They
were declared, notwithstanding that the British political agent at
the Court of Dost Mohammed reported that ruler as "entirely English"
in his sympathies. This report was suppressed. Twenty years later
the facts were given to Parliament, Russian letters were found
implicating the Czar's ministers, and the English agent, Burnes, was
vindicated.
The Anglo-Indian army--consisting of twenty thousand troops, fifty
thousand followers, and sixty thousand camels--advanced in two
columns, one from Bengal, and the other from Bombay by the Indus.
Scinde, which had hitherto been independent, like the Punjab and
Lahore, was subjugated _en route_, and nine thousand men were
left behind to occupy it. On the 23d of February, 1839, a
simultaneous advance from Shikarpur, on the Bolan Pass, commenced.
Kandahar was occupied April 25th, Ghazni July 23d, and Kabul August
6th, and Shah Sujah was proclaimed Ameer by British authority. By
the following September the greater part of the English forces
returned to India. Only five regiments of infantry and one of
cavalry remained in Afghanistan, where suspicious symptoms of
discontent with the new order of things began very soon to show
themselves.
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