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Updated: May 20, 2025
'Bad ministers, wrote Burnes, 'are in every government solid ground for unpopularity; and I doubt if ever a king had a worse set than has Shah Soojah. The oppressed people appealed to the British functionaries, who remonstrated with the minister, and the minister punished the people for appealing to the British functionaries.
Other waifs of the wreck of a nefarious and disastrous enterprise, among them old Zemaun Khan, who had been our friend throughout, and the family of the ill-fated Shah Soojah, were well content to return to the exile which afforded safety and quietude.
That, so late as April 1837, he had no design of obstructing the existing situation in Afghanistan is proved by his written statement of that date, that 'the British Government had resolved decidedly to discourage the prosecution by the ex-king Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, so long as he may remain under our protection, of further schemes of hostility against the chiefs now in power in Cabul and Candahar. Yet, in the following June, he concluded a treaty which sent Shah Soojah to Cabul, escorted by British bayonets.
After the downfall of Shah Soojah, Afghanistan for many years was a prey to anarchy. At length in 1826, Dost Mahomed succeeded in making himself supreme at Cabul, and this masterful man thenceforward held sway until his death in 1863, uninterruptedly save during the three years of the British occupation. Dost Mahomed was neither kith nor kin to the legitimate dynasty which he displaced.
The Khan of Khelat, whether from disaffection or inability, left unfulfilled his promise to supply grain, and the result of the quarrel which Burnes picked with him was that he shunned coming in and paying homage to Shah Soojah, for which default he was to suffer cruel and unjustifiable ruin.
The invasion of Afghanistan by the English had been for the purpose of protecting the Indian frontier. A prince, Shah Soojah, friendly to England, was placed on the throne. This prince was repudiated by the Afghan tribes, and to their bitter and savage hostility was due the result which we have briefly described.
But Shah Soojah was dead. The king we had driven from the throne, however, was still alive: Dost Mahomed, therefore, was restored; and nothing remained to be done, since the grand drama had been brought to a conclusion, but to celebrate the happy dénouement by a fête. This, accordingly, came off at Ferozepore.
There was a fine rugged honesty in his nature, and a streak of genuine chivalry; notwithstanding the despite he suffered at our hands, he had a real regard for the English, and his loyalty to us was broken only by his armed support of the Sikhs in the second Punjaub war. The fallen Shah Soojah, from his asylum in Loodianah, was continually intriguing for his restoration.
Tucker, of the Court of Directors, wrote to the Duke of Wellington: 'We have contracted an alliance with Shah Soojah, although he does not possess a rood of ground in Afghanistan, nor a rupee which he did not derive from our bounty as a quondam pensioner. He added, that 'even if we succeed we must maintain him in the government by a large military force, 800 miles from our frontier and our resources.
The Indian Government, while professing neutrality, indirectly assisted Shah Soojah by paying his pension in advance. In 1833 Shah Soojah's army was thoroughly beaten by Dost Mahomed before Candahar, though he himself escaped.
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