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 Posté le: Lun Sep 30, 2013 2:53 pm Sujet du message: A banker by profession |
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A banker by profession, Salim Ansar has a passion for history and historic books. His personal library already boasts a treasure trove of over 7,000 rare and unique books.Every week, we shall take a leaf from one such book and treat you to a little taste of history.BOOK NAME: Bokhara BurnesAUTHOR: James LuntPUBLISHER: Faber & Faber - LondonDATE OF PUBLICATION: 1969The following excerpt has been taken from Pages: 204 - 208LIFE & TIMES OF FIRST AFGHAN WAR AT KABUL“The Afghans are a sober, simple, steady people.” Alexander Burnes“Afghanistan has long fascinated foreign travelers, and Alexander Burnes proved to be no exception. He never concealed his preference for Afghanistan and its people over India. He wrote of the Afghans that ‘they are a nation of children; in their quarrels they fight, and become friends without any ceremony. They cannot conceal their feelings from one another, and a person with any discrimination may at all times pierce their designs. If they themselves are to be believed, their ruling vice is envy, which besets even the nearest and dearest relations. No people are more incapable of managing an intrigue.’“This was written in 1831, after only a short visit to Afghanistan, but it is hard to explain why Burnes should have misjudged the Afghanistan character. Intrigue and treachery, murder and violence, came naturally to the Afghans. Revenge was a virtue, and the blood feud was part of normal life. Every man carried a weapon, and used it without hesitation, and as a people the Afghans were avaricious and vindictive. They were at the same time brave and hospitable,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]moncler down jackets[/url], lively and cheerful, and possessed the simple courtesy of the mountain-dweller. During the course of the next nine years, Burnes was to experience the many sides of the Afghan character, but his affection for them remained constant almost until the very end. They repaid his trust by murdering him.“In Kabul, Sir Alexander Burnes, all were welcome to drop in discuss a rare Scotch breakfast of smoked fish, salmon grills, devils and jellies, and puff away at their cigars till ten. His weekly dinner parties were a feature of garrison life at Kabul.“‘As the good river Indus is a channel for luxuries as well as commerce, I can place before my friends at one-third in excess of the Bombay price my champagne, hock, madeira,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]moncler down jackets[/url], sherry, port, claret, sauterne, not forgetting a glass of curacao, and maraschino, and the hermetically sealed salmon and hotch-potch (a veritable hotch-potch, all the way frae Aberdeen), for deuced good it is, the peas as big as if they had been soaked in bristling.’ Burnes went on to say — ‘I lead a very pleasant life, and if rotundity and heartiness be proofs of health, I have them.’“For male companionship in his house, he had his brother Charley, and his assistant, William Broadfoot. Nor was female companionship lacking,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]moncler on sale[/url], if the rumours be true. Afghan ladies seem to have been susceptible to his charms and to the charms of other British officers too, and although this made for a pleasant existence, it was not calculated to endear the British to the Afghans.“Shortly before sunrise that morning Burnes had been woken by Osman Khan,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]moncler outlet[/url], the king’s chief minister, who had come to beg him to take refuge in the cantonment. There would have been time to do this, but Burnes refused to budge. Paymaster Johnson wrote later that ‘Sir Alexander scorned the idea of quitting his house, as he had every hope of quelling the disturbance; and let the worst come to the worst, he felt too well assured that neither the Envoy nor the General would permit him to be sacrificed whilst in the performance of his public duty, so long as there were 6,000 men within two miles of him. The Paymaster,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]moncler sale[/url], a wiser man than Burnes, had slept the night in the cantonment.“While Macnaghten and his military advisers debated whether or not to send help to Burnes, the Kabul mob was gathering in the streets. Every ruffianly character equipped himself with a weapon and hurried along the stinking alleys to join the mob, while more peaceable citizens bolted their doors and put up their shutters; once a riot began in Kabul, no one could say how it would end. Individuals soon joined up in parties, and parties with other parties, until there was a great crowd pouring along the streets, shouting as it ran the battle-cry of a Moslem mob, Allaho Abkar! Din! Din! — God is great! The true religion forever! It is a noise which once heard is never forgotten. Soon the mob joined forces with Abdullah Khan’s murder gang and together they raced on to Burnes’s house.“It was a big house, standing in a courtyard, with a balcony overlooking the street. Burnes, his brother Charles, and William Broadfoot were there, together with the servants, and a sepoy guard of one subedar and twenty-eight men. Burnes, hoping to parley with the mob,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]moncler on sale[/url], at first refused to allow the soldiers to open fire. He went out onto the balcony and endeavoured to address the wolf-pack below, but a sea of savage faces shouted him down. Blood was demanded, and blood the mob was determined to have. Shots rang out and the guard returned the fire. Broadfoot fell with a bullet through his heart, but not before he had shot six of the enemy. His brother had been killed exactly a year before at Purwandurrah.“The stables and servants quarters were now blazing fiercely. There was still no sign of the expected help from the cantonment, and Burnes was reduced to bargaining with the mob for their lives. He offered them large sums of money to spare his brother and himself, and there now appeared from somewhere a Kashmiri, who offered to lead them to safety. Falling into the trap, Alexander and Charles Burnes put on native dress and followed their rescuer down into the garden, and as soon as they appeared in view,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]moncler outlet[/url], the Kashmiri shouted, ‘See, friends! Here is Sekunder Burnes!’“It was all over in less than a minute. The long Afghan knives cut them to pieces, and gory arms went on thrusting long after they were dead. Later, an old friend of Burnes, the Naib Sherif,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]discount moncler jackets[/url], collected the bloody remnants and buried them. The sepoy guard died to a man in the gallant performance of their duty.“All this had happened within easy reach of help, but not a British or Indian soldier had moved from the cantonment. The Afghan rebellion against the hated British had begun with a signal victory, and it was the first in a chain of events which was to continue with Macnaghten’s murder by Akbar Khan, and would end with the complete destruction of the British garrison in Kabul. Only one man of that force, Dr Brydon, got through to Jelalabad to tell the sorry tale - ‘The remnants of an Army’. Later, much later, Generals Pollock and Nott were to retrieve the honour of British arms by advancing to Kabul from Peshawar and Kandahar respectively, and by releasing the prisoners taken by the Afghans, among whom were Macnaghten’s widow and the stout-hearted Lady Sale. Shah Shujah was to be murdered before the rebellion was over, and Dost Mohammed returned eventually with British agreement to re-occupy the throne from which they had so unnecessarily evicted him. Not until the fall of Singapore a century later were the British to suffer such a disastrous defeat in Asia.“When it was all over there was the usual search for scape-goats, and the equally usual attempt to gloss over unfortunate facts. Auckland and Macnaghten came in for most blame, as did the unfortunate Elphinstone, the general who was unfit in every way to command an army in battle. Sir Alexander Burnes was hardly less condemned. ‘A man of bright talents, immense energy, and high ambition, with a quick, mercurial nature,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]moncler sale[/url], that touched in one moment the extremest chords of hope and despondency, he was,[url=http://www.moncler-sale.org]discount moncler jackets[/url],’ thought Captain Trotter, ‘evidently wanting in steadiness of purpose, sound judgement, and moral self-restraint.’ Sir Henry Durand goes even further, alleging that Burnes was ‘the man hated as the treacherous cause of the invasion and occupation of the country’. This may well have been the Afghan view, but it was not correct. Had Burnes’s advice been taken, there would have been no war in Afghanistan.“It is not easy to reach an impartial judgement about Sir Alexander Burnes. There were those among his contemporaries who considered that his character lacked depth, and who felt that he was too easily influenced by the opinions of others; but then there were many who held him in high regard. Both schools of thought contained eminent men. That stout old puritan, Sir Henry Havelock, thought highly of him, and we can be certain that Havelock’s standards were high. King William IV had been much taken with him. ‘Really, sir,’ he had told him, ‘you are a wonderful man .... I had heard you were an able man, but now I know you are most able.’ There were others in high places who were equally impressed, and young lieutenants who can impress sober-minded statesmen must be rather unusual men. But here perhaps is the answer to the problem. Too much attention was paid to Burnes’s opinions when first he came to prominence, and too little later when he was a more mature and experienced man; as Kaye has written of him, ‘It was the hard fate of Alexander Burnes to be overrated at the outset and underrated at the close of his career.salimansar52@gmail.comhttps://www.facebook.com/PagesFromHistoryBySalimAnsar
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