Sabres on the Steppes Page 6

  3. When the author was taken on a hunting trip into the Hindu Kush (by a friendly Afghan warlord) on his first visit to Afghanistan in 1958, the party slept in caves, presumably like those thought to have been giving shelter to Osama bin Laden after the events of September 2001. On one occasion the footprints of a leopard were found in the morning around the mouth of the cave. Such caves are not always the safest of shelters.

  4. The aversion of cavalry officers and their associates to eating horse flesh long persisted and probably still persists. The author recalls hearing of a relative who was ‘singularly disadvantaged’ during the siege of Ladysmith in the Boer War because the only meat available was horse flesh and – as a lancer – he felt obliged to abstain however hungry and starving he became.

  Chapter 3

  Arthur Conolly: The Soldier Who Exceeded

  His Orders

  ‘Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.’

  – F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

  Lieutenant Arthur Conolly of the Bengal Native Light Cavalry started his military career as a model player in the Great Game; indeed it was he who first coined that phrase to describe the struggle between tsarist Russia and the British Raj in India for mastery of Central Asia. But he was to end not only his career but his life after exceeding his instructions. An officer who once had enjoyed the full support and confidence of his superiors, he was to be murdered in circumstances in which his own government could not help him and was set on disowning his enterprise.

  In late 1829, returning after home leave, the twenty-four-year-old Conolly had set out overland from England through Russia, the Caucasus, Persia and Afghanistan bound for British India. He had already served in India since the age of sixteen when he had been sent out by sea, after finishing his schooling at Rugby, to join his regiment. Now his role was to observe Russian troop deployments, to assess the terrain that any army would have to cross if planning to invade India, and to make contact with the Khan of Khiva and Afghan leaders whose domains lay across the line of any such advance towards India.

  All went smoothly for the first stages of the journey. The carriage drive from St Petersburg to Moscow took five days and nights on a very bad road, ‘sandy, muddy or over the trunks of trees which had been laid across it’. After four days in Moscow, where he lamented the ‘gross and idolatrous superstition which can scarcely be imagined by a Protestant’, he pressed on and crossed the River Don into Cossack country and then continued over the steppes towards the Caucasus, sleeping at night in the carriage ‘buried in furs’. As he approached the Caucasus however, security considerations arose. He waited to join up with a larger party that could justify an escort of Terek Cossacks, some infantry and even a twelve-pounder gun. He was now entering a region where ‘the Russians do not yet command free passage [. . .] for they are obliged to be very vigilant against surprise by the Circassian sons of the mist, who still cherish the bitterest hatred against them’.

  Even the Cossacks were nervous, as sixteen of their number had been ambushed and killed very shortly before. For once Conolly’s military judgement was mistaken: he predicted that ‘the Russians will find it an easy task to reduce them [the Circassians] to obedience’ since they had set up forts on the coast and were imposing a blockade which would mean that supplies could no longer reach the insurgents from Turkey.

  Conolly was still the guest of the Russian commanders, who entertained him at Tiflis – the Georgian capital – and who impressed him with their hardiness and bravery. But he was already beginning to feel that, although they might be Orthodox Christians and thus in principle to be preferred to the followers of the Prophet, they did not share his particular brand of religious conviction. His own beliefs – which were to play a crucial part in his later disastrous decisions – were largely the result of exposure at an impressionable age to Bishop Reginald Heber, the charismatic preacher and author of such popular hymns as ‘Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty’ and ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains to India’s Coral Strand’. For Conolly, Anglicanism was a mixture of evangelicalism and patriotism: to rescue a fellow countryman and to die for one’s faith were to prove commitments that transcended any military instructions.

  The first real dangers and tests of his endurance were to come when he left the protection of the Russian authorities and of the Persians to set off across the Karakum desert from Astrabad on the Caspian Sea to Khiva on the Oxus river. This was Turkoman country, where caravans were regularly waylaid by armed parties of slavers, and where to travel as an Englishman was to invite both the cupidity of hostage takers and the hatred of a population who feared (often correctly) that foreigners were pathfinders for invading armies. Up to now, he had travelled as himself; now disguise was required. He decided that if he went as a local merchant this would not only conceal his nationality but would also give him a plausible reason for making the trip; accordingly he set about buying goods which he thought appropriate for the Khivan market: red silk scarves, shawls, furs, pepper, ginger and other spices. It was difficult to persuade his guide and servant to go with him: the latter seemed to think the Turkomans would eat him.

  The fear engendered by the Turkomans, though they were not cannibals, proved to have plenty of justification. Conolly and his companion had not gone far into the desert on their camels in their search to find and join a larger caravan, when they were overtaken by a small armed gang who – under pretence of protecting them – effectively took them prisoner. They then led them off their path towards Khiva on an alarmingly circuitous route which seemed to be taking them ever further from help. When questioned about why they were doing this, their captors confessed that they had heard from one of the desert tribal chiefs that Conolly was really a Russian agent, loaded with gold bullion to bribe support for his cause. Conolly records in his account of his travels that at this stage ‘we told them to examine our baggage, and convince themselves that we had no wealth, and then escort us to the caravan [. . .] or two of their number might come with us to Khiva, where Russians would certify that I was not of their country’. Although the armed gang were at pains to avoid taking them to settled encampments, they stumbled on some other camps in the desert. At one of these their captors took up their offer of allowing them to search their baggage for the supposed stock of gold ducats; the only gold they found was the few coins they carried in belts round their waists, but – more disturbingly – when they unwrapped a brass astrolabe they assumed this was solid gold and were with difficulty persuaded that it was not an object of intrinsic value – however much value it held for Conolly, for navigational purposes.

  Eventually Conolly concluded that all the prevarication and delay was a prelude to deciding either to murder them or to sell them into slavery. Their so-called protectors continued to avoid contact with other desert travellers wherever possible, explaining that such travellers were likely to be enemies, but Conolly remarked that he was not sure what such enemies could do to him that was worse than the attentions of his ‘protectors’. However, contact with outsiders at a desert well revealed the fact that their captors had ‘given out a report of our murder’ to see what the reaction would be: ‘if our friends appeared resigned to our loss’, then Conolly and his friend could be safely sold on; if on the other hand ‘it should appear that we had patrons influential enough to cause annoyance’, then they would ‘produce us as [having been] saved from attack’. While all this negotiation, aimless travel and constant menace was going on, Conolly gained some local credit by offering medical cures to those with ailments; in some cases he was able to give genuine help, and in others he made wishful promises in the conviction that – by the time they were proved to be unfounded – he would either be dead or gone.

  While on these gyrations round the desert, Conolly learnt some useful tips for travellers in Central Asia. For instance, he nearly gave away his European origins at one point by carelessly throwing two lumps of sugar into a cooking cauldron; such extravagance with a rare commodity coul
d only – his hosts speculated – be evidence of extreme (European) wealth. He also learnt that when selling a horse, it was incumbent on the vendor to explain to the buyer where the horse had been stolen; if such information were not passed on, and the purchaser was later challenged about the true ownership of the horse, the vendor would have to pay compensation. Conolly wryly remarked that it sounded just like Yorkshire to him!

  It was random contact with some Persian merchant travellers that eventually led to their being escorted back to Astrabad. Conolly had failed to reach Khiva, but he had survived his desert ordeal and had learnt a considerable amount about the problems of crossing the Karakum desert. He had learnt also that Khiva still retained its independence and that the Russians had not yet properly established themselves on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea. Now he contemplated an alternative route to India, one that might equally be used by an invader. He turned southwards and headed for the Persian town of Meshed, and after that across another bleak region to Herat in Afghanistan; for part of this journey he managed to travel under the protection of an Afghan military unit, and so was able to observe at first hand the practicality of moving an army across the harsh terrain. The experience of travelling with the Afghan army also gave him a disturbing introduction to their methods of discipline: noses were cut off those who had broken ranks to go marauding or who had proved to be sleepy sentries.

  Once in Herat, he again abandoned his merchant guise and reverted to his increasingly familiar and well-practised role of a man of medicine; this proved sufficiently convincing to save him from further scrutiny by the despotic ruler. The next stage before he reached India was across Afghanistan from Herat to Kandahar, and here again it was slave-raider country. The distinctive feature of the bandit gangs in this area was that they made a practice of cutting off the ears of their prisoners, in the belief that this would so embarrass the latter that they would be less likely to try to escape and make for home where their disfigurement would prove a humiliation to them. Mindful of his lack of protection in the Karakum, and no doubt alarmed at all the mutilation he had witnessed or heard about, he took the precaution of ensuring that he was accepted into a party of Islamic holy men before venturing beyond the walls of Herat. From Kandahar it was another long march to the Indus and the frontier of British India.

  Conolly had not completed his journey along the intended route. But he had switched to another route which was equally relevant to the possible invasion of India. He had followed his instructions and returned with valuable intelligence. So far he had been a model officer, so much so, that he sat down on his return to write a postscript to his account of his travels, analyzing the threat to India from Russia, as well as outlining the routes that any invading force might take. Furthermore he suggested broad foreign policy objectives which might serve to frustrate such an invasion. He argued not only that Britain should set up and support a friendly regime in Afghanistan, but also that she should endeavour to bring the khanates and emirates of Central Asia into an alliance with each other and with Britain which would serve to provide a buffer zone and which – also an important objective for Conolly – would involve their giving up their trade in slaves. Conolly felt that the abolition of slave capturing and the slave markets would not only ensure that the khanates were less provocative to their powerful northern neighbour (many of the slaves were captured Russians), but would also be a stepping stone to their adopting those Christian values that played such an important part in his faith.

  Now that he was established as an intrepid and resourceful traveller (his two-volume account of his journey was published in 1838), Conolly was determined to seek authority for further ventures into Central Asia. But not everyone thought his ambitious plans to unite and convert the khans and emirs was realistic. Among his critics was Sir Alexander Burnes – ‘Bokhara Burnes’, whose own travels in the region were already legendary – who saw Conolly as an over-emotional trespasser on his own established ground: ‘he is flighty, though a very nice fellow [. . .] he is to regenerate Toorkistan, dismiss all the slaves, and looks upon our advent as a design of providence to spread Christianity’, he wrote. Burnes suggested that the only way such ambitious and vague objectives could be achieved was by waving the wand of Prospero. And Burnes was not alone in his scepticism: more powerful figures were also set against any such wild projects and plans.

  Chief among these powerful figures was the governor-general of India himself, Lord Auckland. The governor-general did not want to act in a manner that the Russians would find provocative, and nor did he want to get too involved with an unsavoury bunch of khans and emirs whom he viewed as basically untrustworthy. Perhaps an even stronger motive behind his letter vetoing Conolly’s plan was that he did not want to have another British officer being held as a hostage by a psychopathic Central Asian ruler. Because there was already one such hostage being held in Bokhara by Emir Nasrullah.

  This hostage was a certain Colonel Charles Stoddart, who had arrived in Bokhara in December 1838 with a brief from the British government (or at least from the British ambassador to Persia) to secure the release of any Russian slaves (always a provocation to the tsar) held by the emir, to offer British assistance if the emirate was attacked by a foreign power, and to reassure the emir that British intentions towards him were benign. Stoddart was a brave soldier but no diplomat: from the moment of his arrival at the emir’s court he put people’s backs up – riding in a cocked hat through the Registan (main square) where no one but the emir himself was permitted to remain mounted, and failing to dismount and bow when greeting the emir. It also transpired that Stoddart had no appropriate presents for the emir and no letter from Queen Victoria – a monarch whom the emir apparently considered as no more than his equal in status. After such an inauspicious start, it was only a matter of days before Stoddart was arrested and thrown into the infamous reptile-infested pit where the emir kept his enemies while they awaited execution.

  Under imminent threat of death – probably being buried alive in the grave that was dug in front of him – Stoddart’s morale finally collapsed and he abjured his Christian faith and declared himself a believer in Islam. Even after this ‘conversion’, the emir’s conduct towards him was erratic in the extreme: sometimes he was received and given employment at court; at other times he was daily reminded that he was a prisoner and hostage. Some of his letters were smuggled out and even reached his family in England, but still there were no letters reaching Bokhara from Queen Victoria or any other recognition of the emir’s status. It was a stalemate, in which Stoddart’s safety depended from day to day on the emir’s assessment of Britain’s military strength. Bad news from Afghanistan could at any moment prove fatal.

  This was the story that reached Conolly as he formulated his plans and negotiated with the governor-general and other British officials about whether he was to be permitted to venture again into Central Asia. And it was to add a further strand to his ambitions. Not only now did he wish to go to Khiva and Khokand, but he also saw as part of his mission penetrating as far as Bokhara to release the unfortunate Stoddart and secure his reconversion to Christianity. It was a noble aim. But Burnes and others were even more determined to prevent Conolly attempting to reach Bokhara; this was after all the destination that Burnes himself had managed to reach after so many difficulties in 1832 (eight years earlier), as a result of which he had earned the sobriquet of ‘Bokhara Burnes’. It was not a distinction that he wished to share with a younger officer, and he spoke sarcastically about Conolly wishing to become ‘Baron Bokhara’ and predicted that if he were allowed to go ahead with the project he would end up keeping Stoddart company as a prisoner there.

  But Conolly was set on his objectives. Although Burnes and the governor-general were against his proposals, he found support in England and an ally in his cousin Sir William Macnaghten who was British minister at the Afghan court and – as such – Burnes’ immediate superior. Macnaghten managed to persuade a somewhat reluctant governor-gen
eral that Conolly should be allowed to proceed, but only as far as Khiva and Khokand. A dispatch was sent to Macnaghten setting out the conditions:

  As in the present aspect of affairs it does not seem necessary to continue the restriction which had at first been imposed, the Lordship in Council authorizes you to permit Captain Conolly to proceed from Khiva to Khokand, if he should think it expedient, and if he finds that he can do so without exciting serious distrust and jealousy at the former place. In his personal intercourse with the Khan of Kokand, he will be guided by the instructions which have been issued [. . .] Captain Conolly may, in such a journey, find increased means of using a useful influence at Bokhara for the release of Colonel Stoddart; and, his Lordship in Council need not add, that he would wish every such means to be employed with the utmost earnestness and diligence for that purpose.

  Conolly was delighted, not least because he desperately needed an adventure to take his mind off a personal unhappiness. His proposal for marriage had recently been rejected by a young lady in England, and when he thought his travel plans were to be thwarted he had written to a friend explaining that ‘I felt the blank that a man must feel who has a heavy grief as the first thing to fall back on’. Now he knew he was going, he wrote again asking his friend to explain to the lady in question that he was ‘about to undertake a journey which is not without risk to life, and if mine should end in Tartary, I would not have her fancy it shortened or carelessly ventured in consequences of my disappointed love for her’. Despite these protestations, it seems all too likely that he was indeed in a frame of mind where he was inclined to take risks that a man more at peace with himself might have rejected.

  Be that as it may, Conolly set about collecting the team for his journey. This included a Khivan envoy whom he described as his ‘croney’, and a rather treacherous-looking envoy from the Afghan court. To ease the rigours of the journey they had an immense baggage train with some eighty bearers. So it was that, in September 1840, they set out, with reluctant consent rather than official blessing.