LORD AUCKLAND'S DISASTERS.

407

and alternately kept state at his two Afghán capitals of Kábul and Kandahar. The Durání kings were prolific in children, who fought to the death with one another on each succession. At last, in 1826, Dost Muhammad, head of the powerful Barakzai family, succeeded in establishing himself as ruler of Kábul, with the title of Amir, while two fugitive brothers of the Durání line were living under British protection at Ludhiana, on the Punjab frontier.

with

The attention of the English Government had been directed Our early to Afghán affairs ever since the time of Lord Wellesley, who dealings feared that Zamán Sháh, the Afghán Amír, then holding his court Kábul, 1800-3 at Lahore (1800), might follow in the path of Ahmad Shah, -37. and overrun Hindustán. The growth of the powerful Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh effectually dispelled these alarms. Subsequently, in 1809, while a French invasion of India was still a possibility to be guarded against, Mountstuart Elphinstone was sent by Lord Minto on a mission to Sháh Shujá to form a defensive alliance. Before the year expired, Shah Shujá had been driven into exile, and a third brother, Mahmúd Shah, was on the throne. In 1837, when the curtain rises upon the drama of English interference in Afghánistán, the usurper Dost Muhammad, Barakzai, was firmly established at Kabul. Dost Muhammad, His great ambition was to recover Peshawar from the Sikhs. 1837. When, therefore, Captain Alexander Burnes arrived on a mission from Lord Auckland, with the ostensible object of opening trade, the Dost was willing to promise everything if only he could get Peshawar.

But Lord Auckland had another and more important object in view. At this time the Russians were advancing Russian rapidly in Central Asia, and a Persian army, not without influence, 1837. Russian support, was besieging Herát, then as now the bulwark of Afghánistán on the west. A Russian envoy was at Kábul at the same time as Burnes. The latter was unable to satisfy the demands of Dost Muhammad in the matter of Peshawar, and returned to India unsuccessful. Lord Auckland forthwith resolved upon the hazardous plan of placing a more subservient ruler upon the throne of Kábul. Shah Shujá, one of the two exiles of Ludhiana, was selected for the purpose. At this time both the Punjab and Sind were independent kingdoms. Sind was the less powerful of the two, and accordingly a British army escorting Shah Shujá made its way by that route into southern Afghánistán through the Bolan Pass. Kandahár surrendered; Ghazni was taken by storm. Dost Muhammad fled across the Hindu Kush, and

Shah Shujá installed, 1839.

Kábul

1839-41.

Shah Shujá was triumphantly led into the Bala Hissár at Kábul in August 1839. After one more brave struggle, Dost Muhammad surrendered, and was sent to Calcutta as a State prisoner. But although we could enthrone Sháh Shujá, we could not win for him the hearts of the Afgháns. To that nation he seemed a degenerate exile thrust back upon them by foreign arms. During two years, Afghánistán remained in the military occupation of the British. The catastrophe occurred in Occupied, November 1841, when our Political Agent, Sir Alexander Burnes, was assassinated in the city of Kábul. The troops in the cantonments were under the command of General Elphinstone (not to be confounded with the able civilian and historian, the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone). Sir William Macnaghten was the political officer. Elphinstone, an old man, proved unequal to the responsibilities of the position. Macnaghten was treacherously murdered at an interview with the Afghán chief Akbar Khán, eldest son of Dost Muhammad. After lingering amid disgraceful dissensions and with fatal indecision in their cantonments for two months, the British army set off in the depth of winter, under a fallacious guarantee from the Afghán leaders, to find its way back to India through the passes. When they started, they numbered 4000 fighting men with 12,000 camp followers. A single survivor, Dr. Brydon, reached the friendly walls of Jalálábád, where Sale was gallantly holding out. The rest perished in ated, 1842. the snowy defiles of Khurd-Kábul and Jagdalak, from the knives and matchlocks of the Afgháns, or from the effects of cold. A few prisoners, chiefly women, children, and officers, were considerately treated by the orders of Akbar Khán.

The winter retreat.

Our garrison annihil

The first Afghán enterprise, begun in a spirit of aggression, and conducted amid disagreements and mismanagement, had The shock ended in the disgrace of the British arms. The real loss, which in Engamounted only to a single garrison, and cost fewer soldiers than many a victory, was magnified by the horrors of the winter march, and by the completeness of the annihilation.

land.

Earl of Ellenborough, 1842-44.

Within a month after the news reached Calcutta, Lord Auckland had been superseded by Lord Ellenborough, whose first impulse was to be satisfied with drawing off in safety the garrisons from Kandahár and Jalálábád. But bolder counsels The army were forced upon him. General Pollock, who was marching straight through the Punjab to relieve Sale, was allowed to penetrate to Kábul. General Nott, although ordered to withdraw from Afghánistán, resolved to take Kábul on the way!

of retribution, 1842.

LORD ELLENBOROUGH.

409

Lord Ellenborough gave his commands in well-chosen words, which would leave his Generals responsible for any disaster.1 General Nott took that responsibility, and instead of retreating south-east to the Indus, boldly marched north in nearly the opposite direction to Kábul. After hard fighting, the two British forces, under Pollock and Nott, met at their common destination at Kábul City in September 1842. The great bázár at Kabul was blown up with gunpowder, to fix a stigma upon the city; the prisoners were recovered; and the British troops marched back to India, leaving Dost Muhammad to take undisputed possession of his throne.

The drama closed with a bombastic proclamation from Lord The Ellenborough, who had caused the gates from the tomb of Gates of Somnath,' Mahmud of Ghazni to be carried back as a memorial of 1842. 'Somnath revenged.' Lord Ellenborough, in his craze for historical melodrama, declared these doors to be the ones carried away from the spoliation of the Somnath temple by Mahmud of Ghazní, 1024 A.D.2 The gates were a modern forgery; and their theatrical procession through the Punjab formed a vainglorious sequel to Lord Ellenborough's diffidence, while the fate of our armies hung in the balance. The histrionic travesty which closed the first Kábul war was scarcely less distasteful to the serious English mind than the unrighteous interference which led to its commencement, or the follies and feeble division of counsels which produced its disasters.

Lord Ellenborough, who loved military pomp, had his taste Sind war, gratified by two more wars. In 1843, the Muhammadan rulers 1843. of Sind, known as the Mirs or Amírs, whose chief fault was that they would not surrender their independence, were crushed by Sir Charles Napier. The victory of Miání, in which 3000 British troops defeated 20,000 Baluchís, is one of the brilliant feats of arms in Anglo-Indian history. But valid reasons can scarcely be found for the annexation of the country. In the same year, a disputed succession at Gwalior, Gwalior outbreak, fomented by feminine intrigue, resulted in an outbreak of the overgrown army which the Sindhia family kept up. Peace was restored by the battles of Mahárájpur and Punniah, at the former of which Lord Ellenborough was present in person.

In 1844, Lord Ellenborough was recalled by the Court of

The Indian Administration of Lord Ellenborough, being his Correspondence. Edited by Lord Colchester, 1874. See Lord Ellenborough's own Letters, pp. 29, 30, 39, etc.

2 Vide ante, chap. x. p. 274.

1843.

Lord

Directors, who differed from him on points of administration, disliked his theatrical display, and distrusted his erratic genius. He was succeeded by Sir Henry (afterwards Lord) Hardinge, Hardinge, who had served through the Peninsular war, and lost a hand 1844-48. at Ligny. It was felt on all sides that a trial of strength between the British and the remaining Hindu power in India, the great Sikh nation, drew near.

The Sikhs, 1469.

Nának
Shah.

Sikh con

The Sikhs were not a nationality like the Maráthás, but a religious sect bound together by the additional tie of military discipline. They trace their origin to Nának Shah, a pious Hindu reformer, born near Lahore in 1469, before the ascendancy of either Mughals or Portuguese in India. Nának, like other zealous preachers of his time, preached the abolition of caste, the unity of the Godhead, and the obligation of leading a pure life. From Nának, ten gurus or apostles are traced down to Govind Singh in 1708, with whom the succession stopped. Cruelly persecuted by the ruling Muhammadans, almost exterminated under the miserable successors of Aurangzeb,2 the Sikh martyrs clung to their faith with unflinching zeal. At last the downfall of the Mughal Empire transformed the Sikh sect into a territorial power. It was

the only political organization remaining in the Punjab. The Sikhs in the north, and the Maráthás in Southern and federacies. Central India, thus became the two great Hindu powers who partitioned the Mughal Empire. Even before the rise of Ranjit Singh, offshoots from the Sikh misls or confederacies, each led by its elected sardár, had carved out for themselves feudal principalities along the banks of the Sutlej, some of which endure to the present day.

Ranjit Singh, 1780-1839.

Ranjit Singh, the 'Lion of the Punjab' and founder of the Sikh kingdom, was born in 1780. In his twentieth year he obtained the appointment of Governor of Lahore from the Afghán Amír, and formed the project of erecting his personal rule upon the fanaticism of his Sikh countryHe organized their church militant, or the liberated,' into an army under European officers, which for steadiness and religious fervour has had no parallel since the 'Ironsides' of Cromwell. From Lahore, as his capital, he kingdom. extended his conquests south to Múltán, west to Peshawar,

His

1 lide ante, pp. 207-8. The life of Nának and growth of his sect are summarized in articles AMRITSAR and PUNJAB, The Imperial Gazetteer of India. The religious aspects of the Sikhs are fully treated in Wilson's Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. pp. 267-275 (ed. 1862).

2 Vide ante, p. 314.

THE EARL OF DALHOUSIE.

411

sensions.

and north to Kashmir. On the east side alone he was hemmed in by the Sutlej, up to which river the authority of the British Government had advanced in 1804. Until his death, in 1839, Ranjit Singh was ever loyal to the engagements which he had entered into with Metcalfe in 1809. But he left no son capable of wielding his sceptre. Lahore was torn by dissensions between rival generals, ministers, and queens. Its disThe only strong power was the army of the Central Committee of Generals or khálsá,1 which, since our disaster in Afghánistán, burned to measure its strength with the British Sepoys. The French or European Generals, Avitabile and Court, were foolishly ousted by the Sikh commanders, and the supreme military command was vested in a series of panchayats or elective committees of five.

Sikh war,

In 1845, the Sikh army, numbering 60,000 men with 150 First guns, crossed the Sutlej and invaded British territory. Sir 1845. Hugh Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, together with the Governor-General, hurried up to the frontier. Within three weeks, four pitched battles were fought, at Múdkí, Firozshahr, Aliwál, and Sobráon. The British loss on each occasion was heavy; but by the last victory, the Sikhs were fairly driven back into the Sutlej, and Lahore surrendered to the British. The British, however, declined to annex the prostrate province; but appointed a Sikh protectorate. By the terms of peace which we then dictated, the infant son of Ranjít, Dhulíp Dhulip Singh, was recognised as Rájá; the Jalandhar Doáb, or tract Singh, 1845. between the Sutlej and the Ráví, was annexed to British territory; the Sikh army was limited to a specified number; Major Henry Lawrence was appointed Resident, to assist the Sikh Council of Regency, at Lahore; and a British force was sent to garrison the Punjab on behalf of the child-Rájá. The Governor-General, Sir H. Hardinge, received a peerage, and returned to England in 1848.

1848-56.

Lord Dalhousie succeeded. The eight years' rule of this Earl of greatest of Indian proconsuls (1848–56) left more conspicuous Dalhousie, results than that of any Governor-General since Clive. A high-minded statesman, of a most sensitive conscience, and earnestly desiring peace, Lord Dalhousie found himself forced against his will to fight two wars, and to embark on a policy of annexation. His campaigns in the Punjab and in Burma

1 The Persian word khálisah, literally 'pure' or 'sincere,' means in Indian official language the royal exchequer, and hence more loosely the bureau of the central administration.