The operations of the day were unquestionably successful so far as they went, but the actual results attained scarcely warranted the anticipation that the Afghans would acknowledge themselves defeated by breaking up their combination and dispersing to their homes. It was true that they had been defeated, but they had fought with unprecedented stubbornness and gave little evidence of being cowed. Throughout the day the villages around Cabul had evinced a rancorous hostility which had a marked significance. Not less significant was the participation in the fighting of the day on the part of the population of Cabul. As Baker was returning to Sherpur in the evening he had been fired upon from the Balla Hissar, and his flanking parties had found ambushes of armed Afghans among the willows between the city and the cantonment. But for the skill and courage of the non-commissioned officer in charge a convoy of wounded on its way to Sherpur would certainly have been destroyed. But there was a stronger argument than any of those indications, significant as they were of the unbroken spirit of the Afghans, telling against the probability that the operations of the day would have the effect of putting down the national rising. The hordes which had gathered to the banners of the Mushk-i-Alum and Mahomed Jan combined with the fanaticism of the _jehad_ a fine secular greed for plunder. Was it likely that they would scatter resignedly, leaving untouched the rich booty of the city that had been almost within arm's-length as they looked down on it from the peak of the Takht-i-Shah, and whose minarets they were within sight of on the spur and in the villages of Beni Hissar? Was that ever likely? And was it not made more and yet more unlikely when on the afternoon of the 13th Macpherson, acting on orders, moved his camp to the Balla Hissar heights, evacuating Deh Mazung and leaving open to the enemy the road into the city through the Cabul gorge? The following morning was to show how promptly and how freely the Afghans had taken advantage of the access to the capital thus afforded them. It must never be forgotten that at this time our people in Afghanistan held no more territory than the actual ground they stood upon and the terrain swept by their fire. No trustworthy intelligence from outside that region was procurable; and of this there can be no clearer evidence than that the General was under the belief that the enemy had been 'foiled in their western and southern operations.'