Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/31

 (where he had an interview with Prince Metternich), Constantinople, and Bagdad, where he first met Major (now Sir Henry) Rawlinson, and reached Bombay in November 1839, thence proceeding to Calcutta. The moment appeared propitious, and Conolly was sent on to Cabul, where in the spring of 1840 he joined the staff of Sir William Hay Macnaghten, the British envoy with Shah Soojah in Afghanistan. One of Macnaughten's brothers had married Conolly's sister (see, Baronetage, under 'Macnaghten'). A paper written by Conolly when in Afghanistan at this time, on 'The White-haired Angora Goat,. . . and another resembling the Thibet Shawl Goat,' appeared in 'Journ. Asiat. Soc.' vi. (1841) 159–78.

At the beginning of 1840 Shah Soojah had been replaced on the throne of Cabul, and the failure of the Russian expedition under Perovsky to Khiva was still unknown in India. The openly expressed views of the envoy, Macnaghten, then were that the British troops in Afghanistan should be pushed on to Balkh, and possibly to Bokhara with the threefold object of reconstituting the authority of Shah Soojah over the petty tribes between Cabul and Balkh; of effecting the release of Colonel Stoddart, who had been despatched by the British envoy in Persia in 1838 on a special mission to Bokhara, where he had been detained and repeatedly imprisoned by the ameer; and of making a sort of counter-demonstration against the Russian advance. There appears to have been some intention of sending Major Rawlinson and Arthur Conolly on a special mission to the Russian army (Calcutta Review, vol. xv.) Later in the year the Russian disasters became known, and Conolly was despatched as envoy to Khiva, with directions to carry out certain objects at Khiva and Khokand, and, conditionally, to visit Bokhara. These objects are stated to have been 'sanctioned in a private letter from authority,' so that the mission could not be considered an amateur one, although Lord Ellenborough always insisted on so regarding it (ib.) Ardent and enthusiastic by nature, cherishing views and hopes, which he himself allowed to be somewhat 'visionary,' of the political regeneration of Central Asia, and the ultimate 'conversion' of its warring tribes 'to the pure faith of Jesus Christ' (ib.), Conolly started, full of heart and hope, in September 1840. Joining the 35th Bengal native infantry, part of the Bhameean reinforcement, he was present with it in the brilliant action of 18 Sept. under Brigadier Dennis, afterwards proceeding to Merv and thence, by the route followed and described by Sir Richmond Shakespeare, to Khiva. His speculations regarding the future of Merv and his fruitless interviews with the khan of Khiva are detailed in a notice of his manuscript remains in the 'Calcutta Review,' 1851 (vol. xv.) Subsequently he proceeded to Khokand and Bokhara, where he was arrested and imprisoned, it is believed, in the third week in December 1841 (, ii. 142). Conolly was a voluminous and rapid writer. When not in the saddle he had nearly always a pen in his hand, and on his travels was wont to note down minutely all he said and did in his journal, a practice he appears to have kept up even in his dungeon at Bokhara. Five letters, all written in February and March 1842, forming the main portion of Conolly's prison journal, are now in possession of Mr. George Pritchard, London and County Bank, Paddington, W., and are full of harrowing details. The latest direct tidings of him alive were contained in a letter sent by him to his brother, then a hostage at Cabul, early in 1842, in which he describes the sufferings of Stoddart and himself. For four months they had no change of raiment; their dungeon was in a most foul and unwholesome state, teeming with vermin to a degree that made life burdensome. Stoddart was reduced to a skeleton. They had with difficulty persuaded one of their keepers to represent their wretched condition to the ameer, and were then awaiting his reply, having committed themselves to God in the full belief that unless quickly released death must soon terminate their sufferings (letter from Sir V. Eyre in Calcutta Review, vol. xv.) The British government appearing unwilling to take action, a committee was formed in London in 1842, at the instance of Captain John Grover, F.R.S., for effecting the release of the Bokhara captives, and a sum of 500l. so collected furnished the funds for Dr. Wolff's mission to Bokhara. An account of the transaction, with a roll of the subscribers appended, was published by Captain Grover, under the title 'The Bokhara Victims,' and conveys a painful impression of official procrastination and the cross purposes of many of the parties concerned. The results of Wolff's perilous investigations at Bokhara were that Conolly, with Stoddart and other victims, 'after enduring agonies in prison of a most fearful character. . . were cruelly slaughtered some time in 1843' (1259 Hegira), and that the instigator of the foul deed was the pretended friend of the English, Abdul Samut Khan, nayeb or prime minister of Nasir Ulla Bahadoor, ameer of Bokhara (see preface to Wolff's narrative, 7th ed.) The military records in the India