BOOK VIII.
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CHAPTER I.
[November, 1841-April, 1842.]
Affairs at Candahar—Evil Tidings from Caubul—Maclaren’s Brigade—Spread of the Insurrection—Arrival of Atta Mahmed—Flight of Sufdur Jung—Attack on the Douranee Camp—Continued Hostilities—Attack upon the City—Action in the Valley of the Urghundab—Fall of Ghuznee—Defence of Khelat-i-Ghilzye—Movements of England’s Brigade.
The attention of the reader ought now no longer to be withheld from that part of the country where General Nott and Major Rawlinson were gallantly and successfully holding out against the insurgent Douranees, and maintaining the character of the British nation before the tribes of Western Afghanistan. At the beginning of November, wrote Rawlinson, in a summary of events, drawn up with such masterly distinctness and comprehensiveness, that the historian has little to do, in this place, but to submit himself to its guidance;[87] “affairs wore a more tranquil and promising appearance in the Candahar province than I had ever witnessed since my assumption of the charge of the agency. Akram Khan, the leader of the Derawat rebellion, captured by Lieutenant Conolly, had been executed at this place by his Majesty’s orders. Eight of the most influential of his colleagues had been sent by me, according to the orders of the Envoy, under the charge of Lieutenant Crawford, to Caubul; that officer having my written instructions to destroy his prisoners in the event of an attempt at rescue. The Hazareh and the Belooch tribes had been effectually conciliated; the Douranees of the northern and western districts had been humbled and overawed.”
The troops then at Candahar consisted of her Majesty’s 40th Regiment; the 2nd, 16th, 38th, 40th, and 43rd Regiments of Bengal Native Infantry; Captain Blood’s battery (Bombay Artillery); the Shah’s Horse Artillery, under Captain Anderson; some regiments of the Shah’s infantry, and some detachments of Irregular Horse (Shah’s and Skinner’s), the weakness of the force lying in this arm. The tranquillity of the country seemed to authorise the diminution of this force, and a brigade, comprising the 16th, 42nd, and 43rd Regiments of Bengal Native Infantry, was about to proceed, under Colonel Maclaren, to the provinces of Hindostan. On the 7th of November it commenced its march; but on the evening of that day some startling intelligence was brought into Candahar. A detachment of 130 men under Captain Woodburn—that officer who, in the month of July, had so distinguished himself on the banks of the Helmund, in action with the Douranee rebels under Akhtar Khan—was proceeding from Candahar to Caubul, when, on the 2nd of November, after they had passed Ghuznee, they were attacked by swarms of Afghans, through whom, with consummate gallantry and skill, Woodburn fought his way to the little fort of Syedabad. The place was occupied by a man supposed to be friendly to us;[88] and the English officer, surrounded as he was by the enemy, gladly accepted his offer of protection. But there was no safety within the fort. For a day and a night he held his position against a besieging enemy, and nobly he defended himself. But his ammunition fell short; and then there came tidings of the success of the insurgents at Caubul. On this, the chief admitted parties of the enemy into the towers of his own Harem, which overlooked the court-yard, in which the Sepoys were quartered. Then the massacre commenced. Many of the Sepoys were killed on the spot. Others threw themselves over the walls, and were shot down outside the fort. Woodburn himself, with a few of his men, took post in a tower of their own court, and for some hours they gallantly defended themselves. But they fell at last. The enemy burnt them out; and massacred them almost to a man.
On receipt of this intelligence Rawlinson at once recommended the General to halt Maclaren’s brigade. It was accordingly brought back to Candahar. It was plain that some mischief was brewing in the country to the north. A week of doubt and anxiety passed; and then letters came from Macnaghten and Elphinstone, announcing that Caubul was in a state of insurrection, and ordering Maclaren’s brigade to be despatched at once to the capital. These letters came on with indorsements from Colonel Palmer at Ghuznee, and Major Leech at Khelat-i-Ghilzye, which showed that in the intervening country there were signs of the coming storm.[89] On the 17th of November, accompanied by a troop of horse artillery, the three regiments commenced their march to the northward.
Anticipating that some evil might arise from the presence of the Prince, Sufder Jung, in the province, after his supercession by his elder and better disposed brother, Rawlinson had invited him to come in from Zemindawer, and he now suggested the expediency of his proceeding to Caubul, with Captain Hart’s Janbaz regiment, which was to follow in the rear of Maclaren’s brigade. The Prince yielded to the suggestion, and went. The fidelity of the Afghan horse was doubtful, and Rawlinson was glad to rid himself of the presence both of a discontented Prince and a body of treacherous Afghan horsemen—soldiers raised, mounted, armed, equipped and disciplined by Shah Soojah and his British supporters, seemingly for the one sole purpose of drawing their swords against the very power to which they owed their military existence.
All through the month of November Candahar remained tranquil. But it was obvious that the course of insurrection was setting towards the West. Tidings came in from the country about Ghuznee, which showed that the road to the capital was infested by the insurgents. Lieutenant Crawford, who was escorting the Douranee prisoners to Caubul had been attacked by overwhelming numbers near Ghuznee; and had suffered his prisoners to escape; or rather, had lost them, with all his baggage, and a considerable number of his horses and men.[90] Soon afterwards Guddoo Khan, an Afghan officer in the service of the Shah and his British supporters, who had accompanied Crawford’s detachment—a man of unimpeachable integrity and unquestionable gallantry and good conduct—was on his return from Ghuznee to Candahar “overpowered by numbers and slain, with seventeen of his best men, losing at the same time forty-five horses, and all the arms and baggage of the Ressaleh.” These incidents seemed to portend the near approach of the thunder-clouds that were breaking over Caubul. Candahar was as yet only beneath the skirts of the storm.
On the 8th of December Maclaren’s brigade returned to Candahar. How it happened that these regiments had failed to make good their march to Caubul is not to be satisfactorily explained. It is still stated by officers who accompanied the detachment, that the difficulties of the march have been greatly exaggerated; and that, at all events, they might have been overcome. Nott sent the brigade with a reluctance which he took no care to conceal. It was his wish to retain the three regiments at Candahar; and he was not a man to shrink from the utterance of his feelings on such a subject as this. “Remember,” he said to Maclaren and his staff, when they presented themselves at the General’s quarters to take leave of their old commandant, “the despatch of this brigade to Caubul is not my doing. I am compelled to defer to superior authority; but in my own private opinion I am sending you all to destruction.” The brigade marched; but, starting under such auspices, there was little likelihood of its reaching its destination. There were few officers in the force who did not know that, on the first colourable pretext, it would be turned back.
A pretext very soon presented itself. Two marches beyond Khelat-i-Ghilyze there was a light fall of snow. On the following day there was more snow, and some of the commissariat donkeys died upon the road. On the next, Maclaren halted the brigade, and ordered a committee to assemble and report upon the state of the commissariat cattle, with reference to their fitness for the continuance of their march to Caubul. The committee assembled; registered the number of deaths among the carriage-cattle during the two preceding days; and reported that as winter had now set in, and as the loss of cattle would increase every march that was made to the northward, it would be impracticable for the force to reach Caubul at all in an efficient state. On this, about the end of November, Maclaren ordered the brigade to retrace its steps.
But the snow had now ceased. The little that had fallen soon melted away, and for weeks not another flake fell throughout the entire country. The weather was remarkably fine and open; and there is not a doubt that the brigade might easily have made good its way to Caubul. But it does not appear ever to have been seriously intended that the force should reach its destination. Maclaren and his officers knew well that the return of the brigade to Candahar would be welcome to General Nott, and that there was not likely to be a very close inquiry into the circumstances attending the retrograde movement. There was in reality little more than a show of proceeding to the relief of Caubul. The regiments were wanted at Candahar; and to Candahar they returned. How far their arrival might have helped to save Elphinstone’s force from destruction can only be conjectured. But it is said that both the English and the Afghan hosts looked with eager anxiety to the arrival or the repulse of Maclaren, as the event which was to determine the issue of the pending struggle. The relief of Ghuznee, would in itself have been great gain to us, for it would have opened the road between that place and Caubul, and have sent many of the rebellious tribes to their home; and that the appearance of reinforcements would have determined many waverers, the venal and vacillating Kuzzelbashes included, to side with the British, may be recorded as a certainty. It is right, however, to admit the belief, that if Nott had known to what straits the Caubul army would soon be reduced, he would not have uttered a word to encourage the return of the relieving brigade to Candahar.
But whatever may have been the causes of the failure, soon after the retrograde movement of Maclaren’s brigade became known, unmistakeable signs of inquietude were discernible in the neighbourhood of Candahar. Mahomed Atta Khan had been detached by the Caubul party to raise an insurrection in Western Afghanistan. No sooner had the chief reached the frontier than such unequivocal symptoms of popular excitement began to manifest themselves, that Major Rawlinson at once perceived the necessity of adopting active measures for the suppression of disorder and the maintenance of the tranquillity of the surrounding country. His efforts in the first instance were directed to the avoidance of any actual collision with the people, and the preservation of outward smoothness and regularity in the administration of affairs. With this primal object, he withdrew from the outlying districts all the detached troops, and concentrated them at Candahar. A single party of Janbaz, protected by the Hazarehs from the possibility of attack, were left in Tezeen, whilst all the other troops, Hindostanee and Afghan, were posted in and around the city of Candahar. But this was not enough. The safety of our military position might be provided for; but it was not sufficient to feel confident of our ability to overcome any enemy that might venture to attack us. It was obviously expedient to strike rather at the root than at the branches; to prevent the growth of rebellion rather than to beat it down full-grown. At all events, it was politic to secure such a division of parties as would annihilate even the possibility of a powerful coalition against us. Relying upon the general unpopularity of the Barukzyes with the Douranee tribes, whom the Sirdars had so long and so severely oppressed, Major Rawlinson exerted himself to get up a Douranee movement in our favour. He bound the chiefs, by all the most solemn oaths that Mahomedanism affords, to stand firm in their allegiance to Shah Soojah and the Shah-zadah Timour. The priesthood ratified the bond; and the families of the Douranee chiefs were placed as hostages for their fidelity in the hands of the British officers. The chiefs themselves, with Prince Timour’s eldest son at their head, and accompanied by Meerza Ahmed, the Revenue-manager of Candahar, a man of considerable talents and unsuspected fidelity, to whom Major Rawlinson had entrusted a lakh of rupees for the management of the movement, were despatched to the eastern frontier to raise the tribes against the Barukzyes and their Ghilzye allies. In the meanwhile the British at Candahar remained apparently unconcerned spectators of the contest, which, it was hoped, would resolve itself into a question of Suddozye or Barukzye supremacy in the Douranee Empire.
The objects contemplated by Major Rawlinson were, however, only partially attained. He succeeded in gaining time, and in removing the Douranee chiefs from the neighbourhood of our camp. “The Douranees quitted Candahar in the middle of December, delayed for a considerable time the advance of Mahomed Atta Khan, and prevented to the utmost of their power the spread of religious fanaticism among their tribes.” But the good faith so apparent at the outset was destined soon to be overclouded. As long as the Douranees believed that to carry out the wishes of the British was really to fight the battle of the Suddozyes, they were true to our cause; but they soon began to give credit to the report that Shah Soojah himself was in the ranks of our enemies, and then they fell away from us. Even Meerza Ahmed, in whom so much confidence had been reposed, turned his fine talents against us, and became the mainspring of a hostile Douranee movement.
But they did not at once declare themselves. For a while the Douranees quietly watched the progress of affairs. Those events as they developed themselves seemed more and more favourable to the spread of insurrection in western Afghanistan. As the old year wore to a close, it seemed that our difficulties were thickening, and the new year came in with a crowd of fresh embarrassments. Sufder Jung had returned to Candahar. On the retrogression of Maclaren’s brigade he had declared that he could not trust the Janbaz to escort him to Caubul, and again set his face towards the south. The presence of these traitorous horsemen at Candahar had always been a source of considerable anxiety to Major Rawlinson. The 1st Regiment of Afghan horse had been in Zemindawer; and when the political agent recalled the other troops from that part of the country, it was his intention that the Janbaz should remain at Ghirisk. Their enmity to the surrounding tribes was so well known, that there was less chance of their uniting with the rebels in that part of the country than in any other. Owing, however, to the miscarriage of a letter, Rawlinson’s intentions were defeated. The Janbaz returned to Candahar with the other details of the Zemindawer detachment, on the 9th of December. But Rawlinson was determined to remove them. He suspected their treachery; but sooner than he anticipated, they threw off all disguise, and openly arrayed themselves against us.
Before daybreak on the 27th of December the men of the Janbaz regiments were to have commenced their march to Ghirisk. There were 250 men of the 1st Regiment under Lieutenant Golding, and 150 of the 2nd under Lieutenant Wilson. Lieutenant Pattinson was to accompany them in political charge. The object of the movement was two-fold—to escort treasure and ammunition to Ghirisk, and to remove from Candahar a body of men whose fidelity was more than suspected. Two hours after midnight the party was to have moved and made a double march, for the purpose of clearing the villages on the Urghundab, which had been greatly excited during the few preceding days. Golding was ready at the appointed hour; but, through some misconception of orders, Wilson’s men were not prepared to march. So the movement was countermanded. Golding and Pattinson, therefore, returned to the tent of the former, and laid themselves down again to sleep. The 1st Janbaz regiment had been drawn up ready for the march with their cattle loaded, and the postponement of the movement now took them by surprise. They had laid a plot to mutiny and desert upon the march, and they believed that the conspiracy had been detected. After waiting for half an hour, drawn up in the chill air of early morning, they determined at once to throw off the mask; so they streamed into Golding’s tent with their drawn swords, and attacked the two officers in their beds. When they thought that their bloody work was complete, they rushed confusedly out of the tent, mounted their horses, and fled. The treasure was plundered, and some horses belonging to Golding and Pattinson were carried off; but nothing else was touched by the assassins. Pattinson was stunned by a blow on the head, but recovering his senses, he made his way out of the tent, wounded as he was in seven places, mounted a horse which his Meerza had saddled on the spot, and effected his escape.[91] Golding was less fortunate. He rushed out of his tent, and fled on foot towards the cantonments; but the Janbaz followed and cut him down when within a short distance of our camp.[92]
A party of the Shah’s horse under Captain Leeson, and a detachment of Lieutenant Wilson’s Janbaz, who had remained true to us in the face of strong temptation, were sent out against the mutineers. The detachment came up with the rebels about twelve miles from Candahar. There was a brief but sturdy conflict. The mutineers charged in a body, but were gallantly met by Leeson’s men; and after a hand-to-hand struggle, were broken and dispersed.[93] Thirty of their number were killed by our cavalry, who followed up their advantage; many more were wounded, and the remainder fled in confusion to the camp of Atta Mahomed.
Two days after the defection of the Janbaz, Prince Sufder Jung fled from Candahar, and joined the camp of Atta Mahomed. The Sirdar had fixed his head-quarters at Dehli, about forty miles from Candahar, and there, early in January, Rawlinson was eager to attack him. The political agent saw clearly the expediency of crushing the insurrection in the bud. Every day was adding to the importance of the movement, and swelling the number of the insurgents. Some of the tribes were standing aloof, unwilling to declare themselves against us, yet in hourly expectation of being compelled to secure their own safety by ranging themselves under the banners of the Prince. But the General was unwilling to divide his force; and refused to send a brigade to Dehli. Whilst Rawlinson urged strong political considerations in favour of promptitude of action, Nott, with equal firmness, took his stand upon military grounds, and argued that it would be inexpedient, at such a season of the year, to send a portion of his force a distance of forty miles from Candahar to beat up the quarters of a fugitive Prince. “Sufder Jung,” wrote Rawlinson, “has fixed his abode at Dehli, and has declared himself the leader of an insurrection, aiming at our expulsion from the country. Up to the present time no very considerable number of men have joined his standard, and the only chiefs in attendance of any note, are those who have accompanied Mahomed Atta Khan from Caubul, together with the Ghilzye leaders, Sumud Khan, Meer Alim Khan, and the Gooroo. It would thus be an easy matter by the detachment of a brigade to Dehli to break up the insurgent force, and whether the rebels fought or fled, the consequences would be almost of equal benefit with regard to the restoration of tranquillity. But I anticipate a very serious aggravation of affairs if we allow the Prince to remain unmolested for any length of time at Dehli, or to move from that place in the direction of Candahar with the avowed purpose of attacking us. Our inactivity would not fail to be ascribed by the great body of the Ooloos to an inability to act on the offensive, and an impression of this sort having once gained ground, the natural consequences, in the present highly excited state of religious feeling, would be a general rise of the population against us.”[94]
Reason and experience were both on the side of this argument, and Rawlinson stated the case clearly and well. But Nott took a soldier’s view of the question. He argued, that to send out a brigade at such a season of the year, so far from its supports, would be to destroy his men in the field, and to expose the city to the attacks of the enemy. “I conceive,” he wrote in reply to Rawlinson’s letter, “that the whole country is in a state of rebellion, and that nothing but the speedy concentration of the troops at this place has saved the different detachments from being destroyed in detail, and the city of Candahar from being besieged.... Because this young Prince is said to have assembled 1000 or 1500 followers at a distance of forty miles from Candahar, it would, indeed, be truly absurd were I, in the very depth of winter, to send a detachment wandering about the country in search of the rebel fugitive, destroying my men amidst frost and snow, killing the few carriage-cattle we have left, and thus be totally disabled at the proper season from moving ten miles in any direction from the city, or even have the means of falling back, should that unfortunately ever become necessary.”[95]
The movements of the rebel army soon settled the question between them. No attempt having been made to dislodge the insurgent chiefs, they quietly moved down the valley of the Urghundab, and on the 12th of January took post on the river, about five miles to the west of the city of Candahar.
General Nott lost no time in moving out to attack them. Taking with him five and a half regiments of infantry, the Shah’s 1st Cavalry, a party of Skinner’s Horse, and sixteen guns,[96] a formidable body of troops, weak only in the mounted branch—he made a four hours’ march over a few miles of country, and came upon the enemy,[97] posted near the fortified village of Killa-chuk, on the right bank of the Urghundab. The British troops crossed the river, and at once advanced in column of battalions, flanked by the artillery and cavalry, to the attack. The action was of brief duration. At the end of twenty minutes, during which our guns and musketry, telling with deadly effect upon the heavy masses of the enemy, were answered by a wild and ineffective fire from their ranks, the rebel army was in confusion and flight. The Ghilzyes fled in one direction; the Janbaz in another; the people from the villages[98] hastened to their own homes. Atta Mahomed attempted to make a stand; but our troops moved forward—carried the village by storm—and slaughtered every man, woman, and child, within its walls. The British line was then reformed, and Atta Mahomed prepared to meet a second attack. But the cavalry, with two horse-artillery guns, were now slipped upon the enemy, who broke and fled in dismay; and the humiliation of Atta Mahomed and his princely ally was complete.[99]
The Douranee chiefs now began to throw off the mask. They moved down to the assistance of the rebel army, but the battle had been fought before they could arrive upon the field, and they only came up in time to see their countrymen in panic flight.[100] Sufder Jung, Atta Mahomed, and the other rebel chiefs found an honourable refuge in the Douranee camp; and from that time, they who had left Candahar as our friends, presented a front of open hostility to our authority.[101]
Meerza Ahmed was the head-piece of the Douranee party. Nott had pronounced him a traitor.[102] Rawlinson had now ceased to believe in his fidelity; but he had never ceased to respect his talents. He knew him to be an Afghan of rare ability, and he believed that the sagacity of the Meerza would not suffer him to doubt the difference between the power of his countrymen and that of the British Government. But the Meerza had sounded the depth of the difficulties which surrounded us with no little accuracy, and had estimated aright the nature of the crisis. He saw in the distance our compulsory abandonment of Afghanistan, and doubted the wisdom of leaguing himself with a declining cause.
From the 20th of January to the last day of February the Douranees remained encamped in the neighbourhood of Candahar. Nothing but the genius of Meerza Ahmed could have kept together, throughout so long a season of comparative inactivity, all the discordant elements of that Douranee force. The winter had set in with its snowy accessories. Nott was unwilling to expose his troops to the severities of the winter season; and the enemy seemed equally disinclined for war whilst the snow was on the ground. But during this period of suspended hostilities very different were the occupations of the two contending forces—very different the feelings with which they contemplated the renewal of the struggle. The attitude of the British at this time denoted a consciousness of strength. There was no despondency—there was no excitement. Our officers and men, having nothing to do in the field, fell back again into the ordinary routine of cantonment life, as though the country had never been convulsed or disturbed. They rode steeple-chases; they played at rackets; they pelted one another with snow-balls. The dreadful snow which had destroyed the Caubul army was only a plaything in the hands of their brethren at Candahar.[103]
The enemy, on the other hand, were kept continually in a state of restless and absorbing activity. Meerza Ahmed saw the danger of suffering the Douranee chiefs, disunited and jealous of each other as they were, to dwell too intently upon the embarrassments of their own position. He gave their thoughts an outward direction; and, by skilful management, kept them both from risking prematurely a general engagement with the British, and from breaking out into internal dissensions.[104] “Meerza Ahmed alone,” says Major Rawlinson, in the masterly despatch I have already quoted, “could have so long preserved union among the discordant elements of which this camp was composed; he alone could have managed, by the most careful revenue arrangements, to have supported the concourse which was assembled round the standard of Sufder Jung; he alone, perhaps, could have prevented the Douranees from risking an action in which they were sure to be defeated; his measures throughout have been most skilful and well sustained. The chiefs were, in the first place, sent to recruit in the different districts where their influence chiefly prevailed; revenue was raised in the usual form for the support of the troops in anticipation of the coming harvest, the ryots receiving an acquittance from Meerza Ahmed in case the management should continue in his hands, and being assured that if our power prevailed we were too just to subject the cultivators to a double exaction; statements of the Shah’s connivance in the Caubul revolution were industriously circulated; incessant attempts were made to tamper with our Hindostanee troops (not altogether without success), and letters were designedly thrown into our hands to render us suspicious of such chiefs as adhered to us, whilst the most stringent measures were adopted to deter the villagers around the city from bringing supplies into Candahar. Such was the line of policy pursued by Meerza Ahmed from the 20th of January to the 20th of February. In this interim General Nott had laid in five months’ supplies for the troops; he had repaired the fortifications to a certain extent; and, intending on the 12th of February to march out and attack the enemy, he had concurred in the advisability of disarming the population preparatory to the movement of our troops.[105] Severe weather, however, rendered a march impracticable at the time he meditated; and before it became sufficiently mild to enable him to take the field, the tactics of the enemy had undergone a total alteration in consequence of advices from Caubul.”
But there were many circumstances at this time to create uneasiness in the minds of those to whom was entrusted the direction of affairs at Candahar. The garrison was not threatened with a scarcity of provisions; but fodder for the cattle was very scarce. The horses were becoming unserviceable from lack of nourishment; the sheep were so miserably lean as to be scarcely worth killing for food. It was intensely cold; and fuel was so scarce, that the luxury of a winter fire was denied even to the sick. The hospitals had their inmates; but there were no medicines. And above all, money was becoming so scarce, that the most serious apprehensions were entertained by Major Rawlinson, who knew that there was no weapon of war so serviceable as the money-bag in such a country as Afghanistan.[106] Under such circumstances it may readily be supposed how anxiously the arrival of a convoy from the southward was looked for, and how necessary it seemed that the communications with Sindh should be opened in such a manner as to secure the arrival of treasure and supplies.
But whilst the hopes of the garrison were directed towards the country to the southward, their thoughts, with fear and trembling, turned themselves towards the North. On the 21st of February a messenger arrived at Candahar, bringing a letter from General Elphinstone and Major Pottinger, ordering the evacuation of Candahar and Khelat-i-Ghilzye.[107] The original had been written nearly two months before; and that which now reached Major Rawlinson was a copy forwarded by Leech from Khelat-i-Ghilzye.[108] There was no doubt in Rawlinson’s mind about the genuine character of the document; but he could not bring himself to recognise for a moment the obligations which it was intended to impose upon him. He could not, however, help perceiving that the turn which political affairs had taken in Caubul placed him in a strange and anomalous position. Shah Soojah was now the recognised sovereign of Afghanistan, ruling by the consent and with the aid of the Barukzye chiefs; and it could no longer be said that the presence of the British troops was necessary to the support of the Suddozye Kings. The Douranee chiefs saw this as plainly as Rawlinson; and they did not fail to take advantage of the circumstance. They now endeavoured to reason the British out of Candahar when they found it difficult to expel them; and Rawlinson and Nott found it less easy to rebut their arguments than to repel their assaults.
On the 23rd of February, Rawlinson received a packet of letters from the Douranee camp, the contents of which supplied much food for earnest reflection. Sufder Jung and the Douranee chiefs wrote to the British agent, setting forth that, as it had always been declared that the British merely occupied the country in support of Shah Soojah, and as the Shah was now recognised by the chiefs and the people, and had no longer any need of our support, it was incumbent upon us to withdraw from the country. If, it was added, the British would now consent to retire from Candahar, an unmolested passage to Quettah would be guaranteed to them; but that, if they insisted on maintaining their position, they must expect that the fate of the Caubul army would be theirs. Meerza Ahmed, in a private letter to Rawlinson, besought him to retire before the whole Douranee nation rose against the British. But perhaps the most important of the letters brought in that morning, was one from Shah Soojah to Prince Timour, to the following effect: “You must understand that the disturbances which you have, no doubt, heard of at Caubul, have been a contest between the followers of Islam and the unbelievers. Now that the affair is decided, all the Afghans have tendered their allegiance to me, and recognised me as King. It is necessary that you should keep me duly informed of all proceedings in your government; and rest assured of my favour and affection.” When Rawlinson took this letter to the Shaz-zadah Timour, the Prince at once declared it to be a forgery; but the British officer knew how to decypher stranger characters than those of a Persian Dust-Khut, and to decide upon the authenticity of far more perplexing scriptures. Rawlinson’s practised eye saw at once that the document was a genuine one.
The letter from the chiefs demanded an answer; and Rawlinson now took counsel with the General. The hour for decision had arrived. It became them to look their position boldly in the face, and to shape their course for the future. Nott was not a man to listen patiently to the language of insolent dictation from the Afghan chiefs. He had already made up his mind to maintain his position at all risks, pending the receipt of instructions from India issued subsequently to the receipt by government of intelligence of the Envoy’s murder.[109] Rawlinson was of the same opinion. So he drew up a letter to the Douranee chiefs, setting forth that, as there was every reason to believe that Shah Soojah was acting under compulsion, and that he in reality, in spite of existing appearances, desired the support of the British, it would not become the latter to withdraw from Afghanistan before entering into a final explanation with the King. He drew the attention of the chiefs to the difference of our positions at Caubul and Candahar—said that any attempt to expel us by force must inevitably fail—and recommended the Douranees to refrain from engaging in unprofitable hostility. But he added, that the British had no desire to conquer the country for themselves—that the Candahar army was only waiting for instructions from government—and he believed it was the desire of that government to restore to Shah Soojah the uncontrolled exercise of his authority, and to be guided by the provisions of a new treaty which would probably be negotiated between the two states.[110] On the following day,[111] the despatch of the letter having been delayed by the difficulty of finding a trustworthy messenger, Rawlinson added a postscript, setting forth that intelligence had since been received, which clearly demonstrated that the Shah was little more than a prisoner in the hands of the Barukzyes; and he added, that forces were on their way from India to avenge the murder of the Envoy.
The activity of Rawlinson, at this time, was unceasing. He exerted himself, and often with good success, to detach different tribes from the rebel cause; and was continually corresponding both with the chiefs in the Douranee camp and in the neighbouring villages. It was his policy to draw off the Barukzyes from the Douranee confederacy, and to stimulate the Douranees against the Barukzyes, by declaring that the Shah was a mere instrument in the hands of the latter. It was debated, indeed, whether the Douranees could not be induced to move off to Caubul for the rescue of the King.[112]
But, in spite of these and other favourable indications, it appeared, both to the military and political chief at Candahar, that it was necessary now to strike some vigorous blow for the suppression of the insurrection and the maintenance of our own security. So Nott determined to attack the enemy; and Rawlinson, after many misgivings, to expel the Afghans from the city. This movement he had been painfully contemplating all through the month of February; and now, at the beginning of March, he believed that he could no longer postpone, with safety, the accomplishment of this harsh, but necessary, measure of defence.[113] All doubts regarding the wishes of the Indian Government had been, by this time, set at rest by the receipt of a copy of a letter, addressed by the Supreme Government to the Commander-in-Chief on the 28th of January, in which letter the continued occupation of Candahar was spoken of as an event which the British-Indian Government believed would be conducive to the interests of the state; and it afforded no small pleasure to Nott and Rawlinson to find how completely they had anticipated the wishes of the Governor-General and his Council.
On the 3rd of March, Rawlinson began to clear the city of its Afghan inhabitants.[114] Inspecting the census he had made, and selecting a few who were to be permitted to remain—peaceful citizens, as merchants, followers of useful trades, and a few members of the priesthood, he expelled the remainder of the Afghan inhabitants—in all, about 1000 families. No resistance was offered. The work was not completed before the close of the 6th. The municipal authorities performed their duties so remissly, that it was necessary to tell off an officer and a party of Sepoys to each district, to see that the clearance was more effectually performed. Some 5000 or 6000 people were driven out of the city. Every exertion was made to render the measure as little oppressive as possible; but the expulsion of so many citizens from their homes could not be altogether free from cruelty and injustice.[115]
The city having thus been cleared of all its suspected inhabitants, Nott, on the 7th of March, took the field, with the main body of his troops. The 40th Queen’s—the 16th, 38th, 42nd, and 43rd regiments of Native Infantry—a wing of one of the Shah’s regiments—all the cavalry in the force, and sixteen guns, went out against the enemy. The 2nd regiment of Native Infantry, with two regiments and a wing of the Shah’s foot, remained behind for the protection of the city. All the gates of the city, but the Herat and a part of the Shikarpoor gate, were blocked up, and Candahar was believed to be secure against the assaults of the whole Douranee force.
As Nott advanced, the enemy, who had been hovering about the neighbourhood of Candahar, retired before him. He crossed the Turnuk and advanced upon the Urghundab in pursuit of them; but they shrank from meeting our bayonets, and it was long before they even ventured to come within reach of our guns. The artillery then told with such good effect on the dense masses of the enemy, that they were more than ever disinclined to approach us. On the 9th, however, there seemed some prospect of a general action. The enemy’s footmen were posted on a range of hills, and, as our column advanced, they saluted us with a volley from their matchlocks. The light companies of the 40th Queen’s and 16th Native Infantry, under Captain F. White, of the former regiment, were sent forward to storm the hills on the right; and the Grenadiers of the 40th, under Lieutenant Wakefield, performed the same good service on the ascents to the left. The hills were soon cleared; and the enemy’s cavalry were then seen drawn up in front of our columns. Their line extended across the plain; their right resting upon a range of high ground, and their left on a ruined fort, built on a high scarped mound.[116] Hoping to draw them within his reach, the General now kept his guns quiet. But they were not inclined to meet us in the field. They were planning another game.
Whether it had been the original design of the Douranee chiefs to draw Nott’s army out of Candahar, and to strip the city of its defences; or whether, awed by the magnitude of the force which the General had taken out with him, they shrunk from the conflict, was not at first very apparent.[117] But it subsequently became known to the British authorities that the stratagem was planned by the subtle understanding of Meerza Ahmed. The enemy, after the skirmish of the 9th instant, retired before our advancing battalions, and, industriously spreading a report that they purposed to attack Nott’s camp during the night, recrossed the river and doubled back upon Candahar. Up to this time the city had remained perfectly quiet; and the minds of the British authorities had not been disturbed by any thoughts of coming danger. But on the morning of the 10th it was seen that a number of Afghan footmen had come down during the preceding night and taken possession of old Candahar. Rawlinson at once despatched three messengers to Nott’s camp, to inform him that the enemy had doubled back in his rear, and that it was apparently their intention to attack the city. His suspicions were soon confirmed. His scouts brought him intelligence to the effect that the Douranee army was to concentrate during the day, before Candahar, and to attack it in the course of the night. All day long the numbers of the enemy continued to increase, and at sunset Sufder Jung and Meerza Ahmed arrived and posted themselves in the cantonments. Night came on with pitchy darkness; and the garrison could not trace the movements of the enemy. They had no blue lights—no fire-balls—no means of casting a light beyond the defences of the city. The Ghazees were swarming close to the walls; and at eight o’clock they commenced the attack. They had heaped up some faggots at the Herat gate; and now they fired the pile. They had poured oil on the brushwood, and now it blazed up with sudden fury.[118] The gate itself ignited as readily as tinder, and the flames now lit up the mass of white turbans, the gleaming arms, and the coloured standards, which had before been only seen, in scattered glimpses, by the momentary light of the kindled match of the Afghan jezails.[119]
Desperate was the attack of the Ghazees, and steady the resistance of the garrison. A gun upon the bastion poured in its deadly shower of grape among the besiegers; and the guard kept up a heavy fire from the ramparts. But the Ghazees pressed on with desperate resolution. The success of their first movement had given them confidence and courage; and now they were tearing down the blazing planks with intrepid hands, fearless of the red-hot bars and hinges of the falling gate. Many of them, intoxicated with bang, were sending up the fearful yell of the Afghan fanatic, and rushing upon death with the eagerness of the martyr. Others were calling upon Prince Timour to come out and win Paradise by aiding the cause of the true believers. At one time it seemed that victory would declare itself on the side of the infuriated multitude that was surging round the city walls. But there were men within the city as resolute, and far more steady and collected in their resolution, than the excited crowds beyond it, who were hungering after our destruction. Major Lane commanded the garrison. Rawlinson was there to counsel and to aid him. They brought down the gun from the bastion, and planted it in the gateway. They brought another from the citadel to its support. They strengthened the point of attack with fresh bodies of infantry, and called out all the water-carriers to endeavour to extinguish the flames. But more serviceable even than these movements was one which opposed a solid obstacle to the entrance of the besieging multitude. They brought down from the Commissariat godowns a number of grain-bags, and piled them up at the burning gate. About nine o’clock the gate fell outwards, and then a party of Ghazees climbed the lofty barricade of grain-bags, as men weary of their lives. Many fell dead or desperately wounded beneath the heavy fire of our musketry. Spirited was the attack—spirited the defence. The fate of Candahar seemed to tremble in the balance. For three more hours the Ghazees renewed, at intervals, the assault upon the gateway; but they could not make good their entrance to the city; and at midnight they drew off in despair.
Whilst this desperate struggle was going on at the Herat gate of the city, attempts had been made upon the Shikarpoor and Caubul gates. But the enemy could not fire the brushwood they had collected. The garrison were too prompt and alert. It appears that Meerza Ahmed, confident of the success of the attack upon the Herat gate, had arranged that a given signal should announce this success, and that then he should proceed to the assault of the Eedgah gate leading to the citadel. But when at midnight the attack was finally repulsed, a council of war was held. Baffled in their attempts on the city, the angry fanatics levelled the most violent reproaches against Meerza Ahmed, and were with difficulty restrained from laying violent hands on the man, who, they declared, had betrayed them into an attempt which had sacrificed the lives of hundreds of true believers, and ended only in failure and disgrace. It is said that the Ghazees lost six hundred men in the attempt. They were busy until daybreak in carrying off the dead.
It is not to be doubted that, during that night of the 10th of March, Candahar was in imminent danger. Had the city fallen into the hands of the enemy at this time, it is doubtful whether Nott’s force, on its return, would have succeeded in recapturing it. The troops had gone out without tents, and were insufficiently supplied with ammunition. Everything, indeed, was against them; and even if the courage and constancy of the force had prevailed at last, success could have been achieved only after an immense sacrifice of life. That the General was out-manœuvred, is plain. But it may be doubted whether he is fairly chargeable with the amount of indiscretion which has been imputed to him. It has been said that he left the city unprotected. But as he was to have engaged the enemy himself in the open country, and all sources of internal danger had been removed by the expulsion of the Afghans and the disarming of the other inhabitants, it was confidently believed that the troops left in the city were more than sufficient for its defence. It must, however, be acknowledged that Nott was lamentably ignorant of the movements of the enemy, who doubled back in his rear without raising a suspicion of their designs in the British camp. But this is no new thing in Indian warfare. To be ignorant of the intentions of the enemy is the rule, not the exception, of Indian generalship. Our intelligence-department is always so miserably defective, that we lose the enemy often as suddenly as we find him, and are either running ourselves unexpectedly upon him, or suffering him to slip out of our hands.
General Nott re-entered Candahar on the 12th of March. The repulse which the insurgents had received at the city gate gave a heavy blow to their cause. It brought disunion into the Douranee camp, and made the Ghazees denounce the chiefs who had plunged them into disaster, and resolve to forswear the perilous trade of fanaticism which brought so much suffering upon them. The ryots, who had joined the standard of the true believers, now returned in numbers to their peaceful avocations; and Major Rawlinson exerted himself to the utmost to re-assure the public mind, and restore peace and prosperity to the surrounding villages.[120] As the month advanced there were many encouraging signs of the approaching dissolution of the Douranee camp. Some of its components were already talking of moving off to Caubul; and it was said that Meerza Ahmed had sent his family to the capital preparatory to retreating in that direction himself.
But there is never anything sustained and consistent in Afghan politics. The appearances of to-day belie the appearances of yesterday, and are again succeeded by varied symptoms to-morrow. The Douranee chiefs at one time seemed to be on the point of a general disruption; and then, after the lapse of a few days, they met in council, and cooling down under a shower of mutual reproaches, swore solemn oaths to be true to each other, and to league themselves together for another attack upon the Feringhees. At the end of the third week of March they were again upon the move. Upon the 24th, they were within a short distance of Killa-chuk, where Nott had before attacked them. On this day the Parsewan Janbaz attempted to renew certain negotiations, which they had initiated a few days before, but which had been coldly received. They offered to quit the Douranee camp and to move off to Caubul, if a month’s pay were given them to defray their expenses on the march. But Nott indignantly rejected the proposal. “I will never give them,” he wrote to Rawlinson, “one rupee; and if I can ever get near them I will destroy them to a man. It is my wish that no communications shall be held with them. They have murdered our people, and plundered the country.”[121]
On the following day, our troops again encountered the enemy in the field. A brigade under Colonel Wymer had been sent out, partly to clear the country on the Candahar side of the Urghundab from the Douranee horse, who were threatening our position, and partly to relieve the garrison, which was straitened for forage, by sending out the camels to graze in the open country. Wymer took with him three regiments of infantry, a troop of horse artillery, and a party of some four hundred mounted men. In the neighbourhood of Baba-Wallee the Douranee horse crossed the river—3000 strong—to attack him. Having sent a messenger to Candahar to inform the General of his position, Wymer prepared to defend himself. He had to guard his cattle as well as to fight the enemy; and the former necessity greatly crippled his movements. Weak, as the Candahar detachments always were, in the mounted branch, he found himself at a disadvantage opposed to the large bodies of the enemy’s horse, who now appeared in his front. Our Hindostanee cavalry were driven in by the Douranees under Saloo Khan, who gallantly charged our squares.[122] But the fire of our guns and the volleys of our musketry soon checked the audacity of the Afghan horsemen; and the affair became one of distant skirmishes. But, in the mean while, the roar of our artillery had been distinctly heard at Candahar, and Nott had moved out to the support of Wymer’s brigade. The Douranees were still surrounding our camp, when the General, with the reinforcing brigade, entered the valley. What the men who followed Nott then saw, is described as “a beautiful spectacle,” which will not readily be forgotten.[123] The bright afternoon sun shed its slant rays upon the sabres of the enemy, and lit them up like a burning forest. Our infantry were drawn up in a hollow square covering a crowd of camels; the horse artillery guns, which had done such good service before, were playing gloriously, under Turner’s direction, upon the dense bodies of the enemy’s horse, whom their heavy fire kept at a cautious distance. “And just as General Nott,” adds an eye-witness,[124] “with the reinforcements came in sight, Lieutenant Chamberlaine, of the Bengal service, an officer in the Shah’s cavalry, who at the head of a small party had charged the enemy, was driven back, and, emerging from a cloud of dust, formed in rear of the infantry, with the loss of a few men killed, himself and many of his party wounded—but not without having given very satisfactory proofs of his power as a swordsman, albeit his treacherous weapon had broken in his hand.” As our reinforcing regiments approached, the enemy retired; and our cavalry were quite useless.[125] The Douranee camp had been left standing, and Nott, though the day was far advanced, was eager to cross the river and attack it; but the guns could not be brought down to the bank without great labour, and the fords were well-nigh impracticable. So Nott determined to withdraw the brigade to Candahar for the night, leaving Wymer in position, and to return on the following morning to disperse the Douranee horse.
On the morning of the 26th, Nott went out again, with the brigade that had accompanied him on the preceding day, to the banks of the Urghundab; but the enemy had struck their camp during the night; and as soon as day broke, the Douranee horse had moved off and dispersed themselves in different bodies. So the General returned to Candahar; whilst Colonel Wymer re-halted in the valley to graze his cattle, unmolested and secure. Rawlinson remained in the valley throughout the day, “visiting the different villages, conversing with the Moollahs and head-men, and endeavouring to restore confidence. Imprecations against the Ghazees were general in every village, and the damage which had been caused by their depredations was evidently very great.”[126]
The result of this affair was a growth of fresh disunion in the Douranee camp. The chiefs accused each other of cowardice, and all assailed Meerza Ahmed with measureless abuse. But tidings were now coming in, both from the north and the south, which went some way to comfort and re-assure them. It was currently reported in their camp that Ghuznee had capitulated. This intelligence had been received some days before by the British officers at Candahar, and had not been disbelieved. On the 31st of March, a letter from Major Leech, at Khelat-i-Ghilzye, was received by Nott at Candahar, and though it announced the fall of Ghuznee only on native authority, it seemed to divest the fact entirely of all atmosphere of doubt. It appeared, from the statements that reached Candahar, that Ghuznee had been invested by an overwhelming force, and that, after holding out for some weeks, the garrison had been reduced more by a want of water than by the attacks of the enemy. It was reported, that before the arrival of orders from Caubul for the evacuation of the place, the town of Ghuznee had been taken by the surrounding tribes—“that the Hindoos of the Bazaar were all killed, fighting on our side—that Palmer, during the two months he was in the Balla Hissar, paid a daily sum for his provisions, water, and wood—that Shumshoodeen was the bearer of orders from the British at Caubul to give up the fortress—that the failure of water was the reason that made him agree to vacate the upper citadel on the 8th instant—that the mass of Ghazees did not respect the treaty formed, with a guarantee given to Palmer by Shumshoodeen, but attacked our garrison, and they only 400 strong, on their leaving the citadel, killing 100 and losing many themselves—that Palmer now wanted a guarantee for the safety of the officers, and that this being given, they surrendered themselves with two or three European females.”[127] At the same time, Leech reported that he was in possession of a letter, bearing the seal of Shumshoodeen Khan, and addressed to the Shamalzye chiefs, exhorting them to assemble and march on Khelat-i-Ghilzye, and holding out to them hopes of honour and wealth to be conferred upon them by the King and Ameen-oollah Khan, if they succeeded in capturing the place; and promising himself, upon the breaking up of the snow, to march down upon it “with fort-destroying guns and an army crowned with victory.”
The tidings of the fall of Ghuznee were most calamitously true. The fortress, which the English had taken with so much difficulty, and the capture of which had been proclaimed with so much pomp, was now in the hands of the enemy. The slight outline of the melancholy events which had ended in the destruction of the garrison and the captivity of the surviving officers, which Leech had sent from Khelat-i-Ghilzye, was substantially correct. The enemy appeared before Ghuznee on the 20th of November. On the same day snow began to fall. Maclaren’s brigade was then advancing from Candahar, and the enemy, expecting its appearance in their neighbourhood, drew off their investing force; but they soon reappeared again. Maclaren’s retirement gave them new heart; and on the 7th of December they collected again, in increased numbers, around the walls. The garrison were now completely enlaced. The city was in their possession, but they could not stir beyond it. Soon, however, they lost even that. The inhabitants undermined the walls, and admitted the enemy from without. On the 16th of December, through the subterranean aperture which the townspeople had made, the enemy streamed in by thousands. The city was now no longer tenable. The garrison shut themselves up in the citadel.
The winter now set in with appalling severity. The Sepoys, kept constantly on the alert, sunk beneath the paralysing cold. Bravely as they tried to bear up against it, the trial was beyond their physical capacity to endure. The deep snow was lying on the ground; it was often falling heavily when the Sepoys were on their cold night-watch. The mercury in the thermometer had fallen many degrees below zero. Men who had spent all their lives on the burning plains of Hindostan, and drunk their tepid water out of vessels scorched by the fierce rays of the Indian sun, were now compelled to break the ice in the wells before they could allay their thirst. Fuel was so scarce, that a single seer[128] of wood was all that each man received in the day to cook his dinner and keep off the assaults of the mysterious enemy that was destroying them. They were on half-rations; and the scanty provisions that were served out to them were of such a quality that only severe hunger could reconcile them to it. Numbers of them were carried into hospital miserably frost-bitten. The northern climate was doing its work.
The Afghans, in the mean while, in possession of the city, continued to harass the garrison in the citadel, by firing upon them whenever they showed their heads above the walls. This continued till the middle of the month of January, when, it appears, that some suspension of hostilities supervened. It was believed that the English at Caubul had entered into a treaty with the Afghan Sirdars; and that Shumshoodeen Khan would shortly arrive with orders from the existing government to assume possession of the place. Weeks, however, passed away, and the new governor did not make his appearance.[129] About the middle of February he arrived, and summoned Palmer to surrender. Unwilling to submit to the humiliating demand, and yet hopeless of the efficacy of resistance, the English officer contrived to amuse the Sirdar until the beginning of March. Then the patience of Shumshoodeen Khan and the other chiefs was exhausted; and they swore that they would recommence hostilities with unsparing ferocity if the citadel were not instantly surrendered. So, on the 6th of March, Palmer and his men marched out of the citadel. The enemy had solemnly sworn to conduct them in safety to Peshawur, with their colours, arms, and baggage, and fifty rounds of ammunition in the pouches of each of our fighting men.
But it soon became only too miserably apparent that the enemy had sworn falsely to protect Palmer and his men. The British troops had scarcely taken up their abode in the quarter of the town which had been assigned to them, when the Afghan chiefs threw off the mask. On the day after their departure from the citadel, when the Sepoys were cooking their dinner, the Ghazees rushed with sudden fury on their lines. Three days of terror followed. House after house, in which the English officers and their suffering Hindostanee followers endeavoured manfully to defend themselves, was attacked by the infuriated enemy. Fire, famine, and slaughter were all working together to destroy our unhappy men. At last, on the morning of the 20th, the survivors were huddled together in two houses which had been assigned to the head-quarters of the force—soldiers and camp-followers, men, women, and children, crammed to suffocation in every room, all hourly expecting death. The enemy were swarming around. The citadel guns, which had been useless in our hands, but were now most effective in those of the enemy, were sending their round-shot “crashing through and through the walls.”[130] Hour after hour, and still the enemy seemed to pause, as though unwilling to shorten, by a last annihilating attack, the sufferings of their victims.[131] But Shumshoodeen Khan had begun to relent. He was in council with the other Sirdars; and it was determined that the wretched men, who were now so wholly at their mercy, should be admitted to terms. The Ghazees were still crying aloud for their blood. But the chiefs assured the officers of their safety, if they would lay down their arms and place themselves in their hands. The Sepoys had by this time thrown off all authority, and determined to make their own way to Peshawur.[132] So the British officers, under a solemn oath from the chiefs that they should be honourably treated and conducted in safety to Caubul, laid down their arms, and trusted to the good faith of the Afghan Sirdars.[133] The Sepoys, in the mean while, were endeavouring to prosecute their insane scheme of escaping across the open country to Peshawur. Snow began to fall heavily. They wandered about the fields helpless and bewildered. Many of them were cut down or made prisoners by the enemy; and to all who survived, officers and men alike, a time of suffering now commenced, all the circumstances of which are burnt into their memories as with a brand of iron.
The fall of Ghuznee was a great disaster and a great discredit. Among the officers of Nott’s division it was regarded as more disgraceful than the loss of Caubul. Want of water was said to be the cause of Palmer’s surrender; but it was believed that he might have retained possession of the great well by running a covered way down the mound; and it is still asserted that if he had taken the more decided step of expelling the treacherous inhabitants from the town, he might have held out until he was relieved from Candahar. This at least would have given him both firewood and water. And it is not improbable that Afghan cupidity would have prevailed over Afghan resentment, and that grain and other provisions would have been brought in to him in return for bills on the British Government. But Palmer wanted decision; and Ghuznee was lost.
In the mean while, Khelat-i-Ghilzye was gallantly holding out against the enemy. Situated between Ghuznee and Candahar, about eighty miles from the latter city, this isolated fortress stands upon a barren eminence, exposed to the wintry winds and driving dust-storms—one of the dreariest and bleakest spots in all the country of Afghanistan. It had been originally garrisoned by the Shah’s 3rd infantry regiment, a party of forty European artillerymen, and some sappers and miners; but Maclaren’s brigade, on its return towards Candahar, had dropped some 250 Sepoys of the 43rd Regiment at Khelat-i-Ghilzye to strengthen the garrison; and now, commanded by Captain John Halkett Craigie, of the Shah’s service, this little party prepared to resist the assaults of the investing enemy and the cruel cold. For months the cold was far more irresistible than the enemy. In that bleak, exposed situation, the icy winds were continually blowing from the north. “The lower the temperature sunk, the higher blew the north wind.” The barracks were unfinished; there were neither doors nor windows to keep out the chilling blasts; and there was a scanty supply of firewood in store. How the Hindostanee soldiers bore up against it, it is difficult to say, for the European officers declare that they “never experienced a winter so continuously cold.” There was an abundance of grain in store; but all the surrounding country was against them, and the wheat could not be ground. After more than two months of ineffectual labour they at last constructed serviceable hand-mills. The Europeans often lived for days together upon bread and water; but not a murmur arose. The winter passed wearily away. The enemy were inactive. But with spring came a renewal of active work on either side. The garrison were labouring to strengthen their defences, and the enemy, as the year advanced, began to draw more closely round the fortress, their numbers and their boldness increasing together. After a time, they began to dig trenches round the place, and, covered by the loopholed parapets, to keep up a hot fire upon the garrison, which it was impossible to return with good effect. But Craigie and his men had no thought of surrender. They held out, cheerfully and uncomplainingly, thankful if they could get a shot at the enemy when the parties in the trenches were being relieved.
Such was the condition of the garrisons of Ghuznee and Khelat-i-Ghilzye when disastrous intelligence from the southward reached Nott and Rawlinson at Candahar. They had been, for some time, looking forward with the greatest anxiety to the arrival of a convoy from Sindh, which was to throw treasure, ammunition, hospital stores, and other necessaries into the garrison, and increase the number of their available troops. Brigadier England, who commanded the Sindh field force, was at Dadur towards the close of February, and there he received instructions to move on through the Bolan Pass, to assemble a strong body of troops at Quettah, and thence to push his succours through the Kojuck with all expedient despatch. Major Outram was then in Sindh, earnest amongst the earnest to retrieve our lost position in Afghanistan, and active amongst the active to carry out the work of throwing troops into the country which had witnessed our abasement.[134] “All my endeavours in this quarter,” he wrote on the 15th of March, “have been to urge forward movements, and at last I have managed to send up every disposable man. Brigadier England marched from Dadur on the 7th (of March), and must be at Quettah by this time. The remainder of his troops intended for service above will march about the 23rd or 24th, so that he will have assembled at Quettah by the end of the month (including the garrison) one troop of European Horse Artillery, six guns; half a company of Bombay European Artillery; Major Sotheby’s company of Bengal European Artillery; her Majesty’s 41st Foot; three regiments of Native Infantry and a flank battalion of the same; two squadrons of Native Regular Cavalry, and 200 Poonah Horse. Of the above, two regiments of Native Infantry and half a company of artillery will be required to garrison Quettah. All the remainder will be available to reinforce General Nott, and will march on Candahar with that view in the first week of April, I trust, with everything that is required by the Candahar garrison, namely, twenty lakhs of treasure, ammunition, and medicines. I hope, however, that Brigadier England will, in the mean while, push on a detachment with a portion of these supplies to meet a brigade at the Kojuck, which General Nott talks of sending out to receive what can be afforded.”[135]
On the 16th of March, Brigadier England arrived at Quettah. On the following day, he wrote to Lieutenant Hammersley, the political agent at that place: “The 22nd is at length fixed as the day of my departure from hence, and in truth I do not see how it could advantageously be hastened, owing to the numerous demands made on my small means. I propose, unless other intervening events should change such purpose, to move as far as Hykulzye on the 24th, and there await intelligence from the northern extremity of the Kojuck Pass. This you must manage for me. I could move at once to Killa-Abdoollah; but it seems to me advisable to try the influence of our presence in the Pisheen valley, in the matter of supplies and camels. The amount of treasure I take to Candahar will not exceed four lakhs, and about one-third of a lakh of musket ammunition; we have not carriage or protection for more at a time.” On the following day he wrote again to Lieutenant Hammersley, stating that he was determined to halt in the Pisheen valley, unless General Nott had actually sent two or three regiments to the Kojuck to meet the treasure; and Hammersley, when he forwarded a copy of this letter to Outram, wrote that there were officers in England’s brigade who openly prophesied that the detachment would be sacrificed between Quettah and the Kojuck Pass.[136]