Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (25 page)

One subject that fascinated the Maharajah in particular was the private life of the British, and as the negotiations got under way the handsome Captain Osborne had to go through intermittent grillings on his sexual preferences:

‘Did you see my Cachmerian girls?’ ‘How did you like them?’ ‘Are they handsomer than the women of Hindostan?’ ‘Are they as handsome as English women?’ ‘Which of them did you admire most?’ I replied that I admired them all very much, and named the two I thought handsomest. He said, ‘Yes, they are pretty; but I have got some more that are handsomer, and I will send them this evening, and you had better keep the ones you like best.’ I expressed my gratitude for such unbounded liberality; his answer was: ‘I have plenty more.’ He then led the subject to horses.
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Nor did Lord Auckland’s proclivities escape Ranjit’s scrutiny:

‘Is Lord Auckland married?’

‘No.’

‘What! Has he no wives at all?’

‘None.’

‘Why doesn’t he marry?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why don’t you marry?’

‘I can’t afford it.’

‘Why not? Are English wives very expensive?’

‘Yes; very.’

‘I wanted one myself some time ago and wrote to the government about it, but they did not send me one.’
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Such banter was partly a smokescreen to disarm the British and disguise from them the acute political intelligence Ranjit Singh always displayed in negotiation. This was something Osborne was perceptive enough to recognise: ‘Ill-looking as he undoubtedly is, the countenance of Runjeet Singh cannot fail to strike everyone as that of a very extraordinary man . . . so much intelligence, and the restless wandering of his single fiery eye excites so much interest, that you are forced to confess that there is no common degree of intellect and acuteness developed in his countenance, however odd his first appearance may be.’

Ranjit Singh’s negotiating skills soon made themselves apparent and before long the wily Sikh leader was running rings around the uptight Macnaghten. One colleague wrote that ‘poor Macnaghten should never have left the secretary’s office. He is ignorant of men, even to simplicity, and utterly incapable of forming and guiding administrative measures. The judicial line would probably have best suited him, and even then only in the court of appeal, judging only written evidence.’
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Auckland had not initially thought of committing British troops to the project of unseating Dost Mohammad: the fighting he hoped was all to be done by Ranjit Singh and Shah Shuja, and, as on Shuja’s last expedition, the British would provide only money, equipment and moral and diplomatic support. But given the trouble he was already having holding his new conquests in Peshawar, Ranjit had little enthusiasm for Lord Auckland’s invitation to invade Kabul. Keen to get rid of Dost Mohammad, and seeing opportunities to increase his wealth in the process, but unwilling to get entangled in Afghanistan, he played his hand with consummate skill.

In early June, Macnaghten reported discouragingly that Ranjit ‘would not dream of marching a force to Kabul’.
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Slowly, however, the Maharajah made it clear that he might be open to persuasion, hinting that if he were given the financial centre of Shikarpur, the Khyber and Jalalabad he might be prepared to join a punitive expedition to chastise and unseat his old Afghan enemy. Macnaghten refused, and for a fortnight the talks were deadlocked. In reality, Ranjit was probably only using these demands as a bargaining counter. For when he gave in and said that he now only wanted to be confirmed for perpetuity in possession of Peshawar and Kashmir, to receive £20,000 from the British as well as a large cash payment from the Amirs of Sindh, and for Shah Shuja in addition to pay him an annual tribute including ‘55 high bred horses of approved colour and pleasant paces’, camel loads of ‘musk melons of sweet and delicate flavour’ and ‘101 Persian carpets’, Macnaghten accepted the offer immediately, and promised to press Shuja and the amirs to deliver. As the negotiations inched forward, what had originally been planned as a Sikh expedition in British interests slowly began to transform itself over the course of several weeks into a British expedition to further Sikh interests.

Only at the end of June, after the negotiations had moved to Lahore, and Burnes and Masson had joined the British delegation from Peshawar, was it confirmed that Ranjit would be prepared to join a largely British force, which together would place Shuja on the throne.

‘Your Highness some time ago [in 1834] formed a treaty with Shah Shuja ul-Mulk,’ said Macnaghten. ‘Do you think it would still be for your benefit that the treaty should stand good, and would it be agreeable to your wishes that the British government become party to that treaty?’

‘This’, replied Ranjit, ‘would be adding sugar to milk.’
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Up to this point, no one had thought of informing Shah Shuja that he was imminently to be placed back on his old throne. Nor had Macnaghten, who had done so much to drag Shuja back out of retirement, ever actually met the man he had been championing for so long.

Shuja had now spent thirty years in exile in Ludhiana – half his life – but had never for a minute given up hope of returning home and ruling the country he regarded as given to him to rule by God. Recently, he had lost his remarkable wife, the formidable Wa’fa Begum, and, to add to the pain, fanatical Sikh
akalis
almost immediately desecrated the tomb he built for her at the dargah [shrine] of Sirhind.
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On 14 July 1838 Macnaghten arrived in Ludhiana, relieved finally to have reached an agreement with Ranjit Singh. Shuja had been kept briefed by his own network of spies and informers, and he was all too aware that he was being treated as a puppet – or a
mooli
, a radish, as the Afghans call it. He was especially humiliated that the action for which he had been waiting three decades had finally been arranged behind his back without even the most cursory reference to him as to how it would be executed. Nor was he at all happy about paying any tribute to Ranjit Singh, the man who had tortured his son and stolen his most valuable possession, even if in the treaty the tribute was disguised as a ‘subsidy’.

In the
Jangnama
,
the first Afghan epic poem to be written about the British invasion, this meeting between the British and Shah Shuja is imagined as one where Macnaghten (‘His heart had no transparency – only smoke’) and Burnes (‘that seditious man’) used their devilish charms and flattery to overcome the reservations of the Shah (‘Shuja the Vile’) about returning to Afghanistan as a British puppet:

They said: ‘O Shah, we are your servants!

We bow down humbly before your command.’

When the Shah listened to their stories

The key to the lock of speech did appear.

He said to them: ‘O my companions!

Let us start trouble within the Amir’s kingdom.

I will take his country and crown

I will place a noose around his neck.

Where can he escape the flash of my sword?

He will certainly give up his throne to me.

Then the kingdom of Kabul will immediately

become the possession of you foreign
sahibs
.’

This
Lat
[Lord – that is, Macnaghten] – that wise and wily man –

When he heard these words

Became excited and said:

‘O Shah! May your fortune be blessed!

If it suits you thus

Get your things in order for heading to Kabul

My only fear is this: that the people there

Might find the taste of my sherbet bitter.

But now is the time to set to the chase

When will you ever have such a hunt again?’
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The reality seems to have been slightly different. Macnaghten was impressed by the sexagenarian’s dignity and ‘much struck with the majestic appearance of the old pretender, especially with the flowing honours of a black beard descending to his waist . . . patiently awaiting the
kismet
,
or fate, which was to restore him to his throne’.
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But he was in no mood to be further delayed in implementing his plans by the sensitivities of Sadozais, who were hardly in a position to strike a bargain in the way the Sikhs had. Shuja was curtly informed of the plans, and of the boundaries of the somewhat diminished and truncated Afghanistan he was going to be allowed to rule. He received some assurances about the British not interfering with his family or in his internal affairs without his royal approval, and about being given financial assistance for reconstructing Afghanistan and consolidating his rule after the conquest. Given his long-standing problems with runaway slave girls in Ludhiana, according to his own account of the negotiations Shuja asked for a clause in the treaty guaranteeing that ‘The maid-servants who run away from one land to another shall be exchanged and given back. It is impossible that a King can have honour and pride without maid-servants.’
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He was also assured he would be allowed to enter Afghanistan at the head of his own troops, using the same route as he had done in 1833–4, and not merely be placed on the throne trailing behind British regiments. Finally, he was also promised additional funds which he could use to train up his own forces as he had done on the previous campaign.

On 16 July, only forty-eight hours after his first meeting with Macnaghten, Shuja signed what later became known as the Tripartite Alliance.

The Simla season, thought Emily Eden, had got off to a most satisfactory start. ‘We give sundry dinners and occasional balls,’ she wrote happily to her sister in England, ‘and have hit on one popular device. Our band plays once a week on one of the hills here, and we send ices and refreshments to the listeners, and it makes a nice little reunion with very little trouble.’
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Her only complaint was that the steamer
Semiramis
which was meant to take her letters to London had sailed off to deliver the naval squadron to Kharg in the Gulf, and her post was still stuck in Bombay: ‘We try all sorts of plans; but, first, the monsoon cripples one steamer, and the next comes back with all the letters still on board that we fondly thought were in England. Then we try an Arab sailing vessel; but I always feel convinced that an Arab ship sails wildly about drinking coffee and robbing other ships . . .’
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Meanwhile, high on his Himalayan ledge, her brother was finalising his plans for a full-scale British invasion of Afghanistan. He was still, however, racked with indecision and rattled by the critical letters he began to receive from old India hands. Charles Metcalfe, who had been acting Governor General in the period up to Auckland’s arrival, and who many believed should have had the job in preference to him, had expressed his deep forebodings about Auckland’s Afghan policies. ‘We have needlessly and heedlessly plunged into difficulties and embarrassments,’ he wrote, ‘from which we can never extricate ourselves without a disgraceful retreat. Our sole course is to resist the influence of Russia, yet our measures are almost sure to establish it . . . The only certain results, even in the event of brilliant success in the first instance, are permanent embarrassments and difficulties, political and financial . . .’

Britain’s foremost Afghan expert, Mountstuart Elphinstone, was equally sceptical. ‘If you send 27,000 men up the Bolan Pass to Candahar (as we hear is intended) and can feed them, I have no doubt you will take Candahar and Cabul and set up Shuja,’ he observed. ‘But for maintaining him in a poor, cold, strong and remote country, among a turbulent people like the Afghans, I own it seems to me hopeless. If you succeed I fear you will weaken your position against Russia. The Afghans were neutral and would have received your aid against invaders with gratitude – they will now be disaffected and glad to join any invader that will drive you out.’
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Nor did the Company’s local allies believe that the invasion would be at all easy. The Nawab of Bahawalpur, through whose territory the British troops would have to pass, expressed his deep anxieties, which were echoed by all his courtiers. As the British official sent to negotiate with him reported,

They dwelt on the difficulties of the country, our ignorance of the road and the passes and what appeared to the British Government an easy enterprise, but which to their profound apprehension they said was beset with no ordinary difficulties. With respect to the Shah’s fortune, their opinion was most unfavourable. With regard to Dost Muhammad Khan, the general opinion here seems to be that he will never be brought to sue for terms until everyone has deserted him and every door has been closed for him.
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