ill-fated and rebellious envoy, but John Palmer, a friend of the horse-vet and one of the most powerful merchants in Calcutta, was determined to get to the truth. From official documents, it appears that Palmer got wind of Harlan’s plans through Captain Wade, and commissioned him to find out exactly what had happened to Moorcroft, and if possible to retrieve his plundered property. One historian has estimated that Harlan was provided with between 50,000 and 60,000 rupees to retrieve Moorcroft’s effects, a very substantial addition to his war chest.
The recruits to Harlan’s expanding army came in a variety of shapes and sizes: Muslims and Hindus, a number of Afghans, and even Akalis, Sikh fundamentalists who were among the most ferocious and least reliable of mercenaries, as apt to kill their commanders as the enemy. Dr McGregor was unimpressed with the quality of these troops, and Harlan himself was well aware that he was employing a band of cut-throats loyal to his money and little else. At some expense, therefore, he recruited a troop of twenty-four sepoys, native Indian soldiers who had served in the Bengal army on whom he could place some reliance. Another former Company soldier, ‘a faithful hindoo of the Brahmin caste’ by the name of Drigpal, was appointed jemadar, or native officer in command of the sepoys.
By the autumn of 1827 Harlan had assembled about a hundred fighting men, and calculated that more could be impressed en route. ‘The time for my departure drew near,’ he wrote. ‘My camp was pitched in the vicinity of the cantonments, my followers were all entertained [employed] and the American flag before my tent door signalised the independence of the occupant.’
He sent a message to Mullah Shakur, informing him that the army was ready to depart, and the American was summoned back to the king’s garden for another private meeting, at which plans of action and routes of travel were decided upon, and Shujah provided him with letters which might prove useful to him. The vizier also handed over a large sum of money in gold and silver coin, to defray Harlan’s expenses and, most important, for bribery once he reached Kabul. When this was added to the funds he had saved from his Company service and the fee for finding Moorcroft’s property, Harlan believed he now had sufficient funds to start a revolution.
The date of departure was set for 7 November 1827, and as he prepared to strike camp, Harlan felt a twinge of melancholy. He was ambivalent about the British rulers of India, but he had made some close friends among them, admiring the sheer resilience and energy of men like Claude Wade. ‘A shadow of regret passed like a fleeting tide when I looked back upon the happy period of my residence in British India, and concern for the future began to crowd upon me in the anticipation of dangers unknown.’ Those dangers could hardly have been more extreme, for Harlan had set himself a series of monumental tasks: to unseat the incumbent ruler of a country famed for its savagery, at the behest of an exile with the habit of lopping off bits of his employees; to spy for the British (who would disown him completely if he was caught); and to find the property of a man who had probably been murdered by slave-dealing Uzbeks. In his spare time he intended to write a treatise on natural history.
William Moorcroft had failed to return from the wilderness despite taking with him the Company’s official seal, a unit of heavily-armed Gurkhas, two light artillery pieces and two European companions. Harlan was now proposing to follow him, with only a motley group of mercenaries and a bag of gold, on a quest inviting disaster and an exceptionally messy death. And as an American, he had no imperial power to fall back on in case of difficulty. While his future appeared uncertain, and in all probability brief, he viewed the coming trials with almost morbid pleasure: ‘I had just stepped within the threshold of active life, was alone in the world, far removed from friends and home, inadequately acquainted with the language of the country I was about to visit, and surrounded by selfish and deceitful and irresponsible people in the persons of my domestics and guards – consisting of Avghauns, Hindus and Musslemen of India – with all the world in boundless prospect and none with whom to advise or consult. Completely alone, companionless and solitary, I plunged into the indistinct expanse of futurity, the unknown and mysterious, which like the obscurity of fate is invoked in the deep darkness of time.’
Two days before the army was due to depart, a most peculiar figure appeared outside Harlan’s tent and demanded an audience. Tubby, barrel-chested and at least fifty years old, the man was missing his left arm from above the elbow, one eye was partly clouded over, the other glittered with intelligence, and both were crossed in an alarming manner. The fellow’s military bearing was complemented by a pair of enormous moustaches and a mighty curved sabre, or talwar, dangling from his belt. After offering a crisp salute with his remaining hand he launched into a bizarre prepared speech: ‘I have served His Majesty by flood and field, through good and evil fortune, to the footstool of the throne and the threshold of the jail. For twenty years have I been a slave to the king’s service in which I lost my left hand and had nothing but the stump of my arm to exhibit in lieu of honours and wealth and dignities, which the worthless have borne off in triumph, and I am still the unrewarded, the faithful, the brave, the famous Khan Gool Khan, Rossiladar, commander of a thousand men, fierce as lions, yesterday in the service of Shah Shujah, may he live forever.’ Finally, he got to the point: ‘Here I am in the Saheb’s service. May his house flourish, for the future I am his purchased slave and respect even the dog that licks his feet!’
Once Gul Khan had regained his breath he explained that he was a Rohillah, a member of the Afghan tribe whose horse-trading enterprises in India had led to their establishing a number of small states along the north India trading routes. The Rohillahs were expert horsemen, and famous as mercenaries. Gul Khan announced that he had served for years as a soldier under the banner of Shah Shujah. ‘He had wandered many years with His Majesty, [and] had followed the fortunes of the ex-king when he fled from the prison to which Ranjeet Singh, after securing the Koh-i-Noor, had ignobly confined Shujah who was then his guest, had traversed the great Himalaya mountains when the royal fugitive, to escape the danger of recapture, fled from Lahore through the Kashmir and penetrating into Tibet, threaded the intricate mazes of those deep glens and unknown valleys, crossing pass after pass over mountainous routes covered with heavy forest or eternal snows and scarcely inhabited by man, the redoubt of the hyena, the leopard and the wolf, braving the rapacious brutes in his flight from the still more ferocious creature man!’
Since Shujah’s arrival in Ludhiana, Gul Khan and his fellow Rohillahs had worked as mercenaries (or, more accurately, as freelance bandits) serving various princes in the surrounding areas. Declaring himself ‘thoroughly acquainted with the country I had before me’, the great Gul Khan now offered his services as risaldar, or native commander. Harlan had come across Rohillah mercenaries before, and noted sardonically: ‘The versatility of service for which the Rohillahs are remarkable gives them pre-eminent claims as traitors to their salt, and renders them useful but dangerous and unfaithful agents.’
Mulling this singular job application, Harlan enquired how Gul Khan had lost his arm. At this the talkative Rohillah became taciturn, muttering vaguely that his injury had been ‘sustained upon the field of battle’. ‘He seemed averse to talk much and openly on the subject however voluble upon other matters,’ wrote Harlan. ‘I afterwards heard there were several versions concerning Gool Khan’s handless limb, and some ascribed that misfortune to the royal displeasure.’
‘I had then no suspicion of his honour or honesty,’ wrote Harlan, who would later come to doubt both. There was no time to substantiate Gul Khan’s claims, and for all his odd appearance he seemed the ideal lieutenant, his band of Rohillahs a useful addition to the ranks. ‘This was an enterprise requiring the perseverance of a fearless and determined spirit and a knowledge of the country,’ wrote Harlan. ‘Of the two first requirements I could boast the possession. The other essential was attained by enlisting individuals who knew the language, the people and the routes. These were present through Gool Khan, and he was forthwith installed as leader of the mercenary band who followed my fortunes.’
On 7 November 1827 the inhabitants of Ludhiana turned out to witness Harlan’s departure: with Old Glory fluttering overhead, an American in a cocked hat rode out of town on a thoroughbred
