Affairs of State | Page 2

British envoy to his Court, who wrote to his
Government that the Shah had fair claim to the sovereignty of
Afghanistan as far as Ghuznee, and that Kamran's conduct in
occupying part of the Persian province of Seistan had given the Shah 'a
full justification for commencing hostilities against Herat.'
The serious phase of the situation for England and India was that
Russian influence was behind Persia in this hostile action against Herat.
Mr Ellis pointed out that in the then existing state of relations between
Persia and Russia, the progress of the former in Afghanistan was
tantamount to the advancement of the latter. But unfortunately there
remained valid an article in the treaty of 1814 to the effect that, in case
of war between the Afghans and the Persians, the English Government
should not interfere with either party unless when called on by both to
mediate. In vain did Ellis and his successor M'Neill remonstrate with
the Persian monarch against the Herat expedition. An appeal to St
Petersburg, on the part of Great Britain, produced merely an evasive
reply. How diplomatic disquietude had become intensified may be
inferred from this, that whereas in April 1836 Ellis wrote of Persia as a
Russian first parallel of attack against India, Lord Auckland, then
Governor-General of India, directed M'Neill, in the early part of 1837,
to urge the Shah to abandon his enterprise, on the ground that he (the
Governor-General) 'must view with umbrage and displeasure schemes
of interference and conquest on our western frontier.'

The Shah, unmoved by the representations of the British envoy,
marched on Herat, and the siege was opened on November 23d, 1837.
Durand, a capable critic, declares that the strength of the place, the
resolution of the besiegers, the skill of their Russian military advisers,
and the gallantry of the besieged, were alike objects of much
exaggeration. 'The siege was from first to last thoroughly ill-conducted,
and the defence, in reality not better managed, owed its _éclat_ to
Persian ignorance, timidity and supineness. The advice of Pottinger, the
gallant English officer who assisted the defence, was seldom asked, and
still more seldom taken; and no one spoke more plainly of the conduct
of both besieged and besiegers than did Pottinger himself.' M'Neill
effected nothing definite during a long stay in the Persian camp before
Herat, the counteracting influence of the Russian envoy being too
strong with the Shah; and the British representative, weary of continual
slights, at length quitted the Persian camp completely foiled. After six
days' bombardment, the Persians and their Russian auxiliaries delivered
an assault in force on June 23d, 1838. It failed, with heavy loss, and the
dispirited Shah determined on raising the siege. His resolution was
quickened by the arrival of Colonel Stoddart in his camp, with the
information that a military force from Bombay, supported by ships of
war, had landed on the island of Karrack in the Persian Gulf, and with
the peremptory ultimatum to the Shah that he must retire from Herat at
once. Lord Palmerston, in ordering this diversion in the Gulf, had
thought himself justified by circumstances in overriding the clear and
precise terms of an article in a treaty to which England had on several
occasions engaged to adhere. As for the Shah, he appears to have been
relieved by the ultimatum. On the 9th September he mounted his horse
and rode away from Herat. The siege had lasted nine and a half months.
To-day, half a century after Simonich the Russian envoy followed
Mahomed Shah from battered but unconquered Herat, that city is still
an Afghan place of arms.
Shah Soojah-ool Moolk, a grandson of the illustrious Ahmed Shah,
reigned in Afghanistan from 1803 till 1809. His youth had been full of
trouble and vicissitude. He had been a wanderer, on the verge of
starvation, a pedlar and a bandit, who raised money by plundering
caravans. His courage was lightly reputed, and it was as a mere creature
of circumstance that he reached the throne. His reign was perturbed,

and in 1809 he was a fugitive and an exile. Runjeet Singh, the Sikh
ruler of the Punjaub, defrauded him of the famous Koh-i-noor, which is
now the most precious of the crown jewels of England, and plundered
and imprisoned the fallen man. Shah Soojah at length escaped from
Lahore. After further misfortunes he at length reached the British
frontier station of Loodianah, and in 1816 became a pensioner of the
East India Company.
After the downfall of Shah Soojah, Afghanistan for many years was a
prey to anarchy. At length in 1826, Dost Mahomed succeeded in
making himself supreme at Cabul, and this masterful man
thenceforward held sway until his death in 1863, uninterruptedly save
during the three years of the British occupation. Dost Mahomed was
neither kith