The March to Kandahar- Roberts in Afghanistan Read online

  With the war apparently over, Browne’s Khyber column was largely disbanded and Stewart’s force was ordered to leave Kandahar in September, as soon as it was cool enough to march. Only Roberts’s troops were left intact to garrison and administer the Kurram valley. The peace was to prove more apparent than real: ‘Never did a state of peace bear a stronger resemblance to a state of war,’ wrote Hanna. In Afghanistan there was unrest at an unpopular treaty, the Indian troops had to be kept alert, convoys were stopped from moving except under escort and supplies were at famine prices. Cavagnari was to proceed to Kabul as the first representative of Great Britain there since the murders of the British envoy Alexander Burnes and his two British companions in 1841. It was an inauspicious moment, with cholera rife in the city and the unfortunate death of Bakhtiar Khan, India’s native agent, closing a valuable channel of information regarding Afghan intrigues and intentions. ‘This is a great chance for you, Cavagnari,’ said Haines as the envoy left Simla. ‘Yes sir, it is a case of man or mouse,’ replied Cavagnari.23

  In London, Disraeli’s government were pleased to claim that one of their two wars had been triumphantly concluded. Parliament passed a vote of thanks to Lytton, Haines and the troops, and approved the treaty. Salisbury wrote privately to Lytton to thank him. A round of honours followed. The Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath was given to Browne, who hardly deserved it, and knighthoods to Cavagnari, Colley, Stewart and Roberts. Some of the soldiers felt these ‘gongs’ were excessive. Stewart admitted to his wife that he thought he had got his KCB on false pretences.24

  At the end of June 1879, Lytton informed Roberts that he was to be one of the military members of a Commission of Inquiry into army expenditure, with a view to achieving reorganization and savings. He was to return to Simla to join the chairman, Sir Ashley Eden, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, a leading Indian civil servant, and the other members including a number like Colonels Baker and MacGregor who had been serving in the war. Before then, however, he had to see Cavagnari safely on his way to Kabul.

  Approach to Kabul and the Charden Valley

  Chapter 5

  At Odds with Desperate Men

  The web of policy so carefully and patiently woven has been rudely shattered ...All that I was most anxious to avoid in the conduct of the late war and negotiations has now been brought about by the hand of fate.

  Lord Lytton

  Gloomy forebodings were uttered in my presence ... It was most unadvisable that our armies should go to Kabul ...The road ran through a defile, the Afghans occupied the hills.

  Colonel Luther Vaughan

  In mid-July, Major Louis Cavagnari set forth as British representative to Kabul, accompanied by his secretary, a doctor, and an escort of twenty-five cavalry and fifty infantry from the Guides, the elite frontier regiment established by Colonel ‘Joe’ Lumsden. They were commanded by Lieutenant Walter Hamilton VC. In his autobiography, written almost two decades later, Roberts claimed to have had gloomy thoughts when he and fifty officers, anxious to do honour to the Envoy, marched with him to within 5 miles of the crest of the Shutagardan Pass and held a last formal dinner with him. There is nothing of this in his official letter to Lyall, Foreign Secretary on the Viceroy’s Council, but it appears Cavagnari, Roberts and his wife all had premonitions of the worst. Lady Roberts told the young Lord Melgund that Cavagnari:

  could not conceal from himself that he was going among the most treacherous people under the sun. But that he c[oul]d not believe that Yakoob for his own sake w[oul]d be such a fool as to allow any thing to happen to him. ‘However,’ Cavagnari told me, ‘if anything does happen to me it will make things very easy for the Government. The course they will have to adopt will be very plain. This is a great satisfaction to me.’

  Lady Roberts concluded, ‘Poor little man he was full of hope when my husband left him.’ That next morning, 14 July, as Roberts and his officers accompanied Cavagnari and his escort as far as the reception committee of Afghan cavalry and notables waiting by a large, tastefully decorated tent where tea was served, they both saw a solitary magpie, an unlucky omen. According to Roberts, both men separated, then spontaneously turned to shake hands in a final farewell.1

  Outwardly at least Cavagnari was in the best of spirits. Indubitably a man of action, he was, thought Neville Chamberlain, serving on the Viceroy’s Council, ‘inclined to be hasty and imperious, and more likely to control those he is brought into contact with through his force of character and through fear than from any personal attachment. I should say he is more the man for facing an emergency than one to entrust with a position requiring delicacy and very calm judgement.’ He feared that once at Kabul, Cavagnari would not keep out of difficulties. Lytton had chosen a man who had wanted to seize the fort at Ali Masjid by a coup de main before hostilities and was an object of special suspicion to the Afghans.2

  Roberts was warmly greeted at Simla, he and his wife were honoured guests at the Viceregal Residence, Peterhof, Lytton’s French chef Bonsard producing new dishes for the occasion: ‘Croquettes a la Roberts and Fillets a la Koorum with bullets of truffles’. Lady Lytton recorded that Haines had not written a line to Roberts to congratulate him on his victory or his knighthood, jealous of his junior’s success.3 Nonetheless, he was soon immersed in the discussions of the Eden Commission assembled by Lytton to consider Indian Army Reform. Throughout August telegrams and letters from Cavagnari to Foreign Secretary of the Viceroy’s Council, Alfred Lyall, and to Roberts himself expressed optimism. His last telegram to the Viceroy on 3 September concluded ‘All well’. Between 1 and 2 o’clock on the morning of 5 September Roberts was woken by his wife to say that a telegraph man was wandering round the house and calling. The telegram he brought was bad news from Captain Conolly, Political Officer at Alikhel, dated 4 September:

  One Jelaldin Ghilzai, who says he is in Sir Louis Cavagnari’s secret service, has arrived in hot haste from Kabul, and solemnly states that yesterday morning the Residency was attacked by three regiments who had mutinied for their pay ... being joined by a portion of six other regiments. The Embassy and escort were defending themselves when he left about noon yesterday. I hope to receive further news.

  For a moment Roberts was paralysed by anxiety, but was roused by his wife calling out, ‘What is it? Is it bad news from Kabul?’ He replied, ‘Yes, very bad, if true. I hope it is not.’ He woke his ADC and sent him off at once to the Viceroy with the telegram. No sooner was he dressed than Lyall arrived. They despatched a telegram to Conolly and went to Lytton. Early as it was, the Council was assembled. There were serious faces. Should the news be true, troops must be despatched. Telegrams were sent to halt the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the afternoon Brigadier Dunham ‘Redan’ Massy, in temporary command of the Kurram Field Force in Roberts’s absence, was directed to move to Shutagardan and entrench, awaiting orders. The Kurram force was the only one which might reach Kabul quickly. During the day further telegrams confirmed the truth of the first report. The Mission had been overwhelmed and every member of it massacred after twelve hours’ heroic resistance. Captain Conolly telegraphed that messengers had arrived from the Amir bringing two letters addressed to Roberts giving the Amir’s account. These and the story of a Risaldar-Major on leave near Kabul told the tale.

  When Cavagnari arrived at Kabul the situation was potentially explosive. The Afghans resented the treaty imposed by British arms, disliked the presence of a foreign embassy, especially with an escort of uniformed soldiers, and remembered the humiliating defeat inflicted upon the British in 1842. The new Amir did not enjoy widespread support. Six Afghan infantry regiments from Herat arrived in a near-mutinous state, demanding arrears of pay, jeering at Kabul regiments beaten by the British, and demanding to know why Cavagnari and his escort were allowed to remain. On the morning of 3 September soldiers from the Herat regiments rioted, demanding their back pay, and when someone shouted that they should obtain it from the English ambassador, they streamed off to the Residency in par
t of the old fortress of the Bala Hissar, accompanied by the ‘dregs’ of the city. The four Englishmen and their escort heard the rising roar of an angry crowd. Stones hurtled against the Residency walls. Cavagnari appeared on the roof as the gates were barred and refused to pay them. There was scuffling and looting, and the escort opened fire. The Afghan troops rushed to collect their rifles and gather support. Two messages to the Amir failed to bring help. Yakub feared to intervene, although he had three batteries of artillery nearby. The Heratis returned with the city badmashes and poured in a hail of fire from surrounding houses on three sides. The Residency was indefensible: the walls were thin and the roofs commanded by other high buildings. The seventy defenders were faced by thousands. At 1.00 p.m. two field guns were brought up to breach the walls. By then the situation was critical, the buildings were ablaze and Cavagnari was dead, having led a sortie. In a second sortie the Guides scattered the attackers ‘like sheep before wolves’ according to an eyewitness, but were unable to drag the guns back or disable them. The survivors fell back. Using ladders a number of the attackers clambered onto the roof of the main Residency building, in which the defenders made their last stand in savage hand-to-hand fighting. By early evening, with the four Englishmen dead and scarcely a dozen Guides still in action, the Afghans called in vain in the name of Islam to the survivors to drop their rifles and surrender, shouting that their hostility was against the British. True to their salt, the last Guides led by Jemadar Jewand Singh sallied out, striking down their foes on either side. Jewand Singh was the last to fall, having killed eight of his assailants. It was estimated later that 400 of the attackers had perished during the twelve-hour battle. The Residency lay gutted and smoking. The investigating military commission set up by Roberts when he reached Kabul wrote: ‘The annals of no army and no regiment can show a brighter record of bravery than has been achieved by this small band of Guides. By their deeds they have conferred undying honour, not only on the regiment to which they belong, but on the whole British Army.’ On Roberts’s recommendation, the whole escort was awarded the Indian Order of Merit, the native soldier’s equivalent of the Victoria Cross, and the Guides wore the battle honour ‘Residency, Kabul’.4

  The Amir did nothing to help Cavagnari and his men, except despatch his Commander-in-Chief, Daud Shah, and his son with a copy of the Koran to persuade the attackers to desist. Daud Shah was unhorsed and roughly handled by the mob. For three days Yakub remained in his palace and the shops in the city were shut. Afghan’s ruler had shown himself weak and cowardly, but no evidence came to light of his being at the centre of a conspiracy. A British surgeon with the force that advanced to Kabul later wrote:

  None of the evidence goes to prove that the Amir planned the destruction of the Embassy. All evidence appears to impute the rising to the bigotry and fury of the soldiery, excited by want of pay, while much proves that the offering of only one month’s pay, the taunting remarks and the general behaviour of the General present in the pay-garden, caused the rush to be made on the Residency ... [But] after the mutiny had commenced his behaviour was, to say the least of it, imbecile and useless, and he practically left the Embassy to protect themselves, and, in so doing, abandoned them to their fate.

  As Donald Stewart said, if he could not protect the embassy, he was useless as an ally.5

  There was shock and anger in both Simla and London. Edith Colley, whose husband was by now in South Africa, wrote to him: ‘We had to keep up appearances, even when the look that passed over H.E.’s face when he read the telegram told us pretty well that there was little hope left ... it is all too dreadful! ... Cavagnari’s face haunts me, and all our last talks, and the poor little wife at home.’ The deaths of Cavagnari and his escort were a bitter blow for the Viceroy and his wife. Lady Lytton and two guests went to the theatre with his ADCs to keep up appearances as news of the massacre passed from mouth to mouth.6

  Lytton and his colleagues were determined that Kabul should be occupied, Cavagnari avenged and British prestige restored. In this they were supported by London. The Queen wired Disraeli to urge that ‘no hanging back, or fear to be found fault with, must deter us from strong and prompt measures ... Pray urge this on the Viceroy.’7 Disraeli strongly backed Lytton and defended him in a masterly speech at the Guildhall against attacks by the Opposition. Privately he was not so sure, especially when Lytton sent to London an acid commentary in which he cut to pieces in words the principal officers in the Indian Army, Roberts apart, and said that one of them, Sir Sam Browne, deserved a court martial. Disraeli commented sarcastically: ‘Except Roberts, who he believes is highly gifted, and certainly is a strategist, there seems no one much to rely on; Stewart respectable; Massy promising ... And these are the men whom, only a few weeks ago, he recommended for all these distinctions. I begin to think he ought to be tried by a court martial himself.’8

  Perhaps, then, it was fortunate that only Roberts’s Kurram Field Force was ready for action. Browne’s column had been dispersed. Stewart could easily reoccupy Kandahar, but an advance from there on Kabul would take months due to the supply difficulty. Roberts’s force was therefore reassembled. From the advanced base at Ali Khel, Kabul lay 80 miles away, five days’ march over difficult but not impossible country. Lytton consulted Haines and his Council, and then ordered Roberts to march to Kabul to avenge Cavagnari and restore the situation. A telegram was sent to Conolly to warn the Amir that a British force was on its way. Stewart was to hold southern Afghanistan and Kandahar with his division. A division under General Bright was to assemble in the Khyber Pass, advance to Jalalabad and support Roberts. Transport would be difficult, as the first campaign had caused the deaths of many baggage animals and the rest had been dispersed. Lieutenant General Sir Michael Kennedy set to work to improvise a system, officers’ baggage having already been cut. ‘No more truffles and champagne,’ wrote Major George White of the Gordons to his wife.9

  As things turned out Bright was unable to reach Roberts because of transport difficulties, but as the Shutagardan Pass at 11,500 feet would be closed by snows over the winter, it was essential that he keep open communications via the Khyber Pass and Gandamak. Brigadier Charles Gough commanding one of Bright’s brigades pushed forward in late November to within 20 miles of Kabul. The Kurram route along which Roberts had advanced was then abandoned.

  The campaign had already stretched the Indian military machine to its limit, especially transport. There was a shortage of British officers and widespread sickness. Roberts pressed for experienced officers as senior subordinates, and was given Brigadiers Herbert MacPherson and Thomas Baker to command the infantry brigades, the latter being the Viceroy’s military secretary, Brigadier Dunham ‘Redan’ Massy for the cavalry, and Colonel Gordon for the guns; unfortunately neither of the latter two had much experience of war, nor had Massy served with cavalry in the field. Roberts told his wife that he had wanted Hugh Gough, left in charge of communications, not Massy, but Haines had insisted against Lytton’s protests. Charles Gough, Hugh’s brother, also an experienced cavalryman, wrote:

  the fact is Massy never saw any service except when as a lad he marched with his Reg[iment] to the attack on the Redan [at Sevastopol in the Crimea], where he was accidentally hit, like many others, rather badly and got called by his Father ‘Redan Massy’. Since which time he has never seen a shot fired. He had never in his life seen cavalry in action until he came up here, and was utterly without experience and untried and yet he was crammed down everybody’s throat.

  He was to prove a burden. Roberts kept his experienced and successful staff, adding Colonel Charles MacGregor as chief, Lieutenant Colonel E.G. Hastings as head of the ‘politicals’ and the young Henry Mortimer Durand as Political Secretary, and by proclamations attempted to calm the people on the route. The young Durand, whose father had distinguished himself at Ghazni in the 1st Afghan War, was delighted to be Roberts’s Political Secretary. He equipped himself with an ancient Scots claymore given him by his brother-in-law Ma
cGregor and an almost equally huge double-barrelled pistol which he thrust ostentatiously into his belt.10

  Roberts visited Lytton for personal instructions. Lytton’s relations with Cavagnari had been close, and he was ‘in a state of deep distress and depression’, grieving for his dead envoy, the collapse of the Mission and the heavy blow to his policy. Roberts asked what line he should take on future relations with Afghans. ‘You can tell them we shall never again altogether withdraw from Afghanistan, and that those who help you will be befriended and protected by the British government.’11 Lytton’s written instructions, marked ‘very confidential’ and despatched to Roberts when he had joined his force, put much that was to follow into perspective. If the Herat regiments were dispersed Roberts should set a price on the head of every soldier and be liberal in payment of informants.

  All such persons captured and denounced by your informants, should be promptly executed in the manner most likely to impress the population ... The whole Afghan Population is Particeps criminis in a great national crime; and every Afghan brought to death by the avenging arm of the British Power, I shall regard as one scoundrel the less in a den of scoundrelism, which it is our present business to thoroughly purge ... You cannot stop to pick and chuse [sic] Ringleaders. Every soldier of the Herat Regiments is ipso facto guilty; and so is every civilian, be he Priest or layman, Mullah or peasant, who joined the mob of assassins. To satisfy the conventions of English sentiment it will probably be necessary to inflict death only in execution of the verdict of some sort of judicial authority. But any such authority should be of the roughest and readiest kind, such as a drumhead Court Martial; and its enquiry in each case limited to the question whether the executors of retribution are satisfied that it is desirable that the alleged culprit should be put to death. For, remember that it is not justice in the ordinary sense, but retribution that you have to administer on reaching Kabul. The action of your Courts Martial should be quick, and the grounds of their decisions not recorded ... What is required is a prompt and impressive example -and do not forget that there will be more clamour at home over the fall of a single head six months hence than over a hundred heads that fall at one. Your objects should be to strike terror, and to strike it swiftly and deeply; but to avoid a ‘Reign of Terror’.12