United States or Nigeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Those people had come back to Afghanistan poor; now they made haste to be rich by acts of oppressive injustice, in the exaction of revenue from the people, and by intercepting from the Dooranee chiefs the flow of royal bounty to which they had looked forward.
But when Yakoub's abdication should be announced, he knew the Afghan nature too well to doubt that the tribal blood-feuds would be soldered for the time, that Dooranee and Barakzai would strike hands, that Afghan regulars and Afghan irregulars would rally under the same standards, and that the fierce shouts of 'Deen! deen! would resound on hill-top and in plain.
General Nott quietly waited until the Sirdar, at the head of some 10,000 men, came within five miles of Candahar, and then he crushed him after twenty minutes' fighting. The fugitives found refuge in the camp of the disaffected Dooranee chiefs, whose leader Meerza Ahmed was sedulously trying to tamper with Nott's native troops, severe weather hindering the General from attacking him.
The Dooranee monarch-elect had already crossed the Indus, and was encamped at Shikarpore, when he was joined by Mr William Hay Macnaghten, of the Company's Civil Service, the high functionary who had been gazetted as 'Envoy and Minister on the part of the Government of India at the Court of Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk. Durand pronounces the selection an unhappy one, 'for Macnaghten, long accustomed to irresponsible office, inexperienced in men, and ignorant of the country and people of Afghanistan, was, though an erudite Arabic scholar, neither practised in the field of Asiatic intrigue nor a man of action.
Near the end of February there reached Nott a letter two months old from Elphinstone and Pottinger, ordering him to evacuate Candahar and retire to India, in pursuance of the convention into which they had entered. The Dooranee chiefs astutely urged that Shah Soojah, no longer supported by British bayonets, was now ruling in Cabul, as an argument in favour of Nott's withdrawal.
Uktar Khan was prominent among the Dooranee noblemen, and he had the double grievance of having been disappointed of the headship of the Zemindawar province on the western bank of the Helmund, and having been evilly entreated by the minions of Prince Timour. He had raised his clan and routed a force under a royalist follower, when Nott sent a detachment against him.
The Dooranee chiefs of Western Afghanistan had not unnaturally expected favours and influence under the rule of the Dooranee monarch; and while in Candahar before proceeding to Cabul, and still uncertain of what might occur there, Shah Soojah had been lavish of his promises.
Word Of The Day