The Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 by Archibald Forbes

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After the council of war had rejected the proposals laid before it, a
decision which in effect involved the maintenance of the defence to the
last extremity, nearly two months passed without the occurrence of any
important event, except the speedily retrieved misfortune of the
earthquake of February 19th. The close investment of the place by Akbar
Khan thwarted the efforts of the foraging parties to obtain much needed
supplies. Those efforts were not vigorous, for Sale, aware of his
garrison's poverty of ammunition, was bent on a passive defence, and
steadily refused his consent to vigorous sorties. The policy may have had
its abstract merits, but it was certainly unsatisfactory in this respect,
that perseverance in it involved the unpleasantness of apparently
inevitable starvation. General Pollock had arrived in Peshawur, and was
making energetic efforts to get his force in order for the accomplishment
of the relief of Jellalabad. But he foresaw serious delays, and so late
as the middle of March was still unable to specify with any definiteness
the probable date of his arrival at that place. The European troops in
Jellalabad would be out of meat rations early in April, and Havelock's
calculation was that the grain, on which mainly subsisted the native
soldiers, who had been on half rations since the new year, would be
exhausted before the middle of that month. Sale modified his policy of
inactivity when he learned that the blockading Afghans were attempting to
drive a mine under a salient of the defences, and Dennie on March 11th
led out a sally, destroyed the works, and thrust back Akbar's
encroachments. The general lack of vigour, however, on the garrison's
part emboldened the Afghans so much that they actually grazed their
flocks of sheep within 600 yards of the walls. This was too impudent, and
the General consented to a raid, which resulted in the acquisition of
some 500 sheep, an invaluable addition to the commissariat resources. It
is worth recording that the native regiment gave up its share of the
sheep to the soldiers of the 13th, on the ground that Europeans needed
animal food more than did natives of India.

On April 6th the Afghan leader fired a salute in triumph for a
supposititious repulse of Pollock in the Khyber. In regard to what then
happened there is a strange conflict of testimony. General Sale, in a
private letter written six weeks later, states: 'I made my arrangements
with Macgregor to sally the next day, provided we did not hear that
Pollock had forced the pass.' Akbar's salutes, and the information of
spies that Pollock had fallen back, 'made us look very grave--our case
desperate, our provisions nearly out, and no relief at hand. I therefore
decided to play a bold stroke to relieve ourselves, and give courage to
Pollock's force in case of success. If we failed in thrashing Akbar, we
would have left our bones on the field.' Abbott's diary of April 5th and
6th records that spies reported that Pollock had been repulsed at Ali
Musjid, and that the heads of three of his officers had been sent in to
Akbar, whereupon 'all the commanding officers waited on the General,
beseeching him to attack Akbar instantly. The 13th and the battery got
all ready for work, but the old General was obstinate, and refused to
act.' Backhouse's diary (April 6th) mentions that Pollock having been
reported repulsed, and Akbar having fired a salute, the officers
commanding corps and detachments went in a body and proposed to the
General to attack Akbar instantly, but without success. 'Immediately the
matter was broached, the General set his face against anything of the
kind, and disagreed about every point--insisted that the enemy had 5000
or 6000 men in camp, and were too strong for us; and then, the next
minute, that it was no use going out as we couldn't punish them, as they
_wouldn't stand_; and concluding with usual excuse for inactivity, "It
isn't our game." Words ran precious high....'

Whether spontaneously or under pressure, General Sale must have ordered a
sortie in force; for at dawn of the 7th three infantry columns marched
out by the Cabul gate, the right commanded by Havelock, the centre by
Dennie, the left by Monteath, General Sale being in command of the whole
force. Akbar, reputed about 5000 strong, was in formation in front of his
camp about three miles west of Jellalabad, his left flank resting on the
river, with an advanced post of 300 men in the 'patched up' fort about
midway between his camp and Jellalabad. The prescribed tactics were to
march straight on the enemy, with which Monteath and Havelock complied;
but Dennie, whether with or without orders is a matter in dispute,
diverged to assail the 'patched up' fort. The outer defences were
carried, gallant old Dennie riding at the head of his men to receive his
death wound. In vain did the guns for which Sale had sent batter at the
inner keep, and the General abandoning the attempt to reduce it, led on
in person the centre column. Meanwhile Havelock and Monteath had been
moving steadily forward, until halted by orders when considerably
advanced. Havelock had to form square once and again against the Afghan
horsemen, who, however, did not dare to charge home. The artillery came
to the front at the gallop, and poured shot and shell into Akbar's mass.
The three columns, now abreast of each other, deployed into line, and
moving forward at the double in the teeth of the Afghan musketry fire,
swept the enemy clean out of his position, capturing his artillery,
firing his camp, and putting him to utter rout. Akbar, by seven o'clock
in the April morning, had been signally beaten in the open field by the
troops he had boasted of blockading in the fortress.

The garrison of Jellalabad had thus wrought out its own relief.
Thenceforth it experienced neither annoyance nor scarcity. Pollock
arrived a fortnight after the dashing sally which had given the garrison
deliverance, and the head of his column was played into its camp on the
Jellalabad plain by the band of the 13th, to the significant tune 'Oh,
but ye've been lang o'coming.' The magniloquent Ellenborough dubbed
Sale's brigade 'the Illustrious Garrison,' and if the expression is
overstrained, its conduct was without question eminently creditable.

CHAPTER IX: RETRIBUTION AND RESCUE

It was little wonder that the unexpected tidings of the Cabul outbreak,
and the later shock of the catastrophe in the passes, should have
temporarily unnerved the Governor-General. But Lord Auckland rallied his
energies with creditable promptitude. His successor was on the voyage
out, and in the remnant of his term that remained he could not do more
than make dispositions which his successor might find of service. Every
soldier of the 'Army of Retribution' was despatched to the frontier
during Lord Auckland's rule. Lord Auckland appointed to the command of
the troops which he was sending forward a quiet, steadfast, experienced
officer of the artillery arm, who had fought under Lake at Deig and
Bhurtpore, and during his forty years of honest service had soldiered
steadily from the precipices of Nepaul to the rice-swamps of the
Irrawaddy. Pollock was essentially the fitting man for the service that
lay before him, characterised as he was by strong sense, shrewd sagacity,
calm firmness, and self-command. When his superior devolved on him an
undue onus of responsibility he was to prove himself thoroughly equal to
the occasion, and the sedate, balanced man murmured not, but probably was
rather amused when he saw a maker of phrases essaying to deck himself in
his laurels. There were many things in Lord Auckland's Indian career of
which it behoved him to repent, but it must go to his credit that he gave
Pollock high command, and that he could honestly proclaim, as he made his
preparations to quit the great possession whose future his policy had
endangered, that he had contributed toward the retrieval of the crisis by
promptly furthering 'such operations as might be required for the
maintenance of the honour and interests of the British Government.'

Brigadier Wild reached Peshawur with a brigade of four sepoy regiments
just before the new year. He was destitute of artillery, his sepoys were
in poor heart, and the Sikh contingent was utterly untrustworthy. To
force the Khyber seemed hopeless. Wild, however, made the attempt
energetically enough. But the Sikhs mutinied, expelled their officers,
and marched back to Peshawur; Wild's sepoys, behaving badly, were driven
back with loss from the mouth of the pass, and Wild himself was wounded.
When Pollock reached Peshawur on February 6th, 1842, he found half of
Wild's brigade sick in hospital, and the whole of it in a state of utter
demoralisation. A second brigade commanded by Brigadier-General
McCaskill, had accompanied Pollock, the sepoys of which promptly fell
under the evil influence of Wild's dispirited and disaffected regiments.
Pollock had to resist the pressing appeals for speedy relief made to him
from Jellalabad, and patiently to devote weeks and months to the
restoration of the morale and discipline of the disheartened sepoys of
his command, and to the reinvigoration of their physique. By kindness
combined with firmness he was able gradually to inspire them with perfect
trust and faith in him, and when in the end of March there reached him a
third brigade, comprising British cavalry and horse-artillery, ordered
forward by Lord Auckland on receipt of tidings of the destruction of the
Cabul force, he felt himself at length justified in advancing with
confidence.

[Illustration: Sir George Pollock]

Before daylight on the morning of April 5th Pollock's army about 8000
strong, consisting of eight infantry regiments, three cavalry corps, a
troop and two batteries of artillery, and a mountain train, marched from
the Jumrood camping ground into the portals of the Khyber. Pollock's
scheme of operations was perfect in conception and complete in detail.
His main column, with strong advance and rear-guards, was to pursue the
usual road through the pass. It was flanked on each side by a chain of
infantry detachments, whose assigned duty was to crown the heights and
sweep them clear of assailants in advance of the head of the central
column. The Afreedi hill men had blocked the throat of the pass by a
formidable barrier, behind which they were gathered in force, waiting for
the opportunity which was never to come to them. For the main body of
Pollock's force serenely halted, while the flanking columns, breaking
into skirmishing order, hurried in the grey dawn along the slopes and
heights, dislodging the Afreedi pickets as they advanced, driving them
before them with resolute impetuosity, and pushing forward so far as to
take in reverse with their concentrated fire the great barrier and its
defenders. The clansmen, recognising the frustration of their devices,
deserted the position in its rear, and rushed tumultuously away to crags
and sungahs where knife and jezail might still be plied. The centre
column then advanced unmolested to the deserted barricade, through which
the sappers soon cleared a thoroughfare. The guns swept with shrapnel the
hill-sides in front, the flanking detachments pushed steadily further and
yet further forward, chasing and slaying the fugitive hillmen; and the
Duke of Wellington's observation was that morning fully made good, that
he had never heard that our troops were not equal, as well in their
personal activity as in their arms, to contend with and overcome any
natives of hills whatever.' The whole British force, in its order of
three columns, the centre in the bed of the hollow, the wings on the
flanking ridges, steadily if slowly moved on in the assured consciousness
of victory. It was sunset before the rear-guard was in camp under the
reoccupied Ali Musjid. The Sikh troops who were to keep open Pollock's
communications with Peshawur moved simultaneously on Ali Musjid by a more
circuitous route.

While Pollock was halted opposite the throat of the Khyber waiting for
the demolition of the Afreedi barricade, the ill-starred Shah Soojah was
being murdered, on his way from the Balla Hissar of Cabul to review on
the Siah Sung slopes the reinforcements which Akbar Khan was clamouring
that he should lead down to aid that Sirdar in reducing Jellalabad before
relief should arrive. Ever since the outbreak of November Shah Soojah had
led a dog's life. He had reigned in Cabul, but he had not ruled. The
Sirdars dunned him for money, and jeered at his protestations of poverty.
It is not so much a matter of surprise that he should have been murdered
as that, feeble, rich, and loathed, he should have been let live so long.
It does not seem worth while to discuss the vexed question whether or not
he was faithful to his British allies. He was certainly entitled to argue
that he owed us nothing, since what we did in regard to him was nakedly
for our own purposes. Shah Soojah's second son Futteh Jung had himself
proclaimed his father's successor. The vicissitudes of his short reign
need not be narrated. While Pollock was gathering his brigades at
Gundamuk in the beginning of the following September, a forlorn Afghan,
in dirty and tattered rags, rode into his camp. This scarecrow was Futteh
Jung, who, unable to endure longer his sham kingship and the ominous
tyranny of Akbar Khan, had fled from Cabul in disguise to beg a refuge in
the British camp.

Pollock's march from Ali Musjid to Jellalabad was slow, but almost
unmolested. He found, in his own words, 'the fortress strong, the
garrison healthy; and except for wine and beer, better off than we are.'
One principal object of his commission had been accomplished; he had
relieved the garrison of Jellalabad, and was in a position to ensure its
safe withdrawal. But his commission gave him a considerable discretion,
and a great company of his countrymen and countrywomen were still in
Afghan durance. The calm pulsed, resolute commander had views of his own
as to his duty, and he determined in his patient, steadfast way to tarry
a while on the Jellalabad plain, in the hope that the course of events
might play into his hands.

Maclaren's brigade, which in the beginning of November 1841 General
Elphinstone had instructed General Nott to despatch with all speed to
Cabul, returned to Candahar early in December. Nott in despatching it had
deferred reluctantly to superior authority, and probably Maclaren not
sorry to have in the snowfall a pretext for retracing his steps. Atta
Mahomed Khan, sent from Cabul to foment mischief in the Candahar regions,
had gathered to his banner a considerable force. General Nott quietly
waited until the Sirdar, at the head of some 10,000 men, came within five
miles of Candahar, and then he crushed him after twenty minutes'
fighting. The fugitives found refuge in the camp of the disaffected
Dooranee chiefs, whose leader Meerza Ahmed was sedulously trying to
tamper with Nott's native troops, severe weather hindering the General
from attacking him. Near the end of February there reached Nott a letter
two months old from Elphinstone and Pottinger, ordering him to evacuate
Candahar and retire to India, in pursuance of the convention into which
they had entered. The Dooranee chiefs astutely urged that Shah Soojah, no
longer supported by British bayonets, was now ruling in Cabul, as an
argument in favour of Nott's withdrawal. Nott's answer was brief: 'I will
not treat with any person whatever for the retirement of the British
troops from Afghanistan, until I have received instructions from the
Supreme Government'--a blunt sentence in curious contrast to the missive
which Sale and Macgregor laid before the Jellalabad council of war. When
presently there came a communication from Government intimating that the
continued occupation of Candahar was regarded as conducive to the
interest of the state, Nott and Rawlinson were in a position to
congratulate themselves on having anticipated the wishes of their
superiors. The situation, however, became so menacing that early in March
its Afghan inhabitants were expelled from the city of Candahar to the
last soul; and then Nott, leaving a garrison in the place, took the field
in force. The old soldier, wary as he was, became the victim of Meerza's
wily strategy. As he advanced, the Afghans retired, skirmishing
assiduously. Leaving Nott in the Turnuk valley, they doubled back on
Candahar, and in the early darkness of the night of the 10th March they
furiously assailed the city gates. They fired one of the gates, and the
swarming ghazees tore down with fury its blazing planks and the red-hot
ironwork. The garrison behaved valiantly. Inside the burning gate they
piled up a rampart of grain bags, on which they trained a couple of guns
loaded with case. For three hours after the gate fell did the fanatics
hurl assault after assault on the interior barricade. They were terribly
critical hours, but the garrison prevailed, and at midnight, with a loss
of many hundreds, the obstinate assailants sullenly drew off. Nott,
although urgently summoned, was unable to reach Candahar until the 12th.

Candahar was fortunately preserved, but at the end of March the
unpleasant tidings came that Ghuznee, which British valour had carried by
storm three years before, had now reverted into Afghan possession. The
siege had lasted for nearly three and a half months. In mid-December the
besiegers occupied the city in force, introduced by the citizens through
a subterranean way; and the garrison, consisting chiefly of a regiment of
sepoys, withdrew into the citadel. The bitter winter and the scant
rations took the heart out of the natives of the warm and fertile Indian
plains; but nevertheless it was not until March 6th that the garrison,
under pledge of being escorted to Peshawur with colours, arms, and
baggage, marched out. The unfortunates would have done better to have
died a soldierly death, with arms in their hands and the glow of fighting
in their hearts. As the event was, faith with them was broken, and save
for a few officers who were made prisoners, most were slaughtered, or
perished in a vain attempt to escape.

During his long isolation Nott's resources had been seriously depleted,
and he had ordered up from Scinde a brigade, escorting much needed
treasure, ammunition, and medicines. Brigadier England was entrusted with
the command of this force, whose assemblage at Quetta was expected about
the end of March. Pending its gathering England had moved out toward the
entrance of the Kojuk Pass, where he met with a sharp and far from
creditable repulse, and fell back on Quetta miserably disheartened,
suggesting in his abjectness that Nott should abandon Candahar and retire
on him. The stout old soldier at Candahar waxed wroth at the limpness of
his subordinate, and addressed to England a biting letter, ordering
peremptorily the latter's prompt advance to Candahar, engaging to
dry-nurse him through the Kojuk by a brigade sent down from Candahar for
the purpose, and remarking sarcastically, 'I am well aware that war
cannot be made without loss; but yet perhaps British troops can oppose
Asiatic armies without defeat.' Thus exhorted England moved, to find his
march through the Kojuk protected by Wymer's sepoys from Candahar, who
had crowned the lateral heights before he ventured into the pass; and he
reached Candahar without maltreatment on the 10th May, bringing to Nott
the much needed supplies which rendered that resolute man equal to any
enterprise.

It remained, however, to be seen whether any enterprise was to be
permitted to him and to his brother commander lying in camp on the
Jellalabad plain. Lord Ellenborough, the successor of Lord Auckland, had
struck a firm if somewhat inexplicit note in his earliest manifesto,
dated March 13th. A single sentence will indicate its tenor: 'Whatever
course we may hereafter take must rest solely on military considerations,
and hence in the first instance regard to the safety of our detached
garrisons in Afghanistan; to the security of our troops now in the field
from unnecessary risks; and finally, to the re-establishment of our
military reputation by the infliction upon the Afghans of some signal and
decisive blow.' Those were brave words, if only they had been adhered to.
But six weeks later his lordship was ordering Nott to evacuate Candahar
and fall back on Quetta, until the season should permit further
retirement to the Indus; and instructing Pollock, through the
Commander-in-Chief, to withdraw without delay every British soldier from
Jellalabad to Peshawur, except under certain specified eventualities,
none of which were in course of occurrence. Pollock temporised, holding
on to his advanced position by the plea of inability to retire for want
of transport, claiming mildly to find discretionary powers in the
Government instructions, and cautiously arguing in favour of an advance
by a few marches to a region where better climate was to be found, and
whence he might bring to bear stronger pressure for the liberation of the
prisoners. Nott was a narrower man than Pollock. When he got his orders
he regarded them as strictly binding, no matter how unpalatable the
injunctions. 'I shall not lose a moment,' he wrote, 'in making
arrangements to carry out my orders, without turning to the right or the
left, and without inquiring into the reasons for the measures enjoined,
whatever our own opinions or wishes may be.' He reluctantly began
preparations for withdrawal. Carriage was ordered up from Quetta, and a
brigade was despatched to withdraw the garrison of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, and
to destroy the fort which Craigie had so long and valiantly defended.

It would be tedious to detail the vacillations, the obscurities, and the
tortuosities of Lord Ellenborough's successive communications to his two
Generals in Afghanistan. Pollock had been permitted to remain about
Jellalabad until the autumn should bring cooler marching weather. Nott
had been detained at Candahar by the necessity for crushing menacing
bodies of tribal levies, but as July waned his preparations for
withdrawal were all but complete. On the 4th of that month Lord
Ellenborough wrote to him, reiterating injunctions for his withdrawal
from Afghanistan, but permitting him the alternatives of retiring by the
direct route along his line of communications over Quetta and Sukkur, or
of boxing the compass by the curiously circuitous 'retirement' _via_
Ghuznee, Cabul, and Jellalabad. Pollock, for his part, was permitted, if
he thought proper, to advance on Cabul in order to facilitate Nott's
withdrawal, if the latter should elect to 'retreat' by the circuitous
route which has just been described.

One does not care to characterise the 'heads I win, tails you lose'
policy of a Governor-General who thus shuffled off his responsibility
upon two soldiers who previously had been sedulously restricted within
narrow if varying limits. Their relief from those trammels set them free,
and it was their joy to accept the devolved responsibility, and to act
with soldierly initiative and vigour. The chief credit of the qualified
yet substantial triumph over official hesitation certainly belongs to
Pollock, who gently yet firmly forced the hand of the Governor-General,
while Nott's merit was limited to a ready acceptance of the
responsibility of a proffered option. A letter from Nott intimating his
determination to retire by way of Cabul and Jellalabad reached Pollock in
the middle of August, who immediately advanced from Jellalabad; and his
troops having concentrated at Gundamuk, he marched from that position on
7th September, his second division, commanded by M'Caskill, following
next day. Pollock was woefully short of transport, and therefore was
compelled to leave some troops behind at Gundamuk, and even then could
carry only half the complement of tentage. But his soldiers, who carried
in their haversacks seven days' provisions, would gladly have marched
without any baggage at all, and the chief himself was eager to hurry
forward, for Nott had written that he expected to reach Cabul on 15th
September, and Pollock was burning to be there first. In the Jugdulluk
Pass, on the 8th, he found the Ghilzais in considerable force on the
heights. Regardless of a heavy artillery fire they stood their ground,
and so galled Pollock's troops with sharp discharges from their jezails
that it became necessary to send infantry against them. They were
dislodged from the mountain they had occupied by a portion of the
Jellalabad brigade, led by gallant old General Sale, who had his usual
luck in the shape of a wound.

This Jugdulluk fighting was, however, little more than a skirmish, and
Pollock's people were to experience more severe opposition before they
should emerge from the passes on to the Cabul plain. On the morning of
the 13th the concentrated force had quitted its camp in the Tezeen
valley, and had committed itself without due precaution to the passage of
the ravine beyond, when the Afghan levies with which Akbar Khan had
manned the flanking heights, opened their fire. The Sirdar had been
dissuaded by Captain Troup, one of his prisoners, from attempting futile
negotiations, and advised not to squander lives in useless opposition.
Akbar had replied that he was too deeply committed to recede, and that
his people were bent on fighting. They were not baulked in the
aspiration, which assuredly their opponents shared with at least equal
zeal. Pollock's advance-guard was about the middle of the defile, when
the enemy were suddenly discovered blocking the pass in front, and
holding the heights which Pollock's light troops should have crowned in
advance of the column. Akbar's force was calculated to be about 15,000
strong, and the Afghans fought resolutely against the British regiments
which forced their way up the heights on the right and left. The ghazees
dashed down to meet the red soldiers halfway, and up among the precipices
there were many hand-to-hand encounters, in which the sword and the
bayonet fought out the issue. The Afghans made their last stand on the
rocky summit of the Huft Kotul; but from this commanding position they
were finally driven by Broadfoot's bloodthirsty little Goorkhas, who,
hillmen themselves from their birth, chased the Afghans from crag to
crag, using their fell kookeries as they pursued. It was Akbar Khan's
last effort, and the quelling of it cost Pollock the trivial loss of
thirty-two killed and 130 wounded. There was no more opposition, and it
was well for the Afghans, for the awful spectacles presented in the
Khoord Cabul Pass traversed on the following day, kindled in Pollock's
soldiers a white heat of fury. 'The bodies,' wrote Backhouse in his
unpublished diary, 'lay in heaps of fifties and hundreds, our gun wheels
crushing the bones of our late comrades at every yard for four or five
miles; indeed, the whole march from Gundamuk to Cabul may be said to have
been over the bodies of the massacred army.' Pollock marched unmolested
to Cabul on the 15th, and camped on the old racecourse to the east of the
city.

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