Empire: World History - 78. The Battle of the Spies

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

The rivalry between Russia and Britain continues to grow as both of their attentions begin to centre more and more on Afghanistan. In a bid to gain influence in the region, both empires send young, daring spies to infiltrate the region. Alexander Burnes and Jan Prosper Vitkevich will both battle to gain the upper hand. Listen as William and Anita discuss these two spies and their thrilling roles in the Great Game. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan. And me, William Duriple. So, shall we call it Battle of the Spies, this one? Because that seems to fit, doesn't it? It's a proper spy story.

Here's a proper spy story. So where we left you on Tuesday, let me remind you. We are discussing the beginnings of the great game. The Tournament of Shadows. They had the better title. I do think they had the better title in Russia. And we're going to talk about the events that lead up to the first Anglo-Afghan War. Let me just remind you what we talked about on Tuesday, shall I?

So we were discussing this growing tension, this mistrust that is bubbling away between the British and the Russians. So you have Lord Ellenborough who's saying, look, all we have to concentrate on now. All Britain has to do is stop expansion of Russia. And they have reason to fear the Russian expansion. But as William was saying, actually they whip up a great storm of suspicion and hawkishness that you were saying that maybe they create the problem that they didn't have to face, William, that's right. Yes, there's this wonderful moment with William Moorcroft.

Now, William Moorcroft, again, is one of these fabulous figures who is, on one hand, a Bonafide explorer, stroke. I think he's actually, he runs the East India company stud is his job. We're doing horses now. We're not talking, Fabio from accounts. No. The East India Company stud. It's not that. Not that kind of start. Okay. Where did that come from? I just say. Different times. Different meanings. Back to history. Back to history.

William Moorcroft, who is a Himalayan explorer who's looking for horses and sources of... Sources of horses. Sources of horses was exactly what I was trying to avoid saying. Yeah. Go on. Horses from Afghanistan. Because there's this feature of Indian history is that horses decline in the Indian plains. Because it's so hot, it's not natural horse territory.

India throughout its history has had to import horses both from Central Asia and Afghanistan and from the Gulf. And the states in southern India import from the Gulf. And Delhi has always been the powerful center in India history because it always got the first call on the horses, the new strong horses coming in from Central Asia. Now, the East India Company still has the same thing. And it has to import its cavalry from Afghanistan. and this character, William Fraser, who's a very important part of this story, William Fraser is on the Elphinston mission, and when he comes back from that, he sets up a horse trading business on the side with James Skinner of Skinner's Horse.

Now, Skinner's horse is also the frontier force that guards the frontiers of the East Indy Company. It has regiments along the Sutledge patrolling the borders, and it's the one that will go into Afghanistan in the future with disastrous results, as we will see. But another of Fraser's sources is William Moorcroft, and he is in touch with Moorcroft. And when Moorcroft disappears in mysterious circumstances in the Himalayas and dies up there, it's Fraser who manages to retrieve his diaries and his effects. And among those effects is a letter which is written from County. Nessel Road, the foreign minister of Russia, to Ranjit Singh, the lion of the Punjab, that confirms all the hawk's worst fears, because Nesrade is basically saying,

Ranjit, anytime you want a bit of assistance, there are 100,000 Cossacks that will charge down from Central Asia and help you fight against the British. The Tsar is with you, but let's just sort of bring up to speed with which Tsar, because we were with an Alexander, we are now with a Nicholas I first, so 1825. Alexander I, the first, suddenly dies. This great underestimated hero. He's one of the great figures of Russian history, and I think not one of the more famous stars.

No, no. And he's suddenly out of the picture. And then what follows is when you have a power vacuum, you often have a coup. And so the Decemberous revolt follows the death of Alexander. His air presumptive is a man called Constantine, who privately, and perhaps thinking about his own Russian history, says, I don't really want to do it.

It's just not a job. It's not a job for a sensible man. I don't want to do it. So he puts his younger brother Nicholas in front, and that is why you have Emperor Nicholas I'm the man who wasn't meant to be Zah, but it's just because Constantine didn't want to do it. So while some of the army has said, okay, we accept Nicholas as a czar, there are still 3,000 troops, which you refer to as the Wagner's of their day, the Wagner group of their day, who try to mount a military coup in favour of Constantine, the man who doesn't want the job, which I just find quite hilarious. The rebels, though, you know, they're not organised. They are fractious. They're fighting amongst themselves. So they confront the loyalists outside the Senate building. And eventually the loyalists

open fire with heavy artillery. They scatter the rebels. Many end up being sentenced to death. They're hanged or they're sent to prison or they're sent to exile in Siberia, which is like being executed in many ways a very long slow death in the frozen tundra. No, no move to Bello Rus for them. No, no. Or indeed off to Niger or wherever the Wagner group are now going to be moving to. So these conspirators for Constantine, the man who doesn't want the job, are known as the Decemberists.

Are the Decembrists a folk band? I think I've got some nice tracks by the Decembrists. I don't, I have no, I don't even know how to, I literally have no response to that, other than this is the look I'm giving you. I will play you in December. No, that's for another day. It's all right. That's another time.

Nicola's the first. So he's already had this trial by fire with people who aren't willing to accept him. So this suddenly makes him stronger, makes him watchful, gives him this iron will that will become part of his armor, if you like. So, Nicholas I'll give you a quick pen sketch of him. He's dutiful. He's hardworking. He understands government and power, so he wants to centralise his administration because he doesn't trust. You know, if you've got armies that can be fractured right at the start, you've got to hold on to power with your fist, and that's what he does. In public, he's described as being majestic, determined, the true autocrat. But, you know, it's unusual because Peter the Great was all of those things as well. But there was a modernisation program that started with Peter the Great. if you haven't heard our episode on that, do go back. And Catherine, the great moderniser, she's also somebody who tries to move things along, brings in Western ideas and literature and poetry. And instead, Nicholas kind of lurches back. It's orthodoxy. It's autocracy. It's nationality.

This is a really important pivot point in Russian history. So that is the Russia that now Britain is looking at through timid fingers, or rather through intrigue, getting their hands and getting their spies more motivated to do things. We should say that there is good reason to fear Russian aggression and Russian forward movement, because since the end of the Napoleonic wars, the Russians have moved incredibly fast through the Caucasus and have twice defeated Khadja, Persia. And there's a whole wonderful episode for a future podcast on this character, Alexander Serejavich Griboyev, who is a Russian diplomat, playwright, poet and composer gets made the Russian ambassador in Tehran, who's then pulled apart and killed by a mob in Tehran, because he is associated with these two very humiliating treaties that Russia imposes on Persia.

That's the Treaty of Gullahstan, which is 1813, and the Treaty of Turkmenchai, 1828. And in both of these, the enormous empire of the 19th century is sliced up to become much more like the Persia we see today on the map that's lost, basically, its whole northern half. And so there's, you know, this very real forward movement by the Russians into Persia and also threatening Constantinople and the Ottomans. So, I mean, the British think, okay, we can halt their advance. we're going to do this. What we'll do is we'll sell superior British goods and if anyone wants to deal with them, they can't deal with us. We, you know, we've done this through trade and mercantile before we'll do it again. So this is Edinburgh's idea. And Edinburgh has this sort of mysterious belief that British trade can somehow spread British ideas. And the British is very

hard for us to imagine this, because to us it's very simple that the Russians and the British are both imperialist forces. They're both using modern weaponry to subject Asian kingdoms. But somehow the British preserve this idea that they are the centre of freedom and liberalism, while the Russians are the tyrants. And they genuinely believe this. And there is this belief that somehow, if they can get Manchester cottons and all these sort of British export goods into Central Asia, somehow British ideas of freedom and liberality will spread. And this all sounds bonkers to us, but this is stuff that Ellenborough is putting out in speeches in the House of Commons and and the House of Lords. And there is a real idea that the British can increase their influence

through trade. Yeah, well, trade our way to victory. We'll trade our way to victory. And in a more realistic and sober way, the East India Company, which is still running the show, although it's now lost its monopoly and is not at all the libertarian free market force it was in the 18th century, the East India Company realizes that they can do with the Indus what, they've already done with the Ganges. They've used the Ganges in an age when road transport in India is still pretty basic and it's almost impossible to move during the monsoon. In an age when the rivers are still the main means of transport, the Ganges is the main motorway for the East India Company, and it's the main trading route. And the Indus, they want to do the same thing for. And so, but the

trouble is that a politically, the Indus is split in its low half between these Amirs of Sindh, who are very anti any foreign interference. And B, they simply haven't got a map of it. There's no good map of the Indus. And this is what they want to sort out. So they send a man called Burns to do this work. Because if you want to know your rivers, you need to have maps of rivers and Burns is the man. And he's really interesting. So Burns, Alexander Burns, 25 years old, so a really very, very young man. He sent in. And I'm always shocked at how they send kind of almost. his little boys to do quite big things where history will turn. He's an outsider. He's a Scot. He's of humble origins. He's a cousin of Robbie Burns, the poet. He is, yes, but he's got really good

linguistic skills, which mark him out. This guy from Montrose is very good at Persian, Arabic, Hindustani, he picks them up. And he also has this enthusiasm that they note in him for dangerous intelligence work. You know, he has, he's charming. He can get into things. He can get out of of things, and he's got that sense of drive that makes you want to put yourself on the front line. And the Brits noticed this. Ranjit Singh, at the same time, is ruling Punjab. He's recently reciprocated treaties from the British King of friendship saying, look, we'll send you some beautiful shores, Kashmiri shores, which Punjab is very famous for, and this is part of his kingdom at the time. And actually the greatest of all Kashmir Shores are made at this time in the

Punjab. Indeed. And they then influence this whole story. You know, the story about the Paisley. No, Paisley print. No. The Paisley pattern is from that. That is from Kashmir Shores made at the time of Ranjit Singh. Really? Paisley and the Liberty print and stuff. It's all from the Ransuit Singh. Exactly. And the British then start making them in Paisley, in Scotland. Which is why when these cheap imitations, if you like, made in Scotland begin to circulate around Europe, the pattern is known as the Paisley. But in fact, that shape is originally Kashmere. I love that. Well, it's a barn leaf. It's all based on a barn leaf. Exactly. So that's fascinating. So Rundjit Singh has sent him some of these very fine shawls. So now, William VIII, has decided he's got to send something back. What does he send back?

This is my favourite story from the whole period. How do you use a diplomatic gift in order to advance imperialism? And it's Edinburgh who comes up with this rather brilliantly eccentric idea. what they know is that Radjick Singh's biggest passion, the thing he loves most of all, is horses. And so they decide to send as a gift to Rajit five huge Suffolk dray horses, cart horses, ones with those big sort of fluffy feet. I mean, they are huge. For people who don't know what a dray is, it is much larger than your average horse. It is more muscular.

Yeah, I mean, they're huge, they're huge beasts. And lovely looking, lovely looking things. and no one in India has ever seen these before. They will be the largest horses ever seen in Asia. And the idea is that if they give these, they can tell Ranjit Singh, we want them to arrive with you in mint conditions. So we're not going to ride them through the wicked Amirs of sinned and risk the passage to the Punjab.

We want to have your permission to send your gift up on a raft. What do you mean on the Indus? On the Indus. Oh, there's a coinkie-dink. So, okay. Radge's Singh is well aware what the Brits are trying to do, but on the other hand, he can't quite resist the idea of these dray horses. And then they add in just a kind of, Radget Singh's favourite phrase was to add sugar in the milk.

Yes. And so the sugar in the milk in this case is a heavy guilt English carriage, which had belonged to the Lord Mayor of London. All this is a means of getting a British raft up. the Indies. And this is Burns' mission. This is Burns who's got to do this to get the horses, the golden carriage and also his pen and paper out. So originally in the first draft of this plan, as planned by Ellenborough, it was going to be William Fraser's brother, James Bailey Fraser. And all the papers for this are a mile from where I'm now sitting in the Highlands in Relig

House, where James Bailey Fraser, who travels all the way through Kajar Persia at this period, making illustrations, making friends. And Relig, which is just a mile from here, has a whole wing extension which was built to accommodate the Khadjar princes on their visit to the Highlands. And in fact, they never came. So they bankrupted the estate. No reason. Anyway, so because of the bankruptcy of the estate, because of the overreaching, because of the Khadjar princes, James Bailey Fraser has to stay and deal with his bankruptcy. Sort of a hellstorm that is his finances. Yeah. So instead, he recommends this young man, Alexander Burns, who's another Scotsman, also from the Highlands. And it is a hellstone. And it is,

in the end, Alexander Burns, who gets age 25 the job of accompanying these horses up the Indus. What Ranjit Singh doesn't know, though he probably suspects, is that inside the carriage is a team of disguised draftsman, cartographers and naval and military surveyors. It's the full spy craft kit. And all the way up, they are accurately mapping the river's banks, plumbing its steps and testing the practicality of sending British steamers upstream. And this is meant to be the preemptive strike before a whole wave of Manchester cottons go shooting up into Central Asia, bringing with them British ideas of freedom and democracy. Of course, doesn't work out. Yeah, I mean, I love young Burns, 25-year-old Burns.

So he's travelling up there attracting so much attention as you would with enormous horses that nobody's ever seen before, an enormous glittery carriage. And a few pot shots, but in the end they make it. Yeah, and he writes for the first time, a dray horse was expected to gallop canter and perform all the evolutions of the most agile animal. His presence are received in great honor in Lahore on the 18th of July 1831. There's a massive cavalry guard that welcomes a regiment of infantry sent to greet them. And he writes, the coach, which was a handsome vehicle, headed the procession in the rear of the dray horses. We ourselves followed on elephants with the officers of the Maharaja.

You know, even if it is a trick to get to map a river, it's kind of pleasing to both sides for now, I think. And Burns, who is this sort of handsome, charming character, immediately makes friends with Ranjit Singh. Ranjit Singh greets him. He says he's passing through the palace when this old man suddenly grabs him and embraces him. And the two get into a sort of great drinking contest. And Ranjit Singh likes this. Oh, he's a big drinker. What is it he drinks? He's a big drinker.

Ground pearls and, you know, he grinds up pearls and puts it into his liquor of choice. Yeah, I mean, it's a wine as far as I know. I don't know what it was exactly. And a lot of conversation about Scotch whiskey goes on. And Rajit Singh really can't make up his mind whether he's more interested in the dray horses, which he calls little elephants, or Alexander Burns' crates of whiskey, which creates an immediate sensation in the Punjab. But behind all this sort of bon homery, there is a great deal of deplorable. going on because Burns is making friends with Ranjit Singh and he is very successfully getting permission to do things that no Brit has done before in the Punjab because Ranjit Singh's been

keeping the company for very good reasons at arm's length. And Burns is staying for an extended period of time in the court of Lahore. The first really detailed accounts that we get at Ranjit Singh from British observers comes from Alexander Burns. And he describes, for example, the Coenor, which is for the first time described in a published British account in Burns's memoirs. Okay, but we really ought to now turn our gaze back to Russia because, you know, this is happening. So the Brits think, okay, right, we've got a foot in here, we've got Ranjit Singh, we've got somebody who he likes, who's feeding us intel and drawing us maps. The Russians have landed in Constantinople.

So Nicholas I has given the ailing Sultan's support against a revolt that had been starting, stirring against him in the last two years. So he's in the British slow to respond to the Sultan who's screaming for their help. So Zahar Nicholas just goes, right, all right, I'm in, you're mine, you owe me. And that again is causing a great deal of fluttering in Westminster. This is everything that Ellenborough has been worrying about and everything that Ellenborough has been predicting. So at this point, Burns gets orders to carry on.

Originally, he was just going to deliver the horses to Radisson. carries on, and he goes on up to Kabul and Bakara. And this is when Dors Muhammad is in charge. Doss Muhammad is in charge. And again, Wade, the spymaster who we met in the last episode, who is the smiley, if you like, at the head of the... The smile who's taken in Sharshujia. He has been listening to all Sharshajouja has said, and he's built up Doss

Mohammed as this great enemy of Britain. But Burns goes there, and he finds that, in fact, Doss Muhammad is absolutely keen as mustard to make friends to the British. Delightful. Delightful. He finds, and that contrary to what Sharshoud has been telling Wade, he is very popular, he's regarded as source of justice, he's established his rule not just in Kabul, but over most of eastern and southern Afghanistan. And Burns is sending back all this information that is completely contradicting everything that his bosses, the spy masters, Pottinger and Wade have been feeding the British. He becomes a fanboy, actually. He doesn't he needs him more than that. He's more than contradicting. He's saying, actually, this is a really good guy. This is a guy you can do business with. I'll give you a quote from his dispatches. He said, the reputation of Doss Mohamed Khan is made known to the traveller long before he enters the country. He is, no one understands better the ways of doing business. He's unremitting an attention to business and attends daily at the courthouse.

The sort of decision is exceedingly popular with the people. Traders receive the greatest encouragement from him and the justice of this chief affords a constant. of praise to all classes. The peasants rejoice at the absence of tyranny, the citizen at the safety of his home, the merchant at the equity of his decisions and protection of his property, and the soldiers at the regular manner in which their arrears are discharged. A man in power can have no higher praise. Okay, so that is proof of fanboy status right there. But more importantly, it is totally going against everything that the British establishment has been told. And it makes him extremely unpopular. So, Burns,

then goes on to Bakara becomes the first British traveller to send a detailed account of Bakara back home. Back in England, he's given the Royal Geographical Society Medal, he becomes fated, he goes to see Queen Victoria, all of which, of course, makes his bosses green with envy. And they, although he's now the most famous traveller of his generation, they're all set to cut him down to size when he gets back to India. Okay, well, I mean, he's already sort of given Dors Mohammed some good propaganda, which the British don't want to hear. They don't want to know about it. But they do certain. sit up and take notice because if they don't want to, you know, admire and do business with

Dorsh Muhammad and they don't give any kind of credibility to Burns, the Russians are going to do it instead. That's what we've learned, haven't we, that they are very quick to get on in there. So in the autumn of 1837, a young man called Henry Rawlinson, a British scholar working as a diplomat in Tehran, is heading through the night for a camp of the Shah of Iran near Nishapur in Persian Khorasan, and he's written over 700 miles. Would you want to tell it? Yeah, this is one of my all-time favorite story. Go on, then you tell it.

You pick it up. So it's a 700-mile ride that he's done. Then what happens? So, Rulensted is, again, one of these sort of classic great-game characters like Burns. He is an Orientalist. He's brilliant at a whole variety of different languages. And he's just spent the previous two months at a place called Behusstun-translating ancient Persian

Kunei form. and he's the guy that realizes that Bayesstudent is the kind of Rosetta Stone for ancient Persia. And so he's been building a scaffolding, taking molds, and beginning to translate ancient Persian scripts for the first time. He's a crucial character. But his little sort of scholarly holidays broken by the fact that news has come that the Persians are going to invade Herat in Afghanistan and that the Russians are going to help them do it. So Poro Rawlinson is sitting in his Behiston copying inscriptions and he gets orders to ride 700 miles to Meshed. And he rides and rides.

And because there's a war about to break out with Herat, he can't get post horses. So he just is on the same old nag the whole way. And it's a long time since I have ridden anywhere, but I'm not sure how long you can stay in the saddle asleep. But at some point in the night, Rawlinson blinks awake, maybe falling out of his saddle, hauls himself back on and realizes that the horse in the night has veered off the road that he's been asleep and he's no idea where he is. And he's in the very, very dangerous borderlands of Afghanistan and Persia and it's dark and he's frightened. And then having wandered around for a little bit,

the sun begins to come up behind the Koishar Jahan Mountains. And he's able to orientate himself. He realizes where east and north is. And he heads back to what he thinks. thinks is the road. And just as he is expecting to meet the road, he sees ahead of him the last thing he wants to see, which is a cloud of dust rising before him. And it is, of course, a party of horsemen who are heading towards him. And he doesn't know who they are. So he does what I suppose any of us would do in the situation. He gets off his horse. He ties it up under an overhang of rock. He goes belly down. And he watches to see who these people love. Are they Afghans? Are they Persians? Are they brigands?

And what he sees in the next two minutes changes the course of history. Because it's none of these. It's not brigands. It's not Persians. It's not Afghans. It's a party of Cossacks riding into Afghanistan under the Russian flag. Dun, dun, da, da. It's a pretty good story. You tell that very well. Join us after the break when we find out how exactly this changes the course of of history. Welcome back. Okay, so just before the break, we left you on the cliff edge that was Rawlinson looking out on a field of Cossacks, finally realizing the Russians are in. Inski,

I wanted to say, but I didn't. But I did. So now what, William? So Rawlinson doesn't know quite what to do. Is he going to risk talking to these people? Is he just going to head back and tell everybody what he's seen. He decides eventually that he has to find out who these people are. So he heads after them. He's alone on a horse. And there's a party of a hundred Cossacks led by this young, very handsome, blonde officer. And he follows their tracks, goes down a side road, which they've just, a side valley, which they've just headed down, and finds them brewing up a samovar of tea by the riverbank. And there's this wonderful, again, sort of great game moment, When Rawlinson, one of the great orientalists of his generation, comes across this blonde officer,

he doesn't know who he is. It is, in fact, a man called Ivan Vickovich, who is the Russian counterpart to Alexander Burns, the orientalist James Bond of the Russian Secret Service. And the two of them face off, and neither of them want to sort of reveal what they're doing there. But the other, each is trying to discover what the other is. And so first of all, he tries French and Vickovic shakes his head. Then he tries Persian and Vickovic shakes his head. Of course, he actually speaks both of these languages completely.

And they end up having a conversation as you do in the great game in Jagatai Turkish, which Rawlinson notes in his letter that when he's reporting this, he spoke with a slight Russian accent. People were made of different stuff back then, weren't they? They were really. Certainly in terms of languages, they were. And this is everything that Ellen Burr, and the Russophobes have been predicting. It's the crucial, if you like the yellow cake in the kind of weapons of mass destruction story.

It's the missing link in the espionage puzzle. Rawlinson has to get the word back again. And so although he's exhausted and has been in the saddle for 700 miles, five days across Persia, he heads straight back to the embassy in Tehran, where there's a man called John McNeil, who's from the outer aisles. and is Ellenborough's man. He's the other biggest Russophobe who's been writing anonymous tracks in London about the Russian threat and who has been facing off against a master strategist in the Russian embassy in Tehran called Simonich, who's his great enemy and who's been running rungs around McNeil. But McNeil now has the vital bit of information,

which he's always been predicting. The Russians have gone into Afghanistan. And camel messengers are sent from Tehran to the Gulf, a steamer heads to Sue is where the telegraph has got to. Morse code is tapped out. A runner is sent from the foreign office across the road to Downing Street. The Russians have gone into Afghanistan. And in actual fact, none of this is as it's made out to be. This is a very, very tentative exploratory expedition. It's not an invasion.

Even Vickovic is a much more mysterious character that he looks. he's not actually Russian at all. He's Lithuanian. He was originally involved in an anti-Russian resistance movement called the Black Brothers. He and his school friends were rounded up by the Tsarist authorities and sent off. He's a teenage, you really do mean it. He's about 17 when he's picked up, isn't he? He's picked up, age 17, sent off to south of the Urals to a punishment posting. But he's so brilliant that while the rest of his friends die in these sort of terrible labor battalions and things, Vickovich rises in the service and he is spotted by the explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt as in Humbold of the Penguin.

Humboldt as in the many volumes of Victorian exploration and so on. And he's amazed to see one of his own books in this distant Cossack cavalry battalion on the Orenberg line in Central Asia. And he asked who's been reading my books here and Vickovic steps forward. It turns out he's got all of Humboldt's books. books. And he amazes Humboldt by the fact that he speaks not only Jagatide, Persian, but he's also learnt Kazakh and has memorized the Quran by heart and knows Arabic. And so he writes this letter saying, this young man should not be in a distant Cossack mission. He's a, he's a brilliant young man. I think you should take more interest in him. So Vickovich is taken out

and he becomes the Russian antidote to Alexander Burns. And the Russians have now read Alexander Burns' account of his journey to Baccarra and Vickovich is sent basically to roll up Burns's network. So I love the work, you know, these counterpoise characters, so Vittkovich and Burns. And then you also have, you mentioned just very briefly, Sir John McNeil, who is, you know, the spider in the web now. And Siminich. And they too are sort of like completely counterpoised characters, aren't they? Exactly that. And McNeil is writing these tracks.

I've got a quote from him here in my notes. The only nation in Europe which attempts to aggrandize itself at the expense of its neighbors is Russia, he fumes. Russia alone threatens to overturn throne, subvert empires, and subdue nations hitherto independent. The integrity and independence of Persia is necessary to the security of India and of Europe. And any attempt to subvert one is a blow struck to the other, an unequivocal act of hostility to England. Well, I find really interesting about that is that he publishes it anonymously. and it proliferate. So again, it's kind of a propaganda. Somebody in the know, but we don't know who it is. I think diplomats would have to do that today. You couldn't as an active diplomat published stuff openly, an opinion piece.

But does he do it? He does it because he means or he does it as an act of propaganda, because we know that both of these things have been done of late. Well, in Britain, as in, you know, as today, there are different factions. There are hawks and there are doves. And he's very much appealing to the hawks. But of course, what he's also doing is ignoring the fact that expansion of British possessions in India has continued without interruption from the first half of the 19th century gobbling up far more land and overturning many more Theranes and achieving by Russia. But the book is nevertheless very well received and widely read in London. So he's the important and influential character. So things have changed. I mean, that moment that you told us so well of Rawlinson looking at the sun rising over the Cossack troops and then seeing Vittaker how does it change everything? How do things change after that?

So this is taken to validate all the overheated fears of hawkish-British policy makers. And they've long feared that the Russians want to take over Afghanistan, uses a base for attacking India. And this stray sighting in the desert by Rawlinson is the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle. And in London, this is wielded as evidence that the Russians are about to go into Afghanistan. And descriptions of Vickovic-Parchi are immediately. sent to intelligence officials at the Khyber Pass and the other entrances to India in case Vickovich is planning to continue on to India or even to negotiate with Ranjit Singh and the Sikh

Halza. So it's action stations. Suddenly everyone is on is on alert. So as part of that alert, Alexander Burns is sent straight to Dawson Muhammad. I mean, it's so good. Why isn't there a movie of this? This is so... Dispatch. It's right. You liked him. You get on with him. Go. Go now. So exactly that. And Rawlinson actually already knows that Burns is heading in this direction. Vickovich does not. And Vickovich crosses the boundary just as Burns is anyway being said. Burns, I think, has got as far as Peshawar, which is now under Ranjit Singh, no longer under Afghan control. And he's sent up into Kabul. And he's in Kabul beginning again his bromance, re-igniting his bromance with Das Mohamed Khan. when Vickovich arrives.

It must have been so cheesied off. It's a complete race against time between these two. And what Burns doesn't know is that Vickovic has already gone just before this sighting by Rawlinson to Bacara, where he has already exposed and rolled up Burns' intelligence network in Bacara. And so on arrival in Baccarra, this is before Rawlinson sees him, people come straight up to him because they see this blonde guy because Burns is also blonde and blue-eyed and he says do you know Iscunda and Vickovich thinks he means

Alexander the Great because well Sikunger is what Alexander is known as in that part of that Iskander or Secunder yeah and they don't they actually mean Alexander Alexander and so it doesn't take him long it only takes him two weeks to uncover the intelligence network that Burns has established to send news back to India I managed to find these notes from Vickovich in the Zaris Archives. I was put in touch with a wonderful character called Alexander Morrison, who's at All Souls, who's the historian of this. And he put me in touch with a researcher he knew in Russia, and we found these letters. And this is the first time it's ever been published. And Vickovic writes, the British have their man in Bukhara. He's a

Kashmiri called Nizamudin, and he's been living in Bukhara for four years under the pretext of trade. And anyway, the letter goes on and on and on, talking about all the different people. So compromises the entire network. He's discovered and compromised. He also, from Bukhara, discovers that there's actually another Brit living in Kabul full-time, as the British spy in Kabul. And this is the man who has called himself Charles Massen. It's actually an assumed name. But Vickovic somehow hears about this in Bukhara and is sending messages. is back to Moscow and St. Petersburg saying that this guy is a British spy and is not to be trusted.

When you say they roll up the network, I mean, are there people having their throat slit? Or are they just being exposed and they run away? No, I think that's me being slightly colourful using Le Carrey speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He exposes them. So they can't do anything anymore? I don't think he's actually killing anyone, no, but he's certainly telling the Russians who is providing the information. Yes.

So, I mean, they're defunct then. If you know who they are, then you know. Then they're not much use. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, one of the great moments of this whole story, Vickovich arrives in Kabul on Christmas Day, I think it is, and the two of them can't resist it. So Vickovich and his opposite number, Burns, have Christmas lunch together. That's hilarious. And it's, I love this story. So these two great spies, these two orientalists, fluent in multiple languages, both of them under.

25 meet for Christmas dinner in December 1837. And of course, they fall into each other's arms. They're both very similar people. Neither of them are from the centre. They like each other. They would be friends in real life, really, best mays. They followed very similar trajectories. They both bothered to learn these languages. They've been sent to distant postings. Burns comes from the middle of nowhere from Montrose and the Highlands. Vickovich is a Lithuanian, who was originally a revolutionary, now recruited by the Russian Secret Service. And this is the letter that Burns writes to London. He says, Vickovich is a gentlemanly agreeable man, about 30 years of age, and speaks French, Persian and Turkish fluently. He wore the uniform of an

officer of the Cossacks, which was a novelty in Kabul. He had been to Bukhara. He doesn't know what he's been doing in Bukhara. And we had therefore a common subject to converse upon without touching on politics. I found him intelligent and well informed on the subject of Northern Asia. he very frankly said it was not the custom of Russia to publish to the world the results of its researches in foreign countries. In other words, idiot, why are you telling us all your secrets? And I've read every word that you've written, as was the case in France or England. Bernsden added, I never again saw, Mr. Vickovich, although we exchanged sundry messages of high consideration. For I regret to say, I found it impossible to follow the dictates of my personal

feelings of friendship towards him as the public service required the strictest, watch. And this was no understatement because Perthens had already begun to intercept his dining companion's letters back to Tehran and St. Petersburg and vice versa. So these two people meeting together. But then, you know, they are the epitome of the great game then, because, you know, they are people who like each other. They are so like each other. And it is kind of a, for them, it's outmanoeuvring, trying to think like the other person. Exactly. This is the gamiest of the great gamey bits, isn't it, really? It's very gamey.

But as so often with the great game, it has very tragic results. And this is where we've always got to temper these wonderful stories with the reality. Who's cleverer? I mean, you've spent time with both of them. Who's the smarter of the two of it? Camitual Burns, do you think? So they're very similar characters, I think. They're both clever.

They're both quite attractive. But they're both flawed. And both of them are basically been bought by the secret services of their country. And both of them have left. And this will happen, as we'll see it, in a later period to Burns, his principles will be bought by the promises of a promotion. So after this Christmas dinner, I mean, Burns is doing his work. He has got to Dorsh Mohammed, his mate first. And Dorsh Mohammed, he's not against making a deal with the Brits, is he? I mean, he wants to do business with the Brits. He's very, very keen to ally with the Brits. And he is basically keeping Vickovich at arm's length, but, but, but, you know, he's very, very keen to ally with the Brits. And he's very keen to ally with the Brits. And he is basically keeping Vickovic.

keeping him in Kabul as a lever to try and get the British to sign an agreement with him. But Burns' enemies, Pottinger and Wade, the two spymasters, who are green with envy, have been rubbishing all that Burns has been sending South. They still are on this old idea that the answer is Shas Shudja. We've got to get rid of Dosh Mohamed. And this is a project that Wade has been sort of sitting like a hen on an egg for 20 years for, if not 30 years. And he's not going to have some whippersnapper, age 25, who has come and jumped over him, who's gone and got a gold medal who's met Queen Victoria. And he's been sitting all this time in Ludiana, hatching his plans.

And he basically, every dispatch that Burns sends from Kabul saying, we need to make an alliance, we need to make it quick. We've got only maximum a couple of months. Because the Russians are here. The Russians are here. They're going to do it. Yeah, they're right here. I've just had Christmas dinner with one. And every dispatch arrives at the new, very foolish, new governor.

general, Lord Auckland, with a six-page disclaimer by Wade saying this is all nonsense. Burns is too young. He's inexperienced. He's over-excited, over-promoted. And Lord Auckland, we should say, is one of those sort of, you know, Etonian kind of clever, clever and looks down on anyone who may be common, could we say? Yes, Burns is, Burns is not his sort of idea of a gentleman at all. and Lord Auckland, we should also say, is the forbear of another disastrous British imperialist, Anthony Eden, who was responsible for Suez. So the first Afghan war and Suez, the two greatest disasters, arguably in entire British imperial history, both generate from the same family.

Anyway, so Burns is in Kabul saying we have the opportunity of making an alliance with this man. Doss Muhammad is capable, pro-British, wants to make a deal, extremely popular. He's conquered three quarters of Afghanistan. He is the apple of everyone's eye. Sharshujah is a passe, has been, no one respects him. He's multiply defeated. You are complete idiots to go for Shashuja, back, Doshuja, back Dosh Mahmah, make this alliance. And meanwhile, he's in Kabul, charming Doss Mohammed, saying, I'm sure any minute we're going to get authorization for a treaty and you and I can cement our personal friendship in a union of nations. And instead, he gets this disastrous letter sent by Auckland saying Dosh Mohammed's our enemy. No one listens to him.

He's not important. Wind your neck in, son. Wind your neck in, son. You've got no authority to make a deal with him, tell him to expel the Russians, or we will invade. And this is no way to speak to Dost Mohammed. Doss Mohammed is being offered at the same time 200,000 rubles by Vickovich to rearm his entire army. And he's also offering military help against the Sikhs, which is what Doss Mohammed is longing to have. So the Russians are offering everything, the British are offering nothing. Are offering insults? Mm-hmm. And so Burns has no cards at all. And although he's giving absolutely the correct information

and he's Duss Muhammad's old friend, his mission ends in catastrophe. He has to withdraw in humiliation and Vickovic is triumphant. Vickovic is left in Kabul, the apple of Duss Muhammad's eye, and Poro Burns heads off to India and goes to Simler. which is newly established. It's now for the first time, the summer capital of the British. And there he meets Lord Auckland and his sister, Emily Eden.

My favourite. I love Emily Eden. Yeah, she's great. She's one of the great wits of the time. Yeah. She's thoroughly rude. She's like the, you know, the trip advice of her time.

Just scathing about the people and places she goes to. And Burns is basically brought off by the British bureaucracy. He is offered a knighthood if he keeps quiet. and all the advisors get to him before he goes to see Auckland and say, look, just do not rock the boat. We know that you want this thing, you're not getting it, but you have the option of a leading role if the British go into Afghanistan, which is what we're now planning to do. We're going to declare war, and you can be the deputy governor of Afghanistan, and you will be Sir Alexander Burns. And Burns buys it.

Well, he's got no choice. What else is he going to do? They didn't listen to him. He lost his great asset. You know, you can only do so much if nobody listens to you. It could only do so much. So he allows himself to be brought off. He doesn't go public with his disagreements. He accepts the knighthood. He is now Sir Alexander Burns. And on the 1st of October, Auckland issues what comes to be known as this similar manifesto,

formally declaring war and announcing Britain's intention to restore Sharshajouja to the Afghan throne by force. It's one of the most catastrophic decisions. Could have been so different. There was absolutely no reason for it. Duss Mahmoud was no enemy of the British, was longing to make an alliance. And literally it's interdepartmental jealousies that bring about this, this completely unnecessary invasion. With a hefty dose of snobbery on the side. Healthy dose of snobbery, very important part of all British imperial history.

So the similar manifesto, which is produced by Lord Auckland, is a tissue of lies. And it goes against everything the British know and have been told. Lord Auckland says that it has been proved to his lordship by the strong, and unanimous testimony of the best authorities. And here Burns is named as someone supporting this mission, though he's opposed it at every stage. He said that to enter Afghanistan, surrounded by his own troops, Sharshujia will be acclaimed by his own people. But of course, in reality, he'll be a puppet at the head of a British army, acting for British interests and closely supervised by British officials. And so this is not at all a homecoming that Shaschouja has

been hoping for. This is an entirely unnecessary imperial war. The best comment on this is my favourite quote, I think it is Emily Eden, your great hero, Anita. And she just says in her diary that day, poor, dear, peaceful George has gone to war, rather an inconsistency in his character. Rather an inconsistency in his character. She's just the mistress of understatement. Look, and this is also the underpinning, we must say, of your absolutely fantastic And I really do mean this. And I mean, you know, you are a wonderful writer, but I think Return of the King, you're at the height of your powers.

I think it's such a great book. I have to say, it's very nice. I mean, you know, as you know, as a writer, you don't tend to reread your own books. Can't bear it. Oh, my God. But it was very nice sitting in an armchair yesterday, rereading the first few chapters of Return of King,

which I've never done before. And I had an excuse to do it with this pod. So thank you for letting me sound off. Same here. No, it was a absolute delight. Listen, that is all from this. What are we doing next week? Do you remember?

Well, the Afghan war breaks out. The first Afghan war. This is poor, peaceful George going to war. Peaceful, peaceful George, rather an inconsistency in his character. I swear one day we've got to do an episode on Emily Eden. I love her so much. Anyway, till then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.