Ever since his arrival at the head quarters at Caubul he had been, in his own words, “unlucky in the state of his health.” From the beginning of May to the beginning of October he had been suffering, with little intermission, from fever and rheumatic gout. Sometimes he had been confined wholly to his couch; at others he was enabled to go abroad in a palanquin. During one or two brief intervals he had sufficiently recovered his strength to trust himself on the back of a horse. He was in the enjoyment of one of these intervals—but expecting every day to relinquish a burden which he was so ill able to bear[133]—when on the 2nd of November, whilst inspecting the guards, he “had a very severe fall—the horse falling upon him,”[134] and he was compelled to return to his quarters. From that time, though he never spared himself, it was painfully obvious that the Caubul army was without a chief. The General was perplexed—bewildered. He was utterly without resources of his own. A crisis had come upon him, demanding all the energies of a robust constitution and a vigorous understanding; and it had found him with a frame almost paralysed by disease, and a mind quite clouded by suffering. He had little knowledge of the political condition of Afghanistan, of the feelings of the people, of the language they spoke, or the country they inhabited. He was compelled, therefore, to rely upon the information of others, and to seek the advice of those with whom he was associated. So circumstanced, the ablest and most confident general would have been guided by the counsels of the British Envoy. But General Elphinstone was guided by every man’s counsels—generally by the last speaker’s—by captains and subalterns, by any one who had a plan to propose or any kind of advice to offer. He was, therefore, in a constant state of oscillation; now inclining to one opinion, now to another; now determining upon a course of action, now abandoning it; the resolutions of one hour giving way before the doubts of its successor, until, in the midst of these vacillations, the time to strike passed away for ever, and the loss was not to be retrieved.