This feeling may tend to elevate the standard of military character, but it must at the same time preclude the probability of calm or impartial examination, so far as the great body of the nation is concerned; and it is therefore the more obviously incumbent on those who, from a more intimate knowledge of the facts, or from habits of more deliberate investigation, are not carried away by the tide of popular indignation and invective, to weigh the circumstances with conscientious caution, and to await the result of judicial enquiry before they venture to apportion the blame or even to estimate its amount. "The following notes," says Lieutenant Eyre in his preface, "were penned to relieve the monotony of an Affghan prison, while yet the events which they record continued fresh in my memory. I now give them publicity, in the belief that the information which they contain on the dreadful scenes lately enacted in Affghanistan, though clothed in a homely garb, will scarcely fail to be acceptable to many of my countrymen, both in India and England, who may be ignorant of the chief particulars. The time, from the 2d November 1841, on which day the sudden popular outbreak at Cabul took place, to the 13th January 1842, which witnessed the annihilation of the last small remnant of our unhappy force at Gundamuk, was one continued tragedy. The massacre of Sir Alexander Burnes and his associates,--the loss of our commissariat fort--the defeat of our troops under Brigadier Shelton at Beymaroo--the treacherous assassination of Sir William Macnaghten, our envoy and minister--and lastly, the disastrous retreat and utter destruction of a force consisting of 5000 fighting men and upwards of 12,000 camp-followers,--are events which will assuredly rouse the British Lion from his repose, and excite an indignant spirit of enquiry in every breast. Men will not be satisfied, in this case, with a bare statement of the facts, but they will doubtless require to be made acquainted with the causes which brought about such awful effects. We have lost six entire regiments of infantry, three companies of sappers, a troop of European horse-artillery, half the mountain-train battery, nearly a whole regiment of regular cavalry, and four squadrons of irregular horse, besides a well-stocked magazine, which _alone_, taking into consideration the cost of transport up to Cabul, may be estimated at nearly a million sterling. From first to last, not less than 104 British officers have fallen: their names will be found in the Appendix. I glance but slightly at the _political_ events of this period, not having been one of the initiated; and I do not pretend to enter into _minute_ particulars with regard to even our _military_ transactions, more especially those not immediately connected