After a day or two spent at Barrackpore, Lord Ellenborough put himself into a palanquin, and proceeded to Allahabad. Halting at Benares, he addressed the Secret Committee on the 21st of April. Much stirring intelligence had met him as he advanced. Good and evil were blended together in the tidings that reached him between Calcutta and Benares. Pollock had entered the Khybur Pass and forced his way to Ali-Musjid. Sale had defeated Akbar Khan in a general action on the plains of Jellalabad. But England had been beaten back at Hykulzye, and withdrawn his brigade to Quettah. All these things the Governor-General now reported to the Secret Committee, in a despatch which can by no means be regarded as a model of historical truth. Writing again on the following day to the home authorities, he stated that he had “by no means altered his deliberate opinion that it is expedient to withdraw the troops under Major-General Pollock and those under Major-General Nott, at the earliest practicable period, into positions wherein they may have certain and easy communication with India.” He had already written to General Nott, instructing him to take immediate measures to withdraw the garrison of Khelat-i-Ghilzye and evacuate Candahar. “You will evacuate,” wrote the Chief Secretary, “the city of Candahar.... You will proceed to take up a position at Quettah, until the season may enable you to retire upon Sukkur. The object of the above-directed measure is to withdraw all our forces to Sukkur at the earliest period at which the season and other circumstances may permit you to take up a new position there. The manner of effecting this now necessary object is, however, left to your discretion.”[164] And so the Governor-General, who in Calcutta had determined to “re-establish our military reputation by the infliction of some signal and decisive blow upon the Afghans,” could now hardly write a sentence suggestive of anything else but withdrawal and evacuation. How it happened that, within the space of little more than a month, so great a change had come over the counsels of the Governor-General, it would be difficult to determine, if he himself had not furnished the necessary explanation. “The severe check,” he wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, “experienced by Brigadier England’s small corps on the 28th ultimo—an event disastrous as it was unexpected—and of which we have not yet information to enable us to calculate all the results—has a tendency so to cripple the before limited means of movement and of action which were possessed by General Nott, as to render it expedient to take immediate measures for the ultimate safety of that officer’s corps, by withdrawing it, at the earliest practicable period, from its advanced position into nearer communication with India.”