Empire: World History - 81. The Graveyard of Empires

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

After the calamitous retreat from Kabul left thousands of British dead, the East India Company wants revenge. They will call upon the Army of Retribution which will leave Afghanistan, once the Crossroads of Civilisation, a desolate wasteland. But once the last sepoy has descended the Khyber Pass, who will rule Afghanistan - and how will the Russians respond? Listen as William and Anita finish the story of the First Anglo-Afghan War and discuss whether Afghanistan really is the Graveyard of Empires, and whether China will be the next foreign power to burn its fingers in the Afghan furnace. 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.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello, Empire Podcast listeners, Anita here. Look, this episode is going to be one perhaps if you're of a delicate disposition, or you've got small children or even slightly bigger children who don't like. gory story. You might not want to listen to it with them. Anyway, just a friendly warning. On with the show. It is said that the English entered Afghanistan a second time, merely to free the

English prisoners, spending lacks and lacks to bribe the Afghans, allowing them into passage, leaving thousands more dead behind, paying compensation double the value to the owners of the property they had destroyed, and then revealing their true nature by demolishing the markets of Kabul and returning to India. They had hoped to establish. themselves in Afghanistan to block any Russian advance. But for all the treasures they expended, for all the lives they sacrificed, the only result was ruin and disgrace. If the English had been able to take and keep Afghanistan, would they have ever left a country where 44 different types of grape grow and other fruits as well? Apples, pomegranates, pears, rhubb, mulberries, sweet

watermelon and musk melon, apricots and peaches, and ice water that cannot be found. in all the plains of India. These Indians know neither how to dress nor how to eat. God save me from the fire of their dahl and their miserable japanes. Rude. Anyway, those are the words of Mirza Atta, an Afghan who witnessed the British expedition in the Anglo-Afghan War, reflecting on the actions of the Army of Retribution.

And this is what we're here to talk about. We left you in the last episode with a rout of British forces in Afghanistan. one man standing, according to legend, although William pointed out there were others who struggled in later. But Dr. Briden, the only one of some 12,000 people who set off to take Afghanistan with Sharshujia, they thought the man the key to Afghanistan and the key to holding the passage to India. Now, this is part of the Russia great game series that we are bringing you. And I know in the last episode, we kind of took our eyes off Russia, because partly, they took their eyes off Afghanistan.

I mean, Vitkovich on the verge of victory, all the hard work that he did and suddenly pulled back. You'll find out, actually, in this episode, it's not quite that simple. Russia hasn't quite removed its gaze. So Russia reappears in this episode, but largely we're going to talk about the answer to that British route. The Army of Retribution sent to exact revenge on the Afghans after that fall of Kabul we talked about in the last Empire podcast,

the British retreat, which led, to such horrific scenes of devastation, murder and even cannibalism. So that's what we're talking about today. First of all, just give us this big picture here, William, of what we are getting into. So as we said in the last episode, awful as it was and catastrophic as it was, the retreat from Kabul is in fact the destruction of only one of three British garrisons in Afghanistan. and two remain holding out. One is Jalalabad, which is where the army from Kabul was trying to get to, which is just at the top of the Kaiba Pass. It is the traditional gateway to India when, for example,

the Chinese pilgrim, Shwan Zhang passes in the 6th century. He thinks he's entering India when he gets to Jalalabad. And if you're coming from Kabul today, it's where you hit the heat of the planes, because you come down the Kodkubal Pass, and that's where you come down the Kodqabal Pass, and that's where the heat of India hits you. And in Jalalabad, even as the army is being destroyed from Kabul, is fighting Bob Sale. Whose wife is taken hostage on the retreat from Kabul? And is being looked after by Akbar Khan.

And although she's not hurt by Akbar Khan, they suffer further casualties in an earthquake. They've already been through the retreat from Kabul, which is as big a nightmare as most people would have to deal with in their life. But six months later, the fort where they're being kept is shaken to dust by an enormous earthquake. And of course, Lady Sale, who is indomitable, emerges from the timbers and the wreckage completely unhurt, as indeed does her daughter, Alexandra. I mean, they are made of some stuff these sales.

And then you've got General Not and Henry Rawlinson, they're holding on in Kandahar as well, haven't you? That's right. And General Not is the character who really should have led the army. He was by far the best qualified soldier, but for class reasons and the fact that the East India Company armies were less posh than the Queen's regiments of the British Army, he's given the minor job of looking after Kandahar, which he does with great brilliance. And his sepoys remain loyal to him. And despite everything, they hold on to Kandah for the whole of this disaster. So that winter, these two forces are under siege. and both are longing to wait for the passes to thaw with spring and to come and recapture Kabul.

I just need to ask you what's happened to Shah Shudja, because last we saw him, he was hold up in this very ancient fort, Balah Hisar, the castle of the Afghans, and he was under siege as well. That's right, but Shah Shudja is made of sterling stuff like Lady Sale, and although he was denigrated by all his British protectors who clasped around him, Sharshujah survives. And for the next two years, Sharsuja remains alive in the Bala Hussar, exerting his authority, exploiting divisions among the other Afghans. One of the things that's quite interesting that we haven't said so far is that in the traditional British accounts of this first Afghan war, you get an impression of a bunch of conniving, treacherous natives in inverted commas who are all working together. In the Afghan accounts that I found in Afghanistan, you get much more clearly the fact that you have a bunch of completely different tribal groups who are acting independently

and who certainly pragmatically take advantage of British errors and occasionally rise and act together. But as always with Afghanistan, as soon as the common enemy is gone, they begin squabbling with each other. And, you know, one of those factions is Dorsa Muhammad, who's managed to get out of the clamber out of the hellhole, but he has fallen into the hands of the British and they are now keeping him in Missouri. and his son who has exacted some of these, if not most of these atrocities, is waiting to get enough bargaining chips to get his dad out. So there's a lot bubbling away in the background. So, I mean, you've got a really interesting, I think, extract in your book from Sharsuja, who's writing to Prince Timor. And what does he say in that last?

And he says, this is, again, one of the Afghan sources that I managed to find in Kandah, this one. And he writes, I frequently warned the English of what would take place, but they paid no regard. to me. Fate has decreed those scenes which I hoped I will never see again. May God shield me from the shame. If by the blessings of God I should ever see you again, I will unfold to you the secrets of my heart. It was my fate to act as I have done. The wealth that I had amassed was entirely expended. If I had some money at my command, I could still perhaps bring about my heart's desire. Alas, I am now destitute. I do not grieve. A better state of things is now in progress, and we shall still attain the objects of which we have long been disappointed. And this is the incredible quality of Shash Tjuj,

he's one of these people that can take repeated defeats and not collapse. Anyone else would have after the amount of reverses that poor Sharsuja has received in his life would have been given up and got into retirement. But he's still holding out in the Bala Hussar. And in the end, it's only a terrible accident of fate that does for him. Just as the spring is coming and the hope of relief from his allies is becoming a reality. he is assassinated not by anyone that he would consider to be his enemy, but why one of his godson's who wants to get in with the other faction of Doss Mahmahman, Nakbar Khan. And Shal Shudu is coming out of the fort and he's killed by someone he trusts with a dagger

at close quarters. They're the barracks-eye assassins. And, I mean, they don't just kill him. It's a humiliating end as well because they strip him, don't they? They take everything off his body. That's right. And his body is left out. for several days.

I have to say, I mean, soon afterwards, he's buried in great state. And when you go to Kabul today, one of the most magnificent ancient buildings in the city is the tomb of Shah Shudha, where he's buried with his brother and his father, Timosha, in the shadow of the Balahistan. It's a magnificent mogul-style monument. It looks very like Sufshuang's tomb in Delhi, for example. Or one of the Lodi tombs in the Lodi Gardens. It's a very familiar-looking shape.

And on a very grand scale. This is something we'll talk about later, but he is regarded as the chief of the Popolzai tribe, whose modern chief is Hamid Khazai, the ex-president. Put a pin in that. I'm not going to let you play that story. It's such a good one, but we'll come to that. We'll circle back to that at the end. But let's look at what the British are doing. So we sort of tantalizingly named the Army of Retribution at the end of the last episode. this is a little bit, to me, feels like the experience after the mutiny of the red mist and we're not having this. And is it a similar kind of sensibility that drives the Army of Retribution?

Yes, and this in a sense forms the model for the armies of retribution 15 years later at the Indian Mutiny, or the First War of Independence, if you're listening to this in India, because this is one of those grim institutions that its entire point is to create war crimes. And when spring finally comes in 1842, the Army of Retribution, which has been gathering its strength in Peshawar, marches up the Khyber Pass, relieved the garrison at Jalab, where Fighting Bob Sale has just defeated Akbar Khan in battle. And just before the army arrives, the army of Fighting Bob Sale marches out and surprises its procedures. And poor Akbar Khan is sent off in chaos back to Kabul. So when the army of retribution comes to the top of the Khyber Pass, they are surprised to be greeted by fighting Bob and all his men ready to greet them at the top of the Khyber Pass. I mean, that is the one thing that we ought to again mention is just the guts of these people to do things that the Afghans think nobody would be stupid enough to do this.

The first time we saw that was when they actually came, first of all, passing through the Bola Pass, which they should not have, nobody should get through that and they did. And so they meet very little resistance. And no one would have imagined that after all they've been through fighting Bob Sayal would have come out, saber swinging. But the Army of Retribution is a very dark chapter in this story in that it exists to humiliate and punish the Afghan. So every Afghan settlement that it passes on its way to Kabul, it destroys. Every tree it comes across, it cuts down, every field of crops that it sees, it burns. And this is made only worse. I mean, again, there are great echoes, as you say, in 1857, where,

the atrocities of the uprising only accelerate and amplify the atrocities done by the vengeful British army. Because as they progress towards Kabul from Jalalabad, they are moving along the road that the army of Kabul was destroyed upon. So what they see everywhere that they go is drifts of snow containing perfectly preserved bodies and skeletons. One officer, writes, some were mere skeletons, while others were in better state of preservation. Their hair was still on their heads. Their features were perfect, although discoloured. Their eyes had evidently been picked out by birds of prey, which wheeling and endless gyrations above my head seemed to consider me an intruder in their domain. On turning a corner of a large rock, where five or six

bodies were lying in a heap together, a vulture had been banqueting on them, hopped carelessly away a little distance, lazily flapping its huge wings, but too indolent to fly. I turned away from the sickening sight with a sad heart, but a stern determination to lend my best efforts to paying the Afghans the debt of revenge. We owed them. And do they and how? So after the hostages have been secured by this army of retribution, they really do set about repaying this debt and with such extraordinary brutality. So they get to the summer resort of Ishthalif and they find 500 enslaved sepoys in a pitiful condition. These are people who fought on their side who were loyal to them and they have been starved. They're half naked, ragged and looking like an army of the living dead.

So the army then commits a massacre in Ishtilif. And it's not just men. It's not just the fighting men. It's boys. Any boy and over 14 and women as well? Yep. Women are killed at this time. Right.

And this horrifies many of the officers. says who record it, which is why we know about it. Well, let's put a number on it. So 4,000 men, women and children reported to have been cut down during a study. And the wounded are not allowed to escape. They are collected in heaps and burnt alive, while the women are divided among the troops by throws of dice. So exactly the same barbaric treatment that they had suffered is now meted out to the

Afghans in turn. And then there's the greatest irony of all. If you remember, the point of this entire exercise was to not only keep the Russians out and keep the Russians at bay and away from India, but to somehow draw Afghanistan into the British orbit. Win the hearts and minds. Win the hearts and minds through trade. And there were high hopes that Afghanistan could be restored to its glory days.

Remember that at the time of the moguls, Afghanistan was considered to be a richer and grander and more civilized place, at least by the moguls themselves, than India was. And to Babor, for example, you know, in the Babonama, writes endlessly of the beauties of Afghanistan and the civilization of Afghanistan, and he's very snotty about India. This is the last moment in a sense that Afghanistan has a shadow of that left. But the final thing the British do before they leave is to destroy all that. So the great Mughal Bazaar built in Kabul, which had been standing well and fine still when the British arrive, is destroyed. It's built at the same time that the Red Fortin in Delhi, the Jamah Mazjid, all these glorious things from the high point of

mogul rule, the time of the Taj Mahal. This bizarre is the wonder of Central Asia, built for a time when Afghanistan considered itself to be the crossroads, the Central Asia, and the place where all traders could come. That is dynamited and level. There's not a trace of it today. So, I mean, this is a legacy of poverty that they wish to leave, that this is a country that, you know, they're going to take the legs out of, and, you know, whatever comes next is not going to be good. And they've been promising Shashuja's supporters that they're going to support him and they're going to leave a government in Afghanistan that is going to be friendly. But having done this destruction, they then just plan to withdraw. And the British intelligence chief, who is Burns' Munshi, Mohan Lal, who somehow survived the death of his boss and is still gathering incredible intelligence and has been promising all the British allies and sympathizers in Kabul that they will be rescued and looked after, now find.

he has to tell all the allies that they are going to be left. You're on your own. You're on your own. And he says, I could hardly show my face to them at the time of our departure. And when they all came full of tears, saying we had deceived and punished our friends, causing them to stand alone against their own countrymen, then leaving them in the mouths of lions. And that as soon as Wazir Akbar Khan would take Kabul, they predicted correctly that he would torture, extort money for them, and disgrace all those who'd taken our side.

And can I just say how very, again, current these things feel, because that must surely be somewhere in the consciousness of Afghanistan. And certainly more recently, I've done programmes on it, you know, Afghan translators who are still left there. And the British officers who I've spoken to who are absolutely tortured with the guilt that they promised, they promised that they would get them out. And I know there are schemes, there are Arab schemes, but there are so many who were left behind and couldn't get out who are still there. I've got a friend, my local taxi driver, Feridan, he'd worked with the British. He got his nine months pregnant wife out in the last plane out of Kabul two years ago. But his sister stayed behind. Her husband was in the security forces. And as soon as the Taliban came in, they shot him dead in front of his children. So that's a story from two years ago, exactly mirroring what we're seeing here in 1842. Well, I mean, since we're talking about, you know, current events. I mean, I did a whole documentary series on, the BBC, the other job that I do, this soldier, a very senior soldier, refused to accept that his translator couldn't get out. So lobbied and lobbied just through the highest channels to finally

have him extracted and his wife and his small children. But his brother, who is a surgeon who also worked for the British, was left behind. And they came and they attacked another brother and they slaughtered him in front of his family saying, where is he? Where is the translator? And, you know, bits of this family are still sort of scattered who, in some way or the other done work for the British. And can't get out. You know, there are so many of these stories around. There's also, and this is quite interesting, there's also a whole community in Afghanistan who are the Kisselbash community, who had supported the British, and they leave with the Army of Retribution. When the Army of Retribution marches out in 1842, they come too. And the great writer on Sufis, Idra Shah, and his children,

Sarah Shah and Tahir Shah, who are writers of our generation, Sarah did a famous documentary that was a award-wing documentary on Taliban Afghanistan. She's a friend of mine. Her family leave with their kisel bash. They leave with the Army of Retribution. And they're eventually given someone we've also talked about on this series, the Begham Sumru, they're given her estate in Sardana, outside Myroud. So you see a whole Afghan community coming as refugees for the first time from Afghanistan and

settling in India at this point. Okay, so when the Army of Retribution have done their thing, you know, creating this wasteland, are they able to leave easily? Or, I mean, what is the answer to retribution? It's exactly like every other retreat from Kabul. The Afghans do not let you leave the country. If you're fleeing, having been defeated, they don't let you go easily. And the whole way out, the Army of Retribution that has behaved so appallingly and raping and murdering and burning alive, wounded people, it is followed every inch of the way back down to India by sharpshooters who are shooting at it. And several of the accounts we have of the First

Afghan War are by people who get very badly injured on this retreat and leave their accounts. But my favorite account is Mir Zarata, the Afghan who's with the, has supported the British, and he's one of those who's forced out. And we started the episode with him. And he writes again, the remaining troops when they were safely out of Afghanistan were welcomed by speeches by the Governor General, for the proverb says Afghanistan is the land of hawks, but India is the land of the carrying crow. In truth, the English would never, ever, after years and years ever, have managed to pacify Chorasan. The English, with their crow-like Indian troops, stayed with their bones scattered and unburied in the mountain slopes of Afghanistan, while the brave Afghan fighters looked for martyrdom and were victorious in this world and the next.

Blessed they are indeed who tastes the cup of martyrdom. Miseratha is saying good riddance to the British, the Afghans won. And this, you know, unequivocally like so many other of the forces who have invaded Afghanistan, this is the fate. Each time they come in, they occupy for a bit, and then they're driven out, and they have to live with that. We've seen that with successively the British, the Russians, and most recently the Americans. And to this wasteland, almost, you know, to sit on the throne with a crown of thorns, really, because that's all that's left. Dorsah Muhammad returns from exile. And Doss Muhammad is a very honorable enemy. And the deal is that they swap the hostages and he agrees to protect the passes of Afghanistan from the Russians and to

effectively turn Afghanistan into a buffer zone. And this is what he does. He succeeds in reconquering the whole country. He's the most successful ruler of his generation. And he doesn't allow the Russians in. And there's a particular moment when he could invade India in 1857 during the great uprising, the Indian Mutiny or the First War of Independence, when many people in Afghanistan call for him to take the opportunity when there's disarray in India to retake Peshawar, which had originally been Afghan, and to extend Afghan rule into the Punjab again. But he says, I signed a treaty. I refuse to do this. So, I mean, you've brought up the Russians and you have brought up the Dors Muhammad's willingness to become the dam against the Russians. where are they and what are they doing now? So of course, the Russians who thought they had an agreement with the British and withdrew their ambassador from Tehran, pulled back Vukovic from Afghanistan, had to sit and watch.

Well, in their view, the British broke their gentleman's agreement and invaded Afghanistan. And so in 1839, when the news come that Afghanistan has fallen to the British, the Russians decide to do the British thing. and they say so explicitly, we're doing what the British did. They say, well, in the English manner is the phrase. In the English manner is exactly, yeah. They decide to send an army across the step from Orenburg to take the great caravan city of Kiva. Now, Kiva today, I was there a couple of years ago, is this magnificent caravan city in present-day Uzbekistan. And it is one of the most magnificent cities of the region, spectacular minarets, amazing.

mud brick walls, wonderful palaces filled with tiles and incredibly beautiful mosques. It's one of the great jewels of Central Asia. And the Russians think this is the moment to show that they're not going to fall behind the British in this contest, as they see it, what the British call the great game. The Tsarists call the tournament of shadows. So 1839, accompanied by more than 5,000 troops, both Russian and Cossack, and followed by a train of 10,000 camels. General Perrovsky, who's in charge of Orenberg, sets out to take Kiva. But he has no more luck than the British. And it is the coldest winter in living memory, and they set out too late in the year.

And without even meeting a single Kivan in battle, the force is wiped out by the sub-zero temperatures. And in December, having lost half the force to frostbite and cold, they turn back. with no gains and return to Orenburg. But as we'll see in a future episode, all these great caravan cities, Samakan, Bukhara, Tashkent, and Kiva will very soon fall to further Zaris expansion. Well, more to come. Join us after the break. Welcome back. So just before the break, we had again, you know, the climate playing its part in world affairs. And this army, this Russian army, that has decided to, in the English manner, go and take Afghanistan, if they can, anything they can do, we can do better, that kind of spirit of everything. But, you know, they perish on the step before they can do anything very much at all. Meanwhile, in this story, there's something rather delicious happening, which is 1844. Can we talk about the visit of this art, a Queen Victoria? Because it is one of my favourite things. Could we do that?

1842, the British pull out of Afghanistan, the army of retribution, levels everything. Duss Muhammad is swapped for Lady Sale. Before we go any further, we should say Lady Sale goes off and starts a whole new life with fighting Bob in South Africa. And when eventually she dies, her epitaph on her tombstone reads, Here lies all that could die of Lady Sale. Even in her own time, she was recognised. She was something. No, she was something else. She also, you know, she very quickly gets her memoirs out. Almost everyone in this story who survives writes their memoirs. And Lady Sail is the first time. It's serialized, I think, in the Times. And it becomes a major bestseller of Victorian sort of travel and adventure and military literature. And there is, I can't remember that, is it Astley's Circus? There's a circus that puts on an entire sort of spectacular touring the country of Lady Sale and Afghanistan. And she's always shown wearing a turban, riding out.

It's worth Googling. Honestly, she's everything you imagine and more if you just Google the image. So look, okay, let's go to 1844. Fighting Bob incidentally is killed eventually in the Indemutney. Or not. Or let's not. Let's not do more anything to one at all. Yes, no, do go on.

Tell us about fighting box sale. It's never been known that I would forge my own independent course on this podcast. Seriously, don't mind me. You just carry up. What happens to fighting Bob Sail? Fighting Bob Sale is killed in the Sikh wars, killed by the Punjabis. Okay. There's the second Anglo-Sikh War and Fighting Bob Sale, I think, is killed in that.

Great. Got that out of your system. Can we go to 1844, which I'm literally desperate to get to? No more Fighting Bob. Okay. So the Tsar, who's, you know, the dispatch of Vitkovich helped to start the conflict to begin with, sort of says, oh, coming over for a cup of tea to Queen Victoria. that all right? In Windsor Castle. And he travels like Peter the Great did incognito. Yes. In his case, he takes the name all of, a name we've come across also in this podcast before.

Not so long ago. To avoid possible assassination attempts by Polish terrorists, it said. But when I say he comes to tea, I'm not even joking. He really does come for tea at Windsor Castle. And there's a regimental brass band playing, but otherwise it's tea and clinky, you know, cups of tea. So there's quite a lot of consternation because the Tsar, arrives at Woolwich Docks unannounced on a Dutch steamer on the 1st of June and sends his word to the Queen that he'd like to come to tea. And at this point, Queen Victoria is 25 years old and heavily pregnant. And given what happened during the visit of Peter the Great, when he destroyed John Evelyn's house and famously left the curtains in a state of some disarray.

He behaved like a disgusting frat boy. Exactly. Exactly. And so Queen Victoria, when she hears that his, whatever it is, great-grandson has turned up at Woolwich Docks unannounced and wants to come to tea, half expect some sort of tartar savage, particularly when he sends a head to say he'd like some straw prepared for him because he always sleeps in a leather sack as his military camp bed. So his only request to Queen Victoria is could you have some straw for me to sleep in? It's just crazy. So she thinks, I've got, here we go again, but take the curtains down. In the end, he is very giant. I'm doing this bit. I'm doing this bit because I just love the way Queen Victoria talks about a good-looking fellow. You are definitely the Queen Victoria of this podcast, Anita.

Thanks. But she does like a well-turned-out man. She does notice. She does notice. So this is what she writes. And we are so grateful that she did write everything done that she was. thinking, and we don't even have all of it because one of her daughters destroyed some of her diary, so we really don't know everything. But what we do know is delicious. So this is what she

says about the Sal. He is certainly a very striking man. Still very handsome. His profile is beautiful, and his manner is most dignified and graceful, extremely civil, quite alarmingly so, as he is so full of attentions and politesses, but the expression of the eyes is formidable and unlike anything I ever saw before. He gives me and Albert the impression, to throw him in, and Albert, the impression of a man who is not happy and on whom the weight of his immense power and position weighs heavily and painfully, he seldom smiles. And when he does, the expression is not happy. He is, however, very easy to get on with. It's just great, isn't she?

It's just so great. And then there's this extraordinary meeting. Now, I this week am recording this next to Chiswick House in West London. And this is where Prince Albert takes the Tsar to tea to Chiswick House. And for those that don't know it, it is an extraordinary little sort of Venetian Palladian villa. So pretty. And it's surrounded by water. and it's something's very pretty,

that they do have very good fireworks display, by the way, if you've ever been. And they do a very nice tea in the cafe. And my children have been pushed around there in push chairs, all their summer childhoods. And this is where, built by Lord Burlington, with this perfect little piece of sort of palladian veneto, strangely marooned on the banks of the Thames,

then amid countryside and market gardens to the west of London. London, at this point, ends even before Kensington, I think, in 1840s. he holds a grand ceremonial breakfast in the honour of the Tsar. On paper, this is all going to be so wonderful. On paper, it's going to be lovely. You know, the Duke of Devonshire, who is the linchpin of the Whig establishment, he's meant to host this grand ceremonial breakfast. So it's going to have all the good baked goods going to be wheeled out,

all the very best things. And they lay on the band of the Coal Stream Guards and the horse guards, and it's a bright summer day, 8th of June. The Royal Cavalcade enters the gates. of Chiswick House playing the Russian national anthem. The Imperial Standard is raised over the summer parlour and the Royal Standard over the arcade. There's a 21 gun salute and in walks the Tsar and with the Duke of Devonshire's four livery giraffes. Yes, we should just pause there and say that again. So the Duke of Devonshire, who has a lot, also has four giraffes dressed up.

dressed up. Very handsome, groomed and brocaded, I like to think, giraffes who are there, to welcome the Tsar. And it all starts off very well. The Tsar talks mainly to the Duke of Wellington, our old friend, who is now what in his, probably in his 70s. But he also talks to Lord Melbourne and the Prime Minister, Robert Peel. With the Tsar is Count Nessel Road, the foreign minister, who originally dispatched Vickovic. The Count Nessel Road. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He comes to Chiswick House. It's the most extraordinary bit of history. Didn't realize he was that. Amazing. Yeah, and then.

And he chats to his opposite number, Lord Palmerster. This is at the end of 30 years of Russophobia in the British establishment. Finally, all these people are meeting each other. They've been exchanging telegrams and threats for years, but they instead now meet in conversation with these giraffes. And this is all intended to cement relations between these two great powers and avoid the sorts of misunderstandings and suspicions. which have caused so much unnecessary bloodshed

all over Afghanistan. I mean, I do think there's something to be said about this. If you really do want to break the ice with somebody, having some kind of

exotic pet in the background. It's an icebreaker. I mean, if it's like, you know, hashtag awkward, bring on a camel or something like that. It all starts very well. There's an exercise

in public relation. The Tsar's visit is a great success. London's society women, especially charmed by his good looks. It's just Queen Victoria and his perfect managers. He is still a great. great devotee of female beauty, noted Baron Stockmar, and his old English flames he's shown the

greatest attention to. So there's lots of sort of dashing good looks and flashing smiles, yet, unwittingly, this meeting at Chiswick House sows the seeds for future conflict. Well, it all starts unraveling, and we can't only blame the giraffes, although they play a part. The giraffes do play a part. They do play a part. So what starts to go wrong? I mean, you tell this so beautifully, go on, when does it start slightly going pear-shaped? So there's two things that basically are wrong. First of all, there's the diplomacy and then there's the giraffe. As far as the diplomacy is concerned, the Tsar, who doesn't really understand about parliamentary factions and needing to put things through a parliamentary vote, thinks that he has an understanding from Robert Peel and his

foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, that between them Britain and Russia can split up the Ottoman Empire, which is, of course, the great Russian project ever since the time of Catherine the Great. They've wanted to seize Constantinople. Catherine has named one of her boys, Constantine, so that he can be put on the throne of Constantinople. Potemkin has captured the Black Sea so the Russian fleet can steam down the Bosphorus to capture the great former capital of Byzantium. But the British don't see this as a settled agreement. They see it as conversations really as a private exchange of ideas, and certainly not to some sort of binding gentleman's agreement as the Tsar believes. And so as well as sowing the seeds of the next stage of distrust that will lead to our next episode, which is the Crimean War, there is also the matter of the giraffes.

All right. So there's this kind of agreement that he thinks he's got, that is not a real thing, which will then become a bone of contention. But can I just tell a little bit of this? because it's just... Your story. Can I? Can I? Oh, thank you. Okay, so they're having breakfast.

It's all very nice. He thinks he's got an agreement. The King of Saxony is around and in attendance as well. And they're crossing the lake in boats, and it's all beautiful. It's beautiful some today, as William said. And, you know, it's being punted by the Duke's Waterman. And they want to go and look at... Take a closer look at the Devonshire, giraffes.

But the giraffes have other ideas. So the giraffes. Actually, it turns out, we'll have quite a good look. them. So they start waiting across the water. In the opposite direction. Before suddenly running amok on the lawns of Chiswick House and they stampede the Tsars party who were waiting on the other bank. And this, to all intents of purposes, looks like an assassination attempt by chariots. I mean, literally, they're drawing their guns and sabers, aren't they? They think this is a proper attack. They are. No, no. It's nearly a major diplomatic incident. Anyway,

the drafts are led away by the Devonshire's grandsmen in their state-liven. But from that point, a long chain of accidents, gaffes and diplomatic misunderstandings lead inexorably to Russia and Britain going to war against each other in the Crimea only nine years later after this great meeting. Yeah. That begins in 1853. And it's going to be a good one, by the way. We've got a really good guest. Orlando Fijis is going to be with us on Thursday to talk Crimean War. But can we just take a pause and just think about Afghanistan before we look forward to the Crimean?

and to Russia again. Because they call Afghanistan the graveyard of empires for a reason, don't they, William? Well, again, this is one of these phrases like the great game which irritate Afghan historians. Because as far as they're concerned, Afghanistan can also be the centre of empires. What we often forget when we think of the great moguls, we think of them today as being an Indian power, forgetting that one of the great mogul capitals was actually Kabul. And that along with Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, and so on, there is a major summer capital, not just in Srinagar in Kashmir, but in Kabul.

And when you go to Afghanistan, you still find, like in Nimla, these wonderful mogul gardens dotted around the place unexpectedly. And so there are many other empires which have centered in Afghanistan earlier, the Khashan Empire, which is at the same time as the Roman Empire, is run out of Afghanistan. And later you get the wonderful golden age of the Timorids at Herat, with some of the greatest miniatures ever painted being produced in Afghanistan. So if you're an Afghan and you're told that it's a graveyard of empires, you say, hang on a minute. There's a whole load of empires which began here.

It's just not your empires, but they're just not your empires. Exactly. It's invading empires, invaders, particularly Christian invaders or atheist invaders from the West, who are given very short shrift. Okay, now, wait, I want to talk more about you. Believe it on North's. You spent the whole of this podcast trying to turn the same. subject the other direction.

I know, I know. This is a very dramatic change in policy. Let's talk about you. Let's talk about you. So look, when researching Return of the King, I mean, it's extraordinary things happened to you. And I think we only very briefly hop, skipped and jumped over your sort of deals with death that happened.

It wasn't an easy thing to do this. And you were getting your hands on primary sources that nobody'd seen or bothered to translate before because they just weren't interested in the Persian stuff, were they? I have to say that I have, I have never. been more excited. There were one or two hairy moments. Every time I came back to Delhi from Kabul or Kandahar or Guzni or wherever I was, I was just buzzing. And my family got so intrigued. They eventually insisted that I take them there. And my son, Sam, who was going to have a very lucrative career as a physicist and engineer and was about to do all his A-levels and physics, was so blown away by

Afghanistan, he started learning Dari and Farsi while he was there and ended up doing it at Oxford. And He's now a historian. And now is now a historian. Very much in the footsteps of his dad, and he's quite brilliant as well. But a rather better linguistic. He's got Sanskrit and he's got Persian. So he outwits me there. Lovely, Sam.

So you broke a physicist. Broke a physicist. But what else? I mean, you met some really important and interesting people. So first night there, I was taken to see the head of the security services who bizarrely had read Last Mogul and was very critical of Anashar Zuffer who thought was far too weak. He was a great believer in a more iron-fisted approach, as indeed his security services were famous for. I've never previously met a secret policeman who's done a critique of

any of my books. But he insisted, he said, you can't write this book unless you go and follow the route. And I said, you know, isn't this a little bit dangerous? He said, no problem. We have the tribal chieftain of Gigdallic, Anwar Khan Gigdallic, who is our Olympic Afghan wrestling champion. Yes. He was with the Taliban, but he's just come into us. He'll take you back to his home. And Puro and Wakan, who actually haven't been to his home village for about three years, was commanded by the chief of secret police to take me down there. And we got to Jagdalik. And of course, all his friends and family came out and we had to have a huge Afghan feast. And I was looking at my watch because the point, as far as I was concerned, was to get. to the next village, which was Gundamuk. And you may remember in the last episode, The Siege of Gandamak, yeah. We talked about the last stand of the 44th Regiment of Foot.

Yes, and the very famous painting, which you can see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I thought the one thing I've got to do if I'm doing the retreat from Carbblades, I've got to get to Gundamuk. And instead, we sat having course after course. First of all, we had lovely yogurt brought to us, which we ate with nan bread, then suddenly kebabs appeared. And it went on for hours now and by about,

It was quite clear. We weren't going to get to Gundamuck. Can I just say, knowing you as I do, this was not a hardship. They were very good cabs. They were very good cabs. It was true. Yeah. But it did definitely sweetened the blow, but we didn't make it to Gundamuck. And we ended up going back on the main road to Jalalabad.

And we spent the night. Late that evening, news came in that there'd been a major battle in Gundamuck that day. The same village where the last survivors of the street from Kabul were gunned down in their squad. and Captain Thomas Souter was taken captive, the government had come in to plough up the poppy crop, and the villagers who were making money from growing opium poppies, resisted and brought in the Taliban to fight off the government. God, you weren't there.

And had we arrived, we arrived in the middle of a gunfight, and it would have all been very, very nasty. We were coming from the back end, the opposite way from Jalalabad. And there was no way we could have got out of that. It would have been very hairy. And ever since that day, dear reader, he's been devoted to the kebab. They're about to say the opium poppy.

The kebab since that day, that brush with death, and so it held a very important place. But then the next day we went out, because Anwar Khan, my guardian on this trip, who the secret police had sent to look after me, was brought in as a negotiator between the government and the village. and so there was a jirga at which he officiated. So a jirga, for those who don't know, is kind of a civilian local government where you have different either tribes or families who nominate a person to come and sit and there'll be a headman who is going to preside over these proceedings. But that is a jirga. And we sat with Jolalabad Airport in the background with predator drones

taking off on and off every five minutes. So you can see these sinister unmanned aircraft taking off. off to bomb Taliban positions in the distant hills. And after the Jirgo was over, two of the tribal elders and Gundamuk came over and we chatted for a while, over a potter. And this is, I suppose, about 2006, this must have taken place. And one of them told me a story. He said, last month, some American officers called us to a hotel in Jalalabad for a meeting. One of them asked me, why do you hate us? And I replied, this is the tribal elder speaking, because you blow down our doors, enter our houses, pull our women by the hair, and kick our children. We cannot accept this. We will fight

back and we will break your teeth. And when your teeth are broken, you will leave just as the British left before you. It's just a matter of time. And I asked, what did he say to that? What did the American officer say when you said that to him? He turned to his friend and said, if the old men are like this, what were the younger ones and be like? In truth, he said, all the Americans here know their game is over. It's just their politicians who deny this. These are the last days of the Americans, said the other elder. Next, it will be China. That was 2006. And of course, we now know that the Chinese have made all these deals with the Taliban, just as the elder said. That they're extracting rare earths and copper and all the rest of it.

Listen here, before we go, there is an extraordinary story to tell that involves Michael. friend William, Hillary Clinton and Karzai. It's true. I've forgotten this one. Yeah, I mean, no kebabs were hurt in the, in the telling of this, in the making of this particular story. But what happened? I mean, go on.

So, this book was published and finished in, what, 2012, I think, just as the whole thing was heading for a crisis. And Hamid Karzai was then the president of Afghanistan. And I have a great friend called Sard Mosani, who used to run all the telecoms in Afghanistan. And literally the week it came out, he gave a copy to Hamid Karzai. And Hamid Karzai is a man that loves history. But he has a particular dog in this race, in that Shah Shudja, the hero of my book, the king, who is the title of Return of a King, is his great great-grandfather.

Both of them are Popolzai. And just as the army from Kabul on the retreat from Kabul was destroyed by the Gilzai tribe in the passes of Jagdalik and Gundamag. So the foot soldiers of the Taliban today are the Gilzai. And the chief of the Hotiki Gilzai was Mullah Omar. So for all that we've now got predator drones and America and high technology and all the rest of it, this is. The conflict remains really the same. The Popolzai, who are the elite, are in the sense, the Tof's and landowners of Afghanistan have allied with foreigners and they're brought down by the Gilzai, who are the day laborers, the landless laborers. They now make up the Taliban.

Their leader is Mueller Omar, who's the direct descendant of Anwar Khan, Jigdalik, the man whose girlfriend was taken by Alexander Burns. Is that extraordinary? So the same conflict has replayed twice, 200 years, a point. part with very similar endings. Anyway, Hamid Karzai read Return of a King on a flight to Washington to go and brief Barack Obama. And the conclusion he drew from this book was that while he should continue to take the aid of the West when it suited him, he could not risk ever appearing as the puppet of the West. So don't be too Shashuja. That's the moral of the do not, yeah, be less Shashuja. with the infidels, the invaders, and so on.

And so from the moment he got out of the plane, he started denouncing the Americans for collateral damage, for destroying villages that were nothing to do with anything. And this, of course, was going on. The Americans were often very clumsy. They drone attack the wrong villages. Innocent people were regularly killed. But the State Department must have been standing all the time.

I go, what the hell happened to him? He wasn't talking like that before he left. What's happened here? I didn't know quite the detail of this. Though I knew Karzai had read it and I received a summons. We'll talk about this in a second to Kabul to come and see him. But it was only when WikiLeaks leaked Hillary Clinton's emails through, we now know, the intervention of Putin's Secret Service, that some Hillary Clinton's emails emerged on the front page of the New York Times. And one of them was from Hillary Clinton saying, how do we stop Hamid Karzai reading this bloody book?

The more he reads it. Who is this, Dalrymple anyway? The more he reads of it, the more he comes out against us. were replies from the then-American ambassador in Pakistan and various people in Kabul. Anyway, I then got summoned to that Ramadan. I got a letter from Karzai saying, I've led your book with great interest. I want to know more about the history and how you think we can learn the lessons of the first Afghan war today.

And I struck a deal with Hamikaze, who turned out to be the most charming man and someone who's still a friend, and I'm still in contact with him. Do you two WhatsApp each other? We email each other. I don't know his response. How many emoji conversations flow between you and Albu, I was just trying to imagine. You can, if anyone's interested, you can see a conversation between the two of us at the Jai Pulitzer Festival, which is online on YouTube. No, I want to see the emails, but anyway, carry on.

So I got called to Kabul, and we ended up having six evenings of conversations at Iftar. So he'd do his fast during Ramadan, and then he'd break it with an enormous plate of fruit. and I would be invited in for an hour and I was allowed to interview him about his life and in return he could ask me questions about Shashoja and the history. Isn't that amazing? So for six days I think I was brought in to the Argue

every evening like Sherazard told him all these stories and then he would reply with questions and I got a lovely big front page interview with him in the New York Times out of it at the end of it and he's remained a friend and he's still now not quite under house arrest in Kabul but at least rather like Sharshajja still alive after the British left

He is still alive in Kabul near the Ark in a house with his wife and young children. And I hope they're all right. Then another weird thing happened that having heard about this, I got called to the West Wing. Don't laugh. Anything we can do, we can do better. Well, Carl's eyes had him over. Quick, to the White House. So what happened then?

And the only people that didn't have any interest in talking to me at all with the British. Right. So what are the Americans? So who, so was it? Was it Hillary? He said, is this the author of the bloody book? Who was it? Who was it?

So it turned out at this point that there was a whole flaw of the West Wing of the White House, which was dedicated to AFPAC as they hyphenated it, no longer hyphenated, and that is no longer the case. But at this point, there was a whole floor of the West Wing. And I just gave a lecture on the first Afghan war to their Afghan teams. and all of whom were extraordinary. I was expecting, because it wasn't going very well the American War in Afghanistan, and I was expecting a bunch of cowboys.

But in fact, they were highly educated. They knew the details of all the tribal politics. I've never been given a more intense grilling than I was there. Well, it was the State Department. I mean, one would hope that they know something. Yeah, well, they didn't disappoint. They were very bright and very, very well-informed. And, no, they were really smart bunch.

Well, that isn't... This is me trying to do. to keep up with C-bag now. I may not have influenced beating, but I have been read by I'm in Casa. Listen, we are going to have to end it here, but Crimean War up next with the fabulous Orlando Fiji. So please do join us then. Until then, though, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.