ruled all Affghanistan himself. So far he had something to show, and the Dost had nothing; and so far Lord Auckland was right. But he was wrong, and, we are convinced, ruinously wrong, by most extravagantly overrating that one advantage. The instincts of loyalty, and the prestige of the royal title, were in no land that ever was heard of so feeble as in coarse, unimaginative Affghanistan. Money was understood: meat and drink were understood: a jezail was understood but nothing spiritual or ancestral had any meaning for an Affghan. Deaf and blind he was to such impressions and perhaps of all the falsehoods which have exploded in Europe for the last six years, the very greatest is that of the Edinburgh Review, in saying that the Suddozye families were "sacred" and inviolable to Affghans. How could such a privilege clothe the species or subdivision, when even the Dooaraunee or entire genus was submitted to with murmurs under the tyranny of accident. In what way had they won their ascendency? By thumps, by hard knocks, by a vast assortment of kicks, and by no means through any sanctity of blood. Sanctity indeed!—we should be glad to see the Affghan who would not, upon what he held a sufficient motive, have cut the throat of any shah or shahzade, padishah, or caliph, though it had been that darling of European childhood—Haroun Alraschid himself.

But how could royalty enjoy any privilege of consecration in a land where it was yet but two generations old? Even those two had been generations of tumultuous struggle. Oftener had the Shah been seen racing for his life on a Arab of the Hedjas, than eating "dillecrout"6 in peace, or dealing round a card-table grand crosses of the Dooraunee order. The very origin of Affghan royalty fathoms the shallowness of the water on which it floated. Three coincidences of luck had raised Ahmed to the throne. One dark night his master Kouli Khan, for the benefit of all Asia, had his throat cut. This Kouli, or Nadir Shah, was much more of a monster than Ahmed; but not very much less of a usurper. Riding off with his cavalry from Persia to Candahar, Ahmed these robbed a caravan! Upon which every body cried out to him, "Go it!" and his lucky connexion by birth with the best of the Dooraunee blood did the rest. A murder, a flight, and a robbery, or pretty nearly in the words of our English litany, "Battle, and murder, and sudden death," together with a silver spoon in his mouth at his natal hour, had made Ahmed a shah; and this Ahmed was the grandfather of our own pet Soojah. In such a genealogy there is not much for a poet-laureate to found upon, nor very much to make a saint out of. Ahmed, after a splendid and tumultuous reign of twenty-six years, died of cancer in 1773. His son Timour feigned distractedly for twenty years. Dying in 1793, Timour left a heap of shahzades, amongst whom our good friend Soojah was almost the youngest. As they call people Tertius, Septimus, or Vicesimus, from their station in the line of birth, let us call him—Penultimate Soojah Penultimate, if he was, he could fight as respectably as the rest: and many was the kick he bestowed on antepenultimate Mahmood. From that year 1793, the zenith of the French Revolution, in Affghanistan was nothing but fighting for some ten or fifteen years. Truly a battle royal it was; and if we cannot report to a fraction the "list of the killed and wounded," we know the main results. How many of the fraternal combatants leaped upon the throne, we are not quite sure. Four we can swear to, who were all pulled out by the ears before they had time to adjust the folds of their purple. The case of Eteocles and Polynices was a joke to it; and by the time the row or termashaw was over, and the candles were brought back amongst this happy family, the following was the state of matters—two stone blind, three (if not four) stone dead, and two in exile living upon charity; amongst which last was Penultimate Soojah. It is proper to mention, by the way, as an appendix to the adventures of this old friend, that (improving upon his grandpapa's example) he had run off from his elder brother with the crown jewels; but, like Colonel Blood in our Charles II.'s reign, he benefited only by the glory of this distinguished larceny; for soon after, falling amongst thieves, at the head of whom was our late worthy ally the Seik Maharajah, Runjeet Singh, he in his turn, was effectually cleaned out; and, in particular, his silk "wipe," in which he had wrapped up the famous Koh-i-noor, or summit of glory, was cleanly forked out of his fob by the artful dodger, old Runjeet, himself. Here was a pleasant commentary on the adage of "Diamond cut Diamond." The jewels, originally stolen by Ahmed, were passed on (as in our game of Hunt the Slipper) from thief to thief, until at least forty thieves had possessed them for a few weeks or months. All the forty are now dead; and at this moment the summit of glory, possibly never once worn by one of them, is a derelict in the hands of the latest murderer at Lahore, of course attracting by its light all hands towards his interesting throat.

We have thus sketched a slender memoir for the leading family of saints amongst the Edinburgh reviewer's holy Suddozyes. Great must have been their sanctity amongst the Affghans. The reader will judge for himself whether that aureola, or supernatural glory about their heads, was altogether sufficient to guarantee the throne of King Soojah. And it must not be quite forgotten, that on the roll-call of legitimacy Penultimate Soojah did not stand next for promotion. Prince Caumraum, who commanded at Herat, stood before him equally in active qualities, and in precedence of title; for he was the son of Mahmood. The sons of Zemaun had a still higher precedency.

However, the Affghans, who are essentially democratic by the necessities of their turbulent condition, often make a compromise in their choice of khans between strict primogeniture and personal merits, where they happen to be appropriate. And they might have done so here. But we are now going, in conclusion, to bring forward one remark, which utterly prostrates Lord Auckland's scheme as a scheme of hope for Affghanistan, or of promise for his own purpose. It is this—no legitimacy of title, and no personal merits, supposing both to have met pre-eminently in the person of Soojah, had a chance of winning over the Affghans to a settled state. This truth, not hitherto noticed, reveals itself upon inspecting the policy of all the Suddozye shahs from Ahmed downwards; and probably that policy was a traditional counsel. Ahmed saved himself from domestic feuds by carrying away all the active, or aspiring, or powerful spirits to continual wars in the Punjaub, in Persia, or India. Thus he sustained their hopes, thus he neutralized their turbulence. Timour next, and his son Zemaun after him, pursued the very same policy. They have been both taxed with foolish ambition. It was not that: the historian has not perceived the key to their conduct:—it was the instinct of self-preservation. No otherwise than by exhausting the martial restlessness of the Affghans upon foreign expeditions, was durability to be had for any government. To live as a dynasty, it was indispensable to cross the Indus in pursuit of plunder. But exactly that policy it was, the one resource of prudent Affghan princes, the escape-valve for conspiracy and treason, which Lord Auckland's army had been put in motion to abolish.

Now, thirdly, let us examine the machinery by which these plans were to be executed. Under the last head we have seen that, if on the whole perhaps the best instrument at hand, and better essentially than the Dost, very soon, indeed, Shah Soojah must have learned the necessity of passing over to that aggressive system which he had been raised up to destroy. Merely for his own safety he must have done this. But now suppose this otherwise, and that Soojah had continued to be that passive instrument for the Indian cabinet which their plans required and presumed. Even on this supposition, our agent or lieutenant Soojah would have required at first some support. By what machinery was this to be given? What was to be the instrument for sustaining our instrument?

Simply taxation, energetic taxation. Yet, if that should happen to fail, what was to be the resource? Simply to fine and to amerce—i.e. more intense taxation. So, in Molière's Malade Imaginaire, the only remedy is "Saignare et Purgare." But lavemens had been known to fail. What was to be done in that case? What is to be done? shrieks the Macaronic chorus—Why, of course, "Purgare et ensuita purgare." To the present government of India, this organ of administration is all in all. And it was natural to transfer this doctrine to Affghanistan. But in that they mistook the notions of the Affghans. And, in order to understand them, it may be well to review the possible aspect and modifications under which the idea of a tax may fall.

First, there is the lawful and peaceful revenue raised in free Christian states under their noble civilization, which is paid even thankfully, as the purchase money for inappreciable social benefits. Next, and in the very opposite extreme, is the ruffian levy once raised upon central India by the ferocious Pindarree, who asked for it with the insolence of a robber, and wrenched it from the recusant with the atrocities of a devil. Here there was no pretence of equivalent given or promised: and this was so exquisite an outrage, a curse so withering, that in 1817 we were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta chout, the other the black mail of the Scottish cateran. Neither of these gave any strict or absolute equivalent; but with a rude sense of justice, both, on different principles, endeavoured to indemnify the sufferer. The Mahratta generally, by a treaty with the local government, induced them to allow for the chout as twenty-five per cent advanced out of their own claim for taxes. And the cateran, if he did not go upon a convention with the government, gave the compounder a protection from other caterans, a discharge from irregular demands, and a means of recovering what might be stolen by knaves. The European case of taxation may be viewed as the fairest case of buying and selling; the Pindarree, as the vilest of robberies; and the two last as cases of compromise, (or what in Roman law was called transactio,)—as a toll or fine in fact, though too arbitrarily assessed.

Such are the categories of taxation; and, at the very best, all Affghans viewed it in the light of chout or black mail, a tribute to be thrown into the one scale if a gleaming sabre lay in the other. King Soojah levying taxes was to him a Mahratta at the least, if he was not even a Pindarree or a Thug. Indeed it is clear that, where the government does nothing for the people, nor pretends to do any thing, where no courts of justice exist, no ambassadors, no police, no defensive militia, (except for internal feuds,) title there can be none to any but a nominal tribute, as a mere peppercorn acknowledgment of superiority: going beyond that, taxation is borne only as robbery is borne.

Under these circumstances, and having a motive so strong for reconciling the Affghans to the new government, of all the incidents belonging to sovereignty on our European notions, least and last should we have suffered the Shah to exercise that of taxation. But to exercise it ourselves, that was midsummer madness! If he would have seemed a robber in such a function, what must we have seemed? Besides, it is held by some who have more narrowly watched the Affghan modes of thinking, that, even where they do submit to pay a tax, it is paid as a loan, and on the understanding that the chief receiving it is bound to refund it indirectly, by leading them at some convenient season (which many conceive to be in every alternate year) upon a lucrative foray. But this was exactly what we came to prevent. What we should have done is manifestly this. How much could the Shah have levied on all Affghanistan? A matter of L. 300,000 at most. But this was the gross sum, before deducting any thing for costs of collecting, which costs were often eighty shillings in the pound, besides counting on the little aid of our bayonets as a service wholly gratuitous. The sum netted by the exchequer must have been laughably small; and even in that respect the poor king must often have sighed for his quiet English lodgings on the left bank of the Sutlege. Now, surely this trivial revenue might have been furnished on the following plan. In a country like Affghanistan, where the king can be no more than the first of the sirdars, it is indispensable to raise his revenue, meaning the costs of his courtly establishment, as we ourselves did in England till the period of 1688. And how was that? Chiefly on crown estates, parks, forests, warrens, mines, just as every private subject raised his revenue, reserving all attempt at taxes in the shape of aids, subsidies, or benevolences, for some extraordinary case of war, foreign or domestic. Our kings, English and Scotch, lived like other country gentlemen, on the produce of their farms. Fortunately for such a plan, at that moment there must have been a fine harvest of forfeitures rising to the sickle all over the Affghan land, for rebels were as thick as blackberries. But, if any deficit had still shown itself on the Shah's rent-roll, one half of that L.30,000 a-year which we allowed to the Dost when our prisoner, or of that smaller sum7 which we allowed to the Shah when our guest, would have made it good. Yet what if we had spent a million sterling through a period of ten years, as a sort of scaffolding for the support of our new edifice whilst yet green and rising? Even in that case, and supposing us to have taken our leave of the Dooraunee throne at the end of one year, after planting it as firmly as it ever could be planted, we should have pocketed six million of pounds sterling that now are gone; whereas we insisted on sinking three millions per annum for the first three years, in some bottomless Affghan Chatmoss, with the effect (seemingly with the intention) of enabling King Soojah to earn universal hatred by netting a few lacs of rupees.

This was the rock on which we split. Had we restrained the king from levying taxes, all might have gone well. Had we restrained ourselves from enforcing his levies, all might have gone decently. And had we prompted the king to inaugurate some great public benefit—as, for instance, by conferring upon the people a simple system of judicial process and distributive justice—both he and we might have become popular; for, even in Affghanistan, there must be multitudes of poor men, peasants and tradesmen in towns, mothers and wives, who sigh for peace, and curse their endless agitations. Yes, even amongst their martial spirits, who now live by war and the passions of war, many are they who would relent from their angry feuds, if it were possible to get justice without them.

The sum, therefore, of that question; viz. of the How and by what machinery Lord Auckland proposed to accomplish his not unstatesmanlike object, is this—that we failed utterly, and chiefly by applying European principles to Oriental communities; and in particular, 1st, By throwing a prodigious stress on the fancied consecration of royalty in a country where it would have snapped under the weight of a L.10 note.

2dly, By enforcing (and even exercising in our own persons as principals) the odious power of taxation, under the monstrous delusion that it was the first of a king's privileges, where in fact, and with some reason, it was viewed as the last of his excesses.

The first was a negative delusion. We fancied a mighty power where simply there was none; fancied a substance where there was not even a shadow. But the second was worse: it was a positive delusion. We fancied a resource where simply there was a snare—a mooring cable where simply there was a rope for our execution—a sheet-anchor where simply there was a rock waiting for our shipwreck.

Not the less, however, we maintain, that whilst in fact our ruin was self-prepared, come it would, sooner or later, from the necessity of Affghan society, had the actual occasion of that ruin been wanting. You build a palace on the waters, and you complain that a monsoon has overthrown it. True; but had there been no monsoon, equally it would have been supplanted by the natural unsteadiness of the waves.

Now, fourthly, however, for Cabool, and the crape-bound banners "perituraque castra!" Fourthly and lastly, for the solution of that hideous calamity, whose memory is accursed for ever. But the solution— is not that plain already? If what we allege be true, if the delusions exposed under the third head are rightly stated, will not they solve the ruin of Cabool? Are not they sufficient? No, nothing will solve it—no causes are sufficient for such a result, unless a strong spirit of delusion had been inflicted from heaven, distraction, frenzy, judicial madness. No dangers from the enemy, no pressure from without, could have accomplished that wreck, had they not been aided by treachery within the counsels of our own hearts.

It is an old saying of any subject too vast or too sad to measure by hurried words—that "de Carthagine satius est silere, quam parcius dicere." And in this case, where we have left ourselves too narrow a space to turn round in, and where no space would exhaust the infinities of the affliction, it is not our purpose to heighten, or rhetorically to colour, any one feature of the dismal story. Rhetoric, and art of all kids, we forswear in a tragedy so torturing to our national sensibilities. We pass, in sympathy with the burning wrath of our readers, the madness of dallying and moping over the question—to starve or not to starve. We pass the infamy of entertaining a treaty with barbarians, commenced in this foul insult to a British army—that after we should have submitted to indignities past expression, they (the barbarians) would consider at their leisure whether it would please them to spare our necks; a villany that gallant men could not have sanctioned, an which too certainly was not hurled back in their teeth as it ought to have been. We pass the lunacy of tempting barbarians to a perfidy almost systematic in their policy, by consenting to a conference outside the British cantonments, not even within range of the British guns, not even within the overlooking of British eyes. We pass the lunacy of taking out sixteen men as an escort against a number absolutely unlimited of the enemy, and where no restraint, even of honour or mutual understanding, forbade that unlimited enemy to come armed from head to foot. It is a trifle to add—that no instructions were given to the sixteen men as to what they were to do, or in what circumstances to act; and accordingly that one man only, out of the whole sixteen, attempted any resistance; and this in defiance of warnings eight several times reiterated by English officers, and by friendly Affghans, that treachery was designed. We pass the triple lunacy of treating at all in a case where Sir William M'Naughtan well knew, and himself avowed his knowledge, that no man or party existed amongst the enemy who could pretend to have authority sufficient for ratifying, or for executing, any treat of whatsoever tenor. The Cabool forces perished eventually by the dissension of the two first in command. This is notorious. And yet, to mark the dread fatality which pursued them, the concord of these two officers was even more destructive to their victims than the worst of their disputes. In the one solitary case where they agreed, the two leaders, Elphinstone and Shelton, sealed their doom. That case was this:—Many felt at that time, as all men of common sense feel now, that the Bala Hissar, and not Jillalabad, was the true haven for the army. In resisting this final gleam of hope for the army, both General Elphinstone and Brigadier Shelton heartily concurred; and they concurred then first and then last. This also, this almost incredible fact, should be added to the anecdote—General Elphinstone, when hard pressed by the general wishes on this point, pleaded as a last reason for his obstinacy—that a particular article, essential to the army, was wanting in the Bala Hillar. Subsequently, but after all was over, it turned out that this plea had been the windiest of chimaeras. True, you reply, but perhaps he was deceived. Yes, reader, but by what manner of deception? He was distant from the Bala Hissar by less than two miles; he was then in almost daily communication with it; and yet, upon a matter confessedly one of life and death for 17,000 souls, he took no steps for ascertaining the truth!

But these things we pass, in order to reach a point most superficially treated by Lieutenant Eyre, which was, in truth, the original fountain of the whole calamity. We have said already, that, (guilty as might be the leaders by unexampled fatuity, obstinacy, and improvidence,) in our judgement, the mischief ascended to elder sources than either General Elphinstone or Shelton. And here was the main source, which (on the principle explained above) we shall barely indicate, not saying one word in aggravation. The cantonments—who was it, what man, what men, what council, on whom rests the horrible responsibility of that selection and that execution? We contend that, besides those directly responsible parties, others were so to a criminal extent; every artillery officer was so; and therefore, unless some further explanations are made, Lieutenant Eyre is so. But surely Lieutenant Eyre has exposed the vices of these cantonments. True, he has so; some of the vices, but not all, but not the worst. The ground, he tells us, was bad; the line of fortifications too extensive; the interior overlooked in parts; and (with a view to the accommodation of the envoy) the defences absolutely interrupted in their regular series. True; and therefore, night and day, it became the duty of every artillery officer to cry out, Delenda est Carthago. But all this is not the worst. Even a child knows that, under the circumstances of the case, and the known reversionary uses of such a retreat in the event of its being wanted at all, (except as a barrack,) it was of the last importance to destroy all the strong places, nay, even all the cover, strong or not strong, which could shelter an enemy. This was not attempted, or thought of, until it became too late. Next, it was of even more clamorous importance to have the corn magazine within the line of defences: no effort was made in that direction. Now, had these been the only defects of the cantonments, they were enough to argue a constructive treason in those who neglected to denounce then. We know how they operated. These three ruins issued from these most culpable negligences:—1st, Starvation fell in one day upon the British host; and that it was which placed them at the mercy of the enemy. 2dly, The troops were inadequate to the extent of the defences; so that, together with starvation, loss of sleep fell upon the fighting men. 3dly, As another effect from that cause, a perpetual Penelope's web was to be maintained; for as often as detachments went out from cantonments against the many neighbouring forts, before they could possibly have time to destroy these nests of hornets, back they were summoned to the defence of their own lares; often in broad daylight, by combined assaults of the enemy on their own ramparts, but always by the approach of night. So that all momentary advantages became idle and useless; none could be followed up, none could be maintained. Lucan says of Caesar, when besieged in the fortified palace of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, that often, whilst thrown on his most difficult defence, the matchless soldier became the assailant—