or increased his readiness. During this day it was that the ladies and officers (their husbands,) were made over to his protection. The delay, therefore, may be held to have led to their safety; but it sealed the fate of the army, who must, with the followers, even now, have amounted to more than 10,000 men: but most of them helpless, hopeless, and disabled; utterly without shelter, food, or fire; remaining day and night on the snow. The unfortunate natives of Hindostan suffered, of course, more than the English: hundreds of them were seen sitting on the snow, not sunk in the apathy of despair, but howling with pain. "More than one half of the force," writes Lady Sale, under the head of this day, "is now frost-bitten or wounded; and most of the men can scarcely put a foot to the ground."

The fifth, sixth, and seventh days of the march were one long and dreadful struggle; death from exhaustion, death from the cold, death from the merciless enemy. The way was lined with those who fell; every pass was a scene of fighting and slaughter; at every halting-place numbers were left dead or dying. The whole of the native infantry was destroyed or scattered on the fifth day, at the end of which Lieutenant Eyre computes that, since the departure from Cabool, 12,000 had perished. The frequent negotiations with Akbar and the Ghilzie chieftains for protection, had no effect, except to diminish the chance of preservation by creating delay. It was on the evening of the sixth day that Shelton and Elphinstone fell into his hands. It is impossible to refuse our tribute of admiration and praise to the resolute and noble spirit with which the remnant of officers and men struggled forward, through the attacks of an enemy as pitiless and untiring as a pack of wolves, forcing all obstacles, melting away at each step like a snowball in water, yet still keeping together, never to the last yielding to the weakness of despair. When the disasters of the siege are attributed to the misconduct of the men of the 44th regiment, and the mistakes of their commander, let not the steady yet desperate heroism shown by many of the former, and uniformly by the latter through those dreadful days, be forgotten.

We read with sad interest that much delay was occasioned by the anxiety of the men to bring on their wounded comrades, in the very last crisis of their fate, on the night of the seventh and morning of the eighth day. The miserable remnant had by this time cleared the Passes, and reached the open country, but by this time, too, their effective force was reduced to twenty muskets. Driven from the road, and forced to take up their position on a hill at Gundamuck, this fragment of an army defended themselves to the last, and were, all but three or four, destroyed there.

On the 9th of January, we believe, Sir Robert Sale received the order to evacuate Jellalabad. A few days after, a report

ran through the garrison that the Cabool force was in full retreat upon them, and was being cut to pieces by the Ghilzies. On the 13th a single officer (hunted for his life till within a short distance of the gates,) came in, and told the all but incredible tale of what he had seen, half incoherent from fatigue and horror. Every effort was instantly made; the country was scoured in every direction by parties of horse, and, for several nights, beacons were kept constantly burning, to guide any stragglers, who might have escaped, to the friendly town. "But none came. They were all dead. The army was annihilated."

So fell the curtain upon one of the most terrible tragedies recorded in war. Greater numbers have perished in less time; but no similar force of civilized men was ever so utterly overwhelmed; nor can a great multitude of human beings have ever suffered more dreadful misery than was endured by those whose lingering destruction we have, following Lieutenant Eyre, faintly sketched, between the 6th and 13th of January, 1842. From the tumult in the city on the 2d of November, to the marvellous escape of the single man out of 17,000, the whole is one of those transactions of which the beginning and end are miracles, when looked at separately from the connecting events, of which every step is most natural;-a series of transactions all tending to one end, truer to nature than fiction ever can be, yet surpassing every effort of fiction in strangeness and horror.

We need not dwell much on the transactions of the rest of Affghanistan during this winter. At Candahar our supremacy

was maintained unshaken. Ghuznee was taken after a stout resistance, and most of its garrison afterwards, in violation of the capitulation, massacred. The fort of Khelât-i-Ghilzie, between Candahar and Ghuznee, was attacked and defended with valour as obstinate as any minstrel has celebrated. It was, we believe, on their final repulse that the Affghans left in the possession of the English a standard which, in their desperate attempt to gain a footing inside the fortification, they had three times planted in the embrasure of one of our cannon. All the world knows how Jellalabad was defended, and how it was at length restored to security by a victory which, though brilliant, cost much, costing the life of Dennie. Many complaints of the treatment received by this officer from his superiors have been made, and not, as far as we are aware, received answer, or attempt at answer, from those most interested in refuting them. We therefore hold them convicted of grievous injustice. Judging from his letters, he was, like many remarkable men, not the most tractable of subordinates. His temper was evidently quick, and impatient of injustice; his estimate of his own deserts, high; his tendency to speak out, inconvenient. But he appears to have

* Letter in an Indian Newspaper.

been a man of a generous, self-devoting, and heroic tone of mind; of great energy and decision,-of daring and caution rightly combined,-of singular conduct and capacity in war. Those who are interested in defending the present system of promotion in the British Army, can perhaps explain how such a man, after 40 years' service, in the last two of which only he had the opportunity of proving what he was, died a Lieutenant-Colonel.

Of the transactions of the summer of 1842, previous to the advance of General Nott from Candahar, and General Pollock from Jellalabad, no historical summary has yet appeared.

The occasional notices in the journals of the captives of affairs at Cabool, during this period, present a most vividly confused picture of bewildering and intricate anarchy. In the course, we believe, of March the unhappy king, who had made some kind of arrangement with the chiefs after our departure, was murdered in cold blood: the first, it appears, of the Suddozye race who had so died.

"Even in the wildest of their civil dissensions," says the Edinburgh Reviewer, "no member of that family had ever been put to death in cold blood. It was regarded as sacred, as well as royal."

Our interference, then, had excited a hatred stronger than even this sacred reverence. From the time of his death, the confusion, before not inconsiderable, became worse confounded; and there is a clashing and intertwining of interests, perfectly inexplicable; every man standing up for himself-fighting for his own hand, and Chaos sitting umpire. In Lady Sale's Journal, written within hearing of the cannon at Cabool, we find such, not unamusing, passages as the following:

"Parties run high at Cabool: Zeman Shah Khan says he will be king, Akbar ditto, Jubhar Khan the same, and Amenoollah has a similar fancy, as also Mahommed Shah Khan, and Futteh Jung the Shahzada. The troops go out daily to fight; Amenoollah's to Ben-i-shehr, and Zeman Shah Khan's to Siah Sung; they fight a little, and then retreat to their former positions. Zeman Shah Khan has been driven out of his house, and Amenoollah out of his; but have part of the town in their favour."

And so things went on. There are constant actions, such as "sharp firing all day." "A grand battle is to come off on Sunday." One day we find that Zeman Shah and Akbar are allied against the rest; a few days after "we heard that Mahomed Shah was at war with Zeman Khan;" and the next day that Akbar having taken Zeman Khan and his two sons prisoners, and taken from them their guns and treasure-had released them again. Indeed, there is little appearance of bitter animosity in these contests. As Lady Sale says, "they fight a little" nearly every day; but it seems to be rather with the object of trying their strength than of doing each other any great injury; it was their inconvenient and inartificial method

of popular election, by universal suffrage-a shaking together of the lots against each other in the helmet, to see which would spring out. The most destructive incident recorded, is the explosion of a mine, by which Akbar blew up a great number of his own men; but, in spite of his blundering engineering, the most marked feature in the whole is the manner in which he, amid all this confusion, asserts an increasing and ultimately complete ascendency. But the civil war of these "barbarians" was soon to sink into stillness before the approach of civilized invasion.

One thing is now clear; that the evacuation of Affghanistan was resolved upon by both Governments of India, Lord Auckland's as well as Lord Ellenborough's. One statesman was hardy enough to protest against the measure. One statesman only: shall we call him "Justum et tenacem propositi virum?" No,injustice like justice is often tenacious of its purpose: like that,

"Si fractus illabatur orbis

Impavidum ferient ruinæ."

There are men who, when the thunderbolt has shattered it over their heads, will set to work with a conscientious perseverance to rebuild the fallen fabric of evil. When the time shall come for summing up that statesman's services to his country, it should not be forgotten that Lord Palmerston earnestly, warningly protested against the withdrawal of our army from our conquest of Affghanistan.

But if Affghanistan was to be evacuated, we have to answer the question, for what purpose was the campaign of 1842 undertaken? For the recovery of the prisoners? or for revenge?

If necessarily undertaken for the former purpose, it was a duty-a duty which, had our original invasion been more iniquitous than it was, we were still, before God and man, bound to fulfil,—a duty, the neglect of which would have been a worse crime than the most unjust invasion. The Indian Government would have been guilty of cowardly treason, had it abandoned those whose position was the result of their faithful obedience to its orders, so long as it had a soldier to send to battle against the Affghans, a rupee in its treasury. We should have thought it unnecessary to say this, had we not seen in some quarters the attempt to insinuate a counter opinion, that, if the original war was unjust, to continue it, even for the recovery of our countrymen and countrywomen, was unjust also-but it is at any rate unnecessary to do more than We cannot stop to argue a point so evident.

say it.

But was the campaign of 1842 necessary for the recovery of the prisoners? On this point there have been many contradictory statements, as well as diverse opinions: into the whole of which we cannot at present enter.

It is well known that, during the first part of the summer of 1842, negotiations for a mutual exchange of prisoners were

constantly occurring. It is now positively stated that arrangements to that effect had actually been made, Akbar Khan engaging not only to restore the prisoners in his immediate charge, but to collect the sepoys scattered over the country, and escort them through the passes; the condition being, that the Affghan prisoners in India should be released, and the English withdraw altogether from the country; and that, on the reception of direct orders from the home Government, these arrangements were broken off and hostilities recommenced; upon hearing which, Mahomed Akbar exclaimed, in fierce anger, that 'every Affghan chief had been taught to lie and break faith by the Feringees!"

66

On this subject, we would direct attention to a letter from General Pollock, to the secretary of the Governor-General, quoted from the Parliamentary Papers at p. 394 in the Appendix to Lieut. Eyre's Journal. It proves, we think, that General Pollock's breaking off the negotiations arose, not from any orders he might have received, but from distrust of the sincerity of Mahomed Akbar. A positive engagement to withdraw would, he thought, lead to delay on Akbar's part in the restoration of the prisoners; and our advance be likely to accelerate it. It is clear that the British general treated, as a man treats with another in whom he does not confide, anxious to avoid giving his opponent the advantage of binding himself to anything. We believe General Pollock, therefore, to have considered the advance on Cabool desirable, if not necessary, for the sake of the prisoners.

It

On the other hand, Mahomed Akbar, fully conscious of the hold on the British Government which he derived from the possession of the prisoners, was not in any way blamable for the refusal to restore them till assured of the conditions. appears, however, from much concurrent testimony, that he entered into the negotiation honestly, with a sincere readiness to restore them on such assurance; that the sudden rupture of the negotiations not unnaturally impressed him with the belief that he had been merely played with; and that the advance of our army, under such circumstances, exposed the prisoners to great peril. Though no actual engagement had been broken, Akbar had been at least deliberately led to form expectations which it was never (as he at least must have thought,) intended to fulfil; and had he been the fiend, which many in and out of India thought him, the most terrible results might have followed.

Lieutenant Eyre remarks, that "This negotiation seemed now, by the sudden turn that had taken place, likely to plunge us into a dangerous dilemma; Mahomed Akbar being notorious for stopping at no atrocity, when his angry passions

* Bombay Times, April, 1843.