On the same day, the 37th native infantry, three companies of the Shah's
sappers under Captain Walsh, and three guns of the mountain train under
Lieutenant Green, retraced their steps towards Cabul, where the sappers,
pushing on, arrived unopposed; but the rest of the detachment was
attacked on the 2d November--on the afternoon of which day, Major
Griffiths, who commanded it, received orders to force his way to Cabul,
where the insurrection had that morning broken out. His march through
the pass, and from Bootkhak to Cabul, was one continued conflict; but
the gallantry of his troops, and the excellence of his own dispositions,
enabled him to carry the whole of his wounded and baggage safe to the
cantonments at Cabul, where he arrived about three o'clock on the
morning of the 3d November, followed almost to the gates by about 3000
Giljyes.
The causes of the insurrection in the capital are not yet fully
ascertained, or, if ascertained, they have not been made public.
Lieutenant Eyre does not attempt to account for it; but he gives us the
following memorandum of Sir W. Macnaghten's, found, we presume, amongst
his papers after his death:--
"The immediate cause of the outbreak in the capital was a
seditious letter addressed by Abdoollah Khan to several chiefs
of influence at Cabul, stating that it was the design of the
Envoy to seize and send them all to London! The principal
rebels met on the previous night, and, relying on the
inflammable feelings of the people of Cabul, they pretended
that the King had issued an order to put all infidels to death;
having previously forged an order from him for our destruction,
by the common process of washing out the contents of a genuine
paper, with the exception of the seal, and substituting their
own wicked inventions."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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