Ali. In that capacity he had
signed the Treaty of Gandamak, and received Sir Louis Cavagnari as
British agent at his capital. When the outbreak occurred at Cabul, on
1st September, and Cavagnari and the whole of the mission were
murdered, it was generally believed that the most guilty person was
Yakoob Khan. On the advance of General Roberts, Yakoob Khan took the
first opportunity of making his escape from his compatriots and
joining the English camp. This voluntary act seemed to justify a doubt
as to his guilt, but a Court of Inquiry was appointed to ascertain the
facts. The bias of the leading members of that Court was
unquestionably hostile to Yakoob, or rather it would be more accurate
to say that they were bent on finding the highest possible personage
guilty. They were appointed to inquire, not to sentence. Yet they
found Yakoob guilty, and they sent a vast mass of evidence to the
Foreign Department then at Calcutta. The experts of the Foreign
Department examined that evidence. They pronounced it "rubbish," and
Lord Lytton was obliged to send Mr (afterwards Sir) Lepel Griffin, an
able member of the Indian Civil Service, specially versed in frontier
politics, to act as Political Officer with the force in Afghanistan,
so that no blunders of this kind might be re-enacted.

But nothing was done either to rehabilitate Yakoob's character or to
negotiate with him for the restoration of a central authority in
Afghanistan. Any other suitable candidate for the Ameership failing to
present himself, the present ruler, Abdurrahman, being then, and
indeed until the eve of the catastrophe at Maiwand, on 27th July 1880,
an adventurous pretender without any strong following, Lord Lytton had
been negotiating on the lines of a division of Afghanistan into three
or more provinces. That policy, of which the inner history has still
to be written, had a great deal more to be said in its favour than
would now be admitted, and only the unexpected genius and success of
Abdurrahman has made the contrary policy that was pursued appear the
acme of sound sense and high statesmanship. When Lord Ripon reached
Bombay at the end of May, the fate of Afghanistan was still in the
crucible. Even Abdurrahman, who had received kind treatment in the
persons of his imprisoned family at Candahar from the English, was not
regarded as a factor of any great importance; while Ayoob, the least
known of all the chiefs, was deemed harmless only a few weeks before