Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (54 page)

To add to their misfortunes, Shelton’s one gun had now over-heated and was unable to reply to the Afghan jezails. Among those wounded at this point was Vincent Eyre, who received a bullet through his left hand ‘which for the present terminated my active services’, and Colin Mackenzie, who took a bullet in the left shoulder. ‘Three times the face of the square had to be made up,’ Mackenzie wrote afterwards.

The front ranks had been literally mowed away . . . Our ammunition was almost expended and by one pm the men were faint from fatigue and thirst. But no water was procurable and the number of killed and wounded was swelled every instant. I tried to persuade Shelton to effect a retreat only to be told: ‘Oh no, we will hold the hill some time longer.’ On Shelton’s refusal to retire, Colonel Oliver, who was a very stout man, remarked that the inevitable result would be a general flight to cantonments, and that, as he was too unwieldy to run, the sooner he got shot the better. He then exposed himself to the enemy’s fire and fell mortally wounded.
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To the growing horror of Lady Sale and the other spectators watching from the cantonment rooftops – ‘I had a fine view of the field of action, and by keeping behind the chimneys, escaped the bullets that continually whizzed past me’ – a large party of Afghan ghazis led personally by Abdullah Khan now began to crawl up a hidden gully towards the squares, out of sight of the infantry, but clearly visible to the ladies.
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Moments later they broke cover and flung themselves at the redcoats. According to the
Tarikh-i-Sultani
, ‘at that moment, Abdullah Khan Achakzai, who was renowned for his bravery and had included a wish for martyrdom in his early morning prayers, yelled, “With Allah’s grace, Victory indeed is near!” and with his unit launched an assault like a fierce lion or the serpent that inhabits the scented grass. He captured the English cannon and pushed back the British infantry soldiers, dispersing them. The British soldiers couldn’t withstand this assault and turned and fled.’
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Within minutes the nearest square had collapsed, and the Afghans began to drag away the captured gun. ‘It was very like the scenes depicted in the battle of the Crusaders,’ wrote Lady Sale. ‘The enemy rushed on and drove our men before them like a flock of sheep with a wolf at their heels. As they captured our gun, our artillerymen fought like heroes; two were killed at the gun; Sergeant Mulhall received three wounds; poor Laing was shot while waving his sword over the gun and cheering the men. It was an anxious sight, and made our hearts beat.’
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Shelton, however, managed to keep his one remaining square intact and ordered his bugler to sound the halt. Then he counter-attacked with bayonets, retrieving the gun and in hand-to-hand fighting killing both Mir Masjidi and the military commander of the rebellion, Abdullah Khan Achakzai. ‘The news of the Ghazi’s death bereaved every Muslim, especially the members of Afghani tribes,’ wrote Sultan Mohammad Khan Durrani. ‘Had he not lost his life, the Ghazis would have captured the British Cantonment on that day itself.’
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For a while the British seemed to have the upper hand. But when the Afghans retreated and the remnants of the two squares reformed, the jezail marksmen resumed their fire, and further ranks of sepoys began to fall where they stood. ‘The Brigadier was then urged and entreated to seize the decisive moment to charge the enemy,’ wrote George Lawrence, who was looking on with horror from the cantonment walls, ‘but from some unexplained cause nothing could induce him to stir from the hill.’
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Then a second party of rebel swordsmen assembled in the hidden gully, ready for a final assault. This time all the troops broke rank and fled back to the cantonment, pursued by the Afghan cavalry. ‘All order was at an end,’ noted George Lawrence.

I could see from my post our flying troops hotly pursued and mixed up with the enemy, who were slaughtering them from all sides: the scene was so fearful I can never forget it. On came the fugitives, pouring into the cantonment, which we fully expected the Affghans to enter along with them. Fortunately for us, and most unexpectedly, the Affghan cavalry suddenly swept to the right, directed, as we afterwards heard, by Mahommad Osman Khan Barakzai, who was one of the chiefs then in communication with Sir W Macnaghten. But who can depict the horror of that night, and our consternation, for we felt ourselves doomed men? Nothing of course could justify the conduct of our troops; but the total incapacity of Brigadier Shelton, his reckless exposure of his men for hours at the top of a high ridge to a destructive fire, and his stubborn neglect to avail himself of the several opportunities offered to him throughout the day – by the temporary flight of the enemy, to complete their dispersion – go far to extenuate the soldiers, who had lost all confidence in a leader who had proved himself so incapable of command.
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It was the turning point in the war. The day had been a catastrophe. Of the 1,100 men who marched out with Shelton in the morning, well over 300 had been killed, while the wounded who had been left outside were disembowelled as their wives and children looked on helplessly at the bottom of the hill. Many more who had been cut off and failed to make it back within the cantonment walls were hunted down that night. ‘Those who had survived the battle and fled back towards the English base but lost their way and tried to hide out in byways and crannies were rounded up one by one and executed,’ wrote Fayz Mohammad. ‘For the English, the calamities of this day took away whatever control they might have had over events and they were rendered virtually helpless.’
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Certainly, after this, the British made no more attempts at taking the initiative. ‘Shelton’s incapacity neutralised the heroism of the officers,’ wrote Mackenzie. ‘Their spirit was gone and discipline had almost disappeared.’
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‘Even such of the officers as had hitherto indulged in the hope of a favourable turn of events began to entertain gloomy forebodings as to our future fate,’ agreed Eyre in his diary that evening. ‘Our force resembled a ship in danger of wrecking among rocks and shoals, for want of an able pilot to guide it safely through them. Even now, at the eleventh hour, had the helm of affairs been grasped by a competent hand, we might perhaps have steered clear of destruction; but in the absence of any such deliverer, it was but too evident that Heaven alone could save us.’
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Instead, that night, worse news still arrived in the cantonment. Welcoming volleys from the city announced the arrival of Akbar Khan, Dost Mohammad’s most fiery and militarily effective son. He had just marched in from Bamiyan at the head of 6,000 of the Mir Wali’s Uzbek cavalry, and immediately put himself in charge of the resistance.

Akbar Khan spent the first few days after his return receiving the adulation of his people. ‘It was as if spring had brought life to a garden,’ wrote Maulana Kashmiri.

All the nobles and chiefs came forward to pay homage

Men and women, young and old, came out to bless him

They said to him: ‘O Protector of us all!

Our Defender, Refuge and Bedrock!’

Such a resounding chorus of prayer rose from the earth

That in heaven they asked Jesus what all the clamour was . . .
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Akbar soon proved himself the adversary the British had always feared he would be. Within a few days he had transformed the uprising by blockading the cantonment effectively for the first time. Mullahs were sent into all the villages in the vicinity to stop the farmers selling the British supplies.
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The villages to the rear were occupied and garrisoned, and the headmen threatened with instant death if they sold a single sack of grain or fodder to the Firangis. The new wooden bridge over the Kabul River which linked the cantonment with the Bala Hisar and the Jalalabad road was burned down. To Macnaghten’s anger, the garrison made no attempt to stop the destruction, and merely watched idly from the behind their parapets, even though the Afghans dismantling bridge were easily within range. With two of the leading Royalist leaders killed on the heights of Bibi Mahru, the previously somewhat fractured rebel command now united firmly around Akbar Khan and his Barakzais. ‘It is perfectly wonderful how they [the rebels] hang together,’ wrote a frustrated Macnaghten.
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Akbar Khan’s marriage alliance with the daughter of Mohammad Shah Khan, one of the most powerful Ghilzai chieftains, also began to change the ethnicity of the resistance. With Abdullah Khan Achakzai dead and the Kohistani Tajiks increasingly sidelined following the death of Mir Masjidi and the departure of his followers en masse to bury their Pir, it was the unsophisticated but formidable Ghilzai who now came to dominate the uprising. Basing themselves in the fort of Mahmud Khan just outside the city walls, it was their troops who increasingly filled the ranks of men ringing the hilltops around the silent and cowed cantonment, supported by the Barakzai forces who had made their base in the Shah Bagh at the valley bottom.

Within the cantonment walls, the pressure was now intense as icy blizzards and hunger brought morale ever lower. The horses were so hungry they were found gnawing at tent pegs and eating their own dung over and over again; Lady Sale saw one starving horse bite off and devour the tail of its neighbour, while her own mare champed away at a cart wheel. Mirza ‘Ata, like many Afghans, relished the discomfiture of the once arrogant British. ‘It now happened that so much snow fell that the English troops, who had never seen the snows of Khurasan, became like melting snowmen,’ he wrote. ‘Many died of hunger; others killed transport camels and oxen for the Muslims to eat the meat and the Hindus to eat the skins! In these extreme circumstances, as in the lowest pit of Hell, all differences of religious practice and taboo were forgotten.’
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The camp followers who couldn’t get access to the dead horses and camels were now seen roasting and spitting pariah dogs in the streets.

Akbar Khan had been released from his prison-pit in Bukhara only a month earlier after a miserable year-long confinement. Shortly before his release, according to Maulana Kashmiri, Akbar had been visited in a dream by a Sufi saint who told him to put on his turban, strap a sword to his belt and go and protect his homeland, which had been given to him by God.
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Mirza ‘Ata, who came greatly to admire the Barakzai heir, learned one version of the story from his followers: ‘The ‘ulama of the noble city of Bukhara interceded with the ruler Nasir al-Daula to release Sardar Muhammad Akbar Khan and his companions,’ he wrote. ‘The chiefs of Kabul wrote to Akbar welcoming him, expressing their joy at his liberation and explaining that the English army was much weakened after recent fighting and in no state to resist, so that the Sardar’s arrival was most opportune: now was the time for avenging his father, the peerless Amir!’ Akbar Khan went straight to Kabul, where all the chiefs and notables told him of the injustices committed by the English, and appealed to him for justice. The Sardar then wrote to Macnaghten asking to see him, and a meeting was arranged.

The next day, Sardar Muhammad Akbar Khan with some trusted companions rode out from Kabul to the appointed place, as did Macnaghten from the cantonment: they met and embraced heartily and retired for private conversation. This much is reported, that the Sardar told the English envoy that it was no longer appropriate for him to remain in Kabul, that he should hand over one of his officers as a hostage and leave for India. Whenever the Sardar’s honoured father, the peerless Amir, was released from foreign incarceration and returned to Khurasan, then the English hostage would be honourably dismissed. Macnaghten agreed, and this agreement was put into writing; the English were all of the opinion that after this agreement there would be no further strife.
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The reality was a little more complex. Through Mohan Lal, who remained active within the city, Macnaghten had been in contact with several of the rebel commanders from the very beginning of the uprising and had already for several weeks been exploring the possibility of buying military support, dividing the Afghan factions or engineering some sort of honourable exit. Two days after Shelton’s crushing defeat, the Envoy received an initial delegation of rebels who came seeking an unconditional British surrender. As Macnaghten put it himself, in a note found on his desk after his death,

At my initiation, deputies were sent from the Rebels who came into cantonment on the 25th, I having received overtures from them of a pacific nature on the basis of our evacuating the country. I proposed to them the only terms which in my opinion could be accepted with honour. They returned me a letter of defiance the next morning to the effect that unless I consented to surrender our arms and to abandon His Majesty to his fate, we must prepare for imminent hostilities. To this I replied that we preferred death to dishonour and that it would remain with a higher power to decide between us.
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Macnaghten having refused to hand over Shuja and his family to Akbar Khan, and having broken off relations, there followed a further fortnight of hungry and anxious inactivity on the part of the British. Macnaghten was now pinning his strategy on the faint hope that a relief force from either Jalalabad, Ghazni or Kandahar might rescue the demoralised troops in the cantonments. To MacGregor, the Political Officer attached to General Sale’s brigade in Jalalabad, he appealed repeatedly: ‘Dozens of letters have been written, urging your immediate return with Sale’s Brigade to Kabul, and if you have not started by the time you receive this, I earnestly beg that you will do so immediately. Our situation is a very precarious one; but with your assistance we shall all do well, and you must render it to us if you have any regard for our lives or the honour of our country.’
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