spread to other stations, and the situation was temporarily critical;
but fortunately there was a British regiment at Rawul Pindi, and
the sepoys came to reason without the necessity on Campbell's part
of resorting to strong measures. When at Rawul Pindi he had the
gratification to learn of his having been promoted to be a Knight of
the Bath for his services in the recent campaign; and Sir Charles
Napier in sending him the intimation added that "no man had won it
better," and expressed the hope that "he would long wear the spurs."
In November he was transferred to the divisional command of the
Peshawur District, a more important, but also a more unquiet post
than Rawul Pindi. Thenceforth for three years he was to be the
Warden of the turbulent north-western frontier. It pleased him to
find in his command his old regiment the Ninety-Eighth, and also the
Sixty-First which he had led at Chillianwallah. When in February,
1850, Sir Charles Napier reached Peshawur on a tour of inspection,
Sir Colin was able to assemble for review quite a little army of
all ranks; three troops of horse-artillery and two field-batteries,
three cavalry regiments, three European and three native infantry
regiments. While Sir Charles was in Colin Campbell's district, it
happened that he came under hostile fire for the last time in his
tumultuous life. Between Peshawur and Kohat, both places in British
territory, a mountain road ran outside that territory through a long
and dangerous defile. The Afridis inhabiting the intervening hill
country had complained that their subsidy for keeping open the pass
had not been paid, and in revenge had slaughtered a working party
of sappers and miners. Sir Charles determined to force the defile
in person. Campbell, on Napier's requisition, detailed a tolerably
strong force as escort to the Commander-in-Chief. It chanced that
before starting Napier inspected a regiment of irregulars under the
control of the much-vaunted Punjaub Government. The men were of fine
physique, but "one soldier had a musket without a lock, another a
lock without a musket. A stalwart soldier, his broad chest swelling
with military pride, his eyes sparkling with a malicious twinkle,
held on his shoulder between his finger and thumb a flint--his
only arm." The defile was duly forced, but its passage was one
long skirmish. Kohat was inspected and reinforced, but Napier, on
commencing his return march, found that the pickets left to keep the
road open had been roughly handled and had suffered serious loss.
The Afridis were very daring, and actually fired on Sir Charles
and his staff at short range. The loss sustained in this somewhat
quixotic expedition amounted to one hundred and ten men killed and
wounded--"not much," comments Napier grimly, "when one considers
the terrible defile through which we passed, defended by a warlike
race." His biographer calls the enterprise an "interesting episode";
it certainly was not a very wise enterprise to be undertaken by
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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