Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (71 page)

It was Johnson who first made some progress. ‘Salih Mahomed is a good humoured, jolly fellow,’ he wrote in his journal on 25 August,

and without any prejudices against us kafirs. He is a soldier of fortune who cares little whom he seizes, has been to Bokhara, and was at the taking of Coucem a few months ago. I rode with him the whole march and was very much amused by his traveller’s tales. He is the greatest hero in his own estimation. There is no end to his feats of valour to which I am a ready listener and for two reasons. First that I am amused, secondly that he is flattered by my being a good listener, by which I hope to turn him to good account.

A few days later, Johnson chose a moment when the two were alone together to make his offer. ‘As I have become pretty intimate with our commandant,’ he wrote, ‘I took advantage of no third person being within hearing to whisper in his ear that we would give him a mountain of rupees, if instead of carrying us to Bameean, he would take us in the opposite direction towards General Nott’s army, extolling the delights of Hindoostan should he feel inclined to go there after liberating us. At first he seemed rather surprised at the proposition which I mooted half-jokingly half-seriously, not knowing in what way he might view it.’
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Before long Saleh Mohammad had made it clear that ‘he wished to know what we would do for our liberation’, and asked the prisoners to make a serious offer.
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Negotiations continued after the party arrived in Bamiyan, aided by a series of promissory notes sent by the ever-resourceful Mohan Lal, which he arranged through his Qizilbash friends in Kabul. When a letter arrived from Akbar Khan ordering Saleh Mohammad Khan to move the hostages still further north, to Khulm, Lawrence raised his bid and offered to make him an immediate down-payment of 20,000 rupees in cash and a monthly payment thereafter for life of Rs 1,000. As ‘Ata Mohammad put it: ‘“Gold is a wonderful substance: the sight of it gladdens the eye; the sound of it drives away melancholy.” The offer turned the Khan’s head, and he prepared to have the prisoners set free.’
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Aided by Saleh Mohammad Khan, at a given signal the prisoners took over the fortress in which they were being held, offering their former guards four months’ extra pay if they helped defend it until they were rescued. When Saleh Mohammad handed the prisoners a pile of muskets to help with the defence, the prisoners were so surprised to have control over their own destinies after many passive months in captivity that at first none volunteered to join the guard – until Lady Sale stepped in. ‘Thinking the men might be shamed into doing their duty,’ she wrote later, ‘I said to Lawrence, “You had better give me one, and I will lead the party.”’
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Before long, under Lady Sale’s watchful eye, the hostages had gained sufficient confidence to run up the Union Jack on the flagpole. Pottinger then resumed his duties as political agent in Kohistan and called upon all the neighbouring chiefs to attend his durbar and receive dresses of honour. ‘Our conspiracy continues to prosper,’ wrote Johnson in his diary on 14 September.

Almost all the influential Chiefs for several miles round have come in to pay their respects . . . swearing faith to us & to tender aid in fighting men if required. Although we are still in the dark as to what our troops are doing or where they are we suppose they must be somewhere near Kabul & probably have had a fight with Akbar – in which case we shall not be surprised to see the latter with some 5 or 600 horsemen at any hour in our valley. We have turned our attention to the strengthening of our forts & clearing out the loop holes so as to give them a warm reception in the event of their interference with us.
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A week later, with Lady Sale at their head, the former hostages had even begun to tax passing caravans.

Early in the morning on 1 September, a solitary horseman rode up to a picket outside Pollock’s camp at Jagdalak. When challenged by the sentry, the rider announced himself to be Shah Fatteh Jang.

It had been rumoured in the Bala Hisar towards the end of August that Akbar Khan had been making plans to kill the young successor to the Sadozai crown, after first having branded him with hot irons. As the rumour spread, the old retainers of the fort took action: they cut a hole in the mud roof of the prison where the Shah was being held and helped him out through a tunnel under the walls, then out to the Qizilbash quarter of Chindawal. There horses were waiting for him, ready saddled. Twenty-four hours later he was breakfasting with General Pollock.
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According to the traditions related by Fayz Mohammad, the young Shah then accused the British of failing his father Shuja and demanded that the British honour their commitment to the dynasty. ‘The English campaign to seize Afghanistan had no other purpose aside from what the English thought might ultimately benefit themselves,’ Fatteh Jang is supposed to have told Pollock.

‘They never helped or even gave a thought to my murdered father . . . However I still consider myself bound to the [Tripartite] treaty which was concluded between the English government and my father and I have come to you so that if you still stand by your commitment, you will assist me and march on Kabul. Otherwise, there is no obligation on the part of the English government on my behalf, and your ambitions and your hostility will be revealed to all.’ Shah Fatteh Jang’s words were embarrassing to General Pollock and he prepared to aid the Shah out of a sense of decency, and so as to banish from people’s lips the bad name ascribed to the English.
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Whether this conversation ever took place, Pollock certainly welcomed Fatteh Jang and from the first treated him with deference, giving him the same honours that Macnaghten had accorded to Shuja when he travelled through the same valley to retake his throne three years earlier. Privately, however, Pollock wrote dismissively of ‘the unhappy prince . . . a slender and rather good-looking young man, but neither gifted with brains, nor entitled to much respect on the score of morality – apparently a reference to the Shah’s predilection for “amusing himself with the occasional homosexual rape on members of the garrison” when stationed in Kandahar in 1839–40’.
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Pollock also wrote that he deliberately withheld from the Shah the fact that the British were planning to withdraw from Kabul after they had achieved the limited objectives Ellenborough had set for them: defeating Akbar Khan, liberating the hostages and prisoners of war, recovering as many sepoys as possible and punishing the Afghan tribes for their perceived treachery.
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A week later, on 8 September, Pollock’s force marched out of Jagdalak towards the mouth of the Tezin Pass, ready for the final push on Kabul. Sniping from the hilltops increased in intensity as the day progressed and, as darkness fell, fire from unseen jezails peppered the camp, despite Pollock having carefully placed pickets on all the peaks round about. ‘The troops were of course turned out and kept on alert,’ wrote Lieutenant Greenwood in his diary. ‘The enemy continued firing into the camp from every height that was not absolutely in our possession; and their bullets were flying like hail among our tents. The sides of the hill were illuminated in every direction by the constant flashes of their jezails and the muskets of our piquets.’
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The following morning at daybreak, Pollock’s scouts brought in the news that Akbar Khan, supported by Mohammad Shah Khan Ghilzai and Aminullah Khan Logari, had moved forward from the positions they had prepared in the Khord Kabul and were now massing their 16,000 troops just ahead of them on the heights of Tezin.

Pollock split his force into three columns, with columns made up of kilted Highland Scots and long-robed Afghan jezailchis mounting the slopes on either side of the pass and with the guns and the cavalry of the advance guard moving cautiously along the valley floor under the direction of General Sale. ‘We moved forward in column without seeing any indication of any enemy,’ recounted Greenwood. ‘We had proceeded about two miles into the defile, when suddenly a long sheet of flame issued from the heights on either side, and a thousand balls came whizzing and whistling about our heads. The hills were lined with the enemy, and they began a most heavy fire.’
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Among those who had a narrow escape at this point was Dr Brydon, who had resumed his duties as a regimental surgeon. ‘He was sitting on a pole by which a dooly is carried, when a six pound shot from one of the enemy’s guns struck and splintered the bamboo, but without injuring him in the least.’
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Unlike the last time Brydon had been in the pass, with his colleagues stumbling snow-blind and unresisting to their slaughter, this time Pollock’s troops were ready. Abbott opened up with his guns and at the same time ‘Sir Robert [Sale] gave the word for the 13th [Regiment] to ascend and storm the heights on the right, and the 9th and 31st those on the left,’ remembered Greenwood.

Up we went, helter skelter. The hill was very high and precipitous, and not easily ascended at any time; the shot of the enemy, however, quickened our motions, and in a short time we were up and at them. The fire was tremendous; the bullets were hopping and whistling among us in every direction. The enemy were very numerous, and seemed disposed to fight to the last for possession of the heights. No sooner, however, had our men arrived at the top than they fixed bayonets, and with a loud hurrah they charged the enemy . . . The Afghans were shouting their war cry of ‘Allah il Ullah’ and reproaching us with various elegant names, such as dogs, kafirs and the like, and assuring us we would never reach Kabul. Captain Broadfoot’s sappers in particular gave as good as they got, in right good Billingsgate.
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Once the Afghans had been dislodged from their position, Sale kept his men driving them along the heights of the ridge, from peak to peak. Down below, meanwhile, the cavalry were charging Akbar’s cannon, all of which had been captured from Elphinstone’s force and were now manned by renegade Company sepoys who had taken their chances with Akbar Khan; as the cavalry closed in, the unfortunate Hindustani deserters were immediately ‘put to the sword’.
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The fighting went on all day, with the Afghans resisting with great bravery and refusing to yield an inch until driven off each successive peak with bayonets. By late afternoon, however, the hilltops had all been captured and Akbar Khan’s men had no option but to turn and flee, with their leader and the Ghilzai chiefs doggedly bringing up the rear. So complete was the defeat that the following day the British passed along the even steeper heights of the Khord Kabul without having to fire a shot.

On the evening of 15 September, Pollock’s weary force finally marched into Kabul to find that almost the entire population, including Akbar Khan, had fled the city. That night they set up camp on the race course built on Macnaghten’s orders three years earlier, and the following day Shah Fatteh Jang was restored to the Bala Hisar, but this time with the Union Jack flying from the flagpole.

Nott and his Kandahar army marched in two days later; and on 21 September news arrived that the 120 prisoners of war were approaching too.
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Pollock had sent one of his young officers, Sir Richmond Shakespear, ahead to find them, along with a troop of 700 Qizilbash cavalry. Unaware that they had already liberated themselves, to his surprise Shakespearmet them coming confidently down the road towards him, protected by an escort of their former jailers. Amid the cheers and the cries of ‘we are saved’, there was a single dissenting voice. ‘Brigadier Shelton could not forget the honour due to his rank as the senior military man,’ wrote Lady Sale, ‘and was much offended at Sir Richmond not having called on him first, and reported his arrival in due form.’
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Mackenzie was now so ill and foggily feverish that he was unable to lift himself off the ground and said only ‘Ah!’ when told he had just been rescued: ‘When he saw Sir Richmond exchange turbans with Saleh Mohammad the only thought which passed through his mind was a lazy wonder “if Shakespear would be covered in vermin in the process”.’
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The day before the hostages made it back to Kabul, the party was met by General Sale, who had headed north to greet them. ‘It is impossible to express our feelings on Sale’s approach,’ wrote Lady Sale, who had not seen her husband for nearly a year. ‘To my daughter and myself happiness so long delayed, as to be almost unexpected was actually painful, and accompanied by a choking sensation which could not obtain relief in tears.’
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When the still feverish Mackenzie stumbled over and said, ‘“General, I congratulate you!” the gallant old man turned towards him and tried to answer, but his feelings were too strong; he made a hideous series of grimaces, dug his spurs into horse, and galloped off as fast as he could.’
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When the prisoners of war finally arrived in Kabul they were greeted with a twenty-one-gun salute, and the infantry lined up to cheer all the captives as they passed into the camp. ‘They presented an extraordinary appearance,’ wrote Ensign Greville Stapylton, ‘being all in Afghan costume with long beards, moustaches. It was with some difficulty that one could recognise one’s friends.’
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The Army of Retribution stayed in Kabul for only two weeks. For the first few days, the troops amused themselves with eating fresh grapes and apples from the Kabul vineyards and orchards, and by visiting the sights of the town. Many sought out the sites where atrocities had taken place the previous winter. Those who had known Kabul during the occupation were especially shocked. ‘Great and terrible changes had taken place in my absence,’ wrote the artist James Rattray. ‘Razed houses and blackened walls met my view. No one appeared. The city was deserted, its habitations darkened and empty. We rode through the streets without encountering a living soul, or hearing a single sound, save the yelp of a half-wild dog who had lapped up English blood perchance, our own suppressed voices and the echoes of our horses’ hoofs sent back through the long grim avenues of the closed bazaars.’
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Neville Chamberlain had last been to Alexander Burnes’s house during his Christmas party in 1839 when Burnes had appeared in full Highland dress and danced reels on a table top in his kilt. Now the house had been burned to the ground and its charred foundations had been dug up by treasure hunters. ‘Sir Alexander’s house, where I had spent many a happy hour, was a heap of ruins,’ wrote Chamberlain in his journal. ‘The cantonments were a perfect waste, and where so much money had been spent, not a house or barrack or tree was left.’
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