The Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 by Archibald Forbes

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How able, resolute, and high-souled a man was George Broadfoot, the
course of this narrative will later disclose. He was one of three gallant
brothers, all of whom died sword in hand. The corps of sappers which he
commanded was a remarkable body--a strange medley of Hindustanees,
Goorkhas, and Afghan tribesmen of divers regions. Many were desperate and
intractable characters, but Broadfoot, with mingled strength and
kindness, moulded his heterogeneous recruits into skilful, obedient and
disciplined soldiers. Broadfoot's description of his endeavours to learn
something of the nature of the duties expected of him in the expedition
for which he had been detailed, and to obtain such equipment as those
duties might require, throws a melancholy light on the deteriorated state
of affairs among our people at this period, and on the relations between
the military and civilian authorities.

Broadfoot went for information, in the first instance, to Colonel
Monteath, who could give him no orders, having received none himself.
Monteath declined to apply for details as to the expedition, as he knew
'these people' (the authorities) too well; he was quite aware of the
danger of going on service in the dark, but explained that it was not the
custom of the military authorities at Cabul to consult or even instruct
the commanders of expeditions. Broadfoot then went to the General.
Cotton's successor in the chief military command in Afghanistan was poor
General Elphinstone, a most gallant soldier, but with no experience of
Indian warfare, and utterly ignorant of the Afghans and of Afghanistan.
Wrecked in body and impaired in mind by physical ailments and
infirmities, he had lost all faculty of energy, and such mind as remained
to him was swayed by the opinion of the person with whom he had last
spoken. The poor gentleman was so exhausted by the exertion of getting
out of bed, and being helped into his visiting-room, that it was not for
half-an-hour, and after several ineffectual efforts, that he could attend
to business. He knew nothing of the nature of the service on which
Monteath was ordered, could give Broadfoot no orders, and was unwilling
to refer to the Envoy on a matter which should have been left to him to
arrange. He complained bitterly of the way in which he was reduced to a
cypher--'degraded from a general to the "Lord-Lieutenant's head
constable."' Broadfoot went from the General to the Envoy, who 'was
peevish,' and denounced the General as fidgety. He declared the enemy to
be contemptible, and that as for Broadfoot and his sappers, twenty men
with pickaxes were enough; all they were wanted for was to pick stones
from under the gun wheels. When Broadfoot represented the inconvenience
with which imperfect information as to the objects of the expedition was
fraught, Macnaghten lost his temper, and told Broadfoot that, if he
thought Monteath's movement likely to bring on an attack, 'he need not
go, he was not wanted'; whereupon Broadfoot declined to listen to such
language, and made his bow. Returning to the General, whom he found 'lost
and perplexed,' he was told to follow his own judgment as to what
quantity of tools he should take. The Adjutant-General came in, and 'this
officer, after abusing the Envoy, spoke to the General with an
imperiousness and disrespect, and to me, a stranger, with an insolence it
was painful to see the influence of on the General. His advice to his
chief was to have nothing to say to Macnaghten, to me, or to the sappers,
saying Monteath had men enough, and needed neither sappers nor tools.' At
parting the poor old man said to Broadfoot: 'If you go out, for God's
sake clear the passes quickly, that I may get away; for if anything were
to turn up, I am unfit for it, done up in body and mind.' This was the
man whom Lord Auckland had appointed to the most responsible and arduous
command at his disposal, and this not in ignorance of General
Elphinstone's disqualifications for active service, but in the fullest
knowledge of them!

Monteath's camp at Bootkhak, the first halting-place on the Jellalabad
road, was sharply attacked on the night of the 9th, and the assailants,
many of whom were the armed retainers of chiefs living in Cabul sent out
specially to take part in the attack, although unsuccessful, inflicted on
Monteath considerable loss. Next day Sale, with H.M.'s 13th, joined
Monteath, and on the 13th he forced the long and dangerous ravine of the
Khoord Cabul with sharp fighting, but no very serious loss, although Sale
himself was wounded, and had to relinquish the active command to Colonel
Dennie. Monteath encamped in the valley beyond the pass, and Sale, with
the 13th, returned without opposition to Bootkhak, there to await
reinforcements and transports. In his isolated position Monteath remained
unmolested until the night of the 17th, when he repulsed a Ghilzai attack
made in considerable strength, and aided by the treachery of 'friendly'
Afghans who had been admitted into his camp; but he had many casualties,
and lost a number of camels. On the 20th Sale, reinforced by troops
returned from the Zurmut expedition, moved forward on Monteath, and on
the 22d pushed on to the Tezeen valley, meeting with no opposition either
on the steep summit of the Huft Kotul or in the deep narrow ravine
opening into the valley. The Ghilzais were in force around the mouth of
the defile, but a few cannon-shots broke them up. The advance guard
pursued with over-rashness; the Ghilzais rallied, in the skirmish which
ensued an officer and several men were killed, and the retirement of our
people unfortunately degenerated into precipitate flight, with the
Ghilzais in hot pursuit. The 13th, to which the fugitive detachment
mainly belonged, now consisted mainly of young soldiers, whose constancy
was impaired by this untoward occurrence.

Macnaghten had furnished Sale with a force which, in good heart and
vigorously commanded, was strong enough to have effected great things.
The Ghilzai chief of Tezeen possessed a strong fort full of supplies,
which Dennie was about to attack, when the wily Afghan sent to Major
Macgregor, the political officer accompanying Sale, a tender of
submission. Macgregor fell into the snare, desired Sale to countermand
the attack, and entered into negotiations. In doing so he committed a
fatal error, and he exceeded his instructions in the concessions which he
made. Macnaghten, it was true, had left matters greatly to Macgregor's
discretion; and if 'the rebels were very humble,' the Envoy was not
disposed to be too hard upon them. But one of his firm stipulations was
that the defences of Khoda Buxsh's fort must be demolished, and that Gool
Mahomed Khan 'should have nothing but war.' Both injunctions were
disregarded by Macgregor, who, with unimportant exceptions, surrendered
all along the line. The Ghilzais claimed and obtained the restoration of
their original subsidies; a sum was handed to them to enable them to
raise the tribes in order to keep clear the passes; Khoda Buxsh held his
fort, and sold the supplies it contained to Sale's commissary at a fine
price. Every item of the arrangement was dead in favour of the Ghilzais,
and contributory to their devices. Sale, continuing his march, would be
separated further and further from the now diminished force in Cabul, and
by the feigned submission the chiefs had made they had escaped the
permanent establishment of a strong detachment in their midst at Tezeen.

Macnaghten, discontented though he was with the sweeping concessions
which Macgregor had granted to the Ghilzais, put the best face he could
on the completed transaction, and allowed himself to believe that a
stable settlement had been effected. On the 26th Sale continued his
march, having made up his baggage animals at the expense of the 37th
Native Infantry, which, with half of the sappers and three guns of the
mountain train, he sent back to Kubbar-i-Jubbar, there to halt in a
dangerously helpless situation until transport should be sent down from
Cabul. His march as far as Kutti Sung was unmolested. Mistrusting the
good faith of his new-made allies, he shunned the usual route through the
Purwan Durrah by taking the mountain road to the south of that defile,
and thus reached the Jugdulluk valley with little opposition, baulking
the dispositions of the Ghilzais, who, expecting him to traverse the
Purwan Durrah, were massed about the southern end of the defile, ready to
fall on the column when committed to the tortuous gorge.

From the Jugdulluk camping ground there is a steep and winding ascent of
three miles, commanded until near the summit by heights on either side.
Sale's main body had attained the crest with trivial loss, having
detached parties by the way to ascend to suitable flanking positions, and
hold those until the long train of slow-moving baggage should have
passed, when they were to fall in and come on with the rear-guard. The
dispositions would have been successful but that on reaching the crest
the main body, instead of halting there for the rear to close up, hurried
down the reverse slope, leaving baggage, detachments, and rear-guard to
endure the attacks which the Ghilzais promptly delivered, pressing
fiercely on the rear, and firing down from either side on the confused
mass in the trough below. The flanking detachments had relinquished their
posts in panic, and hurried forward in confusion to get out of the pass.
The rear-guard was in disorder, when Broadfoot, with a few officers and
some of his sappers, valiantly checked the onslaught, but the crest was
not crossed until upwards of 120 men had fallen, the wounded among whom
had to be abandoned with the dead. On October 30th Sale's force reached
Gundamuk without further molestation, and halted there temporarily to
await orders. During the halt melancholy rumours filtered down the passes
from the capital, and later came confirmation of the evil tidings from
the Envoy, and orders from Elphinstone directing the immediate return of
the brigade to Cabul, if the safety of its sick and wounded could be
assured. Sale called a council of war, which pronounced, although not
unanimously, against a return to Cabul; and it was resolved instead to
march on to Jellalabad, which was regarded as an eligible _point d'appui_
on which a relieving force might move up and a retiring force might move
down. Accordingly on November 11th the brigade quitted Gundamuk, and
hurried down rather precipitately, and with some fighting by the way, to
Jellalabad, which was occupied on the 14th.

Some members of the Gundamuk council of war, foremost among whom was
Broadfoot, argued vigorously in favour of the return march to Cabul.
Havelock, who was with Sale as a staff-officer, strongly urged the
further retreat into Jellalabad. Others, again, advocated the middle
course of continuing to hold Gundamuk. It may be said that a daring
general would have fought his way back to Cabul, that a prudent general
would have remained at Gundamuk, and that the occupation of Jellalabad
was the expedient of a weak general. That a well-led march on Cabul was
feasible, although it might have been difficult and bloody, cannot be
questioned, and the advent of such men as Broadfoot and Havelock would
have done much toward rekindling confidence and stimulating the
restoration of soldierly virtue, alike in the military authorities and in
the rank and file of the Cabul force. At Gundamuk, again, the brigade,
well able to maintain its position there, would have made its influence
felt all through the Ghilzai country and as far as Cabul. The evacuation
of that capital decided on, it would have been in a position to give the
hand to the retiring army, and so to avert at least the worst disasters
of the retreat. The retirement on Jellalabad, in the terse language of
Durand, 'served no conceivable purpose except to betray weakness, and
still further to encourage revolt.'

While Sale was struggling through the passes on his way to Gundamuk, our
people at Cabul were enjoying unwonted quietude. Casual entries in Lady
Sale's journal, during the later days of October, afford clear evidence
how utterly unconscious were they of the close gathering of the storm
that so soon was to break upon them. Her husband had written to her from
Tezeen that his wound was fast healing, and that the chiefs were
extremely polite. She complains of the interruption of the mails owing to
the Ghilzai outbreak, but comforts herself with the anticipation of their
arrival in a day or two. She was to leave Cabul for India in a few days,
along with the Macnaghtens and General Elphinstone, and her diary
expresses an undernote of regret at having to leave the snug house in the
cantonments which Sale had built on his own plan, the excellent kitchen
garden in which her warrior husband, in the intervals of his soldiering
duties, grew fine crops of peas, potatoes, cauliflowers and artichokes,
and the parterres of flowers which she herself cultivated, and which were
the admiration of the Afghan gentlemen who came to pay their morning
calls.

[Illustration: CABUL the CANTONMENT _and the_ Surrounding COUNTRY.]

The defencelessness of the position at Cabul had long engaged the
solicitude of men who were no alarmists. Engineer officer after engineer
officer had unavailingly and a half from the cantonments, with the Cabul
river intervening. With Shelton's troops and those in the cantonments
General Elphinstone had at his disposition, apart from the Shah's
contingent, four infantry regiments, two batteries of artillery, three
companies of sappers, a regiment of cavalry, and some irregular horse--a
force fully equipped and in good order. In the Balla Hissar Shah Soojah
had a considerable, if rather mixed, body of military and several guns.

The rising of the 2d November may not have been the result of a fully
organised plan. There are indications that it was premature, and that the
revolt in force would have been postponed until after the expected
departure of the Envoy and the General with all the troops except
Shelton's brigade, but for an irrepressible burst of personal rancour
against Burnes. Durand holds, however, that the malcontents acted on the
belief that to kill Burnes and sack the Treasury was to inaugurate the
insurrection with an imposing success. Be this as it may, a truculent mob
early in the morning of November 2d assailed Burnes' house. He at first
regarded the outbreak as a casual riot, and wrote to Macnaghten to that
effect. Having harangued the throng without effect, he and his brother,
along with William Broadfoot his secretary, prepared for defence.
Broadfoot was soon killed, and a little later Burnes and his brother were
hacked to pieces in the garden behind the house. The Treasury was sacked;
the sepoys who had guarded it and Burnes' house were massacred, and both
buildings were fired; the armed mob swelled in numbers, and soon the
whole city was in a roar of tumult.

Prompt and vigorous military action would no doubt have crushed the
insurrection, at least for the time. But the indifference, vacillation
and delay of the British authorities greatly encouraged its rapid
development. Macnaghten at first 'did not think much of it.' Shelton was
ordered into the Balla Hissar, countermanded, a second time ordered, and
again instructed to halt for orders. At last the Envoy himself despatched
him, with the loose order to act on his own judgment in communication
with the Shah. Shelton marched into the Balla Hissar with part of his
force, and the rest of it was moved into the cantonments. When the
Brigadier went to the Shah, that potentate demanded to know who sent him,
and what he had come for. But the Shah, to do him justice, had himself
taken action. Informed that Burnes was attacked and the city in revolt,
he had ordered Campbell's regiment of his own levies and a couple of guns
to march to his assistance. Campbell recklessly attempted to push his way
through the heart of the city, instead of reaching Burnes' house by a
circuitous but opener route, and after some sharp street fighting in
which he lost heavily, he was driven back, unable to penetrate to the
scene of plunder and butchery. Shelton remained inactive in the Balla
Hissar until Campbell was reported beaten and retreating, when he took
some feeble measures to cover the retreat of the fugitives, who, however,
abandoned their guns outside the fortress. The day was allowed to pass
without anything further being done, except the despatch of an urgent
recall to Major Griffiths, whom Sale had left at Kubbar-i-Jubbar, and
that good soldier, having fought every step of the way through the
passes, brought in his detachment in unbroken order and without loss of
baggage, notwithstanding his weakness in transport. Shelton, reinforced
in the Balla Hissar, maintained an intermittent and ineffectual fire on
the city. Urgent orders were despatched to Sale, recalling him and his
brigade--orders with which, as has been mentioned, Sale did not
comply--and also to Nott, at Candahar, begging him to send a brigade to
Cabul. In compliance with this requisition, Maclaren's brigade
immediately started from Candahar, but soon returned owing to the
inclemency of the weather.

Captain Mackenzie was in charge of a fort containing the Shah's
commissariat stores; this fort was on the outskirts of a suburb of Cabul,
and was fiercely attacked on the 2d. For two days Mackenzie maintained
his post with unwearying constancy. His garrison was short of water and
of ammunition, and the fort was crowded with women and children, but he
held on resolutely until the night of the 3d. No assistance was sent, no
notice, indeed, of any kind was taken of him; his garrison was
discouraged by heavy loss, and by the mines which the enemy were pushing
forward. At length, when the gate of the fort had been fired, and his
wounded were dying for lack of medical aid, he evacuated the fort, and
fought his way gallantly into cantonments, bringing in his wounded and
the women and children. With this solitary exception the Afghans had
nowhere encountered resistance, and the strange passiveness of our people
encouraged them to act with vigour. From the enclosed space of the Shah
Bagh, and the adjacent forts of Mahmood Khan and Mahomed Shereef, they
were threatening the Commissariat fort, hindering access to it, and
besetting the south-western flank of the cantonments. A young officer
commanded the hundred sepoys garrisoning the Commissariat fort; he
reported himself in danger of being cut off, and Elphinstone gave orders
that he and his garrison should be brought off, and the fort and its
contents abandoned. Several efforts to accomplish the withdrawal were
thwarted by the Afghan flanking fire, with the loss of several officers
and many men. The commissary officer urged on the General the disastrous
consequences which the abandonment of the fort would entail, containing
as it did all the stores, adding that in cantonments there were only two
days' supplies, without prospect of procuring any more. Orders were then
sent to Warren to hold out to the last extremity; which instructions he
denied having received. Early in the morning of the 5th troops were
preparing to attack the Afghan fort and reinforce the Commissariat fort,
when Warren and his garrison reached the cantonments. The gate of the
Commissariat fort had been fired, but the enemy had not effected an
entrance, yet Warren and his people had evacuated the fort through a hole
cut in its wall. Thus, with scarcely a struggle to save it, was this
vital fort allowed to fall into the enemy's hands, and thenceforward our
unfortunate people were to be reduced to precarious and scanty sources
for their food.

From the 5th to the 9th November there was a good deal of desultory
fighting, in the course of which, after one failure, Mahomed Shereef's
fort was stormed by a detachment of our people, under the command of
Major Griffiths; but this success had little influence on the threatening
attitude maintained by the Afghans. On the 9th, owing to the mental and
physical weakness of poor General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton was
summoned into cantonments from the Balla Hissar, bringing with him part
of the garrison with which he had been holding the latter post. The hopes
entertained that Shelton would display vigour, and restore the confidence
of the troops, were not realised. He from the first had no belief in the
ability of the occupants of the cantonment to maintain their position,
and he never ceased to urge prompt retreat on Jellalabad. From the purely
military point of view he was probably right; the Duke of Wellington
shared his opinion when he said in the House of Lords: 'After the first
few days, particularly after the negotiations at Cabul had commenced, it
became hopeless for General Elphinstone to maintain his position.'
Shelton's situation was unquestionably a very uncomfortable one, for
Elphinstone, broken as he was, yet allowed his second in command no
freedom of action, and was testily pertinacious of his prerogative of
command. If in Shelton, who after his manner was a strong man, there had
been combined with his resolution some tact and temper, he might have
exercised a beneficial influence. As it was he became sullen and
despondent, and retired behind an 'uncommunicative and disheartening
reserve.' Brave as he was, he seems to have lacked the inspiration which
alone could reinvigorate the drooping spirit of the troops. In a word,
though he probably was, in army language, a 'good duty soldier,' he
certainly was nothing more. And something more was needed then.

Action on Shelton's part became necessary the day after he came into
cantonments. The Afghans occupied all the forts on the plain between the
Seah Sung heights and the cantonments, and from the nearest of them, the
Rikabashee fort, poured in a heavy fire at close range, which the return
artillery fire could not quell. On Macnaghten's urgent requisition the
General ordered out a strong force, under Shelton, to storm the obnoxious
fort. Captain Bellew missed the gate, and blew open merely a narrow
wicket, but the storming party obeyed the signal to advance. Through a
heavy fire the leaders reached the wicket, and forced their way in,
followed by a few soldiers. The garrison of the fort hastily evacuated
it, and all seemed well, when a sudden stampede ensued--the handful
which, led by Colonel Mackrell of the 44th and Lieutenant Bird of the
Shah's force, had already entered the fort, remaining inside it. The
runaway troops were rallied with difficulty by Shelton and the
subordinate officers, but a call for volunteers from the European
regiment was responded to but by one solitary Scottish private. After a
second advance, and a second retreat--a retreat made notwithstanding
strong artillery and musketry support--Shelton's efforts brought his
people forward yet again, and this time the fort was occupied in force.
Of those who had previously entered it but two survivors were found. The
Afghans, re-entering the fort, had hacked Mackrell to pieces and
slaughtered the men who tried to escape by the wicket. Lieutenant Bird
and a sepoy, from a stable the door of which they had barricaded with
logs of wood, had fended off their assailants by a steady and deadly
fire, and when they were rescued by the entrance of the troops they had
to clamber out over a pile of thirty dead Afghans whom the bullets of the
two men had struck down.

It had come to our people in those gloomy days, to regard as a 'triumph'
a combat in which they were not actually worsted; and even of such
dubious successes the last occurred on November 13, when the Afghans,
after having pressed our infantry down the slopes of the Behmaroo ridge,
were driven back by artillery fire, and forced by a cavalry charge to
retreat further, leaving behind them a couple of guns from which they had
been sending missiles into the cantonments. One of those guns was brought
in without difficulty, but the other the Afghans covered with their
jezail fire. The Envoy had sent a message of entreaty that 'the triumph
of the day' should be completed by its capture. Major Scott of the 44th
made appeal on appeal, ineffectually, to the soldierly feelings of his
men, and while they would not move the sepoys could not be induced to
advance. At length Eyre spiked the piece as a precautionary measure, and
finally some men of the Shah's infantry succeeded in bringing in the
prize. The return march of the troops into cantonments in the dark, was
rendered disorderly by the close pressure of the Afghans, who, firing
incessantly, pursued the broken soldiery up to the entrance gate.

On the depressed garrison of the Cabul cantonments tidings of disaster
further afield had been pouring in apace. Soon after the outbreak of the
rising, it was known that Lieutenant Maule, commanding the Kohistanee
regiment at Kurdurrah, had been cut to pieces, with his adjutant and
sergeant-major, by the men of his own corps; and on November 6th
intelligence had come in that the Goorkha regiment stationed at Charikar
in the Kohistan, where Major Pottinger was Resident, was in dangerous
case, and that Codrington, its commandant, and some of his officers had
already fallen. And now, on the 15th, there rode wearily into cantonments
two wounded men, who believed themselves the only British survivors of
the Charikar force. Pottinger was wounded in the leg, Haughton, the
adjutant of the Goorkha corps, had lost his right hand, and his head hung
forward on his breast, half severed from his body by a great tulwar
slash. Of the miserable story which it fell to Pottinger to tell only the
briefest summary can be given. His residence was at Lughmanee, a few
miles from the Charikar cantonments, when early in the month a number of
chiefs of the Kohistan and the Nijrao country assembled to discuss with
him the terms on which they would reopen the communications with Cabul.
Those chiefs proved treacherous, slew Rattray, Pottinger's assistant, and
besieged Pottinger in Lughmanee. Finding his position untenable, he
withdrew to Charikar under cover of night. On the morning of the 5th the
Afghans assailed the cantonments. Pottinger was wounded, Codrington was
killed, and the Goorkhas were driven into the barracks. Haughton, who
succeeded to the command of the regiment, made sortie on sortie, but was
finally driven in, and the enemy renewed their assaults in augmented
strength. Thenceforward the position was all but hopeless. On the 10th
the last scant remains of water was distributed. Efforts to procure water
by sorties on the nights of the 11th and 12th were not successful, and
the corps fell into disorganisation because of losses, hardships,
exhaustion, hunger and thirst. Pottinger and Haughton agreed that there
was no prospect of saving even a remnant of the regiment unless by a
retreat to Cabul, which, however, was clearly possible only in the case
of the stronger men, unencumbered with women and children, of whom,
unfortunately, there was a great number in the garrison. On the afternoon
of the 13th Haughton was cut down by a treacherous native officer of the
artillery, who then rushed out of the gate, followed by all the gunners
and most of the Mahommedans of the garrison. In the midst of the chaos of
disorganisation, Dr Grant amputated Haughton's hand, dressed his other
wounds, and then spiked all the guns. When it was dark, the garrison
moved out, Pottinger leading the advance, Dr Grant the main body, and
Ensign Rose the rear-guard. From the beginning of the march, discipline
was all but entirely in abeyance; on reaching the first stream, the last
remains of control were lost, and the force was rapidly disintegrating.
Pottinger and Haughton, the latter only just able to keep the saddle,
pushed on toward Cabul, rested in a ravine during the day, evaded the
partisan detachment sent out from Cabul to intercept them, rode through
sleeping Cabul in the small hours of the morning, and after being pursued
and fired upon in the outskirts of the city, finally attained the
cantonments. It was afterwards learned that a portion of the regiment had
struggled on to within twenty miles from Cabul, gallantly headed by young
Rose and Dr Grant. Then the remnant was destroyed. Rose was killed, after
despatching four Afghans with his own hand. Dr Grant, escaping the
massacre, held on until within three miles of the cantonments, when he
too was killed.

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