been permitted by his bigoted predecessor to meddle in the affairs of state, and even the warrior-prince Ma'sum had not ventured to thwart them. Nasrullah overturned their authority, and substituted his royal commands for the hitherto sacred injunctions of law and custom.1

His evil passions gained a complete mastery as he grew older. He gave full rein to the foulest lust, and neither rank nor sex were sacred in his eyes. His temper became utterly ungovernable. "When angry," writes one who knew him well,2" the blood comes into his face and creates a convulsive action of his muscles; and in such fits he gives the most outrageous orders, reckless of consequences." These spells of madness alternated with periods when he became a prey to the wildest suspicion. To gratify it, an army of spies was maintained, who were paid to report the most trivial words of those whom he believed to be disaffected.3

Our readers may well wonder why a tyrant of his mould was allowed to reign for more than a generation and to die in his bed. The key to the mystery is to be found in his attitude towards the populace, by whom he was idolised as their protector against the violence of the military class. Juvenal, in lamenting the atrocities of a monster of the like nature, remarks that he did not perish until he came to be feared by the dregs of the people.5

His foreign policy was as perfidious as his domestic. He attacked Shahrisabz, a little state enclosed in his dominions, which had, like Holland, preserved its independence by the bravery of its people and their ability to lay the environs of their capital under water at an invader's

1 Wolff, Bokhara, p. 233.

3 Wolff, p. 181.

5

'Sed periit postquam cerdonibus esse timendums Coperat" (Sat. IV. 153).

3

approach.1 He was baffled, and Shahrisabz continued to be a thorn in his side during his long reign, albeit that he endeavoured to gain a footing there by espousing the ruler's sister. With Kokand he was more successful. That state was governed by Khan Mohammad 'Alī, a prince descended in the female line from the great Baber, emperor of Hindustan, who had won glory by successes against the Chinese on his western frontier.2 Thus he incurred Nasrullah's jealousy, and his ruin was determined on. It was compassed by the aid of a Persian soldier of fortune named 'Abd us-Samad Khān, who had fled his country after attempting to assassinate his master. He knew how to cast and work cannon-engines of war which exercise an overwhelming influence on the Oriental mind; and commended himself to Nasrullah by military knowledge and an eagerness to pander to his worst vices. He became his âme damnée, even as the infamous "Azimulla" prompted every atrocity committed by Nana Sahib during the Indian Mutiny. The excuse for aggression was afforded by the frontier fortress of Pishagar, which Nasrullah declared had been erected by the Kokandis on his territory. Its destruction was peremptorily demanded; and, on Mohammad 'Ali's refusal to comply, it was attacked by a strong force, accompanied by a breaching battery under 'Abd us-Samad's command." The mud walls of Pishagar were unable to resist the iron shower, and its surrender was followed in the succeeding year by that of Ura Teppe and of Khojend. The Khān of Kokand, seeing that the capital was in peril, sued for peace, and, by the treaty of Kohna Bādām, ceded Khojend and recognised the Bokharan Amir as his suzerain.

With the cunning which in the East passes for the highest manifestation of diplomacy, Nasrullah placed the

1 Wolff, p. 248.

3 Khanikoff, p. 306; Wolff, p. 152, et passim.

2 Vambéry, p. 372.

Vambéry, p. 373.

newly conquered territory under the governorship of Sultan Mahmud, a brother of the Khan of Kokand and a pretender to his throne. But hardly were these arrangements completed ere Mahmud and his brother came to terms, and both Khojend and Ura Teppe were temporarily lost to Bokhārā. The wrath of the Amir was unbounded. In April 1842 he took the field against Kokand with a host of 30,000 horsemen and regulars,1 and 10,000 Turkoman mercenaries. He reached Khojend by forced marches, and captured that city without firing a shot, though it was defended by a garrison 15,000 strong. Thence he moved rapidly on the capital and drove Mohammad 'Ali to seek refuge in Marghilan. Here he was taken prisoner, dragged back to Kokand, and slaughtered with the greater part of his relatives.3

Nasrullah's relations with Khiva were bitterly hostile throughout his reign; and he played into the hands of the common enemy, Russia, by harrying the Khan's territory at a time when all his force was needed to oppose an expedition under General Perovski.

The petty states of Balkh, Andakhūy, and Maymana on the southern frontier were the objects of his constant aggression, and the mutual jealousy of Persia and Afghanistan allowed him to assume suzerainty over them. Thus the weakness of his neighbours turned to his advantage. He was hailed by his obsequious courtiers as king of kings, and firmly believed himself destined to repeat the conquests of his model, Tīmūr.

This was the man at whose gates knocked the two greatest of European Powers. England had watched the constant advance of Russia towards her Indian frontier

1 Under 'Abd us-Samad's advice he had organised a corps of soldiers who were drilled and accoutred in the European fashion.

2 Khanikoff, p. 313.

3 Ibid. p. 314. Wolff adds that the unfortunate Khan's pregnant wife was also butchered (Bokhara, p. 232).

1

with ill-concealed alarm, and in 1832 Alexander Burnes was despatched on an unofficial mission to Bokhārā. He accomplished nothing, and was fortunate indeed to escape from the bloodthirsty tyrant's clutches.1

The next attempt made by England to establish friendly relations with the leading Central Asian Powers was less fortunate. Her agent was Colonel Stoddart of the Indian Army, a man utterly unfitted by training and temperament for a diplomatic mission.2 His rude and overbearing manners gave the deepest offence to a despot accustomed to see all around him tremble at his slightest movement.8 He was thrown into a loathsome dungeon, and languished there, with brief intervals of comparative liberty, till death put an end to his sufferings. In 1840 he received a companion in affliction in the person of Captain Arthur Conolly, whose gentle disposition and high culture rendered him equally unfit to cope with a truculent monster such as Nasrullah. He had been charged with the duty of uniting the Central Asian Khānates in an informal alliance against Russia-a task which their common jealousies rendered absolutely impossible. Thus his overtures were politely rejected by Khiva and Kokand in succession. Enticed by Nasrullah into his camp, he was seized, robbed of all his possessions, and sent to join poor Stoddart in captivity. In the meantime the Russians had begun to compete for Nasrullah's favour.4 Major Batanieff was despatched to Bokhārā in 1840 by the Tsar Nicholas, with orders to

1 He published an interesting account of his wanderings in his Travels into Bokhara, being an account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia in 1831-33. London, 1834-39.

2 Wolff, p. 176. It appears that he drew his sword on the court official charged with the duty of presenting him to His Majesty.

3" He delights to hear that people tremble at his name, and laughs with violence when he hears of their apprehensions" (Wolff, p. 233).

* The first regular Russian embassy to Bokhārā was that of M. Regni in

conclude a treaty of commerce and amity with the Amir. He was received with ostentatious courtesy, and his presents found especial favour in Nasrullah's eyes. But every attempt to arrive at a modus vivendi was baffled by those excuses and procrastinations in which Oriental monarchs are past masters. He left in 1841, after vainly interceding for his rivals, who languished in daily expectation of death. Their fate was sealed by his departure and by the news of our disasters in Kābul.1

On the 17th June 1842 the unfortunate men were brought out to die. Stoddart, who had been forced to embrace Mohammedanism, was the first to suffer. When his head had been severed from his body the executioner paused, and Conolly had an offer made of life as the price of his apostasy. He scorned the bargain, and stretched out his neck to receive the fatal blow. This atrocious crime was never avenged by the country which had sent her sons forth to perish, but for many years Bokhārā was a word full of evil associations in the English mind. It was undoubtedly prompted by the fiendish 'Abd us-Samad, who lost no opportunity of gratify

1820, which was described by Colonel Baron Meyendorff in his Voyage d'Orenbourg & Boukhara. Paris, 1826. The Russian reply to Burnes' mission were those of Desmaison in 1834, and of Vitkovich in the following year (Vambéry, p. 380).

1 The issue of our first attempt to meddle in the affairs of Afghanistan is too well known for recapitulation. The British forces left Käbul on January 1842 on their homeward march, and, out of 16,500 troops and camp followers, only one man lived to carry the news of disaster to Jalālābād. See Kaye's History of the War in Afghanistan, 1851.

2 Nasrullah was tormented by remorse to his dying day. He told the Shaykh ul-Islām of Bokhārā that "he had given himself a terrible wound by having killed Stoddart and Conolly." And the chief-justice assured Wolff that the Amir had more than once exclaimed, "The wounds of my heart, for having slain these English people, will never heal!" (Wolff's Bokhara, pp. 176, 233). Even this black heart had one white spot. But we must not judge a bad man by the good he may do on impulse, nor a good one by the evil which alloys the finest nature.