Book I, Chapter 1: Auckland and Ellenborough

CHAPTER I

AUCKLAND AND ELLENBOROUGH

LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK left India in 1835. His seven years’ rule was an era of Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. He secured tranquillity in the East India Company’s dominions, and lived at peace with the Indian Powers. He reduced the public debt, decreased the annual expenditure, and showed a surplus. He commenced that revised settlement of land revenue in Northern India which gave relief to landlords and cultivators. He admitted the educated people of India to the higher appointments in the revenue and judicial departments. He abolished the practice of Sati and suppressed the crime of Thugs. He promoted English education in India, and endeavoured to carry out the maxim that the administration of India was primarily for the interests of the people. His successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, trained in the traditions of his school, worked in the same lines, and followed the same principles. He gave liberty to the Press of India, and earned for himself a high reputation as an able and benevolent administrator.

Henry St. George Tucker was the Chairman of the Court of Directors in August 1834, when the resignation of Lord William Bentinck was received by the Directors. Tucker had himself done distinguished service in India, and had ably managed its finances under Wellesley and Minto. And after his retirement to England he still remained true to the interests of the people of India. He desired, when Bentinck’s resignation came, to appoint a worthy successor. His choice lay between Mountstuart Elphinstone, lately returned from Bombay, and Sir Charles Metcalfe, still working in Bengal. Elphinstone, then enjoying a life of literary repose in England, declined to return to the toil and turmoil of India. And the Court of Directors, by an overwhelming majority, carried the proposal of their Chairman, that Sir Charles Metcalfe should be appointed Governor-General of India. But the ministers of the Crown demurred to the appointment. On receipt of the resolution of the Court of Directors, the Board of Control announced that the Company’s nominee was ineligible to the station. It was their secret wish that the prize appointment should be given to a party man.

Great changes in administration followed thick and fast in England. The Liberal Ministry, which had declined to sanction the appointment of Sir Charles Metcalfe, went out of office towards the close of 1834. Sir Robert Peel formed a Tory Government; and the choice of that Government fell, not on Sir Charles Metcalfe, but on a Tory peer. Lord Heytesbury’s appointment was made in January 1835. It was sanctioned by the Crown in February. A farewell banquet was given to him in March. Sir Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington, and other Tory magnates attended the banquet. In April, before Lord Heytesbury had embarked for India, the Tory Government fell. The appointment of the Tory lord was revoked by the Liberal Government which succeeded, and a Liberal lord was appointed Governor-General of India. Lord Auckland was selected to take the reins of administration from the hands of Sir Charles Metcalfe, who was acting after the departure of Lord William Bentinck. It is difficult to say if these transactions were more discreditable to the Tory party or to the Whig party. But both parties seemed equally anxious to place party interests before the interests of Indian administration.

But the appointment of Lord Auckland as Governor-General of India had a deeper significance. It meant that the foreign policy of India must shape itself to the foreign policy of England. The Liberal party in England had come triumphantly into office in 1830, and held office—excepting a brief interruption during the winter of 1834–35—for eleven years. The strongest man in the Liberal Government during these years was the Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston. And the strongest ambition of Lord Palmerston was to check Russia in the East. In 1838 he supported and strengthened the Turkish Government. In 1840 he made a convention with three European Powers for armed interference in support of Turkey. In 1841 he placed Egypt once more under the power of Turkey. It was easy to foresee that Lord Auckland was appointed to India to carry out this Imperial policy of England against Russia.

The East India Company has often been blamed for their wars of annexation and of conquest. But the crime of the first Afghan War cannot be laid at their door. It was undertaken without their sanction and without their approval. As early as 1835, Henry St. George Tucker, then Chairman of the Court of Directors, had induced the Board of Control to accept the principle, that England’s diplomatic transactions with Persia, for the prevention of the advance of Russia, was a European question and not an Indian question. It was arranged, with that “melancholy meanness” which has so often characterised England’s financial transactions with India, that India should pay £12,000 per annum for the Persian Mission, but that all power over the English envoy at Teheran and the politics of Persia should be vested in the Crown Ministers. It was not anticipated, when the Russo-Persian question was declared to be a European question, that Indian blood and Indian treasure were to be lavished on its solution.

Dr. MacNeill was appointed ambassador to the King of Persia, and placed himself in direct communication with the Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston. In February 1837 he complained to Lord Palmerston that the agent from Kandahar had visited the Russian Minister, and had not visited the British Ambassador.¹ And in the same month he addressed another letter to Lord Palmerston, in which he justified the possible invasion of Herat by the King of Persia.

“Putting aside the claims of Persia to the sovereignty of Herat, and regarding the question as one between two independent sovereigns, I am inclined to believe that the Government of Herat will be found to have been the aggressor.

“Persia has committed no act of hostility against the Afghans, but on the death of the late Shah, the Government of Herat made predatory incursions into the Persian territories, in concert with the Turcomans and Hazarehs, and captured the subjects of Persia for the purpose of selling them as slaves.

“Under these circumstances, there cannot, I think, be a doubt that the Shah is fully justified in making war on Prince Kamran.”²

The expected invasion of Herat by Persia took place. Dost Muhammad, the ruler of Afghanistan, gave his support to the King of Persia. He had also endeavoured to recover Peshawar from Ranjit Singh of the Punjab, and had received a Russian mission at Kabul. These were the ostensible grounds on which Lord Auckland, now Governor-General of India, declared war with Afghanistan.

The reader seeks in vain in Lord Auckland’s declaration³ any adequate cause for plunging India into a needless war. If an endeavour had been made to recover Peshawar from Ranjit Singh, the endeavour had failed, and Ranjit Singh was quite competent to defend his own. And if Dost Muhammad had supported Persia in the invasion of Herat, that invasion was “fully justified” by the conduct of the Governor of Herat, according to Dr. MacNeill’s letter of 1837, quoted above. The real cause of the war was to dethrone a strong, able, and friendly ruler like Dost Muhammad, and to place on the Afghan throne a creature of the British Power. Lord Palmerston was fighting England’s great rival in the East, and Lord Auckland consented to pay the cost from the taxes of India. “It was no doubt very convenient,” wrote St. George Tucker, “for Her Majesty’s Government to cast the burden of an enterprise, directed against Russia, on the finances of India, instead of sending the fleet into the Baltic or the Black Sea; but we are bound to resist the attempt to alienate and misapply the resources of India.”⁴

The siege of Herat by Persian troops was ultimately abandoned. The ostensible reason of Lord Auckland’s interference with Afghan affairs thus ceased to exist. There was yet time to abandon the contemplated Afghan War. The Duke of Wellington, who was not a peace-at-any-price man, was of opinion that the expedition should be abandoned. “I had understood,” he wrote to St. George Tucker, “that the raising the siege of Herat was to be the signal for abandoning the expedition to the Indus. It will be very unfortunate if that intention should be altered. The consequence of crossing the Indus, to settle a government in Afghanistan, will be a perennial march into the country.”⁵

But Lord Auckland knew better. He wrote to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors that: “Upon receiving an authentic report that the Shah of Persia had relinquished the siege of Herat, I publicly announced my resolution to persevere, notwithstanding that favourable circumstance, in carrying through the course of measures which had been perfected with a view to establish the tranquillity of the western frontier of India upon a stable basis, and to raise up a permanent barrier against schemes of aggression from that quarter.” The experience of sixty years enables us to judge whether the Duke of Wellington or Lord Auckland was right; and whether, by interfering in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, we “raise up a permanent barrier” against invasions, or simply demolish the existing barrier, and are led into “a perennial march into the country.”

The war was carried on. The British troops marched through Sindh, because Ranjit Singh refused them permission to march through his territories in the Punjab. Kandahar was taken in April 1839; Ghazni was stormed in July; Kabul was reached in August. Dost Muhammad fled over the Oxus into Bokhara; Shah Shuja was placed on the throne. The elation in England was great; and the actors on the spot betrayed a vaingloriousness seldom manifested by British soldiers or statesmen. Sir John Keane, after capturing Ghazni, wrote to Lord Auckland: “The army under my command have succeeded in performing one of the most brilliant acts it has ever been my lot to witness during my service of 45 years in the four quarters of the globe.”⁶ Lord Auckland wrote to the Secret Committee of the Directors “of the flight of Sirdar Dost Muhammad Khan, and the triumphant entry of His Majesty, Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, into Kabul, amid the congratulations of his people.”⁷ And His Majesty, Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, wrote to Queen Victoria, expressing “the fullest confidence in the kind consideration of my wishes which is felt by my Royal Sister.” His wishes were to found an Order of the Durani Empire, and to confer the first class of the Order upon Lord Auckland, Sir John Keane, and a few others.⁸

It is not within the scope of the present work to narrate the history of the first Afghan War which is told in every school-book on Indian history, and has been fully and faithfully narrated by one of the most impartial of Anglo-Indian historians.⁹ Briefly, the Afghan people resented this foreign interference in their affairs. The new Amir, Shah Shuja, smarted under the control of the British envoy. The Mullas of Kabul refused to offer up prayers for him, and declared that he was not their independent king. Sardars and chiefs of tribes became openly hostile as the stream of gold from the Indian treasury was gradually reduced. On November 2, 1841, an insurrection broke out in Kabul, and Sir Alexander Burnes was killed. On December 23 the British envoy, Macnaghten, was killed in an open meeting by Akbar Khan, son of the exiled Dost Muhammad. In January 1842 the British army of four thousand, with twelve thousand camp-followers, began their retreat from Kabul. Fighting and negotiations continued during this disastrous retreat. Akbar Khan demanded more English hostages, including the wives and children of English officers, while his troops joined the Ghilzai mountaineers in pouring a murderous fire on the retreating army. The entire force and camp-followers, sixteen thousand men, perished under the Afghan fire, or died of wounds, cold, and hunger, in the Afghan snows. One solitary survivor, Dr. Brydon, escaped.

Lord Auckland was succeeded by Lord Ellenborough as Governor-General of India in 1842. In England the Liberal Government had fallen, and a Tory Government had succeeded. The new Ministers were not responsible for this unwise and disastrous war. They could rightly throw the whole blame of it on their predecessors; and it was hoped that they would even do India the justice of relieving her of the expenses of the war. But British Ministers, Liberal or Conservative, are unwilling to face their constituencies with a demand for the cost of an unsuccessful war. The Court of Directors pressed their claims with vigour. The Court of Proprietors made a demonstration in the same direction and with equal vigour. The people of India felt the injustice of being taxed for a war beyond the frontiers of India. But all protest was vain. The cost of the first Afghan War was fifteen millions sterling, and was thrown on the revenues of India. Not a shilling was contributed by Great Britain.

In February 1842 Lord Ellenborough landed at Calcutta. Ellenborough had qualified himself for his Indian administration by his work as President of the India Board of Control. He had helped in abolishing the transit duties which had impeded the internal trade of India. And he had acted as Chairman of a Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the question of Indian produce and manufactures. But Afghan affairs required his immediate attention on his arrival in India.

Ranjit Singh had died in June 1839, and there was none to oppose the march of the British army through the Punjab. General Pollock went through the Punjab and relieved Jellalabad. He defeated Akbar Khan, and in September 1842 was in possession of Kabul. The great Bazaar of Kabul, one of the finest edifices in Asia, was blown up by gunpowder; and other acts of retribution were perpetrated by the conquering army.

On October 1, 1842, exactly four years after the declaration of war by Lord Auckland, his successor issued a proclamation announcing that the victorious British army would withdraw from Afghanistan. There are some passages in this proclamation which the Duke of Wellington might have dictated, and Lord Lawrence might have carried out, passages which are true for all time.

“To force a sovereign upon a reluctant people would be as inconsistent with the policy as it is with the purpose of the British Government, tending to place the arms and resources of the people at the disposal of the first invader, and to impose the burden of supporting a sovereign without the prospect of benefit from his alliance.

“The Governor-General will willingly recognise any Government, approved by the Afghans themselves, which shall appear desirous and capable of maintaining friendly relations with neighbouring states.

“Content with the limits Nature appears to have assigned to its Empire, the Government of India will devote all its efforts to the establishment and maintenance of general peace, to the protection of the sovereigns and chiefs, its allies, and to the prosperity and happiness of its own faithful subjects.”¹⁰

These were wise and statesmanlike words. But Lord Ellenborough stained his administration by the policy which he adopted immediately after towards a nearer and weaker neighbour. The Amirs of Sindh had permitted the British army to pass through their country to Kabul in 1838, and from that date the Province of Sindh had acquired a value as the gateway to Western Asia. During the British occupation of Afghanistan the Amirs had rendered good service to the Indian Government; and it is lamentable to record that the conclusion of the Afghan War was immediately followed by the annexation of their country by that Government.

Major Outram had long been the British political agent in Sindh, and had dealt with the Amirs with that courtesy and kindness, joined with firmness and strength, which were a part of his character. In October 1842 the supreme power was taken from his hands and placed in those of Sir Charles Napier, a brave and distinguished soldier, but an imperious and quarrelsome man—the last man who should have been appointed to deal with Indian princes.¹¹ Napier was easily led to believe that some of the Amirs were guilty of disaffection to the British Government, and he declared war against them. The Amirs were defeated in the battles of Miani and Haidarabad in February and March 1843; and Lord Ellenborough, who had gone out to Asia as a peacemaker, ordered the annexation of Sindh.

No impartial historian has tried to justify this annexation of a friendly State on charges which were never proved. And it is to the credit of the Court of Directors that they passed a formal resolution, in August 1843, declaring the proceedings against the Amirs of Sindh to be unjust, impolitic, and inconsistent with the honour and interests of the Indian Government. It is more than probable that Lord Ellenborough had acted with the approval of the Tory Ministry in the matter of Sindh, as Lord Auckland had acted with the approval of the Whig Ministry in the matter of Afghanistan. The Court of Directors, however, had the right of recall, and they recalled Lord Ellenborough in 1844, after only two years’ administration, against the public protests of Tory Ministers.

One more incident connected with the annexation of Sindh is interesting, rather from a literary than from an historical point of view. Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Sindh, had a younger brother, distinguished in letters as well as in arms. William Napier had fought under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War, and his admirable history of that war is now an English classic. It is a matter of regret that the brave soldier and distinguished historian should have mixed himself up with his brother’s quarrels with Major Outram. The author of the “Peninsular War” published a work on the “Conquest of Sindh” in 1845; and not content with defending his brother, William Napier charged Major Outram with want of military skill, with opposition to a policy conducive to the civilisation of India, and with the advocacy of measures calculated to lead to the annihilation of a British force. The two brothers, rich in military and literary fame, sought to crush by the weight of their authority a comparatively young and obscure soldier. It is a signal instance of the justice which posterity sometimes does to true and honourable men, that James Outram survived this unworthy attack, and his fame stands higher in India to-day than that of the conqueror of Sindh. He replied to William Napier’s work in his own simple style; and his book is still read by many who have forgotten William Napier’s partisan work. Known early in his career as the “Bayard of India” for his high and chivalric character, Outram rose to distinction during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and was made a baronet in the following year. And when the administration of India passed away from the East India Company to the Crown, Outram took his seat in the Council of the first Viceroy of India, Lord Canning, in 1860.

And the judgment which James Outram passed on the annexation of Sindh was the judgment of the Court of Directors, and is the verdict of impartial historians. “Solemn treaties, though forced upon them [the Amirs of Sindh] were treated as waste paper, past acts of friendship and kindness towards us in the hour of extremity were disregarded, false charges were heaped upon them, they were goaded into resistance, and the ruthless and unrelenting sword of a faithless and merciless ally completed their destruction.”¹²