Auckland, prompted by his evil genius, attempted to place Sháh
Shujá upon the throne of Kábul—an attempt conducted with
gross mismanagement, and ending in the annihilation of the
British garrison placed in that city.
Afghánistán under the Duranis, 1747-1826.—Almost for the first time since the days of the Sultáns of Ghazní and Ghor, Afghánistán had obtained a national king, in 1747, in Ahmad Sháh Duraní. This resolute soldier found his opportunity in the confusion which followed the death of the Persian conqueror, Nádir Sháh. Before his own decease in 1773, Ahmad Shah had conquered a wide empire, from Herat to Peshawar, and from Kashmír to Sind. His intervention on the field of Pánípat (1761) turned back the tide of Maráthá conquest, and replaced a Muhammadan emperor on the throne of Delhi. But Ahmad Sháh never cared to settle down in India, and kept state alternately at his two Afghán capitals of Kábul and Kandahar. The Duraní kings were prolific in children, who fought to the death with one another on each succession. At last, in 1826, Dost Muhammad, head of the powerful Bárakzái family, succeeded in establishing himself as ruler of Kábul, with the title of Amír, while two fugitive brothers of the Durání line were living under British protection at Ludhiána, on the Punjab frontier.
Our Early Dealings with Kabul.—The attention of the English Government had been directed to Afghán affairs ever since the time of Lord Wellesley, who feared that Zemán Sháh, then holding his court at Lahore (1800), might follow in the path of Ahmad Sháh, and overrun Hindustán. The growth of the powerful Sikh kingdom of Ranjít Singh, however, gradually dispelled such alarms for the future. Subsequently, in 1809, while a French invasion of India was still a possibility to be guarded against, Mountstuart Elphinstone was sent by Lord Minto on a mission to Sháh Shujá, brother of Zemán Sháh, to form a defensive alliance. Before the year expired, Sháh Shujá had been driven into exile, and a third brother, Mahmúd Sháh, was on the throne.
Restoration of Sháh Shujá by the British, 1839.—In 1837, when the curtain rises upon the drama of English inter-
