Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (102 page)

Sir William Hay Macnaghten, seen here with his famous blue-tinted spectacles. A bookish former judge from Ulster who had been promoted from his court room to run the Company’s bureaucracy, he became Lord Auckland’s Russophobe, protocol-obsessed Political Secretary. His jealousy of the fast-promoted Burnes led him to support the idea of replacing Dost Mohammad Khan with Shah Shuja, an idea Burnes strongly opposed. The two men, who never got on, became the dysfunctional centre of the British administration in Afghanistan.

George Eden, Lord Auckland, the British Governor General, a clever but complacent man with little knowledge of the region.

Emily Eden, one of Lord Auckland’s unmarried sisters and the writer of some of the Raj’s most witty and waspish letters.

Reliant on the Russophobic filtering of intelligence by Wade and Macnaghten, Lord Auckland failed to heed the more accurate message from Burnes on the ground, and became convinced of Dost Mohammad’s anti-British position. ‘Poor, dear peaceful George has gone to war,’ wrote his sister Emily. ‘Rather an inconsistency in his character.’

In July
1838
, Macnaghten visited Shah Shuja and his court in Ludhiana and curtly informed him that after thirty years in exile he was to be replaced on his throne in Kabul with the help of the British.

Shah Shuja’s court in exile. From left to right: Prince Timur, Shah Shuja, Prince Safdarjang and Mullah Shakur Ishaqzai.

Two sepoys of the Bengal Native Infantry.

A Bajaur jezailchi.

Kabul infantry.

Skinner’s Horse riding out to war.

The British-Indian Army of the Indus make their way east...