the commander-in-chief returns to england—disastrous insurrection throughout afghanistan—jellalabad holds out, and general pollock advances upon caubul.

after the breaking up of the army of the indus, sir john keane proceeded down the indus, and shortly afterwards embarked for england, where those honours, titles, and pecuniary rewards awaited him, which would have entitled him to the appellation of one of the most fortunate soldiers who ever acquired laurels in india—had he survived long to enjoy the distinction.

fortunate, indeed, may sir john keane be termed, in having brought to an apparently suc[pg 2]cessful conclusion a campaign which was founded in error and injustice, and placed in the hands of the commander-in-chief with the fullest assurance of the directing arm of providence leading the small band through a country of which the little that was known should have induced a supposition that an army provided with an insufficient amount of supplies must meet with enormous difficulties. by some unaccountable fatality, the afghans neglected the advantages thus afforded them, and thereby induced a supposition that the warlike spirit of the tribes who had overrun and conquered hindostan had departed for ever; and that a handful of british soldiers would be sufficient to maintain possession of a country inhabited by a nation whose hands were fitted at their birth to the cimeter, and whose eyes, when capable of distinguishing objects with accuracy, were directed along the barrel of a rifle.

trusting, doubtless, in the resources of their monarch to repel the british invasion, no coalition was formed amongst the mountain tribes; but when the abhorred feringhee had seized their king and established himself in the land of their[pg 3] fathers, and when, moreover, they beheld him, lulled into security, break up his forces and march the greater portion of his army homewards through the jaws of the tremendous portals of afghanistan, the lighted torch flew with resolute speed from the valley of quetta to the mountains of kohistan. the ghilzie, whose heel had been bruised, but whose arm was not unnerved, roused his brethren to vengeance, and the eloquence of akbar, pleading for the diadem which had been snatched from his ambitious hopes, found a responsive echo in the heart of every true barukzye.

a tribe of insolent plunderers had established themselves in the khoord caubul, and had the audacity to interfere with the letter-carriers. the gallant sale, with his brigade, hastened to brush these intruders from the surface of the mountains, but the band of robbers had swollen to an army; and though, by desperate valour and unwearied exertion, a passage was forced through every obstacle, yet the passes closed upon the isolated brigade, and the communication with the ill-fated garrison of caubul was cut off for ever.

red with the slaughter of their enemies, and[pg 4] faint from their own wounds, the wearied band of soldiers, under sale, threw themselves into jellalabad. then burst the startling intelligence over the plains of india that an insurrection had broken out amongst the far-distant mountains of afghanistan, and that our fellow-soldiers were ill provided with sustenance, short of ammunition, and enveloped amongst countless swarms of enemies. i will not enter minutely on the details of that insurrection, which shook the fabric of our eastern power to its centre, brought unmerited obloquy on the british name, and entailed the most harrowing series of disasters on the hapless army in afghanistan that england's history can record in her military annals.

the task of recapitulating the succession of horrors which took place in caubul has been undertaken by eye-witnesses and sufferers from the small remnant of the caubul garrison who escaped.

amongst that catalogue of miseries and massacre we have the consolatory reflection that the afghans found no grounds to assert that the british, though worn with toil, and pierced by[pg 5] incessant cold, derogated in aught from their national fame. from the first struggle on leaving the entrenched camp at caubul, unto the final catastrophe at gundamuk, the afghans were cautious of meeting our fellow-countrymen at close quarters. when they tried the experiment, led by the alluring satisfaction of revelling in feringhee gore, they found that, although heart-broken and disorganized, the briton was ever ready to die facing his enemy. peace to the manes of those maligned and hapless warriors, whose bones are bleaching on every height and valley of that rugged desolation (fit scene for such a catastrophe) which disfigures the face of the country, from the gates of the bala hissar to the walls of jellalabad! and, peace to the ashes of the worthy and amiable elphinstone! it rested not with him that, suffering under bodily weakness and worn by mental anxieties in his arduous command, he should have lived to end his honourable days in an enemy's camp. the soldier has no choice but to obey the authority which places him in command, and those authorities are answerable to their countrymen for the selection.

but the british power fell not with her general and his army. kandahar was held with security in the iron grasp of nott.[1] the little garrison of khelat-i-ghilzie held resolutely their post against the repeated and determined attacks of their blood-thirsty foe; and the haughty akbar, with the bravest of his mountain tribes, was checked in his murderous career under the walls of jellalabad. the "illustrious garrison" maintained their isolated post against cold, starvation, the overwhelming mass of vaunting afghans, and against the convulsions of nature when an earthquake cast down their fortifications and left no artificial barrier, beyond their weapons, between the hordes of afghanistan and sale's devoted band.

vain were the efforts made by the native infantry brigade, from peshawur, to force the passage of the khyber, for the spirit of those savage mountaineers was roused; every hill was watched with untiring vigilance, and the two[pg 7] regiments which penetrated to ali musjid had little cause to congratulate themselves on their undertaking. at length, the "avenging army," under the guidance of general pollock, having traversed the punjaub with rapid strides, arrived at the gorge of the khyber, and joyfully received the tidings of jellalabad being still in the hands of sale.

resting awhile to give breath to his soldiers, and to see his army properly equipped, the gallant general (armed with full discretionary power from the noble and sagacious ellenborough, whose strong arm now guided the helm of india) prepared to advance. from every village and fastness of the gloomy khyber the gathering call had gone forth, and the ready mountaineers hastened to the defence of their hereditary defiles; but their haste was of no avail, for the britons were advancing to save their gallant countrymen, to retaliate on the authors of the caubul atrocities, and to rescue their countrywomen from captivity. advancing, with his main body in the jaws of the defile, whilst his two wings spread over the flanking mountains, general pollock drove the reluctant khyberees[pg 8] from hill and sungahe[2] of their mountain chain, and, with a trifling loss, stood inside the barriers of afghanistan, and within a few marches of jellalabad; but sale's daring band of warriors had provided for their own safety. their bastions had sunk into dust before the earthquake, which rolled from the mountains of the indian caucasus across the punjaub and into the heart of india; but, undaunted in heart and resolution, the garrison of jellalabad opposed their breasts to the enemy, whilst the workmen repaired the damages: and let akbar khan (the treacherous and cold-blooded assassin) and the remnant of his twenty thousand companions in arms, bear witness to the unimpaired energy and courage of the garrison of jellalabad. heedless of the approaching reinforcements from india, they sallied, scarce two thousand in number, from the gates of their fortress, piercing the centre of the afghan hosts, where the flashing sabre and deadly bayonet inflicted a partial retribution on their enemies, still reeking with the blood of the caubul tragedy.

that victory was purchased with the life of the heroic dennie.[3] but where, save on the battle-field, should the soldier hope to fall, and when can the dart of death be more welcome to the warrior's breast than when, falling in the arms of victory, he feels the immortal laurel wreath rest lightly on his brow? maligned by those who were jealous of his fame and acquirements, he fell in the vigour of manhood, and we may sadly concur with the panegyrist of moore, in exclaiming—

"lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,

and o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;

but nothing he'll reck if they let him sleep on

in the grave where a briton has laid him."

i can neither envy nor estimate the feelings which must have occupied the hearts of his invidious traducers, (and one especially, high in rank and authority, though ennobled only by name,) when the deeds and fate of the talented and lion-hearted dennie wrung from the senate of england, after his death, that well-merited tribute[pg 10] which had not fallen to his lot during a life of gallant exploits, hardships, and sufferings.

the simultaneous advances of generals pollock and nott from jellalabad and kandahar, were almost daily marked by the defeat or flight of the savage tribes who had aided in the massacre of the ill-fated garrison of caubul. ghuzni was not defended a second time, but evacuated on the approach of nott, who dismantled its blood-stained fortifications, and thence moved, unopposed, to unite his army with pollock's at caubul. the tribes under akbar khan were more resolute in their defence; but light mountain troops, without artillery, and ignorant even of the most simple methods of rendering their passes more difficult of approach, present but a contemptible barrier to a well-organized and effective army. marching over the heights, which were strewn with the mangled corpses of their ill-fated comrades, peals of british musketry rung a tardy death-knell to their memories, but wrote the epitaph in the blood of their assassins.

leaving khoord caubul, the most formidable barrier to the metropolis, undefended, akbar and[pg 11] his forces fled from the field of tezeen, and left the country again in the hands of the british conquerors.

the capture of istalif closed the three years' tragedy enacted amidst the rugged defiles of afghanistan.

the unexpected release of the prisoners crowned the successes of this fortunate expedition; and it now remained only to retire, with as good a grace as possible, from a country where the most extraordinary vagary which had ever invaded the head of civilized man had originally conducted the army of the indus.

as a last memento of the british invasion, the arched bazaars of the city of caubul were destroyed, and buried in a confused mass of blackened ruins. this has always appeared to me rather a wanton mode of exciting the hostility of the harmless bunneahs[4] of caubul against us: for the insurrection and its concomitant disasters arose not amongst the mercantile community of caubul, but amongst the warlike mountain tribes. to punish the unfortunate house-owners of the ba[pg 12]zaars, was not a dignified retaliation for our losses.

in november, 1842, the united forces quitted the metropolis of the afghans, leaving the inhabitants of these barbarous regions to their wonted occupation of cutting each other's throats ad libitum. that soil can surely never flourish, which is eternally watered with human blood. the earliest records of afghan history present to us the same prevalence of murderous tastes, from the days of sinkol, the contemporary of romulus, throughout the middle ages, down to the year of our lord, eighteen hundred and forty-two, when the british government wisely resolved to have nothing more to do with afghanistan.

were the invasion of that country a measure conducive to our interests, it follows that the occupation thereof must have been necessary, in order to render it a bulwark against the nations lying to the north-west, of whom, in 1838, such unnecessary apprehensions were entertained. as this measure required a large subsidiary force to be maintained in the country, entailing a consequent augmentation of our army in the east, which[pg 13] was not convenient to the wishes or coffers of the anglo-indian government, there cannot exist a doubt of the wisdom of lord ellenborough's administration in correcting the errors of his predecessor, and withdrawing the army from a country which was never likely to become a profitable territory.

the question of its advantages as a military position, may form a theoretical subject for discussion; but practically, the utter inability of the country to pay and maintain a large subsidiary force, and the impracticability of the exhausted revenues of india furnishing the sinews of war, sets the question at rest.

the finishing stroke yet required to be put to the afghan policy, in disposing of dost mahomed, who had remained for some time in our hands; but now that his country was no longer an object of interest, of course the ex-king was less so. the release of that monarch, and his return to the throne—to hurl him from which had impoverished india, besides draining it of some of its best blood, was the practical and final satire on the caubul campaign.

i have not been diffuse in entering on minute details of the losses experienced on our march into that country, because i cannot flatter myself that the subject possesses sufficient general interest; but should any one have any curiosity regarding the number of men, camels, horses, bullocks, and asses that died during the first campaign, together with the minutest particulars, more than the most inquisitive disciple of hume could require, let him not languish in ignorance, for are they not written in the book of hough?

our questionable allies, the sikhs, having been a cause of some disquietude, it was thought prudent to assemble a large force on the north-west frontier, at the close of the year 1842, which was denominated the "army of reserve." this force, encamped on the banks of the sutlej, in the vicinity of ferozepore, awaited the return of the victorious troops from afghanistan, and lord ellenborough was present in person to welcome the arrival of the caubul warriors under a triumphal arch which he had caused to be erected at the extremity of a bridge of boats thrown across the sutlej. the united forces, when generals nott[pg 15] and pollock had joined us, exceeded forty thousand men; and thus the nations of the east were shown that afghanistan was not abandoned owing to any weakness in a military point of view.

after two reviews of the army on the frontier, at which some of the sikh durbar were present, in the beginning of january, 1843, the army was broken up, and marched to their cantonments in bengal.