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Correspondance of 9 envelopes with contents from ‘A. Lyall’ [FOREIGN SECRETARY to Lord Lytton] in 1879 during the early part of AFGHAN WAR. HISTORIC contents from serving Foreign Secretary in Afghanistan writing home. Lyall ratified TREATIES between Government of INDIA & Afghanistan. Includes a few letters from his brother a REVENUE COMMISSAR in Afghanistan.
FULL typed details of all letters available.
One shown here:
SIMLA 7th July 1879
Page 2 The Afghan job has been done properly with a great improvement on the first attempt, forty years ago where we spent 17 million and lost an army - we have this time spent 2 million and got all we wanted. (NB: see below TREATY)
Page 3 How well I remember my mother telling me in 1842 of the influence of the English in the war; and here have I been in the next generation's doings on the same ground.
Major Cavagnari has been staying a fortnight with us; and he left yesterday morning for Kabul as the first Envoy since Sir W MacNaughton was murdered there. He is a keen resolute man, full of ambition and ability very likely what Adolphus McCartney might have been had he taken to policies and thrown off his petty twists; and eccentricities of character. His father was an Italian attached to Napoleon 1 and accompanied the Emperor to Moscow.
I think the Cavagnari of this era will pull himself through perilous times and straits; he certainly could spare no one who that got in his way. Our only Afghan difficulties lie just now with the border clans who are a set of ruthless robbers and assassins, with whom we may have to deal roughly. I sympathise with a free people on these mountains as much as anyone, but they can't go on in this way much longer; and the English are rather a fierce race themselves.
I have been much grieved for Robert Shaw, who died at Mandalay in Upper Burma; his funeral was attended by all the Burmese notables;
Treaty between the Governments of India and Afghanistan, 26 May 1879. This Treaty was ratified by His Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, at Simla, on 30th day of May 1879. A. C. LYALL.
LYALL - Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall (January 4, 1835 - April 11, 1911) was a British civil servant, literary historian and poet. He was born at Coulsdon in Surrey.
He joined the Indian Civil Service in 1856, and served a long career in India, fighting in the Indian Mutiny. He was knighted in 1881, and was made a member of the Privy Council in 1902, having served on the India Council from 1888 to 1902.
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