Affairs of State | Page 7

people of Afghanistan, was, though an erudite Arabic scholar, neither practised in the field of Asiatic intrigue nor a man of action. His ambition was, however, great, and the expedition, holding out the promise of distinction and honours, had met with his strenuous advocacy.' Macnaghten was one of the three men who chiefly inspired Lord Auckland with the policy to which he had committed himself. He was the negotiator of the tripartite treaty. He was now on his way toward a region wherein he was to concern himself in strange adventures, the outcome of which was to darken his reputation, consign him to a sudden cruel death, bring awful ruin on the enterprise he had fostered, and inflict incalculable damage on British prestige in India.
Marching through Bhawulpore and Northern Scinde, without noteworthy incident save heavy losses of draught cattle, Cotton's army reached Roree, the point at which the Indus was to be crossed, in the third week of January 1839. Here a delay was encountered. The Scinde Ameers were, with reason, angered by the unjust and exacting terms which Pottinger had been instructed to enforce on them. They had been virtually independent of Afghanistan for nearly half a century; there was now masterfully demanded of them quarter of a million sterling in name of back tribute, and this in the face of the fact that they held a solemn release by Shah Soojah of all past and future claims. When they demurred to this, and to other exactions, they were peremptorily told that 'neither the ready power to crush and annihilate them, nor the will to call it into action, was wanting if it appeared requisite, however remotely, for the safety and integrity of the Anglo-Indian empire and frontier.'
It was little wonder that the Ameers were reluctant to fall in with terms advanced so arrogantly. Keane marched up the right bank of the Indus to within a couple of marches of Hyderabad, and having heard of the rejection by the Ameers of Pottinger's terms, and of the gathering of some 20,000 armed Belooches about the capital, he called for the co-operation of part of the Bengal column in a movement on Hyderabad. Cotton started on his march down the left bank, on January Jeth, with 5600 men. Under menaces so ominous the unfortunate Ameers succumbed. Cotton returned to Roree; the Bengal column crossed the Indus, and on February 20th its headquarters reached Shikarpore. Ten days later, Cotton, leading the advance, was in Dadur, at the foot of the Bolan Pass, having suffered heavily in transport animals almost from the start. Supplies were scarce in a region so barren, but with a month's partial food on his beasts of burden he quitted Dadur March 10th, got safely, if toilsomely, through the Bolan, and on 26th reached Quetta, where he was to halt for orders. Shah Soojah and Keane followed, their troops suffering not a little from scarcity of supplies and loss of animals.
Keane's error in detaining Cotton at Quetta until he should arrive proved itself in the semi-starvation to which the troops of the Bengal column were reduced. The Khan of Khelat, whether from disaffection or inability, left unfulfilled his promise to supply grain, and the result of the quarrel which Burnes picked with him was that he shunned coming in and paying homage to Shah Soojah, for which default he was to suffer cruel and unjustifiable ruin. The sepoys were put on half, the camp followers on quarter rations, and the force for eleven days had been idly consuming the waning supplies, when at length, on April 6th, Keane came into camp, having already formally assumed the command of the whole army, and made certain alterations in its organisation and subsidiary commands. There still remained to be traversed 147 miles before Candahar should be reached, and the dreaded Kojuk Pass had still to be penetrated.
Keane was a soldier who had gained a reputation for courage in Egypt and the Peninsula. He was indebted to the acuteness of his engineer and the valour of his troops, for the peerage conferred on him for Ghuznee, and it cannot be said that during his command in Afghanistan he disclosed any marked military aptitude. But he had sufficient perception to recognise that he had brought the Bengal column to the verge of starvation in Quetta, and sufficient common sense to discern that, since if it remained there it would soon starve outright, the best thing to be done was to push it forward with all possible speed into a region where food should be procurable. Acting on this reasoning, he marched the day after his arrival. Cotton, while lying in Quetta, had not taken the trouble to reconnoitre the passes in advance, far less to make a practicable road through the Kojuk defile if