AT CHAPTER XXIII. AFGHANISTAN. T the close of the last century, Zemaun Shah, son of Timour, and grandson of the illustrious Ahmed Shah, reigned over the great Douranee Empire, which then included Afghanistan, Beloochistan, and Scinde, with many other miscellaneous tribes besides, having Cabul for its capital, and including a population of about fifteen millions, very much the same in point of numbers with the kingdom of Prussia after the War of Independence and the Waterloo campaign. And it is not a little curious to contrast the fortunes of the two great military states of central Europe and central Asia, then and Prussia, since the overthrow of Napoleon I. in 1815, and Napoleon III., in 1870, has become the greatest military power in the world, with a population of nearly fifty millions of subjects; whereas the Dourance Empire during the same period has not only been entirely broken up and dispersed; but the only kingdom which can have any claim to being its representative, viz., that of Afghanistan, is now so thoroughly disorganized, that when peace is made after the useless war in which we have unhappily been engaged in that country during the last two years, the utmost which the Afghans can hope for is to possess the now. remains of an ancient empire, with a population of, perhaps, two or three millions. And the problem still awaits solution as to how the once great kingdom of Afghanistan is hereafter to be governed.* It may be of some interest if we endeavour to give a brief sketch of how this has come to pass; which is explained by the history of the country, during the present century, presenting a continual struggle between rival competitors for power, with scarcely any intermission of anarchy, war, and internecine horrors, very similar to what occurred in our own country during the Wars of the Roses. Very little appears to be known of the Douranees until the time of Nadir Shah, the great King of Persia, who reduced them to submission in the early part of the last century. After the death of Nadir, in 1747, Ahmed Shah, the chief of the tribe called Abdaullees, seized the government, and was crowned at Candahar; and in consequence of the dream of a Mohammedan saint, he changed the name of his tribe from Abdaullees to Douranees, while he himself assumed the name of Shah Dooree Douran. Ahmed was an enterprising warrior, and likewise distinguished as a patron of literature. He extended his conquests as far as Delhi; and his life was chiefly passed in a series of campaigns against the Mahrattas and the Sikhs. He was succeeded by his son, Timour Shah, in 1773, whose chief characteristic was the reverse of his father's activity, which rendered him quite incapable of retaining in submission the various tribes which his father had conquered. The only important event of his twenty years' reign *This was written before the accession of Abdul Rahman, in 1880. Zemaun Shah's intended Invasion. 241 was in leading an army of 100,000 men from Cabul against the King of Bokhara, who before long offered acceptable conditions of peace. On Timour's death, in 1793, a fearful struggle ensued between his sons for the throne, which was at first obtained by his eldest son, Zemaun, who, after a turbulent reign of between seven and eight years, was eventually overthrown by his brother Mahmoud, with the help of Futteh Khan, the chief of a tribe called the Barrekzyes. It was during the reign of Zemaun Shah that the English may be said to have come into contact with Afghanistan; for in and during the chief part of this present century that nation has been more or less a thorn in the side of England. For many years Zemaun's threatened descent on Hindostan had kept our Indian officials in a chronic state of unrest. But he never advanced farther than Lahore, and was then compelled precipitately to retire. Sir John Kaye, in his valuable "History of the War in Afghanistan," observes: "We, who in these times trustingly contemplate the settled tranquillity of the northwestern provinces of India, and remember Zemaun Shah only as the old blind pensioner of Loodhianah, can hardly estimate aright the real importance of the threatened movement, or appreciate aright the apprehensions which were felt by two governorgenerals of such different personal characters as Sir John Shore and Lord Wellesley."* * Vol. i., p. 3. Sir John Shore wrote in 1797: "Report speaks of an intended invasion of Hindostan by Zemaun Shah, and with respect to his intention is entitled to credit." Lord Wellesley, two years later, spoke of the threatened invasion " creating the liveliest sensation |