That Akbar and the confederate chiefs spread a snare for the Envoy is plain, and that they regarded his acceptance of their deceitful proposals as a proof of his faithlessness to the treaty obligations to which he had bound himself. It was no element in their reasoning that since they had not regarded the treaty the British functionary might without breach of faith hold that it did not bind him. But it is improbable that the murder of Macnaghten was actually included in their scheme of action. Their intention seems to have been to seize him as a hostage, with intent thus to secure the evacuation of Afghanistan and the restoration of Dost Mahomed. The ill-fated Envoy's expressions on his way to the rendezvous indicate his unhinged state of mind. He went forth to sure treachery; Akbar's gust of sudden fury converted the planned abduction into savage murder, and his abrupt pistol bullet baulked the more wily and less ruthless project which had probably been devised in cold blood.
The escort brought back into cantonments tidings that the Envoy had been seized. The garrison got under arms, and remained passive throughout the day. The defences were manned at night, in the apprehension that the noise and disturbance in the city portended an assault; but that clamour was caused by the mustering of the Afghans in expectation that the British would attack the city, bent on vengeance on the murderers of the Envoy. Action of that nature was, however, wholly absent from the prostrate minds of the military chiefs. On the following afternoon Captain Lawrence transmitted certain overtures from the chiefs, as the result of a conference held by them, when, notwithstanding severe comments on the conduct of the Envoy, professions were made of sincere regret for his death. With certain alterations and additions, the treaty drawn up by Macnaghten was taken by the chiefs as the basis for the negotiations which they desired to renew. Major Pottinger, as now the senior 'political' with the force, was called on by General Elphinstone to undertake the task of conducting negotiations with the Afghan leaders. The high-souled Pottinger rose at the summons from the sickbed to which he had been confined ever since his wonderful escape from Charikar, and accepted the thankless and distasteful duty. It is not necessary to recount the details of negotiations, every article and every stage of which display the arrogance of the men who knew themselves masters of the situation, and reveal not less the degrading humiliation to which was submitting itself a strong brigade of British troops, whose arms were still in the soldiers' hands, and over whose ranks hung banners blazoned with victories that shall be memorable down the ages. On the sombre and cheerless Christmas Day Pottinger rose in the council of men who wore swords, and remonstrated with soldierly vigour and powerful argument against the degrading terms which the chiefs had contumeliously thrown to them. He produced letters from Jellalabad and Peshawur giving information of reinforcements on the way from India, and urging the maintenance of resistance. He argued that to conclude a treaty with the Afghans would be a fatal error, and suggested two alternative courses which offered a prospect of saving their honour and part of the army—the occupation of the Balla Hissar, which was the preferable measure, or the abandonment of camp, baggage, and encumbrances, and forcing a retreat down the passes. The council—Pottinger must have written sarcastically when he termed it a 'council of war'—unanimously decided that to remain in Cabul and to force a retreat were alike impracticable, and that nothing remained but the endeavour to release the army by agreeing to the conditions offered by the enemy. 'Under these circumstances,' in the words of Pottinger, 'as the Major-General coincided with the officers of the council, and refused to attempt occupying the Balla Hissar, and as his second in command declared that impracticable, I considered it my duty, notwithstanding my repugnance to and disapproval of the measure, to yield, and attempt to carry on a negotiation.'
This Pottinger accordingly did. The first demand with which he had to comply was to give bills for the great sums promised by the Envoy to the chiefs for their services in furthering and supporting his treaty. This imposition had to be submitted to, since the Afghans stopped the supplies until the extortion was complied with. The next concession required was the surrender of the artillery of the force, with the exception of six field and three mule guns; and the military chiefs endured this humiliation, against which even the demoralised soldiery chafed. Then the demand for hostages had to be complied with, and four officers were sent on to join the two hostages already in Afghan hands. The chiefs had demanded four married hostages, with their wives and children, and a circular was sent round offering to volunteers the inducement of a large stipend; but the sentiment of repulsion was too strong to be overcome by the bribe. The sick and wounded who could not bear the march were sent into the city in accordance with an article of the treaty, two surgeons accompanying their patients.
The treaty, ratified by the leading chiefs and sent into cantonments on New Year's Day 1842, provided that the British troops, within twenty-four hours after receiving transport, and under the protection of certain chiefs and an adequate escort, should begin their march of evacuation, the Jellalabad garrison moving down to Peshawur in advance; that the six hostages left in Cabul should be well treated, and liberated on the arrival at Peshawur of Dost Mahomed; the sick and wounded left behind to be at liberty to return to India on their recovery; all small arms and ordnance stores in the cantonment magazine to be made over to the Afghans 'as a token of friendship,' on which account also, they were to have all the British cannon except as above mentioned; the Afghans to escort the Ghuznee garrison in safety to Peshawur; and a further stipulation was that the British troops in Candahar and Western Afghanistan were to resign the territories occupied by them and start quickly for India, provisioned and protected from molestation by the way.
Severe and humiliating as were those terms, they were not obtained without difficulty. The terms put forward in the earlier drafts of the treaty were yet more exacting, and the tone of the demands was abrupt, contemptuous, and insulting. Pottinger had to plead, to entreat, to be abject; to beg the masterful Afghans 'not to overpower the weak with sufferings'; 'to be good enough to excuse the women from the suffering' of remaining as hostages; and to entreat them 'not to forget kindness' shown by us in former days. One blushes not for but with the gallant Pottinger, loyally carrying out the miserable duty put upon him. The shame was not his; it lay on the council of superior officers, who overruled his remonstrances, and ground his face into the dust.
Our people were made to pass under the yoke every hour of their wretched lives during those last winter days in the Cabul cantonments. The fanatics and the common folk of the city and its environs swarmed around our petty ramparts, with their foul sneers and their blackguard taunts, hurled with impunity from where they stood at the muzzles of the loaded guns which the gunners were forbidden to fire. Officers and rank and file were in a condition of smouldering fury, but no act of reprisal or retribution was permitted. If the present was one continuous misery, the future lowered yet more gloomily. It was of common knowledge as well in the cantonments as in the city, that the engagements made by the chiefs were not worth the paper on which they had been written, and that treachery was being concerted against the force on its impending travail through the passes. It was told by a chief to one of the officers who was his friend, that Akbar Khan had sworn to have in his possession the British ladies as security for the safe restoration of his own family and relatives, and, strange forecast to be fulfilled almost to the very letter, had vowed to annihilate every soldier of the British army with the exception of one man, who should reach Jellalabad to tell the story of the massacre of all his comrades. Pottinger was well aware how desperate was the situation of the hapless people on whose behalf he had bent so low his proud soul. Mohun Lal warned him of the treachery the chiefs were plotting, and assured him that unless their sons should accompany the army as hostages, it would be attacked on the march. Day after day the departure was delayed, on the pretext that the chiefs had not completed their preparations for the safe conduct of the force and its encumbrances. Day after day the snow was falling with a quiet, ruthless persistency. The bitter night frosts were destroying the sepoys and the camp followers, their vitality weakened by semi-starvation and by the lack of firewood which had long distressed them. At length on January 5th, Sturt the engineer officer got his instructions to throw down into the ditch a section of the eastern rampart, and so furnish a freer exit than the gates could afford. The supply of transport was inadequate, provisions were scant, and the escort promised by the chiefs was not forthcoming. Pottinger advised waiting yet a little longer, until supplies and escort should arrive; but for once the military chiefs were set against the policy of delay, and firm orders were issued that the cantonments should be evacuated on the following day.
Shah Soojah remained in Cabul. The resolution became him better than anything else we know of the unfortunate man. It may be he reasoned that he had a chance for life by remaining in the Balla Hissar, and that from what he knew, there was no chance of life for anyone participating in the fateful march. He behaved fairly by the British authorities, sending more than one solemn warning pressing on them the occupation of the Balla Hissar. And there was some dignity in his appeal to Brigadier Anquetil, who commanded his own contingent, 'if it were well to forsake him in the hour of need, and to deprive him of the aid of that force which he had hitherto been taught to regard as his own?'
The ill-omened evacuation by our doomed people of the cantonments wherein for two months they had undergone every extremity of humiliation and contumely, was begun on the dreary winter morning of January 6th, 1842. Snow lay deep on plain and hill-side; the cruel cold, penetrating through the warmest clothing, bit fiercely into the debilitated and thinly clad frames of the sepoys and the great horde of camp followers. The military force which marched out of cantonments consisted of about 4500 armed men, of whom about 690 were Europeans, 2840 native soldiers on foot, and 970 native cavalrymen. The gallant troop of Company's Horse-Artillery marched out with its full complement of six guns, to which, with three pieces of the mountain train, the artillery arm of the departing force was restricted by the degrading terms imposed by the Afghan chiefs. In good heart and resolutely commanded, a body of disciplined troops thus constituted, and of a fighting strength so respectable, might have been trusted not only to hold its own against Afghan onslaught, but if necessary to take the offensive with success. But alas, the heart of the hapless force had gone to water, its discipline was a wreck, its chiefs were feeble and apathetic; its steps were dogged by the incubus of some 12,000 camp followers, with a great company of women and children. The awful fate brooded over its forlorn banners of expiating by its utter annihilation, the wretched folly and sinister prosecution of the enterprise whose deserved failure was to be branded yet deeper on the gloomiest page of our national history, by the impending catastrophe of which the dark shadow already lay upon the blighted column.
The advance began to move out from cantonments at nine A.M. The march was delayed at the river by the non-completion of the temporary bridge, and the whole of the advance was not across until after noon. The main body under Shelton, which was accompanied by the ladies, invalids, and sick, slowly followed. It as well as the advance was disorganised from the first by the throngs of camp followers with the baggage, who could not be prevented from mixing themselves up with the troops. The Afghans occupied the cantonments as portion after portion was evacuated by our people, rending the air with their exulting cries, and committing every kind of atrocity. It was late in the afternoon before the long train of camels following the main body had cleared the cantonments; and meanwhile the rear-guard was massed outside, in the space between the rampart and the canal, among the chaos of already abandoned baggage. It was exposed there to a vicious jezail fire poured into it by the Afghans, who abandoned the pleasures of plunder and arson for the yet greater joy of slaughtering the Feringhees. When the rear-guard moved away in the twilight, an officer and fifty men were left dead in the snow, the victims of the Afghan fire from the rampart of the cantonment; and owing to casualties in the gun teams it had been found necessary to spike and abandon two of the horse-artillery guns.
The rear-guard, cut into from behind by the pestilent ghazees, found its route encumbered with heaps of abandoned baggage around which swarmed Afghan plunderers. Other Afghans, greedier for blood than for booty, were hacking and slaying among the numberless sepoys and camp followers who had dropped out of the column, and were lying or sitting on the wayside in apathetic despair, waiting for death and careless whether it came to them by knife or by cold. Babes lay on the snow abandoned by their mothers, themselves prostrate and dying a few hundred yards further on. It was not until two o'clock of the following morning that the rear-guard reached the straggling and chaotic bivouac in which its comrades lay in the snow at the end of the first short march of six miles. Its weary progress had been illuminated by the conflagration raging in the cantonments, which had been fired by the Afghan fanatics, rabid to erase every relic of the detested unbelievers.
It was a night of bitter cold. Out in the open among the snow, soldiers and camp followers, foodless, fireless, and shelterless, froze to death in numbers, and numbers more were frost-bitten. The cheery morning noise of ordinary camp life was unheard in the mournful bivouac. Captain Lawrence outlines a melancholy picture. 'The silence of the men betrayed their despair and torpor. In the morning I found lying close to me, stiff, cold, and quite dead, in full regimentals, with his sword drawn in his hand, an old grey-haired conductor named Macgregor, who, utterly exhausted, had lain down there silently to die.' Already defection had set in. One of the Shah's infantry regiments and his detachment of sappers and miners had deserted bodily, partly during the march of the previous day, partly in the course of the night.
No orders were given out, no bugle sounded the march, on the morning of the 7th. The column heaved itself forward sluggishly, a mere mob of soldiers, camp followers and cattle, destitute of any semblance of order or discipline. Quite half the sepoys were already unfit for duty; in hundreds they drifted in among the non-combatants and increased the confusion. The advance of the previous day was now the rear-guard. After plundering the abandoned baggage, the Afghans set to harassing the rear-guard, whose progress was delayed by the disorderly multitude blocking the road in front. The three mountain guns, temporarily separated from the infantry, were captured by a sudden Afghan rush. In vain Anquetil strove to rouse the 44th to make an effort for their recapture. Green was more successful with his handful of artillerymen, who followed him and the Brigadier and spiked the pieces, but being unsupported were compelled a second time to abandon them. On this march it became necessary also, from the exhaustion of their teams, to spike and abandon two more of the horse-artillery guns; so that there now remained with the force only a couple of six-pounders. While the rear-guard was in action, a body of Afghan horse charged on the flank, right into the heart of the baggage column, swept away much plunder, and spread confusion and dismay far and wide. The rear of the column would probably have been entirely cut off, but that reinforcements from the advance under Shelton pushed back the enemy, and by crowning the lateral heights kept open the thoroughfare. At Bootkhak was found Akbar Khan, who professed to have been commissioned to escort the force to Jellalabad, and who blamed our people for having marched out prematurely from the cantonments. He insisted on the halt of the column at Bootkhak until the following morning, when he would provide supplies, but he demanded an immediate subsidy of 15,000 rupees, and that Pottinger, Lawrence and Mackenzie should be given up to him as hostages that the force would not march beyond Tezeen until tidings should arrive that Sale had evacuated Jellalabad. Those officers by the General's instructions joined the Afghan chief on the following morning, and Akbar's financial requisition was obsequiously fulfilled. After two days' marching our people, who had brought out with them provisions for but five and a half days, expecting within that time to reach Jellalabad, were only ten miles forward on their march.
Another night passed, with its train of horrors—starvation, cold, exhaustion, death. Lady Sale relates that scarcely any of the baggage now remained; that there was no food for man or beast; that snow lay a foot deep on the ground; that even water from the adjacent stream was difficult to obtain, as the carriers were fired on in fetching it; and that she thought herself fortunate in being sheltered in a small tent in which 'we slept nine, all touching each other.' Daylight brought merely a more bitter realisation of utter misery. Eyre expresses his wonderment at the effect of two nights' exposure to the frost in disorganising the force. 'It had so nipped even the strongest men as to completely prostrate their powers and incapacitate them for service; even the cavalry, who suffered less than the rest, were obliged to be lifted on their horses.' In fact, only a few hundred serviceable men remained. At the sound of hostile fire the living struggled to their feet from their lairs in the snow, stiffened with cold, all but unable to move or hold a weapon, leaving many of their more fortunate comrades stark in death. A turmoil of confusion reigned. The Afghans were firing into the rear of the mass, and there was a wild rush of camp followers to the front, who stripped the baggage cattle of their loads and carried the animals off, leaving the ground strewn with ammunition, treasure, plate, and other property. The ladies were no longer carried in litters and palanquins, for their bearers were mostly dead; they sat in the bullet fire packed into panniers slung on camels, invalids as some of them were—one poor lady with her baby only five days old. Mess stores were being recklessly distributed, and Lady Sale honestly acknowledges that, as she sat on her horse in the cold, she felt very grateful for a tumbler of sherry, which at any other time would have made her 'very unladylike,' but which now merely warmed her. Cups full of sherry were drunk by young children without in the least affecting their heads, so strong on them was the hold of the cold.
It was not until noon that the living mass of men and animals was once more in motion. The troops were in utter disorganisation; the baggage was mixed up with the advance guard; the camp followers were pushing ahead in precipitate panic. The task before the wretched congeries of people was to thread the stupendous gorge of the Khoord Cabul pass—a defile about five miles long, hemmed in on either hand by steeply scarped hills. Down the bottom of the ravine dashed a mountain torrent, whose edges were lined with thick layers of ice, on which had formed glacier-like masses of snow. The 'Jaws of Death' were barely entered when the slaughter began. With the advance rode several Afghan chiefs, whose followers, by their command, shouted to the Ghilzais lining the heights to hold their fire, but the tribesmen gave no heed to the mandate. Lady Sale rode with the chiefs. The Ghilzai fire at fifty yards was close and deadly. The men of the advance fell fast. Lady Sale had a bullet in her arm, and three more through her dress. But the weight of the hostile fire fell on the main column, the baggage escort, and the rear-guard. Some of the ladies, who mostly were on camels which were led with the column, had strange adventures. On one camel was quite a group. In one of its panniers were Mrs Boyd and her little son, in the other Mrs Mainwaring, with her own infant and Mrs Anderson's eldest child. The camel fell, shot. A Hindustanee trooper took up Mrs Boyden croupe, and carried her through in safety; another horseman behind whom her son rode, was killed, and the boy fell into Afghan hands. The Anderson girl shared the same fate. Mrs Mainwaring, with her baby in her arms, attempted to mount a baggage pony, but the load upset, and she pursued her way on foot. An Afghan horseman rode at her, threatened her with his sword, and tried to drag away the shawl in which she carried her child. She was rescued by a sepoy grenadier, who shot the Afghan dead, and then conducted the poor lady along the pass through the dead and dying, through, also, the close fire which struck down people near to her, almost to the exit of the pass, when a bullet killed the chivalrous sepoy, and Mrs Mainwaring had to continue her tramp to the bivouac alone.
A very fierce attack was made on the rear-guard, consisting of the 44th. In the narrow throat of the pass the regiment was compelled to halt by a block in front, and in this stationary position suffered severely. A flanking fire told heavily on the handful of European infantry. The belated stragglers masked their fire, and at length the soldiers fell back, firing volleys indiscriminately into the stragglers and the Afghans. Near the exit of the pass a commanding position was maintained by some detachments which still held together, strengthened by the only gun now remaining, the last but one having been abandoned in the gorge. Under cover of this stand the rear of the mass gradually drifted forward while the Afghan pursuit was checked, and at length all the surviving force reached the camping ground. There had been left dead in the pass about 500 soldiers and over 2500 camp followers.
Akbar and the chiefs, taking the hostages with them, rode forward on the track of the retreating force. Akbar professed that his object was to stop the firing, but Mackenzie writes that Pottinger said to him: 'Mackenzie, remember if I am killed that I heard Akbar Khan shout "Slay them!" in Pushtoo, although in Persian he called out to stop the firing.' The hostages had to be hidden away from the ferocious ghazees among rocks in the ravine until near evening, when in passing through the region of the heaviest slaughter they 'came upon one sight of horror after another. All the bodies were stripped. There were children cut in two. Hindustanee women as well as men—some frozen to death, some literally chopped to pieces, many with their throats cut from ear to ear.'
Snow fell all night on the unfortunates gathered tentless on the Khoord Cabul camping ground. On the morning of the 9th the confused and disorderly march was resumed, but after a mile had been traversed a halt for the day was ordered at the instance of Akbar Khan, who sent into camp by Captain Skinner a proposal that the ladies and children, with whose deplorable condition he professed with apparent sincerity to sympathise, should be made over to his protection, and that the married officers should accompany their wives; he pledging himself to preserve the party from further hardships and dangers, and afford its members safe escort through the passes in rear of the force. The General had little faith in the Sirdar, but he was fain to give his consent to an arrangement which promised alleviation to the wretchedness of the ladies, scarce any of whom had tasted a meal since leaving Cabul. Some, still weak from childbirth, were nursing infants only a few days old; other poor creatures were momentarily apprehending the pangs of motherhood. There were invalids whose only attire, as they rode in the camel panniers or shivered on the snow, was the nightdresses they wore when leaving the cantonments in their palanquins, and none possessed anything save the clothes on their backs. It is not surprising, then, that dark and doubtful as was the future to which they were consigning themselves, the ladies preferred its risks and chances to the awful certainties which lay before the doomed column. The Afghan chief had cunningly made it a condition of his proffer that the husbands should accompany their wives, and if there was a struggle in the breasts of the former between public and private duties, the General humanely decided the issue by ordering them to share the fortunes of their families.
Akbar Khan sent in no supplies, and the march was resumed on the morning of the both by a force attenuated by starvation, cold, and despair, diminished further by extensive desertion. After much exertion the advance, consisting of all that remained of the 44th, the solitary gun, and a detachment of cavalry, forced a passage to the front through the rabble of camp followers, and marched unmolested for about two miles until the Tunghee Tariki was reached, a deep gorge not more than ten feet wide. Men fell fast in the horrid defile, struck down by the Afghan fire from the heights; but the pass, if narrow, was short, and the advance having struggled through it moved on to the halting-place at Kubbar-i-Jubbar, and waited there for the arrival of the main body. But that body was never to emerge from out the shambles in the narrow throat of the Tunghee Tariki. The advance was to learn from the few stragglers who reached it the ghastly truth that it now was all that remained of the strong brigade which four days before had marched out from the Cabul cantonments. The slaughter from the Afghan fire had blocked the gorge with dead and dying. The Ghilzai tribesmen, at the turn into the pen at the other end of which was the blocked gorge, had closed up fiercely. Then the steep slopes suddenly swarmed with Afghans rushing sword in hand down to the work of butchery, and the massacre stinted not while living victims remained. The rear-guard regiment of sepoys was exterminated, save for two or three desperately wounded officers who contrived to reach the advance.
The remnant of the army consisted now of about seventy files of the 44th, about 100 troopers, and a detachment of horse-artillery with a single gun. The General sent to Akbar Khan to remonstrate with him on the attack he had allowed to be made after having guaranteed that the force should meet with no further molestation. Akbar protested his regret, and pleaded his inability to control the wild Ghilzai hillmen, over whom, in their lust for blood and plunder, their own chiefs had lost all control; but he was willing to guarantee the safe conduct to Jellalabad of the European officers and men if they would lay down their arms and commit themselves wholly into his hands. This sinister proposal the General refused, and the march was continued, led in disorder by the remnant of the camp followers. In the steep descent from the Huft Kotul into the Tezeen ravine, the soldiers following the rabble at some distance, came suddenly on a fresh butchery. The Afghans had suddenly fallen on the confused throng, and the descent was covered with dead and dying.
During the march from Kubbar-i-Jubbar to the Tezeen valley Shelton's dogged valour had mainly saved the force from destruction. With a few staunch soldiers of his own regiment, the one-armed veteran, restored now to his propermétierof stubborn fighting man, had covered the rear and repelled the Ghilzai assaults with persevering energy and dauntless fortitude. And he it was who now suggested, since Akbar Khan still held to his stipulation that the force should lay down its arms, that a resolute effort should be made to press on to Jugdulluk by a rapid night march of four-and-twenty miles, in the hope of clearing the passes in that vicinity before the enemy should have time to occupy them.
That the attempt would prove successful was doubtful, since the force was already exhausted; but it was the last chance, and Shelton's suggestion was adopted. In the early moonlight the march silently began, an ill omen marking the start in the shape of the forced abandonment of the last gun. Fatal delay occurred between Seh Baba and Kutti Sung because of a panic among the camp followers, who, scared by a few shots, drifted backwards and forwards in a mass, retarding the progress of the column and for the time entirely arresting the advance of Shelton's and his rear-guard. The force could not close up until the morning, ten miles short of Jugdulluk, and already the Afghans were swarming on every adjacent height. All the way down the broken slope to Jugdulluk the little column trudged through the gauntlet of jezail fire which lined the road with dead and wounded. Shelton and his rear-guard handful performed wonders, again and again fending off with close fire and levelled bayonets the fierce rushes of Ghilzais charging sword in hand. The harassed advance reached Jugdulluk in the afternoon of the 11th, and took post behind some ruins on a height by the roadside, the surviving officers forming line in support of the gallant rear-guard struggling forward through its environment of assailants. As Shelton and his brave fellows burst through the cordon they were greeted by cheers from the knoll. But there was no rest for the exhausted people, for the Afghans promptly occupied commanding positions whence they maintained a fire from which the ruins afforded but scant protection. To men parched with thirst the stream at the foot of their knoll was but a tantalising aggravation, for to attempt to reach it was certain death. The snow they devoured only increased their sufferings, and but little stay was afforded by the raw flesh of a few gun bullocks. Throughout the day volley after volley was poured down upon the weary band by the inexorable enemy. Frequent sallies were made, and the heights were cleared, but the positions were soon reoccupied and the ruthless fire was renewed.
Captain Skinner, summoned by Akbar, brought back a message that General Elphinstone should visit him to take part in a conference, and that Brigadier Shelton and Captain Johnson should be given over as hostages for the evacuation of Jellalabad. Compliance was held to be imperative, and the temporary command was entrusted to Brigadier Anquetil. Akbar was extremely hospitable to his compulsory guests; but he insisted on including the General among his hostages, and was not moved by Elphinstone's representations that he would prefer death to the disgrace of being separated from his command in its time of peril. The Ghilzai chiefs came into conference burning with hatred against the British, and revelling in the anticipated delights of slaughtering them. Akbar seemed sincere in his effort to conciliate them, but was long unsuccessful. Their hatred seemed indeed stronger than their greed; but at length toward nightfall Akbar announced that pacific arrangements had been accepted by the tribes, and that what remained of the force should be allowed to march unmolested to Jellalabad.
How futile was the compact, if indeed there was any compact, was soon revealed. The day among the ruins on the knoll had passed in dark and cruel suspense—in hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, in the presence of frequent death; and as the evening fell, in anguish and all but utter despair. As darkness set in the conviction enforced itself that to remain longer in the accursed place was madness; and the little band, leaving behind perforce the sick and wounded, marched out, resolute to push through or die fighting. In the valley the only molestation at first was a desultory fire from the camping Ghilzais, who were rather taken by surprise, but soon became wide awake to their opportunities. Some hurried forward to occupy the pass rising from the valley to the Jugdulluk crest; others, hanging on the rear and flanks of the column encumbered with its fatal incubus of camp followers, mixed among the unarmed throng with their deadly knives, and killed and plundered with the dexterity of long practice. Throughout the tedious march up the steeply rising defile a spattering fire came from the rocks and ridges flanking the track, all but blocked by the surging concourse of miserable followers. The advance had to employ cruel measures to force its way through the chaos toward the crest. As it is approached from the Jugdulluk direction the flanking elevations recede and merge in the transverse ridge, which is crowned by a low-cut abrupt rocky upheaval, worn down somewhat where the road passes over the crest by the friction of traffic. Just here the tribesmen had constructed a formidable abattis of prickly brushwood, which stretched athwart the road, and dammed back the fugitives in the shallow oval basin between the termination of the ravine and the summit of the ridge. In this trap were caught our hapless people and the swarm of their native followers, and now the end was very near. From behind the barrier, and around the lip of the great trap, the hillmen fired their hardest into the seething mass of soldiers and followers writhing in the awful Gehenna on which the calm moon shone down. On the edges of this whirlpool of death the fell Ghilzais were stabbing and hacking with the ferocious industry inspired by thirst for blood and lust for plunder. It is among the characteristics of our diverse-natured race to die game, and even to thrill with a strange fierce joy when hope of escape from death has all but passed away and there remains only to sell life at the highest possible premium of exchange. Among our people, face to face with death on the rocky Jugdulluk, officers and soldiers alike fought with cool deadly rancour. The brigadier and the private engaged in the same fiercemêlée, fought side by side, and fell side by side. Stalwart Captain Dodgin of the 44th slew five Afghans before he fell. Captain Nicholl of the horse-artillery, gunless now, rallied to him the few staunch gunners who were all that remained to him of his noble and historic troop, and led them on to share with him a heroic death.
All did not perish on the rugged summit of the Jugdulluk. The barrier was finally broken through, and a scant remnant of the force wrought out its escape from the slaughter-pit. Small detachments, harassed by sudden onslaughts, and delayed by reluctance to desert wounded comrades, were trudging in the darkness down the long slope to the Soorkhab. The morning of the 13th dawned near Gundamuk on the straggling group of some twenty officers and forty-five European soldiers. Its march arrested by sharp attacks, the little band moved aside to occupy a defensive position on an adjacent hillock. A local sirdar invited the senior officer to consult with him as to a pacific arrangement, and while Major Griffiths was absent on this errand there was a temporary suspension of hostilities. The Afghans meanwhile swarmed around the detachment with a pretence of friendship, but presently attempts were made to snatch from the soldiers their arms. This conduct was sternly resented, and the Afghans were forced back. They ascended an adjacent elevation and set themselves to the work of deliberately picking off officer after officer, man after man. The few rounds remaining in the pouches of the soldiers were soon exhausted, but the detachment stood fast, and calmly awaited the inevitable end. Rush after rush was driven back from its steadfast front, but at last, nearly all being killed or wounded, a final onset of the enemy, sword in hand, terminated the struggle, and completed the dismal tragedy. Captain Souter of the 44th, with three or four privates all of whom as well as himself were wounded, was spared and carried into captivity; he saved the colours of his regiment, which he had tied round his waist before leaving Jugdulluk. A group of mounted officers had pushed forward as soon as they had cleared the barrier on the crest. Six only reached Futtehabad in safety. There they were treacherously offered food, and while they halted a few moments to eat two were cut down. Of the four who rode away three were overtaken and killed within four miles of Jellalabad; one officer alone survived to reach that haven of refuge.
The ladies, the married officers, and the original hostages, followed Akbar Khan down the passes toward Jugdulluk, pursuing the line of retreat strewn with its ghastly tokens of slaughter, and recognising almost at every step the bodies of friends and comrades. At Jugdulluk they found General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton, and Captain Johnson, and learned the fate which had overtaken the marching force. On the following day Akbar quitted Jugdulluk with his hostages and the ladies, all of whom were virtually prisoners, and rode away through the mountains in a northerly direction. On the fourth day the fort of Budiabad in the Lughman valley was reached, where Akbar left the prisoners while he went to attempt the reduction of Jellalabad.
Sale's brigade, retreating from Gundamuk, reached Jellalabad on the 12th November 1841. An investigation into the state of the fortifications of that place showed them, in their existing condition, to be incapable of resisting a vigorous assault. But it was resolved to occupy the place, and to Captain George Broadfoot, as garrison engineer, was committed the duty of making it defensible. This assuredly was no light task. The enciente was far too extensive for the slender garrison, and its tracing was radically bad. The ramparts were so dilapidated that in places they were scarcely discernible, and the ruins strewn over what should have been the glacis afforded near cover to assailants, whose attitude was already so threatening as to hinder the beginning of repairing operations. Their fire swept the defences, and their braves capered derisively to the strains of a bagpipe on the adjacent rocky elevation, which thenceforth went by the name of 'Piper's Hill.' A sortie on the 15th cleared the environs of the troublesome Afghans, supplies began to come in, and Broadfoot was free to set his sappers to the task of repairing the fortifications, in which work the entrenching tools he had wrenched from the Cabul stores proved invaluable. How greatly Sale had erred in shutting up his force in Jellalabad was promptly demonstrated. The connecting posts of Gundamuk and Peshbolak had to be evacuated; and thus, from Jumrood at the foot of the Khyber up to Cabul, there remained no intermediate post in British possession with the solitary exception of Jellalabad, and communications were entirely interrupted except through the medium of furtive messengers.
The Jellalabad garrison was left unmolested for nearly a fortnight, and the repairs were well advanced when on the 29th the Afghans came down, invested the place, and pushed their skirmishers close up to the walls. On December 1st Colonel Dennie headed a sortie, which worsted the besiegers with considerable slaughter and drove them from the vicinity. Bad news came at intervals from Cabul, and at the new year arrived a melancholy letter from Pottinger, confirming the rumours already rife of the murder of the Envoy, and of the virtual capitulation to which the Cabul force had submitted. A week later an official communication was received from Cabul, signed by General Elphinstone and Major Pottinger, formally announcing the convention which the Cabul force had entered into with the chiefs, and ordering the garrison of Jellalabad forthwith to evacuate that post and retire to Peshawur, leaving behind with 'the new Governor,' an Afghan chief who was the bearer of the humiliating missive, the fortress guns and such stores and baggage as there lacked transport to remove. The council of war summoned by Sale was unanimous in favour of non-compliance with this mandate. Broadfoot urged with vigour that an order by a superior who was no longer a free agent and who issued it under duress, could impose no obligation of obedience. Sale pronounced himself untrammelled by a convention forced from people 'with knives at their throats,' and was resolute in the expression of his determination to hold Jellalabad unless ordered by the Government to withdraw.
More and more ominous tidings poured in from Cabul. A letter received on January both reported the Cabul force to be still in the cantonments, living utterly at the mercy of the Afghans; another arriving on the 12th told of the abandonment of the cantonments and the beginning of the march, but that the forlorn wayfarers were lingering in detention at Bootkhak, halted in their misery by the orders of Akbar Khan. Those communications in a measure prepared the people in Jellalabad for disaster, but not for the awful catastrophe of which Dr Brydon had to tell, when in the afternoon of the 13th the lone man, whose approach to the fortress Lady Butler's painting so pathetically depicts, rode through the Cabul gate of Jellalabad. Dr Brydon was covered with cuts and contusions, and was utterly exhausted. His first few hasty sentences extinguished all hope in the hearts of the listeners regarding their Cabul comrades and friends.
There was naturally great excitement in Jellalabad, but no panic. The working parties were called in, the assembly was sounded, the gates were closed, the walls were lined, and the batteries were manned; for it was believed for the moment that the enemy were in full pursuit of fugitives following in Brydon's track. The situation impressed Broadfoot with the conviction that a crisis had come in the fortunes of the Jellalabad garrison. He thought it his duty to lay before the General the conditions of the critical moment which he believed to have arrived, pointing out to him that the imperative alternatives were that he should either firmly resolve on the defence of Jellalabad to the last extremity, or that he should make up his mind to a retreat that very night, while as yet retreat was practicable. Sale decided on holding on to the place, and immediately announced to the Commander-in-Chief his resolve to persevere in a determined defence, relying on the promise of the earliest possible relief.
Because of the defection of his Sikh auxiliaries and the faint-heartedness of his sepoys, Wild's efforts to cross the threshold of the Khyber had failed, and with the tidings of his failure there came to Sale the information that the effort for his relief must be indefinitely postponed. It may be assumed that this intimation weakened in some degree the General's expressed resolution to hold Jellalabad with determination, and it is not to be denied that this resolution was in a measure conditional on the not unwarranted expectation of early relief. Neither he nor his adviser Macgregor appears to have realised how incumbent on the garrison of Jellalabad it was to hold out to the last extremity, irrespective of consequences to itself, unless it should receive a peremptory recall from higher authority; or to have recognised the glorious opportunity presented of inspiriting by its staunch constancy and high-souled self-abnegation a weak government staggering under a burden of calamity. Than Sale no braver soldier ever wore sword, but a man may delight to head a forlorn hope and yet lack nerve to carry with high heart a load of responsibility; nor was Macgregor so constituted as to animate his chief to noble emprise. Fast on the heels of the gloomy tidings from the Khyber mouth there came to them from Shah Soojah, who was still the nominal sovereign at Cabul, a curt peremptory letter obviously written under compulsion, of which the following were the terms: 'Your people have concluded a treaty with us; you are still in Jellalabad; what are your intentions? Tell us quickly.'
Sale summoned a council of war, which assembled at his quarters on January 27th. Its proceedings were recorded, and the documents laid before it were preserved by Captain Henry Havelock in his capacity as Sale's staff-officer. Record and papers were reclaimed from Havelock's custody by General Sale before the evacuation of Afghanistan, and had been long lost to sight. They have recently been deposited among the records of the India Office, but not before their latest non-official possessor had published some extracts from them. It is to be hoped that the more important documents may be given to the public in full, since passages from documents, whether intentionally or not, may be so extracted as to be misleading. Broadfoot, who had been a member of the council of war, and who was apparently aware of the suppression of the official records, wrote in 1843 a detailed narrative of its proceedings while his recollection of them was still fresh, and this narrative he sent to Havelock, desiring him to note 'any points erroneously stated, distinguishing between what you may merely not remember and what you know I am mistaken in.' Havelock, who was a loyal and ardent admirer of General Sale, having sparsely annotated Broadfoot's narrative, returned it with the statement that he had compared it with memoranda still in his possession, and that he considered that it 'contributes a fair and correct statement of that which occurred.' The officers comprising the council to whom Sale and Macgregor addressed themselves were Colonel Dennie of the 13th, Colonel Monteath of the 35th N.I., Captains Backhouse and Abbott of the artillery, Captain Oldfield commanding the cavalry, and Captain Broadfoot the garrison engineer. The following is a summary of the proceedings, as recorded by Broadfoot and authenticated by Havelock.
After a few formal words from General Sale, he called on Macgregor to submit a matter on which that political officer and himself were agreed. Macgregor then described the situation from the point of view of Sale and himself, and expressed their united conviction that nothing was to be hoped for from the Government. Reserving his own liberty of action, he sought the opinion of the officers on offers received from Akbar Khan to treat for the evacuation of Afghanistan, and he laid before them a draft answer to Shah Soojah's curt letter, professing the readiness of the garrison to evacuate Jellalabad on his requisition, since it was held only for him, but naming certain conditions: the exchange of hostages, the restoration of British prisoners and hostages in exchange for the Afghan hostages on arrival of the force at Peshawur, escort thither 'in safety and honour,' with arms, colours, and guns, and adequate assistance of supplies and transport. Both Sale and Macgregor frankly owned that they were resolved to yield, and negotiate for safe retreat.
Great excitement from the first had pervaded the assemblage, and when Macgregor had finished his statement Broadfoot arose in his wrath. He declined to believe that the Government had abandoned the Jellalabad garrison to its fate, and there was a general outburst of indignation when Sale produced a letter carrying that significance. Broadfoot waxed so warm in his remonstrances against the proposed action that an adjournment was agreed to. Next day Sale and Macgregor urged that it was impossible to hold out much longer, that later retreat would be impracticable, and that the scheme they proposed was safe and honourable. Broadfoot denounced it as disgraceful, contended that they could hold Jellalabad indefinitely—'could colonise if they liked'—and retreat at discretion. He denied that the place was held for Shah Soojah, and challenged their right to surrender the post unless by Government order. Hostages he proclaimed worthless while the Afghans held heavier pledges of ours in the shape of prisoners and hostages. He denounced as disgraceful the giving of hostages on our part. Monteath's remark that nobody would go as a hostage roused Oldfield to express himself tersely but pointedly on the subject. 'I for one,' he exclaimed in great agitation, 'will fight here to the last drop of my blood, but I plainly declare that I will never be a hostage, and I am surprised that anyone should propose such a thing, or regard an Afghan's word as worth anything.' The resolution to treat for the abandonment of Jellalabad was carried, Oldfield only voting with Broadfoot against it, but the stipulations: regarding hostages were omitted. Broadfoot continued to press modifications of the conditions set out in the proposed reply, pleading, but in vain, that the restoration of the prisoners in Afghan hands before departure of the garrison should be insisted on; and that since evacuation was resolved on, it should at least be conducted as a military operation, and not degradingly under escort. Then, and little wonder, he objected to expressions in the draft letter as too abject, and he was successful in procuring the alteration of them. The letter was written out, signed by Macgregor, and despatched to Cabul. It was agreed that those members of the council who chose to do should record in writing the reasons for their votes, and this was done by Dennie, Monteath, Abbott, and Broadfoot.
Broadfoot, pending an answer from Cabul, set the garrison to work in digging a ditch round the fortifications. The reply from the Shah, to the effect 'If you are sincere in offers, let all the chief gentlemen affix their seals,' was laid before the reassembled council on February 12th. The implied imputation on the good faith of British officers might well have stung to indignation the meekest; but the council's opinion was taken as to the expediency of complying with the derogatory request made by the Shah, as well as of a stipulation—a modification of what Broadfoot had originally urged in vain—for the surrender of all prisoners, hostages, sick, and wounded under detention in Afghanistan, on the arrival at Peshawur of the Jellalabad brigade. The members of council, who in the long interval since the previous meeting had been gradually regaining their self-respect and mental equipoise, unanimously declined to accept the proposals tendered them by their commanding officer and his political ally; and a letter written by Monteath was accepted, which 'was not a continuation of the negotiation.'
Thus ended the deliberations of the memorable council of war, whose eleventh hour resolve to 'hold the fort' mainly averted the ruin of British prestige in India and throughout the regions bordering on our Eastern Empire; and the credit of its final decision to repudiate the humiliating proposals of Sale and Macgregor belongs to George Broadfoot, who was firmly though silently backed by Havelock. The day after that decision was formulated a letter came from Peshawur informing the garrison that every effort would be made for its relief; and thenceforth there was no more talk of surrender, nor was the courage of the little brigade impaired even when the earthquake of February 19th shook the newly repaired fortifications into wreck. Broadfoot's vehement energy infected the troops, and by the end of the month the parapets were entirely restored, the bastions repaired, and every battery re-established.
After the council of war had rejected the proposals laid before it, a decision which in effect involved the maintenance of the defence to the last extremity, nearly two months passed without the occurrence of any important event, except the speedily retrieved misfortune of the earthquake of February 19th. The close investment of the place by Akbar Khan thwarted the efforts of the foraging parties to obtain much needed supplies. Those efforts were not vigorous, for Sale, aware of his garrison's poverty of ammunition, was bent on a passive defence, and steadily refused his consent to vigorous sorties. The policy may have had its abstract merits, but it was certainly unsatisfactory in this respect, that perseverance in it involved the unpleasantness of apparently inevitable starvation. General Pollock had arrived in Peshawur, and was making energetic efforts to get his force in order for the accomplishment of the relief of Jellalabad. But he foresaw serious delays, and so late as the middle of March was still unable to specify with any definiteness the probable date of his arrival at that place. The European troops in Jellalabad would be out of meat rations early in April, and Havelock's calculation was that the grain, on which mainly subsisted the native soldiers, who had been on half rations since the new year, would be exhausted before the middle of that month. Sale modified his policy of inactivity when he learned that the blockading Afghans were attempting to drive a mine under a salient of the defences, and Dennie on March 11th led out a sally, destroyed the works, and thrust back Akbar's encroachments. The general lack of vigour, however, on the garrison's part emboldened the Afghans so much that they actually grazed their flocks of sheep within 600 yards of the walls. This was too impudent, and the General consented to a raid, which resulted in the acquisition of some 500 sheep, an invaluable addition to the commissariat resources. It is worth recording that the native regiment gave up its share of the sheep to the soldiers of the 13th, on the ground that Europeans needed animal food more than did natives of India.
On April 6th the Afghan leader fired a salute in triumph for a supposititious repulse of Pollock in the Khyber. In regard to what then happened there is a strange conflict of testimony. General Sale, in a private letter written six weeks later, states: 'I made my arrangements with Macgregor to sally the next day, provided we did not hear that Pollock had forced the pass.' Akbar's salutes, and the information of spies that Pollock had fallen back, 'made us look very grave—our case desperate, our provisions nearly out, and no relief at hand. I therefore decided to play a bold stroke to relieve ourselves, and give courage to Pollock's force in case of success. If we failed in thrashing Akbar, we would have left our bones on the field.' Abbott's diary of April 5th and 6th records that spies reported that Pollock had been repulsed at Ali Musjid, and that the heads of three of his officers had been sent in to Akbar, whereupon 'all the commanding officers waited on the General, beseeching him to attack Akbar instantly. The 13th and the battery got all ready for work, but the old General was obstinate, and refused to act.' Backhouse's diary (April 6th) mentions that Pollock having been reported repulsed, and Akbar having fired a salute, the officers commanding corps and detachments went in a body and proposed to the General to attack Akbar instantly, but without success. 'Immediately the matter was broached, the General set his face against anything of the kind, and disagreed about every point—insisted that the enemy had 5000 or 6000 men in camp, and were too strong for us; and then, the next minute, that it was no use going out as we couldn't punish them, as theywouldn't stand; and concluding with usual excuse for inactivity, "It isn't our game." Words ran precious high….'
Whether spontaneously or under pressure, General Sale must have ordered a sortie in force; for at dawn of the 7th three infantry columns marched out by the Cabul gate, the right commanded by Havelock, the centre by Dennie, the left by Monteath, General Sale being in command of the whole force. Akbar, reputed about 5000 strong, was in formation in front of his camp about three miles west of Jellalabad, his left flank resting on the river, with an advanced post of 300 men in the 'patched up' fort about midway between his camp and Jellalabad. The prescribed tactics were to march straight on the enemy, with which Monteath and Havelock complied; but Dennie, whether with or without orders is a matter in dispute, diverged to assail the 'patched up' fort. The outer defences were carried, gallant old Dennie riding at the head of his men to receive his death wound. In vain did the guns for which Sale had sent batter at the inner keep, and the General abandoning the attempt to reduce it, led on in person the centre column. Meanwhile Havelock and Monteath had been moving steadily forward, until halted by orders when considerably advanced. Havelock had to form square once and again against the Afghan horsemen, who, however, did not dare to charge home. The artillery came to the front at the gallop, and poured shot and shell into Akbar's mass. The three columns, now abreast of each other, deployed into line, and moving forward at the double in the teeth of the Afghan musketry fire, swept the enemy clean out of his position, capturing his artillery, firing his camp, and putting him to utter rout. Akbar, by seven o'clock in the April morning, had been signally beaten in the open field by the troops he had boasted of blockading in the fortress.
The garrison of Jellalabad had thus wrought out its own relief. Thenceforth it experienced neither annoyance nor scarcity. Pollock arrived a fortnight after the dashing sally which had given the garrison deliverance, and the head of his column was played into its camp on the Jellalabad plain by the band of the 13th, to the significant tune 'Oh, but ye've been lang o'coming.' The magniloquent Ellenborough dubbed Sale's brigade 'the Illustrious Garrison,' and if the expression is overstrained, its conduct was without question eminently creditable.
It was little wonder that the unexpected tidings of the Cabul outbreak, and the later shock of the catastrophe in the passes, should have temporarily unnerved the Governor-General. But Lord Auckland rallied his energies with creditable promptitude. His successor was on the voyage out, and in the remnant of his term that remained he could not do more than make dispositions which his successor might find of service. Every soldier of the 'Army of Retribution' was despatched to the frontier during Lord Auckland's rule. Lord Auckland appointed to the command of the troops which he was sending forward a quiet, steadfast, experienced officer of the artillery arm, who had fought under Lake at Deig and Bhurtpore, and during his forty years of honest service had soldiered steadily from the precipices of Nepaul to the rice-swamps of the Irrawaddy. Pollock was essentially the fitting man for the service that lay before him, characterised as he was by strong sense, shrewd sagacity, calm firmness, and self-command. When his superior devolved on him an undue onus of responsibility he was to prove himself thoroughly equal to the occasion, and the sedate, balanced man murmured not, but probably was rather amused when he saw a maker of phrases essaying to deck himself in his laurels. There were many things in Lord Auckland's Indian career of which it behoved him to repent, but it must go to his credit that he gave Pollock high command, and that he could honestly proclaim, as he made his preparations to quit the great possession whose future his policy had endangered, that he had contributed toward the retrieval of the crisis by promptly furthering 'such operations as might be required for the maintenance of the honour and interests of the British Government.'
Brigadier Wild reached Peshawur with a brigade of four sepoy regiments just before the new year. He was destitute of artillery, his sepoys were in poor heart, and the Sikh contingent was utterly untrustworthy. To force the Khyber seemed hopeless. Wild, however, made the attempt energetically enough. But the Sikhs mutinied, expelled their officers, and marched back to Peshawur; Wild's sepoys, behaving badly, were driven back with loss from the mouth of the pass, and Wild himself was wounded. When Pollock reached Peshawur on February 6th, 1842, he found half of Wild's brigade sick in hospital, and the whole of it in a state of utter demoralisation. A second brigade commanded by Brigadier-General McCaskill, had accompanied Pollock, the sepoys of which promptly fell under the evil influence of Wild's dispirited and disaffected regiments. Pollock had to resist the pressing appeals for speedy relief made to him from Jellalabad, and patiently to devote weeks and months to the restoration of the morale and discipline of the disheartened sepoys of his command, and to the reinvigoration of their physique. By kindness combined with firmness he was able gradually to inspire them with perfect trust and faith in him, and when in the end of March there reached him a third brigade, comprising British cavalry and horse-artillery, ordered forward by Lord Auckland on receipt of tidings of the destruction of the Cabul force, he felt himself at length justified in advancing with confidence.
[Illustration: Sir George Pollock]
Before daylight on the morning of April 5th Pollock's army about 8000 strong, consisting of eight infantry regiments, three cavalry corps, a troop and two batteries of artillery, and a mountain train, marched from the Jumrood camping ground into the portals of the Khyber. Pollock's scheme of operations was perfect in conception and complete in detail. His main column, with strong advance and rear-guards, was to pursue the usual road through the pass. It was flanked on each side by a chain of infantry detachments, whose assigned duty was to crown the heights and sweep them clear of assailants in advance of the head of the central column. The Afreedi hill men had blocked the throat of the pass by a formidable barrier, behind which they were gathered in force, waiting for the opportunity which was never to come to them. For the main body of Pollock's force serenely halted, while the flanking columns, breaking into skirmishing order, hurried in the grey dawn along the slopes and heights, dislodging the Afreedi pickets as they advanced, driving them before them with resolute impetuosity, and pushing forward so far as to take in reverse with their concentrated fire the great barrier and its defenders. The clansmen, recognising the frustration of their devices, deserted the position in its rear, and rushed tumultuously away to crags and sungahs where knife and jezail might still be plied. The centre column then advanced unmolested to the deserted barricade, through which the sappers soon cleared a thoroughfare. The guns swept with shrapnel the hill-sides in front, the flanking detachments pushed steadily further and yet further forward, chasing and slaying the fugitive hillmen; and the Duke of Wellington's observation was that morning fully made good, that he had never heard that our troops were not equal, as well in their personal activity as in their arms, to contend with and overcome any natives of hills whatever.' The whole British force, in its order of three columns, the centre in the bed of the hollow, the wings on the flanking ridges, steadily if slowly moved on in the assured consciousness of victory. It was sunset before the rear-guard was in camp under the reoccupied Ali Musjid. The Sikh troops who were to keep open Pollock's communications with Peshawur moved simultaneously on Ali Musjid by a more circuitous route.
While Pollock was halted opposite the throat of the Khyber waiting for the demolition of the Afreedi barricade, the ill-starred Shah Soojah was being murdered, on his way from the Balla Hissar of Cabul to review on the Siah Sung slopes the reinforcements which Akbar Khan was clamouring that he should lead down to aid that Sirdar in reducing Jellalabad before relief should arrive. Ever since the outbreak of November Shah Soojah had led a dog's life. He had reigned in Cabul, but he had not ruled. The Sirdars dunned him for money, and jeered at his protestations of poverty. It is not so much a matter of surprise that he should have been murdered as that, feeble, rich, and loathed, he should have been let live so long. It does not seem worth while to discuss the vexed question whether or not he was faithful to his British allies. He was certainly entitled to argue that he owed us nothing, since what we did in regard to him was nakedly for our own purposes. Shah Soojah's second son Futteh Jung had himself proclaimed his father's successor. The vicissitudes of his short reign need not be narrated. While Pollock was gathering his brigades at Gundamuk in the beginning of the following September, a forlorn Afghan, in dirty and tattered rags, rode into his camp. This scarecrow was Futteh Jung, who, unable to endure longer his sham kingship and the ominous tyranny of Akbar Khan, had fled from Cabul in disguise to beg a refuge in the British camp.
Pollock's march from Ali Musjid to Jellalabad was slow, but almost unmolested. He found, in his own words, 'the fortress strong, the garrison healthy; and except for wine and beer, better off than we are.' One principal object of his commission had been accomplished; he had relieved the garrison of Jellalabad, and was in a position to ensure its safe withdrawal. But his commission gave him a considerable discretion, and a great company of his countrymen and countrywomen were still in Afghan durance. The calm pulsed, resolute commander had views of his own as to his duty, and he determined in his patient, steadfast way to tarry a while on the Jellalabad plain, in the hope that the course of events might play into his hands.
Maclaren's brigade, which in the beginning of November 1841 General Elphinstone had instructed General Nott to despatch with all speed to Cabul, returned to Candahar early in December. Nott in despatching it had deferred reluctantly to superior authority, and probably Maclaren not sorry to have in the snowfall a pretext for retracing his steps. Atta Mahomed Khan, sent from Cabul to foment mischief in the Candahar regions, had gathered to his banner a considerable force. General Nott quietly waited until the Sirdar, at the head of some 10,000 men, came within five miles of Candahar, and then he crushed him after twenty minutes' fighting. The fugitives found refuge in the camp of the disaffected Dooranee chiefs, whose leader Meerza Ahmed was sedulously trying to tamper with Nott's native troops, severe weather hindering the General from attacking him. Near the end of February there reached Nott a letter two months old from Elphinstone and Pottinger, ordering him to evacuate Candahar and retire to India, in pursuance of the convention into which they had entered. The Dooranee chiefs astutely urged that Shah Soojah, no longer supported by British bayonets, was now ruling in Cabul, as an argument in favour of Nott's withdrawal. Nott's answer was brief: 'I will not treat with any person whatever for the retirement of the British troops from Afghanistan, until I have received instructions from the Supreme Government'—a blunt sentence in curious contrast to the missive which Sale and Macgregor laid before the Jellalabad council of war. When presently there came a communication from Government intimating that the continued occupation of Candahar was regarded as conducive to the interest of the state, Nott and Rawlinson were in a position to congratulate themselves on having anticipated the wishes of their superiors. The situation, however, became so menacing that early in March its Afghan inhabitants were expelled from the city of Candahar to the last soul; and then Nott, leaving a garrison in the place, took the field in force. The old soldier, wary as he was, became the victim of Meerza's wily strategy. As he advanced, the Afghans retired, skirmishing assiduously. Leaving Nott in the Turnuk valley, they doubled back on Candahar, and in the early darkness of the night of the 10th March they furiously assailed the city gates. They fired one of the gates, and the swarming ghazees tore down with fury its blazing planks and the red-hot ironwork. The garrison behaved valiantly. Inside the burning gate they piled up a rampart of grain bags, on which they trained a couple of guns loaded with case. For three hours after the gate fell did the fanatics hurl assault after assault on the interior barricade. They were terribly critical hours, but the garrison prevailed, and at midnight, with a loss of many hundreds, the obstinate assailants sullenly drew off. Nott, although urgently summoned, was unable to reach Candahar until the 12th.
Candahar was fortunately preserved, but at the end of March the unpleasant tidings came that Ghuznee, which British valour had carried by storm three years before, had now reverted into Afghan possession. The siege had lasted for nearly three and a half months. In mid-December the besiegers occupied the city in force, introduced by the citizens through a subterranean way; and the garrison, consisting chiefly of a regiment of sepoys, withdrew into the citadel. The bitter winter and the scant rations took the heart out of the natives of the warm and fertile Indian plains; but nevertheless it was not until March 6th that the garrison, under pledge of being escorted to Peshawur with colours, arms, and baggage, marched out. The unfortunates would have done better to have died a soldierly death, with arms in their hands and the glow of fighting in their hearts. As the event was, faith with them was broken, and save for a few officers who were made prisoners, most were slaughtered, or perished in a vain attempt to escape.
During his long isolation Nott's resources had been seriously depleted, and he had ordered up from Scinde a brigade, escorting much needed treasure, ammunition, and medicines. Brigadier England was entrusted with the command of this force, whose assemblage at Quetta was expected about the end of March. Pending its gathering England had moved out toward the entrance of the Kojuk Pass, where he met with a sharp and far from creditable repulse, and fell back on Quetta miserably disheartened, suggesting in his abjectness that Nott should abandon Candahar and retire on him. The stout old soldier at Candahar waxed wroth at the limpness of his subordinate, and addressed to England a biting letter, ordering peremptorily the latter's prompt advance to Candahar, engaging to dry-nurse him through the Kojuk by a brigade sent down from Candahar for the purpose, and remarking sarcastically, 'I am well aware that war cannot be made without loss; but yet perhaps British troops can oppose Asiatic armies without defeat.' Thus exhorted England moved, to find his march through the Kojuk protected by Wymer's sepoys from Candahar, who had crowned the lateral heights before he ventured into the pass; and he reached Candahar without maltreatment on the 10th May, bringing to Nott the much needed supplies which rendered that resolute man equal to any enterprise.
It remained, however, to be seen whether any enterprise was to be permitted to him and to his brother commander lying in camp on the Jellalabad plain. Lord Ellenborough, the successor of Lord Auckland, had struck a firm if somewhat inexplicit note in his earliest manifesto, dated March 13th. A single sentence will indicate its tenor: 'Whatever course we may hereafter take must rest solely on military considerations, and hence in the first instance regard to the safety of our detached garrisons in Afghanistan; to the security of our troops now in the field from unnecessary risks; and finally, to the re-establishment of our military reputation by the infliction upon the Afghans of some signal and decisive blow.' Those were brave words, if only they had been adhered to. But six weeks later his lordship was ordering Nott to evacuate Candahar and fall back on Quetta, until the season should permit further retirement to the Indus; and instructing Pollock, through the Commander-in-Chief, to withdraw without delay every British soldier from Jellalabad to Peshawur, except under certain specified eventualities, none of which were in course of occurrence. Pollock temporised, holding on to his advanced position by the plea of inability to retire for want of transport, claiming mildly to find discretionary powers in the Government instructions, and cautiously arguing in favour of an advance by a few marches to a region where better climate was to be found, and whence he might bring to bear stronger pressure for the liberation of the prisoners. Nott was a narrower man than Pollock. When he got his orders he regarded them as strictly binding, no matter how unpalatable the injunctions. 'I shall not lose a moment,' he wrote, 'in making arrangements to carry out my orders, without turning to the right or the left, and without inquiring into the reasons for the measures enjoined, whatever our own opinions or wishes may be.' He reluctantly began preparations for withdrawal. Carriage was ordered up from Quetta, and a brigade was despatched to withdraw the garrison of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, and to destroy the fort which Craigie had so long and valiantly defended.
It would be tedious to detail the vacillations, the obscurities, and the tortuosities of Lord Ellenborough's successive communications to his two Generals in Afghanistan. Pollock had been permitted to remain about Jellalabad until the autumn should bring cooler marching weather. Nott had been detained at Candahar by the necessity for crushing menacing bodies of tribal levies, but as July waned his preparations for withdrawal were all but complete. On the 4th of that month Lord Ellenborough wrote to him, reiterating injunctions for his withdrawal from Afghanistan, but permitting him the alternatives of retiring by the direct route along his line of communications over Quetta and Sukkur, or of boxing the compass by the curiously circuitous 'retirement'viaGhuznee, Cabul, and Jellalabad. Pollock, for his part, was permitted, if he thought proper, to advance on Cabul in order to facilitate Nott's withdrawal, if the latter should elect to 'retreat' by the circuitous route which has just been described.
One does not care to characterise the 'heads I win, tails you lose' policy of a Governor-General who thus shuffled off his responsibility upon two soldiers who previously had been sedulously restricted within narrow if varying limits. Their relief from those trammels set them free, and it was their joy to accept the devolved responsibility, and to act with soldierly initiative and vigour. The chief credit of the qualified yet substantial triumph over official hesitation certainly belongs to Pollock, who gently yet firmly forced the hand of the Governor-General, while Nott's merit was limited to a ready acceptance of the responsibility of a proffered option. A letter from Nott intimating his determination to retire by way of Cabul and Jellalabad reached Pollock in the middle of August, who immediately advanced from Jellalabad; and his troops having concentrated at Gundamuk, he marched from that position on 7th September, his second division, commanded by M'Caskill, following next day. Pollock was woefully short of transport, and therefore was compelled to leave some troops behind at Gundamuk, and even then could carry only half the complement of tentage. But his soldiers, who carried in their haversacks seven days' provisions, would gladly have marched without any baggage at all, and the chief himself was eager to hurry forward, for Nott had written that he expected to reach Cabul on 15th September, and Pollock was burning to be there first. In the Jugdulluk Pass, on the 8th, he found the Ghilzais in considerable force on the heights. Regardless of a heavy artillery fire they stood their ground, and so galled Pollock's troops with sharp discharges from their jezails that it became necessary to send infantry against them. They were dislodged from the mountain they had occupied by a portion of the Jellalabad brigade, led by gallant old General Sale, who had his usual luck in the shape of a wound.
This Jugdulluk fighting was, however, little more than a skirmish, and Pollock's people were to experience more severe opposition before they should emerge from the passes on to the Cabul plain. On the morning of the 13th the concentrated force had quitted its camp in the Tezeen valley, and had committed itself without due precaution to the passage of the ravine beyond, when the Afghan levies with which Akbar Khan had manned the flanking heights, opened their fire. The Sirdar had been dissuaded by Captain Troup, one of his prisoners, from attempting futile negotiations, and advised not to squander lives in useless opposition. Akbar had replied that he was too deeply committed to recede, and that his people were bent on fighting. They were not baulked in the aspiration, which assuredly their opponents shared with at least equal zeal. Pollock's advance guard was about the middle of the defile, when the enemy were suddenly discovered blocking the pass in front, and holding the heights which Pollock's light troops should have crowned in advance of the column. Akbar's force was calculated to be about 15,000 strong, and the Afghans fought resolutely against the British regiments which forced their way up the heights on the right and left. The ghazees dashed down to meet the red soldiers halfway, and up among the precipices there were many hand-to-hand encounters, in which the sword and the bayonet fought out the issue. The Afghans made their last stand on the rocky summit of the Huft Kotul; but from this commanding position they were finally driven by Broadfoot's bloodthirsty little Goorkhas, who, hillmen themselves from their birth, chased the Afghans from crag to crag, using their fell kookeries as they pursued. It was Akbar Khan's last effort, and the quelling of it cost Pollock the trivial loss of thirty-two killed and 130 wounded. There was no more opposition, and it was well for the Afghans, for the awful spectacles presented in the Khoord Cabul Pass traversed on the following day, kindled in Pollock's soldiers a white heat of fury. 'The bodies,' wrote Backhouse in his unpublished diary, 'lay in heaps of fifties and hundreds, our gun wheels crushing the bones of our late comrades at every yard for four or five miles; indeed, the whole march from Gundamuk to Cabul may be said to have been over the bodies of the massacred army.' Pollock marched unmolested to Cabul on the 15th, and camped on the old racecourse to the east of the city.