The anni hilation of the force. hills. Soldiers, camp-followers, women, children, plunged into the gorge, and from every vantage-ground bands of Ghilzies poured a deadly fire into the miserable crowd of fugitives. Three thousand men are said to have fallen on that terrible day. Akbar Khan, accompanying the retreat, endeavoured to restrain the attacks of the Ghilzies. The Ghilzies cared not for Akbar Khan. He offered, if Elphinstone would only halt, to supply the troops with food; and Elphinstone, against the advice of those around him, halted another day in the snow. And so from morning to evening of the fourth day the doomed force waited for relief that never came; while at the close of it Akbar Khan, either from pity or from policy, asked for the surrender of the ladies and the children, and consented that the husbands of those who had husbands with them should accompany them. Lady Macnaghten, Lady Sale, and a few other women and children were, with one or two officers, given up to the enemy. They escaped from a certain death to a captivity whose dangers were unknown. On the morning of the fifth day the army, thus relieved of one of its charges, resumed its march. Its resumption was the signal for the renewal of the slaughter. As soldiers and camp-followers wound their way through the defile, they were shot down at every stride. 'Tis said that on the evening of that fearful day only 4000 enfeebled men remained out of the 14,500 who had started from Cabul. Despair gave them strength, and they decided, without halting, to push on. All night long, all through the next day, the remnant of an army, constantly reduced by the enemy's fire, fought its way to Jugdulluck. There the weary men passed the sixth night and the seventh day, while their leaders entered into fresh negotiations with Akbar Khan. Elphinstone, Shelton, and another officer were detained as hostages, and endeavoured, in their detention, to purchase terms for the safety of the residue of the army. An arrangement was nominally concluded; and the force, without its leaders, on the evening of the seventh day prepared to resume its march. But again the renewal of the march led to a repetition of the slaughter. The dispirited and weakened troops found themselves in face of a barricade which stretched across the narrow defile. There the little remnant of soldiers who had survived the dangers of the march fought with a courage which redeems the character of the retreat, and there, one by one, they were shot or cut down. When the morning of the eighth day dawned only sixty-five men were still alive. Still fighting, still hoping, still seeing its dwindled numbers lessening, the little band pushed on to Futtehabad. Six British officers reached it alive, and Jellalabad, with its shelter, was only sixteen miles away. But five out of these six survivors were to fall in these sixteen miles, and one man alone, Dr. Brydon, faint from his wounds, was suffered to struggle on his jaded horse to the walls of Jellalabad. A great English poet has told the story of the memorable nightride by which the good news were brought from Ghent to Aix. No poet, either in verse or prose, has yet told-perhaps no poet will ever dare to tell-in fitting language how the story of shame and suffering was brought to Jellalabad. On the day on which Dr. Brydon staggered into Jellalabad exactly two months had passed since Sale had thrown his column into the town. Few men in responsible Sale at positions had ever passed a more anxious period, Jellalabad. or done more by courage and judgment to retrieve a desperate fortune. On the outbreak of the insurrection at Cabul he had been pressed by Macnaghten to return.1 On the conclusion of the arrangement for the retreat he had been desired by Pottinger and Elphinstone 2 to retire to India. Compliance with the first order was, perhaps fortunately, impracticable. Sale had no animals with him which would have enabled him to move his brigade to Cabul. The second order Sale deter1 These orders were sent not from Elphinstone to Sale, but by Macnaghten to his deputy, MacGregor. There are some very pertinent remarks of the Duke of Wellington's on the singular arrangement which enabled political agents to direct military movements in Ellenborough's Indian Administration, p. 240 et seq. For the orders, Kaye, vol. ii. p. 63. For Sale's reasons for disobeying them, ibid., p. 195. 2 Ibid., p. 212. 3 This is a point which has been disputed. The opinion in the text is Wellington's, in Ellenborough's Indian Administration, p. 227. mined to disregard. He felt that the fate of the troops at Cabul was, in all probability, decided before it reached him. He concluded that their chances of safety would be increased by his remaining at Jellalabad. There could be no doubt that British honour and British interests required that, amidst humiliation and disaster, a brigade of British soldiers should prove that they could behave like Britons in the hour of danger.1 Yet, in truth, when Sale threw himself into Jellalabad on the 13th of November his chances of safety seemed inferior to those of the army at Cabul. His men, almost His position. destitute of transport and of food, were surrounded by a yelling crowd calling upon them to abandon the town. In the immediate neighbourhood hovered armed bodies of Afghans. The feeble ramparts filled with rubbish afforded little or no resistance to an attacking force. To the north, between the garrison and Elphinstone, was the narrow defile, blocked by the guns of the enemy, which ran among the hills between Gundamuck and Jugdulluck. On the south, the only road to India and safety, was the Khyber, the most dreaded of all the passes which led to Hindostan. The men had reason for depression in the vague rumours of disaster and defeat which continually reached them from Cabul; their commander had his own cause for anxiety, since his wife shared the dangers of Elphinstone's force. Yet the circumstances which might have paralysed the arms of other men only braced the garrison of Jellalabad to action. Captain Broadfoot, an engineer officer of capacity, undertook the task of making the weak defences of the town a little stronger. Colonel Monteith, an Indian officer of vigour, issued from the city on the 16th of November and attacked the Afghan forces which surrounded it. Colonel Dennie, an English officer who had led the assaulting column at Ghuznee, fought a new battle outside the walls on the 1st of December. MacGregor, 1 The reasons for refusing to retire will be found in MacGregor's words in Kaye, vol. ii. p. 213. It is perhaps fair to add that Durand condemns Sale's original decision to withdraw from Gundamuck to Jellalabad. Afghan War, p. 360. the political agent who accompanied the force, busied himself in procuring supplies. The common soldiers, sharing the energy of their leaders, cheerfully consented to live on halfrations and to do double work. Yet the men who held Jellalabad were only made of the same stuff as those who were beleaguered at Cabul. The gallantry with which an everdwindling band of heroes fought its way from Jugdulluck to Gundamuck proved that there were Dennies and Monteiths and Broadfoots and MacGregors at Cabul. The energy of one man galvanised the garrison of Jellalabad into life. The incapacity of another paralysed the army at Cabul. The earth Two months had passed when Dr. Brydon bore into Jellalabad such a story of shame and suffering as no British messenger had ever told before. The extermination of the Cabul army increased the difficulties of the garrison. The bands of Afghans who had hitherto hovered round the town were reinforced by the Afghan army and Akbar Khan; and the garrison, which had held its own against mortal foes, was assailed by a new and greater force than the Afghans. A severe earthquake shattered the town, demolished the parapet of the ramparts, and in a few moments quake. annihilated the labours of two weary months. If Akbar Khan had ordered an attack immediately after the shock, his troops, like the Jews of old, might have marched over the prostrate fortifications to a contest in which numbers would have given them an overwhelming advantage. But even the recollection. of recent slaughter could not nerve the Afghans to a new fight with British soldiers who stood firm. Akbar Khan, instead of venturing on an assault, relied on the slower but surer operations of blockade. He had not yet counted on the endurance of British troops when they are worthily led. Throughout February and March, the garrison, ever toiling at the works, its supplies growing less day by day, patiently waited for the aid which was so long in coming. On the 1st of April the troops issued from their ramparts, and swept a flock of five hundred sheep and goats into their lines from the 1 Kaye, vol. ii. pp. 205, 206. The siege raised. enemy's camp. Flushed with their success, they ventured, six days afterwards, to move out of the town and attack Akbar Khan's beleaguering army. Their courage and confidence were justified by the event. Dennie, who had figured in almost every glorious action, attacked the centre of the position, and found a soldier's death in the field. Havelock, whose name was then unknown beyond a narrow circle, and who in 1842, after twenty-seven years of service, still held only a captain's commission, turned the enemy's left. Sale, seizing the opportunity, ordered a general advance, and secured a victory. The enemy hastily abandoned guns, camps, and equipage, and fled before the little force, which it outnumbered as five men outnumber one.1 Nott at Jellalabad was not the only place in Afghanistan in which a British garrison was endangered by the outbreak of November. In Western Afghanistan a large force held Candahar; while small garrisons were placed at Khelat-i-Ghilzie and Ghuznee on the road from Candahar to Cabul. On the first outbreak of insurrection at Cabul, Nott was ordered to despatch a brigade to Elphinstone's assistance. As a soldier, he could not venture to disregard the command, but, with an intemperance which unfortunately characterised him, he almost publicly avowed his disapproval of the movement. Conscious of Nott's views, the officer in command of the brigade availed himself of the first pretext-the death of a few baggage-animals-to abandon the march, which he knew his commanding officer disapproved, and to return to Candahar; and thenceforward. Nott had the satisfaction of knowing that his whole force was assembled under his own orders for the defence of his own position. In the meanwhile Auckland at Calcutta was receiving message after message announcing the annihilation of his Dispolicy and the accumulation of disaster. trustful of his own judgment, aware of the fall of his old colleagues, the Whig ministers, and conscious 1 Kaye, vol. ii. p. 342; Life of Sir H. Havelock, p. 119. Auckland at |