C.B.; and the right, composed of one company of the 13th Light Infantry, and one of the 35th regiment Native Infantry, and the detachment of Sappers under the command of Lieutenant Orr (the severity of Captain Broadfoot's wound still rendering him noneffective), amounting to 360 men, commanded by Captain Havelock, her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry; these were to be supported by the fire of the guns of No. 6 field battery under Captain Abbott, to which Captain Backhouse, Shah Shooja's artillery, was also attached, and by the whole of my small cavalry force under Captain Oldfield and Lieutenant Mayne.

The troops issued from the Cabul and Peshawur gates at daylight this morning. So far from the Sirdar having made any dispositions to avoid the encounter, his whole force (not falling short in all of 6,000 men), was formed in order of battle, for the defence of his camp; its right resting on a fort, and its left on the Cabul river; and even the ruined works within eight hundred yards of the place, recently repaired, were filled with Ghilzye marksmen, evidently prepared for a stout resistance. The attack was led by the skirmishers and column under Captain Havelock, which drove the enemy in the most satisfactory manner from the extreme left of his advanced line of works, which it pierced at once, and proceeded to advance into the plain; whilst the central column directed its efforts against a square fort, upon the same base, the defence of which was obstinately maintained. With the deepest regret, I have to record that, whilst nobly leading his regiment to the assault, Colonel Dennie, C.B., of her Majesty's 13th Light

Infantry, received a shot through his body, which shortly after proved fatal. The rear of the work having been finally gained by passing to its left, I gave orders for a combined attack upon the enemy's camp. It was in every way brilliant and successful. The artillery advanced at the gallop, and directed a heavy fire upon the Affghan centre, whilst two of the columns of infantry penetrated his line near the same point, and the third forced back his left from its support on the river, into the stream of which some of his horse and foot were driven. The Affghans made repeated attempts to check our advance, by a smart fire of musquetry, by throwing forward heavy bodies of horse, which twice threatened to force the detachments of foot under Captain Havelock, and by opening on us three guns screened by a garden wall, and said to have been served under the personal superintendence of the Sirdar, but, in a short time, they were dislodged from every point of their positions-their cannon taken, and their camp involved in a general conflagration. The battle was over, and the enemy in full retreat in the direction of Lughman by about seven A.M. We have made ourselves masters of two cavalry standards, recaptured four guns, lost by the Cabul army and Gundamuck forces, the restoration of which to our Government is matter of much honest exultation among our troops; seized and destroyed a great quantity of matériel and ordnance stores, and burnt the whole of the enemy's tents. In short the defeat of Mahomed Akbar, in open field, by the troops whom he had boasted of bleckading, has been complete and signal.

The fall of an officer so distin

guished as Colonel Dennie will be felt as a public calamity; lamenting it on every account, I must yet share with his country, his regiment, and his friends, in the consolation afforded by the reflection that he was killed whilst most gallantly performing his duty. I have to express my entire satisfaction with the conduct, in this action, of Lieutenant-Colonel Monteath, C.B., commanding one of the two infantry columns under my own eye, and of Captain Wilkinson, 13th Light Infantry, on whom the charge of the other devolved on the death of his Lieutenant Colonel; of Captain Oldfield and Lieutenant Mayne, who led the cavalry, and of Captains Abbott and Backhouse, and Lieutenant Dawes, Artillery.

The able and judicious manner in which Captain Havelock moved the force under his command, which acted on a line sufficiently distant to render the manoeuvres independent of my immediate controul, demands my particular and separate commendation.

My acknowledgments are also especially due to my Brigade-Major, Captain Hamlet Wade, whose exertions were on this day, as they have ever been, most meritorious; to Major Frazer of the Light Cavalry, who acted as my Aide-deCamp; and to Captain Mainwaring, Commissariat Officer with the Force, who was present and active in the field. Captain Macgregor, Political Agent, handsomely offered his services with No. 6, light field-battery, and was most useful in serving the guns. I inclose returns of killed and wounded, and of ordnance and stores captured.

Lieutenant and Adjutant Wood, Her Majesty's 13th light infantry,

made a dash at one of the enemy, and in cutting him down, his charger was so severely injured as to have been since destroyed. Captain Havelock reports in the most favorable manner the gallant conduct, throughout the day, of Lieutenant Cox, Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, and he was the first of the party which captured them, to seize two of the enemy's cannon.

It will be seen from the preceding details, that the force employed in this successful enterprise amounted to about 1800 men of all arms. The safety of the place was entrusted, during the action, to the ordinary guards of its gates, and one provisional battalion of followers of every description, armed with pikes and other weapons, who manned the curtains, and made a respectable show of defence, as they have done on all occasions of attack on the walls. Captain Pattison, 13th Light Infantry, was left in command of this diminished garrison;-a sally was made from the Cabool gate by Lieutenant Wade, of her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, towards the conclusion of the engagement, into the fort before which Colonel Dennie had fallen, when it was observed that the enemy were abandoning it; all that it contained was set on fire, and some of its defenders were bayoneted.

The enemy's loss during the day must have been severe; the field of battle was strewed with the bodies of men and horses, and the richness of the trappings of some of the cattle seemed to attest that persons of rank had fallen.

Lieutenant-Colonel Monteath has mentioned to me, in high terms, the gallant behaviour of

Captain Seaton, of the 35th Regiment Native Infantry, when in command of the skirmishers of that corps, and the fact of his

having been the captor of a howitzer from the enemy.

I have, &c.,
R. SALE.

Jellalabad, April 16, 1842. Sir, The relief of this place having been at length effected by the victorious advance through the passes of Khyber of the army under General Pollock, C.B., I conceive that I owe it to the troops who have so long formed the garrison here to address to you a report, which may convey some notion of their conflicts, and the severity of their duties, labours, and privations. It has before been made known to the Government, that I reached Gundamuck on the 30th of October, 1841, under instructions from the authorities at Cabul, and there received intelligence of the breaking out of a terrific insurrection at the Affghan Capital, on the 2nd November. My retracing my steps on that city was, in a military sense, impracticable, since the first inevitable sacrifice would have been of the lives of 300 sick and wounded, whom I could not have left in depôt with the treasonable Irregulars at Gundamuck, whilst my cattle was unequal to the transport of my camp equipage, and my ammunition insufficient for protracted operations. In the position which I occupied, I could not absolutely command a day's provisions or even water, and should have been hemmed in on every side by hostile tribes, amount ing to 30,000 or 40,000 men, part of whom might have seized Jel

lalabad and reduced it to ashes, or, holding it, have left me no alternative but a disastrous retreat towards Peshawur. I therefore came to the resolution of anticipating any movement of this kind, and, by possessing myself of this city, establishing a point on which the force of Cabul might retire, if hardly pressed, and restoring a link in the chain of communication with our provinces. Two marches brought me, after a successful contest at Futtahabad, to Jellalabad. My breaking up from Gundamuck was followed by the immediate defection of the irregulars there, the destruction of the cantonment, and a general rising of the tribes. I found the walls of Jellalabad in a state which might have justified despair as to the possibility of defending them; the enceinte was far too extensive for my small force, embracing a circumference of upwards of 2,300 yards. Its tracing was vicious in the extreme; it had no parapet excepting for a few hundred yards, which there was not more than two feet high. Earth and rubbish had accumulated to such an extent about the ramparts, that there were roads in various directions across and over them into the country. There was a space of 400 yards together, on which none of the garrison could show themselves, excepting at one spot; the population within was disaffected,

and the whole enceinte was surrounded by ruined forts, walls, mosques tombs, and gardens, from which a fire could be opened upon the defenders, at twenty or thirty yards.

The garrison took full possession of the town, in such a state, on the morning of the 12th of November, and, in the course of the day, the place, and detached hills by which on one side it is commanded, were surrounded and surmounted by a force of not fewer than 5,000 insurgents. A general attack, on the 14th of November, ridded us of these enemies, and a similar array, brought against us a fortnight afterwards, was dissipated by a second sally, on the 1st of December. But we had seized the town, having in our possession not quite two days' provisions and corn for our men and horses, and beheld the arduous task before us of striving to render the works defensible, and collecting supplies for our magazine from the midst of a fanatical and infuriated people, with very narrow means, in the way of treasure, to purchase them. I appointed Captain Broadfoot, of Shah Soojah's Sappers, Garrison Engineer, and Captain Abbott of the Artillery, Commissary of Ordnance. Captain Macgregor, Political Agent, gave me the aid of his local experience, and through his influence and measures our Dak communication with India was restored, and a great quantity of grain collected, whilst the unremitting and almost incredible labours of the troops, aided by the zeal and science of Captain Broadfoot, put the town in an efficient state of defence. Captain Abbott made the artillery dispositions in the ablest manner, and used every exertion to add to, and economise,

our resources in the way of gun and musquet ammunition, in both of which we were deficient for the purposes of a siege. Lead and powder were procured in and about Jellalabad, and a quantity of cartridges discovered in an old magazine, and thus the troops completed to 200 rounds per man. It is to be remarked, that I might, in the second week of November, have marched upon Pesh Bolak, relieved from investment the corps of Jezzailchees under Captain Ferris, and with it operated a doubtful retreat upon Peshawur. But I felt it to be my duty to give support to the last moment to our tooops, struggling against their numerous enemies at Cabul, and maintain for them a point on which to retreat and rally, if they met with reverse.

On the 9th of January, I was summoned by the leaders of the Affghan rebellion to give up the place, in fulfilment of a convention entered into by the political and military authorities at Cabul; but, as I was fully assured of the bad faith of our enemies, I refused to do this; and on the 13th received the melancholy intelligence of the disastrous retreat of our troops from the capital, and their annihilation in the Ghilzie defiles, by the rigours of the climate, and the basest treachery on the part of those in whose promises they had confided. Almost at the same time it became known to us that the brigade of four regiments, marched to my succour from Hindoostan, had been beaten in detail, and forced to fall back upon Peshawur: my position was most critical, and I might, whilst our enemies were engaged in plundering the force from Cabul, have attempted and perhaps effected, though with heavy

loss, a retreat across Khyber; but I resolved, at all hazards, on not relinquishing my grasp on the chief town of the valley of Ningrahar, and the key of Eastern Affghanistan, so long as I had reason to consider that our Go vernment desired to retain it. The discouragements of my garrison at this moment were very great, their duties most severe, their labours unceasing, and the most insidious endeavours made by the enemy to seduce the native portion of them from their allegiance. But their fidelity was unshaken, and their serenity amidst labours and priva tions unclouded. With reference, however, to the state of fanatical excitement and national antipathy which prevailed around us, I had been compelled, as a measure of prudence, to get rid, first of the corps of Khyber rangers, and next of the detachment of Jezzailchees, and a few of the Affghan sappers, and a body of Hindoostanee gun ners, who had formerly been in the employment of Dost Mahomed Khan. Works had in the meantime been completed, of which the annexed reports and plans of Cap. tain Broadfoot contain ample details. Generally, I may state, they consisted in the destruction of an immense quantity of cover for the enemy, extending to the demolition of forts and old walls, filling up ravines, and destroying gar dens and cutting down groves, raising the parapets to six or seven feet high, repairing and widening the ramparts, extending the bastions, retrenching three of the gates, covering the fourth with an outwork, and excavating a ditch, ten feet in depth and twelve feet in width, round the whole of the walls the place was thus secure against the attack of any Asiatic

enemy not provided with siege artillery.

But it pleased Providence, on the 19th February to remove in an instant this ground of confidence. A tremendous earthquake shook down all our parapets built up with so much labour, injured several of our bastions, cast to the ground all our guard-houses, demolished a third of the town, made a considerable breach in the rampart of a curtain in the Peshawur face, and reduced the Cabul gate to a shapeless mass of ruins. It savours of romance, but it is a sober fact, that the city was thrown into alarm, within the space of little more than one month, by the repetition of full one hundred shocks of this terrific phenomenon of nature.

The troops turned with indefatigable industry to the reparation of their walls, but at the moment of the great convulsion, Sirdar Mahomed Akbar Khan Barukzye, the assassin of the late Envoy, and treacherous destroyer of the Cabul force, having collected a body of troops, flushed with a success consummated by the vilest means, had advanced to Murkhail, within seven miles of our gates. He attacked our foraging parties with a large body of horse on the the 21st and 22nd of February, and soon after, establishing his head quarters to the westward, two miles from the place, and a secondary camp to the eastward, about one mile distant, invested the town, and established a rigo rous blockade. From that time up to the 7th of April, the reduced garrison was engaged in a succession of skirmishes with the enemy, who, greatly superior in horse, perpetually insulted our walls by attacks and alerts, and