upon the ramparts lighted flambeaux until we returned. Several months passed in this manner, and our own attendants were with difficulty allowed to come into the presence. No relief was left but that of our holy religion, and God alone could give us assistance.” And assistance was given, in the shape of unwonted resolution and ingenuity. In this critical hour the resources of the Shah seem to have developed themselves in an unexampled manner. He foiled all Runjeet’s efforts to secure his prisoner, and baffled the vigilance of his guards. A few faithful attendants aided his endeavours, and he escaped from the cruel walls of Lahore. “We ordered,” he says, “the roof of the apartment containing our camp equipage to be opened, so as to admit of a person passing through; apertures were formed by mining through seven other chambers to the outside of the building.” Everything being thus prepared, the unhappy King disguised himself as a mendicant, and leaving one of his attendants to simulate the royal person on his bed, crept through the fissures in the walls, escaped with two followers into the street, and emerged thence through the main sewer which ran beneath the city wall.
Outside Lahore he was joined by his remaining followers. He had been thinking, in confinement, of the blessings of a safe retreat at Loodhianah; but no sooner did he find himself abroad than he courted new adventures, and meditated new enterprises. Instead of hastening to the British provinces, he turned his face towards the hills of Jummoo. Wandering about in this direction without seemingly any fixed object, he received friendly overtures from the Rajah of Kistawar, and was easily persuaded to enter his dominions.
The Rajah went out to meet him, loaded him with kindness, conducted him to his capital, and made the kingly fugitive happy with rich gifts and public honours. Offering up sacrifices, and distributing large sums of money in honour of his royal guest, the Rajah spared nothing that could soothe the grief or pamper the vanity of the exiled monarch. But the novelty of this pleasant hospitality soon began to wear away, and the restless wanderer sighed for a life of more enterprise and excitement. “Tired of an idle life,” he says, “we laid plans for an attack on Cashmere.” The Rajah of Kistawar was well pleased with the project, and placed his troops and his treasury at the command of his royal guest. The Shah himself, though robbed of all his jewels, had a lakh of rupees remaining at Lahore, but as soon as he began to possess himself of it, the Maharajah stretched out his hand, and swept it into his own treasury. Nothing daunted by this accident, the Kistawar chief, who was “ready to sacrifice his territory for the weal” of the Shah, freely supplied the sinews of war; troops were levied, and operations commenced.
But it was not written in the Shah’s book of life that his enterprises should result in anything but failure. The outset of the expedition was marked by some temporary successes; but it closed in disaster and defeat. The Shah’s levies charged the stockaded positions of the enemy sword in hand, and were pushing into the heart of the country, when the same inexorable enemy that has baffled the efforts of the greatest European states raised its barriers against the advance of the invading army. “We were only three coss,” relates Shah Soojah, “from Azim Khan’s camp, with the picturesque city of Cashmere full in view, when the snow began again to fall, and the storm continued with violence, and without intermission, for two days. Our Hindostanees were benumbed with a cold unfelt in their sultry regions; the road to our rear was blocked up with snow, and the supplies still far distant. For three days our troops were almost famished, and many Hindostanees died. We could not advance, and retreat was hazardous. Many lost their hands and feet from being frost-bitten, before we determined to retreat.”
These calamities, which seemed to strengthen the devotion of the Rajah of Kistawar to the unfortunate Shah, and which were borne by him with the most manly fortitude, sobered the fugitive Afghan monarch, and made him again turn his thoughts longingly towards a tranquil asylum in the Company’s dominions. At the earnest request of his new friend, he remained during nine months beneath the hospitable roof of the Rajah, and then prepared for a journey to Loodhianah.[66] Avoiding the Lahore territory, lest he should fall into the hands of Runjeet Singh, willing rather to encounter the eternal snows of the hill regions than his ruthless enemies on the plains, he tracked along the inhospitable mountains of Thibet, where for days and days no signs of human life or vegetation appeared to cheer his heart and encourage his efforts. “The depth of the eternal snows,” he says, “was immense. Underneath the large bodies of ice the mountain torrents had formed themselves channels. The five rivers watering the Punjaub have their rise here from fountains amid the snows of ages. We passed mountains, the snows of which varied in colour, and at last reached the confines of Thibet, after experiencing the extremes of cold, hunger, and fatigue.”
His trials were not yet over. He had still to encounter dangers and difficulties among the hill tribes. The people of Kulloo insulted and ill-treated him; but the Rajah came to his relief, and, after a few days of onward travelling, to the inexpressible joy of the fugitive monarch the red houses of the British residents at one of our hill stations appeared in sight. “Our cares and fatigues were now,” says the Shah, “forgotten, and giving thanks to Almighty God, who, having freed us from the hands of our enemies, and led us through the snows and over the trackless mountains, had now safely conducted us to the land of friends, we passed a night, for the first time, with comfort and without dread. Signs of civilisation showed themselves as we proceeded, and we soon entered a fine broad road. A chuprassie from Captain Ross attended us; the hill ranas paid us every attention; and we soon reached Loodhianah, where we found our family treated with marked respect, and enjoying every comfort after their perilous march from Lahore.”
It was in the month of September, 1816, that Shah Soojah joined his family at Loodhianah. He sought a resting-place, and he found one in the British dominions. Two years of quietude and peace were his. But quietude and peace are afflictions grievous and intolerable to an Afghan nature. The Shah gratefully acknowledged the friendly hospitality of the British, but the burden of a life of inactivity was not to be borne. The Douranee Empire was still rent by intestine convulsions. The Barukzye sirdars were dominant at Caubul; but their sovereignty was threatened by Shah Mahmoud and the Princes of Herat, and not, at that time, professing to conquer for themselves, for the spirit of legitimacy was not extinct in Afghanistan, they looked abroad for a royal puppet, and found one at Loodhianah. Azim Khan invited Shah Soojah to re-assert his claims to the throne; and the Shah, weary of repose, unwarned by past experience, flung himself into this new enterprise, only to add another to that long list of failures which it took nearly a quarter of a century more to render complete.
CHAPTER VII.
[1816–1837.]
Dost Mahomed and the Barukzyes—Early days of Dost Mahomed—The fall of Futteh Khan—Defeat of Shah Mahmoud—Supremacy of the Barukzyes—Position of the Empire—Dost Mahomed at Caubul—Expedition of Shah Soojah—His Defeat—Capture of Peshawur by the Sikhs.
Among the twenty brothers of Futteh Khan was one many years his junior, whose infancy was wholly disregarded by the great Barukzye Sirdar. The son of a woman of the Kuzzilbash tribe, looked down upon by the high-bred Douranee ladies of his father’s household, the boy had begun life in the degrading office of a sweeper at the sacred cenotaph of Lamech.[67] Permitted, at a later period, to hold a menial office about the person of the powerful Wuzeer, he served the great man with water, or bore his pipe; was very zealous in his ministrations; kept long and painful vigils; saw everything, heard everything in silence; bided his time patiently, and when the hour came, trod the stage of active life as no irresolute novice. A stripling of fourteen, in the crowded streets of Peshawur in broad day, as the buyers and the sellers thronged the thoroughfares of the city, he slew one of the enemies of Futteh Khan, and galloped home to report the achievement to the Wuzeer. From that time his rise was rapid. The neglected younger brother of Futteh Khan became the favourite of the powerful chief, and following the fortunes of the warlike minister, soon took his place among the chivalry of the Douranee Empire.
The name of this young warrior was Dost Mahomed Khan. Nature seems to have designed him for a hero of the true Afghan stamp and character. Of a graceful person, a prepossessing countenance, a bold frank manner, he was outwardly endowed with all those