Donald Stewart had occupied Candahar with but little opposition, and had also seized Khelat-i-Ghilzi and Girishk. There was much outrage, also in the Pishin and other valleys, both by the turbulent hill tribes and the dispersed or disbanded soldiery of the Amir. By May 1879 Yakoub Khan, who had succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, Shere Ali, had recognised the futility of further resistance. The Peace of Gandamak was signed, by which the control of the foreign affairs of Afghanistan was to be vested in the Indian Government, the Kurram, Pishin, and Sibi Passes were to be attached to the Indian Empire, the Khyber Pass was also to be under our control, and a British Resident was to be installed at Cabul. Sir Louis Cavagnari accordingly proceeded there with a small escort on the 17th June 1879. The calm that followed on the conclusion of the first period of the war was rudely broken. Sir Louis Cavagnari’s sanguine belief in a friendly Afghanistan was ill founded. But unlike the close of the first period of the previous war in 1843 to 1844, the massacre of the Resident and his people, which caused the second “army of vengeance,” took place while they were in apparently peaceful occupation of the Residency, and in Cabul, and not when in full retreat on India. There was even less warning of disaster in 1878 than in 1844. When the news came there were troops in the Khyber, and Kurram Vallies, and at Candahar. In the Kurram Valley rapidly assembled the brigades of Macpherson and Baker, in which served the 72nd, the 67th, and the 92nd European Regiments, with many gallant Sikh and Ghoorka battalions, well provided with artillery and a cavalry brigade, in which were the 9th Lancers. Pushing on at once beyond the Peiwar Kotal, the Shaturgardan Pass was occupied before the enemy could get there, and garrisoned; and then the army, pushing on by Ali Kehl, in the Logar Valley, first met and defeated the insurgent Afghans at Charasia, where twenty guns were taken with but little loss. Yet another skirmish, and the army reached Cabul. The 67th was the first to enter, playing the quickstep that had been played long years before by the unhappy 44th, and the army then took up cantonments in the fortified district of Sherpur without the city walls.