the cantonments and actually compelled the English to abandon the forts in which all our commissariat was stored. We were thus threatened with famine even if we could resist the enemy in arms. We were strangely unfortunate in our civil and military leaders. Sir W. Macnaghten was a man of high character and good purpose, but he was weak, and credulous. The commander, General Elphinstone, was old, infirm, tortured by disease, broken down both in mind and body, incapable of forming a purpose of his own, or of holding to one suggested by anybody else. His second in command was a far stronger and abler man, but unhappily the two could never agree. "They were both of them,” says Sir J. W. Kaye, “brave men. In any other situation, though the physical infirmities of the one, and the cankered vanity, the dogmatical perverseness of the other, might have in some measure detracted from their efficiency as military commanders, I believe they would have exhibited sufficient courage and constancy to rescue an army from utter destruction, and the British name from indelible re it was allowed to grow up without attempt at control. Sir Alexander Burnes could not be got to believe that it was anything serious even when a fanatical and furious mob were besieging his own house. The fanatics were especially bitter against Burnes, because they believed that he had been guilty of treachery. They accused him of having pretended to be the friend of Dost Mahomed, deceived him, and brought the English into the country. How entirely innocent of this charge Burnes was we all now know; but it would be idle to deny that there was much in the external aspect of events to excuse such a suspicion in the mind of an infuriated Afghan. To the last Burues refused to believe that he was in danger. He had always been a friend to the Afghans, he said, and he could have nothing to fear. It was true. He had always been the sincere friend of the Afghans. It was his misfortune, and the heavy fault of his superiors, that he had been made to appear as an enemy of the Afghans. He had now to pay a heavy penalty for the errors and wrongdoing of others. He harangued the raging mob, and endeavoured to bring them to rea-proach. But in the Cabul cantonments they son. He does not seem to have understood up to the very last moment that by reminding them that he was Alexander Burnes, their old friend, he was only giving them a new reason for demanding his life. He was murdered in the tumult. He and his brother and all those with him were hacked to pieces with Afghan knives. He was only in his thirtyseventh year when he was murdered. He was the first victim of the policy which had resolved to intervene in the affairs of Afghanistan. Fate seldom showed with more strange and bitter malice her proverbial irony than when she made him the first victim of the policy adopted in despite of his best advice and his strongest warnings. The murder of Burnes was not a climax; it was only a beginning. The English troops were quartered in cantonments outside the city, and at some little distance from it. These cantonments were in any case of real difficulty practically indefensible. The popular monarch, the darling of his people, whom we had restored to his throne, was in the Balla Hissar, or citadel of Cabul. From the moment when the insurrection broke out he may be regarded as a prisoner or a besieged man there. He was as utterly unable to help our people as they were to help him. The whole country threw itself into insurrection against him and us. The Afghans attacked were miserably out of place. They seem to have been sent there, by superhuman intervention, to work out the utter ruin and prostration of an unholy policy by ordinary human means." One fact must be mentioned by an English historian; one which an English historian has happily not often to record. It is certain that an officer in our service entered into negotiations for the murder of the insurgent chiefs who were our worst enemies. It is more than probable that he believed in doing so he was acting as Sir W. Macnaghten would have had him do. Sir W. Macnaghten was innocent of any complicity in such a plot, and was incapable of it. But the negotiations were opened and carried on in his name. A new figure appeared on the scene, a dark and a fierce apparition. This was Akbar Khan, the favourite son of Dost Mahomed. He was a daring, a clever, an unscrupulous young man. From the moment when he entered Cabul he became the real leader of the insurrection against Shah Soojah and us. Macnaghten, persuaded by the military commander that the position of things was hopeless, consented to enter into negotiations with Akbar Khan. Before the arrival of the latter the chiefs of the insurrection had offered us terms which made the ears of our envoy tingle. Such terms had not often been even suggested to British soldiers before. They were simply that there are not many Englishmen who would, under any circumstances, have consented even to give a hearing to the proposals of Akbar Khan. unconditional surrender. Macnaghten indig- | cherous. All this is but excuse, and rather nantly rejected them. Everything went wrong poor excuse. When it has all been said and with him, however. We were beaten again | thought of, we must still be glad to believe and again by the Afghans. Our officers never faltered in their duty; but the melancholy truth has to be told that the men, most of whom were Asiatics, at last began to lose heart and would not fight the enemy. So the envoy was compelled to enter into terms with Akbar Khan and the other chiefs. Akbar Khan received him at first with contemptuous insolence as a haughty conqueror receives some ignoble and humiliated adversary. It was agreed that the British troops should quit Afghanistan at once; that Dost Mahomed and his family should be sent back to Afghanistan; that on his return the unfortunate Shah Soojah should be allowed to take himself off to India or where he would; and that some British officers should be left at Cabul as hostages for the fulfilment of the conditions. The evacuation did not take place at once, although the fierce winter was setting in, and the snow was falling heavily, ominously. Macnaghten seems to have had still some lingering hopes that something would turn up to relieve him from the shame of quitting the country; and it must be owned that he does not seem to have had any intention of carrying out the terms of the agreement if by any chance he could escape from them. On both sides there were dallyings and delays. At last Akbar Khan made a new and startling proposition to our envoy. It was that they two should enter into a secret treaty, should unite their arms against the other chiefs, and should keep Shah Soojah on the throne as nominal king, with Akbar Khan as his vizier. Macnaghten caught at the proposals. He had entered into terms of negotiation with the Afghan chiefs together; he now consented to enter into a secret treaty with one of the chiefs to turn their joint arms against the others. It would be idle and shameful to attempt to defend such a policy. We can only excuse it by considering the terrible circumstances of Macnaghten's position; the manner in which his nerves and moral fibre had been shaken and shattered by calamities; and his doubts whether he could place any reliance on the promises of the chiefs. He had apparently sunk into that condition of mind which Macaulay tells us that Clive adopted so readily in his dealings with Asiatics, and under the influence of which men, naturally honourable and high-minded, come to believe that it is right to act treacherously with those whom we believe to be trea Whatever Macnaghten's error, it was dearly expiated.. He went out at noon next day to confer with Akbar Khan on the banks of the neighbouring river. Three of his officers were with him. Akbar Khan was ominously surrounded by friends and retainers. These kept pressing round the unfortunate envoy. Some remonstrance was made by one of the English officers, but Akbar Khan said it was of no consequence, as they were all in the secret. Not many words were spoken; the expected conference had hardly begun when a signal was given or an order issued by Akbar Khan, and the envoy and the officers were suddenly seized from behind. A scene of wild confusion followed, in which hardly anything is clear and certain but the one most horrible incident. The envoy struggled with Akbar Khan, who had himself seized Macnaghten; Akbar Khan drew from his belt one of a pair of pistols which Macnaghten had presented to him a short time before, and shot him through the body. The fanatics who were crowding round hacked the body to pieces with their knives. Of the three officers one was killed on the spot; the other two were forced to mount Afghan horses and carried away as prisoners. At first this horrid deed of treachery and blood shows like that to which Clearchus and his companions, the chiefs of the famous ten thousand Greeks, fell victims at the hands of Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap. But it seems certain that the treachery of Akbar, base as it was, did not contemplate more than the seizure of the envoy and his officers. There were jealousies and disputes among the chiefs of the insurrection. One of them in especial had got his mind filled with the conviction, inspired no doubt by the unfortunate and unparalleled negotiation already mentioned, that the envoy had offered a price for his head. Akbar Khan was accused by him of being a secret friend of the envoy and the English. Akbar Khan's father was a captive in the hands of the English, and it may have been thought that on his account and for personal purposes Akbar was favouring the envoy and even intriguing with him. Akbar offered to prove his sincerity by making the envoy a captive and handing him over to the chiefs. | position. General Elphinstone and his second This was the treacherous plot which he strove in command, Brigadier Shelton, were conto carry out by entering into the secret negotia- vinced that it would be equally impossible to tions with the easily-deluded envoy. On stay where they were or to cut their way the fatal day the latter resisted and struggled; through the Afghans. But it might have occurAkbar Khan heard a cry of alarm that the red to many that they were nevertheless not English soldiers were coming out of canton- bound to treat with the Afghans. They might ments to rescue the envoy; and, wild with have remembered the famous answer of the passion, he suddenly drew his pistol and fired. father in Corneille's immortal drama, who is This was the statement made again and again asked what his son could have done but yield by Akbar Khan himself. It does not seem in the face of such odds, and exclaims in generous an improbable explanation for what otherwise passion that he could have died. One English looks a murder as stupid and purposeless as it officer of mark did counsel his superiors in was brutal. The explanation does not much this spirit. This was Major Eldred Pottinger, relieve the darkness of Akbar Khan's charac- whose skill and courage in the defence of ter. It is given here as history, not as excul- Herat we have already mentioned. Pottinger pation. There is not the slightest reason to was for cutting their way through all enemies suppose that Akbar Khan would have shrunk and difficulties as far as they could, and then from any treachery or any cruelty which occupying the ground with their dead bodies. served his purpose. His own explanation of But his advice was hardly taken into considerhis purpose in this instance shows a degree of ation. It was determined to treat with the treachery which could hardly be surpassed Afghans; and treating with the Afghans now even in the East. But it is well to bear in meant accepting any terms the Afghans chose mind that the suspicion of perfidy under which to impose on their fallen enemies. In the negothe English envoy laboured, and which was tiations that went on some written documents the main impulse of Akbar Khan's movement, were exchanged. One of these, drawn up by had evidence enough to support it in the eyes the English negotiators, contains a short senof suspicious enemies; and that poor Mac- tence which we believe to be absolutely unique naghten would not have been murdered had in the history of British dealings with armed he not consented to meet Akbar Khan and enemies. It is an appeal to the Afghan contreat with him on a proposition to which an querors not to be too hard upon the vanEnglish official should never have listened. quished; not to break the bruised reed. "In friendship, kindness and consideration are necessary, not overpowering the weak with sufferings!" In friendship!—we appealed to the friendship of Macnaghten's murderers; to the friendship, in any case, of the man whose father we had dethroned and driven into exile. Not overpowering the weak with sufferings ! The weak were the English! One might fancy he was reading the plaintive and piteous appeal of some forlorn and feeble tribe of helpless half-breeds for the mercy of arrogant and mastering rulers. "Suffolk's imperious tongue is stern and rough," says one in Shakespeare's pages when he is bidden to ask for consideration at the hands of captors whom he is no longer able to resist. The tongue with which the English force at Cabul addressed the Afghans was not imperious or stern or rough. It was bated, mild, and plaintive. Only the other day, it would seem, these men had blown up the gates of Ghuznee and rushed through the dense smoke and the falling ruins to attack the enemy hand to hand. Only the other day our envoy had received in surrender the bright sword of Dost A terrible agony of suspense followed among the little English force in the cantonments. The military chiefs afterwards stated that they did not know until the following day that any calamity had befallen the envoy. But a keen suspicion ran through the cantonments that some fearful deed had been done. No step was taken to avenge the death of Macnaghten even when it became known that his hacked and mangled body had been exhibited in triumph all through the streets and bazaars of Cabul. A paralysis seemed to have fallen over the councils of our military chiefs. On December 24, 1841, came a letter from one of the officers seized by Akbar Khan, accompanying proposals for a treaty from the Afghan chiefs. It is hard now to understand how any English officers could have consented to enter into terms with the murderers of Macnaghten before his mangled body could well have ceased to bleed. It is strange that it did not occur to most of them that there was an alternative; that they were not ordered by fate to accept whatever the conquerors chose to offer. We can all see the difficulty of their these things could only plead for a little gentleness of consideration, and had no thought of resistance, and did not any longer seem to know how to die. Mahomed. Now the same men who had seen | story it is told by Lady Sale that crowds of the fanatical Ghilzyes were endeavouring to persuade Akbar Khan to slaughter all the English, and that when he tried to pacify them they said that when Burnes came into the country they entreated Akbar Khan's father to have Burnes killed, or he would go back to Hindostan, and on some future day return and bring an army with him, "to take our country from us;" and all the calamities had come upon them because Dost Mahomed would not take their advice. Akbar Khan either was or pretended to be moderate. He might indeed safely put on an air of magnanimity. His enemies were doomed. It needed no command from him to decree their destruction. We accepted the terms of treaty offered to us. Nothing else could be done by men who were not prepared to adopt the advice of the heroic father in Corneille. The English were at once to take themselves out of Afghanistan, giving up all their guns except six, which they were allowed to retain for their necessary defence in their mournful journey home; they were to leave behind all the treasure, and to guarantee the payment of something additional for the safe conduct of the poor little army to Peshawur or to Jellalabad; and they were to hand over six officers as hostages for the due fulfilment of the conditions. It is of course understood that the conditions included the immediate release of Dost Mahomed and his family and their return to Afghanistan. When these should return the six hostages were to be released. Only one concession had been obtained from the conquerors. It was at first demanded that some of the married ladies should be left as hostages; but on the urgent representations of the English officers this condition was waived-at least for the moment. When the treaty was signed, the officers who had been seized when Macnaghten was murdered were released. It is worth mentioning that these officers were not badly treated by Akbar Khan while they were in his power. On the contrary, he had to make strenuous efforts, and did make them in good faith, to save them from being murdered by bands of his fanatical followers. One of the officers has himself described the almost desperate efforts which Akbar Khan had to make to save him from the fury of the mob, who thronged thirsting for the blood of the Englishman up to the very stirrup of their young chief. "Akbar Khan," says this officer, "at length drew his sword and laid about him right manfully" in defence of his prisoner. When, however, he had got the latter into a place of safety, the impetuous young Afghan chief could not restrain a sneer at his captive and the cause his captive represented. Turning to the English officer, he said more than once, "in a tone of triumphant derision," some words such as these: "So you are the man who came here to seize my country?" It must be owned that the condition of things gave bitter meaning to the taunt, if they did not actually excuse it. At a later period of this melancholy The withdrawal from Cabul began. It was the heart of a cruel winter. The English had to make their way through the awful pass of Koord Cabul. This stupendous gorge runs for some five miles between mountain ranges so narrow, lofty, and grim, that in the winter season the rays of the sun can hardly pierce its darkness even at the noontide. Down the centre dashed a precipitous mountain torrent so fiercely that the stern frost of that terrible time could not stay its course. The snow lay in masses on the ground; the rocks and stones that raised their heads above the snow in the way of the unfortunate travellers were slippery with frost. Soon the white snow began to be stained and splashed with blood. Fearful as this Koord Cabul Pass was, it was only a degree worse than the road which for two whole days the English had to traverse to reach it. The army which set out from Cabul numbered more than four thousand fighting men, of whom Europeans, it should be said, formed but a small proportion; and some twelve thousand camp-followers of all kinds. There were also many women and children. Lady Macnaghten, widow of the murdered envoy; Lady Sale, whose gallant husband was holding Jellalabad at the near end of the Khyber Pass towards the Indian frontier; Mrs. Sturt, her daughter, soon to be widowed by the death of her young husband; Mrs. Trevor and her seven children, and many other pitiable fugitives. The winter journey would have been cruel and dangerous enough in time of peace; but this journey had to be accomplished in the midst of something far worse than common war. At every step of the road, every opening of the rocks, the unhappy crowd of confused and heterogeneous fugitives were beset by bands of savage fanatics, who with their long guns and long knives were murdering all they could reach. It was all the way a confused should be handed over to his custody to be conveyed by him in safety to Peshawur. There was nothing better to be done. The only modification of his request, or command, that could be obtained was that the husbands of the married ladies should accompany their wives. With this agreement the women and children were handed over to the care of this dreaded enemy, and Lady Macnaghten bad to undergo the agony of a personal interview with the man whose own hand had killed her husband. Few scenes in poetry or romance can surely be more thrilling with emotion than such a meeting as this must have been. Akbar Khan was kindly in his language, and declared to the unhappy widow that he would give his right arm to undo, if it were possible, the deed that he had done. The women and children and the married men whose wives were among this party were taken from the unfortunate army and placed under the care of Akbar Khan. As events turned out this proved a fortunate thing for them. But in any case it was the best thing that could be done. Not one of these women and children could have lived through the horrors of the journey which lay before the Was it for this, then, that our troops had remnant of what had once been a British force. been induced to capitulate? Was this the safe- The march was resumed; new horrors set in; conduct which the Afghan chiefs had pro- new heaps of corpses stained the snow; and mised in return for their accepting the igno- then Akbar Khan presented himself with a minious conditions imposed on them? Some fresh proposition. In the treaty made at Cabul of the chiefs did exert themselves to their ut- between the English authorities and the Afghan most to protect the unfortunate English. It chiefs there was an article which stipulated is not certain what the real wish of Akbar that "the English force at Jellalabad shall Khan may have been. He protested that he march from Peshawur before the Cabul army had no power to restrain the hordes of fanati- arrives, and shall not delay on the road." cal Ghilzyes whose own immediate chiefs had Akbar Khan was especially anxious to get rid not authority enough to keep them from mur- of the little army at Jellalabad at the near dering the English whenever they got a chance. end of the Khyber Pass. He desired above The force of some few hundred horsemen all things that it should be on the march home whom Akbar Khan had with him were utterly to India; either that it might be out of his incapable, he declared, of maintaining order way, or that he might have a chance of destroyamong such a mass of infuriated and lawlessing it on its way. It was in great measure as savages. Akbar Khan constantly appeared a security for its moving that he desired to on the scene during this journey of terror. At have the women and children under his care. every opening or break of the long straggling It is not likely that he meant any harm to the flight he and his little band of followers showed women and children; it must be remembered themselves on the horizon: trying still to pro- that his father and many of the women of his tect the English from utter ruin, as he declared; family were under the control of the British come to gloat over their misery and to see that government as prisoners in Hindostan. But it was surely accomplished, some of the un- he fancied that if he had the English women happy English were ready to believe. Yet his in his hands the army at Jellalabad could not presence was something that seemed to give a refuse to obey the condition set down in the hope of protection. Akbar Khan at length article of the treaty. Now that he had the startled the English by a proposal that the women in his power, however, he demanded women and children who were with the army other guarantees with openly acknowledged |