The Dark Defile (25 page)

On 8 November the attackers, who had brushed off several gallant and determined sorties by the Gurkhas, offered terms provided the defenders agreed to become Muslims. Pottinger refused, saying, “
We came to this country to aid a Mohammedan sovereign in the recovery of his rights. We are therefore within the pale of Islam, and exempt from coercion on the score of religion.
” The siege resumed with lack of water now as great a danger as the attackers. On 10 November each fighting man received only half a glass, and the following day many had to go without. Some men sucked pieces of raw mutton to deaden their thirst, while others stole out after dark in a bid to reach a nearby spring but returned empty-handed.

With over half the officers dead, only two hundred fighting men left and barely thirty rounds of ammunition apiece for their muskets, the wounded Pottinger knew they had to leave. On the night of 13 November, weak and dazed with thirst, the garrison left Charikar. As one survivor recalled, “
Most of the wounded who were unable to move out … with us were slaughtered next day.
” Those who did get away owed their lives to a brave Gurkha bugler. Because of him, “the enemy either did not discover our retreat or were afraid to venture near, till long after daylight. We had all throughout the siege sounded our bugles with the regularity of peaceful times, by way of a hint to the enemy that we were all right. On this last fatal morning the Bugle Major … who was too severely wounded to leave with us, crawled up to a bastion and sounded the customary bugle at dawn.”

As it turned out, Pottinger would be one of only four members of the garrison to make it safely back to Kabul, but when he arrived there two days later with his tales of hardship and massacre, he found little comfort.

Chapter Twelve

It is not feasible any longer to maintain our position in this country.

—MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM ELPHINSTONE, NOVEMBER 1841

As the insurrection entered its second week, the mood in the Kabul cantonments grew bleaker. Elphinstone’s precarious physical condition had been worsened by a bad fall from his horse, and he was no longer able to ride around the cantonments to inspect the defenses. On 9 November he reluctantly recalled his second-in-command, Brigadier Shelton, from the Balla Hissar to take charge of the cantonments. The Afghans made no attempt to oppose Shelton, who brought his men in safely, though there was some momentary alarm when Shelton, who had ridden ahead, spied in the distance what he thought was a group of jezail-toting Afghans. It turned out to be only a pack of pariah dogs.

Many welcomed Shelton’s arrival, expecting “wonders from his prowess and military judgement,” as Lady Sale wrote. However, as she also observed, the new arrangement was not a happy one. Shelton was openly contemptuous of Elphinstone and “often refused to give any opinion when asked for it by the general.” He brought his bedroll to councils of war so that when he became bored he could simply curl up and go to sleep. Elphinstone, who found Shelton “
contumacious
” and “actuated by ill feelings” toward him, often interfered with or countermanded his orders, leaving more junior officers confused as to their instructions.

The brigadier was not a man who bothered to hide his feelings. Having decided that the British could never survive the winter in Kabul, he told everyone so, further lowering the morale that his arrival in the cantonments had been expected to enhance. Shelton was also openly rude to Macnaghten. When Mackenzie took him to task about it, Shelton replied, “Damn it, Mackenzie, I
will
sneer at him, I
like
to sneer at him!” Lady Sale quickly grew to dislike Shelton and was irritated by his determination to get out of Afghanistan and back to India at the earliest opportunity, writing: “It may be remarked that, from the first of his arrival in the country, he appears to have greatly disliked it, and his disgust has now considerably increased. His mind is set on getting back to Hindustan.” She likened his presence to “a dark cloud shadowing us.” Eyre wrote that, “from the very first, [Shelton] seemed to despair of the force being able to hold out the winter in Kabul and strenuously advocated an immediate retreat to Jalalabad. This sort of despondency proved unhappily very infectious. It soon spread its baneful influence among the officers and was by them communicated to the soldiery. The number of
croakers
in garrison became perfectly frightful, lugubrious looks and dismal prophesies being encountered everywhere.”

Shah Shuja, abandoned by Shelton and besieged in the Balla Hissar, knew that if the British indeed departed Afghanistan, either death or exile would be his likely fate. Mohan Lal, in one of his stream of intelligence reports from his hiding place in the city, reported that Shah Shuja had told the 860 women of his
haram
that he would poison every one of them if the insurgents captured the cantonments. The king’s gloom only deepened when he learned that the insurgent chiefs—a confederacy including Barakzais, Ghilzais and Sadozais—had elected Nawab Zaman Khan—the cousin of Dost Mohammed who had spirited Mohan Lal to safety beneath his bulky apparel—as their new king. It was obvious the nawab was a caretaker, warming the throne for the eventual return of Dost Mohammed himself. Abdullah Khan was appointed the nawab’s commander in chief and Amenoolah Khan his vizier.

Within the cantonments the British debated how they could best preserve not only their lives but their honor. Unlike Shelton, Elphinstone and Macnaghten were for the moment convinced the British should remain where they were. They still hoped for the arrival of reinforcements from General Nott or indeed for the return to Kabul of Brigadier Sale’s brigade. The envoy had sent yet further messages to Sale, sometimes writing in French or Latin in case the message fell into enemy hands. He had also persuaded Elphinstone to write as well, though a critical Lady Sale thought the general’s instructions highly ambiguous: “From the very cautious wording of the order, it appears doubtful whether [Sale] can take such responsibility upon himself as it implies. He is, if he can leave his sick, wounded and baggage in perfect safety, to return to Kabul, if he can do so without endangering the forces under his command. Now, in obeying an order of this kind, if Sale succeeds, and all is right, he will doubtless be a very fine fellow; but if he meets with a reverse, he will be told, ‘you were not to come up unless you could do so safely!’ ”

On 10 November the British had a much needed success when Shelton led two thousand soldiers to assault the Rikabashi Fort, a small tower lying a mere three hundred yards from the northeast corner of the cantonments. Afghan marksmen had occupied it and were picking off unwary troops within the cantonments. Many of these sharpshooters were not soldiers but ordinary tradesmen from the city. Lady Sale noted that two of the most accurate were a barber and a blacksmith: “They completely commanded the loopholes with their long rifles; and although the distance is probably 300 yards, yet they seldom fail to put a ball through the body or into the clothes of anyone passing them … and it became an amusement to place a cap on the end of a pole above the walls, which was sure to be quickly perforated by many balls.”

The attack on the Rikabashi Fort nearly failed when a captain, who had volunteered to blast open the main gate, in error blew in a small wicket gate wide enough to allow only one man at a time to crawl inside. A few did so, but they were left isolated when a sudden cry went up among those troops still outside that Afghan cavalry were coming, causing them to flee in panic. Shelton on this occasion, in Lady Sale’s words, “proved a trump,” coolly rallying his men and leading them back to capture the fort with its ample store of grain and to rescue their colleagues trapped within.

For some of these men it was too late. Also according to Lady Sale, Shelton’s troops found an elderly officer who had struggled back outside severely hacked about the body by Afghans with their sharp
tulwars
. The officer’s attackers had even pulled off his boots and severed two toes. “This is not battle,” he groaned, “
it is murder.
” He died after surgeons amputated both his arms in a futile bid to save him. Among the enemy corpses the British found sprawled on the ground was the headless body of a man who by his rich dress they identified as a chief. The unsqueamish Lady Sale was intrigued to observe that when it was too dangerous or difficult for the Afghans to carry away their dead from the battlefield, they contented themselves with cutting off the heads so that they could bury at least that part of the body with the due religious rites.

Emboldened by their success, the British captured, ransacked and destroyed four further nearby forts and brought a large amount of grain back to the cantonments. Though two hundred men had been killed or wounded, their confidence began to return, and many felt a turning point had been reached. For three days the Afghans hung back and allowed long lines of commissariat camels to tramp unmolested through the countryside close to the cantonments as the officers of the commissariat gathered up more food. There was jubilation when two dogs known to belong to officers who had marched with Sale trotted into the cantonments. Rumors flew that Sale and his column were coming. Yet, as day followed day, those looking toward the eastern passes saw no sign of the returning column, and on closer inspection, it was clear that the dogs had been running wild for quite a time—one had rabies.

Unknown to his compatriots waiting anxiously in Kabul, on 11 November Sale had moved out from Gandamack, but his destination was Jalalabad, not Kabul. Faced by Macnaghten’s and Elphinstone’s passionate and repeated entreaties and with his wife and daughter trapped in Kabul, it had been a hard decision. Sale had consulted his senior officers. Though some, including George Broadfoot, favored returning, the near-unanimous view was that if they tried to retrace their steps the seventy miles to Kabul, the waiting Ghilzais would fall on them. Even if they did turn and try to fight their way back through the passes to Kabul, it would mean leaving behind their three hundred sick and injured. Thus Sale chose to march resolutely on—a decision for which many would later criticize him. On 13 November he and his men reached Jalalabad, a little more than halfway between Kabul and Peshawar and on the south side of the Kabul River. They swiftly occupied its decrepit fortress and began repairing the town’s defenses to ready it to withstand a siege and to act as a base for British troops coming up from India or back from Kabul. That same day, Sale sent a force out to reconnoitre. They came across a lone Afghan sitting among some rocks overlooking Jalalabad and playing what looked and sounded like bagpipes. From that point on, the British called his eyrie Piper’s Hill.

Unaware of the true position, Elphinstone, Macnaghten and others continued to hope not only that Sale and his men were coming but also that General Nott, 290 miles away in Kandahar, would send help. Macnaghten’s message to Nott asking him to send a relief column did not reach Kandahar until 14 November. Nott thought the envoy was asking for the near impossible—it was late in the season and some of the passes were already blocked by snow. The cold was so intense that his men felt as if their heads were freezing solid. But dutiful soldier that he was, he recalled a brigade that had departed six days earlier for India under its commander, Brigadier James Maclaren, and ordered them instead to march for Kabul. Nott’s personal feelings are clear from a letter to his daughters: “
I have received
a
positive
order from the Envoy and Elphinstone to send troops to Kabul … This is
against my
judgment; 1st because I think at this time of year they
cannot
get there, as the snow will probably be four or five feet deep … besides which, it is likely they will have to fight every foot of the ground … I am obliged strictly to obey the orders of such stupid people, when I know these orders go to ruin the affairs of the British Government, and to cut the throats of my handful of soldiers … How strange that Macnaghten has never been right, even by chance!” He was equally open to Brigadier Maclaren, telling him, “
The despatch of this brigade to Kabul is none of my doing. I am compelled to defer to superior authority but in my own private opinion I am sending you all to destruction.
”

In Kabul, although the British had taken the Rikabashi Fort and other strongholds, the insurgents, encouraged by Abdullah Khan and Amenoolah Khan, had merely been regrouping and had not gone away. Angry that the villagers of Bemaru, half a mile to the north of the cantonments on the road to Kohistan, were continuing to sell grain to the British, the insurgents drove them from their houses, seized their possessions, then positioned two guns—a 4-pounder and a 6-pounder—in the hills above the village, from where they began firing into the cantonments below. Macnaghten insisted the guns be captured. When Shelton objected that the risks were too great, Macnaghten replied, “
If you will allow yourself to be thus bearded by the enemy, and will not advance and take these two guns by this evening, you must be prepared for any disgrace that may befall us.
”

The reluctant Shelton assembled four cavalry squadrons, seventeen infantry companies and two guns and on 13 November led them up into the hills around Bemaru. Charged by Afghan horsemen, the leading British troops held their fire, not discharging their Brown Bess muskets until the enemy was only ten yards away, but their volley failed to topple a single man or horse. Lady Sale, watching from her flat-topped roof where the chimney offered some protection from the bullets whizzing by, was terrified: “My very heart felt as if it leapt to my teeth when I saw the Afghans ride clean through them. The onset was fearful. They looked like a great cluster of bees.” Unlike many of her male compatriots, she admired Afghan fighting tactics, astutely identifying some of the reasons for their success: “Every horseman [carries] a foot soldier behind him to the scene of action, where he is dropped without the fatigue of walking to his post. The horsemen have two or three matchlocks or jezails each, slung at their backs, and are very expert in firing at the gallop. These jezails carry much further than our muskets.”