at Maidan. There it was taken possession of by the British, and given up to Shah Shuja; and on the 7th of August 1839, that prince, after an exile of thirty years, re-entered the capital of his kingdom.
Hard upon the track of the fugitive Amir, followed Colonel Outram, with several other officers, and some Afghans under Haji Khan Kaker, in all about eight hundred foot and horse. Dost Mohammed had with him a handful of followers, including the Navab Jabbar Khan and Akhbar Khan, the latter of whom was sick and travelled in a litter. On the 21st August, Colonel Outram was informed that he was within a day's march of the object of his pursuit, whose escape, on that occasion, he attributes to the treachery of Haji Khan. One night the Hazarahs stole twenty of the Amir's horses, which greatly reduced the numbers of his little escort. At last, however, he found himself in safety amongst the Uzbegs, and thence wished to proceed to Persia; but the difficulties of the road, already nearly impassible on account of the snow, decided him to accept the proferred protection of the Amir of Bokhara. By this half-mad monarch he was very queerly treated; at one time his life was in peril – a treacherous attempt being made to drown him, his sons, and relations, whilst crossing the river Oxus in a boat. At last he was forbidden to leave his house, even to make his prayers at the mosque, and was in fact a prisoner. His two sons, Afzal and Akhbar, shared his captivity.
For the easy conquest of Afghanistan, and for the popularity of the English during the early days of its occupation, a long string of reasons is given by Mohan Lal. By various parts of his conduct, especially by his injustice and extortions, the Amir had made himself unpopular with the Afghans, who, on the other hand, remembered the liberality displayed by the Honourable Montstuart Elphinstone in the days of his mission to Kabul, and being by nature exceedingly avaricious, hoped to derive immense profit and advantage from British occupation of their country. The recent intercourse and friendship of the Amir with the Shah of Persia had also excited the indignation of his subjects, who, being Sunnies by sect, were deadly enemies of the Persian Shias. The English, in short, were as popular as the Barakzais were detested. Nevertheless it behoved the Shah Shuja and his European supporters to be circumspect and conciliatory; for Dost Mohammed was still at large, and lingering on the frontier, and any offence given to the Kabulis might be the signal for his recall. "Notwithstanding," says Mohan Lal, "all these points of grave concern, we sent a large portion of the army back, with Lord Keane, to India; and yet we interfered in the administration of the country, and introduced such reforms amongst the obstinate Afghans just on our arrival, as even in India, the quietest part of the world, Lords Clive and Wellesley had hesitated to do but slowly." The administration of the principal frontier towns was now confided to the Shah's officers; but these were not suffered to rule undisturbed, for Sir W. MacNaghten's political assistants every where watched their conduct and interfered in their jurisdictions. The occult nature of this interference prevented benefit to the people, whilst it caused a disregard for the local authorities. An undecided course was the bane of our Afghanistan policy. The government was neither entirely taken into the hands of the British, nor wholly left in those of the Shah. Outwardly, we were neutral; in reality, we constantly interfered: thus annoying the king and disappointing the people. Shah Shuja grew jealous of British influence, and began to suspect that he was but the shadow of a sovereign, a puppet whose strings were pulled for foreign advantage. Sir A. Burnes introduced reductions in the duties on all articles of commerce. Trade improved, but the Shah's servants frequently deviated from the new tariff, and extorted more than the legal imposts. When complaints were made to the English, they were referred to the Shah's Vazir, Mulla Shakur, who, instead of giving redress, beat and imprisoned the aggrieved parties for having appealed against the king's authority. Persons known to be favoured by the English were vexed and annoyed by the Shah's government; and it soon became evident that Mulla Shakur was striving to form a party for Shuja, in order to make him independent of British support. The people began to look upon the Shah as the unwilling slave of the Europeans; the priests omitted the "Khutbah," or prayer for the king, saying that it could only be recited for an independent sovereign. Soon the high price of provisions gave rise to grave dissensions. The purchases of grain made by the English commissariat raised the market, and placed that description of food out of reach of the poorer classes. Forage, meat, and vegetables, all rose in proportion, and a cry of famine was set up. Both in town and country, the landlords and dealers kept back the produce, or sent the whole of it to the English camp. A proclamation made by Mulla Shakur, forbidding the hoarding of provisions, or their sale above a fixed price, was disregarded. The poor assembled in throngs before the house of Sir A. Burnes, who was compelled to make gratuitous distributions of bread. At last the Shah's government adopted the course usual in Afghanistan in such emergencies; the store-keepers were seized, and compelled to sell their grain at a moderate price. They complained to the English agents, who unwisely interfered. Mohan Lal was ordered to wait upon Mulla Shakur, and to request him to release the traders. The result of this was a universal cry throughout the kingdom, that the English were killing the people by starvation. What wretched work was this? what miserable mismanagement? and how deluded must those men have been who thought it possible, by pursuing such a course, to conciliate an ignorant and barbarous people, and secure the permanence of Shah Shuja's reign? "After the outbreak of Kabul," says Mohan Lal, whose evidence on these matters must have weight, as that of an eyewitness, and of one who, from his position as servant of the East India Company, would not venture to distort the truth, "when I was concealed in the Persian quarters, I heard both the men and the women saying that the English enriched the grain and the grass-sellers, &c., whilst they reduced the chiefs to poverty and killed the poor by starvation."
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