by George Bruce
Shelton, the taciturn, not very likeable fighting soldier, who by Elphinstone’s standards was no gentleman, offended the General so deeply that he denounced him in a report to the Governor-General. Perhaps he also found in Shelton a convenient scapegoat.
‘On the 9th, not finding myself equal to the duties,’ he wrote later… ‘I recalled Brigadier Shelton from the Bala Hissar, but I regret to be obliged to disclose that I did not receive from him that cordial co-operation and advice I had a right to expect; on the contrary his manner was most contumacious; from the day of his arrival he never gave me information or advice, but invariably found fault with all that was done, and canvassed and condemned all orders before officers, frequently preventing and delaying carrying them into effect…; he appeared to be actuated by an ill-feeling towards me. I did everything to remain on terms with him.
‘I was also unlucky in not understanding the state of things and being wholly dependent upon the Envoy and others for information,’ he concluded lamely. Yet much later he could not but praise Shelton’s ability: ‘I beg to be allowed to express my sense of the gallant manner in which the various detachments sent out were led by Brigadier Shelton,’ he wrote, when his own death was near.
Thus, command of the force was now bedevilled by Elphinstone’s and Shelton’s quarrel.
Shelton, having made a thorough appreciation of the military situation, decided not to support risking the force in a large-scale attack on Kabul; and despairing of being able to hold out the winter there, he vouched for an immediate fighting retreat to Jellalabad.
Macnaghten was disgusted. Faced now with a General who wished to negotiate and a second-in-command who wished to retreat, despairingly he looked about him and saw still only two chances to stay in Kabul and save the army and himself from the ignominy of a retreat. The first again, was his secret policy of blood money for the chief’s heads.
The second hope was that General Nott, 290 miles away in Kandahar, and General Sale in Gundamuk, in answer to his letters, would march troops to the rescue. Lady Sale noted in her diary on 10 November that ‘Nott may be here with his brigade in three weeks’, but he had not then received the letter and would not until 14 November.
Meantime, the Afghans, still on the offensive, occupied the three or four other forts dotted about the plain within range of the cantonments. From the Rikabashee fort, about 400 yards east of the cantonment, they poured a heavy fire at troops manning the defences — one or two of the infantry were hit and a gunner was shot through the head while in the act of loading.
These Afghan marksmen were not regular troops but, many of them, tradesmen of Kabul, and, according to Lady Sale the two best shots were a barber and a blacksmith, who had picked off many British troops. ‘They completely commanded the loopholes with their long rifles,’ she wrote, ‘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. It was sufficient for the loophole to be darkened to be fired at.’
Tireless in her self-appointed role as recorder of day-to-day events, Lady Sale never slept now till daylight but sat up, often on the roof — ‘to watch passing events, and give the alarm if need be, and have kept my nightly watch ever since the insurrection commenced. Our troops are as yet staunch; and if we are attacked, and succeed in repelling the enemy, we shall be able to keep our own until Sale’s brigade arrives,’ she commented hopefully.
Shelton was authorised by Elphinstone to occupy the Rikabashee fort, but he seemed to have lost his fighting spirit in the enervating atmosphere the old General created. Shelton would attend the many councils of war Elphinstone summoned, but would insultingly lie down on the floor and pretend to go to sleep, while beside his prone body the discussions, which decided nothing, went on.
While shot from the Rikabashee fort thudded into the cantonments, Shelton delayed attacking until Macnaghten insisted that Elphinstone should issue peremptory orders.
Elphinstone reluctantly did so and Shelton began to assemble a force of some 2,000 men, when Elphinstone had second thoughts. ‘I was occupied,’ says Shelton, ‘in telling off the force about 10 a.m., when I heard Elphinstone say to his aide-de-camp, “I think we had better give it up” — which was done, and I returned, as you may conceive, disgusted with such vacillation.’ Clearly, the bitter quarrel between the General and his second-in-command was affecting operations.
Shelton complained to Macnaghten, who managed to bring the General round again to the importance of occupying the fort — from which bullets still whined past the ears of those in the cantonments.
Captain Bellew volunteered to blow the gate open by gunpowder, but in the excitement of the moment he blew open a small wicket gate instead and when the storming party under Colonel Mackrell rushed forward only one at a time could get through. Mackrell and Lieutenant Bird forced their way in, many soldiers were shot down outside, Captain Westmacott fell with a round in his brain, Captain Macrae was sabred.
While the storming party milled about outside there was a cry of ‘Cavalry!’ The British troops wavered, then turned and fled. The one-armed Shelton now showed his courage, standing upright where the Afghan fire was hottest to rally his men. Under his example, the disorderly lines re-formed, but when Shelton called for an advance only a Scottish private named Stewart responded. The demoralised British gave way to the Afghan cavalry and once more the fearless Shelton’s example inspired them. Finally, when shells from the 9-pounders in the cantonment began to bowl over the Afghans, Shelton was able to lead his men forward to capture the fort.
Of those who had forced their way in earlier there were only two survivors. Colonel Mackrell was found bloody and almost unrecognisable from his wounds and carried into the cantonment to die; several men had fallen to huge gashes from the Afghan tulwars (sabres). Lieutenant Bird and a sepoy had barricaded themselves into a stable with logs of wood from which they had shot down thirty Afghans who had tried to enter; the bodies lay in a heap before the door.
So the fort was occupied with an absurd and tragic cost in lives. One or two other small forts near by were also taken and the action kept the Afghans quiet for the next two or three days.
The ever-watchful Lady Sale after having watched this and other actions, noted that the Afghans had some advantages over the British troops. ‘One consists in dropping their men fresh for combat,’ she observed. ‘Each horseman takes a foot soldier up behind him, and when he is arrived at the spot he is required to fire from, 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. Their jezails carry much farther than our muskets and, whilst they are out of range of our fire, theirs tells murderously on us. They fire from rests and then take excellent aim; and are capital riflemen, hiding behind any stone sufficiently large to cover their head, and quietly watching their opportunities to snipe off our people.’
The British troops were armed with the musket known as the Brown Bess, only slightly improved since first used in India nearly 100 years earlier in the time of Robert Clive. Made either in gun factories surrounding the Tower of London or in Birmingham, it weighed 11 lb. 2 oz., and had a barrel 46 inches long with a bore of 0.753 inches.
Against the hand-made Afghan jezails with barrels 60 and even 70 inches long, and greater accuracy, range and muzzle velocity, the unfortunate British infantrymen found the Brown Bess a very sorrowful weapon, for its effective range was little more than 300 yards. Beyond this range British artillery usually took over — 6- and 9-pounders firing case- or grape-shot, only really effective against massed troops, just as was the controlled fire-power in repeated volleys of infantrymen armed with the Brown Bess.
Meantime, Mohan Lal, Macnaghten’s secret agent, had advanced 9,000 rupees and promised another 12,000 directly the heads of two of the chief rebels, Abdullah Khan and Meer Musjidi, were brought to him. He chose these two chiefs as his first vic
tims because they were most influential — the ringleaders in the attack on Burnes’s house and Johnson’s treasury.
Two tribesmen, Abdul Azeez and Mahomed Oolah, were his chosen assassins. Within a few days Mahomed Oolah broke into Meer Musjidi’s house at night and strangled the chief while he slept.
It is hard to say what Macnaghten really hoped to gain by isolated assassination of this kind, for it was hardly possible for him to bribe assassins to kill all the ringleaders of the rising. But Macnaghten by now must have become desperate in his burning wish for effective action against the rebels. It must be remembered that this irritating rising of a humble race had occurred when he was about to step up to the very pinnacle of his career.
But assassination did little immediate good, for on 13 November things worsened. An Afghan force of several thousand assembled on the Behmaru ridge — which was about 600 yards west of the north-west corner of the cantonments — obviously to stop food going from there to the British and to attack the cantonments with jezail and cannon fire. No counter-action having been taken by noon, Macnaghten insisted that Elphinstone should order Shelton to counter-attack, but by midafternoon still not a shot had been fired. Macnaghten then sought out Shelton and found him wasting time. With commendable restraint he said: ‘Brigadier Shelton, 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…’
But it was five o’clock and dusk was falling before the force finally took the field. One of the British guns got stuck in a canal while the advance body of infantry under Major Thain moved up the hill to close with the enemy. The Afghan cavalry charged and the infantry fired wildly at short range. When the smoke had cleared not a single Afghan had fallen and they were charging furiously down upon the British bayonets.
To Lady Sale, watching from the cantonments it was terrifying. ‘My very heart,’ she wrote, ‘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…’
For a minute or two there was panic and confusion. The column gave way and friend and foe interlocked as the horsemen charged through the bayonets with a whirl of sabres. The British retreated down the slope, but rallied, and under cover of accurate shooting from Vincent Eyre’s guns advanced again.
The British cavalry now charged the enemy’s flank and scattered them. The infantry moved in, gained the height and captured the two Afghan guns. The enemy, says Lawrence fled ‘with such precipitation that they abandoned their two guns and our troops might easily have followed them into and taken the city, had not the night come on. Brigadier Shelton thus gained a brilliant success against his own will, but his previous procrastination had rendered it impossible to reap any real advantage from the victory.’
One of the guns was now manhandled into the cantonment and when no volunteers could be found to help bring in the other — the Afghans were showering it with jezail fire — Vincent Eyre went out bravely with a gunner and spiked it.
The Afghans now began a small, but lively counter-attack upon the cantonment, and the British force hurried back to help repel it. It was done easily enough, but the hopelessness of having to retire to the cantonments and leave the Behmaru heights gained at such cost now became painfully clear.
Sooner or later the Afghans would reoccupy them and the British would again have to lose men in driving them out, thus paying over and over in blood for the initial mistake two years ago of not entering the Bala Hissar.
Casualties had been heavy on both sides during the action — some 200 British had been killed or wounded; Major Thain was hurt severely by a great sword slash, Captain Paton’s arm was shattered by a bullet and had to be amputated — anaesthetics were not in use by the British in India then; sometimes the shock of rough and ready surgery killed those who suffered it.
All night the defenders in the cantonment saw lights on the hillside and heard cries of lamentation from the women burying the Afghans who had fallen. Could this have brought home to a few of the British that the Afghans were not, after all, merely treacherous savages who loved to fight, but brave patriots dying to free their country from a ruthless invader?
So involved were these early-Victorian English with their empire and, unlike their eighteenth-century forebears — so race-proud, so certain of the rightness of their overseas policies, that practically none of them managed to look objectively, let alone with any sympathy at this primitive people whose land they had seized, ruined and drenched in blood.
Lady Sale made an attempt to do so. ‘I often hear the Afghans designated as cowards,’ she noted at this time. ‘They are a fine manly-looking set, and I can only suppose it arises from the British idea… that assassination is a cowardly act. They 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 Afghans 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.’
In the absence of Dost Mahommed in India, the Afghan chiefs leading this struggle for liberation, now chose a king in opposition to the British puppet Shah Shuja up in the Bala Hissar. He was Nawab Mohammed Zemaun, not Shuja’s blind brother, but the son of an elder brother of Dost Mahommed, the same one who, at first opposing the rising, had tried to help Captain Trevor. The chiefs assembled in the mosque and read the prayer for the new monarch, whom some of the moollahs, or priests, refused to accept on the grounds of legitimacy. So while Shah Shuja sat tight in the fortress and lacked power in the country, Mohammed Zemaun, backed by many of the chiefs, took over and celebrated by minting his own money.
Macnaghten, all this time still hoped for the return of Sale’s brigade, and almost daily was writing to his political assistant, Macgregor, with Sale in Gundamuk, imploring him to procure it. ‘I have written to you four times, requesting that you would come up with Sale’s brigade as soon as possible,’ he protested on 12 November. ‘Our force is so small that we cannot act on the offensive and we have not above a fortnight’s supplies. We have lost a great many officers…’
And two days later: ‘Dozens of letters have been written… urging your immediate return with Sale’s brigade to Kabul; and if you have not started by the time you receive this, I earnestly beg that you will do so immediately. Our situation is a very precarious one; but with your assistance we should all do well and you must render it to us if you have any regard for our lives or for the honour of our country… The Ghilzye force being here I should conceive you will experience no opposition on the road.’
But there was to be from now on only bad news for the garrison. The next day, 15 November, at 3 a.m., two worn and bloody officers on horseback with a Ghurka soldier walking beside them crossed the Kabul plain in the darkness and entered the cantonments. They were Major Eldred Pottinger and Lieutenant Haughton, who had somehow managed to cross hostile country from Charikar, in Kohistan, 100 miles to the north, to report that the Ghurka regiment in an outpost there had been cut to pieces. Pottinger was wounded in the leg and Haughton’s hand was cut off, while his head hung forward on his chest — his neck muscles had been severed by a sword cut. Wearing Afghan dress they had crossed the sleeping city of Kabul.
Pottinger’s news was hardly cheering. Charikar had fallen — the Ghurka regiment no longer existed — a large force of Kohistanee tribesmen would be marching to join the Kabul rebels. And worst of all, Macnaghten now learned that Sale’s brigade, which he had looked upon as a lifeline, had instead marched westwards for Jellalabad from Gundamuk.
General Sale had held a council of war when he received the request. The outcome was a decision not to attempt to force the passes in a fighting return to Kabul.
The decision for Sale must have been a hard one — his wife and
daughter were still in Kabul; it was opposed, too, by Broad-foot and some of Sale’s best officers. Yet Sale had convinced himself that confined as he would be in the narrow passes while under attack from a nation in arms he risked a disaster — the annihilation of his entire force.
Also, to carry 200 wounded and sick back with him would have been impossible. He would have been forced to leave them guarded by a detachment at Gundamuk and for this and his own force he certainly did not have enough rations. In the event, his decision was the correct one, for he might have fought his way back to Kabul only to face starvation because the Afghans had seized the food supplies there and scattered them across the country.
But instead of staying at Gundamuk, where his force threatened the Ghilzyes in their traditional territories and discouraged them from seething into Kabul, Sale then launched his force another 80 miles west to Jellalabad out of the area of operations.
Macnaghten tried hard to bring it back and on 17 November sent a final appeal: ‘I have written to you daily, pointing out our precarious state, and urging you to return here with Sale’s brigade, with all possible expedition. General Elphinstone has done the same and we now learn to our dismay, that you have proceeded to Jellalabad. Our situation is a desperate one if you do not immediately return to our relief, and I beg that you will do so without a moment’s delay…’
But that same night his hopes were dashed. A letter he received from his political assistant Macgregor, dated 13 November, made it clear that the brigade would not return. Typically, he put the best face possible on it. ‘I perceive now that you could not well have joined us,’ he replied, and went on to urge that the Sikhs should be brought in under the terms of the Tripartite Treaty to relieve them at Kabul. ‘If there is any difficulty about the Sikhs getting through the pass, Mackeson should offer a bribe to the. Khyberees of a lakh of rupees (£10,000) or more to send them safe passage,’ he wrote, with as fervent a belief as ever in the power of money.