General Roberts and many others feared that the treaty had been signed too hastily, and that the Afghans, “an essentially arrogant and conceited people,” needed a severer lesson before they acquiesced in British suzerainty.  But no sense of foreboding depressed Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, the gallant and able officer who had carried out so much of the work on the frontier, when he proceeded to take up his abode at Cabul as British Resident (July 24).  The chief danger lay in the Afghan troops, particularly the regiments previously garrisoned at Herat, who knew little or nothing of British prowess, and whose fanaticism was inflamed by arrears of pay.  Cavagnari’s Journal kept at Cabul ended on August 19 with the statement that thirty-three Russians were coming up the Oxus to the Afghan frontier.  But the real disturbing cause seems to have been the hatred of the Afghan troops to foreigners.

Failure to pay was so usual a circumstance in Afghanistan as scarcely to account for the events that ensued.  Yet it furnished the excuse for an outbreak.  Early on September 3, when assembled for what proved to be the farce of payment at Bala Hissar (the citadel), three regiments mutinied, stoned their officers, and then rushed towards the British Embassy.  These regiments took part in the first onset against an unfortified building held by the Mission and a small escort.  A steady musketry fire from the defenders long held them at bay; but, when joined by townsfolk and other troops, the mutineers set fire to the gates, and then, bursting in, overpowered the gallant garrison.  The Ameer made only slight efforts to quell this treacherous outbreak, and, while defending his own palaces by faithful troops, sent none to help the envoy.  These facts, as reported by trustworthy witnesses, did not correspond to the magniloquent assurances of fidelity that came from Yakub himself[316].

[Footnote 316:  Parl.  Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1880), pp. 32-42, 89-96.]

Arrangements were at once made to retrieve this disaster, but staff and transport arrangements caused serious delay.  At length General Roberts was able to advance up the Kurram Valley and carry the Shutargardan Pass by storm, an exploit fully equal to his former capture of the Peiwar Kotal in the same mountain range.  Somewhat further on he met the Ameer, and was unfavourably impressed with him:  “An insignificant-looking man, . . . with a receding forehead, a conical-shaped head, and no chin to speak of, . . . possessed moreover of a very shifty eye.”  Yakub justified this opinion by seeking on various pretexts to delay the British advance, and by sending to Cabul news as to the numbers of the British force.