Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/67

Rh On Macnaghten's arrival at Simla he found Lord Auckland already prepared to help his allies with something stronger than British officers and rupees. Under the pressure applied from Cannon Row and enforced by the arguments of his two private secretaries, the solid John Colvin and the brilliant Henry Torrens, the Governor-General had made up his uncertain mind to support Sháh Shujá with an army strong enough not only to eject the Bárakzái princes, but to relieve, or, if need were, to recover Herát, which Muhammad Sháh had been besieging ever since the past November.

The Afghán province of Herát was then ruled by the Saduzai prince, Sháh Kámrán, whose father Sháh Mahmúd had once held and lost the throne of Kábul. Kámrán had incurred the wrath of his overlord, the Sháh of Persia, by making inroads into Persian territory, kidnapping thousands of Persian subjects, and selling them into slavery. McNeill, himself, our Envoy at Teherán, admitted the justice of the Sháh's quarrel with Herát, even while he called upon his own Government to take steps against a movement which could only serve to extend Russian influence by means of Persian arms to the very threshold of India. Muhammad Sháh, however, was bent on punishing his refractory vassal, and Count Simonich, the Russian Minister, encouraged him to pursue an enterprise which, whether it failed or prospered, might redound to Russia's advantage.

On the 23rd of November, 1837, the Persian batteries