[Footnote 4:  ’Besides the sixty-three Ruling Chiefs, there were nearly three hundred titular Chiefs and persons of distinction collected at the Imperial Assemblage, besides those included in the suites of Ruling Chiefs.—­J.  Talboys Wheeler, ’History of the Delhi Assemblage.’]

[Footnote 5:  These gold medals were also presented to the Governors, Lieutenant-Governors, and other high officials, and to the members of the Imperial Assemblage Committee.]

[Footnote 6:  In endeavouring to describe this historical event, I have freely refreshed my memory from Talboys Wheeler’s ’History of the Imperial Assemblage,’ in which is given a detailed account of the proceedings.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLIII. 1878

Object of the first Afghan war —­Excitement caused by Russia’s advances

Before continuing my story, it will, I think, be as well to recall to the minds of my readers the train of events which led to England and Russia becoming at the same moment solicitous for the Amir’s friendship, for it was this rivalry which was the immediate cause of the second Afghan war.

Less than two hundred years ago the British Empire in the East and Russia were separated from each other by a distance of 4,000 miles.  Russia’s most advanced posts were at Orenburg and Petropaulovsk, while England had obtained but an uncertain footing on the seaboard of southern India.  The French were our only European rivals in India, and the advance of Russia towards the Oxus was as little anticipated as was England’s advance towards the Indus.

Thirty years later Russia began to absorb the hordes of the Kirghiz steppes, which gave her occupation for more than a hundred years, during which time England was far from idle.  Bengal was conquered, or ceded to us, the Madras Presidency established, and Bombay had become an important settlement, with the result that, in the early part of this century, the distance between the Russian and English possessions had been diminished to less than 2,000 miles.

Our progress was now more rapid.  While Russia was laboriously crossing a barren desert, the North-West Provinces, the Carnatic, the territories of the Peshwa, Sind, and the Punjab, successively came under our rule, and by 1850 we had extended our dominions to the foot of the mountains beyond the Indus.

Russia by this time, having overcome the difficulties of the desert, had established herself at Aralsk, near the junction of the Syr Daria with the waters of Lake Aral; so that in fifty years the distance between the outposts of the two advancing Powers in Asia had been reduced to about 1,000 miles.

Repeated successful wars with Persia, and our desertion of that Power owing to the conviction that we could no longer defend her against the Russians, had practically placed her at their mercy, and they had induced Persia, in 1837, to undertake the siege of Herat.  At the same time, the Russian Ambassador at Teheran had despatched Captain Vitkievitch to Kabul with letters from himself and from the Czar to the Amir, in the hope of getting Dost Mahomed Khan to join the Russians and Persians in their alliance against the English.