Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (35 page)

The idea of a depression – or melancholia as the Victorians called it – provoked by shame and guilt being the cause of Vitkevitch’s suicide was also the explanation favoured by his travelling companion Ivan Blaramberg, who knew him well in his final months. ‘In April we received the sad news of our friend Vitkevitch’s suicide,’ Blaramberg later wrote in his memoirs.

This was a tragic end for a young man who could yet have been of much use to our government for he had the energy, the enterprise, and all the necessary qualities to play in Asia the role of Alexander Burnes. During our journey to Persia and the sojourn there he was often in a melancholy mood and would say that he had had enough of life. Pointing at a breech-loading Bertran pistol, he once remarked: ‘Avec ce pistolet-là, je me brulerai un jour la cervelle.’ And he kept his word, as it was with this very pistol that he shot himself in a moment of deep melancholy.
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The suicide of Vitkevitch was only one of many far-reaching repercussions of Shah Shuja’s return to the throne of Afghanistan.

In Orenburg, Vitkevitch’s champion, Count Perovsky, was determined that Russia would not be outmanoeuvred by British machinations in Central Asia. As soon as it became clear that the British were about to invade Afghanistan, Perovsky began lobbying to revive Russian prestige in the region by conquering the Turkman Khanate of Khiva, something he had been pushing for since 1835. For many years the Khivans had been buying the kidnapped and enslaved Russian serfs abducted from the border region by the Kazakhs; the British advance into Central Asia gave Perovsky the excuse he had been waiting for to put his invasion plan into action. A committee assembled in St Petersburg to consider his proposal and decided that the expedition to Khiva should ‘consolidate the influence of Russia in Central Asia, weaken the long-standing impunity of the Khivans, and especially that constancy with which the English government, to the detriment of our industry and trade, strives to spread its supremacy in those parts. Looking on this enterprise from this point of view, the committee is entirely convinced of the necessity of it.’
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In London, meanwhile, there was great satisfaction that the first military expedition undertaken during the reign of Queen Victoria had been such an effortless success: in London society, a new dance – a gallop named ‘The Storming of Ghuznee’ – became the fashionable strut of the season.
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The young Queen wrote in her diary that the invasion was ‘a stroke for the Mastery of Central Asia’, while her politicians assured her that the war had for the time being settled the question of whether it was Britain or Russia which was to have ‘possession of the East’.
As the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, observed, from the day Shah Shuja returned to the Bala Hisar, it was Macnaghten who was now the real King of Afghanistan.
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Downing Street authorised baronetcies for Macnaghten, Wade and Keane, and an earldom for Auckland.

In Simla too, there was great relief at the way the campaign had gone: the Governor General’s ball to celebrate the victory ‘went off with the greatest success’, wrote Emily Eden, ‘with transparencies of the taking of Ghazni, “Auckland” in all directions, arches and verandahs made up of flowers; and a whist table for his Lordship. Every individual in Simla was there.’
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In Kabul itself, there were also celebrations, at least among the Royalist supporters of the Sadozais and among those who were able to gain profit or promotion from the occupation. Shah Shuja settled into the Bala Hisar, and restored his old durbar, making Mullah Shakur, his faithful aide in Ludhiana, his chief of staff, and summoning Colonel Wade, his long-time champion, to receive a special robe of honour. To the assembled nobility he announced a fresh start for Afghanistan: he would forgive his enemies and honour his commitments to the British who had looked after him when he had lost everything. As his faithful biographer Mohammad Husain Herati remarked:

His Majesty would often repeat that he had spent thirty years as a guest of the English and had never experienced anything except kindness and respect from them, and that this in turn demanded his utter loyalty and that of his heirs, generation after generation. He compared his case to that of the Emperor Humayun who had sought refuge at the Safavid court in Iran and had received help to reconquer his kingdom. He also had it loudly proclaimed in the public audience at court that any of the Barakzai khans who had fled and left their homes would be pardoned on their return to Kabul, and their possessions restored to them: several, such as Nawab Zaman Khan Barakzai with his sons and brothers and with all their dependants and tribesmen, took advantage of the offer of reconciliation, and were restored to their former positions.
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Meanwhile, the British troops and sepoys wandered happily around the autumnal palace gardens and the Kabul orchards heavy with fruit, while ‘parties rode hither and thither to visit such objects of curiosity as were described to them’.
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The city that the British had just seized from Dost Mohammad was then at the peak of its prosperity and with a population of around seventy thousand was by 1839 probably the greatest commercial entrepôt in Central Asia and the centre of the region’s caravan trade. The security that Dost Mohammad had been able to guarantee in his kingdom and the tolerance he had shown to religious minorities meant that Kabul had become a major centre for Hindu traders from Sindh and especially the Sindhi banking capital of Shikarpur; there were also flourishing communities of Jewish, Georgian and Armenian traders.
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The narrow streets gave on to the mud-walled compounds of rich merchants and the townhouses of the landowners and tribal chiefs, though from the streets all that could be seen were grandly carved wooden gateways, the wooden shutters and lattices of the overhanging upper rooms and the tops of the mulberry trees visible above the walls. If the gates opened, however, passers-by could catch glimpses of large courtyards in which trickling fountains were placed in the middle of a raised platform, spread with carpets and bolsters and shaded by fruit trees. Recesses in the arcades would be ornamented with intricate plasterwork. Here, under the trellising, the chiefs would loll during the evenings, smoking pipes and listening to musicians play their rababs or the poets recite the great Persian epics.

Between the great houses stretched miles of bustling brick-built bazaars, arranged by trade, with separate streets for shawl merchants, the sellers of spice and rose water, and the importers of Bukhara silks, Russian tea, Lucknavi indigo, Tartar furs, Chinese porcelain and the celebrated stabbing daggers of Isfahan. ‘The shop windows are open to the ground,’ noted James Rattray, a young officer who would later go on to draw some of the finest sketches of Kabul,

and the immense display of merchandise, fruits, game, armour, and cutlery defies description. These articles are arranged in prodigious piles from floor to ceiling; in front of each sits the artificer or from amidst the heaped up profusion peeps out the trader at his visitors. The streets are so narrow, that a string of laden camels takes hours to press through the dense, moving, ever-varying crowds who all day long fill the thoroughfares . . . In and out of the crowds the women in their shroud-like veils, thread their passage, or seek an easier plan of forcing it, astride on horseback . . . The multitude is suddenly pushed aside by a long train of foot soldiery, the advance guard of some great chief, who rides proudly on, followed by a troop of cavaliers, glittering in embroidered cloaks and trappings, and brandishing their spears and matchlocks . . . After these waddle the elephants of the Shah, tearing down the outstanding water pipes from the flat roofs, or backing onto an ice or fruit shop.
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Through the noise and the press would come the cry of the water seller with his brass cup and leather bag, ‘Ab! Ab!’, the cry of the lines of blind beggars asking for alms and, at the end of the summer, the rhubarb sellers with their call of ‘Shabash rawash!’ [‘Excellent rhubarb!’].

After all the hardships they had been through, the British troops were enchanted and even a little dazzled: ‘They marvelled at the wonderful Chatta covered bazaar,’ wrote Mirza ‘Ata, referring to the great arcaded market built by Shah Jahan’s Governor, Ali Mardan Khan, in the 1640s, around the same time as the Taj was coming up in Agra.

They admired the fine cut-masonry pools and cisterns, the gardens equal to those of paradise, the fine buildings of a capital city, and the well-stocked shops . . . The English troops, numerous as the waves of the sea, had experienced much hardship on the route into Khurasan, and now rested in Kabul, eating meat and rice, almond marzipan, faluda [vermicelli pudding], grilled meats and kababs, with various fruits, grapes of the sahebi and khalili varieties, and the finest of all, khaya-e ghulaman, young men’s testicles. They nibbled raisins and grew plump after being semi-starved on vile Indian chillies, dal and chapatis. The proverb ‘the women of Kabul all have lovers, just as the wheat flour of Peshawar is all cut with maize flour’ was also quickly proved, as the soldiers rode the steed of their lust unbridled day and night.
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This latter entertainment was something the jaunty regimental chaplain, the Rev. G. R. Gleig, chose to draw a veil over when he described in his memoirs the various wholesome masculine activities which kept the British troops occupied in Kabul. ‘Wherever Englishmen go,’ he wrote,

they sooner or later introduce among the people whom they visit a taste for manly sports. Horse racing and cricket were both got up in the vicinity of Kabul; and both the chiefs and the people soon learned to take a lively interest. Shah Shuja himself gave a valuable sword to be run for, which Major Daly, of the 4th Light Dragoons had the good fortune to win: and so infectious became the habit that several of the native gentry entered horses. The game of cricket was not, however, so congenial to the taste of the Afghans. Being great gamblers in their own way, they looked on with astonishment at the bowling and batting of the English players. But it does not appear that they were ever tempted to lay aside their flowing robes and huge turbans and enter the field as competitors. On the other hand, our countrymen attended their cocks, quails and other fighting animals, and, betting freely, lost or won their rupees in the best possible humour.
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More surprisingly, Gleig claimed that the Afghans also developed a taste for amateur theatricals. ‘The British officers got up some plays,’ he wrote.

A theatre was constructed, scenery painted, dresses prepared and excellent bands in attendance. The pieces chosen were chiefly comedies, such as the ‘Irish Ambassador’ and others of the same sort, and great amusement was afforded the audience. For on such occasions they changed the titles of the
dramatis personae
, so as to bring them and the offices of the parties bearing them to the level of Afghan comprehension, while Burnes translated the speeches as they were uttered. The Afghans are a merry people, and have a keen relish of the ludicrous and satirical; and as the interpreter never failed to bring the jokes of the actors home to them, they marked their delight by bursting into peals of laughter.
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As late summer turned to autumn, and the nights began to grow longer and colder, the troops were issued with sheepskin clothes, warm gloves and quilts. It was now deemed to be the hunting season and those foxhounds which had made it alive through the Bolan Pass without starving or being eaten by the camp followers were now taken out daily to hunt jackals. Snipe- and duck-shooting also became popular diversions, as did, a little later, skating and snowman building. ‘We appeared in skates manufactured by ourselves,’ wrote Thomas Seaton, ‘and figured away on the ice to the utter amazement of the Kabul people who as they had never seen such a spectacle, came running together to witness the performance. We enjoyed the winter as thoroughly as circumstances would permit – shooting, snow-balling, making snow giants, and picnics to the lake, for the weather was frequently most enjoyable. How clear, how blue and how cloudless it was!’

Shuja meanwhile was busy rebuilding the Bala Hisar and trying to return it to the glories he remembered from his youth, remaking it as a palace which befitted his elevated ideas of kingship. The high walls and bastions ringing the high rock were in good repair; what was not to his liking was the refinements of the palace buildings perching on the terraces within. So, starting with the durbar hall, Shuja refurbished and repainted the plasterwork and repaired the balustrades and the arcades. The Mughal gardens were replanted and a new harem sarai designed from scratch to be ready for his womenfolk when they arrived from Ludhiana. At the same time the court ceremonial was altered to bring back the more formal court style of the Sadozais, which the Barakzais had abandoned. The old offices of state were reinstated and with them the elaborate uniforms which so amazed British observers: ‘The court officials should really be viewed in a body of some hundreds,’ wrote the artist James Rattray, ‘dressed in crimson jackets, and bearing on their heads their high fantastic caps of every conceivable semblance. Some are ornamented with huge ears like asses, or spikes like those of porcupines, while others take the form of goat and buffalo horns, and many are conical, spiral or bell-shaped. These caps are all more or less decorated with figures and devices, some bearing a spear head as an emblem of superior rank.’
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In formal durbar, Shuja himself was dressed no less remarkably, with a long choga hanging loose over his shoulder, ornamented with jewels at the loops, while the corners of his doge-like hat were edged with velvet pendants. He would remain seated on his octagonal white marble throne while receiving petitioners, and would rise only to receive the most senior British officials. On these occasions he would lean on a long curvilinear antelope horn, ‘the expression on his face grave and careworn’.