Military Service and Adventures in the Far East: Vol. 2 (of 2): Including Sketches of the Campaigns Against the Afghans in 1839, and the Sikhs in 1845-6.MacKinnon, Daniel Henry
History
Military Service and Adventures in the Far East: Vol. 2 (of 2): Including Sketches of the Campaigns Against the Afghans in 1839, and the Sikhs in 1845-6.
MacKinnon, Daniel Henry
Afghan Wars -- Personal narratives, British; British -- Afghanistan -- History -- 19th century -- Sources; British -- India -- Punjab -- History -- 19th century -- Sources; Great Britain. Army -- Military life; Sikh War, 1845-1846 -- Personal narratives, British
THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF RETURNS TO ENGLAND--DISASTROUS INSURRECTION
THROUGHOUT AFGHANISTAN--JELLALABAD HOLDS OUT, AND GENERAL POLLOCK
ADVANCES UPON CAUBUL.
After the breaking up of the army of the Indus, Sir John Keane
proceeded down the Indus, and shortly afterwards embarked for England,
where those honours, titles, and pecuniary rewards awaited him, which
would have entitled him to the appellation of one of the most fortunate
soldiers who ever acquired laurels in India--had he survived long to
enjoy the distinction.
Fortunate, indeed, may Sir John Keane be termed, in having brought to
an apparently successful conclusion a campaign which was founded in
error and injustice, and placed in the hands of the commander-in-chief
with the fullest assurance of the directing arm of Providence leading
the small band through a country of which the little that was known
should have induced a supposition that an army provided with an
insufficient amount of supplies must meet with enormous difficulties.
By some unaccountable fatality, the Afghans neglected the advantages
thus afforded them, and thereby induced a supposition that the warlike
spirit of the tribes who had overrun and conquered Hindostan had
departed for ever; and that a handful of British soldiers would be
sufficient to maintain possession of a country inhabited by a nation
whose hands were fitted at their birth to the cimeter, and whose eyes,
when capable of distinguishing objects with accuracy, were directed
along the barrel of a rifle.
Trusting, doubtless, in the resources of their monarch to repel the
British invasion, no coalition was formed amongst the mountain tribes;
but when the abhorred Feringhee had seized their king and established
himself in the land of their fathers, and when, moreover, they beheld
him, lulled into security, break up his forces and march the greater
portion of his army homewards through the jaws of the tremendous
portals of Afghanistan, the lighted torch flew with resolute speed
from the valley of Quetta to the mountains of Kohistan. The Ghilzie,
whose heel had been bruised, but whose arm was not unnerved, roused
his brethren to vengeance, and the eloquence of Akbar, pleading for
the diadem which had been snatched from his ambitious hopes, found a
responsive echo in the heart of every true Barukzye.
A tribe of insolent plunderers had established themselves in the Khoord
Caubul, and had the audacity to interfere with the letter-carriers.
The gallant Sale, with his brigade, hastened to brush these intruders
from the surface of the mountains, but the band of robbers had swollen
to an army; and though, by desperate valour and unwearied exertion, a
passage was forced through every obstacle, yet the passes closed upon
the isolated brigade, and the communication with the ill-fated garrison
of Caubul was cut off for ever.
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