The Russians Sher Ali Letter from great Emperor is a true friend of the Amir's and of Afghanistan, and His Majesty will do whatever he may think necessary.' Sher Ali himself wrote to General Kaufmann after the refusal of passage to Sir Neville Chamberlain's mission, asking for Russian help in the approaching crisis. With this letter was enclosed one to the Czar appealing for friendly assistance.' 6 6 These letters were acknowledged on November 4 refuse to help by General Kaufmann in a spirit which must have caused Sher Ali bitter disappointment. He had heard that the English wanted to come to terms, and he advised the Amir as a friend to make peace with them. On November 26 General Kaufmann wrote to the Russian General Razgonoff at Kabul: The November 26 Amir knows perfectly well that it is impossible for me to assist him with troops in winter, therefore it is necessary that war should not be commenced at this unseasonable time. If the English, in spite of the Amir's exertions to avoid the war, commence it, you must then take leave of the Amir and start for Tashkend, because your presence in Afghanistan in winter is useless. Moreover at such a juncture as the commencement of war with Afghanistan you ought to come here and explain the whole thing to me, so that I may communicate it to the Emperor. This will be of great benefit to Afghanistan and Russia.' Amir to Kaufmann On December 8 the Amir addressed to General Kaufmann a renewed appeal on the ground of the old friendship, and the recent alliance concluded through General Stoletoff on the part of His Imperial Majesty. . . . Should any harm or injury, which God forbid, befall the Afghan Government, the dust of blame will certainly settle on the skirt of His General Imperial Majesty's Government.' A simultaneous Amir to letter was sent to Mirza Muhammad Hassan Khan, Kaufmann who had been deputed with General Stoletoff, in which the Amir begged that 32,000 troops of Tashkend should be sent to Afghan Turkestan, troops 'which General Stoletoff told me in your presence were ready and would be despatched whenever I required them.' Before leaving Kabul, on December 13, the Amir addressed a letter to the officers of the British Government in which he informed them that he departed with a few attendants to lay the whole history of the transactions with the British Government before the Czar of Russia at St. Petersburg. 6 subjects He also proclaimed the cause and purpose of his The Amir's departure to his own subjects in a firman dated firman to his December 22, addressed to the Governor of Herat and other notables there: We have received,' said the Amir in his firman, letters from the GovernorGeneral and from General Stoletoff, who, being with the Emperor at Livadia, writes to us as follows: "The Emperor considers you as a brother, and you also, who are on the other side of the water (that is to say the Oxus), must display the same sense of friendship and brotherhood. The English Government is anxious to come to terms with you through the intervention of the Sultan, and wishes you to take his advice and counsel. But the Emperor's desire is that you should not admit the English into your country; and, like last year, you are to treat them with deceit and deception until the present cold season passes away; then the will of the Almighty will be made manifest to you that is to say, the Russian Government having repeated the Bismillah, the Bismillah will come to your assistance." Lord Lytton's comments on the firman Lord Lytton comments upon this document: 'I have seen the letter from General Stoletoff to which this firman refers. I have read it not once or twice only, but several times, with the greatest of care; and, incredible as it must seem, I am bound to say that the firman accurately reproduces the substance of it, though the firman does not do full justice to its remarkable phraseology. I distinctly remember the advice given in that letter by General Stoletoff to Sher Ali, and it was this. That Sher Ali should, if possible, incite to rebellion against the Queen's authority Her Majesty's subjects on the other side of the Indus; but that, if he were unable to do this, then he should send to the Government of India an emissary possessing the tongue of a serpent and full of deceit, who might with sweet words perplex our minds and induce us to suspend hostilities till the spring, as Russia could not send troops into Afghanistan during the winter. The firman, therefore, is a true statement. But, if it be a true statement, what then is the true meaning of its allusion to "last year"? “Like last year, you are to treat them with deceit and deception until the present cold season passes away." What does this mean? Why, it can have but one meaning, and that meaning is plain. It means this. "The advice we give you now is the same as the advice we gave you last year, and on which you then acted so successfully at the Peshawur Conference. You must do now what you did thenengage the British Government in a deceptive and abortive negotiation in order to gain time." Recapitulating the conclusions which the evidence of Russian intrigue with Afghanistan had left on his mind Lord Lytton says, 'I affirm that Russian interference in Afghan affairs did not commence with the Russian mission to Kabul, and that it did not cease with the withdrawal of that mission. I affirm that Sher Ali had ceased to be the friend and ally of the British Government, and that for all practical purposes he had become the friend and ally of the Russian Government, at least three years before I had any dealings with His Highness or any connection with the Government of India. And, finally, I affirm that the real and the only cause of the Afghan war was an intrigue of long duration between Sher Ali and the Russian authorities in Central Asia, an intrigue leading to an alliance between them for objects which, if successfully carried out, would have broken to pieces the empire of British India.' CHAPTER VIII HISTORY OF NEGOTIATIONS WITH YAKUB KHAN. KABUL MASSACRE. WAR OF 1879 THE situation of affairs, military and political, at the beginning of the year 1879 was uncertain and obviously inconclusive. The Amir, Sher Ali, had fled across the Oxus into Russian territory, where the Russian Government found his presence embarrassing, and where he received from General Kaufmann a series of letters which must have finally dispelled any hope he may still have retained of receiving Russian aid. He was dissuaded from continuing his journey to St. Petersburg, and advised to make friends with the English and return to his own kingdom. His unhappy life, however, was drawing to a close. He never left Mazar-i-sharif, and died February 21, there on February 21. Death of 1879 In the meantime the English armies were stationary at the points up to which they had advanced, at or near Jellalabad on the line towards Kabul; on the Shutargardan; and at Kandahar. To push on further into the interior of Afghanistan would have necessitated the occupation of a wider area than was necessary for the policy that the Viceroy had now adopted under instructions from the Government at home, with which, on the whole, he concurred. His personal opinion inclined towards the expediency of disintegrating Afghanistan; but he was aware of |