At the time that these events took place, Chinese Turkestan was shown on both British and Russian maps as a vast white blank, with the locations of oasis towns like Kashgar and Yarkand only approximately indicated. Cut off from the rest of Central Asia by towering mountain ranges, and from China by the huge expanse of the Taklamakan desert, it was one of the least known areas on earth. Centuries earlier the flourishing Silk Road, which linked imperial China to distant Rome, had passed through it, bringing great prosperity to its oases. But this traffic had long ago ceased, and most of the oases had been swallowed up by the desert. The region had then sunk back into virtual oblivion.
The Taklamakan desert, which dominates the region, had always enjoyed an ill reputation among travellers, and over the years a sad procession of men – merchants, soldiers and Buddhist pilgrims – had left their bones there after losing their way between the widely scattered oases. Sometimes entire caravans had been known to vanish into it without trace. It is no surprise to learn that Taklamakan, in the local Uighur tongue, means ‘Go in – and you won’t come out’. As a result very few Europeans had ever been to this remote region, for there was little to attract them to it.
Chinese Turkestan, or Sinkiang as it is today called, had long been part of the Chinese Empire. However, the central authorities’ hold over it had always been tenuous, for the Muslim population had nothing in common with their Manchu rulers and everything in common with their ethnic cousins in Bokhara, Khokand and Khiva, lying on the far side of the Pamirs. As a result, in the early 1860s, a violent revolt had broken out among the Muslims against their overlords. Chinese cities were burned to the ground and their inhabitants massacred. The insurrection, which had begun in the east, spread quickly westwards until the whole of Turkestan was up in arms. It was at that moment that a remarkable Muslim adventurer named Yakub Beg, claiming direct descent from Tamerlane, arrived on the scene. Veteran of a number of engagements against the Russians, in which he had acquitted himself with courage and distinction (having five bullet wounds to show for it), he was now in the service of Kashgar’s former Muslim ruler, then living in exile in Khokand. It was the latter’s hope to drive out the infidel Chinese and reclaim his throne.
In January 1865, accompanied by a small force of armed men, Yakub Beg and his patron crossed the mountains to Kashgar to find it in bloody turmoil, with rival factions fighting among themselves for possession of the throne, as well as against the Chinese. But within two years, by means of his own charismatic leadership and European tactics which he had picked up from the Russians, Yakub Beg had managed to wrest Kashgar and Yarkand from both the Chinese and his local rivals. The two Chinese governors, it is said, chose to blow themselves up rather than surrender to the Muslims. According to one colourful, but unsubstantiated, account, Kashgar’s defenders had eaten their own wives and children before submitting, having first devoured every four-legged creature in the city, including cats and rats.
After ruthlessly pushing aside his patron, and making Kashgar his capital, Yakub Beg declared himself ruler of Kashgaria, as the liberated area now became called. From here he proceeded to fight his way eastwards, taking more and more of Chinese Turkestan under his wing. Before long his rule was to extend to Urumchi, Turfan and Hami, the latter lying nearly 1,000 miles from Kashgar. In addition to his own troops from Khokand, his authority was maintained by means of mercenaries recruited from the local ethnic groups and tribes, including Afghans and even a few Chinese, not to mention a handful of Indian Army deserters who had found their way across the mountains. So far as the Muslim population was concerned, Yakub Beg’s expulsion of the Chinese from the region brought few, if any, benefits, as it merely replaced one unwelcome ruler with another. They found themselves, like the vanquished Chinese, the victims of plunder, massacre and rape at the hands of his rag-bag army. As each oasis town and village capitulated, moreover, Yakub Beg’s secret police and tax-collectors moved in to terrorise and squeeze them.
Such was the situation in the former Chinese territory when, in the autumn of 1868, an adventurous British traveller named Robert Shaw crossed the mountains northwards, intent on being the first of his countrymen to reach the mysterious cities of Kashgar and Yarkand. It was no secret to him that one Russian officer, of Kazakh origin, had preceded him there in the guise of a trader, bringing back valuable military and commercial intelligence. But that was before Yakub Beg’s seizure of power, and Shaw was convinced that Kashgaria now offered great commercial prospects to enterprising British merchants. Shaw had originally intended to be a regular soldier, and had passed first into Sandhurst from Marlborough. However, in his youth he had been struck down with rheumatic fever, and persistent ill-health finally forced him to abandon any hopes of a military career. What he lacked in bodily fitness, he more than made up for in determination. At the age of 20 he had moved to India, taking up residence in the Himalayan foothills as a tea-planter. It was as a result of talking to native traders who had visited Chinese Turkestan that he became persuaded that a great untapped market lay there, especially for Indian tea now that supplies from China had been halted by Yakub Beg’s conquest of the region.
Journeys beyond India’s frontiers were severely frowned upon by the authorities in Calcutta, and British officers and other officials were banned from attempting them. The lesson of Conolly and Stoddart had not been forgotten. As the Viceroy put it: ‘If they lose their lives we cannot avenge them, and so lose credit.’ He also felt that they tended to do more harm than good, though, as will be seen, he made an exception for Indian agents carrying out specific tasks for the government, since they could be more readily disowned. Robert Shaw, however, was not a government employee, and therefore felt bound by no such restrictions. On September 20, 1868, having sent a native messenger ahead to inform Yakub Beg’s frontier officials of his corning, and of his friendly intentions, he set out from Leh with a caravan laden with tea and other merchandise.
What Shaw was unaware of was that following close behind him was a rival, also an Englishman. This was a young ex-army officer named George Hayward, who had a passion for exploration and whose one-man expedition had been financed by the Royal Geographical Society in London. He also enjoyed the vigorous support of Sir Henry Rawlinson, who was shortly to become the Society’s President. Officially Hayward was there to explore the passes between Ladakh and Kashgaria, but the close personal interest taken in his journey by the Russophobe Rawlinson suggests that there may also have been a political motive behind it. Indeed, the dividing line at that time between exploration and intelligence-gathering was often extremely narrow. But whatever the truth about Hayward, both men were soon to find themselves inextricably caught up in the Great Game.
The first that Shaw knew of his rival’s presence was when he received word that an Englishman, disguised as an Afghan and travelling light and fast, was following only a few days behind his own slow-moving caravan. Shaken by the news, he hastily penned a note to the stranger asking who he was and urging him to turn back lest he endanger the prospects of his own expedition, in which he had invested so much. Hayward, a man every bit as determined as Shaw, refused. However, the two rivals agreed to meet over Hayward’s camp-fire to discuss the situation. In fact they were not really in competition, for whereas Shaw’s objective was principally commercial, Hayward was there to explore and map the passes. Hayward had no particular wish to take part in a race for Kashgar or Yarkand, merely wishing to make them his base for map-making forays into the Pamirs, then still totally unknown. He therefore agreed to give Shaw a two-week start while he explored some of the passes and river gorges of the Karakorams on the Indian side of the frontier.
Nonetheless, although they were often no more than a mile apart, their meeting on that bitterly cold night was to be their last for many months. For each strongly resented the other’s presence, and from then on behaved as though he were not there. Indeed, Shaw comforted himself with the thought that very soon Hayward would not be there. For while he had been careful to send generous gifts ahead to Yakub Beg’s frontier officials, with the hint of more to follow, he knew that Hayward had no such gifts to dispense, and had not even alerted them to his coming. Moreover, Hayward had no reason that would satisfy Yakub Beg for wishing to enter his domains. Almost certainly he would be turned back, if not arrested.
Shaw reached Yarkand, where he was cordially received, in the middle of December. But two weeks later, to his intense annoyance, he was joined there by Hayward. He had seriously underestimated his rival’s resourcefulness and determination. After completing his explorations in the Karakorams, Hayward had talked his way past the border guards by assuring them that he was part of Shaw’s caravan – or so the latter claimed afterwards – and was on his way to catch it up. In Yarkand the two men studiously ignored one another, occupying separate lodgings, while keeping a close watch on the other’s movements. For their part, the authorities maintained a wary eye on both of them while awaiting further instructions from Kashgar, 100 miles further on. Shaw’s careful preparations, not to mention his generous gifts, appear to have paid off, for on January 3, 1869, he was officially informed that Yakub Beg would receive him in his palace at Kashgar. Eight days later, after leaving his rival kicking his heels in frustration at Yarkand, Shaw saw in the distance across the treeless plain the great mud walls of the capital – the first Englishman ever to do so. Beyond it, on the horizon, rose the snow-capped Pamirs, while to the east stretched the endless sands of the Taklamakan. Soon afterwards he was met by an armed escort who led him and his caravan through the gates of the city to the quarters which had been prepared for him. Yakub Beg, he was told, was expecting to see him the next morning.
At the appointed hour, followed by thirty or forty servants bearing the gifts he had brought, including examples of the latest models of British firearms, he set off for the palace for his audience with the King – as Yakub Beg now styled himself. After passing through a large but silent crowd which lined the route, he entered the gateway. There followed a succession of large courtyards, each lined with rank upon rank of seated guards and attendants, all clad in brilliantly coloured silk robes. They sat so still, Shaw noted in his diary that night, ‘that they seemed to form part of the architecture of the building’. Instead of firearms some of the guards carried bows and quivers full of arrows. ‘The whole effect was curious and novel,’ he wrote. ‘The numbers, the solemn stillness, and the gorgeous colouring gave a sort of unreality to this assemblage of thousands.’ Finally he and his escort reached the royal audience chamber in the heart of the palace. Here, seated on a rug, was a solitary figure. Shaw realised at once that this was the redoubtable Yakub Beg, descendant of Tamerlane, and conqueror of Chinese Turkestan.
‘I advanced alone,’ Shaw recalled, ‘and when I drew near he half rose to his knees and held out both hands to me.’ Mindful of the costly error in oriental etiquette committed by Colonel Stoddart at Bokhara, Shaw had briefed himself thoroughly on the courtesies of Yakub Beg’s court. After grasping the latter’s hands in the manner of Central Asia, he was invited by him to be seated. Yakub Beg, who Shaw was relieved to see was now smiling, began by asking him about his journey. In replying, Shaw first expressed regret for his poor Persian, but Yakub Beg assured him that he was able to understand it. Recalling that his own country had fought the Chinese three times, the Englishman congratulated Yakub Beg on his victory over them, and on re-establishing a Muslim kingdom in Turkestan. By now the ruler had signalled his visitor to sit closer, and the courtesies being over, Shaw explained the reason for his coming. He was there, he said, to try to open up trade between their two countries, especially the traffic in tea, which was his own particular business. He was not a representative of the British government, however, and he apologised for the modesty of the gifts he had brought. In fact, these had been chosen with the utmost care. Laid out on large trays, they were a dazzling sight, and caused Yakub Beg’s eyes to widen in satisfaction.
To allow his host ample time to inspect the gifts, which were intended to whet his appetite for a regular supply of British goods, Shaw suggested that more detailed discussions might be conducted at a subsequent meeting. It was a proposal that Yakub Beg happily fell in with. However, when the Englishman said he thought they might need an interpreter next time, because of the inadequacy of his Persian, his host replied: ‘Between you and me no third person is requisite. Friendship requires no interpreter.’ With that he stretched out his hand and gave Shaw’s a powerful squeeze, declaring: ‘Now enjoy yourself for a few days. Consider this place and all it contains as your own, and on the third day we will have another talk.’ It would be a much longer one, he assured his visitor, and others would follow. Finally he summoned an attendant who arrived bearing a magnificent satin robe which Shaw was helped into.
That night Shaw noted in his diary with some satisfaction: ‘The King dismissed me very graciously.’ After so effusive a welcome, he might have been forgiven for believing that he had hit it off with the wily Yakub Beg, and that he had stolen a march on the Russians, who were known to have been actively pursuing the trade of Chinese Turkestan before its seizure by its present ruler. Already Shaw could see his dream of tea caravans streaming northwards across the passes coming true. After all, Kashgar’s ancient trading links with China had been severed, and Yakub Beg badly needed new friends and commercial partners. It was no secret that his relations with St Petersburg were anything but cordial, for by driving out the Chinese he had brought to naught the special trading concessions obtained by Ignatiev for Russian merchants under the Treaty of Peking. It was strongly rumoured in Kashgar, moreover, that the Russians had moved their troops up to the frontier with a view to wresting the territory from its new ruler. What better ally could Yakub Beg want than Great Britain, which had been victorious in war against both Russia and China?
It was only as the days passed and there was no further word from Yakub Beg that Shaw began to feel less sure and to wonder what was going on. The days soon stretched to weeks, and Shaw found himself pondering gloomily on the fate of Conolly and Stoddart at Bokhara and asking himself whether he might not be being held as a hostage or privileged prisoner of some kind. Although most courteously treated, and provided with everything he asked for, he found that his movements were more and more restricted, until he was not even allowed to leave his quarters, let alone depart from Kashgar. Despite this, however, he did not waste his time. He had numerous visitors, and from them he endeavoured to glean as much political and other intelligence concerning Yakub Beg’s rule as possible. He learned, for instance, that until his arrival virtually nothing had been known in Kashgar of the British in India, let alone of their power and influence in Asia. Hitherto it had been thought that they were merely vassals of the Maharajah of neighbouring Kashmir – very likely a piece of Russian disinformation.
He also learned at this time of the arrival in the town of two other travellers. One was his rival George Hayward, who had finally received permission to visit Kashgar, only to find that he had merely exchanged house arrest in Yarkand for house arrest there. Clearly Yakub Beg wanted to keep a closer eye on him. Like Shaw, he was being well treated, though he was guarded day and night, for in Yarkand he had made a brief but unauthorised foray from his quarters which had caused the authorities there considerable embarrassment. It was not long before he and Shaw, using trusted couriers, managed to make contact with one another and maintain an irregular but secret correspondence.
The other new arrival was something of a mystery. The first that Shaw knew of his presence was when he received a note from him, written in English, in which he made two rather curious requests. Signing himself simply Mirza, he claimed that he had been sent to Kashgar from India (by whom precisely he did not say) to conduct a clandestine survey of the region. He begged Shaw for the loan of a watch, explaining that his own was broken and that he desperately needed one in order to complete the astronomical observations essential to his task. For the same reason, he said, he needed to know the exact date by the European calendar. Mystified as to who he was, and fearing that he might be an agent provocateur sent by Yakub Beg to test him, Shaw decided to have nothing to do with him. ‘I have grave doubts of his genuineness,’ he noted in his diary, adding that were the man found to be in possession of a watch traceable to him this would cast dangerous suspicion upon himself. Shaw therefore sent the mysterious newcomer a verbal message explaining regretfully that he had no spare watch. In this way he avoided even having to reveal the date to the stranger.
Unbeknown to Shaw, the man was perfectly genuine. His full name was Mirza Shuja, and he was doing precisely what he claimed. An Indian Muslim in the service of the British Indian authorities, he had left Kabul the previous year and had made his way in mid-winter across the Pamirs. It had been a cruel journey, which he had been lucky to survive. Nonetheless he had managed to carry out his orders, which were to survey the route between Afghanistan and Kashgaria. His principal task in Kashgar, apart from generally keeping his eyes and ears open, was to try to fix its exact position on the map. It was something which could not be done without a watch, an instrument then unobtainable in Kashgar. He could not believe his luck therefore when he learned that an Englishman had arrived in Yakub Beg’s capital shortly before him. Shaw’s abrupt brush-off must thus have come as a cruel blow to one who risked so much for his British masters, and who would eventually give his life for them. But then Mirza Shuja was no ordinary man, for he belonged to an elite group of hand-picked and highly trained Indians known as the ‘Pundits’.
The idea of using native explorers to carry out clandestine surveys of the lawless regions beyond India’s frontiers had arisen as a result of the Viceroy’s strict ban on British officers venturing there. Because of this the Survey of India, which had the task of providing the government with maps of the entire sub-continent and surrounding regions, found itself greatly hampered when it came to mapping northern Afghanistan, Turkestan and Tibet. Then a young officer working for the Survey, Captain Thomas Montgomerie of the Royal Engineers, hit upon a brilliant solution. Why not, he asked his superiors, send native explorers trained in secret surveying techniques into these forbidden regions? They were far less likely to be detected than a European, however good the latter’s disguise. If they were unfortunate enough to be discovered, moreover, it would be less politically embarrassing to the authorities than if a British officer was caught red-handed making maps in these highly sensitive and dangerous parts.
Surprisingly perhaps, in view of the British and Indian governments’ determination not to become entangled in Central Asia, Montgomerie’s bold plan was approved, and over the next few years a number of Indian explorers, including Mirza Shuja, were dispatched in great secrecy across the frontier. All of them were hillmen, carefully chosen for their exceptional intelligence and resourcefulness. Because discovery, or even suspicion, would have spelt instant death, their existence and activities had to be kept as secret as possible. Even within the Survey of India they were known merely by a number or a cryptonym. They were trained personally by Montgomerie at Dehra Dun, the Survey’s headquarters in the Himalayan foothills. Some of the techniques and equipment he devised were extremely ingenious.
Montgomerie first trained his men, through exhaustive practice, to take a pace of known length which would remain constant whether they walked uphill, downhill or on the level. Next he taught them ways of keeping a precise but discreet count of the number of such paces taken during a day’s march. This enabled them to measure immense distances with remarkable accuracy and without arousing suspicion. Often they travelled as Buddhist pilgrims, many of whom regularly crossed the passes to visit the holy sites of the ancient Silk Road. Every Buddhist carried a rosary of 108 beads on which to count his prayers, and also a small wood and metal prayer-wheel which he spun as he walked. Both of these Montgomerie turned to his advantage. From the former he removed eight beads, not enough to be noticed, but leaving a mathematically convenient 100. At every hundredth pace the Pundit would automatically slip one bead. Each complete circuit of the rosary thus represented 10,000 paces.
The total for the day’s march, together with any other discreet observations, had somehow to be logged somewhere safe from prying eyes. It was here that the prayer-wheel, with its copper cylinder, proved invaluable. For concealed in this, in place of the usual hand-written scroll of prayers, was a roll of blank paper. This served as a log-book, which could easily be got at by removing the top of the cylinder, and some of which are still preserved in the Indian State Archives. Then there was the problem of a compass, for the Pundit was required to take regular bearings as he journeyed. Montgomerie decided to conceal this in the lid of the prayer-wheel. Thermometers, which were needed for calculating altitudes, were hidden in the tops of pilgrims’ staves. Mercury, essential for setting an artificial horizon when taking sextant readings, was hidden in cowrie shells and poured out into a pilgrim’s begging bowl when required. Concealed pockets were added to the Pundits’ clothing, and false bottoms, in which sextants could be hidden, were built into the chests which most native travellers carried. All this work was carried out in the Survey of India’s workshops at Dehra Dun under Montgomerie’s supervision.
The Pundits were also thoroughly trained in the art of disguise and in the use of cover stories. For in the lawless lands beyond the frontier their safety would depend on just how convincingly they could play the part of holy-man, pilgrim or Himalayan trader. Their disguise and cover had to stand the test of months of travelling, often in the closest intimacy with genuine pilgrims and traders. Some were away for years. One became the first Asiatic to be awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s gold medal, having contributed ‘a greater amount of positive knowledge to the map of Asia than any other individual of our time’. At least two never returned, while a third was sold into slavery, although he eventually escaped. In all, their clandestine journeys were to provide a wealth of geographical intelligence over some twenty years which Montgomerie and his fellow cartographers at Dehra Dun used to fill in many of the no-go areas on the British maps of Central Asia.
Just what drove men like Mirza Shuja to face such hardships and extreme dangers for their imperial masters has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps it was the inspirational leadership of Montgomerie, who took such a pride in their individual achievements, and who looked upon them as his sons. Or possibly it was the knowledge that they belonged to an elite, for each was aware that he had been hand-picked for this great task. Or maybe Montgomerie had managed to imbue them with his own patriotic determination to fill in the blanks on the Great Game map before the Russians did. In an earlier book, Trespassers on the Roof of the World, I have described some of the Pundits’ more prodigious feats of exploration, which I shall not attempt to retell here. Sadly, very little is known of these men as individuals, for none of them left memoirs of any kind. However, it is in Kipling’s masterpiece Kim, whose characters so clearly come from the shadowy world of Captain Montgomerie, that they have their just memorial.
In Kashgar, in the spring of 1869, neither Shaw nor Hayward had any idea of this. Mirza, the mysterious Indian, they learned, had been arrested and chained to a heavy log. More ominously for Shaw, Yakub Beg had been enquiring whether he and the Indian had been in communication, and whether he still had in his possession the two watches with which he was known to have arrived. Both he and Hayward were becoming increasingly perturbed as they received no further word from Yakub Beg, for it was now nearly three months since Shaw’s audience with the ruler. Although both men were well treated, enquiries put to court officials produced no satisfactory explanation for this long silence. In fact, if they did but know it, there was a very good reason for Yakub Beg’s procrastination – the Russians.
Having fought against them in the past, Yakub Beg was aware that his mighty northern neighbour represented an infinitely greater threat to his throne than the Chinese, whom he had defeated without much difficulty. He also knew that their troops were poised on the frontier, not many days’ march from Kashgar. Altogether they represented a more immediate priority than his two British visitors, who could quite happily be kept on ice for the time being. For its part, St Petersburg was in something of a quandary over Yakub Beg. Not only was it worried by the prospect of Kashgar becoming a rallying-point for anti-Russian feeling in Central Asia, but with British help and encouragement the Muslim adventurer might even try to launch a crusade aimed at driving the Russians out of their newly acquired territories. The hawks were impatient to invade Kashgaria and place it under permanent Russian rule, while time was still on their side. Anxious not to allow this promising new market to slip from its grasp, St Petersburg was sorely tempted. But in the event, as always, the Tsar and his ministers were guided by what they felt they could get away with. For the Russians to march into Kashgaria would be bound to enrage and alarm both the British and the Chinese (the latter regarding it still as part of their empire, albeit momentarily lost). With the disaster of the Crimean War still fresh in Russian minds, Tsar Alexander did not yet feel confident enough to risk it. Instead of an army, therefore, an envoy had been sent to Kashgar to try to find another solution.
What St Petersburg most wanted from Yakub Beg was his recognition of the treaty rights, especially the trading concessions, which Ignatiev had obtained from the Chinese. It was particularly anxious to prevent these from going to the British. For his part, Yakub Beg was eager for Russian recognition of his rule, and a guarantee that his frontiers would be secure against invasion. However, St Petersburg was unwilling to grant his regime formal recognition, since this would permanently damage its relations with Peking. He, at least, was mortal. The Chinese would be around for a long time. Although Shaw did not realise it, these negotiations had still been in progress when he first arrived in Kashgar. Indeed, a Russian envoy had left for home shortly before, taking with him Yakub Beg’s nephew as an emissary to St Petersburg. But Alexander had refused to receive him, fearing that this might be seen by both Peking and Yakub Beg himself as implying recognition. Yakub Beg was incensed. Realising that the Russians had no intention of recognising his authority, he decided to show his displeasure in a way calculated to cause them the maximum alarm and annoyance. He turned to those whom he knew by now to be their principal rivals in Central Asia – the British.
The first that Robert Shaw knew of this, although he had ho idea what lay behind it, was when, to his great relief, he found himself summoned to an audience with Yakub Beg. ‘Today,’ he noted in his diary on April 5, ‘I have some news to write. I have had my long expected second interview with the King.’ Although he made no attempt to explain the long delay, Yakub Beg proved even more amiable than at their first meeting. Brushing aside Shaw’s reminder that he did not represent the British government, but had travelled to Kashgar of his own accord, Yakub Beg told him: ‘I consider you my brother. Whatever course you advise, I will take.’ Other extravagant compliments followed. ‘The Queen of England is like the sun, which warms everything it shines upon,’ he declared. ‘I am in the cold, and desire that some of its rays should fall upon me.’ Shaw, he said, was the first Englishman he had ever met, although he had heard much of their power and truthfulness from others. ‘It is a great honour for me that you have come. I count upon you to help me in your country.’
The compliments over, Yakub Beg now got down to business. ‘I am thinking’, he told Shaw, ‘of sending an envoy to your country.’ What did his visitor think? Shaw said he thought it was an excellent idea. In that case, Yakub Beg declared, he would dispatch a special emissary bearing a note to the ‘Lord Sahib’, as he called the Viceroy. Welcoming this, Shaw offered to brief the individual chosen, promising to smooth his path in every way possible. After a further exchange of compliments, Shaw withdrew, hardly daring to believe that he might soon be free to leave for home. Aware, though, of Yakub Beg’s reputation for every kind of double-dealing, he knew that he would feel much happier once he was safely across the frontier.
But there remained one last problem – Hayward. Nothing had been said about him during Shaw’s audience with Yakub Beg. In view of the latter’s evident eagerness to woo the British, Shaw had assumed that Hayward would be free to return home too, although perhaps not via the Pamirs, which was what his sponsors, the Royal Geographical Society, had hoped. Then one of Shaw’s servants brought him ‘an ugly rumour . . . that I should be sent back to India with an envoy . . . and that Hayward would be kept as a hostage for his safe return.’ At the same time he received an anxious note from Hayward himself. In this he said that he had learned that Yakub Beg was proposing to hold on to him. Much as Shaw disliked Hayward – ‘the thorn in my flesh’, he calls him in his diary – he knew he could not simply abandon him to the whims of an oriental despot with an unsavoury reputation for cruelty and treachery. Still confined to his own quarters, he at once sent a note to one of Yakub Beg’s senior officials, a man with whom he was on excellent terms. In this he warned that it would be a waste of time and effort for Yakub Beg to send an envoy to India seeking Britain’s friendship, ‘so long as an Englishman is kept here against his will’. It was a risky thing to do, he knew, but it worked. The following day he was informed that not only Hayward, but also the mysterious Mirza, whom Yakub Beg seemed to associate with them, would be free to return home. The envoy would follow later.
Shaw and Hayward got back to a hero’s welcome, having been given up for dead by some. Despite their close confinement, they had managed, albeit quite independently, to bring back with them an immense amount of intelligence – political, commercial, military and geographical. The latter was to win for both men that ultimate prize among explorers, the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. For his part, however, Mirza Shuja was to receive no such reward or acclaim. Although it was due to his determined efforts that the Survey of India was able to produce its first, if somewhat rough, map of northern Afghanistan and the Pamirs, his activities had to be kept secret still. Only when a Pundit had made his final journey could his identity be disclosed. Sadly, Mirza would not live to enjoy this, for he was destined to be murdered in his sleep while on another mission to Central Asia, this time to Bokhara.
Both Shaw and Hayward, who saw eye to eye on very little else, returned to India convinced that the Russians were proposing to march into Kashgaria, overthrow Yakub Beg, and add his kingdom to their own Central Asian empire. After that it would only be a question of time before they continued southwards into northern India via the very passes by which the two British travellers had entered Kashgaria, and across which Shaw was hoping to send his tea caravans. Until then the great mountain systems to the north of India had been regarded by strategists in Calcutta and London as impenetrable to a modern army weighed down with artillery and other heavy equipment, and requiring regular supplies of food and ammunition. Shaw and Hayward, having crossed those mountains both ways, now questioned this, arguing that one pass in particular – the Chang Lung, lying north-east of Leh – offered an invader a back-door route into Ladakh, and thence into northern India. Although this rose to over 18,000 feet, both Shaw and Hayward (the latter a former army officer) believed that artillery could be dragged over it.
Had Sir John Lawrence still been Viceroy, no official notice would have been taken of their views. Indeed, they would almost certainly have been severely reprimanded for meddling in affairs of state, as Moorcroft had been half a century earlier. But during their absence he had retired and had been succeeded by a younger Viceroy with a more open mind. India’s new chief was Lord Mayo, who had not only visited Russia but had also written a two-volume work about the country. It was not surprising, therefore, that he was eager to hear what these two enterprising young travellers had to say about Yakub Beg and Russian machinations beyond the Pamir and Karakoram passes.
Their warnings, however, would not go unchallenged by the military establishment, even if none of the latter had ever set foot themselves in the passes they discussed with such intimacy. ‘It is conceivable’, one War Office colonel wrote, ‘that 10,000 Kirghiz horsemen might be able to traverse a difficult road . . . with nothing but what can be carried at the saddle bow. But turn these into European soldiers with their trains of artillery, ammunition, hospital supplies, and the innumerable requirements of a modern army, and the case is totally different. The resources of the country that might suffice for the one would be utterly insufficient for the other.’ However, if Shaw and Hayward had failed to convince the defence chiefs that the Cossacks were about to swarm down through the northern passes into India, they did succeed in opening up a great debate on the general vulnerability of the region to Russian incursion. And they did more than that, for they also managed to interest the new Viceroy in Yakub Beg’s diplomatic overture. Their hand was strengthened here by the timely arrival in India of the latter’s special envoy.
Lord Mayo was convinced that India’s best defence lay, not in forward policies or military adventures, but in the establishment of a chain of buffer states friendly to Britain around its vast and thinly guarded frontiers. The most important of these was obviously Afghanistan, now ruled by Dost Mohammed’s son Sher Ali, with whom Calcutta enjoyed cordial relations. Here was Mayo’s chance to add another link to the chain by making a friend of Yakub Beg. With these two powerful rulers as Britain’s allies, India had little to fear from the Russians. In a crisis Mayo was willing to assist them with arms and money, and perhaps even military advisers. With a handful of British officers and generous helpings of gold, he declared, ‘I could make of Central Asia a hotplate for our friend the Russian bear to dance on’. It was much what Moorcroft had proposed many years before when he outlined to his superiors a strategy whereby British officers commanding local irregulars would halt an invading Russian force in the high passes by rolling huge boulders down on it from above.
Lord Mayo gave orders for a small British diplomatic mission, thinly disguised as a purely commercial one, to return with Yakub Beg’s special envoy to Kashgar. It was led by Sir Douglas Forsyth, a senior political officer. Its purpose was to make exploratory contacts with this powerful Muslim ruler who, it appeared, preferred the friendship of the British to that of the Russians, and also to investigate the possibility of establishing regular caravan traffic across the Karakorams. Sir John Lawrence, fearing the political consequences of the latter, had always opposed any such initiatives. But Mayo took the opposite view, seeing commerce as a means of extending British influence into Central Asia with the minimum of risk. He also saw it as a way of combating the growing influence of the Russians, with their manifestly inferior goods, in the states beyond India’s northern frontiers. Nor was he blind to the commercial advantage to be gained from opening up Kashgaria where, according to Robert Shaw, there were anything up to sixty million potential customers, each one a tea-drinker and a cotton-wearer, eagerly awaiting the British caravans. Shaw was invited by Mayo to join the Forsyth mission, and immediately accepted. George Hayward, the loner, had other plans. He too was preparing to venture into the unknown once again. His objective was the Pamirs, beyond whose towering peaks and unmapped passes lay the nearest Russian outposts. And this time no one was going to stop him.