installed, the venerable and amiable Hassan Khan. Baker's rear-guard was scarcely clear of the valley when a mob of tribesmen and sepoys attacked the fort in which the old Sirdar was residing, shot him through the head, and then hacked his body to pieces. It was too clear that governors unsupported by bayonets, and whose only weapons were tact and persuasiveness, were at an extreme discount in the condition which Afghanistan presented in the end of November and the beginning of December. CHAPTER IV: THE DECEMBER STORM The invader of Afghanistan may count as inevitable a national rising against him, but the Afghans are a people so immersed in tribal quarrels and domestic blood-feuds that the period of the outbreak is curiously uncertain. The British force which placed Shah Soojah on the throne and supported him there, was in Afghanistan for more than two years before the waves of the national tempest rose around it. The national combination against Roberts' occupation was breaking its strength against the Sherpur defences while as yet the Cabul field force had not been within sight of the capital for more than two months. There seems no relation between opportunity and the period of the inevitable outburst. If in November 1841 the Cabul Sirdars had restrained themselves for a few days longer two more regiments would have been following on Sale's track, and the British force in the cantonments would have been proportionately attenuated. Roberts might have been assailed with better chance of success when his force was dispersed between the Siah Sung camp, the Balla Hissar, and Sherpur, than when concentrated in the strong defensive position against which the Afghans beat in vain. Perhaps the rising ripened faster in 1879 than in 1841 because in the former period no Macnaghten fomented intrigues and scattered gold. Perhaps Shere Ali's military innovations may have instilled into the masses of his time some rough lessons in the art and practice of speedy mobilisation. The crowning disgrace of 1842 was that a trained army of regular soldiers should have been annihilated by a few thousand hillmen, among whom there was no symptom either of real valour or of good leadership. To Roberts and his force attaches the credit of having defeated the persistent and desperate efforts of levies at least ten times superior in numbers, well armed, far from undisciplined, courageous beyond all experience of Afghan nature, and under the guidance of a leader who had some conception of strategy, and who certainly was no mean tactician.