Sale’s Brigade—Evacuation of Gundamuck—Skirmishes with the Enemy—Occupation of Jellalabad—State of the Defences—Successful Sallies—The Fortifications repaired—Disastrous Tidings from Caubul—Summons to Surrender—Arrival of Dr. Brydon 336 CHAPTER IV. [January, 1842.] The Retreat from Caubul—Departure of the Army—Attack on the Rear-Guard—The First Day’s March—Encampment at Begramee—The Passage of the Koord-Caubul Pass—Tezeen—Jugdulluck—Sufferings of the Force—Negotiations with Akbar Khan—Massacre at Gundamuck—Escape of Dr. Brydon 360 APPENDIX 391 THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN. BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. [August-December: 1839.] Dawn of the Restoration—Difficulties of our Position—Proposed Withdrawal of the Army—Arrival of Colonel Wade—His Operations—Lord on the Hindoo-Koosh—Evils of our Policy—Defective Agency—Moollah Shikore—Our Political Agents—Operations in the Khybur Pass—The Fall of Khelat. Restored to the home of his fathers, Shah Soojah was not contented. Even during the excitement of the march to Caubul he had complained of the narrow kingdom to which he was about to return; and now, as he looked out from the windows of his palace over the fair expanse of country beneath him, he sighed to think that the empire of Ahmed Shah had been so grievously curtailed. Very different, indeed, was the Douranee Empire, over which the sceptre of Shah Soojah was now waved, from that which his father had handed down to Zemaun Shah and his brothers, to be sacrificed by their weakness and disunion. The kingdom, which had once extended from Balkh to Shikarpoor, and from Herat to Cashmere, had now shrunk and collapsed. On every side its integrity had been invaded. Cashmere and Mooltan had fallen to the Sikhs; Peshawur had been wrested from the Afghans by the same unscrupulous neighbour; the independence of Herat had been guaranteed to a branch of the Royal family; the Beloochees had asserted pretensions unknown in the times of Ahmed Shah; the petty Princes on the northern hill-frontier no longer acknowledged their allegiance to Caubul. In whatsoever direction he turned his eyes, he beheld the mutilations to which the old Douranee Empire had been subjected; and yearned to recover some of the provinces which had been severed from the domain of his fathers.