The First Afghan War and Its Causes

Introduction

More than thirty years ago my father, then Captain Durand, of the Bengal Engineers, being at home on leave, began to write this history of the Cabul War. He had some special qualifications for the task, for he had served through Keane’s campaign, had personally known most of the men whose actions he was to chronicle, and afterwards, as private secretary to Lord Ellenborough, had enjoyed unusual opportunities of obtaining correct and full information upon many important matters connected with the subject of his work.

It was never completed ; for in 1848, convinced that an outbreak in the Punjab was imminent, he threw up his furlough and returned to India—just in time to take a part in the battles of the second Sikh War. For two or three years after the close of the campaign his duties afforded him a certain amount of leisure ; but the life of an Indian official is at best ill suited to the prosecution of a literary task requiring such close and constant application as the one he had undertaken, and I believe he never resumed it. A portion of the manuscript was converted into a long review article, which is repeatedly quoted by Sir John Kaye, and has had a marked effect upon the historian’s treatment of some parts of his subject. The rest was left untouched, and the narrative breaks off abruptly with the arrival of Lord Ellenborough in India. It is, therefore, a fragment, and in parts a rough one. .

Nevertheless, fragmentary though it be, I have ventured to bring it to light. Now that war has again been declared against the Ameer of Cabul, and that the defiles of the Khybur have once more reverberated the roar of British guns, I think the vl INTRODUCTION, story of our victories and reverses in Afghanistan, told by one who bore a part in the former, and early recognised the errors of policy which led to the latter, cannot be altogether devoid of interest.. I have not attempted to elaborate or complete the narrative. Such an attempt could only have had the effect of detracting from any value it may now possess; and the manuscript goes to press almost as I found it. In one or two places, however, I have permitted myself to deviate from the original text. With some hesitation—for truth is truth, and I would not willingly garble my father’s work—but in deference to the opinion of others, and with the desire of sparing pain, I have suppressed the statement of certain circumstances which, though indubitable and not wholly devoid of historical interest, were not, perhaps, necessary to the completeness of the story. And I have slightly altered that portion of the manuscript which tells of the storm of Ghuznee. A writer is necessarily at a disadvantage in describing an exploit in which he was one of the chief actors, and I found it difficult to supplement the text satisfactorily by means of notes. The alterations are, however, slight, and there is not a sentence of my own in the account. The whole is taken from papers in my father’s handwriting, and I have kept his words.

It is, probably, needless for me to point out that a work like this, written thirty years ago, and left in the rough, affords neither an exposition of my father’s views with regard to our policy in Central Asia, nor a fair specimen of his literary powers. For the opinions of men and measures which the book puts forward I offer no apology. They differ considerably in some respects from the ideas now generally entertained, and they are often as strongly expressed as they were strongly held. But, however strongly held and expressed, they were not hastily formed ; and, right or wrong, they are the result of careful and censcientious thought.

For those who knew the writer personally, or who are acquainted with the course of events in India during the last forty years, it would not, perhaps, be necessary to add anything more. But the career of an Indian official] is as a rule little known in England, and rapidly forgotten by Englishmen, even in India ;

INTRODUCTION. Vil and as this book may fall into the hands of some who are wholly ignorant of the writer’s claims to a hearing, I add a brief account of his life. I cannot, of course, pretend that the account is an impartial one, but I have-done my best to make it truthful and accurate.

Henry Marion Durand was born on November 6, 1812. The son of a soldier, he early manifested an inclination for a military career ; and after a brief education at Leicester and Putney, where one of his schoolfellows was his future chief (Lord Canning), he entered the East India Company’s College, at Addiscombe. Here his success was marked. He passed out of Addiscombe on June 7, 1828, ‘ with more prizes than he could find hands to carry from the table, ! and five days later received his commission as Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Bengal Engineers. It was, I believe, a rule of the Company that no cadet should be admitted to the service before the age of sixteen, but the rule was set aside in his favour.

In October of the following year, after having passed with special credit through the course preseribed for Engineer officers, he set sail for India. The voyage was not altogether uneventful ; for the ‘ Lady Holland,’ after running some risk from pirates, was wrecked upon Dassan Island, and my father, exerting himself to save the lives and property of others, lost everything he possessed. It was not until the end of May 1829 that he reached Calcutta.

In the vessel which brought him from the Cape he had met . Alexander Duff, the first missionary from the Kirk of Scotland, and afterwards one of his staunchest friends. The two had much in common. It was said of my father after his death, by one who wrote in no friendly spirit, that he ‘looked at everything through the pure crystal of Christianity ;’ and the remark was as true of him when he landed in India as it was thirty years later. Even in those days his conduct was controlled by a firm belief in the truth of the Bible, and to the end of his life that belief never wavered. No record of his life, however brief, would be other than thoroughly false if it failed to bring pro-

» Seven out of eight, and the sword for good conduct.

Vil INTRODUCTION.

minently forward the fact that a steadfast faith in the teaching of Christ, free from the slightest admixture of cant or bigotry, was the very foundation of his character. Humbly and fearlessly serving one Master, and relying upon a strength not his own, he strove to do his duty unflinchingly from beginning to end ; and, passing through many trials, he closed an upright, uncompromising life by a death which was strangely calm and peaceful.

When he arrived in India the country was in a condition of profound tranguillity. The stormy Administration of Lord Amherst had come to an end; and Lord William Bentinck, secure from foreign aggression, and harbouring no dreams of conquest, had entered upon a policy of unsparing retrenchment. The army was being rapidly reduced, and everything seemed to presage a long peace. But then, as ever, the most promising field for a man of soldierly aspirations was the line of our North-Western Frontier; for though our statesmen troubled themselves but little about the countries west of the Indus, the old ‘ Lion of Lahore’ lay within four marches of the Sutlej, with a large and eager army ; and other elements of danger were not wanting.

Immediately after his arrival, therefore, my father applied for employment in the North-West Provinces. He obtained it without difficulty; and after a year spent in acquainting himself with the work of the Building Department, and in surveying sites for European troops in the Himalayas, he was appointed, by special request, an assistant to Major Colvin, the Superintendent of Canals. His fellow-assistants were all picked men. It would not be easy to find three more distinguished names in the ranks of Indian Engineers than Proby Cautley, William Baker, and Robert Napier.

For the next five years, during which time large works were executed and the system of canal irrigation was much developed, my father was employed upon the canals west of the Jumna. The nature of his duties afforded him, during the hot weather, ample opportunities for study ; and as he was from the first an untiring reader—a strange mixture of the soldier and the student,’ to use the words of one of his earliest friends—those opportunities

INTRODUCTION. 1X were not wasted. At the same time his work threw him into constant contact with the people, and under peculiarly favourable circumstances. Regarding a Canal officer as their benefactor, one who had nothing to do with trying or taxing them, they behaved towards him with an openness which natives of India rarely show to a European; and he always felt that he had gained more insight into the customs and character of the agricultural classes during this time than at any subsequent period of his career. Knowledge brought with it a kindly feeling which it never lost.

In 1834, hearing that a detachment of officers was about to be sent to Persia, to organise and drill the native army, he applied for the service; and his chief supported the application, adding that if Government wanted another officer of the same stamp they would find him in Henry Lawrence, of the Artillery. Fortunately, perhaps, though to my father’s great vexation at the time, the application was unsuccessful.

Meanwhile the little party of Engineers had directed their attention to another field. The heads of the irrigation canals were drawn from the Jumna, where that river debouches from the outer ranges of the Himalaya, and it became a favourite amusement with the Canal officers to make excursions into the hills, It was in the course of one of these excursions that a clue was obtained to the discovery of the Sewalik fossils, which startled the scientific world, and contributed so materially to the development of the study of paleontology. The value of the discovery is attested by Dr. Murchison, in his palxontological memoirs of Falconer. By it, he says, ‘a sub-tropical mammalian fossil fauna was brought to light unexampled for richness and extent in any other region then known.’ Following up their subject, the young officers sent to the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, then under the management of James Prinsep, a series of articles descriptive of the most interesting specimens brought to light ; and when my father left the canals three years later, the names of Cautley, Baker, and himself were well known to English men of science.

I have dwelt upon this part of my father’s early life because the taste for geology and its kindred studies which he first acx INTRODUCTION.

quired among the Sewalik fossils always remained with him. His journals are full of geological jottings ; and wherever he was employed, from Burmah to Afghanistan, he seems to have found time for the prosecution of his favourite subject.

In 1838, after some time spent in examining and reporting upon the Nujjufghur Marsh and a large tract of country to the south of Delhi, which it was proposed to drain, his connection with the canals finally closed. The Surveyor-General of India, Colonel Everest, had previously applied for his services ; and he was now nominated for the duty of drawing up reports on the condition and progress of the Trigonometrical Survey. This duty, however, he never took up. Lord Auckland and his distinguished secretary, Thomason, had been struck with the detailed knowledge of the people ‘and their tenures which my father had acquired during his work on the canals; and at the close of the hot weather he was offered, and accepted, the appointment of Secretary to the Revenue Board of the North-West Provinces. This appointment, a singular one for a young military officer, he was about to enter upon, when the assembly of a force for war in Afghanistan turned his thoughts in a different direction. Though fully sensible of the distinction conferred upon him, he was not of a temper to resign, for any inducement that could be offered, the chance of active service ; and at once throwing up his secretaryship, he applied for employment with the army in the field. The application was granted, and he was attached to the Army of the Indus, as one of two Engineer officers charged, in addition to their other professional duties, with the work of the Topographical Department, surveys of fortresses, and the like. Upon their labours were based in a great measure all subsequent maps of Afghanistan, for the old maps were very incorrect.

Having assisted in the preparation of the Engineer Park at Delhi, and the bridging of the Indus, my father accompanied Sir Willoughby Cotton’s division to Quetta, and was with Sir John Keane’s force in the advance to Candahar. From Candahar, after bearing part in Sale’s expedition to Girishk, he marched with the main body upon Cabul. When Keane arrived before Ghuznee, the provisions of the force so nearly le

INTRODUCTION. Xi exhausted that capture of the fortress by a coup de main could alone save the expedition from calamitous failure, he was offered by the Chief Engineer, Thomson, the command of the party which was to blowin the Cabul Gate. The offer was a tempting one, for the command of the party was a certain opening to distinction ; and to be specially selected for the duty by Thomson, as fine a soldier as ever stepped, was in itself no small honour. _ Nevertheless it was declined. Knowing that Captain Peat, of the Bombay Engineers, an excellent officer, and his senior, expected the command, my father requested that it might be offered to him, asking only to be entrusted with the duty of heading the explosion party, placing the powder, and firing the train.! How he performed that duty I need not tell here. Hardly able to walk, from the effects of severe illness, he had, while reconnoitring in the course of the day preceding the attack, narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Afghan skirmishers, and it was with extreme difficulty that he bore up until the work was done. Immediately after the storm he was forced to take to his bed. |

After the arrival of the British force at Cabul my father was appointed Engineer to the Shah ; and in this capacity he did his best to oppose the fatal error of abandoning the Bala Hissar. Fortunately for himself, perhaps, he found that this lucrative appointment debarred him from active service, and he soon resigned it. His successor, Sturt, fell in the fatal retreat of Elphinstone’s division. Returning to India with Sir John Keane, he had the opportunity of becoming to some extent acquainted with the Punjab and the condition of the Sikh army shortly after the death of Runjeet Sing—an acquaintance which was of use to him a few years later.

When the maps, plans, and reports connected with the campaign in Afghanistan had been completed, my father went to England on furlough. His religious convictions growing stronger year by year, had led him at this time to contemplate resigning his career in India in favour of the Church. But after

’ Sir Colin Campbell’s comment upon this unselfish act when, years afterwards, he ascertained the truth of the story, was .a very characteristic one: ‘By God, Durand, I wouldn't have done that for my own father!’

X11 INTRODUCTION.

much self-examination and consulting of friends he found he was ‘ unfit for so serious a charge as entering the ministry,’ and the idea was eventually abandoned. Shortly afterwards he was introduced to Lord Ellenborough, then about to assume the government of India, and was asked to draw up a military memoir on the Punjab. The paper was shown by Lord Ellenborough to the Duke of Wellington, and elicited from the latter a warm expression of approval. At the same time my father received, and after some hesitation accepted, the offer of an appointment on Lord Ellenborough’s Staff as aide-de-camp. Before the new Governor-General reached Calcutta the appointment was exchanged for that of private secretary.

In this position my father remained throughout Lord Ellenborough’s Indian administration, refusing in succession several high political posts. He was greatly tempted by the offer of the Agency on the North-West Frontier, at that time perhaps the most responsible appointment in the Governor-General’s gift ; but he feared that by accepting it he might compromise the reputation of a chief for whose character and abilities he had early cause to entertain a high respect, and he decided to decline the honour. Lord Ellenborough appreciated the motives which influenced him in this decision, and a warm personal friendship sprang up between the Governor-General and his secretary, which was never interrupted. The careers of both were very nearly cut short at the same time on the field of Maharajpore, where Lord Ellenborough’s coolness and courage under the close fire of the Mahratta guns won him the admiration of many brave men.!

Upon Lord Ellenborough’s recall by the Court of Directors my father was appointed by Lord Hardinge Commissioner on the Tenasserim coast. Until this time his success had been

1 Lord Ellenborough has been blamed for thrusting himself into a false position at Maharajpore. As a fact he followed the directions of the commander-in-chief, and it was only by an unforeseen change of disposition on the part of the enemy that he found himeelf in front of their batteries. Once in the thick of the action, his spirit was roused—and, as my father afterwards said, he ‘ thoroughly enjoyed it.’ But he retired to a less dangerous position when it was pointed out to him that he was unduly exposing himself.

INTRODUCTION. Xili rapid and uninterrupted. For the next thirteen years he was destined to experience incessant trouble and disappointment ; to meet with censure and supersession for honestly doing his duty ; to face a storm of calumny and vituperation ; and to find himself, after seven-and-twenty years of varied military and political service, a nearly ruined man.

Without writing at considerable length it would be impossible to enter into the story of his administration in Tenasserim, and of his recall by Sir Herbert Maddock. So long as Lord Hardinge remained in Calcutta all went well, and he earned the special commendation of the Indian Government. But directly Lord Hardinge had departed fur the North-West Provinces, leaving Maddock in Calcutta, as Deputy-Governor of Bengal and President in Council, the aspect of affairs changed. From circumstances which this is not the proper place to detail, Maddock’s relations with my father had been far from cordial. Freed from Lord Hardinge’s control, he lost no time in openly manifesting his ill-will; and the Governor-General being fully occupied with the course of events in the North, he ventured, after a series of proceedings of which it is difficult for me to speak with patience, to remove my father from his appointment. That the removal was wholly unmerited was afterwards shown to the satisfaction of the highest authorities ; but the story is a long one, and [ cannot follow it here.

On hearing of his recall my father appealed, as was natural, to the Governor-General. This Maddock refused to permit, on the ground that the appeal from his decision as Deputy- Governor of Bengal lay to the President in Council; that is, to himself and one other member, the commander-in-chief and the military member being absent. It is needless to comment on the propriety of this dictum, whatever doubt there may be as to its legality. At the same time that he thus officially refused my father the right of appeal to the Governor-General, Maddock, as afterwards appeared, was privately canvassing Lord Hardinge’s concurrence. He failed to obtain it; for the Governor-General, though he did not interfere with the President’s action, declined, to use his own words, being made registering clerk to Maddock’s orders, and immediately offered

X1V INTRODUCTION.

my father the post of Chief Engineer in the Punjab. While war was going on my father had placed his services at the disposal of Government for employment in the field, and had been censured for so doing by the Deputy-Governor. But now that war was over the offer was refused, and he returned to England to seek justice from the Court of Directors.

During this time he was fiercely assailed by the Bengal press, misled as to the facts of the case, and roused to indignation by his stern treatment of an unprincipled member of the fraternity in Moulmein. ‘The Jeffreys of India,’ as he was called, found, however, an able defender in Alexander Duff; and the warm expressions of sympathy which he received at parting, from every class of the community he had been declared unfit to rule, did much to console him for the injustice and calumny — he had gone through. Foremost among those who deplored his loss were the little band of American missionaries, headed by Judson, whose work in Burmah my father had aided by every means in his power.

His appeal to the Directors was too late. The legality of the decisions which had led to his removal was strongly affirmed by counsel in England; but the Court had meanwhile sanctioned the Deputy-Governor’s order. The President of the Board of Control, however, assured him that on his return to India he should be employed exactly as he had been before, and that he should be no sufferer in any respect from what had passed. With this assurance he was forced to be content.

It was at this time that he began to write his account of the Cabul War. I have already described bow the work was interrupted by his return to duty in 1848. Although the peace in the Punjab was, by those who should have known best, confidently represented as solid and lasting, he was persuaded that an outbreak was certain ; and his predictions were verified with curious rapidity, for on arriving at the Sandheads he found awaiting him orders to join the army at once—the outbreak had already occurred. Hastening up to the frontier, he arrived in time to witness the sanyuinary battle of Chillianwalla. The morning after that battle he did all that his pusition allowed him to bring about an immediate advance; and it was, I believe, afterwards admitted by the Sikhs themselves that if an advance had been made the complete defeat of the Khalsa army, shaken and demoralised by the conflict of the previous day, would have been almost inevitable. But we had lost fearfully, and it was not then understood how severely the Sikhs had been tried by the fight. The opportunity was, therefore, allowed to go by, and long weeks of weary inaction followed before the final victory of Gujerat. Through that decisive battle my father was with Colin Campbell’s division.

After the close of the campaign, the Tenasserim commissionership and several suitable appointments in the newly annexed province of the Punjab being vacant, my father confidently expected that the assurance given to him by the President of the Board of Control would be fulfilled. He was disappointed ; for the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, knowing nothing of him, and surrounded by men avowedly hostile to his interests, set his claims aside ; and after a short stay at Gwalior, as an assistant for the affairs of Sindia, he was relegated to the subordinate political agency of Bhopal. There, with a brief interval of absence, he remained until the close of 1853.

Sir Charles Napier, no mean judge of a soldier, to some degree compensated him for the slur by an offer which surprised and gratified him more than he could say—the command of the sappers and miners. But, war being over, my father, smarting under a sense of wrong, and determined to obtain from the Governor-General a clear recognition of the injustice inflicted upon him, refused the offer. The refusal was unfortunate, for a man of Lord Dalhousie’s imperious nature was little likely to grant promotion which was demanded as a right, not asked as a favour; and my father lost a promising opening for distinction in his own branch of the service.

This period of his life was a trying one. Time after time he saw political posts of importance, any one of which he could have had for the asking ten years before, given away to his juniors, while he remained unnoticed in his obscure charge. And year after year he strove without success to obtain the military rank which was unquestionably his due. By an oversight on the part of Lord Ellenborough his name had been a

Xvl INTRODUCTION.

omitted from the list of recommendations for brevet rank after the fight at Maharajpore ; and though Lord Ellenborough deeply regretted the mistake, and afterwards did his best to repair it, the ground lost was never recovered. The satisfaction of his claim was deferred from year to year; and finally, after it had been supported by Lord Ellenborough, by Sir Charles Napier, by Lord Gough, and even by Lord Dalhousie, the Court of Directors declined to recommend it, on the ground that the grant of the promotion would bring him over the heads of too many officers who had now risen above him—thus, as one of his supporters observed, making the very magnitude of the original injustice the excuse for not repairing it. The decision was one which almost irremediably ruined his prospect of advancement in his profession—a profession which was the pride and passion of his life.

But if this period of his career was one of disappointment and dejection, it was not altogether wasted. The confidence and goodwill with which he inspired the ruler of the Bhopal State have borne good fruit. Throughout the Mutiny there was no stauncher friend to the British cause than that brave and cool-headed woman ; and the traditions she left behind her have not been forgotten. Moreover, the leisure which he enjoyed enabled my father to use his pen to some purpose. The ‘Calcutta Review’ was then in its prime; and, though he always rated his power of writing very low, some of the essays which he contributed to the ‘ Review’ at this time attracted considerable notice both in India and at home. Besides articles on the wars in Cabul, Burmah, and the Punjab, he wrote a series of papers showing up the abuses of the system upon which India was then governed, and advocating reforms which the Mutiny has since forced us to adopt. These papers excited no small annoyance in Leadenhall] Street, for the existence of the Court of Directors was at this time threatened, and use was made of my father’s essays by reformers at home to deal some heavy blows.

In December 1853, despairing of redress at the hands of Lord Dalhousie, and finding his health seriously impaired, my father threw up his charge at Sehore and returned to Europe,

INTRODUCTION. XVll where he remained for nearly two years, endeavouring to find some employment which might spare him the necessity of continuing his career in a country now become hateful to him. He failed to do so; and towards the close of 1855 he sailed again for India. His first appointment was not a promising one. No political or military position being offered him, he was forced to fall back upon a subordinate charge in the Department of Public Works; and for more than a year he was employed as

Superintending Engineer of the Presidency Circle. He felt this © keenly ; but the experience was of use to him in after life, and ' during the latter part of this time he was enabled to do some good outside the limits of his nominal duties. Lord Canning had not been slow to recognise the fact that in the superseded and neglected Engineer officer he had found a man whose views on questions of policy and war were worth considering; and before long my father’s opinion came to be frequently asked, and not infrequently taken, by the Governor-General. Twice in particular, during 1856, he was, I believe, mainly instrumental in dissuading Lord Canning from projected military operations which must have had a disastrous effect upon our position in India. I refer to the proposals to occupy Quetta, and to attack Persia overland through Afghanistan. In combating these proposals he dwelt strongly upon the danger of denuding India of British troops ; and it is unnecessary to point out how terribly we should have regretted the mistake if, at the outbreak of the Mutiny, a considerable part of our then scanty European garrison had been hundreds of miles from our own provinces. As be had expected, Persia was rapidly and easily coerced by our operations in the Gulf, and our troops were set free in time for the crisis of 1857.

In the beginning of that year Lord Canning offered my father the charge of the Central India Agency, about to be temporarily vacated by Sir Robert Hamilton, and the offer was accepted. He took charge of his new appointment in April, and retained it until the middle of nes throughout the most critical period of the Mutiny.

The tract of country comprised in the Central India Agency was a point of special importance during this time. Through it

a2

XVILi INTRODUCTION.

ran the direct road from Bombay to Agra, by which troops from Bombay could be brought into operation against the North of India, and by which also telegraphic communication between Calcutta and the Madras and Bombay Presidencies could alone be effected, for there was then no direct telegraphic line from Madras to Calcutta. The maintenance of this line of communication was, therefore, invaluable. Nor was it less important to maintain intact the line of the Nerbudda river, which, roughly speaking, formed the southern frontier of the Agency, for the Nerbudda was the one barrier between the mutinous Bengal troops and the doubtful armies of Madras and Bombay. To hold Central India, and if this failed at least the Nerbudda line, was to localise the revolt, hy preventing its spread over the Southern Presidencies. For the attainment of these objects my father had most insufficient means. His European force consisted of a single battery of foot artillery, which contained a source of weakness in the shape of native drivers, and was moreover forced to remain statianary to check the native troops at Mhow. The one chance lay in the fact that the bulk of the armed forces in the Central India Agency were troops belonging to the several State contingents; and he hoped that by carefully isolating these troops and playing them off against the regulars, it might be possible to maintain his position. .