The first act of the new Shah was to seize his brother, the ex-King, and order his eyes to be put out. This order, however, he revoked, owing to the influence of his new Wazîr or Prime Minister--one of the chiefs who had invited him to seize the throne. He imprisoned the ex-King, therefore, in the dungeons of Bala Hissar. Fethi Khan returning from Bamian found Shujah King. He had, however, a vendetta against the new Shah for the murder of his father, Paînda, by the Shah’s full brother, Zaman. Secretly, and with the help of his brother, he rescued Mahmûd from prison, and again placed him on the throne in Kabul, himself taking his hereditary post of Wazîr. Shah Shujah, routed by Fethi Khan, fled to India, and sought the support of Runjit Singh, the Sikh Maharajah of Lahore. But Runjit Singh held certain provinces formerly belonging to Afghanistan, and he would do nothing for Shujah. He, however, extorted from him a valuable diamond that Shujah had guarded through all his adventures. This diamond had passed from Moghul to Turkoman, from Turkoman to Afghan, and from Afghan has passed through the Sikh to England. It is the Koh-i-Nûr. Shujah, in terror of his life, escaped from the Sikh, and in 1815 threw himself on the mercy of the East India Company, who gave him a pension and a residence in Ludhiana. Meanwhile, in Kabul, Mahmûd gave way to every kind of sensual excess. He was a puppet in the hands of his powerful minister, Fethi Khan, under whose rule the country recovered some of its former prosperity. Mahmûd’s son and heir, Kamran, jealous of the power and increasing influence of Fethi Khan, succeeded in entrapping the minister, and, with most atrocious tortures, he murdered him. The death of this master spirit, warrior, and statesman was an irreparable loss to Afghanistan, and anarchy once more spread over the country. Mahmûd and Kamran fled to Herat, and the rest of the country was divided among the brothers of the murdered Wazîr--Kabul, Jelalabad, and Ghuzni falling to the share of Dôst Mahomed, the favourite brother of Fethi Khan, and the most resolute and gifted. The government of the country, therefore, with the exception of Herat, which was still held by Mahmûd Khan, fell from the power of the Durani Shah to that of the Durani Wazîr. Dôst Mahomed took the title of Amîr of Kabul, or Military Commander, and to him British envoys were sent on missions of commerce and discovery. At this time Russia was urging on Persia to take Herat, but as Herat commands Kandahar, and thus is, as it were, the gate of India, the British were compelled to make a counter-move. Then came the first Afghan war--the disastrous endeavour on our part to revive the extinct Suddozai Durani dynasty. Dôst Mahomed was taken prisoner to Calcutta; Shah Shujah was put on the throne at Kabul; and Mahmûd, with his son Kamran, as successor, acknowledged as Governor of Herat. [Sidenote: The Rule of Dôst Mahomed: a Standing Army.]