General Nott re-entered Candahar on the 12th of March. The repulse which the insurgents had received at the city gate gave a heavy blow to their cause. It brought disunion into the Douranee camp, and made the Ghazees denounce the chiefs who had plunged them into disaster, and resolve to forswear the perilous trade of fanaticism which brought so much suffering upon them. The ryots, who had joined the standard of the true believers, now returned in numbers to their peaceful avocations; and Major Rawlinson exerted himself to the utmost to re-assure the public mind, and restore peace and prosperity to the surrounding villages.[120] As the month advanced there were many encouraging signs of the approaching dissolution of the Douranee camp. Some of its components were already talking of moving off to Caubul; and it was said that Meerza Ahmed had sent his family to the capital preparatory to retreating in that direction himself. But there is never anything sustained and consistent in Afghan politics. The appearances of to-day belie the appearances of yesterday, and are again succeeded by varied symptoms to-morrow. The Douranee chiefs at one time seemed to be on the point of a general disruption; and then, after the lapse of a few days, they met in council, and cooling down under a shower of mutual reproaches, swore solemn oaths to be true to each other, and to league themselves together for another attack upon the Feringhees. At the end of the third week of March they were again upon the move. Upon the 24th, they were within a short distance of Killa-chuk, where Nott had before attacked them. On this day the Parsewan Janbaz attempted to renew certain negotiations, which they had initiated a few days before, but which had been coldly received. They offered to quit the Douranee camp and to move off to Caubul, if a month’s pay were given them to defray their expenses on the march. But Nott indignantly rejected the proposal. “I will never give them,” he wrote to Rawlinson, “one rupee; and if I can ever get near them I will destroy them to a man. It is my wish that no communications shall be held with them. They have murdered our people, and plundered the country.”[121]