Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎17v] (35/312)

was encountered from the Afghans. When the two
columns effected a junction they still amounted to
10,400 fighting men, though the vast train of
camp followers had dwindled to 29,000 ; and with
this little army, in the midst of a hostile country,
and so far removed from his base of operations,
j Sir John Keane set out on the 1st of July from
Kandahar, which, though a city of 10,000
inhabitants, had surrendered without a
struggle, for Ghuzni, 230 miles distant. Ghuzni
was taken by storm—the citadel being captured
alter a desperate combat of three hours' duration,
and Hyder Khan, the governor, one of the sons of
Dost Mahommed, the then ruler of Cabul, being
taken prisoner. It is admitted by Captain Have-
lock that Hyder Khan and his Afghans displayed
boldness and vigilance in the defence of their
fortress. The success of the day had cost the
victors 17 non-commissioned officers and privates
killed, and 18 officers and 147 non-commissioned
officers and privates wounded. Of the Afghans
514 were ascertained to have fallen in the town,
j that number of bodies having been buried by the
British, while more than 1,500 were made
prisoners. The force employed on our side m the-
operation _ amounted to 4.363 fichtina: men of all
ranks. This was the final struggle of the campaign
of 1839. Dost Mahommed, on receipt of the news
of the fall of Ghuzni, abandoned his throne, and
fled with only 600 horsemen to seek a refuge be
yond the Oxus ; and when on the 7th of August
' Shah Shoojah, under the protection of the vic
torious British army,made his formal entry into his
farmer capital of Cabul, the Afghan war appeared
tso be at an end.
Such is a brief outline of the passage of the
Bolan Pass and the British invasion of Afghanis
tan in 1839, which for a brief time at least pre
sented the aspect of a brilliant success. A deeper
interest, however, attaches at the present time to
an episode of that campaign which has yet to be
noticed. We refer to the advance of Sir Claud
Wade through the Khyber Pass in the month of
July of that year in the teeth of the opposition of it 8
defenders. Wade's force consisted of considerable
but irregularlevies of Mussulman Pun jab^es,partly
led by British officers, conj oined to a small de
tachment of native infantry, and accompanied by
two howitzers of our native horse artillery.
. With this force, intended to act in concert
with a corps of the Sikh army—an auxiliary
which, of course, was not forthcoming until after
news had been received of the British successes—•
General Wade advanced from Peshawur. Attempts
had been made to obtain possession of the defiles
of the Khyber by corrupting the Moinunds on the
left bank of the Cabul river and the Khyberee
tribes in the mquntain fastnesses, but those
intrigues failed. Mahomed i^khbar, the eldest son
of Dost Mahonjed,linade a resolute defence of the
faipous fort of Aiyktusiid, which stands at a point
in the pass where theSmlley farrows and the road
follows the course of a clear mountain stream. A
traveller from the Afghan side, we are told,
might pass by this fort without perceiving
it; but when he has followed the rivulet i
a short distance down he will, if he
faces about, see its toweri frowning from
a lofty and insulated eminence and com
pletely commanding the only approach. When
the troops of the Ameer occupied this stronghold
they were posted in the fort itself and on the
summits of the mountains which enclose and look
down upon the valley. From these Colonel
Wade's troops drove them, however, by ascending
the heights at distant points and advancing along
the ridges, while the howitzers of our artillerv,
placed in battery in the hollow, dislodged the
garrison with their shells. " The locality," says
Havelock, " and the atmosphere was, in the
month of November, pure and bracing, yet the
post has become the grave of nearly all the soldiers
that have bee» quartered there." Thus, driven from
Ali Musjid, Mahomed Akhbar yet continued at
the head of a considerable force to present a bold
front to the invaders. As the disposition of his
forces was skilful, it is probable that he would
have made an energetic resistance; but his
intentions were frustrated by the capture of
Ghuzni, which now rendered the defence of the
capital the most pressing object. Accordingly
the force under Wade, finding its enemy dimi
nished in its front, penetrated the last passes of
the Khyber, and after establishing a chain of
posts along the mountain route, and on the right
margin of the river, advanced without further
! obstacle to the neighbourhood of Cabul.
In brief, the passage of the dreaded
Khyber had proved to Wade's army an
enterprise of little difficulty ; but the cir
cumstances were obviously favourable. The aspect
of affairs soon afterwards when the victorious Sir
John Keane, and the column under his command,
were returning to India by this route, gave
ominous token of future troubles. The intelli
gence that the predatory Khyberees had attacked
an earthwork near the Ali Musjid fort, and merci
lessly put to the sword 40 »of its Nujeeb defenders,
part of the British forces, was significant, and I
the occasional appearance of bands of these j
robbers, described as " men of dwarfish stature,
and remarkable for a peculiarly wild air and mean
and squalid clothing, creeping along cautiously j
out of point-blank range of musketry on the ridge j
of the mountains," rendered it advisable for the ]
column to move in close and guarded array. !
Once more, however, the terrible Khyber was
passed by a British army without any serious
impediment, though it is to be observed that the !
conditions of mountain warfare have greatly
changed since 1839. It would at least be prudent
to assume that the Khyber Pass in the hands of
defenders well armed would prove in these days
a less easy route for an invader of ^ghan-
istan.
The disasters which subsequently befel the
British forces in Cabul, isolated and surrounded
by hostile tribes—the assassination of Sir Alex
ander Burnes and Sir William Macnaghten, the
convention under which Major Pottinger and
Captains Laurence and Mackenzie were delivered
up as hostages to Akhbar Khan, and the massacres
which ensued—are matters of history. Twenty-
six thousand men, women, and children fell in the j
rocky defiles and mountain gorges of Afghan
istan, partly under the incessant harrassment and
Murderous attacks of the Afghan troops and the
wild hill tribes, but more from hunger and the deep
snows and wintry blasts of that inhospitable
region, five thousand feet above the level of the
sea. Of all that host only one, Dr. Brydon, made his
way alive to Jellalabad, bringing the news that the
army of Cabul had ceased to exist. Seven or eight
only of the survivors were taken prisoners; the
rest were killed. The scene of those terrible
disasters, however, was not the Khyber Pass—
which the retreating multitude, in fact, never
reached—but the Koord-Cabul and some minor
passes. The attack indeed began almost as soon
as the retreat, though it was continued only in an |
irregular fashion; for, even famished and without 1
ho}:>e, the British forces still fought desperately, j
and kept their foe, as a rule, at a respectful dis- I
tance. The Koord-Cabul Pass is described as five
miles long, shut in on either hand by a line of
lofty hills, with a torrent dashing down the centre
which even the intense frost was powerless to arrest, i
The destruction of life at this stage was great.
Lady Sale received a bail in her arm, and
Lieutenant Sturt, her son-in-law, was mortally
, wounded. This was ou the 8th of January : on
f the 9th the married officers with their wives and
children were given up to Akhbar Khan, in the
hope of saving them by future ransom. On the
next day the retreat was continued through a
defile ominously named the Dark Pass, only fifty
yards long, and the Tezeen Pass, three miles long.
On the 11th General Elphinstone, the commander-
in-chief, fell into the hands of the enemy. On the
following day they entered the terrible pass of
Jugdulluk, two miles long, and very narrow and
precipitous, and found the exit closed by strong
barriers of prickly holly-oak stretched across the
defile. Here, with twenty muskets for their only
weapons, the miserable remnant of our forces
made their final stand, and " the rest was
1 silence." ^ |
pjXo'jj 0t$ ux Bn®q 0T"[qnd eq; bb erai^ euras '
eq^. q/B fpaqiqrqojd ej8A\ Buopn^sui Xunadqo^o
esaqjQ •paqsqcqu eieii seue^ox eqi HP
aaq.j'B 'i^pijssooonsun Saqqurc^ uo oS o; JBq
pa^adun pus j/ej'sStnq.rBtti,, v puq eqs emSuoii
aeq eptJta qotqn jo '^09 ?Jo eqmv
us pa|03[ood eqs aaqiq npeM. e»iqq pun
''lOOo'l J 0 vuMpynib « uoai eqs S uxmo ^ oj
Xspan^Bg eqij uo i suosqodim 008 J 0 WMaji b
uoav eouo ' sso.i^ob aq^ 'qszeCoQ; "eilph siq
Baraiq. pejpuuq uaAe^a sb qonxu bb xsep qqSim aq
•patnBa pBq eq aapao eq^. tn ^no eraoo ppi ppao-Ai
Xaq; !}Bq^ pejijoq pu« 'ssanJoq: jo aaqmnu ure^jBo b
paqoaxas aq jt 'si qwq^ 'suini ao 'suM^vnb 'aius} 'aqiun
ub joj tit quail aq jt qnq ejpgqa sxq sotuiq aAtj
uib S qqSini Xpio auo uo paipaqs oqM. uosaad
y •aAg; Suxpaaoxa qou sqa^oi; jo aaqmnu Xub
was encountered from the Afghans. When the two
columns effected a junction they still amounted to
. 10,400 fighting men, though the vast train of
camp followers had dwindled to 29,000 ; and with
this little army, in the midst of a hostile country,
and so far removed from his base of operations,
| Sir John Keane set out on the 1st of July from
Kandahar, which, though a city of 10,000
inhabitants, had surrendered without a
struggle, for Ghuzni, 230 miles distant. Ghuzni
was taken by storm—the citadel being captured
after a desperate combat of three hours' duration,
and Hyder Khan, the governor, one of the sons of
Dost Mahommed, the then ruler of Cabul, being
taken prisoner. It is admitted by Captain Have-
lock that Hvder Khan and his Afghans displayed
boldness and vigilance in the defence of their
fortress. The success of the day had cost the
victors 17 non-commissioned officers and privates
killed, and 18 officers and 147 non-commissioned
officers and privates wounded. Of the Afghans
514 were ascertained to have fallen in the town,
that number of bodies having been buried by the
British, while more than 1,500 were made
prisoners. The force employed on our side m the-
operation amounted to 4.363 fiuehtina men of all
ranks. This was the final struggle of the campaign
of 1839. Dost Mahommed, on receipt of the news
of the fall of Ghuzni, abandoned his throne, and
fled witji only 600 horsemen to seek a refuge be
yond the Oxus ; and when on the 7th of August
I Shah Shoojah, under the protection of the vic
torious British army,made his formal entry into his
former capital of Cabul, the Afghan war appeared
to be at an end.
Such is a brief outline of the passage of the
Bolan Pass and the British invasion of Afghanis
tan in 1839, which for a brief time at least pre
sented the aspect of a brilliant success. A deeper
interest, however, attaches at the present time to
an episode of that campaign which has yet to be
noticed. We refer to the advance of Sir Claud
Wade through the Khyber Pass in the month of
July of that year in the teeth of the opposition of its
defenders. Wade's force consisted of considerable
but irregular levies of Mussulman Pun jabees,partly
led by British officers, conjoined to a small de
tachment of native infantry, and accompanied by
two howitzers of our native horse artillery.
I. With this force, intended to act in concert j
with a corps of the Sikh army—an auxiliary
which, of course, was not forthcoming until after
news had been received of the British successes-
General Wade advanced from Peshawur. Attempts
had been made to obtain possession of the defiles
of the Khyber by corrupting\the ]S|Iomunds on the
left bank of the Cabul river and the Khyberee
tribes in the mountain fastnesses, but those
intrigues failed. MTahomed Akhbar, the eldest son
of Dost Mahomed,lmade a refeolute defence of the
famous fort of AU Musitd, which stands at a point
in ^he pass where tne^lley narrows and the road
follows the course of a clear mountain stream. A
traveller from the Afghan side, we are told,
might pass by this fort without perceiving
it; but when he has followed the rivulet
a short distance down he will, if he
faces about, see its toweri frowning from
a lofty and insulated eminence and com
pletely commanding the only approach. When
the troops of the Ameer occupied this stronghold
they were posted in the fort itself and on the
summits of the mountains which enclose and look
down upon the valley. From these Colonel
Wade's troops drove them, however, by ascending
the heights at distant points and advancing along
the ridges, while the howitzers of our artillery,
placed in battery in the hollow, dislodged the
garrison with their shells. " The locality," says
Havelock, " and the atmosphere was, in the
month of November, pure and bracing, yet the
post has become the grave of nearly all the soldiers
that have beeM quartered there." Thus, driven from
Ali Musjid, Mahomed Akhbar yet continued at
the head of a considerable force to present a bold
front to the invaders. As the disposition of his
forces was skilful, it is probable that he would
have made an energetic resistance; but his
intentions were frustrated by the capture of
Ghuzni, which now rendered the defence of the
capital the most pressing object. Accordingly
the force under Wade, finding its enemy dimi
nished in its front, penetrated the last passes of
the Khyber, and after establishing a chain of
posts along the mountain route, and on the right
margin of the river, advanced without further
I obstacle to the neighbourhood of Cabul.
In brief, the passage of the dreaded I
Khyber had proved to Wade's army an j
enterprise of little difficulty ; but the cir- j
cumstances were obviously favourable. The aspect
of affairs soon afterwards when the victorious Sir
John Keane, and the column under his command,
were returning to India by this route, gave
ominous token of future troubles. The intelli
gence that the predatory Khyberees had attacked
an earthwork near the Ali Masjid fort, and merci
lessly put to the sword 400 of its Nujeeb defenders,
part of the British forces, was significant, and :
the occasional appearance of bands of these |
robbers, described as "men of dwarfish stature, j
and remarkable for a peculiarly wild air and mean j
and squalid clothing, creeping along cautiously j
out of point-blank range of musketry on the ridge j
of the mountains," rendered it advisable for the j
column to move in close and guarded array, i
Once more, however, the terrible Khyber was
passed by a British army without any serious j
impediment, though it is to be observed that the I
conditions of mountain warfare have greatly
changed since 1839. It would at least be prudent i
to assume that the Khyber Pass in the hands of
defenders well armed would prove in these days
a less easy route for an invader of Afghan
istan.
The disasters which subsequently befel the
British forces in Cabul, isolated and surrounded
by hostile tribes—the assassination of Sir Alex
ander Burnes and Sir William Macnaghten, the
convention under which Major Pottinger and
Captains Laurence and Mackenzie were delivered
up as hostages to Akhbar Khan, and the massacres
which ensued—are matters of history. Twenty-
six thousand men, women, and children fell in the j
rocky defiles and mountain gorges of Afghan
istan, partly under the incessant harrassment and
murderous attacks of the Afghan troops and the
wild hill tribes, but more from hunger and the deep
snows and wintry blasts of that inhospitable
region, five thousand feet above the level of the
sea. Of all that host only one, Dr. Brydon, made his
way alive to Jellalabad, bringing the news that the
army of Cabul had ceased to exist. Seven or eight
only of the survivors were taken prisoners; the
rest were killed. The scene of those terrible
disasters, however, was not the Khybor Pass—
which the retreating multitude, in fact, never
reached—but the Koord-Cabul and some minor
passes. The attack indeed began almost as soon
| as the retreat, though it was continued only in an |
irregular fashion; for, even famished and without 1
hope, the British forces still fought desperately,
and kept their foe, as a rule, at a respectful dis- I
tance. The Koord-Cabul Pass is described as five
miles long, shut in on either hand by a line of
lofty hills, with a torrent dashing down the centre
which even the intense frost was powerless to arrest. '
The destruction of life at this stage was great.
Lady Sale received a bail in her arm, and
Lieutenant Sturt, her son-in-law, was mortally
, wounded. This was on the 8th of January ; on
f the 9th the married officers with their wives and
children were given np to Akhbar Khan, in the
hope of saving them by future ransom. On the
next day the retreat was continued through a
defile ominously named the Dark Pass, only fifty
yards long, and the Tezeen Pass, three miles long.
On the 11th General Elphinstone, the commander-
in-chief, fell into the hands of the enemy. On the
following day they entered the terrible pass of
Jugdulluk, two miles long, and very narrow and
precipitous, and found the exit closed by strong
barriers of prickly holly-oak stretched across the
defile. Here, with twenty muskets for their only
weapons, the miserable remnant of our forces
made their final stand, and " the rest was
silence."
The attempt of General Pollock with his army of
relief to force the Khyber Pass about this time
was tedious and difficult. At the fort of Ali
Musji^ he experienced a severe check, and it was
not until the 10th of April that he was heard of
at Jella^abad as having reached the middle of the
Pass. Ob the 14th of that month the besieged
garrison received the joyful news that the diffi
culties of the passage were all surmounted, and
that his losses in this second attempt did not exceed
one officer killed, two or three wounded, and about
135 men killed and wounded. General Pollock's
tactics were the same as those of Sir Claude Wade,
his successful progress being due to his system of
holding the heights with his infantry before
moving his guns and baggage with his
cavalry. By neglecting this precaution, Gene
ral Nott suffered somewhat from the shots
of his watchful enemy; but the war was
now practically at an end. The disasters
of 1842 have invested the Khyber with a
romantic and a gloomy interest; and it is
still customary to regard it as offering an insur
mountable obstacle to an invader disdaining to
purchase the goodwill of the " head man" who,
as the representative of the lawless hill tribes re
cognising no allegiance to the ruler of Cabul, has
recently agreed to pass Sir Neville Chamberlain
and his escort through the dreaded gorges. Ex
perience, however, hardly bears out this view,
though the Kyber, in the possession of a British
army with due, provision for its defence, would
unquestionably prove a serious difficulty in the
way of an army advancing from the Afghan side.