Josiah the Great: The True Story of The Man Who Would Be King

Perhaps Gul Khan was right, Harlan pondered: ‘Caution is creditable where desperation does not marshal our designs. Those who have no other hope may be justly desperate: To win or lose, to sink or swim as fortune may approve, death or victory.’ This was not yet the moment for a desperate gamble. Even so, Gul Khan’s spinelessness was not encouraging. The Rohillah from Tak was handed a thousand rupees, an advance against the five thousand payable if the mutiny was successful, and instructed to return to the fortress. While he organised the mutiny, Harlan would slowly advance on Tak and lead, if necessary, an assault in support of the mutineers.

The following day, after stocking up on powder and lead shot at the town bazaar, Harlan led his men out of Dera and set out for Tak, ‘still holding the Indus on my right within a convenient distance to secure a retreat in case of adverse results in the audacious enterprise’. He was not leaving Dera a moment too soon, for strange stories were circulating, and the nawab’s behaviour had become increasingly unfriendly. ‘He had been informed that I possessed a wonderful missile of violence which could be thrown into the area of a fort by the hand where its explosion would cause the death of the garrison and blow down the walls in an instant.’ In addition to this magical hand-grenade, the feringhee was said to possess other weapons of mass destruction, including a rapid-assembly cannon whose parts could be put together at a moment’s notice. Even more worrying, from the nawab’s point of view, there was a rumour that Shah Shujah himself was hiding inside one of Harlan’s trunks. The gossip was patently absurd, but it was enough to convince the already nervous nawab that Harlan represented a serious threat to his own security.

Fourteen miles out of Dera, Harlan made camp in the ruins of an ancient fortress known as Kafir Qila, or Fort of the Infidel, to await word on the progress of the mutiny. From the low hill the plain stretched away to mountains, the dense jungle of dwarf tamarisk broken here and there by patches of cultivation. Herds of camels and goats browsed among the thorn trees, and small plumes of white smoke rose quietly into the still air from the fires of unseen herdsmen. In this landscape, unchanged for centuries, Harlan reflected that his tented encampment made an improbable tribute to American endeavour.

Over the principal tent, a few feet above the apex, the American flag displayed its stars and stripes, flickering in the quietly drifting breeze. There were no villages in sight but the curling smoke told of many abodes, and the tinkling bells of the flocks that fed unheedingly in the waste, broke the desolation of the scene. In the midst of that wild landscape, the flag of America seemed a dreamy illusion of the imagination, but it was the harbinger of enterprise which distance, space and time had not appalled, for the undaunted sons of Columbia are second to no people in the pursuit of adventure where ever the world is trodden by man.

Waiting anxiously for news from Tak, Harlan decided to hold a dress parade of his troops. ‘A hundred men in a single rank dressed in the costume of Rohillahs, armed with long matchlocks sloped over their left shoulder, Hindustani swords and shields, some with the addition of pistols thrust into the waist belt and a few with blunderbusses.’ To the right of the line, in rather more regimental order, the uniformed sepoys were drawn up, with musket and bayonet. His officers, Harlan observed, were also a mixed bag: ‘Two Europeans in military habits and forage caps with English broadswords suspended from their belts attended in advance of the line, accompanied by a portly Rohillah minus the left hand.’

Harlan studied Gul Khan’s expression, and did not like what he saw. The mercenary ‘gazed wistfully towards the mountains, his bleared right eye partially closed, as he stood grasping the stump of his arm in his hand’. Gul Khan’s anxiety seemed to have affected the troops, for ‘silent expectation and enquiring glances amongst the men expressed apprehension and doubt’.

Dismissing the troops, Harlan summoned Gul Khan into his tent. ‘Gool Khan,’ he began, ‘you are an old soldier and if report speaks truly, a brave man. My confidence in you has been unbounded. To you as a native acquainted with the country and the people I submitted the direction of my will.’ Why, Harlan demanded, had the Rohillah turned down the opportunity to launch an assault on Tak? ‘Had you not discountenanced my determination to proceed in person to attack, Sirwa Khan would now have been my prisoner, the fortress in our possession, the King proclaimed and the whole country forthwith up in arms for the royal cause.’

Gul Khan’s self-defence was a masterpiece of ‘querulous loquacity’, rising in a crescendo. ‘Death to the King’s enemies and may his salt become dirt in the mouths of traitors! Tell me where death is the reward of duty, and I swear by your salt, an instant’s hesitation shall not delay the execution of Your Highness’s will. Now, this instant, speak but the word and the Saheb’s slave is ready!’

But Harlan had by now heard enough of Gul Khan’s belligerent bombast. ‘’Tis too late,’ he said, glumly. ‘I apprehend the scheme has failed, for good news would have reached our camp quickly if Tak has fallen. This long silence can proceed only from hesitating cowardice.’ Gul Khan said nothing, but ‘raised his arms in an attitude of respectful supplication, his right hand grasping the stump of his mutilated limb’, and backed out of the tent.

Harlan’s gloomy prediction proved only too accurate. The next morning, a message arrived from the Rohillah officer at Talc he was ready to order the mutiny, but only if Harlan would send his regular soldiers and force Sirwa Khan to pay their arrears. Harlan exploded. ‘Traitors and cowards! I offered to enlist them! Do you see those mountains before us? Can such wretches, who are unable to seize an empty fortress, scale those heights and force the fortresses in possession of savage robbers? They have proved themselves women in the affairs of men. Such retainers I need not. I know their value.’ He gave the order to march within the hour: he would storm Tak himself.

Still spitting with rage, Harlan had buckled on his sword and was loading his pistols when loyal Drigpal, the jemadar in command of the sepoys, appeared at the tent door, out of uniform and visibly distraught. The Hindu officer ‘touched his forehead with the back of his hand and then assuming an attitude of respect with his hands closed before his breast and downcast eyes’ delivered the worst possible news. The entire force of regular soldiers had deserted.

‘What? All?’ demanded Harlan incredulously.

‘With the exception of four men who are my friends and Your Highness’s slaves.’

Reeling, Harlan ordered Gul Khan to find out the extent of this desertion, then slumped into a chair, declaring: ‘Let everyone retire, and leave me to myself.’ Gul Khan returned a few moments later. The sepoys had indeed vanished, he said, defecting en masse to the nawab of Dera Ismail Khan, who had secretly sent agents to recruit them. ‘The fears of these people were excited by the dangerous nature of our enterprise,’ wrote Harlan bitterly, ‘and they accepted the Nawab’s offer of service, deserting in a cowardly and traitorous manner at the moment of active necessity.’

The Rohillahs were still at their posts, but Harlan perceived that ‘an air of despondency prevailed amongst the remaining soldiers, who consisted now principally of lawless adventurers of the worst class’. To make matters worse, he suspected that his one-handed lieutenant was double-dealing. ‘The conduct and management of Gool Khan appeared incompetent, selfish and suspicious,’ particularly as he had refused to lead the mutineers in an assault on Tak. Surrounded by heavily armed and probably mutinous mercenaries, reliant on a man whose loyalty was seriously in doubt, hundreds of miles from British India and with the local chief conspiring against him, Harlan found even his granite optimism beginning to crumble. ‘My affairs,’ he wrote with splendid understatement, ‘began to assume a dangerous and gloomy aspect, [which] induced me to contemplate a retreat.’

The next morning the situation became even darker, when Gul Khan reported that the Englishman Charles Masson had also vanished, decamping surreptitiously before daybreak. This new desertion, Harlan decided, was also the work of the nawab’s agents. Certainly Masson later recorded that he had spent several weeks in Dera Ismail Khan, where he was handsomely entertained, but it is equally possible that the eccentric Englishman had merely wandered off alone. Either way, Harlan was furious, and deeply hurt by what he regarded as Masson’s rank treachery. The two men would meet again. Having briefly been friends, they would henceforth be the most bitter enemies.

John Brown, solid and dependable, remained at Harlan’s side, but Masson’s disloyalty had convinced the American that the time had come to take ‘measures that should allay the storm rising around me, threatening to involve in its turmoil the personal security of our party’. Once more he wondered whether to lead an attack on Tak with his remaining forces, but that, he reflected, would be a huge and unnecessary gamble. ‘I was restrained from doing so only by the extravagance and desperation of the enterprise. My resources were numerous and my prospects sufficiently encouraging to forbid placing all my aspirations upon the result of a forlorn hope. Had I been desperate, the affair of Tak would have been a final determination, and must have decided my fortunes either to sink or swim, but there remained many other ways of accomplishing my designs more feasible, if not less dangerous.’ The idea of retreat was anathema. He would push on, whatever the danger. ‘From the latter it will appear I never shrank,’ he later wrote. ‘Indeed, incidents of that nature accrued during my intrigues at Kabul in 1828 surpassing all my previous conceptions.’

5 THE DERVISH FROM CHESTER COUNTY (#ulink_8ce574da-fb43-5cd1-8ebd-7f0bd740661d)

Harlan’s first priority was to get away from Dera Ismail Khan as fast as possible. The deserters had surely by now confirmed what the nawab already suspected: that the feringhee was no amateur traveller. More worrying yet was the general atmosphere of insubordination emanating from his remaining troops, and from Gul Khan in particular. The once-cheery Rohillah now exuded an ‘air of disappointment and coldness’. Plainly, Harlan decided, the man was planning some sort of vile treachery, and perhaps already ‘gloating over the prospect of a golden prize in the plunder of my establishment’. He must get rid of his dwindling army before it tried to get rid of him. ‘Not one individual could be relied on, with the exception of the remaining European who, as he had already declined accompanying his chum, appeared to have preferred attaching himself to my fortunes.’

Harlan was now working on a different plan. Instead of establishing a beachhead by force, he would head on into the Afghan interior in disguise with just a handful of attendants. Every item of non-essential baggage would be abandoned. ‘I brought myself to the condition of primitive simplicity,’ he wrote, ‘thus conforming to the order and example of Alexander to his victorious followers after the conquest of Persia, which was to burn their baggage, inferring that new victories and extended acquisitions of empire would accumulate plunder.’

Harlan handpicked twelve men to accompany him, carefully avoiding any who volunteered. The five loyal sepoys were dismissed, with a gift of two months’ pay and letters of recommendation to the French officers in Ranjit’s service. Harlan’s carefully chosen companions included the Englishman John Brown, Sayyid Mohammed, ‘a man of respectable character’, and an Afghan named Bairam Khan. The latter had been involved in negotiations with the faint-hearted mutineers of Tak, and though Harlan suspected him of dishonesty he was an enterprising individual, too useful to be left behind. Amirullah, the Afghan mace-bearer, was also selected to join the little party. Loquacious and pompous, he was ‘one of the most declamatory vociferators of services promised or performed’, wrote Harlan, but his command of Persian and Pushtu made him useful. The party would consist of the mace-bearer on foot, five horsemen and six men on foot, who when they were tired could ride on one of the six camels.

As the preparations were made, the restive Rohillahs became positively threatening. ‘Expedition on my part became every moment more urgent,’ wrote Harlan. Each man was paid his wages a month in advance, and while the money was being doled out Harlan summoned Gul Khan and delivered a very public speech, emphasising that the Rohillah was now guardian of his possessions: ‘You have all my camp equipage, my trunks and baggage to acquire your attention, and in this position you must be vigilant.’ What Gul Khan did not know was that the contents of the trunks were almost worthless. ‘All the valuables of my establishment I had secretly packed away in ordinary loads which were ready to be placed on the camels, trusting nothing to the Rohillahs but the camp equipage and trunks of books.’ Henceforth Harlan would carry only what was absolutely necessary for his campaign, most importantly a fortune in silver and gold coinage stuffed into two pairs of large leather hampers. He finished by telling Gul Khan he would send further instructions when he reached Peshawar. The old rascal did not disguise his disappointment and distrust, but this was nothing compared to the frustration he would suffer when he duly ransacked Harlan’s baggage, to find it contained nothing but worthless books and bedding.

Fearing Gul Khan might try to prevent him leaving, Harlan ordered his men to prepare to march at dawn the next day. That night in his tent he climbed into his disguise, consisting of a long flowing robe and a large white turban: ‘I was now to personate the character of a Saheb Zader, returning home from a pilgrimage to Mecca,’ he wrote. ‘A Saheb Zader is a holy man to whom is ascribed supernatural powers and revered as instructive in religion.’ Dressing as a Muslim divine, or dervish, was a typical Harlan gamble, and an extraordinarily risky one. Any stranger ran the risk of being attacked, and it was marginally safer to be recognised as a foreign infidel than mistaken for a local one. Masson, for example, once ‘encountered a man, who drew his sword, and was about to sacrifice me as an infidel Sikh. I had barely the time to apprise him that I was a Feringhi, when he instantly sheathed his weapon and, placing his arm around my waist in a friendly mode, conducted me to a village near at hand, where I was hospitably entertained.’