Eldred Pottinger

Major Eldred Pottinger CB, Bombay Artillery, about 1840

Eldred Pottinger CB (born August 12, 1811 , † November 15, 1843 in Hong Kong ) was an officer in the artillery of the British East India Company , a diplomat and adventurer. He became known as the "Hero of Herat".

Life

Sir Henry Pottinger's nephew received his education at the East India Company Cadet Institute in Addiscombe , went to Bombay as an artillery officer in 1827 and finally became a political officer on his uncle's staff in the Sindh residency . From here he went on an adventurous reconnaissance trip to the north-western border of British India in 1837, disguised as a local horse dealer , which finally took him to Herat via Kabul . When the city was besieged by Persian troops with Russian help and advice, Pottinger offered his services to the Emir of Herat, Shah Kamran, and his vizier Yar Mahomed. The defense was entrusted to him and it was possible to hold the city. Pottinger was appointed political agent in Herat, received the rank of major and was accepted as a companion in the Order of the Bath . He stayed in Herat until September 1839 and then went to Calcutta .

In 1841 Pottinger was appointed political agent in Kohistan , north of Kabul. When the Afghan resistance to the British occupation increased in December 1841 (→ First Anglo-Afghan War ), he sought refuge in Charikar , where a Gurkhas detachment was stationed. Together with another officer, Lieutenant Houghton, he escaped the destruction of the garrison by the Afghans by fleeing to Kabul. For his wounds sustained while defending Charikar, he received compensation equal to one year's salary.

When we arrived in Kabul, the situation there had become untenable. In place of the murdered British envoy Sir William Macnaghten , Pottinger negotiated the terms of surrender with the Afghan commander, Akbar Khan. General Elphinstone surrendered the city and set out with his troops and 12,000 civilians on the disastrous retreat to Jalalabad . Pottinger remained hostage with two other officers, George Lawrence and Colin Mackenzie, and spent several months in Afghan captivity until the Relief Army under General George Pollock managed to free the hostages.

After his liberation, Pottinger was brought before a commission of inquiry, but acquitted. He then traveled to China to visit his uncle, who was now the governor of Hong Kong. There he died at the age of 32 in November 1843 of a fever. The East India Company paid his stepmother a pension of £ 100.

literature

• Colonel HM Vibart: Addiscombe: Its Heroes and Men of Note. - Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1894
• George Pottinger: The Afghan connection: the extraordinary adventures of Major Eldred Pottinger. - Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1983