nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47offered to pay Lahore a portion of the Peshawar revenues. Burnes wrote
about this ‘settlement of the Peshawar affair’:
we have, it seems to me, an immediate remedy against further
intrigue and a means of showing to the Afghans that the British
Government does sympathise with them, and at one and the
same time satisfying the chiefs, and gaining both our political and
commercial ends. 49Burnes was convinced Ranjit Singh would accept the terms and even
offered to go to Lahore to head the negotiations.
Auckland’s reply did not reach Kabul until the end of February 1838
and its contents dashed any hopes Burnes had that his actions would be
approved. The offer of assistance to the Kandahar sardars was rejected and
the Persian treaty dismissed as a fabrication, a ploy by the Dil brothers to
extract concessions from Britain. As for Vitkevich’s mission, this was a
storm in a teacup. The Governor General then reiterated that the Amir must
abandon all hope of any British mediation with the Sikhs and forget about
Peshawar, since Britain had recognized it as a Sikh province. Wade had not
even bothered to forward the Amir’s latest proposals to Ranjit Singh. To cap
it all, Burnes was reprimanded for exceeding his mandate and raising Dost
Muhammad’s expectations beyond anything Britain was prepared to offer.
On 22 February Burnes had his last, humiliating audience with Dost
Muhammad Khan, during which he communicated the contents of
Auckland’s letter and confessed he had grossly exceeded his orders, misrep
resented government policy and raised the Amir’s hopes far too high. Dost
Muhammad Khan, who had committed a great deal of time and money in
order to win over the British, was bitter. Throughout the course of Burnes’s
mission, he declared, he had been ‘either kept in the dark or misled... I
wish no countenance but that of the English, and you refuse all pledges
and promises.’ 50 Britain had offered him neither ‘izzat nor ikram – honour
or respect. Burnes then added insult to injury by trying to shift the blame
onto the Amir, accusing him of being intransigent and unreasonable. When
the Amir’s tribal council heard the news they were incensed and their fury
was exacerbated by the hectoring tone of Auckland’s letter. General Harlan,
who was now in the service of the Amir after having incurred the wrath of
Ranjit Singh, claimed that some of Dost Muhammad Khan’s advisers even
wanted to put the British members of the mission to death.
Instead Dost Muhammad Khan, supported by Nawab Jabbar Khan,
tried to salvage something from the wreckage. In his reply to Auckland