On the following day, Major Todd made his appearance. A vast crowd went out to gaze at him. He was the first European who had ever appeared in Herat in full regimentals; and now the tight-fitting coat, the glittering epaulettes, and the cocked hat, all excited unbounded admiration. The narrow streets were crowded, and the house-tops were swarming with curious spectators. The bearer as he was of a message from Mahomed Shah, announcing that the Persian sovereign was willing to accept the mediation of the British Government, he was received with becoming courtesy by Shah Kamran, who, after the interview, took the cloak from his own shoulders, and sent it by the Wuzeer to Major Todd, as a mark of the highest distinction he could confer upon him.[177] The English officer returned to the Persian camp with assurances of Kamran’s desire to accept the mediation of the British minister. But there was no suspension of hostilities. That evening the aspect of affairs was more warlike than ever. “The Persian trenches were filled with men. The parties of horse and guards of the line of investment appeared stronger than usual; and everything betokened an assault of which at dusk the garrison received intelligence. The Afghans made all arrangements to meet it; the different chiefs were sent off to different points either to strengthen the posts or form reserves. Yar Mahomed’s post was at the gate of Mulik, as the breach close to it was the most dangerous, and the point was defended by the worst troops.” It was agreed among the different chiefs that not a shot should be fired until the enemy reached the counterscarp, on pain of the immediate loss of the delinquent’s ears.
The assembly had scarcely broken up when intelligence arrived that the British minister, Mr. M’Neill, had arrived at the edge of the ditch and sought entrance to the city. The report was presently confirmed by a messenger who brought letters from the envoy to Yar Mahomed and Lieutenant Pottinger. Pottinger, who was just composing himself to sleep, started up and proceeded with all haste to the Wuzeer’s post. Yar Mahomed mustered the chiefs to receive the Envoy with becoming respect, and conducted him to his quarters. The greater part of the night was spent in discussion. It was nearly dawn when M’Neill accompanied Pottinger to his residence, and they lay down to sleep.
Pottinger rose before seven o’clock, and found M’Neill engaged in writing. The Wuzeer, having been sent for by the former officer, soon made his appearance grumbling at, but still honestly commending the vigilance of the British minister,[178] whom he conducted to the presence of Shah Kamran. The Shah, with the utmost frankness and unreserve, placed the negotiations in the hands of Mr. M’Neill, and said that he would gladly consent to any terms agreed upon by that officer. After partaking of some refreshment, the British minister took his departure; and the armistice ceased.
This was on the 21st of April. On the 23rd, Major Todd was despatched from the Persian camp with intelligence no less surprising than discouraging. Mahomed Shah had resolutely refused to submit to British arbitration the disputes between the states of Persia and Herat. In an abrupt and peremptory manner he had “refused the proposed agreement and spoke of prosecuting the siege.” “Either,” he said, “the whole people of Herat shall make their submission, and acknowledge themselves my subjects, or I will take possession of the fortress by force of arms, and make them obedient and submissive.”[179] The British minister was deeply mortified at the result. He had been, however unwittingly, a party to the deception of the Government of Herat. He had told Yar Mahomed that the Shah would accept his intervention and abide his decision; and now his overtures had been peremptorily declined.[180] It was suggested by some whether it would be expedient to send any reply to the hostile declaration of Mahomed Shah; but as it had been forwarded by the British minister, etiquette demanded that an answer should be returned.[181] That answer was grave and dignified. “If the Persians,” wrote Yar Mahomed, “will not attend to your words, we must answer with our bodies and leave the result to God. Be not distressed. Now that we have suffered so many injuries, and have been kept back from our tillage and cultivation, and have suffered that loss which should not have befallen us, what have we now to care for?”[182]
And now the siege was prosecuted with increased activity. A new actor had appeared on the stage. On the morning of the day which witnessed Mr. M’Neill’s visit to the city of Shah Kamran, Count Simonich appeared in camp. He was not one to remain even for a day a passive spectator of the contest. Freely giving advice and rendering assistance, he soon began, in effect, to conduct the operations of the siege; whilst the officers of his suite were teaching the Persian soldiers how to construct more effective batteries. Nor was Russian skill all that was supplied, in this conjuncture, to raise the drooping spirits of Mahomed Shah. Russian money was freely distributed among the Persian soldiers; and a new impulse was given to them at a time when their energies were well-nigh exhausted, and their activity was beginning to fail.[183]
Mr. M’Neill remained in the Persian camp, and in spite of the failure of his endeavours to reconcile the contending parties, determined not to cease from his efforts, though all hope had well nigh departed of bringing about a satisfactory arrangement. A strongly worded letter was addressed to the Persian ministers; and at one time it seemed likely that the Shah-in-Shah would accede to the terms offered by the Government of Herat; but the arrival of friendly letters from Kohun-dil Khan, the Candahar chief, offering to aid him in the prosecution of the siege, inflated him with new courage, and caused him to rise in his demands. He demanded compensation for the losses he had sustained; and the negotiations were again broken off at a time when they seemed likely, at last, to reach a favourable termination.
Nor was it only in the Persian camp that at this time Russian influence was making its way. The garrison was beginning to think whether it would not be expedient for Herat to fling itself into the arms of the great northern power. On the night of the 23rd of May, there was a consultation among the chiefs, when it was proposed that an envoy should be sent to the Russian ambassador, acknowledging the dependence of Herat upon that State. It was asserted, at the suggestion of M. Euler, Kamran’s physician, that if such a step as this were taken the Persians dare not continue the siege, and that the English dare not interfere. The proposal was favourably received. It was with difficulty that the chiefs could be induced to listen to a suggestion for delay; but on the following day intelligence of the energetic course pursued by Mr. M’Neill found its way into the city. It was announced that the British minister had threatened Persia with hostilities if Herat should fall into its hands; that the city would be retaken, at any cost, by the British, army; and that Major Todd had been sent to India to make arrangements with the Governor-General for the sustenance of the people of Herat after the siege.
This intelligence, which was not wholly correct, changed at once the complexion of affairs. It was plain that the British were, after all, the best friends of the Afghans, and that it would be folly to reject their good offices for the sake of the problematical friendship and good faith of the Russian Government. The announcement, indeed, raised the spirits of the garrison, and inspired them with new courage. Even those who, the day before, had been loudest in their support of the Russian alliance, now abandoned it without reserve.
This feeling, however, was but short-lived. It soon appeared that the intentions of the British Government, as reported to have been set forth by Mr. M’Neill, had been overstated; and again the chiefs began to bethink themselves of the advantages of a Russian alliance. Many meetings were held, at which the terms to be offered and accepted were warmly debated. At all of these Pottinger was present. Sometimes he was received and listened to with respect; at others he was treated with marked discourtesy. Now the value of the British alliance outweighed that of the Russian in the estimation of the chiefs; now it was held of far lighter account; and as the scale of their opinions turned, so varied with intelligible capriciousness their bearing towards the English officer. A man of temper and firmness, he was little disconcerted. The whole assembly might be against him; but he was not to be overawed.
On the evening of the 27th of May, Pottinger sought a private interview with Yar Mahomed. Telling the Wuzeer that his conduct towards the Persians had caused him to be suspected by the British ambassador, he insisted upon the necessity of acting decidedly upon two points—Kamran, he said, must never submit to be called the servant of Persia; nor must he on any account admit the interference of the Russians. Yar Mahomed assented to these conditions—declared that he would never sacrifice the independence of Herat, and, finally, with Pottinger’s approval, despatched a letter into the Persian camp, intimating that “he agreed to the suppression of slavery, and would aid in its extinction; that he would release from bondage, and send back the people of Jam and Bakhurs if possible, and he would try to make the Soonee Hazarehs serve Persia; that he would pay a yearly present after the current year, and would also give his son and one of the King’s sons as hostages. Persia should, on her part, restore Ghorian, and when his son joined the Persian camp, his brother, Shere Mahomed Khan, should be sent back, and that Mahomed Shah should give them an order for five or six thousand kurwars of grain on the Governor of Khorassan.” “If these terms be not accepted,” it was added, “nothing but the possession of Herat will satisfy you.”
Pottinger had no easy part to play, at the best; but now his difficulties began to thicken around him. He could only hope to counteract Russian influence by impressing Yar Mahomed with a conviction that the British Government would do great things for Herat. But on the 29th of May he received instructions from Mr. M’Neill on no account to commit the government by any offers of aid to Herat as he had received no authority to make them. Startled and embarrassed by these injunctions, for, seeing that without such promises Yar Mahomed would have accepted the mediation of Russia, he had already committed the government, Pottinger went at once to the Tukht-i-pool, where the chiefs were assembled, and honestly stated that in his anxiety to bring affairs to a satisfactory adjustment, he had exceeded his powers. Exasperated by this announcement, the chiefs broke out into violent reproaches against Pottinger, M’Neill, and the whole British nation, and then began to discuss the advantages of the Russian alliance. Firm in the midst of all this storm of invective, the young British officer declared that he had only spoken the truth—that such were the instructions of the British minister—that he had no power to disobey them; but that a representation to Mr. M’Neill of the disappointment they had occasioned might induce him to depart from this cautious policy. To this the chiefs were induced to listen; and it was finally resolved to await the results of another reference to the British Envoy.[184]
But the influence of Mr. M’Neill at the Persian Court was now rapidly declining; and his departure was at hand. His position, ever since his arrival in the camp of Mahomed Shah, had been one of no little difficulty and embarrassment. Unhappily, at that time, one of those petty perplexities, which, arising between state and state, often evolve more serious misunderstandings than affairs of far higher moment, was constantly obtruding, in the way of a satisfactory adjustment of differences, an obstruction of a very annoying and irritating kind. A courier of the British minister, Ali Mahomed Beg by name, had been making his way from Herat to Teheran, bearing some letters from Yar Mahomed, Pottinger, and others, to Mr. M’Neill, and escorting some horses, sent by Futteh Mahomed Khan, the Herat agent, as presents to the same officer. Without any interruption he had passed the Persian camp and was within three stages of Meshed, when Berowski recognised the man and officiously reported him at head-quarters. Immediately, horsemen were despatched to carry him to the Persian camp. What followed could not be narrated better or more briefly than in the language of Mr. M’Neill:-“He was forced,” wrote the minister to Lord Palmerston, “to return with them; a part of his clothes were taken from him; the horses which he was bringing for me from Herat were seized; he was dragged to camp, and there placed in custody. He succeeded, however, in making his way to the tent of Colonel Stoddart, and was by that officer conducted to the prime minister, who, after he had been informed by Colonel Stoddart that the man was in the service of this Mission, again placed him in custody, while Hadjee Khan, an officer of the rank of Brigadier in the service of the Shah, not only used offensive language in addressing Colonel Stoddart in presence of the prime minister, but after the messenger had been released by order of his Excellency, seized him again in the midst of the camp; stripped him to search for any letters he might have concealed about his person;[185] took from him Lieutenant Pottinger’s letter, which was sent to the prime minister; used to the messenger the most violent threats and the most disgusting and opprobrious language, and took from him a portion of his accoutrements.”[186]
This was, doubtless, a grievous insult; and Mr. M’Neill believed that it was intended to be one. It was designed, he thought, “to exhibit to the Afghans and to the Persian army an apparent contempt for the English, with a view to diminish the moral effect which might have been produced on either party, by the general belief that we were opposed to the conquest of Herat by the Persians.” It was an insult for which reparation, if not offered by one state, might be rightfully exacted by the other; and Mr. M’Neill was not a man to sit down tamely under such an outrage as this. But the incident had taken place in October, and now, in May, though the subject had been repeatedly forced upon the attention of Mahomed Shah and his ministers, no fitting reparation had been offered to the British Government. The Persian Government had, indeed, asserted their right to seize, punish, or put to death, without reference to the British minister, the Persian servants in his employment. The breach was thus palpably widening. The Governor of Bushire, too, had used offensive language towards the British Resident in the Persian Gulf; and the redress, which had been sought by Mr. M’Neill, had not been granted by the Persian Government. Then there was another grievance of which the British minister complained. The Persian Government had continued to evade the conclusion of the commercial treaty, which was guaranteed to us in the general treaty of friendship between the two states.
All these cumulative offences, added to the great subject of complaint—the conduct of Persia towards Herat—made up such an amount of provocation, that Mr. M’Neill felt his position at the Persian Court was little likely to be one of much longer continuance. The Shah had declared that he would raise the siege, if the British minister would afford him a pretext for the retrograde movement, satisfactory in the eyes of his countrymen, by threatening, on the part of his government, to attack Persia if she continued her offensive operations against Herat; but from this promise he had receded, or thrown such difficulties in the way of its fulfilment, as practically to nullify the pledge. Mr. M’Neill massed all his demands upon the Persian Government. The Shah required that he should keep the question of Herat distinct from the others, and, on the British minister refusing to do so on his own responsibility, declared that he would do it himself, by acceding to all the demands except that which related to Herat. “The Shah then,” says Mr. M’Neill, in his report of these proceedings to the Foreign Secretary, “immediately dismissed me, with an assurance that he should adopt that course; but before I had left the area on which the royal tent was pitched, he called after me, that on his agreeing to the other demands, he should expect me to avoid all further discussion of the affairs of Herat, and to order Mr. Pottinger to quit that city. In answer, I represented that I could not tie up the hands of my own government in respect to the question of Herat, and that Mr. Pottinger was not under my orders.”[187]
There was obviously now little hope of bringing these long-protracted negotiations to a favourable conclusion. The British Mission was fast falling into contempt. The Russians were exalted at the Persian Court. The British were slighted and humiliated. There was not a tent-pitcher in camp who did not know that the British Mission was treated with intentional disrespect. It was time, therefore, to bring matters to a crisis. So, on the 3rd of June, Mr. M’Neill addressed a letter to the Foreign minister in the Persian camp, announcing his intention to depart for the frontier on the following day. “I feel myself called upon,” he concluded, “to inform you that, until the reparation and satisfaction I have demanded, for the indignities already offered, shall have been fully given, the Queen of England cannot receive at her Court any minister who may be sent thither by the Shah of Persia.” The decisive language of the British minister called forth an evasive reply from the Persian Government. The Shah professed not to understand “his Excellency’s object in all these writings,” and declared that there had been no indignity or disrespect ever offered to him. But M’Neill was not to be thus appeased. He sent back, in a few plain words, a statement of his demands. He demanded that Hadjee Khan, who had outraged the servant of the British minister, should be removed from office; that Hadjee Meerza Aghassy, who had connived at the outrage, should go to the British minister’s tent, and apologise for the insult; that a firman should be issued, commanding the servants of the Persian Government not to interfere with the dependants of the British Mission; that the Governor of Bushire should be removed from office for his insults to the British Resident; and that the commercial treaty should be forthwith concluded and ratified. All these demands but the last were to be carried into effect within three days of the date of the letter.
Again the Persian minister declared, on the part of the Shah, that no indignities had ever been offered to the British Mission; and again Mr. M’Neill requested his dismissal. The Shah was not ready to grant it. “No,” he said; “never shall we consent to the departure of his Excellency. Let him by all means lay aside his intention, and let him not allow this idea to enter his mind.” But he was not to be persuaded to lay aside his intentions. The Persian ministers continued to declare that no insults had been offered the British Mission. So, reluctant as he was abruptly to terminate our diplomatic intercourse with Persia, Mr. M’Neill, on the 7th of June, took his departure from the Persian camp. From the ramparts of Herat they looked out upon the striking of the English ambassador’s tents, and a large party of horsemen were seen making their way across the plain. The rupture was now complete. Persia was no longer an ally of Great Britain.
In the mean while, as the year advanced, the miseries and privations of the siege were more and more severely felt by the inhabitants. The wonder is, that at a still earlier period they had not become wholly unendurable. Houses were pulled down to supply fuel.[188] Horses were killed for food. The vast number of people assembled within the walls had not only created an extreme scarcity of provisions, but was in a fair way to generate a pestilence. The city was altogether without sewers or other means of drainage. The accumulations of filth had therefore become inconceivable, and the stench hardly to be borne. The decaying bodies of the dead had polluted the air to a still more horrible extent; so that there was every probability of some fearful epidemic breaking out among the people.[189] Indeed, at the beginning of May, famine and sickness pressed so severely upon the inhabitants, that it was debated whether it would not be expedient to suffer a number of them to depart out of the city. Fever and scurvy were rife among them; and it appeared that the enemies outside the gates were less terrible than the viewless ones within. In this extremity they mustered in large numbers, and petitioned the Shah to suffer them to depart. The Shah referred the matter to the Wuzeer; and the Wuzeer consulted the chiefs. The discussion was long and animated. The decision was against the departure of the people. The petitioners were mainly women and children; and to suffer them to depart would be to throw them into the hands of the licentious Persian soldiery, and to expose them to a fate more terrible than famine and death.[190]
The Persians now, under Russian direction, continued to prosecute the siege with increased vigour and judgment. The whole of the investing force, some portion of which had before been scattered over the great plain, was now drawn in more closely round the city.
On the 13th of June an assault was attempted at the south-west angle, but gallantly repulsed by the garrison. Informed by some deserters from Herat that the defence of the fausse-braie was comparatively neglected during the mid-day heats, the Persians surprised the guards at the outer works, and pushed on towards the fausse-braie. But a little party of Afghans—not more than three or four in number—stood at bay in the passages of the traverses, and heroically defended the post until assistance was at hand. The relieving party came down gallantly to the defence. Headed by Sultan Mahomed Omar, they flung themselves over the parapet of the upper fausse-braie, and pouring themselves down the exterior slope overwhelmed the assailants and dislodged them with great slaughter.[191]
Another attempt, made at the same time, to effect a lodgment at the south-east angle, was equally unsuccessful. Twice the storming column advanced, and twice it was repulsed. The fortune of the day was against the Persians.
In nowise disheartened by these failures, the besiegers now redoubled their exertions, and pursued their mining operations with a vigour and an activity which the garrison could not match. The Afghans were now becoming dispirited and inert; even the chiefs began to despond, and the wonted constancy of the Wuzeer forsook him. Everywhere Pottinger saw with uneasiness signs of failing courage and impaired activity. He had been deputed by Mr. M’Neill to act as British Agent at Herat, and now, in his official capacity, he redoubled his exertions. There was need, indeed, of his best efforts. The siege was being pushed forward, not only with an energy, but with an intelligence that had not marked the earlier stages of the attack. The breaches had become more practicable. The Persians were filling up the ditch at some parts, and constructing bridges to span it at others. Another assault of a more formidable character than any before attempted was said to be in contemplation; and as these rumours were circulated through the works, and the obscure terms of the future were magnified by the palpable dangers of the present, the defenders scarcely strove to conceal the fear which had crept into their hearts.
The threatened assault was at hand. The 24th of June was a memorable day in the annals of the siege. It opened with a heavy fire from the Persian batteries on all the four sides of the city. Then there was a perfect lull, more ominous than the uproar that preceded it. The signs of the coming assault were plain and intelligible; but strangely were they disregarded. The Wuzeer was at his quarters. The garrison were off their guard. Many, indeed, had composed themselves to sleep. The enemy had been seen assembling in great force; but no heed was taken of the movement. Suddenly the stillness was broken by the booming of a gun and the flight of a rocket; another gun—then another—and presently a heavy fire of ordnance from all sides, supported by a discharge of musketry, which, feeble at first, grew presently more vigorous and sustained. There was no longer any doubt of the intentions of the besieging force. The enemy had braced themselves up for a general assault upon the city, and were moving to the attack of five different points of the works.
At four of these points they were repulsed.[192] At the fifth, gallantly headed by their officers, the storming column threw itself into the trench of the lower fausse-braie. The struggle was brief, but bloody. The defenders fell at their post to a man, and the work was carried by the besiegers. Encouraged by this first success, the storming party pushed up the slope. A galling fire from the garrison met them as they advanced. The officers and leading men of the column were mown down; there was a second brief and bloody struggle, and the upper fausse-braie was carried. A few of the most daring of the assailants pushing on in advance of their comrades gained the head of the breach. But now Deen Mahomed came down with the Afghan reserve. Thus recruited, the defenders gathered new heart. The Persians on the breach were driven back. Again and again, with desperate courage, they struggled to effect a lodgment, only to be repulsed and thrown back in confusion upon their comrades who were pressing on behind. The conflict was fierce; the issue was doubtful. Now the breach was well-nigh carried; and now the stormers, recoiling from the shock of the defence, fell back upon the exterior slope of the fausse-braie. It was an hour of intense excitement. The fate of Herat was trembling in the balance.
Startled by the first noise of the assault, Yar Mahomed had risen up, left his quarters, and ridden down to the works. Pottinger went forth at the same time, and on the same errand. There was a profound conviction in his mind that there was desperate work in hand, of which he might not live to see the end. Giving instructions to his dependents, to be carried out in the event of his falling in the defence, he hastened to join the Wuzeer. It was a crisis that demanded all the energy and courage of those two resolute spirits. The English officer was equal to the occasion. The Afghan Sirdar was not.
As they neared the point of attack, the garrison were seen retreating by twos and threes; others were quitting the works on the pretext of carrying off the wounded. These signs of the waning courage of the defenders wrought differently on the minds of the two men who had hitherto seemed to be cast in the same heroic mould—soldiers of strong nerves and unfailing resolution. They saw that the garrison were giving way. Pottinger was eager to push on to the breach. Yar Mahomed sat himself down. The Wuzeer had lost heart. His wonted high courage and collectedness had deserted him in this emergency. Astonished and indignant at the pusillanimity of his companion, the English officer called upon the Wuzeer again and again to rouse himself—either to move down to the breach or to send his son, to inspire new heart into the yielding garrison. The energetic appeal of the young Englishman was not lost upon the Afghan chief. He rose up; advanced further into the works; and neared the breach where the contest was raging. Encouraged by the diminished opposition, the enemy were pushing on with renewed vigour. Yar Mahomed called upon his men, in God’s name, to fight; but they wavered and stood still. Then his heart failed him again. He turned back; said he would go for aid; sought the place where he had before sat down, and looked around, irresolute and unnerved. Pointing to the men, who, alarmed by the backwardness of their chief, were now retreating in every direction, Pottinger in vehement language insisted upon the absolute ruin of all their hopes that must result from want of energy in such a conjuncture. Yar Mahomed roused himself; again advanced, but again wavered; and a third time the young English officer was compelled, by words and deeds alike, to shame the unmanned Wuzeer. The language of entreaty was powerless; he used the language of reproach. He reviled; he threatened; he seized him by the arm and dragged him forward to the breach. Such appeals were not to be resisted. The noble example of the young Englishman could not infuse any real courage into the Afghan chief; but it at least roused him into action. The men were retreating from the breach. The game was almost up. The irresolution of the Wuzeer had well-nigh played away the last stake. Had Yar Mahomed not been roused out of the paralysis that had descended upon him, Herat would have been carried by assault. But the indomitable courage of Eldred Pottinger saved the beleaguered city. He compelled the Wuzeer to appear before his men as one not utterly prostrate and helpless. The chief called upon the soldiery to fight; but they continued to fall back in dismay. Then seizing a large staff, Yar Mahomed rushed like a madman upon the hindmost of the party, and drove them forward under a shower of heavy blows. The nature of the works was such as to forbid their falling back in a body. Cooped up in a narrow passage, and seeing no other outlet of escape, many of them leapt wildly over the parapet, and rushed down the exterior slope full upon the Persian stormers. The effect of this sudden movement was magical. The Persians, seized with a panic, abandoned their position and fled. The crisis was over; Herat was saved.[193]
But no exultation followed a victory so achieved. The bearing of the Afghans was that of men who had sustained a crushing defeat. The garrison were crest-fallen and dispirited. A general gloom seemed to hang over the city. Yar Mahomed, long after the danger was past, moved about as one confused and bewildered. There were few of the chiefs whose minds were not so wholly unhinged by the terrors of that great crisis as to be unable, for days afterwards, to perform calmly their wonted duties. A complete paralysis, indeed, descended upon men of all ranks. The loss on both sides had been severe; but if half the garrison had fallen in the defence of the breach, Herat could not have been more stunned and prostrated by the blow. The Persian camp was equally dispirited; and a week of inaction supervened.[194] Even the work of repairing the damaged fortifications was slowly recommenced by the garrison; and when at last the men returned to their accustomed duties it was plain that they had no heart. Nor was there anything strange and unaccountable in this. The Afghans had repulsed the Persians on the 24th of June; but they felt that nothing but a miracle could enable them to withstand another such assault. The resources of the government had failed them. Food was scarce; money was scarce. The citizens could not be fed. The soldiers could not be paid.
In all of this there was much to disquiet with painful doubts and misgivings the mind of Eldred Pottinger. To protract the siege was to protract the sufferings of the Heratees. The misery of the people was past counting. The poor were perishing for want of food; the rich were dying under the hands of the torturers. The soldiers clamoured for their pay; and wherever money was known or suspected to be, there went the ruthless myrmidons of Yar Mahomed to demand it for their master, or to wring from the agonised victim the treasure which he sought to conceal. To tear from a wretched man, at the last gasp of life, all that he possessed; then, demanding more, to torture him anew, until, sinking under the accumulated agony, the miserable victim was released by death; and then to fling his emaciated corpse, wrapped in an old shawl or blanket down at the threshold of his desolated home, was no solitary achievement of the Wuzeer. Even ladies of rank were given over to the torturers. The very inmates of the Shah’s Zenana were threatened. A reign of terror was established such as it sickened Pottinger to contemplate. He felt that he was the cause of this. Many reproached him openly. The despairing looks and gaunt figures of others reproached him more painfully still. All that he could do to redress the wrongs of the injured and alleviate the sufferings of the distressed he did in this fearful conjuncture. Men of all kinds came to him imploring his aid and importuning him for protection. Some he was able to save, stepping between the wrong-doer and the wronged; but from others he was powerless to avert by his intervention the ruin that was impending over them. Every day brought palpably before him new illustrations of the unsparing cruelty of the Wuzeer. But dire political necessity compelled him to protract a conjuncture laden with these terrible results. It is impossible to read the entrances in his journal at this time without feeling how great was the conflict within him between the soldier and the man.
The events of the 24th of June, though they had raised Pottinger’s character, as a warrior, in the Afghan city, in the Persian camp, and in the surrounding country, had, greatly indeed, diminished his popularity in Herat and increased the difficulties of his position. In the negotiations which followed, Mahomed Shah insisted upon Pottinger’s dismissal. The young English officer had excited the measureless indignation of the Persian King; and the Afghan Wuzeer was not disinclined to reproach him with presenting a new obstacle to the adjustment of the differences between the two states. The Afghan envoys said that they had always thought Pottinger was one man, but that the importance the Persians attached to his departure showed that he was equal to an army.[195] Pottinger was always ready with a declaration that no thoughts of personal safety or convenience should ever suffer him to stand in the way of an arrangement conducive to the safety of Herat and the welfare of his country, and that if these objects were to be gained by his departure, he was willing to depart. But Yar Mahomed, whilst unwilling to retain him, was unwilling to persuade him to go. The dismissal of the man who had saved Herat from the grasp of the Persians, would have been an act that might have fixed a stain upon the character of the Wuzeer, prejudicial to the success of his after-career. Moreover, it was possible that Pottinger’s assistance might be wanted at some future time—that the Persians, having obtained his dismissal, might hesitate to perform their promises, and rise in their demands on the strength of the advantage which they had thus gained.
The month of July was not distinguished by any great activity on the part of the besiegers. The siege, indeed, now began to assume the character of a blockade. The question of surrender had become a mere question of time. It seemed impossible much longer to protract the defence. Yar Mahomed, with all the resources of unscrupulous cruelty at his command, could not extort sufficient money from his victims to enable him to continue his defensive operations with any prospect of success. But it appeared to him, as it did to Pottinger, expedient to postpone the inevitable day of capitulation, in the hope that something might yet be written down in their favour in the “chapter of accidents,” out of which so often had come unexpected aid. Yar Mahomed looked for the coming of an Oosbeg army. He had long anxiously expected the arrival of a relieving force from Toorkistan; and scarcely a day had passed without some tidings, either to elevate or depress him, of the advent or delay of the looked-for succours. Pottinger, though unwilling to encourage in others expectations which might not be realised, was inwardly convinced that something of a decisive character respecting the intentions of his own government must soon be heard, and that the knowledge of those intentions would have an effect upon the Afghan garrison and the Persian camp very advantageous to the former. With the object, therefore, of gaining time, the Wuzeer renewed his exertions to raise money for the payment of the troops. Assemblies of the chiefs were held, at which every practicable method of recruiting their exhausted finances was discussed. The Sirdars addressed themselves to the discussion as men wholly in earnest, determined to do their best.[196] The resolutions of the chiefs in this conjuncture surprised and delighted Pottinger, who was little prepared for the unanimity with which they determined on protracting the defence. “With open breaches, trembling soldiery, and a disaffected populace, they determined to stand to the last. How I wished,” exclaimed Pottinger, “to have the power of producing the money!”
The plan which was at last resolved upon—one which threw into the hands of a single chief the power of seizing the property of whomsoever he thought fit to mulct for the service of the state—under a written pledge from the other chiefs not to interfere, as had been their wont, for the protection of their own friends, threw the city into such confusion, and produced so many appeals to the assembly of chiefs, that Pottinger, anxious to establish a less arbitrary system of levying contributions, suggested that all who voluntarily brought their money would be reimbursed, at his recommendation, by the British Government. But money came in slowly. The difficulties of the garrison seemed to thicken around them. Negotiations were, therefore, again resumed, with a determination at last to bring them to an issue; and messengers were constantly passing and repassing between the city and the Persian camp.
But in the mean while, far beyond the walls of Herat, events were taking shape mightily affecting the issue of the contest. Lord Auckland, who had watched with much anxiety the progress of affairs in the West, had, in the course of the spring, determined on despatching an expedition to the Persian Gulf, to hold itself in readiness for any service which Mr. M’Neill might deem it expedient to employ it upon, “with a view to the maintenance of our interests in Persia.” Instructions to this effect were forwarded to Bombay. In conjunction with Sir Charles Malcolm, the chief of the Indian navy, the Bombay Government despatched the Semiramis and Hugh Lindsay steamers, and some vessels of war, with detachments of the 15th, 23rd, and 24th Regiments, and the Marine battalion, to the Persian Gulf; and instructed the resident, Captain Hennell, to land the troops on the island of Karrack, and concentrate the squadron before it. On the 4th of June, the Semiramis steamed out of the Bombay harbour, and on the 19th anchored off Karrack. The troops were immediately landed. The governor of the island, greatly alarmed by the coming of the steamer and the fighting men, but somewhat reassured by the appearance of Captain Hennell, said that the island and everything it contained, himself and its inhabitants, were at the disposal of the British Resident; and at once began to assist in the disembarkation of the troops.
The demonstration was an insignificant one in itself; but by the time that intelligence of the movement had reached the Persian camp, the expedition, gathering new dimensions at every stage, had swollen into bulk and significance. The most exaggerated reports of the doings and intentions of the British soon forced themselves into currency. The Persian camp was all alive with stories of the powerful British fleet that had sailed into the gulf, destroyed Bunder-Abassy and all the other ports on the coast, taken Bushire, and landed there a mighty army, which was advancing upon Shiraz, and had already taken divers towns in the province of Fars. Nothing could have been more opportune than the arrival of these reports. Mr. M’Neill was making his way towards the frontier, when intelligence of the Karrack expedition met him on the road. About the same time he received letters of instruction from the Foreign-office, issued in anticipation of the refusal of Mahomed Shah to desist from his operations against Herat; and thinking the hour was favourable, he resolved to make another effort to secure the withdrawal of the Persian army, and to regain for the British Mission the ascendancy it had lost at the Persian Court.
Fortified by these instructions from the Foreign-office, Mr. M’Neill despatched Colonel Stoddart to the Persian camp, with a message to the Shah. The language of this message was very intelligible and very decided. The Shah was informed that the occupation of Herat or any part of Afghanistan by the Persians would be considered in the light of a hostile demonstration against England; and that he could not persist in his present course without immediate danger and injury to Persia. It was stated, that already had a naval armament arrived in the Persian Gulf, and troops been landed on the island of Karrack, and that if the Shah desired the British Government to suspend the measures in progress for the vindication of its honour, he must at once retire from Herat, and make reparation for the injuries which had been inflicted upon the British Mission.
On the 11th of August, Colonel Stoddart arrived in the Persian camp. Repairing at once to the quarters of the minister, he found the son of the Candahar chief and a party of Afghans waiting in the tent. The Hadjee, on his return, received him with courtesy and friendliness, and fixed the following day for an interview with the Shah. Stoddart went at the appointed hour. The King was sitting in a raised room, up six or seven steps. Beckoning to the English officer to come up more closely to him, he welcomed him with much cordiality, and listened to the message from the British Government. Taking advantage of a pause in the recital, the King said: “The fact is, if I don’t leave Herat, there will be war, is not that it?” “It is war,” returned Stoddart; “all depends upon your Majesty’s answer—God preserve your Majesty!” The message, written in the original English, was then given to the King. “It is all I wished for,” he said. “I asked the minister plenipotentiary for it; but he would not give it to me. He said he was not authorized.” “He was not authorized then,” returned Stoddart; “but now he has been ordered to do it. No one could give such a message without especial authority from his Sovereign.” The Shah complained that the paper was in English, which he could not understand; but said that his Meerzas should translate it for him, and then that he would give a positive answer to its demands. Two days afterwards Stoddart was again summoned to the royal presence. “We consent to the whole of the demands of the British Government,” said the Shah. “We will not go to war. Were it not for the sake of their friendship, we should not return from before Herat. Had we known that our coming here might risk the loss of their friendship, we certainly would not have come at all.”[197] The English officer thanked God that his Majesty had taken so wise a view of the real interests of Persia; but hinted to the Foreign Minister as he went out, that although the Shah’s answer was very satisfactory, it would be more satisfactory still to see it at once reduced to practice.
Whilst, in the Persian camp, Mahomed Shah was promising the English diplomatists to withdraw his army from Herat, an officer of the Russian Mission—M. Goutte, who had approved himself an adept in intrigue—was busying himself in Herat to bring about an arrangement that would give a colour of victory to the achievements of the investing force. If Kamran could have been persuaded to come out and wait upon Mahomed Shah in token of submission, the army might have been withdrawn with some show of credit, and the Russian Mission might have claimed a diplomatic victory. The Afghans were not, in their present reduced state, disinclined to acknowledge the supremacy of Mahomed Shah, and to consent that Kamran should visit the Persian monarch at Ghorian: but the Russian envoy demanded that he should come out of Herat, and make his obeisance to the King of Kings, as a preliminary to the withdrawal of the Persian army.[198]
This was on the 17th of August. On the morning of the 18th, Yar Mahomed sent a messenger to Pottinger, requesting his attendance at the Wuzeer’s quarters. The English officer was received with coldness almost amounting to discourtesy. Scarcely a word was spoken to him whilst the levee lasted; but when the assembly broke up, Pottinger, in a tone of voice that showed he was not to be trifled with, asked him why he had sent for him if he had nothing to communicate and nothing to ask. The Wuzeer took him by the hand and was about to leave the room; when Pottinger, arresting his progress, demanded a private interview. The room was cleared. The young English officer and the Afghan Sirdar sate down together, and were soon in friendly discourse. Yar Mahomed, the most plausible and persuasive of men,[199] soon stilled the tempest that was rising in Pottinger’s breast. All patience and gentleness now, he was ready to submit to any rebuke, and to utter any apology. They were soon in earnest conversation, as friends and brothers, regarding the general condition of the garrison and its available resources. The Wuzeer declared that “he regretted much the step he was obliged to take, but that indeed no alternative was left him—that every resource which even tyranny commanded was exhausted—that he dared not lay hands on the property of the combatants, though many of them had large funds.” The chiefs, he declared, were misers. The eunuch, Hadjee Ferooz, he said, could easily contribute two lakhs of rupees towards the expenses of the war, and the Shah might contribute ten; but neither would advance a farthing. “They are all,” he said, “equally niggardly. They have money, but they will not advance it. When their wives are being ravished before their faces, they will repent of their avarice; but now it is impossible to convince them of the folly and the danger of the course they are pursuing. With such people to deal with, and the soldiery crying out for pay and subsistence, how can I hold out longer by force?” He consented, however, to protract the negotiations to the utmost—to amuse the Persians—and to gain time. And in the mean while, he extracted from the weak and unresisting all that he could wring from them by torture. On the night after this conference with Pottinger, the Moonshee-Bashee died under the hands of the torturers.
The struggle, however, was now nearly at an end. The movements in the Persian camp appear, at this time, to have been but imperfectly known within the walls of Herat. Whilst Mahomed Shah was making preparations for the withdrawal of his army, Yar Mahomed and the Afghan Sirdars were busy with their financial operations for the continuance of the defence. A Finance Committee was appointed. Kamran was told that he must either provide money for the payment of the soldiery, or authorise the Committee to set about their work after their own manner. Eager to save his money, he sacrificed his people, and armed the Committee with full powers to search the houses of the inhabitants, to order the expulsion of all who had less than three months’ provisions, and to take from those who had more all that they could find in excess. The Topshee-Bashee, or chief artilleryman, to whom the executive duties of the Committee were entrusted, contrived to extort from the inhabitants several days’ food, and a large supply of jewels, with which he enriched the Wuzeer and himself. It was always believed that the former had amassed large sums of money during the siege; that he had turned the scarcity to good account, by retaining in his own coffers no small portion of the coin which he had wrung by torture from the wretched inhabitants. Now when the soldiery, lacking the means of subsistence, entered upon a course of plundering that threw the whole city into confusion, the Wuzeer, whilst issuing a proclamation forbidding such irregularities, and declaring severe penalties for the offence, allowed a continuation of the license to his own people, that he might avoid the necessity of paying them at his own cost. It is not strange, therefore, that when reports were circulated throughout the city that the Persian army was about to move, the Soonee Parsewans, scarcely less than the Sheeahs, should have received the intelligence, some with sorrow, and some with a forced incredulity, “preferring the miseries of the siege with the ultimate prospect of the city being taken and sacked, to the raising of the siege and the prospect of Kamran’s and Yar Mahomed’s paternal government.” “All I wonder,” said Pottinger, recording this fact, “is, that not a man is to be found among them bold enough to terminate their miseries by the death of their oppressors.”[200]
But it was now becoming every day more obvious that Mahomed Shah was about to break up his camp. Some countrymen came into Herat and reported that the Persians were collecting their guns and mortars, and parking them as though in preparation for an immediate march. Parties of horsemen also had been seen moving out of camp. Others brought in word that the enemy had destroyed their 68-pounders, were assembling their carriage-cattle, and were about to raise the siege. The English, it was said, had taken Shiraz; but the Persians in the trenches, declaring that they were ready for another assault, cried out, that though the English army had advanced upon that city, the Prince-Governor had defeated it. All kinds of preposterous rumours were rife. Some asserted that the Russians had attacked and captured Tabreez; others that the Russians and English had formed an alliance for the overthrow of Mahomedanism, and the partition of the countries of the East between the two great European powers. But amidst all these rumours indicating the intended retrogression of the Persian army, the garrison was kept continually on the alert by alarming reports of another attack; and it was hard to say whether all these seeming preparations in Mahomed Shah’s camp were nor designed to lull the Heratees into a sleep of delusive security, and render them an easier prey.
But the month of September brought with it intelligence of a more decided character. There was no longer any doubt in Herat, that Mahomed Shah was breaking up his camp. Letters came in from the Persian authorities intimating the probability of the “King-of-Kings” forgiving the rebellion of Prince Kamran on certain conditions which would give a better grace to the withdrawal of the Persian monarch. To some of these, mainly at Pottinger’s suggestion, the Heratees demurred; but on the 4th of September, the Persian prisoners were sent into camp; and the Shah-in-Shah promised Colonel Stoddart that the march of the army should commence in a few days. There was, indeed, a pressing necessity for the immediate departure of the force. “The forage in camp,” wrote Colonel Stoddart to Mr. M’Neill, “will only last for five or six days more, and as messengers have been sent to turn back all cafilas, no more flour or grain will arrive. The advanced guard under Humza Meerza leaves camp on Friday evening.”
Everything was now ready for the retreat. The guns had been withdrawn from their advanced positions, and were now limbered up for the march. The baggage-cattle had been collected. The tents were being struck. The garrison of Herat looked out upon the stir in the Persian camp, and could no longer be doubtful of its import. The siege was now raised. The danger was at an end. Before the 9th of September, the Persian army had commenced its retrograde march to Teheran; and on the morning of that day the Shah mounted his horse “Ameerj,” and set his face towards his capital.
To Mahomed Shah this failure was mortifying indeed; but the interests at stake were too large for him to sacrifice them at the shrine of his ambition. He had spent ten months before the walls of Herat, exhausting his soldiery in a vain endeavour to carry by assault a place of no real or reputed strength. He had succeeded only in reducing the garrison to very painful straits; and had retired at last, not as one well-disposed to peaceful negotiation and reasonable concession, submitting to the friendly intervention of a neutral power, and willing to wave the chances of success; but as one who saw before him no chance of success, and was moved by no feeling of moderation and forbearance, but by a cogent fear of the consequences resulting from the longer prosecution of the siege. On the whole, it had been little better than a lamentable demonstration of weakness. The Persian army under the eye of the sovereign himself, aided by the skill of Russian engineers and the wisdom of Russian statesmen, had failed, in ten months, to reduce a place which I believe, in no spirit of national self-love, a well-equipped English force, under a competent commander, would have reduced in as many days.
The real cause of the failure is not generally understood. The fact is, that there was no unity in the conduct of the siege. Instead of devising and adhering to some combined plan of operations, the Sirdars, or Generals, under Mahomed Shah, to whom the prosecution of the siege was entrusted, acted as so many independent commanders, and each followed his own plan of attack. The jealousy of the chiefs prevented them from acting in concert with each other. Each had his own independent point of attack, and they would not even move to the assistance of each other when attacked by the Heratees in the trenches. Except when Mahomed Shah insisted on a combined assault, as on the 24th of June, and the Russian minister directed it, there was no union among them. Each had his own game to follow up; his own laurels to win; and was rather pleased than disappointed by the failures of his brethren. It was not possible that operations so conducted should have resulted in anything but failure. But it was the deliberate opinion of Eldred Pottinger, expressed nearly two years after the withdrawal of the Persian army, that Mahomed Shah might have taken Herat by assault, within four-and-twenty hours after his appearance before its walls, if his troops had been efficiently commanded.[201]
Whether Mahomed Shah ever rightly understood this matter I do not pretend to know, but he felt that it was necessary to make an effort to patch up the rents which this grievous failure had made in his reputation. So he issued a firman, setting forth all the great results of his expedition to the eastward, and attempted to demonstrate, after the following fashion, that he gained a victory, even at Herat:-“At last,” so ran the royal proclamation, “when the city of Herat existed but in name, and the reality of the government of Kamran was reduced to four bare walls, the noble ambassadors of the illustrious British Government, notwithstanding that three separate treaties of peace between the two governments of England and Persia, negotiated respectively by Sir Harford Jones, Sir Gore Ouseley, and Mr. Ellis, were still in force, disregarding the observance of the conditions of these treaties, prepared to undertake hostilities, and as a warlike demonstration, despatched a naval armament with troops and forces to the Gulf of Persia. The winter season was now approaching, and if we protracted to a longer period our stay at Herat, there appeared a possibility that our victorious army might suffer from a scarcity of provisions, and that the maintenance of our troops might not be unaccompanied with difficulty; the tranquillity of our provinces was also a matter of serious attention to our benevolent thoughts; and thus, in sole consideration of the interest of our faith and country, and from a due regard to the welfare of our troops and subjects, we set in motion our world-subduing army upon the 19th of Jumady-al-Akber, and prepared to return to our capital.... During the protracted siege of Herat, a vast number of the troops and inhabitants had perished, as well from the fire of our cannon and musketry as from constant hardship and starvation; the remainder of the people, amounting to about 50,000 families, with a large proportion of the Afghan and Persian chiefs, who had been treated with the most liberal kindness by the officers of our government, and who being compromised, could not possibly, therefore, hold any further intercourse with Yar Mahomed Khan, marched away with us, with zealous eagerness, to the regions of Khain and Khorassan, and there was no vestige of an inhabited spot left around Herat.”
But although the failure of Mahomed Shah is mainly to be attributed to the jealousy, and consequent disunion, of his generals, it would be an injustice to the garrison of Herat not to acknowledge that they owed their safety, in some measure, to their own exertions. Their gallantry and perseverance, however, were not of the most sustained character, and might have yielded to the assaults of the Persians if there had been any union among the assailants. They gathered courage from the languid movements of the besiegers; and, surprised at the little progress made by the once dreaded army of Mahomed Shah, they came in time to regard themselves as heroes, and their successful sorties as great victories. When, on the other hand, the Persians really attempted anything like a combined movement against their works, the garrison began to lose heart, and were with difficulty brought to repulse them. To what extent they were indebted to the unfailing constancy and courage of Eldred Pottinger, has been set forth, but I believe very imperfectly, in this narrative of the siege. Enough, however, has been shown to demonstrate that, but for the heroism of this young Bombay artilleryman, Herat would have fallen into the hands of Mahomed Shah. The garrison were fast breaking down, not so much under the pressure from without as the pressure from within. The chiefs were desponding—the people were starving. But still the continued cry of Eldred Pottinger was, “A little longer—a little longer yet.” When the chiefs talked of surrender—when they set forth the hopelessness of further efforts of defence—he counselled still a little further delay. His voice was ever for the manlier course; and what he recommended in speech he was ever eager to demonstrate in action. Yar Mahomed did great things at Herat. It would be unjust to deny him the praise due to his energetic exertions in the prosecution of the defence, however unscrupulous the means he employed to sustain it. But his energies failed him at last; and it was only by the powerful stimulants applied by his young European associate that he was supported and invigorated in the great crisis, when the fate of Herat was trembling in the balance. There was one true soldier in Herat, whose energies never failed him; and History delights to record the fact that that one true soldier, young and inexperienced as he was, with no knowledge of active warfare that he had not derived from books, rescued Herat from the grasp of the Persian monarch, and baffled the intrigues of his great northern abettor.[202]
About these intrigues something more should be said. No sane man ever questions the assertion that Russian diplomatists encouraged Mahomed Shah to undertake the expedition against Herat, and that Russian officers aided the operations of the siege. No reasonable man doubts that, so encouraging and so aiding Persia in aggressive measures against the frontier of Afghanistan, Russia harboured ulterior designs not wholly unassociated with thoughts of the position of the British in Hindostan. At all events, it is certain that the first word, spoken or written in encouragement of the expedition against Herat, placed Russia in direct antagonism with Great Britain. “The British minister at Teheran was instructed to dissuade the Shah from such an enterprise; urging reasons of indisputable force, and founded upon the interests of the Shah himself. But the advice given by the Russian ambassador was all of an opposite tendency. For while Mr. M’Neill was appealing to the prudence and the reason of the Shah, Count Simonich was exciting the ambition and inflaming the passions of that Sovereign; whilst the one was preaching moderation and peace, the other was inciting to war and conquest; and whilst the one pointed out the difficulties and expense of the enterprise, the other inspired hopes of money and assistance.”[203]
Such, very plainly stated, in grave, official language, had been the relative positions of Russia and Great Britain. But when Lord Durham, in 1837, was directed to seek from the Russian minister an explanation of conduct so much at variance with the declarations of the Muscovite Government, the answer was, that if Count Simonich had encouraged Mahomed Shah to proceed against Herat, he acted in direct violation of his instructions.
But for a man disobeying the instructions of an arbitrary government, Simonich acted with uncommon boldness. He advanced to the Persian ruler 50,000 tomauns, and promised, that if Mahomed Shah took Herat, the balance of the debt due by Persia to Russia should be remitted. Thus encouraged, Mahomed Shah advanced upon Herat. How Simonich followed M’Neill to the Persian camp, and how he thwarted the efforts of the British diplomatist to bring about an accommodation of the differences between the two contending states, and how Russian officers subsequently directed the siege, has been already shown. It has been shown, how a Russian agent guaranteed a treaty injurious to British interests, between Mahomed Shah and the Sirdars of Candahar. It has been shown, too, how a Russian agent appeared at Caubul, and how he endeavoured to detach Dost Mahomed from an alliance with the British, and to encourage him to look for support from the Persian King and his Muscovite supporters.
Considering these things, the British Government asked whether the intentions of Russia towards Persia and Afghanistan were to be judged from Count Nesselrode’s declarations, or from the actions of Simonich and Vickovich. The answer was, that Vickovich had been despatched to Caubul on a “Commercial Mission,” and that, if he had treated of anything but commerce, he had exceeded his instructions; and that Simonich had been instructed, not only to discourage Mahomed Shah from prosecuting the expedition against Herat, but to withdraw the Russian-deserter regiment, which formed no insignificant portion of the invading army. “Not upon the cabinet of Russia,” it was said, “can fall the reproach of having encouraged or suggested that fatal enterprise.”[204] The proceedings of the agents were repudiated. Vickovich, being a person of no account, was remorselessly sacrificed, and he blew out his brains. But an apology was found for Count Simonich. It was said that he only assisted a friendly state when in extreme difficulty, and that any English officer would have done the same.[205]
There was some truth in this. At all events, when it was added by the Russian minister that his government had more reason to be alarmed by the movements of Great Britain, than Great Britain by the movements of Russia; and that England sought to monopolise the privilege of intrigue in Central Asia, it was difficult for any candid and unprejudiced observer of events to comment harshly upon the injustice of the imputation. When, too, some time afterwards, Baron Brunow said to Sir John Hobhouse, “If we go on at this rate, the Cossack and the Sepoy will soon meet on the banks of the Oxus,”[206] it would have been hard to have laid the contemplated collision wholly to the account of the restlessness of the Czar. True it is, that the policy of Russia in the East had been distinguished for its aggressive tendencies;[207] and it is equally true, that in the plenitude of our national self-love, we encouraged the conviction that Great Britain had conquered the entire continent of Hindostan by a series of purely defensive measures. Looking merely at the recognised policy of the East India Company, the distinction may be admitted. For a century have this great body been steadfastly setting their face against the extension of their empire; but their empire has been extended in spite of them, and their agents have been less pacific than themselves. The general tendency of the Eastern policy worked out by the English in India, has not been purely defensive, and they are, perhaps, the last people in the world entitled to complain of the encroachments of their allies. England and Russia seemed at one time to be—and, perhaps, they are still—approaching each other on the vast Central-Asia battle-field; but when the account between the two great European states comes to be struck, it is doubtful whether History will set down against the Muscovite power any greater transgression than that which it is the object of these volumes to record.[208]