The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80. Archibald Forbes
army, and made certain alterations in its organisation and subsidiary commands. There still remained to be traversed 147 miles before Candahar should be reached, and the dreaded Kojuk Pass had still to be penetrated.
Keane was a soldier who had gained a reputation for courage in Egypt and the Peninsula. He was indebted to the acuteness of his engineer and the valour of his troops, for the peerage conferred on him for Ghuznee, and it cannot be said that during his command in Afghanistan he disclosed any marked military aptitude. But he had sufficient perception to recognise that he had brought the Bengal column to the verge of starvation in Quetta, and sufficient common sense to discern that, since if it remained there it would soon starve outright, the best thing to be done was to push it forward with all possible speed into a region where food should be procurable. Acting on this reasoning, he marched the day after his arrival. Cotton, while lying in Quetta, had not taken the trouble to reconnoitre the passes in advance, far less to make a practicable road through the Kojuk defile if that should prove the best route. The resolution taken to march through it, two days were spent in making the pass possible for wheels; and from the 13th to the 21st the column was engaged in overcoming the obstacles it presented, losing in the task, besides, much baggage, supplies, transport and ordnance stores. Further back in the Bolan Willshire with the Bombay column was faring worse; he was plundered severely by tribal marauders.
By May 4th the main body of the army was encamped in the plain of Candahar. From the Kojuk, Shah Soojah and his contingent had led the advance toward the southern capital of the dominions from the throne of which he had been cast down thirty years before. The Candahar chiefs had meditated a night attack on his raw troops, but Macnaghten's intrigues and bribes had wrought defection in their camp; and while Kohun-dil-Khan and his brothers were in flight to Girishk on the Helmund, the infamous Hadji Khan Kakur led the venal herd of turncoat sycophants to the feet of the claimant who came backed by the British gold, which Macnaghten was scattering abroad with lavish hand. Shah Soojah recovered from his trepidation, hurried forward in advance of his troops, and entered Candahar on April 24th. His reception was cold. The influential chiefs stood aloof, abiding the signs of the times; the populace of Candahar stood silent and lowering. Nor did the sullenness abate when the presence of a large army with its followers promptly raised the price of grain, to the great distress of the poor. The ceremony of the solemn recognition of the Shah, held close to the scene of his defeat in 1834, Havelock describes as an imposing pageant, with homagings and royal salutes, parade of troops and presentation of nuzzurs; but the arena set apart for the inhabitants was empty, spite of Eastern love for a tamasha, and the display of enthusiasm was confined to the immediate retainers of His Majesty.
The Shah was eager for the pursuit of the fugitive chiefs; but the troops were jaded and sickly, the cavalry were partially dismounted, and what horses remained were feeble skeletons. The transport animals needed grazing and rest, and their loss of numbers to be made good. The crops were not yet ripe, and provisions were scant and dear. When, on May 9th, Sale marched toward Girishk, his detachment carried half rations, and his handful of regular cavalry was all that two regiments could furnish. Reaching Girishk, he found that the chiefs had fled toward Seistan, and leaving a regiment of the Shah's contingent in occupation, he returned to Candahar.
Macnaghten professed the belief, and perhaps may have deluded himself into it, that Candahar had received the Shah with enthusiasm. He was sanguine that the march to Cabul would be unopposed, and he urged on Keane, who was wholly dependent on the Envoy for political information, to move forward at once, lightening the difficulties of the march by leaving the Bombay troops at Candahar. But Keane declined, on the advice of Thomson, his chief engineer, who asked significantly whether he had found the information given him by the political department in any single instance correct. Food prospects, however, did not improve at Candahar, and leaving a strong garrison there as well, curious to say, as the siege train which with arduous labour had been brought up the passes, Keane began the march to Cabul on June 27th. He had supplies only sufficient to carry his army thither on half rations. Macnaghten had lavished money so freely that the treasury chest was all but empty. How the Afghans regarded the invasion was evinced by condign slaughter of our stragglers.
As the army advanced up the valley of the Turnuk, the climate became more temperate, the harvest was later, and the troops improved in health and spirit. Concentrating his forces, Keane reached Ghuznee on July 21st. The reconnaissance he made proved that fortress occupied in force. The outposts driven in, and a close inspection made, the works were found stronger than had been represented, and its regular reduction was out of the question without the battering train which Keane had allowed himself to be persuaded into leaving behind. A wall some 70 feet high and a wet ditch in its front made mining and escalade alike impracticable. Thomson, however, noticed that the road and bridge to the Cabul gate were intact. He obtained trustworthy information that up to a recent date, while all the other gates had been built up, the Cabul gate had not been so dealt with. As he watched, a horseman was seen to enter by it. This was conclusive. The ground within 400 yards of the gate offered good artillery positions. Thomson therefore reported that although the operation was full of risk, and success if attained must cost dear, yet in the absence of a less hazardous method of reduction there offered a fair chance of success in an attempt to blow open the Cabul gate, and then carry the place by a coup de main. Keane was precluded from the alternative of masking the place and continuing his advance by the all but total exhaustion of his supplies, which the capture of Ghuznee would replenish, and he therefore resolved on an assault by the Cabul gate.
During the 21st July the army circled round the place, and camped to the north of it on the Cabul road. The following day was spent in preparations, and in defeating an attack made on the Shah's contingent by several thousand Ghilzai tribesmen of the adjacent hill country. In the gusty darkness of the early morning of the 23d the field artillery was placed in battery on the heights opposite the northern face of the fortress. The 13th regiment was extended in skirmishing order in the gardens under the wall of this face, and a detachment of sepoys was detailed to make a false attack on the eastern face. Near the centre of the northern face was the Cabul gate, in front of which lay waiting for the signal, a storming party consisting of the light companies of the four European regiments, under command of Colonel Dennie of the 13th. The main column consisted of two European regiments and the support of a third, the whole commanded by Brigadier Sale; the native regiments constituted the reserve. All those dispositions were completed by three A.M., and, favoured by the noise of the wind and the darkness, without alarming the garrison.
Punctually at this hour the little party of engineers charged with the task of blowing in the gate started forward on the hazardous errand. Captain Peat of the Bombay Engineers was in command. Durand, a young lieutenant of Bengal Engineers, who was later to attain high distinction, was entrusted with the service of heading the explosion party. The latter, leading the party, had advanced unmolested to within 150 yards of the works, when a challenge, a shot and a shout gave intimation of his detection. A musketry fire was promptly opened by the garrison from the battlements, and blue lights illuminated the approach to the gate, but in the fortunate absence of fire from the lower works the bridge was safely crossed, and Peat with his handful of linesmen halted in a sallyport to cover the explosion operation. Durand advanced to the gate, his sappers piled their powder bags against it and withdrew; Durand and his sergeant uncoiled the hose, ignited the quick-match under a rain from the battlements of bullets and miscellaneous missiles, and then retired to cover out of reach of the explosion.
At the sound of the first shot from the battlements, Keane's cannon had opened their fire. The skirmishers in the gardens engaged in a brisk fusillade. The rattle of Hay's musketry was heard from the east. The garrison was alert in its reply. The northern ramparts became a sheet of flame, and everywhere the cannonade and musketry fire waxed in noise and volume. Suddenly, as the day was beginning to dawn, a dull, heavy sound was heard by the head of the waiting column, scarce audible elsewhere because of the boisterous wind and the din of the firing. A pillar of black smoke shot up from where had been the Afghan gate, now shattered by the 300 pounds of gunpowder which Durand had exploded against it. The signal to the storming party was to be the 'advance' sounded by the bugler who accompanied Peat. But the bugler had been shot through the head. Durand could not find Peat. Going back through the bullets to the nearest party of infantry, he experienced some delay, but at last the column was apprised