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Sixteen hundred prisoners were taken, and large stores of grain and flour fell into the hands of the conquerors. The fall of Ghuznee a fortress hitherto deemed by the Afghans impregnable astonished Dost Mahomed, and was the cause of the ruin which soon afterwards overtook him. In the northern part of Beloochistan stands the strong mountain fortress of Khelat.
The country toward Ghuznee was reported to be in a state of disquiet, and a strong body of troops was detailed under the command of General Baker for the protection of the transport. This force marched out from Sherpur on November 21st, and next day camped on the edge of the pleasant Maidan plain. Baker encountered great difficulties in collecting supplies.
Nott, although urgently summoned, was unable to reach Candahar until the 12th. Candahar was fortunately preserved, but at the end of March the unpleasant tidings came that Ghuznee, which British valour had carried by storm three years before, had now reverted into Afghan possession. The siege had lasted for nearly three and a half months.
Herat and Candahar were wholly independent, the Ghilzai tribes inhabiting the wide tracts from the Suliman ranges westward beyond the road through Ghuznee, between Candahar and Cabul, and northward into the rugged country between Cabul and Jellalabad, acknowledged no other authority than that of their own chiefs.
At the end of June it recommenced its march northwards, and Ghuznee having been stormed and captured, our troops without further fighting arrived at Cabul on April 6. Dost Mahomed, deserted for the time by his people, fled northward over the Hindoo Koosh, finding a temporary refuge in Bokhara, and Shah Soojah reigned in his stead.
Cherchez la femme is the keynote among Western peoples of an investigation into the origin of most troubles and strifes; the watchword of the student of the springs of great popular outbursts among Eastern nations must be Cherchez les pretres. The Peter the Hermit of Afghanistan was the old Mushk-i-Alum, the fanatic Chief Moulla of Ghuznee.
In the Simla manifesto, in which Lord Auckland embodied the rationale of his policy, he expressed the confident hope 'that the Shah will be speedily replaced on his throne by his own subjects and adherents, and when once he shall be received in power, and the independence and integrity of Afghanistan established, the British army will be withdrawn. The Shah had been indeed restored to his throne, but by British bayonets, not by 'his own subjects and adherents. It could not seriously be maintained that he was secure in power, or that the independence and integrity of Afghanistan were established when British troops were holding Candahar, Ghuznee and Cabul, the only three positions where the Shah was nominally paramount, when the fugitive Dost was still within its borders, when intrigue and disaffection were seething in every valley and on every hill-side, and when the principality of Herat maintained a contemptuous independence.
Nott sent a detachment to occupy the fortress of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, between Candahar and Ghuznee, thus rendering the communications more secure; and later, Macnaghten bribed the chiefs by an annual subsidy of L600 to abstain from infesting the highways. The terms were cheap, for the Ghilzai tribes mustered some 40,000 fighting men.
Sir Donald Stewart tarried on the field only long enough to bury his dead and have his wounded attended to; and soon after noon his force resumed its march. Ghuznee was reached on the 21st, where there was a halt of three days.
The treaty, ratified by the leading chiefs and sent into cantonments on New Year's Day 1842, provided that the British troops, within twenty-four hours after receiving transport, and under the protection of certain chiefs and an adequate escort, should begin their march of evacuation, the Jellalabad garrison moving down to Peshawur in advance; that the six hostages left in Cabul should be well treated, and liberated on the arrival at Peshawur of Dost Mahomed; the sick and wounded left behind to be at liberty to return to India on their recovery; all small arms and ordnance stores in the cantonment magazine to be made over to the Afghans 'as a token of friendship, on which account also, they were to have all the British cannon except as above mentioned; the Afghans to escort the Ghuznee garrison in safety to Peshawur; and a further stipulation was that the British troops in Candahar and Western Afghanistan were to resign the territories occupied by them and start quickly for India, provisioned and protected from molestation by the way.
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