The Dark Defile (30 page)

Elphinstone was almost convinced by Pottinger’s arguments, but Shelton was not. He insisted that neither of Pottinger’s plans was practical and that the safety of the British force was worth paying any sum of money for. The other senior officers agreed, and Elphinstone ordered Pottinger to resume negotiations with the chiefs to conclude the treaty, despite his view that they would thereby “
be dishonoured and disgraced and the stigma of cowardice fixed on us ever.
” Lady Sale was similarly depressed that the only options the military leaders would contemplate were “a disgraceful treaty or a disastrous retreat.”

On 29 December a haggard Captain Lawrence arrived in the cantonments, disguised as an Afghan with a floppy turban “leaving only an eye exposed” and in Lady Sale’s view looking “ten years older from anxiety.” Pottinger had secured his release by insisting that the bills to be drawn on the government of India to enable the payment of the huge sums demanded by the chiefs must be signed by Lawrence as Macnaghten’s secretary. Lawrence got down to work but took care to stipulate that the bills could be cashed “only on the presentation of certificates from our political agent at Peshawar
of the safe arrival there of our troops
.”

The Afghans continued to pressure the British, demanding the immediate surrender of their artillery with the exception of the few pieces they were to be allowed to keep. Pottinger, still hoping something might occur to avoid capitulation, procrastinated, handing over the guns two by two on successive days. However, there was little he could do. He and other officers and men could only watch as muskets, ammunition and wagons were also surrendered to the Afghans, together with fresh hostages. Captains Walsh, Drummond, Warburton and Webb joined the other British officers in captivity, though on their arrival in Kabul Captains Skinner and Mackenzie were allowed to return to the cantonments. Warburton must have been worrying about his pregnant Afghan wife, a cousin of Akbar Khan, whom he had not seen since Burnes’s murder on 2 November. That day he had been in the cantonments when the mob besieged his house, where his wife was, and set it alight, and he had little way of knowing where she was or even whether she was still alive.

The wounded and the sick—many of the latter had frostbitten toes, fingers, noses and cheeks, for which, according to Colin Mackenzie, the harassed army doctors found the traditional Afghan remedy of a cold poultice of cow dung “most efficacious”—and two doctors to care for them were sent into captivity in the city on 29 and 30 December because there was insufficient transport to take them on the retreat. On New Year’s Day 1842, after Elphinstone had insisted Pottinger write to Sale ordering him to withdraw from Jalalabad, the ratified treaty bearing the seals of eighteen chiefs finally arrived in the cantonments. The text contained everything the Afghans had demanded except the surrender of British families. In return they guaranteed the British forces safe passage out of their country. Mackenzie described how a miserable Pottinger “signed the treaty in soldierly obedience, knowing full well that he would be held responsible for that which was the work of others.”

The first article of the treaty demanded “that the British troops shall speedily quit the territories of Afghanistan and march to India, and shall not return; and twenty-four hours after receiving the carriage-cattle [camels and ponies] the army shall start.” In fact the British had been making efforts to prepare for what would be a ninety-mile trek in subzero temperatures through snow that already lay at least a foot deep around Kabul and would be far deeper in the passes.
Ghazis
milled about outside, harassing merchants and sometimes attempting to rush the cantonment gates. Captain Johnson captured the daily indignities and obstacles in his diary: “Very busy, buying camels and yaboos [ponies] … The Ghazis still infest our gates and insult us in every possible way—stop our supplies coming in from the town and abuse and ill-treat those who bring them. No notice taken by our military leader.” He complained that “the chiefs say they cannot control their men, and that if their people misbehave themselves at our gates, or around our walls, we must fire upon them. No orders, however, given by General Elphinstone to punish our insulting foe, who naturally attribute our forbearance to dastardly cowardice.”

As the British forces struggled to make their preparations while awaiting the provisions promised by the chiefs, warnings flooded in just as they had before the murders of Burnes and Macnaghten. Johnson wrote: “Several of my native friends from the city come daily to see me. And all agree, without one dissenting voice, that we have brought the whole of our misfortunes upon ourselves, through the apathy and imbecility displayed at the commencement of the outbreak. They also tell me that our safety on the retreat depends solely on ourselves—that no dependence is to be placed on the promises of any of the chiefs, and more especially Mohammed Akbar Khan. Every one of them will now … do his utmost to destroy us.” Mohan Lal, from his hiding place in the city, was also warning that the chiefs were not to be trusted and that the British would be attacked as soon as they left the cantonments. Lady Sale noted a report “that the chiefs do not mean to keep faith: and that it is their intention to get all our women into their possession; and to kill every man except one, who is to have his hands and legs cut off, and is to be placed with a letter
in terrorem
at the entrance of the Khyber passes, to deter all Feringhees from entering the country again.” A further warning stated that Akbar Khan “would annihilate the whole army, except one man, who should reach Jalalabad to tell the tale.”

As the first days of January passed in a mood of bleak foreboding, conditions in the bitterly cold cantonments were miserable. Every night the soldiers and civilians expected orders to march the next day, but they did not come. Whether for genuine practical reasons or because they saw advantages in further weakening the British by delaying their retreat, the chiefs kept asserting that they had neither completed the arrangements necessary to ensure the safety of the retreating British force nor gathered sufficient provisions. Shah Shuja, who had already warned Lawrence that the chiefs were not to be trusted, sent a messenger to the cantonments, to try to persuade Lady Macnaghten on no account to ride on the retreat but to seek sanctuary “
with as many ladies as would accompany her
” in the Balla Hissar. When Pottinger learned of this, he persuaded Lawrence to join him in making one final attempt to convince Elphinstone that, on moving out of the cantonments, the entire force should march at once for the protection of the Balla Hissar, where the king would be bound to admit them. Elphinstone’s response was “Can you guarantee us supplies?” When the officers said they could not although they were “pretty sure of sufficient supplies,” Elphinstone replied, “No, we retreat!”

On the evening of 5 January, although the chiefs had still not sent either the promised supplies or strong escort to protect the retreating column from the
ghazis
, Elphinstone decided, against the advice of Pottinger and others, to wait no longer. He ordered every fighting man to carry three days’ provisions in his rucksack and for the entire force to be ready to march at daybreak. He also ordered Sturt to cut an opening through the eastern ramparts of the cantonments to provide an additional exit point for the troops and camp followers. That night, Sturt wrote a letter to his father-in-law, Brigadier Sale, in which he revealed his apprehension about the coming retreat: “
We shall have a fight—but courage! Man will not help us—God only can.
”

With his mind set firmly on departure, Elphinstone seems to have had little regard for the fate of Shah Shuja, who, realizing that the British were about to abandon him, wrote plaintively to Brigadier Antequil, the commander of his forces, asking “
if it were well to forsake him in the hour of need.
” The British could salve their consciences by arguing that the treaty provided for Shah Shuja to depart with them if he wished, but sensibly enough the king had no intention of leaving the relative safety of the Balla Hissar to risk himself in the passes. With his protectors deaf to his appeals and on the point of marching, his best, indeed only, hope for the moment was to seek an accommodation with the chiefs and hope they would observe it. Lady Sale had no sympathy for him, writing coldly of what she suspected would be his fate if he stayed: “The Afghans do not wish to put him to death, but only to deprive him of sight.”

On that final night in Kabul, Lady Sale, whose last few meals had been cooked “with the wood of a mahogany dining-table” as furniture was broken up for firewood, was inspecting a selection of books her son-in-law hoped to save by sending them to a friend in the city. She picked up a volume by the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell, by chance opening it at a poem whose words were to haunt her “day and night.” It was Campbell’s “Hohenlinden,” of which the final verse read:

Few, few shall part where many meet.

The snow shall be their winding sheet;

And every turf beneath their feet

Shall be a soldier’s sepulchre.

Chapter Fifteen

The spectacle then presented by that waving sea of animated beings, the majority of whom a few fleeting hours would transform into a line of lifeless carcasses to guide the future traveller on his way, can never be forgotten.

—LIEUTENANT VINCENT EYRE, 8 JANUARY 1842

Though the first bugle sounded at five A.M., not until around nine A.M. on the bright, frosty morning of Thursday, 6 January did the first British troops leave the cantonments to begin their long-anticipated retreat. Though Shelton had wanted all the baggage loaded and prepared by moonrise, it was not ready until eight A.M., while Elphinstone—still vainly hoping for the promised Afghan escort—declined to order the retreat to begin until pressed by Captain Mackenzie.

Brigadier Antequil commanded the vanguard, which was followed by the main column including the baggage train under Brigadier Shelton, and then the rear guard. The only artillery the Afghans had agreed to allow the British to take—six horse artillery guns and three mule-borne mountain guns—were divided between the three groups. The retreating force comprised 4,500 fighting men, of whom 690 were European, 2,840 sepoy infantry and 970 sepoy cavalry. They were accompanied by 12,000 camp followers, who, Lieutenant Eyre wrote, “proved from the very first mile a serious clog upon our movements, and … the main cause of our subsequent misfortunes.”

Compared to the jaunty optimism with which the Army of the Indus had arrived in Kabul nearly two and a half years earlier, Captain Lawrence saw around him “a crouching, drooping, dispirited army.” Ahead lay a ninety-mile journey through a frozen landscape. Their route—difficult to negotiate even in summer—lay eastward through Begramee to Boothak, then southward through the high Khoord Kabul Pass, then eastward again to Tezeen and through the Jugdulluk Pass to Gandamack and eventually Jalalabad and safety.

Captain Lawrence had asked for and been given the responsibility of protecting the British women and children who were traveling toward the front of the main column, regarded as the safest place. Most of these women—some pregnant, some ill, some even traveling in their nightgowns—were to be carried in palanquins. However, Lady Sale and her daughter Alexandrina Sturt were riding on horseback. An Afghan well-wisher had advised them to wear turbans and common sheepskin coats (
poshteens
) over their clothes and to keep away from the main group of ladies, who, he warned, were likely to be attacked. Therefore that morning they were riding with some cavalrymen. Leaving the cantonments, Lady Sale was relieved that few Afghans had gathered to witness their departure and that those who had made no move to molest the column as it began picking its way over snowy ground so dazzling white it hurt the eyes. The cold was bitter and the landscape, in Lady Sale’s words, “a swamp encrusted with ice.” Lawrence pitied “the poor native soldiers and camp followers, walking up to their knees in snow and slush.”

The eyewitness accounts of those who survived often conflict in the details. Survivors were in different places at different times. None could see the length of the straggling column. However, all the accounts convey the confusion and uncertainty at the start of the retreat and the terror and despair at its end. They also reveal their authors’ frustrations at foolish decisions which contributed to the disaster, several made in the very first hours.

Elphinstone had planned that his retreating force should clear the wild Khoord Kabul Pass on the first day—a journey of fifteen miles. Speed was therefore imperative. However, when the retreat was just under way, Nawab Zaman Khan—the figurehead king appointed by the insurgents until Dost Mohammed’s return—sent a message warning the British to defer their departure until there was an escort to protect them. Elphinstone, still racked by indecision, ordered Shelton to halt. This was too much for Captain Mackenzie, who decided that, with half the troops already out of the cantonments, it would be disastrous to stop the retreat. Therefore he countermanded the order. With the general’s despairing cry of “Mackenzie, don’t!—don’t do it!” as the only response to his insubordination fading behind him, he galloped off to tell Shelton to resume the march.

In addition to Elphinstone’s vacillation, there were practical obstacles to a swift and orderly departure. Barely half a mile from the cantonments the great, heaving mass of retreating people and animals—the baggage train included two thousand camels—came to a standstill because the bridge that Elphinstone had ordered to be built across the Kabul River was not ready. Sturt had repeatedly argued that the river—although deep in some places but just eight feet wide—was easily fordable, but his superiors had decided a bridge was needed. Sturt and his sappers had begun work in the early hours, laboring up to their hips in freezing water to clear boulders from the riverbed so they could construct a bridge out of gun carriages with doors and planks laid over them. However, Elphinstone, busy with his breakfast, had failed to authorize the sending of the gun carriages until after nine A.M., so that Sturt and his engineers could not complete the bridge until midday.