Tsar Nicholas himself was the first to extend the olive branch. He did so when he came to Britain on a state visit in the summer of 1844. Queen Victoria, then aged 25, had expected her Russian guest to be little better than a savage, but found herself captivated by his striking good looks and graceful manners. ‘His profile is beautiful,’ she noted, ‘but the expression of his eyes is formidable and unlike anything I ever saw before.’ In his subsequent talks with Sir Robert Peel and the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, the Emperor assured them that he only wanted peace, and that he had no further territorial ambitions in Asia, and none whatsoever towards India. His principal concern was the future of the Ottoman Empire, or the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ as he called it. He professed to be deeply perturbed about what would happen when it broke up, something he judged to be imminent. But his real concern seemed to have more to do with ensuring that he got his share of the pieces when it did.
While Peel and Aberdeen were less convinced of the coming collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Nicholas found them sympathetic to his wish to avoid a free-for-all among the European powers, leading almost certainly to war, if it were to happen. Both sides also agreed on the desirability of maintaining the Sultan on his throne for as long as possible. Nicholas returned home under the impression that he had obtained an unequivocal commitment from Britain that, in the event of a crisis over Turkey, she would act in concert with him. To the British, however, the discussions, although most cordial, had produced little more than a vague statement of intent which could in no way be held to be binding on any future government. It was a misunderstanding which, in due course, would prove extremely costly to both sides.
In the meantime, while refraining from making any antagonistic or threatening moves towards one another’s Asiatic domains, then still separated by vast stretches of desert and mountain, the two powers set about consolidating their existing frontiers by subduing troublesome neighbours. The Russians pushed forward their line of fortresses across the lawless Kazakh Steppe as far as the banks of the Syr-Darya, northern twin of the Oxus. By 1853, these stretched from the Aral Sea to Ak-Mechet, 250 miles up river and towards the Central Asian heartland. Two small steamers for supplying these outposts were brought overland in sections and reassembled on the Aral Sea. The British were even more active during this period of détente. In 1843, following their humiliation in Afghanistan, they had seized Sind – ‘like a bully who has been kicked in the street and goes home to beat his wife in revenge,’ observed one critic. They next fought two minor but bloody wars against the Sikhs of the Punjab, who had become increasingly unruly since the death of Ranjit Singh, adding this large and valuable territory to their domains in 1849. The northern state of Kashmir was detached from the Punjab and placed under the control of a ruler considered to be amenable to Britain. These rearrangements gave British India a new neighbour in Dost Mohammed, now firmly back on his throne and showing himself to be cautiously friendly towards his former captors, whom he had apparently come to like during his exile among them.
Such then was the position of the two powers in Central Asia in 1853 when the détente so keenly sought by Tsar Nicholas suddenly collapsed. It had been showing signs of strain for some time. In 1848 revolutions had broken out simultaneously in a number of European capitals, including Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Prague and Budapest. ‘There is a general fight going on all over the Continent . . . between governors and governed, between law and disorder, between those who have and those who want to have,’ wrote Lord Palmerston, once more Foreign Secretary. Nicholas, who lived in perpetual fear of revolution at home, at once clamped down on the few freedoms which existed there. At the same time he dispatched an army under the able Paskievich to Hungary, which he believed to be the centre of the revolutionary movement and of a conspiracy against Russia. The uprising in Hungary was crushed, and its leaders executed. Nicholas had prevented the revolution from spreading to Russia, but had earned himself the enmity of liberals and others everywhere, as well as the title ‘the Gendarme of Europe’. When he wrote to Queen Victoria pointing out that only Britain and Russia had been spared from anarchy, and proposing that they join forces to fight it, he got no reply.
However, it was a quarrel in which Britain was not involved over the guardianship of the Christian sites of the Holy Land, then part of the Ottoman Empire, which finally led to the collapse often years of Anglo-Russian accord. The reasons for the squabble – between Russia, France and Turkey – are of no concern to us. But the ensuing crisis was to escalate to the point where Nicholas ordered his troops into the Sultan’s northern Balkan provinces, purportedly to protect the Christians there. Nicholas ignored an ultimatum from the Turks to withdraw, and once again the two nations were at war. The British and the French, determined to keep the Russians out of the Near East, allied themselves to the Sultan. Tsar Nicholas, who believed he had forged a special relationship with the British over the question of Turkey, realised too late that he had badly misjudged matters. The Crimean War, which no one really wanted and which could easily have been avoided, had begun.
The story of that bloody conflict is too familiar to need retelling here. Nor was it a part of the Great Game, being fought by large armies on the open battlefield, far from the grim deserts of Central Asia and the lonely passes leading down into India. Yet the ripples were soon to be felt by those responsible for India’s defence. For just as British hawks saw the war as an opportunity to prise the Russians from their Caucasian base, and thereby reduce the potential threat to India, there were Russian strategists who believed that a march on India would help speed their victory in the Crimea. Among the latter was Count Simonich’s successor at the Persian court, General Duhamel, who put forward a detailed invasion plan aimed at forcing Britain to switch troops to India from the Near Eastern theatre. Such an attack, he argued, need not involve a very large Russian force if the Afghans, and perhaps the Sikhs, could be enticed to join in by the promise of plunder and territorial gains. While the British regiments were manning the frontier, the ‘enemy within’, India’s vast native population, would require little encouragement to attack their masters in the rear.
There was nothing very new in Duhamel’s plan. After considering the various alternative routes, all of which had been pointed out long before by Kinneir and others, he settled for a crossing of the Caspian to Astrabad, to be followed by an overland march to Herat. This, he believed, offered the shortest and least exhausting route for the invading troops, since it avoided deserts, mountains and major rivers, not to mention warlike tribes, some or all of which barred the other approaches. The final thrust, which would be made by Duhamel’s hoped-for joint force of Russian, Persian and Afghan troops, would be launched from either Kabul or Kandahar. His own preference was for the former, since this led via the Khyber Pass to Lahore and Delhi, whose large native populations might be expected to throw in their lot with their ‘liberators’. In the event, the general’s plan was never put to the test. Already the war was beginning to go badly for the Russians, and no troops could be spared for such an adventure. Whether, in fact, it would ever have stood a chance of succeeding appears improbable. It seems highly unlikely that those two ancient adversaries, Persia and Afghanistan, would have agreed to forget their differences and join forces, let alone allow a Russian army to march across their domains. After all, they had no better reason to trust the Russians than they had the British. Even with such co-operation, moreover, the military authorities in Calcutta were confident that an invasion force could be destroyed. But Duhamel was right on one point. As the British were soon to discover, there was indeed an ‘enemy within’.
If the general’s plan achieved nothing for his own country, it was to provide British hawks with valuable political ammunition when word of it and another somewhat similar scheme leaked out. Here was damning evidence that St Petersburg, despite its frequent denials, still had designs on India. One cannot but be struck by the number of these invasion plans which somehow reached British ears over the years. It could well have occurred to the Russian military that there was profit to be gained from such leaks, since they obliged the British to garrison more troops in India than would otherwise have been necessary. After all, it was not only the British who were playing the Bolshaya Igra, the Great Game.
But if the British had their Achilles’ heel in India, the Russians had theirs in the Caucasus where the local Muslim tribes were still holding out fiercely against the might of the Tsar. Because of the demands of the war in the Crimea, however, the Russian forces in the Caucasus had been drastically reduced. This was the moment, urged the hawks in London and Calcutta, to play Britain’s trump card. Not only should arms be sent to the gallant Imam Shamyl and his followers, but also troops. For ever since the days of Urquhart, Long-worth and Bell, who had given them such encouragement, not to mention false hopes, the tribesmen had been begging for British help, while Shamyl had even written to Queen Victoria, though in vain. ‘An English corps operating in Georgia,’ observed one British commentator, ‘with the aid of Turkey and Persia, and backed by Shamyl and his hardy mountaineers, would certainly have driven the Russians back beyond the Caucasus.’ Others saw the war with Russia as a chance to strike at the Russian fortresses being built along the Syr-Darya. This would not involve the use of British troops at all, it was argued. Arms and advice supplied to the local tribal leaders would enable them to turn the tables on the isolated and weakened Russian posts on the steppe, ‘driving them back to the frontiers they occupied at the commencement of the century’, as one advocate put it.
However, just as St Petersburg had shied away from Duhamel’s plan, the British baulked at similar schemes directed against the Russians, although for different reasons. With the horrors of the Afghan adventure still fresh in everyone’s minds, there was an acute reluctance to meddle again in the affairs of the Muslim states of Asia, even by invitation. This cautious new approach was to become known as the doctrine of ‘masterly inactivity’, in sharp and obvious contrast to the aggressive ‘forward’ policy which, with such disastrous results in Afghanistan, had preceded it. Also the French were beginning to suspect that they had been dragged into the conflict in the Crimea in order to further British interests in the East, and London was most anxious to avoid doing anything which might appear to justify this suspicion. In fact, by now, the war was going very much in favour of the British and French. In September 1854 they had laid siege to Sebastopol, Russia’s great naval stronghold on the Black Sea, since it was considered that its capture and destruction would secure Turkey’s continued independence. The struggle was to last for 349 days and result in heavy casualties and much suffering on either side. But as the Russian surrender became inevitable, Tsar Nicholas, whose attack on Turkey had begun the war, sank deeper and deeper into despair. He finally died in the Winter Palace, from where he had personally commanded the Russian forces, on March 2, 1855. Officially the cause was said to be influenza, but many believed that he had taken poison rather than witness the defeat of his beloved army.
Following the surrender of Sebastopol, and a threat by Austria to join in against him, the new Tsar, Nicholas’s son Alexander, agreed to a preliminary peace settlement on February 1, 1856. This was finalised a few weeks later at the Congress of Paris, called to settle the entire Eastern Question. The principal aim of the victors was to keep the Russians out of the Near East, and the harshest terms imposed on the losers concerned the Black Sea area. All warships, naval bases and other fortifications were banned from its waters and shores. While applying equally to all nations, this obviously hit the Russians hardest. At the same time the Black Sea ports were to be opened to the merchant ships of all countries, a somewhat belated victory for David Urquhart, James Bell and others involved in the celebrated Vixen affair of twenty years earlier. The Russians also surrendered the mouth of the Danube, the captured Turkish towns of Batum and Kars, and the northern Balkan territories they had occupied, as well as renouncing claims to a religious protectorate over Christians living in the Sultan’s domains.
Inevitably, the hawks were dissatisfied, but Britain had achieved her main objectives. The Black Sea was now effectively neutralised, and Turkey’s integrity guaranteed by the leading European powers. Russia’s ambitions in Europe and the Near East had been blocked, and fifteen years were to pass before St Petersburg declared that it no longer considered itself bound by the Paris agreement, and began once again to build a powerful Black Sea fleet. Meanwhile, smouldering with resentment at their humiliation, the Russian generals once again turned their attention to the war against Shamyl and his followers in the Caucasus, determined this time to crush them once and for all. But if the British thought that their own immediate troubles were over, they were in for a disappointment. All of a sudden Afghanistan, the problem which would not go away, was back in the news.
On the outbreak of the Crimean War, the Shah of Persia, who had no great love for either the British or the Russians, found himself in a quandary over which side, if either, to ally himself to. He had hoped that, in exchange for his support, the British might help him to regain from the Russians his lost Caucasian territories. Instead they advised him to remain strictly neutral. Aware, however, that he was under strong pressure from the Russians, whom he greatly feared, to join in the war on their side by marching into eastern Turkey, the Indian government swiftly dispatched a warship to the Persian Gulf as a warning. It worked, and Persia remained neutral throughout the war. Russian machinations continued, however. In the hope of fomenting a war between Britain and Persia, St Petersburg worked on the Shah to lay claim once again to Herat, so crucial to India’s defence, while the British were involved in the Crimea. Finally he was persuaded, believing that the British were less concerned now over Herat’s ownership. By the time he set out, though, it was too late for the move to be of any benefit to the Russians, for the outcome of the war in the Crimea had already been decided.
Herat fell to the Persians on October 25, 1856, after only a brief siege. The news, which took a whole month to reach India, caught the British by surprise, despite the warnings of Dost Mohammed in Kabul that the Persians were planning such an adventure. He had asked for arms and other assistance from India so that he could repel any Persian incursions into Afghanistan, but in vain. For London, while instructing the Governor-General to maintain cordial relations with Kabul, ordered him to avoid at all costs interfering in the country’s internal affairs. By the time it changed its mind it was too late. The Persians, nonetheless, had to be driven out, and quickly, lest Herat become an outpost for intrigue against India, or ultimately a base for invasion. For it had not been forgotten that the Russians had a long-standing agreement with Teheran under which they were entitled to establish consulates anywhere in the Shah’s domains that they wished. The British had two options. Either they could march an army, with Dost Mohammed’s agreement, through Afghanistan, and drive the Persians back across the frontier, or they could dispatch a naval task force to the Gulf and bombard the Shah’s ports until he saw sense and withdrew.
The current Governor-General, Lord Canning, was strongly opposed to forward policies – ‘especially for India, which cannot raise the money to pay for them’ – and particularly averse to sending troops into Afghanistan, even as part of a joint force shared with Dost Mohammed. ‘I believe it to be impossible’, he wrote, ‘for an English army to show itself in that country without at once alienating the common herd of the people, who do not care a straw for Herat but who have a lively recollection of 1838 and all that followed.’ It was decided therefore to send a mixed naval and military force to the Gulf, as had been done to good effect when the Persians had laid siege to Herat seventeen years earlier. At the same time a state of war was proclaimed by the Government of India. A formal declaration of war by Britain would have meant the recall of Parliament, then in recess, and Palmerston, now Prime Minister, knew that this recourse to gunboat diplomacy would prove unpopular, even among his Cabinet, so soon after the costly war with Russia. Indeed, when news of the expedition reached Britain there were anti-war demonstrations in a number of cities there.
After a brief but intensive bombardment, Bushire surrendered to the British on December 10, 1856. As the Union Jack was raised over the city the British troops gave a resounding cheer. Believing this to be the signal for a massacre, the defenders and other inhabitants fled into the desert. However, there was no ill-feeling among the attackers towards the Persians. The real culprits, most felt, were elsewhere. As one British gunner put it to his officer when the bombardment commenced: ‘That’s one in the eye for the Russians, sir!’ But British belligerency did not have the immediate effect which Palmerston had hoped for. Two further engagements proved necessary before the Shah bowed to the inevitable, and agreed once again to withdraw from Herat, this time abandoning all claims to it. This was most fortunate for the British in India, who at that moment found themselves facing an internal upheaval which threatened their very survival.
The Indian Mutiny had been incubating for some time, though few had foreseen it. Among those who did was Eldred Pottinger. Not long before his death he wrote to a friend: ‘If the Government does not take some decided steps to recover the affections of the Army, I really think a single spark will blow the sepoys into mutiny.’ However, most of the British in India were convinced that the native soldier was, as one officer put it, ‘perfectly happy with his lot, a cheerful, good-natured fellow, simple and trustworthy.’ Details of the Mutiny, which broke out on May 10, 1857, at Meerut, are beyond the scope of this narrative. Like the Crimean War and the Persian Gulf expedition, it was not part of the Great Game, even if some hawks suspected Russian or Persian agents of having a hand in it. Indeed, the Persians were reported to be openly boasting of this. But even if the Russians were not involved, they did not hesitate to try to take advantage of it.
In the spring of 1858, Nikolai Khanikov, a Russian agent, crossed the Caspian and reached Herat, from where he intended to proceed secretly to Kabul and make overtures on behalf of his government to Dost Mohammed. As it happened, the Afghan ruler had just concluded an alliance with the British, towards whom he was feeling particularly well disposed since they had ejected the Persians from Afghanistan without so much as setting foot there themselves. He no doubt remembered too the painful consequences for himself, twenty years earlier, of his dallying with Captain Vitkevich, the last Tsarist agent to visit Kabul. And now he had witnessed the defeat of the Russians on the Crimean battlefield by the British and their allies, not to mention the failure of St Petersburg, for the second time in eighteen years, to come to the assistance of its Persian friends. There was little question in Dost Mohammed’s mind as to which of the two rivals was the more powerful, and therefore worth remaining on good terms with. The one thing he most desired, moreover, was Herat, which the Russians were never likely to bestow upon him as this would finish them for ever with the Persians.
Khanikov was sent packing, without even seeing Kabul, despite the wild rumours then circulating in the capital that the British in India had all been slaughtered. Considering also the intense pressure that Dost Mohammed found himself under from the more fanatical of his followers to be allowed to join the uprising against the infidels, the British had good reason to feel profound gratitude towards the ruler they had once removed forcibly from his throne. For at a time when they were fighting for their very survival against the ‘enemy within’, the intervention of the Afghans would have been a stab in the back which would most likely have proved decisive. Dost Mohammed was to receive his reward some years later. In 1863, when he led his troops against Herat, the British raised no objection. They would have preferred the country to remain divided, lest under a less friendly successor to the ageing Dost Mohammed a united Afghanistan should prove a threat to India. As it was, just nine days after his victory, the old warrior died, happy in the knowledge that he had restored order to his kingdom, and regained control over this long-lost province. But what he did not know was that history would repeat itself with uncanny precision, and that within fifteen years Britain and Afghanistan would be at war again. A lot, however, was destined to happen before that.
The suppression of the Mutiny, which had been achieved by the spring of 1858, was to have the most far-reaching consequences for India. It was to lead to a massive shake-up in the way the country was ruled, and to mark the end of the East India Company’s two and a half centuries of sway over 250 million people. At the time of the outbreak, India was still nominally run from the Company’s headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the City of London, albeit with ever-increasing interference from Downing Street and Whitehall as improved communications made this easier. In August 1858, in an attempt to resolve the deep resentments and antagonisms which had led to the Mutiny, the British government passed the India Act, abolishing the powers of the Company and transferring all authority to the Crown. A new Cabinet post – that of Secretary of State for India – was created, and the old Board of Control, together with its powerful President, was abolished. In place of the Board an Advisory Council of fifteen members was appointed, eight of whom were chosen by the Crown and the others, initially, by the Company. At the same time the Governor-General was given the additional title of Viceroy of India, being the personal representative of the Queen.
There were radical changes too in the organisation of India’s armed forces, then forming one of the largest armies in the world. A fresh start was obviously called for to restore the confidence of the sepoys in their officers and vice versa. The higher ranks of the Company’s Army had long been filled with ageing, time-serving officers (of whom General Elphinstone had been merely one), in whose abilities and leadership the troops had little confidence. Worse, during the disastrous retreat from Kabul, many of the officers had deserted their men so as to make their own escape, leaving them to a chilling fate at the hands of the Afghan soldiery. Significantly, those native regiments which had fought in Afghanistan were among the first to join the Mutiny. Now, just as the East India Company ceased to exist, so too did its once formidable army. The regiments, both European and native, were transferred to the newly formed Indian Army, which was under the ultimate authority of the War Office in London. All artillery was henceforth placed under European control.
Altogether the Mutiny had been a close-run thing, and the nightmare experienced by the British during it served only to intensify their paranoia over Russian interference in India’s affairs. Nonetheless, the enemy within had been crushed, and India was to remain relatively quiet for the rest of the century. But beyond the frontiers it was a very different matter. By defeating the Russians in the Crimea, the British had hoped not merely to keep them out of the Near East, but also to halt their expansion into Central Asia. As things turned out, it was to have quite the opposite effect.