of the Persian Army—Progress of the Siege—Negotiations for Peace—Failure of the Attack—The Siege raised.
Surrounded by a fair expanse of country, where alternating corn-fields, vineyards, and gardens varied the richness and beauty of the scene; where little fortified villages studded the plain, and the bright waters of small running streams lightened the pleasant landscape, lay the city of Herat.[136] The beauty of the place was beyond the walls. Within, all was dirt and desolation. Strongly fortified on every side by a wet ditch and a solid outer wall, with five gates, each defended by a small outwork, the city presented but few claims to the admiration of the traveller. Four long bazaars, roofed with arched brickwork, meeting in a small domed quadrangle in the centre of the city, divided it into four quarters.[137] In each of these there may have been about a thousand dwelling-houses and ten thousands of inhabitants. Mosques and caravanserais, public baths and public reservoirs, varied the wretched uniformity of the narrow dirty streets, which, roofed across, were often little better than dark tunnels or conduits, where every conceivable description of filth was suffered to collect and putrify. When Arthur Conolly expressed his wonder how the people could live in the midst of so much filth, he was answered, “The climate is fine; and if dirt killed people where would the Afghans be?”[138]
Such to the eye of an ordinary traveller, in search of the picturesque, was the aspect of the city and its environs at the time when the army of Mahomed Shah was marching upon Herat. To the mind of the military observer both the position and construction of the place were suggestive of much interesting speculation. Situated at that point of the great mountain-range which alone presents facilities to the transport of a train of heavy artillery, Herat has, with no impropriety of designation, been described as the “Gate of India.” Within the limits of the Heratee territory all the great roads leading on India converge. At other points, between Herat and Caubul, a body of troops unencumbered with guns, or having only a light field artillery, might make good its passage, if not actively opposed, across the stupendous mountain-ranges of the Hindoo-Koosh; but it is only by the Herat route that a really formidable well-equipped army could make its way upon the Indian frontier from the regions on the north-west. Both the nature and the resources of the country are such as to favour the success of the invader. All the materials necessary for the organisation of a great army, and the formation of his dépôts, are to be found in the neighbourhood of Herat. The extraordinary fertility of the plain has fairly entitled it to be called the “Granary of Central Asia.” Its mines supply lead, iron, and sulphur; the surface of the country, in almost every direction, is laden with saltpetre; the willow and poplar trees, which furnish the best charcoal, flourish in all parts of the country; whilst from the population might at any time be drawn hardy and docile soldiers to recruit the ranks of an invading army.[139] Upon the possession of such country would depend, in no small measure, the success of operations undertaken for the invasion or the defence of Hindostan.
The city of Herat, it has been said, stood within solid earthen walls, surrounded by a wet ditch. The four sides were of nearly equal length, a little less than a mile in extent, facing towards the four points of the compass. The most elevated quarter of the city was the north-east, from which it gradually sloped down to the south-west corner, where it attained its lowest descent.[140] The real defences of the place were two covered ways, or fausse-braies, on the exterior slope of the embankments, one within and the other without the ditch. The lower one was on the level of the surrounding country, its parapet “partly covered by a mound of earth on the counterscarp, the accumulation of rubbish from the cleansings of the ditch.” On the northern side, surrounded by a wet ditch, the citadel, once known as the Kella-i-Aktyar-Aldyn, but now as the Ark, overlooked the city. Built entirely of good brick masonry, with lofty ramparts and numerous towers, it was a place of considerable strength; but now its defences, long neglected, were in a wretched state of repair. Indeed, when, in 1837, tidings of the advance of the Persian army reached Herat, the whole extent of the fortifications was crumbling into decay.
The population of Herat was estimated at about 45,000 inhabitants. A large majority of these were Sheeahs. It was said that there might have been 1000 Hindoos, of various callings, in the city; there were several families of Armenians, and a few families of Jews. The general appearance of the inhabitants was that of a poor and an oppressed people. Dirty and ill-clad, they went about in a hurried, anxious manner, each man looking with suspicion into his neighbour’s face. Few women were to be seen in the streets. It was hardly safe for a stranger to be abroad after sunset. Unless protected by an armed escort, there was too great a likelihood of his being seized and sold into slavery. There was no protection for life, liberty, or property. They who should have protected the people were the foremost of their oppressors. During the absence of the King, in 1837, such was the frightful misrule—such the reign of terror that had been established by the chartered violence of the rulers of the city, that the shops were closed before sunset, and all through the night the noise and uproar, the challengings and the cries for help were such as could scarcely have been exceeded if the place had been actually besieged. A son of Yar Mahomed Khan, the Wuzeer, was then governor of the city. Compelled to hold office upon a small salary, he enriched himself by plundering the houses of the inhabitants, and selling the people into slavery. All who were strong enough followed his example, and when detected, secured immunity for themselves by giving him a portion of the spoil.[141] So remorseless, indeed, was the tyranny exercised over the unhappy Sheeahs by their Afghan masters, that many of the inhabitants of Herat looked forward to the coming of the Persian King as to the advent of a deliverer, and would gladly have seen the city given over to the governance of one who, whatever may have been his political claims, was not an alien in his religious faith.[142]
Such was the last remnant of the old Afghan monarchy in the hands of Shah Kamran—the only one of the Suddozye Princes who had retained his hold of the country he had governed. His government was at this time a pageant and a name. An old and a feeble man, broken down by long years of debauchery, he had resigned the active duties of administration into the hands of his Wuzeer. He was, perhaps, the worst of the royal princes—the worst of a bad race. His youth had been stained by the commission of every kind of Oriental crime; and now in his old age, if the evil passions of his nature were less prominently developed, it was only because physical decay had limited his power to indulge them. In his younger days he had set no restraint upon himself, and now it was nature only that restrained him. The violent gusts of passion, which had once threatened all who were within his influence, had given place to an almost incessant peevishness and petulance of manner, more pitiable to behold than it was dangerous to encounter. He had once played openly the part of the bandit—placing himself at the head of gangs of armed retainers, plundering houses by night and slaying all who opposed him; now he suffered others to commit the violence which he had before personally enacted, and oppressed, by deputy, the weakness which he could not see smitten before his face. He had once been immoderately addicted to sensual pleasure, and in the pursuit of such gratification—arrested by no feelings of compassion, by no visitings of remorse—had violently seized the objects of his desires, to whomsoever they belonged, and cast them adrift when his appetite was sated; now he sought excitement of another kind, to which age and feebleness were no impediments, and turned from the caresses of women to seek solace from the stimulants of wine. Unfaithful to his friends and unmerciful to his enemies, ingratitude and cruelty were conspicuous in his nature, and these darker features of his character there was little to lighten or relieve. Among his countrymen he was esteemed for a certain kind of courage, and in his younger days he had not been wanting in activity and address.[143] Though naturally haughty and arrogant, there were times when he could assume, for his own ends, a becoming courtesy of demeanour; and, as by assiduous attention to costume, he endeavoured to compensate for the deficiencies of an unattractive person, there was something of a high and princely aspect about the outward bearing even of this degraded man. Short and thickset, with misshapen limbs and an unseemly gait, his appearance was more comely in repose than in action. His face was pitted with the small-pox, and there was a harshness in his countenance stamped by the long possession of arbitrary power and the indulgence of unbridled passions; but he had a finer, more massive, more upright forehead, than the majority of his countrymen, with more of intellect impressed upon it. His voice had once been loud and deep; but the feebleness of age, much sickness, and much suffering, had given a querulousness to its tones which was equally undignified and unpleasing.
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