Relations with the Amir.

91

protection and disowned the acts of the mutineers, his personal safety was assured, and this, no doubt, was his first aim. But how much further did he mean to go? That he heartily desired his turbulent regiments to be punished one can well believe, and that he schemed to save Cabul from the fate it had courted is quite possible; but unless an accomplice in their acts, he could not have expected that his most trusted ministers and kinsmen would be arrested and himself confined to our camp. Here he must see our suspicion peeping out; but, then, mark our forbearance. In our proclamations rebellion against the Amir has been cited as worthy of death; we are living upon tribute grain collected as due to him; the citizens of Cabul have been declared "rebels against His Highness," and our Military Governor of the city is "administering justice and punishing with a strong hand all evil-doers" with his "consent." This is one side of the picture, and these acts are the direct outcome of our efforts to re-establish something like order after the anarchy which prevailed when we began our march upon the capital. There is nothing of contempt in them; it is merely laying the foundations for replacing the Amir on his throne more securely for the future. Our forbearance is further shown by the consideration displayed towards his subjects: nothing is taken that is not paid for-and, in most instances, exorbitantly paid for-and there is not the slightest affectation of treating the country through which we pass as conquered territory. But there is another side of the picture where new aspects appear and some anomalies crop up. The Amir's authority is proclaimed as justification for many of our acts; and yet at the same time we loot his citadel, and seize upon, as spoils of war, all guns and munitions of war which for a few weeks only had passed out of his hands into those of the rebels. Did he, by abandoning his capital and its defences, lose all right and interest in the cannon which guarded them, in the ammunition collected for years past in the Bala Hissar, and in the very clothing prepared for his regiments? Apparently he did, for the two hundred and fourteen guns now in our camp are looked upon as captured from an enemy who used many of them against us; the untold quantity of gunpowder which the explosion of the 16th left untouched is to be destroyed; and our camp-followers are masquerading in the warm

uniforms of Afghan Highlanders. This is the feature of contempt in our policy. Our war, unlike that of last year, is against the subjects of the Amir, and not against the Amir himself; and, so far as we have gone, we have assumed the functions of the sovereign in their fullest sense, using his name only to smooth away difficulties that would otherwise have to be overcome by force. This assumption has had to be made for the simple reason that Yakub Khan is too weak and vacillating to exercise the authority which we have so ostentatiously recognized, and his ministers too corrupt to be trusted near his person. But beyond the immediate exercise of military power in Cabul and its neighbourhood, we can do nothing. There is no responsible Government which could take out of our hands the task of hunting up the men who have been guilty of treachery and murder; and as our first duty is to our dead Envoy and not to the living Amir, it follows that our present work is that of judges and not of king-makers. That work has to be done, and we are doing it unflinchingly, and until it is completed, the Amir must be content to accept his position as a sovereign in leading strings. By the time we have dealt with all the culprits that can be captured, the cloud of suspicion now resting upon Yakub Khan will either have deepened or been dissipated, and our second duty of punishing or aiding him under his difficulties will then have to be fulfilled. The drift of evidence seems now fairly in his favour, i.e., he was not involved in the work of Nek Mahomed and Kushdil Khan; and taking it as most probable that he will finally be convicted of nothing worse than weakness, it will remain with us to say if he is again worthy of our trust. With his army dispersed, and his artillery (which goes for so much in the eyes of Asiatic nations) in our hands, the only semblance of power he can derive will be reflected from our arms-if we reinstate him in good faith. And if his weakness is held as our justification for reducing him to the rank of a political pensioner, comfortably housed in India, are we to fit out his successor with new war-trappings, which may at any moment be seized by mutinous regiments and turned against us at the first opportunity? More unlikely things have occurred than this; but unless our army carries back with it to India the trophies it now boasts of, there will be sad disappointment in every mind.

Attacks on the Line of Communication.

93

I have dwelt with great pertinacity upon the political side of the Afghan question as it is developing under the walls of Cabul, because our late successes may have overshadowed the great problem which has now to be worked out, viz., what are the future relations between India and Afghanistan to be? From what I have written, a fair judgment may be formed as to whether the sanguine view, that the line of policy laid down in the Treaty of Gundamak still remains good, can be consistently maintained. The arrest of the Mustaufi, the Wazir, and their two intimate friends, has raised the revolt in Cabul far above the level of a local émeute of discontented soldiers.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Line of Communication with the Kurram Valley-Hostile Action of the TribesSkirmish on the Surkhai Kotal-Defeat of the Tribesmen by the Shutargardan Garrison-The Enemy Reinforced -The Garrison Surrounded-Serious Complications-The Shutargardan relieved by General Charles Gough.

CAMP SIAH SUNG, 24th October.

THERE is one great consolation for the troops who did not share in the advance upon Cabul, and that is, they have not been allowed by the tribes in our rear to rest in peace at the stations guarding the Kurram line of communication. General Gordon at Ali Kheyl, and Colonel Money at the Shutargardan, have had their hands very full indeed during the past few weeks; Mangals, Ghilzais, and their allies considering it a grand opportunity for attack. The bulk of our army was too far ahead, and had too important a mission to fulfil, to send back reinforcements; and no doubt these mongrel tribesmen believed they would have it all their own way. I hear that they called upon the Shinwaris and Khugianis on the northern slopes of the Safed Koh to come over and join in the rare chance that was presented of cutting up our troops; but the ill-timed zeal of the Mangal moollahs spoiled the whole arrangement. They gave out that we had been defeated at Cabul, and further promised their fanatical followers that bullets

and bayonets should leave them unscathed for a few days if they would only attack the handful of infidels then left at their mercy. Accordingly Ali Kheyl was attacked, and the result of the fighting in that neighbourhood was the complete dispersal of the tribesmen. At one time the situation seemed so full of peril that General Gordon made up his mind to abandon the Shutargardan, Colonel Money having informed him that he was surrounded on all sides, his forage cut off, and his water-supply threatened. Such a step would, of course, have only been resorted to in the last extremity, for a force retiring through the Hazara Darukht defile, followed by swarms of our enemy, confident that their success was assured, might have ended in a disaster. But there were at the Shutargardan two splendid fighting regiments, well-officered and in perfect trim, and their stubborn resistance kept the enemy in check until it was too late for them to profit by our difficulties. During the worst period at the Shutargardan, General Hugh Gough with the 5th Punjab Cavalry, 5th Punjab Infantry, and four mountain guns was on his way thither to bring down supplies and close the communication, as it was no longer needed; and a welcome flash from Captain Straton's heliograph informed Colonel Money that help was at hand. The Mangals and their allies seem to have had earlier information, for they had already begun to disperse, though their stray shots into camp kept the garrison alive, and cost them something in the way of chargers and baggage animals. The abandonment of the post in the face of an enemy far superior in number was thus happily avoided, as well as the ill-effect it would have had upon every tribesman from Thull to Cabul. It is believed here that there was a tendency to exaggerate the danger at Ali Kheyl, and that undue importance was attached to the attack there; but we are loth to think that General Gordon would have recalled the two regiments from the Shutargardan merely to strengthen his own post. Such a step might have brought about a really serious conflict, as it would have been too glaring an admission of weakness not to have been appreciated by the neighbouring tribes. Of the earlier fighting at the Surkhai Kotal on the 14th, we have now full accounts from Colonel Money, which I give below.

On the 13th instant information was brought into the camp at

Fighting at Surkhai Kotal.

95

Shutargardan that the Machalgu Ghilzais were assembling in force and would probably appear near Karatiga and the Surkhai Kotal, on that side, for the purpose of blocking up the road to Ali Kheyl and molesting our picquet on the Kotal. That mischief was on foot was proved by the telegraph wire to Ali Kheyl being cut at nine o'clock the same evening. The next morning Colonel Money, in sending the usual relief of 90 men to the picquet, ordered Major Collis, commanding the 21st P.N.I., to take two companies of his regiment and two guns of the Kohat Mountain Battery, and see what was occurring. He was further to attack and disperse any bodies of tribesmen who might have assembled, to detach a party to bring up ammunition left at Karatiga, and to repair the telegraph wire. On arriving at the Kotal, Major Collis found the picquet already engaged with a large body of Ghilzais, who had attacked at daybreak. His first step was to seize a hill on the right commanding the Kotal, which the enemy had failed to occupy. Fifty sepoys under a native officer were soon swarming up this, and in the meantime Captain Morgan opened fire with the mountain guns upon sungars filled with men, on a hill to the east. The shells were well pitched, and the enemy were so shaken that when 50 rifles of the 21st P.N.I., under Captain Gowan, and a similar number of the 3rd Sikhs under Lieutenant Fasken, went in at them with the bayonet, they abandoned their sungars, leaving several killed and wounded on the ground. The tribesmen then attacked on the south of the position, and came under fire of the 50 men first sent up to occupy the hill, commanding the Kotal. A company of the 21st P.N.I., under Lieutenant Young, was detached to strengthen this point, and at the same time a welcome reinforcement of 100 of the 3rd Sikhs under Major Griffiths arrived. One company of these doubled over the open, and got in rear of 600 of the enemy whom Captain Gowan and Lieutenant Fasken were driving back, and soon the hills to the north were all cleared. But on the south there were still 2,000 men to be dealt with; and as they were showing a bold front, Major Griffiths judged that a combined movement must be made against them as soon as the two companies returned from pursuing the 600 men they had scattered. The advanced company of the 21st P.N.I. under Lieutenant Young was bearing the brunt of