Such were the circumstances attending his abdication. Up to this afternoon it was believed that the ex-Amir was acting in good faith, but within the last few hours we have had reason to change our opinion. Since the entrance into the Bala Hissar, on October 12th, Yakub Khan has been living in a large tent close to head-quarters, and has had about him a little army of servants, whose tents also have been pitched about that of their master. He was reported to be much happier in his mind now that his scheming Ministers had been removed from about his person, and once or twice he had shown himself among us in the evening, walking with General Roberts up and down the row of tents in which the Staff are lodged, and listening with much delight to the band playing near. The restraint placed upon him after he had come voluntarily into our camp from among his own people on the lower slope of the Ridge, was merely that a guard of twenty European soldiers was stationed over his tents, while two sentries paced before them night and day. This was his “guard of honour” nominally, though if he had tried to escape they would instantly have become his gaolers. It was most important that we should have him with us while we were examining into the guilt of the various persons concerned in the Massacre; for if once he had been a free agent, he would probably have been made an instrument of intrigue by such men as the Mustaufi and the Wazir. This was proved by the episode of Nek Mahomed’s visit to him at Charasia the day before the action of the 6th, the commander-in-chief of the rebel army returning to Cabul and proclaiming that the Amir had ordered all men to resist the British force. Thus was there every reason to keep him under fairly close surveillance, as the scattered units of his disbanded army are still capable of doing harm if once gathered together. In my letter of the 23rd I pointed out very fully the anomalous position we were occupying here: proclaiming the Amir’s authority on the one hand, and appropriating all his stores and munitions of war on the other. This was, of course, written without knowledge of what had occurred on the 12th; and, viewed in the new light that has now scattered the political darkness here, the anomaly at once vanishes. Yakub Khan had voluntarily cast away all power and responsibility, and the only course remaining for Sir F. Roberts was to assume the discarded authority and take every means to secure order in Cabul. The clearing out of the Bala Hissar and the appropriation of all that it contained, except Yakub Khan’s personal property, now stands out as merely an ordinary taking over of effects surrendered to us, and not the spoliation of a sovereign whose authority we were re-establishing. We could not, in fact, have done otherwise, unless we had waited for a declaration of the ministerial policy at home, and the delay might, perhaps, have had mischievous results.