nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47and on occasion he marched his regiment so hard that by the time they
reached the battlefield they were exhausted. On at least one occasion,
he had driven the 44th to the brink of mutiny. Furthermore, despite his
personal bravery, Shelton lacked tactical acumen, a flaw that was starkly
exposed when the military situation in Kabul began to deteriorate from
the summer of 1841. His poor judgement in the stress of battle contributed
significantly to the near-extermination of his regiment. For very differ-
ent reasons neither Elphinstone nor Shelton was suited to direct military
operations in the most complex and threat-filled theatre of war that British
forces had engaged in since the American War of Independence. When
the storm finally broke both men were found wanting.
Part of the problem was that Macnaghten had been constantly re -
as suring the Governor General that all was well and that Afghanistan
was pacified. When Elphinstone and Shelton reached Kabul, Macnaghten
repeated his assurances and told them there was nothing to worry about
militarily. As late as August 1841 the envoy reported to Auckland that ‘the
country is perfectly quiet from Dan to Beersheba’. 18 When junior officers
tried to warn Macnaghten that trouble was brewing and that recent vic -
tories had merely suppressed the discontent, he dismissed them as ‘croakers’.
Anyway, by the time Elphinstone took charge in Kabul, Macnaghten was
less concerned about the situation in Afghanistan than he was about having
been appointed Governor of Bombay. During his last months in Kabul,
Macnaghten wanted to convince himself and the Governor General that
his time in Afghanistan had been a success.
The failure of British diplomacy in Herat, Khiva and BukharaWhile the Army of the Indus settled down in Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul,
the situation in Herat imploded. After the Persian siege was abandoned,
Eldred Pottinger was replaced by Major Todd, an experienced diplomat
who had served under McNeill in Tehran. Todd, though, had his work cut
out since Yar Muhammad Khan, Kamran’s wazir, who was the real power
in the principality, was at best difficult and at worst impossible. He was also
cruel to the point of sadism and a master manipulator who skilfully played
on British fears about the Russian and Persian threat to Herat to extract
more and more cash in the form of subsidies and for ‘special projects’.
The wazir also covertly continued his lucrative role as middleman in the
trade in Hazara and Shi‘a slaves and conducted a clandestine correspond-
ence with the Persian governor of Mashhad in violation of his treaty with
Britain. In one letter, which Todd intercepted, Yar Muhammad openly