Alexandria by Edmund Richardson

Author:Edmund Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

13

No Return

In Shimla, Burnes was starting to feel more like his old self. The air was clear and cool. Everyone seemed pleased to see him. He moved into the Secretaries’ Lodge, just down the hill from Lord Auckland’s own house. In the evening light, its green lawns, white walls and red-tiled roofs turned shimmering gold. To the east, range after range of hills stretched away to the horizon, shading imperceptibly from green to darkest blue. Inside, the lamps were lit in the long, wood-panelled rooms and the table was laid for dinner. For those who have travelled too far and seen too many horizons, Shimla gives comfort. There is an armchair by the fire, a pile of blankets on an old brass bedstead, and a cup of hot, sweet morning tea. From that armchair, you may even start to believe you understand India. That is Shimla’s great solace, and that is why, in 1838, it was one of the most dangerous places in the world.

When Burnes, trying his best to look respectable, went to report to Lord Auckland, two of Auckland’s private secretaries ‘came running to him and prayed him to say nothing to unsettle His Lordship: that they had all the trouble in the world to get him into the business, and that even now he would be glad of any pretence to retire from it’.1 ‘The business’ turned out to be a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan.

Over the course of a few weeks, the small-scale plan suggested by Burnes and Masson – a British officer here, a handful of cash there – had turned into a gigantic military expedition. Burnes’s first reaction was shock. His second reaction was that he wanted to be in charge. ‘We are now planning a grand campaign to restore the Shah to the throne of Kabul,’ he wrote. ‘What exact part I am to play I know not, but if full confidence and hourly consultation be any pledge, I am to be chief. I can plainly tell them that it is “aut Caesar aut nullus” [either Caesar or nothing], and if I get not what I have a right to, you will soon see me en route to England.’2 Despite Burnes’s confidence, one of Auckland’s secretaries, John Colvin, had already sent a ‘private letter to Macnaghten on his assuming the diplomatic direction of the Shah’s expedition’.3 (When Masson eventually found out, he thought ‘the unfortunate secretary was the last man in India who should have put himself forward.’)4

Auckland’s vast troop of secretaries was in a bloodthirsty mood. ‘Military croakers have always called our army inadequate,’ Colvin sniffed, ‘yet it has never been founded.’5 A few weeks earlier, Burnes had sworn off any involvement in re-establishing Shah Shujah in Kabul. ‘This last I will not do,’6 he vowed. But now that he had seen the chessboard, he made a different move, and began to insist that ‘the British have no resource but in instantaneous movement, and the most cordial support of Shah Shujah’.7 ‘You must,’

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