Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80, Part 2 — Chapter III - The Lull before the Storm

No more fighting was possible.

What, then, was to be done?

Elphinstone and Shelton were at one in opposing removal into the Balla Hissar.

Macnaghten, to whom Shah Soojah had communicated his urgent recommendation of that measure as the only expedient which could secure the safety of the British troops, fell in with the views of the military authorities.

There came to him a letter from Osman Khan, the chief who had called off his adherents on the previous day from pursuing the fugitives fleeing into cantonments.

Osman wrote that, if his troops had followed up their successes, the loss of the cantonments and the destruction of the British force were inevitable; but, he continued, that it was not the wish of the chiefs to proceed to such extremities, their sole desire being that our people should quietly evacuate the country, leaving the Afghan sirdars to govern it according to their own customs, and with a king of their own choosing.

In communicating this letter to General Elphinstone, Sir William asked for the latter's opinion on the military possibility, or the reverse, of the retention of the British position in Afghanistan.

Elphinstone, in reply, enumerated sundry reasons which led him to the conclusion which he stated, that 'it is not feasible any longer to maintain our position in this country, and that you ought to avail yourself of the offer to negotiate which has been made to you.'

CHAPTER VI: THE ROAD TO RUIN

As the result of the military disaster of November 23d, and of the representations of the General, recorded in the last chapter, Macnaghten, with whatever reluctance, permitted himself to entertain proposals for an arrangement made by the Afghan leaders.

From the beginning of the outbreak, while urging on the military authorities to exert themselves in putting down the revolt, he had been engaged in tortuous and dangerous intrigues, with the object of sowing discord among the Afghan chiefs, and thus weakening the league of hostility against Shah Soojah and his British supporters.

In the conduct of these intrigues he used the services of Mohun Lal, who had been one of Burnes' assistants, and who, having escaped the fate of his chief, had found refuge in the city residence of a Kuzzilbash chief.

Mohun Lal was a fitting agent for the sort of work prescribed to him, and he burrowed and suborned with assiduity, and not altogether without success.

But it is unhappily true that he was commissioned to carry out a darker enterprise, the removal by assassination of certain of the more virulently hostile among the Afghan leaders.

The incident is the blackest of the many discreditable transactions which chequer the inner political history of this melancholy chapter of our annals.

It is unfortunately certain that Lieutenant John Conolly, Macnaghten's kinsman and his confidential representative with Shah Soojah, authorised Mohun Lal, in writing, to compass the taking off of prominent Afghan leaders.

In a letter to Mohun Lal, of 5th November, Conolly wrote: 'I promise 10,000 rupees for the head of each rebel chief.'

Again, on the 11th, he wrote: 'There is a man called Hadji Ali, who might be induced by a bribe to try and bring in the heads of one or two of the Mufsids.

Endeavour to let him know that 10,000 rupees will be given for each head, or even 15,000 rupees.'

Two chiefs certainly did die under suspicious circumstances, and in each case the blood-money was claimed.

It was refused by Mohun Lal on the plea that the stipulation that the heads of the dead Afghans should be brought in was not fulfilled.

Whether Macnaghten inspired those nefarious machinations, whether indeed he was actively aware of them, are questions which, in the absence of conclusive evidence, may judiciously be left unanswered.

There is extant a letter from him to Mohun Lal, written December 1st, which has the following passage: 'I am sorry to find from your letter of last night that you should have supposed it was ever my object to encourage assassination.

The rebels are very wicked men, but we must not take unlawful means to destroy them.'

And later he is reported to have informed an Afghan deputation that, 'as a British functionary, nothing would induce him to pay a price for blood.'

Durand holds that it was the belief on the part of the Afghan chiefs that the British Envoy had set a price on their heads which destroyed all confidence in Macnaghten's good faith, and which was Akbar Khan's chief incentive to his murder.

The terms proffered on November 25th by an Afghan deputation were so humiliating that Macnaghten peremptorily rejected them; and the threat of immediate hostilities unless our people promptly surrendered their arms and withdrew was not carried out.

A period of inaction strangely ensued, which on the Afghan side was a treacherous lull, but which Macnaghten, hoping against hope that some turn in our favour might yet occur, regarded with complacency.

The chiefs, aware that winter was approaching with added hardship to the forlorn garrison, temporarily desisted from urging negotiations.

But the British military authorities, with troops living from hand to mouth on precarious half rations, and with transport cattle dying fast of starvation, kept urging the Envoy to activity in making terms, if absolute starvation was to be averted.

Futile projects were discussed between Envoy and General, only to be put aside.

As the dreary days of inaction and depletion passed, the deterioration of military spirit among our people manifested itself more and more plainly.

British soldiers stolidly watched the Afghans destroying our bridge across the Cabul river, within a quarter of a mile from cantonments.

Scared by the threat of an assault, which, in the scornful words of brave Lady Sale, a child with a stick might have repulsed, the garrison of the Mahomed Shereef fort abandoned it in a panic, the white soldiers of the 44th showing the example of pusillanimity to the sepoys whom their cowardice demoralised.

Next day the detachment of the 44th which had guarded an exposed position had to be withdrawn, ceding the post of honour to the stauncher sepoys.

The camp followers were living on carrion; the commissaries reported but four days' provisions in store, and their inability to procure any more supplies.

At length on December 8th the four senior military officers informed the Envoy that it was imperatively necessary he should negotiate a retreat, on the best terms he could obtain.

Macnaghten had to bring himself to recognise that the alternatives were negotiation or starvation, and on the 11th December, with a draft treaty in his hand, he met the principal Afghan chiefs on the river side between the cantonments and the city.

After the introductory palavers, Macnaghten read the proposed treaty, whose purport was as follows: that the British should evacuate Afghanistan forthwith unmolested, furnished with supplies and accompanied by hostages, on their march to India; that the Dost, his family, and other Afghan political exiles, should be allowed to return to their country; that Shah Soojah should have the option of remaining at Cabul or going down to India; that amnesty should be accorded to all adherents of Shah Soojah and his British allies; that all prisoners should be released; and that perpetual friendship and mutual good offices should thenceforth endure between the British and the Afghans.

Akbar Khan made demur to some of the provisions, but was overruled, and the main stipulations of the treaty were agreed to by the chiefs.

The conference broke up with the understanding that the British troops should evacuate cantonments within three days, and that meanwhile provisions should be sent in for their use.

The treaty was simply a virtual capitulation all along the line; but the inherent falseness of our position, the incapacity of the military chiefs, and the debased spirit of the troops, consequent partly on low rations but mainly because of the utter absence of competent and vigorous leadership such as a Broadfoot or a Havelock would have supplied, enforced on the reluctant Envoy conditions humiliating beyond previous parallel in the history of our nation.

From the outset the Afghan chiefs defaulted from their promise of sending in supplies, but some grain was brought into cantonments by the troops, whose evacuation of the Balla Hissar on the 13th was effected under humiliating circumstances.

The Afghans demanded the surrender of the forts in British occupation in the vicinity of the cantonments.

The requisition was complied with, and the Magazine fort furnished the enemy with both arms and ammunition.

The three stipulated days passed away, and still the British force remained motionless in the cantonments.

Macnaghten was bent on procrastination, and circumstances seemed to favour a policy which to all but himself was inexplicable.

By the treaty, Shah Soojah was in effect committed to withdraw to India, but soon after its acceptance the chiefs had invited him to remain in Cabul as king, on the stipulation that he should give his daughters in marriage to leaders of the malcontents.

After considerable deliberation, the Shah had consented to remain on the condition named, but a few days later he withdrew his acceptance.

His vacillation increased the suspicions of the chiefs, and they demanded the immediate evacuation of the cantonments, refusing to furnish provisions until that was done.

Meanwhile they sent in no transport animals, although large sums had been handed over for their purchase.

Our people were still immobile, and already, on the 18th, there had occurred a fall of snow several inches deep.

The Envoy was engaged in strange and dubious intrigues, and since the Afghans were not fulfilling their share of the treaty obligations, he appears to have regarded himself as no longer bound by its conditions, and free to try to obtain better terms from other sources, in pursuit of which purpose he was expending money in a variety of directions.

The dark and unscrupulous Mohun Lal was his confidant and instrument.

Akbar Khan and the chiefs of his party had become aware of Macnaghten's machinations, and they laid a snare for him into which he fell with open eyes.

Emissaries were sent to him with the sinister proposals that the British should remain in Afghanistan until the spring, when they were to withdraw as of their own accord; that the head of Ameenoolla Khan, one of the most powerful and obnoxious of the rebel leaders, should be presented to the Envoy in return for a stipulated sum of money; and that for all those services the British Government should requite Akbar Khan with a present of thirty lakhs of rupees, and an annual pension of four lakhs.

Macnaghten refused peremptorily the proffer of Ameenoolla's head, but did not reject co-operation in that chiefs capture by a dubious device in which British troops were to participate; he did not hesitate to accept the general terms of the proposals; and he consented to hold a conference with Akbar Khan on the following day to carry into effect the projected measures.

On the morning of the 23d the deceived and doomed man, accompanied by his staff-officers, Lawrence, Trevor and Mackenzie, rode out from cantonments to keep the fateful tryst on the bank of the Cabul river.

His manner was 'distracted and hurried.'

When he told Lawrence of the nature of the affair on which he was going, that shrewd officer immediately warned him that it was a plot against him.

'A plot!'

he replied hastily, 'let me alone for that; trust me for that!'

and Lawrence desisted from useless expostulation.

Poor old Elphinstone had scented treachery; but the Envoy had closed his mouth with the impatient words: 'I understand these things better than you!'

As he rode out, he admitted the danger of the enterprise, but argued that if it succeeded it was worth all risks.

'At all events,' he ended, 'let the loss be what it may, I would rather die a hundred deaths than live the last six weeks over again.'

The escort halted, and the four British gentlemen advanced to the place of rendezvous, whither came presently Akbar Khan and his party.

Akbar began the conference by asking the Envoy if he was ready to carry out the proposals presented to him overnight.

'Why not?'

was Sir William's short reply.

A number of Afghans, armed to the teeth, had gradually formed a circle around the informal durbar.

Lawrence and Mackenzie pointed out this environment to some of the chiefs, who affected to drive off the intruders with their whips; but Akbar observed that it did not matter, as they 'were all in the secret.'

'Suddenly,' wrote Mackenzie, 'I heard Akbar call out, "Begeer!

begeer!"

("Seize!

seize!"

) and turning round I saw him grasp the Envoy's left hand with an expression on his face of the most diabolical ferocity.

I think it was Sultan Jan who laid hold of the Envoy's right hand.

They dragged him in a stooping posture down the hillock, the only words I heard poor Sir William utter being, "Az barae Khooda" ("For God's sake").

I saw his face, however, and it was full of horror and astonishment.'

Neither Mackenzie nor Lawrence, the surviving companions of the Envoy, witnessed the actual end.

'Whether,' writes Kaye, 'he died on the spot, or whether he was slain by the infuriated ghazees, is not very clearly known; but the fanatics threw themselves on the prostrate body and hacked it with their knives.'

There is no doubt that the head of the unfortunate Macnaghten was paraded in triumph through the streets of Cabul, and that the mangled trunk, after being dragged about the city, was hung up in the great bazaar.

Of the three officers who accompanied the Envoy to the conference, Trevor was massacred, Lawrence and Mackenzie were saved with difficulty by friendly chiefs, and brought into the city, where they and Captain Skinner joined the hostages, Captains Connolly and Airey, under the safe roof of the venerable Mahomed Zemaun Khan.

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?'

CHAPTER VII: THE CATASTROPHE

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 Boyd _en 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 proper _métier_ of 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 fierce _mêlée_, 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.