Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (52 page)

Brigadier Shelton was no more effective. ‘Shelton appeared from the commencement to despair of success,’ wrote Mohan Lal, ‘which produced a baneful effect in every fighting man.’
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‘Although already supplied with a force superior in numbers to that which had shortly before carried the strong fort of Qalat by assault in open day, Shelton had remained totally inactive,’ agreed George Lawrence. ‘Even so obvious an action as securing the [old Mughal] Shah Bagh and Mohammad Sharif’s fort [which overlooked the cantonment] was totally neglected, although these lay between us and that containing the commissariat stores, on which the very existence of the force depended.’
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On 4 November, Hugh Johnson, the paymaster of Shah Shuja’s force, went to Elphinstone and explained the situation with stark clarity. He told the General that ‘there were but two days’ provisions left in cantonments . . . that we could not procure supplies from the surrounding country with the enemy out in force in the neighbouring forts, and [that] the consequent destruction of our force [was inevitable] from famine, unless the Commissariat Fort were taken possession of at all hazards’. Elphinstone reluctantly agreed with Johnson’s analysis, and sent a message to the defender of the fort, Ensign Warren of the 5th Native Infantry, ‘a man of cool determined courage, who said little and always went about with a couple of bulldogs at his heels’, telling him that a relief force would be sent to him at two in the morning. He then did nothing to bring the promise to fulfilment. Warren replied with a stream of messages begging for immediate assistance and explaining that unless he were relieved without delay he would have to abandon his position as much of his guard, which initially had been only seventy men strong, had now run away. The following morning at five o’clock, the commissariat fort was finally abandoned, Warren and his handful of men having bravely waited a full three hours beyond the time by which Elphinstone had promised to relieve them. ‘The enemy then took immediate possession,’ wrote Lady Sale, ‘depriving us of [almost] our only means of subsistence.’

This left just one centre of British supplies intact, the Qal’a Nishan Khan, commanded by Colin Mackenzie, which still contained the ample supplies collected for Shah Shuja’s force. From their parapets, the defenders watched glumly ‘the scene of plunder going on in Trevor’s house,’ wrote Mackenzie; ‘and the enemy, taking possession of the top, which overlooked my defences, pitched their balls from their large jezails with such accuracy as to clear my western face of defenders.’ His account continued:

It was only by crawling on my hands and knees up a small flight of steps and whisking suddenly through the door that I could even visit the tower that was being undermined. On one of these visits the sentry told me that there was an Afghan taking aim from an opposite loophole, but I could not see him. As I moved my head, the sentry clapped his eye to the slit, and fell dead at my feet with a ball through his forehead . . . In the afternoon the enemy brought down a large wall piece against us, the balls from which shook the upper part of one of our towers. The disposition to despair was increased by the utter failure of our last ammunition . . . The Afghans also brought quantities of firewood and long poles, with combustibles at the ends, which they deposited under the walls in readiness to burn down my door.

Some of Mackenzie’s sawars now embarked on ‘a sort of half-mutiny’, planning to escape on horseback. ‘This I quelled by going down amongst them with a double-barrelled gun. I cocked it, and ordered them to shut the gate, threatening to shoot the first man who should disobey. They saw I was quite determined, for I had made up my mind to die, and they obeyed.’ By the evening Mackenzie and his men were exhausted, after ‘fighting and working for nearly forty hours without rest’.

Abandoned, as I evidently was, to almost certain destruction by my own countrymen, my Afghan followers remained staunch to the last, in spite of the most tempting offers if they would betray me. When at last we had scarcely a round of ammunition, Hasan Khan [the commander of Mackenzie’s Afghan jezailchi troops] came to me and said: ‘I think we have done our duty. If you consider it necessary that we should die here, we will die, but I think we have done enough.’
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Mackenzie then agreed to make arrangements for a retreat. It was Ramazan, so they planned their escape soon after sunset, to coincide with the time that their besiegers would be busy with their
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dinner. The Afghan marksmen of Hasan Khan’s jezailchis were to lead, while the wounded were to be transported on makeshift litters and were to follow with the women and children. Mackenzie was himself to bring up the rear. The plan was to avoid all villages and to follow the canal until the cantonment came in sight, and then to strike out across the fields. All baggage and food supplies were to be abandoned.
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This was easier to order than to achieve. ‘A night retreat is generally disastrous,’ wrote Mackenzie,

and this proved no exception, for notwithstanding my strict order that all the baggage should be left behind, many of the poor women contrived to slip out with loads of their little property on their shoulders, making their children walk, whose cries added to the danger of discovery. Going among the women to see that my order for leaving everything was obeyed, a young Gurkha girl of sixteen or eighteen, who had girded up her loins and stuck a sword in her cumberbund came to me, and throwing all that she possessed at my feet, said: ‘Sahib you are right, life is better than property.’ She was a beautiful creature, with a fair complexion and large dark eyes, and she stood there with her garments swathed around her, leaving her limbs free, a picture of life, spirit and energy. I never saw her again, and fear she was either killed or taken prisoner on the night march.

The shooting started before the column had moved more than half a mile. Mackenzie’s party quickly got separated from the jezailchis who had led the retreat, and he found himself alone and under fire, ‘with a chaprasi and two sowars in the midst of the wailing crowd of women and children’. Soon after this he was surrounded. At first he thought it was his own men, but ‘they quickly undeceived me by crying out “Feringhee hast” (Here is a European) and attacking me with swords and knives.’ Mackenzie spurred his horse and wheeled round,

cutting from right to left. My blows, by God’s mercy, parried the greater part of theirs, and I was lucky enough to cut off the hand of my most outrageous assailant. My sword went clean through the man’s arm, but just after that, I received such a tremendous blow on the back of the head that, though the sabre turned in my enemy’s hand, it knocked me almost off my horse. Hanging on with one foot . . . the next thing I remember was finding myself upright in the saddle in advance of the enemy, with the whole picket firing after me. I passed unhurt through two volleys of musketry. The picket pursued, but I soon distanced them, crossing several fields at speed . . . Proceeding cautiously along, I found to my horror my path again blocked up by a dense body of Afghans. Retreat was impossible, so, putting my trust in God, I charged into the midst of them, hoping that the weight of the horse would clear the way for me, and reserving my sword-cut for the last struggle. It was well that I did so, for by the time I had knocked over a heap of fellows, I found that they were my own Jezailchis.

Eventually they reached the cantonment. ‘During the night,’ noted Mackenzie, ‘many stragglers of my party, principally followers, dropped in. From first to last I had about a dozen killed. Among the errors which led to our downfall, that of omitting to strengthen my post was the worst. Every Afghan of intelligence has confessed that if I had been reinforced by a couple of regiments, we should have remained masters of the city.’
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Hugh Johnson, already aghast at the folly of the generals in allowing his treasury to fall into the hands of the rebels, was even more horrified at the loss of all food supplies – and all this within only thirty-six hours of the outbreak of the revolt. ‘Four lakh of rupees worth of wheat, barley, wine, beer & every requisite were surrendered without a blow being struck back to our enemy,’ he wrote in his diary the following day.

Numbers of people, and especially that large and influential tribe the Qizilbashes, had hitherto kept aloof from the struggle, and much as they might have been astonished at our inactivity for a day or two, and our apparent apathy at the loss of our Treasury and the murder of our Resident, it never entered their most idle dreams that a British force of five thousand men of whose high state of discipline & courage and of the wisdom of their leaders they had always heard such high praise, would sit down tamely and see themselves bearded at the very gates of their Cantonments by a few contemptible ill-assured savages.

The eyes of the whole Afghan nation were now however opened. Every man was our enemy, and in lieu of the high character which we had hitherto borne, we were looked upon with the most utter contempt. The godown fort was this day something similar to a large ants’ nest. By noon thousands & thousands had assembled from far & wide to participate in the booty of the English dogs, each man taking away with him as much as he could carry and to this we were all helpless eye witnesses.
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Afghan sources state that within twenty-four hours the rebels had taken three years’ worth of military and food supplies, removing everything to within the city walls. ‘They carried off the booty on their heads, and distributed thousands of maunds of grain among the Afghan villagers and nomads, so that, having eaten their fill, they too joined the revolt,’ wrote Munshi Abdul Karim. ‘Whatever was judged as too heavy to carry off, they destroyed.’
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Lady Sale was quite clear about the seriousness of what had happened: ‘It gave both confidence and much plunder to the enemy and created great disgust among Europeans, who lost all their rum. A worse loss was all the medical supplies, sago, arrow root, wine &c, for the sick.’
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Weeks later, when word of what had happened reached George Broadfoot in the besieged city of Jalalabad, he wrote an angry note in his diary:

Colin Mackenzie was in the outskirts of the city in an old fort. For two days he fought, and then cut his way through to the large force, who did not seem able to cut their way through to him, bringing in all his men and the crowd of women and children safe, himself getting two sabre wounds. A more heroic action was never performed. The unhappy women and children have since perished or gone into slavery, because 5000 men could not do what he did with 50.
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Within the besieged cantonment, hunger soon began to set in.

The troops were put on half-rations, but as with the death march through the Bolan two years earlier, it was the camp followers and baggage animals who suffered first. ‘Our cattle have been starving for some days past,’ wrote Johnson in his diary a week later. ‘Not a blade of grass nor a particle of bussorah [fodder] or grain is procurable for them.
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The barley in store is served out as rations to camp followers. They only get ¼ of a seer for their daily food. Our cattle are subsisting on the twigs, branches & bark of trees. Scarcely an animal is fit to carry a load.’
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A week later the situation was even more dire: ‘Our camp followers have for the past 2 days had nothing to eat except the carcasses of our camels and horses that have died from want of food. Twigs and the bark of trees was no longer procurable. All the trees in the Cantonments are stript.’
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Johnson soon identified the only feasible source of food: the Sufi-shrine village of Bibi Mahru (‘Moon-Faced Lady’), known to the British as Bemaroo, which lay on a low ridge half a mile to the north, commanding the rear of the cantonment.
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Johnson eventually concluded negotiations with the headman, and a small quantity of wheat now arrived in the cantonment, but it was only enough for the needs of a few days.
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To add to the misery, the temperature now dropped, and the first snows of winter began to dust the ground. Around the same time the insurgents began to bombard the cantonment with the cannon they had captured within the city and in the commissariat forts. There was little skill or method to the bombardment, and throughout the war the Afghans struggled to find trained gunners, but the random falling of shot within the cantonment walls still began to wear away at the nerves of the besieged troops.

The cannon fire was soon supplemented by volleys of musketry from the fort of Mohammad Sharif, captured by the rebels the following day. This looked straight on to the main gate of the cantonment, and flanked the road leading to the city. The Afghans, having walked in and captured it unopposed, had quickly loopholed the walls so as to shoot down any British attempt at sorties from their front gate. On 6 November, Elphinstone further stymied British resistance by forbidding returning fire from the walls on the grounds that ‘powder is scarce!’ wrote an incredulous Lady Sale. ‘There being at the time sufficiency for a twelve month siege.’
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It was now clear to everyone that Elphinstone was a liability. ‘People do not hesitate to say that our chief should be set aside,’ noted Lady Sale in her diary. ‘The poor general’s mind is distracted by the diversity of opinions offered; and the great bodily ailments he sustains are daily enfeebling his powers. There is much reprehensible croaking going on: talk of retreat, and the consequent desertion of our Mussalmen troops. All this makes a bad impression on the men.’
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This was certainly true: the troops were baffled and unnerved by the lack of leadership and the sudden loss of confidence. ‘The spirits of the army were much depressed,’ wrote the sepoy Sita Ram. ‘There was fighting every day, and because there was no good food for the European soldiers, they lost spirit and did not fight as well as they used to.’ To make matters worse,