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Updated: June 3, 2025
The fate of the gallant Major Cavagnari and his mission, murdered at Kabul, September 3, 1879, made a deeper impression on the Afghan mind than the British occupation of Afghan cities or the Afghan losses in battle.
Both strains carry the attributes of vivacity and restlessness, but Cavagnari to the superficial observer appeared as phlegmatic as he was habitually taciturn. This sententious imperturbability was only on the surface; whether it was a natural characteristic or an acquired manner is not easy to decide.
Cavagnari issued orders that the chief must pay a heavy fine, in money and cattle; and that the actual murderers must be tried for their crime. The Khan, however, took no notice of the demand. "Forty miles southeast of Sappri was the British cantonment of Murdan, where the corps of Guides is permanently quartered.
He insists upon the same point, I may add, in his private letters to Lytton, and declares that it is even more important to be straightforward and to keep our word sacredly with Afghans than with civilised races. He writes very warmly upon the danger of exacting excessive punishment for the murder of Cavagnari.
This was what in effect happened when on September 21st Major Cavagnari rode forward to the Afghan post in the Khyber Pass. The officer who courteously stopped him assured him that he had orders to oppose by force the progress of Sir Neville and his mission, so Cavagnari shook hands with the Afghan major and rode back to Peshawur.
But Cavagnari had been slaughtered notwithstanding that he dwelt in the Balla Hissar Residency in virtue of a solemn treaty between the Empress of India and the Ameer of Afghanistan, notwithstanding that the latter had guaranteed him safety and protection, notwithstanding that Britain and Afghanistan had ratified a pledge of mutual friendship and reciprocal good offices.
Suddenly, on September 3, the British Residency was attacked by several Afghan regiments, and after a desperate resistance, Cavagnari and the whole of his officers and escort perished. This deplorable event, of course, upset all previous arrangements, and led to an immediate resumption of hostilities.
Defeated by the English at Ali Musjid and Peiwar, and believing his cause lost, he fled, no one knew whither; though there is reason to think that he might have returned to power and popularity among the Afghan tribes if he had presented himself after the murder of Cavagnari.
Somewhere in his "Rulers of the South" Marion Crawford speaks of the wonderful rapidity with which news flies among the native population in warfare, and he cites as an illustration that "when Sir Louis Cavagnari was murdered in Cabul, in 1879, the news was told in the bazaar at Allahabad before the English authorities received it by telegraph, which then covered more than half the whole distance between the two places."
The General wrote in my notebook a telegram announcing the good news to the Commander-in-Chief; and poor Cavagnari, the political officer, who was afterwards massacred at Cabul, wrote another message to the same effect to the Viceroy. I expected to have to walk some distance to our bivouac of the night; but lo! as I turned to go, there was John with my horse, close up.
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