and was in frequent consultation with the Governor-General. He was a fine old soldier of the Tory school, with very strong opinions regarding the general “shabbiness” of all Whig doings, and a strenuous dislike of half-measures, especially in military affairs. It is believed that he did not approve of the general policy of British interference in the affairs of Afghanistan,[256] but he was entirely of opinion that it was the duty of government, in the conjuncture that had arisen, either not to interfere at all, or to interfere in such a manner as to secure the success of our operations. Always by nature inclined towards moderate measures, the Governor-General for some time resisted the urgent recommendations of those who spoke of the formation of a grand army, drawn from our own regular establishment, to be headed by the commander-in-chief in person, and marched upon Candahar, perhaps upon Herat itself. But Lord Auckland was never the most resolute of men. His own confidential advisers had long been endeavouring to convince him of the necessity of adopting more vigorous measures. The commander-in-chief was not only recommending such measures, but insisting upon his right, as the first military authority in the country, to determine the number of British troops to be employed, and the manner of their employment. And the ministers of the Crown, fortified by the knowledge that the expenses of the war would fall upon the treasury of the East India Company, and that they would not be called by the British people to account for any expenditure, however lavish, upon remote warlike operations, which the public might easily be persuaded to regard as the growth of the most consummate wisdom, were exhorting Lord Auckland to adopt effectual measures for the counteraction of Russian intrigue and Persian hostility in the countries of Afghanistan. So, after some weeks of painful oscillation, Lord Auckland yielded his own judgment to the judgment of others, and an order went forth for the assembling of a grand army on the frontier, to be set in motion early in the coming cold weather, in support of Shah Soojah and his levies; to cross the Indus; and to march upon Candahar.
In August, the regiments selected by the commander-in-chief were warned for field-service, and on the 13th of September he published a general order, brigading the different components of the force, naming the staff-officers appointed, and ordering the whole to rendezvous at Kurnaul. The reports, which all through the dry summer months had been flitting about from cantonment to cantonment, and making the pulses of military aspirants, old and young, beat rapidly with the fever of expectancy, now took substantial shape; and everywhere the approaching expedition became the one topic of conversation. Peace had reigned over India for so many years, that the excitement of the coming contest was as novel as it was inspiriting. There was not an officer in the army who did not long to join the invading force; and many from the distant Presidency, or from remote provincial stations, leaving the quiet staff-appointments which had lapped them long in ease and luxury, rushed upwards to join their regiments. Even in that unpropitious season of the year, when the country was flooded by the periodical rains, corps were set in motion towards Kurnaul, from stations as low down as Benares, and struggled manfully, often through wide sheets of water, to their destination at the great northern rallying point. There had been no such excitement in military circles since the grand army assembled for the reduction of Bhurtpore; and though the cause was not a popular one, and there was scarcely a mess-table in the country at which the political bearings of the invasion of Afghanistan were discussed without eliciting the plainest possible indications that the sympathies of our officers were rather with the Barukzye chief than the Suddozye monarch, there was everywhere the liveliest desire to join the ranks of an army that was to traverse new and almost fabulous regions, and visit the scenes rendered famous by the exploits of Mahmoud of Ghuzni and Nadir Shah.
The army now warned for field-service consisted of a brigade of artillery, a brigade of cavalry, and five brigades of infantry. Colonel Graham was to command the artillery; Colonel Arnold the cavalry; whilst the brigades of infantry were assigned respectively to Colonels Sale and Dennis, of the Queen’s; and Colonels Nott, Roberts, and Worseley, of the Company’s service. The infantry brigades were told off into two divisions under Sir Willoughby Cotton, an old and distinguished officer of the Queen’s army, who had rendered good service in the Burmese war, and was now commanding the Presidency division of the Bengal army, and Major-General Duncan, an esteemed officer of the Company’s service, who was then in command of the Sirhind division of the army, and was therefore on the spot to take the immediate management of details.
The regiments now ordered to assemble were her Majesty’s 16th Lancers, 13th Infantry, and 3rd Buffs; the Company’s European regiment; two regiments of Native light cavalry, and twelve picked Sepoy corps.[257] Two troops of horse artillery and three companies of foot, constituted the artillery brigade; and some details of sappers and miners, under Captain Thomson, completed the Bengal force. The usual staff-departments were formed to accompany the army,[258] the heads of departments remaining in the Presidency whilst their deputies accompanied the forces into the field.
Whilst the Bengal army was assembling on the northern frontier of India, under the personal command of Sir Henry Fane, another force was being collected at Bombay. It was composed of a brigade of cavalry, including her Majesty’s 4th Dragoons, a brigade of artillery, and a brigade of foot, consisting of two Queen’s regiments (the 2nd Royals and 17th Foot) and one Sepoy corps. Major-General Thackwell commanded the cavalry; Major-General Wiltshire the infantry; and Colonel Stevenson the artillery brigade. Sir John Keane, the commander-in-chief of the Bombay army, took command of the whole.
Such was the extent of the British force warned for field-service in the autumn of 1838. At the same time another force was being raised for service across the Indus—the force that was to be led by Shah Soojah into Afghanistan; that was to be known distinctively as his force; but to be raised in the Company’s territories, to be commanded by the Company’s officers, and to be paid by the Company’s coin.
To this army was to have been entrusted the work of re-establishing the authority of the Suddozye Princes in Western Afghanistan; but it had now sunk into a mere appendage to the regular army which the British-Indian Government was about to despatch across the Indus; and it was plain that, whatever opposition was to be encountered, the weight of it would fall, not upon Shah Soojah’s raw levies, but upon the disciplined troops of the Indian army that were to be sent with them, to secure the success of the otherwise doubtful campaign. Whatever work there might be in store for them, the recruiting went on bravely. For this new service there was no lack of candidates in the Upper Provinces of India. The Shah himself watched with eager pride the formation of the army which was to surround him on his return to his own dominions, but was fearful lest the undisguised assumption of entire control by the British officers appointed to raise his new regiments should deprive him of all the éclat of independence with which he was so anxious to invest his movements. It was, indeed, no easy matter, at this time, to shape our measures in accordance with the conflicting desires of the old king, who wished to have everything done for him, and yet to appear as though he did it himself. To Captain Wade was entrusted the difficult and delicate duty of managing one who, by nature not the most reasonable of men, was rendered doubly unreasonable by the anomalous position in which he found himself after the ratification of the tripartite treaty. It was difficult, indeed, to say what he was at this time. At Loodhianah he had hitherto been simply a private individual. He had held no recognised position. He had been received with no public honours. He had gone hither and thither, almost unnoticed. He had excited little interest, and met with little attention. Some, perhaps, knew that he had once been an Afghan monarch, and that he received four thousand rupees a month from the British Government as a reward for his incapacity and a compensation for his bad fortune. Beyond this little was known and nothing was cared. But now, suddenly, he had risen up from the dust of Loodhianah as a recognised sovereign and framer of treaties—a potentate meeting on equal terms with the British Government and the Maharajah of the Punjab. He could not any longer be regarded as a mere tradition. He had been brought prominently forward into the light of the Present; and it was necessary that he should now assume in men’s eyes something of the form of royalty and the substance of power.
It was natural that, thus strangely and embarrassingly situated, the Shah should have earnestly desired to bring his sojourn at Loodhianah to a close, and to launch himself fairly upon his new enterprise. The interval between the signing of the treaty and the actual commencement of the expedition was irksome in the extreme to the expectant monarch. It was plain that he could not move without his army;