XIA. D. 1842THE SPIES
Fromearliest childhood Eldred Pottinger was out of place in crowded England. Gunpowder is good exciting stuff to play with, and there could be no objection to his blowing up himself and his little brother, because that was all in the family; but when he mined the garden wall and it fell on a couple of neighbors, they highly took offense; and when his finely invented bomb went off at Addiscombe College he rose to the level of a public nuisance. On the whole it must have been a relief to his friends when he went to India. There he had an uncle, the president in Scinde, a shrewd man who shipped young Pottinger to the greatest possible distance in the hinder parts of Afghanistan.
The political situation in Afghanistan was the usual howling chaos of oriental kingdoms, and the full particulars would bore the reader just as they bored me. It was Pottinger’s business to find out and report the exact state of affairs at a time when any white man visiting the country was guaranteed, if and when found, to have his throat cut. Being clever at native languages, with a very foxy shrewdness, theyoung spy set off, disguised as a native horse dealer, and reached Cabul, the Afghan capital.
The reigning ameer was Dost Mahomet, who was not on speaking terms with Kamran, king of Herat, and Pottinger’s job was to get through to Herat without being caught by Dost. The horse-copper disguise was useless now, so Pottinger became a Mahomedansyed, or professional holy man. He sent his attendants and horses ahead, slipped out of the capital on foot by night and made his way to his camp. So he reached the country of the Hazareh tribes where his whole expedition was captured by the principal robber Jakoob Beg, who did a fairly good business in selling travelers, as slaves, except when they paid blackmail. “The chief,” says Pottinger, “was the finest Hazareh I had seen, and appeared a well-meaning, sensible person. He, however, was quite in the hands of his cousin—an ill-favored, sullen and treacherous-looking rascal. I, by way of covering my silence, and to avoid much questioning, took to my beads and kept telling them with great perseverance, much to the increase of my reputation as a holy personage.”
The trouble was that Pottinger and his devout followers were of the Sounee faith, whereas the robber castle was of the Sheeah persuasion. The difference was something like that between our Catholics and Protestants, and Pottinger was like a Methodist minister trying to pass himself off for a cardinal without knowing the little points of etiquette. The prisoners prompted one another into all sorts of ridiculous blunders, so that the ill-favored cousin suspectedPottinger of being a fraud. “Why he may be a Feringhee himself,” said the cousin. “I have always heard that the Hindustanees are black, and this man is fairer than we are.” But then the Feringhees—the British—were supposed to be monsters, and Pottinger was in no way monstrous to look at, so that he managed to talk round the corner, and at the end of a week ransomed his party with the gift of a fine gun to the chief. They set off very blithely into the mountains, but had not gone far when the chief’s riders came romping in pursuit, and herded them back, presumably to have their throats cut according to local manners and customs. The chief, it turned out, had been unable to make the gun go off, but finding it worked all right if handled properly dismissed the spy with his blessing. Eighteen days’ journey brought him to Herat, where he felt perfectly safe, strolling unarmed in the country outside the walls, until a gang of slave catchers made him an easy prey. His follower, Synd Ahmed, scared them off by shouting to an imaginary escort.
Shah Kamran with his vizier Yar Mahomed had been out of town, but on their return to Herat, Pottinger introduced himself to the king as a British officer, and his gift of a brace of pistols was graciously accepted.
Not long afterward a Persian army came up against Herat, and with that force there were Russian officers. For once the Heratis could look for no help from Afghanistan; and for once this mighty fortress, the key to the gates of India, was guarded by a cur. If Herat fell the way was open for Russia,the ancient road to India of all the conquerors. There is the reason why the British had sent a spy to Herat.
The Heratis were quick to seek the advice of the British officer who organized the defense and in the end took charge, the one competent man in the garrison. Shah Kamran sent him with a flag of truce to the Persian army. The Persian soldiers hailed him with rapture, thinking they would soon get home to their wives and families; they patted his legs, they caressed his horse, they shouted “Bravo! Bravo! Welcome! The English were always friends of the king of kings!”
So Pottinger was brought before the shah of Persia, who would accept no terms except surrender, which the Englishman ridiculed. He went back to the city, and the siege went on for months.
A shell burst the house next door to his quarters, but he took no harm. One day he leaned against a loophole in the ramparts, watching a Persian attempt to spring a mine, and as he moved away his place was taken by a eunuch who at once got a ball in the lungs. He had narrow escapes without end.
At the end of six months, June twenty-fourth, 1838, the Persians tried to carry the place by assault. “At four points the assault was repulsed, but at the fifth point the storming column threw itself into the trench of the lower fausse-braye. The struggle was brief but bloody. The defenders fell at their posts to a man, and the work was carried by the besiegers. Encouraged by this first success, the storming party pushed on up the slope, but a galling fire from the garrison met them as they advanced. The officersand men of the column were mown down; there was a second brief and bloody struggle, and the upper fausse-braye was carried, while a few of the most daring of the assailants, pushing on in advance of their comrades, gained the head of the breach. But now Deen Mahomed came down with the Afghan reserve, and thus recruited the defenders gathered new heart, so that the Persians in the breach were driven back. Again and again with desperate courage they struggled to effect a lodgment, only to be repulsed and thrown back in confusion upon their comrades, who were pressing on behind. The conflict was fierce, the issue doubtful. Now the breach was well-nigh carried; and now the stormers, recoiling from the shock of the defense, fell back upon the exterior slope of the fausse-braye.
“Startled by the noise of the assault Yar Mahomed (the vizier) had risen up, left his quarters, and ridden down to the works. Pottinger went forth at the same time and on the same errand. Giving instructions to his dependents to be carried out in the event of his falling in the defense, he hastened to join the vizier.... As they neared the point of the attack the garrison were seen retreating by twos and threes; others were quitting the works on the pretext of carrying off the wounded.... Pottinger was eager to push on to the breach; Yar Mahomed sat himself down. The vizier had lost heart; his wonted high courage and collectedness had deserted him. Astonished and indignant ... the English officer called upon the vizier again and again to rouse himself. The Afghan chief rose up and advanced further into the works, and neared the breach where the conflictwas raging.... Yar Mahomed called upon his men in God’s name to fight; but they wavered and stood still. Then his heart failed him again. He turned back, said he would go for aid.... Alarmed by the backwardness of their chief the men were now retreating in every direction.” Pottinger swore.
Yar roused himself, again advanced, but again wavered, and a third time Pottinger by word and deed put him to shame. “He reviled, he threatened, he seized him by the arm and dragged him forward to the breach.” Now comes the fun, and we can forsake the tedious language of the official version. Yar, hounded to desperation by Pottinger, seized a staff, rushed like a wildcat on the retreating soldiers, and so horrified them that they bolted back over the breach down the outside into the face of the Persians. And the Persians fled! Herat was saved.
An envoy came from the Persian army to explain that it was infamous of the Shah Kamran to have an infidel in charge of the defense. “Give him up,” said the Persians, “and we’ll raise the siege.” But the shah was not in a position to surrender Pottinger. That gentleman might take it into his head to surrender the shah of Herat.
Another six months of siege, with famine, mutiny and all the usual worries of beleaguered towns finished Pottinger’s work, the saving of Herat.
Now we take up the life of another spy, also an army officer, old Alexander Burnes. At eighteen he had been adjutant of his regiment and rose very steadily from rank to rank until he was sent asan envoy to Runjeet Singh, the ruler of Punjab, and to the ameers of Scinde. In those days Northwestern India was an unknown region and Burnes was pioneer of the British power.
In 1832 he set out on his second mission through Afghanistan, Bokhara and Persia. See how he wrote from Cabul: “I do not despair of reaching Istamboul (Constantinople) in safety. They may seize me and sell me for a slave, but no one will attack me for my riches.... I have no tent, no chair or table, no bed, and my clothes altogether amount to the value of one pound sterling. You would disown your son if you saw him. My dress is purely Asiatic, and since I came into Cabul has been changed to that of the lowest orders of the people. My head is shaved of its brown locks, and my beard dyed black grieves ... for the departed beauty of youth. I now eat my meals with my hands, and greasy digits they are, though I must say in justification, that I wash before and after meals.... I frequently sleep under a tree, but if a villager will take compassion on me I enter his house. I never conceal that I am a European, and I have as yet found the character advantageous to my comfort. The people know me by the name of Sekunder, which is the Persian for Alexander.... With all my assumed poverty I have a bag of ducats round my waist, and bills for as much money as I choose to draw.... When I go into company I put my hand on my heart, and say with all humility to the master of the house, ‘Peace be unto thee,’ according to custom, and then I squat myself down on the ground. This familiarity has given me an insight into the character of the people... kind-hearted and hospitable, they have no prejudices against a Christian and none against our nation. When they ask me if I eat pork, I of course shudder, and say that it is only outcasts that commit such outrages. God forgive me! for I am very fond of bacon.... I am well mounted on a good horse in case I should find it necessary to take to my heels. My whole baggage on earth goes on one mule, which my servant sits supercargo.... I never was in better spirits.”
After his wonderful journey Burnes was sent to England to make his report to the government, and King William IV must needs hear the whole of the story at Brighton pavilion.
The third journey of this great spy was called the commercial mission to Cabul. There he learned that the Persian siege of Herat was being more or less conducted by Russian officers. Russians swarmed at the court of Dost Mahomed, and an ambassador from the czar was there trying to make a treaty.
Great was the indignation and alarm in British India, and for fear of a Russian invasion in panic haste the government made a big famous blunder, for without waiting to know how Dost was fooling the Russians, an army was sent through the terrible Bolan Pass. That sixty-mile abyss with hanging walls belongs to the Pathans, the fiercest and wildest of all the tribes of men. The army climbed through the death trap, marched, starving, on from Quetta to Candahar and then advanced on Cabul. But Dost’s son Akbar held the great fortress of Ghuznee, a quite impregnable place that had to be taken.
One night while a sham attack was made on the other side of the fortress, Captain Thomson placed nine hundred pounds of gunpowder at the foot of a walled-up gate, and then touched off the charge. The twenty-first light infantry climbed over the smoking ruins and at the head of his storming column Colonel Dennie, in three hours’ fighting, took the citadel. Dost Mahomed fled, and the British entered Cabul to put a puppet sovereign on the throne.
Cabul was a live volcano where English women gave dances. There were cricket matches, theatricals, sports. The governor-general in camp gave a state dinner in honor of Major Pottinger, who had come in from the siege of Herat. During the reception of the guests a shabby Afghan watched, leaning against a door-post, and the court officials were about to remove this intruder when the governor-general approached leading his sister. “Let me present you,” said Lord Auckland, “to Eldred Pottinger, the hero of Herat.” This shabby Afghan was the guest of honor, but nobody would listen to his warnings, or to the warnings of Sir Alexander Burnes, assistant resident. Only the two spies knew what was to come. Then the volcano blew up.
Burnes had a brother staying with him in Cabul, also his military secretary; and when the mob, savage, excited, bent on massacre, swarmed round his house he spoke to them from the balcony. While he talked Lieutenant Broadfoot fell at his side, struck by a ball in the chest. The stables were on fire, the mob filled his garden. He offered to pay then in cash for his brother’s life and his own, so a Cashmiri volunteered to save them in disguise. Theyput on native clothes, they slipped into the garden, and then their guide shouted, “This is Sekunder Burnes!” The two brothers were cut to pieces.
Pottinger was political agent at Kohistan to the northward, and when the whole Afghan nation rose in revolt his fort was so sorely beset that he and his retinue stole away in the dark, joining a Ghoorka regiment. But the regiment was also beset, and its water supply cut off. Pottinger fought the guns; the men repelled attacks by night and day until worn out; dying of thirst in an intolerable agony the regiment broke, scattering into the hills. Only a few men rallied round Pottinger to fight through to Cabul, and he was fearfully wounded, unable to command. Of his staff and the Ghoorka regiment only five men were alive when they entered Cabul.
Our officer commanding at Cabul was not in good health, but his death was unfortunately delayed while the Afghans murdered men, women and children, and the British troops, for lack of a leader, funked. Envoys waited on Akbar Khan, and were murdered. The few officers who kept their heads were without authority, blocked at every turn by cowards, by incompetents. Then the council of war made treaty with Akbar, giving him all the guns except six, all the treasure, three officers as hostages, bills drawn on India for forty thousand rupees, the honor of their country, everything for safe conduct in their disgrace. Dying of cold and hunger, the force marched into the Khoord-Cabul Pass, and at the end of three days the married officers were surrendered with their wives and children. Of the sixteen thousand men three-fourths were dead when the officer commanding andthe gallant Brigadier Skelton were given up as hostages to Akbar. The survivors pushed on through the Jugduluk Pass, which the Afghans had barricaded, and there was the final massacre. Of the whole army, one man, Doctor Brydon, on a starved pony, sinking with exhaustion, rode in through the gates of Fort Jellalabad.
The captured general had sent orders for the retreat of the Jellalabad garrison through the awful defiles of the Khyber Pass in face of a hostile army, and in the dead of winter; but General Sale, commanding, was not such a fool. For three months he had worked his men to desperation rebuilding the fortress, and now when he saw the white tents of Akbar’s camp he was prepared for a siege. That day an earthquake razed the whole fortress into a heap of ruins, but the garrison rebuilt the walls. Then they sallied and, led by Henry Havelock, assaulted Akbar’s camp, smashed his army to flying fragments, captured his guns, baggage, standards, ammunition and food. Nine days later the bands of the garrison marched out to meet a relieving army from India. They were playing an old tune,Oh, but ye’ve been lang o’ comin’.
Meanwhile the British prisoners, well treated, were hurried from fort to fort, with some idea of holding them for sale at so much a slave, until they managed to bribe an Afghan chief. The bribed man led a revolt against Akbar, and one chief after another joined him, swearing on the Koran allegiance to Eldred Pottinger. When Akbar fell, Pottinger marched as leader of the revolted chiefs on the way to Cabul. One day, as the ladies and children wereresting in an old fort for shelter during the great heat of the afternoon, they heard the tramp of horsemen, and in the dead silence of a joy and gratitude too great for utterance, received the relieving force.