"You are exhausted," he said. "I dislike to disturb you, but I beg leave to ask you a few questions."
"Go on sir; I can answer," said the traveller, in a weary tone.
"Do you bring a message from General Elphinstone,—from the army?"
"I bring no message. There is no army,—or, rather, I am the army," was the enigmatical reply.
"You the army? I do not understand you."
"I represent the army. The others are gone,—dead, massacred, prisoners,—man, woman, and child. I, Doctor Brydon, am the army,—all that remains of it."
The commander heard him in astonishment and horror. General Elphinstone had seventeen thousand soldiers and camp-followers in his camp at Cabul. "Did Dr. Brydon mean to say——"
"They are all gone," was the feeble reply. "I am left; all the others are slain. You may well look frightened, sir; you would be heart-sick with horror had you gone through my experience. I have seen an army slaughtered before my eyes, and am here alone to tell it."
It was true; the army had vanished; an event had happened almost without precedent in the history of the world, unless we instance the burying of the army of Cambyses in the African desert. When Dr. Brydon was sufficiently rested and refreshed he told his story. It is the story we have here to repeat.
In the summer of 1841 the British army under General Elphinstone lay in cantonments near the city of Cabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in a position far from safe or well chosen. They were a mile and a half from the citadel,—the Bala Hissar,—with a river between. Every corner of their cantonments was commanded by hills or Afghan forts. Even their provisions were beyond their reach, in case of attack, being stored in a fort at some distance from the cantonments. They were in the heart of a hostile population. General Elphinstone, trusting too fully in the puppet of a khan who had been set up by British bayonets, had carelessly kept his command in a weak and untenable position.