Part 5

On this day a report was carried to the King and Conolly that the rebels had mined from the Shôr Bazaar to immediately under H. M.'s palace, which said mine was to be sprung the same evening. The King instantly left the palace, and took up his abode at the Gate of the Haram Serai, where he remained during the rest of the siege; and all day, seated at a window commanding a fine view of cantonments, telescope in hand, watched anxiously the course of passing events in that place. He was at this time quite sunk into a state of despondency, and would gladly seize any opportunity of asking the opinion of any of the officers as to what was likely to be the issue of the struggle. He put off for the time all the insignia of royalty, made the officers sit by him on chairs, and seemed quite _gobrowed_ (an expressive eastern term, to be rendered something between dumbfounded and at one's wits' end). The Shah's conduct in the particular of the chairs is the more worthy of remark, as he had been in the habit of keeping the officers for hours standing with folded hands silently in his presence, and then ungraciously dismissing them without even a passing remark. He now sent to each Sahib a warm silk resaiz and a pillow, which were very acceptable, as they were all starving with cold.

_6th._--Major Kershaw, Lieut. Hobhouse, and eleven soldiers of the 13th Lt. Inf. (who had been left at Cabul in consequence of illness) this day volunteered their services.

Sturt, having fretted himself half mad at every thing going wrong, determined, weak and ill as he was, to go out and do his duty. He is the only engineer officer at Cabul. He was unable to dress, but went out in his shirt and pyjania to the works. Although he was out himself a little after 6 o'clock, he could not get things or people into their places until 10. General Elphinstone gave him permission to make any arrangements he considered as safe from chance of failure for taking the small fort; but when he had with great exertion got three nine-pounders and two twenty-four pound howitzers at work (the latter across the road), Major Thain was sent to him to desire he would be careful not to expend ammunition, as powder was scarce! there being at the time a sufficiency for a twelvemonths' siege! However, Sturt made no alteration in his proceedings, and by 12 o'clock an excellent breach was made, the bastion being thrown down and great part of the curtain, so that ladders were not required: the gate was blown in at the same time by Capt. Bellew, Assist.-Adjt.-Gen. There was a small crack in the rampart near Sale's bastion, of which I used to take advantage, as a stepping-stone to enable me to see what was going on; and from my position I saw the storming party ascend the breach, under a heavy fire, with a commendable steadiness and great alacrity: they quickly drove the enemy from their stations, who then escaped through the wicket into the Shah's garden. The storming party was commanded by Major Griffith, of the 37th N. I., consisting of the light company of the Queen's 44th, Lieut. Hobhouse and ten men of H. M. 13th Lt. Inf., one company of 5th N. I., one company 37th N. I.; in all about 150 men. Lieut. Raban, 44th, killed whilst waving his sword on the highest point of the breach; Mr. Deas, 5th, wounded. I believe we had nineteen killed, and several wounded; amongst the latter, one of the 13th. The flag taken from the enemy was waved on the crest of the breach by a Sipahee of the 37th, who captured it, and who was promoted for the act. He and a havildar of the same corps, though belonging to the rear company, were, with Lieut. Raban, the first into the fort. But few of the enemy were found killed; but it is difficult to estimate the numbers of their slain, as they are so particular regarding Moslem burial that they always, when practicable, drag the bodies away. Great numbers escaped to the hills behind, which were quickly covered with horsemen, from 2000 to 3000 men. A party of Anderson's horse charged straight up the hill (just to the left of the gorge leading to the lake) in most gallant style, and drove the enemy along the ridge to the extreme left. Meantime, the 5th cavalry rode along the foot of the hill to the left, and charged up at that end; by which manœuvre the enemy were hemmed in, in the centre of the two cavalry corps, when a very severe encounter took place. From the top of our house we saw every thing distinctly; the gleaming of their swords in the sun, and the fire of their pistols and matchlocks: fresh horsemen came pouring on to the assistance of the enemy from the back of the hill; they buried our cavalry and Anderson's horse, who, overpowered by numbers and a most galling fire, were forced along the ridge to the spot whence the first charge took place.

The Affghans have many advantages over our troops: one consists in dropping their men fresh for combat; each horseman takes a foot soldier up behind him, and drops him when he is arrived at the spot he is required to fire from. Their horsemen are either gentlemen or yeomen (as we should denominate them), all well mounted, and their baggage ponies can manage the hills much better than our cavalry horses; in fact, the Affghan horses seem to me to climb about with as much unconcern as goats do. As regards pistols, we are on a par, as most of theirs have been presents from the Posha Khana; but their juzails carry much further than our muskets, and, whilst they are out of range of our fire, theirs tells murderously on us.

A standard bearer with a white flag was killed; he was evidently a person of some consequence, from the great anxiety evinced to obtain possession of his body. There were two red flags in another division.

Capt. Anderson distinguished himself, killing four men with his own hand; he rode up the gorge to challenge the enemy again, but they had the advantage of position, and would not come down.

The enemy continued to crown the heights: our guns were out of range, and the shot fell short. We had infantry out in skirmishing order, but the whole was little more than a very exciting and provoking spectacle; for we made little impression, although the whole of our cavalry was out: so cavalry, infantry, guns, and all, came back again, and soon after the enemy came down the hill, some evidently returning to the Shah bagh, and others dispersing more to the left, and probably returning to the city.

Lady Macnaghten told me to-day that Sir William had written to inform Sale that we had been in siege since the 2d, and to request his return with the force under his command; to leave the sick and wounded in safety at Gundamuk, under charge of the troops there. To this the General assented, and signed the letter; but afterwards he said it would be abandoning the sick and baggage, and refused to recall Sale's brigade.

I was asked if I could send a letter from Sir William to Sale, through Sturt's influence with the natives; but if, with secret service money at his command, the Envoy cannot bribe a messenger, how are poor people like us to do so?

Sir William has given one of the Kuzzilbash chiefs 50,000 rupees to raise a diversion in our favour, and has promised him two lakhs more if he succeeds.

The insurgent chiefs have set up a king, and a wuzeer; they went to the mosque, and read the fatcha, or prayer, for the reigning monarch. Several of the Moollahs refused to recognise the name of Shah Zeman: they said they would allow that of Shah Shoojah as a legitimate monarch. There was a long and wordy dispute; but Shah Mahommed Zeman seems at present to possess most power in Cabul. This is not the blind Shah Zeman, Shah Shoojah's brother, but a relation of the Ameer Dost Mahommed. He is an old man, and said to be the son of an elder brother of Dost Mahommed's, and used to be called the Nawaub. He has struck coin in his own name.

Abdoollah Khan has sent a messenger to treat with the King, who replied that he would receive no such low person, and that some person of respectability must be sent. The King is also said to have seized the man who stabbed Sturt, and to have declared his intent to put him to death; but just now I believe he dares not do so.

This day there was a report that Sir Alexander Burnes and his brother were still living, but that the people, in whose power they were, were treating for a very large ransom.

Capt. Warburton left two guns in the city at his house; the Affghans have taken possession of them (six-pounders), and use them against us either with their own balls, or ours returned to us in that manner. They hammer our nine-pound shot into an egg shape. One of them that fell in Sturt's compound attracted attention, as we all supposed that they could not be hammered to fit other guns.

Paton and Bellew meet in council with Sturt at nine most evenings at our house. To-day arrangements were made for carrying the Shah's garden and the Commissariat fort at daybreak, every thing being so clearly explained that even I understood it as well as hemming the handkerchief I was making. The captured fort, as it is called, is now held by three companies. It is proposed to be blown up: they are quietly to cut embrasures in the wall for three guns, to cover the attack on the garden. There is to be a simultaneous attack on the Commissariat fort; and the signal for escalading the breach with a company of Europeans, and one of natives, will be the explosion in blowing up the gate. Plans were sketched, and all the minutiæ written out, so that the General might have no questions to ask. It is now midnight, and no reply has been sent from him, though an answer was to have come to say whether the work should be done or not.

This day Gen. Elphinstone wrote to the Envoy to state that we were in want of ammunition, requesting him to endeavour to make arrangements with the enemy!

Capt. Bellew told me that the General has at length agreed that Sale's brigade shall be recalled. Had we more men, a brigade might be sent out on the hill, to punish the enemy who defy us there.

The men are greatly harassed; their duty is very heavy, and they have no cover night or day, all being on the ramparts. The weather is cold, particularly at night.

There was a good store of grain in the captured fort, but very little of it was brought into cantonments by the Commissariat, though a great deal found its way into the Bunneahs' shops, or was carried off by the Sipahees and camp-followers.

A great quantity of wheat has been brought in to-day and yesterday from the villages, and we are promised further supplies.

A note from Thain mentions that Sale has been sent for, but, from the very cautious wording of the order, it appears doubtful whether he 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 Cabul, if he can do so without endangering the force 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!"

There has been much talk of bringing Brig. Shelton from the Bala Hissar into cantonments, to aid with counsel and prowess; the plan is, however, for the present abandoned.

The troops in the Bala Hissar are better off than we are, as there are yet some supplies in the shops there, though at an exorbitant rate.

Despatches have been sent for reinforcements from Kandahar. If Gen. Nott's brigade had not proceeded on their way to the provinces further than the Kojuk pass, they are to return.

Accounts have been received that Codrington's corps at Charikar is surrounded. Capt. Rattray, the political agent there, and Lieut. Salisbury, killed. Capt. Codrington and the other officers wounded, as also Major Pottinger, political agent.

There has been great talk of withdrawing the troops from the Bala Hissar into cantonments; but if this were done, the King, with his 800 ladies (wives, daughters, &c., and their attendants), would follow, and we should soon be starved out. If we make an inglorious retreat to Hindostan, he will still accompany us; and as we brought him to the country, we must stand by him.

When there was first an intention of building for the army at the Company's expense, Capt. Sturt gave it as his decided opinion, (which opinion is on record in the letter book of his office, in a letter to Sir A. Burnes,) that the garrison should be placed in the Upper Bala Hissar, from whence (with plenty of ammunition and food, which might always be procured from the city, either purchased from friends, or taken zubberdust from the enemy) we never could be dislodged. A large outlay (I write from memory, and therefore do not name a sum) was expended in commencing barracks, bombproofs, &c.; and last, not least, a new wing was added to a palace for the Envoy, and another, to make all square, was laid out, when the King sent to say he would neither have the Envoy nor the troops in the Bala Hissar: so all the money spent was thrown away, and the King had the new wing and the whole palace thrown down because it was originally erected by the Dost.

The camp was pitched at Siah Sung; but that site would not answer for a cantonment for many reasons detailed by Sturt in his public letter, which I propose appending to my Journal.[4] I shall therefore only notice two of them,--the distance from good water, and the whole spot being commanded by the heights that surround it, except on one side, which is a morass, and from that cause not particularly healthy at some seasons.

There was ground on the further side of the city, but that would not answer, as should an insurrection occur in Cabul it would cut off our communication with Jellalabad.

Eventually the King gave up a garden or orchard, the present site of cantonments, with water at hand, good and plentiful, and always procurable by digging two feet for it in any direction.

Sturt urges the absolute necessity of our now withdrawing our forces from the cantonments into the Bala Hissar, but is still met by the cry of, "How can we abandon the good buildings and property?"

The ammunition might be buried and concealed, the guns spiked, &c.; but a great deal of the former might be sent into the Bala Hissar by the cavalry carrying each man a proportion on his horse nightly, and many of the latter might be taken to the citadel.

To Sergt. Deane, of the engineers' department, the army are very greatly indebted for his great personal exertions in getting in grain. He is a particularly intelligent man, and very superior to his present station in life; and the fluency with which he speaks Persian enables him to pick up information, and also to go about at times in disguise for the same purpose.

If we can only continue to obtain provisions as we have done for the last two days, we shall be able to hold out on half rations, and in another month, it is said, the Kohistanees cannot touch us for the snow, which fell heavily on the hills last night.

We had rain here late in the evening, and at night; and this morning I saw a great increase in the snow on the hills.

In the Bala Hissar, Lieut. Melville having recovered from his wound sufficiently to do his duty, was sent down to take charge of the Lahore gate of the fort, which was now the only opening into the Bala Hissar, the others having been built up with almost solid masonry.

The troops there were isolated in a fort closely besieged, actually without a single case of amputating or other surgical instruments amongst them, and hardly a grain of medicine!--most culpable negligence, as they might easily have been sent from the cantonments, though a little foresight would have suggested their being taken there with the troops; and they might easily have been got ready during the time they were under arms--more than an hour--before they marched.

There has been constant firing for the last day or two on the city side of the fort, and the enemy have made several unsuccessful attempts to carry off the two guns that are lying beneath the walls. Food is already scarce in the bazaar; and although plenty is stored up in the private houses of the natives, yet in the shops the price of two seers of wheat or two and a half is a rupee.

The Sipahees complain bitterly of the severity of the weather, particularly at night, and above sixty men are in hospital at the Bala Hissar already, besides the wounded: they are attacked with pneumonia, which carries them off in the course of a couple of days. The King sent strict orders to Melville at the gate, to allow no one to pass either in or out without a pass from either the wuzeer or Conolly, except the surwans in charge of the grazing cattle which go out at 8 A.M. and return at 2, protected by a resallah of the King's Sikh regt.: in case of an alarm from without, a flag is ordered to be waved from the ramparts, on which signal all the cattle are immediately to come in. The above-mentioned resallah are, without any exception, the worst set-up and most disorderly body of troops calling themselves a regiment that can be imagined: their horses are ill-conditioned, their arms and accoutrements nominal, as each man dresses as he pleases, a stick with a bayonet on the top being the sole offensive weapon of many of them. And this is the imperial guard of the monarch of Affghanistan! Besides this regiment his majesty has with him in the fort, of his own troops (not reckoning those of the subsidiarised force), his orderly regiment (Campbell's), 400 Juzailchees, and 500 of another Hindostanee regt. The orderly regiment are certainly better men of the sort (not being the Company's soldiers) than are usually met with, although they did run away in the city on the 2nd, but it was not until they had lost 200 men and fought gallantly. Campbell himself is the King's right-hand man.

Associated with Melville at the gate was Raja Jeenial Sing, a man whose father was prince of an extensive territory lying near Cashmere, and who, when Shah Shoojah in 1818 was a fugitive and an exile flying from Runjeet Sing, received him most kindly, gave him all he asked for: refusing every offer or command of Runjeet to surrender him up, he transported him safely to the Company's territories. For this, Runjeet deprived him of his Raj, valued at four lakhs yearly, and all his property, imprisoning both him and his sons: the latter on their father's death made their escape and arrived at the court of Shah Shoojah, for whose sake they had lost every thing. His gratitude was shown in the regal donation of two rupees eight anas daily!! Verily they had their reward, and well may they exclaim, "Put not your trust in princes!"

From an idea of an insurrection being about to take place among the Arabs (who compose a large portion of the inhabitants), a proposal was set on foot for turning all the Affghans, &c. out of the Bala Hissar, and taking all provisions found for the use of the troops both there and in cantonments. This, as well as every other energetic measure proposed, was knocked on the head either by the King or the politicals, and, instead of turning out all useless hands, an order was issued to allow no woman to pass the gate unless supplied with a pass, as an idea had got afloat that they were about to turn out their wives and children ere a general massacre of the troops took place. However, in lieu of an insurrection, food becoming very scarce, all the natives became clamorous for permission to leave the fort, and go into the city with their wives and children,--"a consummation devoutly to be wished," and to insure which it had been good policy to have paid them a high price for their houses and grain, &c. This the King positively refused to allow, but ordered a Shah-Gazee to join Melville at the gate, and, having examined them one by one to see that they carried out no arms, to allow females to pass; but no man to go on any account. In this way, in three days were passed out 750 women with their children, which was at least a good riddance!

_7th._--I did not go to bed till after Mr. Eyre went away this morning: he came at a little after midnight in consequence of some frivolous objections of the General's, based I believe mostly on Capt. Bellew's doubts as to whether the trees in the garden next the Commissariat fort were planted in lines parallel to the wall or not. Now Bellew always has an "observation" to throw in, or "begs to suggest" something. He had acknowledged he had never been in this garden, though Sturt had; neither could he be made to understand that it was the custom of the country to plant the trees in lines parallel with the outer walls: neither could he comprehend, that if even a tree intervened, a shot would destroy it from the heavy nine-pounders. These trees were not gigantic English oaks, the growth of a century; but fruit trees.

The heavy iron nines would now have proved their utility against the fort, but the old objection of the difficulty of transporting them over bad roads still exists; an iron nine cannot be as portable as a brass six-pounder, but the eighteen-pounders would not have given much more trouble than the nines did on the march up, and would have done us good service had we them here. Capt. Abbott wrote for 3 eighteen-pounders; the military board made it a case of arithmetic, and sent 6 nines; and as they had to be taken up the hills by hand, a little more manual labour would have transported the others also over the Affghanee mountains.

I often hear the Affghans designated as cowards: they are a fine manly-looking set, and I can only suppose it arises from the British idea among civilised people that assassination is a cowardly act. The Affghans never scruple to use their long knives for that purpose, _ergo_ they are cowards; but they show no cowardice in standing as they do against guns without using any themselves, and in escalading and taking forts which we cannot retake. The Affghans of the capital are a little more civilised; but the country gentlemen and their retainers are, I fancy, much the same kind of people as those Alexander encountered.

The Juzailchees were sent out to skirmish: they attacked the Shah bagh, and cleared the west end of it; they then joined Major Thain, who, with a squadron of horse and two companies of infantry, attacked a garden beyond it, drove the enemy out with great slaughter, and burnt the garden house. Lieut. Eyre at the same time, through a small opening in the wall of the Shah bagh immediately under the captured fort, played with a six-pounder upon the gate of the garden. Not being supported, however, these advantages were lost, and the enemy being reinforced in great numbers, the above troops were forced to retreat, having lost a considerable number of men; _par exemple_, fifteen of the Juzailchees out of ninety-five were left on the field. I have not the actual numbers of the Europeans and Sipahees who were slain.

The gun was saved with great difficulty, and here a great fault was committed in sending one gun only. In the Marquis of Hastings's time an order was published prohibiting a single gun being sent out, in consequence of the disastrous consequences attending its being unsupported during the Nepalese war. But all seems confusion here. Those who, at the head of affairs, ought to have been directing every thing, appear to be in consternation. General Elphinstone from his first arrival in the country was in ill health, which gradually increased on him, till his mind became nearly as much enervated as his body; and so conscious was he of his own state, that he had written to Government to give up the command, and also to Gen. Nott at Kandahar to come up and take his place until a new commander of the forces was appointed.