Major-General Sir Robert Sale, on taking possession of Jellalabad, found the fortress in a very dilapidated state, and the inhabitants disaffected to the government of the Shah. The Affghans collected to about ten thousand, and the walls of the fort being without parapets, and the garrison having only one day and a half supplies, on half rations, a sally was made on the 14th November, which routed the enemy, and enabled the troops to collect provisions, and erect works for the defence of the fortress. On this latter duty, the THIRTEENTH Light Infantry were conspicuous for the alacrity and indefatigable perseverance they evinced under circumstances of the most disheartening and trying character. The demolition of ruinous forts and old walls, filling up ravines, destroying gardens, cutting down groves, raising the parapets to six or seven feet high, repairing and widening the ramparts, extending the bastions, retrenching three of the gates, covering the fourth with an outwork, and excavating a ditch ten feet in depth and twelve in width round the whole of the walls, were works of great labour, which called forth the efforts of every individual. While thus employed another array of many thousands of Affghans on the 27th of November again invested the place, but they were completely routed and dispersed by a sally of the garrison on the 1st December. [Sidenote: 1842] On the 9th of January, 1842, the garrison was summoned to give up the fortress, by the leader of the Affghan rebellion, in fulfilment of a convention entered into at Cabool; but Major-General Sir Robert Sale, being fully assured of the bad faith of the insurgents, refused; the annihilation of the troops from the capital, in the Ghilzie defiles, by the severity of the climate, and the basest treachery on the part of those in whose promises they had confided, proved the correctness of the major-general’s estimation of the Affghan character.