To revert to the appearance of the city when we formally relieved it: The flanking bastions which stud the wall at regular intervals are seventy in number. They are really circular towers with that part of the circumference cut away which looks citywards. As they were in a wretched state of repair as regarded their upper layers of sun-dried mud, there was much to be done in building up a new parapet with sand-bags, and their appearance is now most uncouth, each tower seeming “top-heavy” and suffering from an excrescent growth which may yet be in its infancy. The south-west bastion, overlooking the Shikarpur village wherein the enemy were always swarming, was strengthened greatly by these means, embrasures being left through which our 40-pounders could be trained to the east, west, and south. A fantastic appearance was also given to the main walls of the city by cutting down the parapet for 18 inches at points equi-distant from the bastions, and placing upright sand-bags to fill in the gap thus made. Ten riflemen were told off to man each of these gaps, which were 10 feet in length. The necessity for thus improving the parapet was due to the defective system of loopholing in vogue among the Afghans. They pierce their walls with narrow slits, through which it is impossible to see more than a few square yards of ground below; and at night not an object can be seen from nine-tenths of the loopholes. The effect of combined breech-loading fire would be minimized if rifles had thus to be blindly fired into space; whereas by giving men a chance of seeing over the wall and grouping the defenders into tens at fixed points, their fire could be always well-aimed and kept well under control. To repel, for instance, an attack of 5,000 or 6,000 men led by ghazis determined to scale the walls or die in the attempt, fire from the ordinary loopholes would have been thrown away, and only the cross-fire from the nearest bastions could have told; but once the defenders could fire at almost any angle, through the ten-feet gaps I have described, the ground in front of any given point could be swept by continuous volleys. Inside the city one could not fail to be struck with the open display of force made at every available point. There was quite a crowd of European soldiers and Bombay sepoys filling the Shikarpur Gate as General Roberts and his Staff entered the city, and nearly every man seemed to have his bayonet fixed or sword drawn. No doubt Candahar bears an ill-reputation for ghazi-ism, and there were many discontented spirits within its walls even after the 18,000 Pathans had been turned out; but the display of naked weapons certainly struck us poor pilgrims from quieter Cabul as unusual and alarming. Our own revolvers were comfortably reposing on our hips, while we found it was the fashion to carry the pistol in the hand, or a drawn sword, or a hog-spear, or a bayonet fixed on a long stick à la ghazi. In the Char Soo, the covered, arched bit of bazaar, where the chief roads cut through each other, were more men with drawn swords and fixed bayonets. The guards at the gates, at the entrance to the citadel and elsewhere, seemed of great strength; but without wishing to be rudely critical, one could not help feeling that numbers were necessary where the sepoys were of such poor physique. It is dangerous to say a word against the Bombay regiments, as a swarm of eager defenders will start up at once to justify them and to challenge comparison with the army of Northern India. But I must humbly submit that the weedy under-grown sepoys of one or more of the regiments now in Candahar are no more like soldiers than a stage army is like those “cull’d and choice-drawn cavaliers” who won Agincourt. I have not seen a regiment paraded, and I do not know the distinctive dress of any particular regiment, but there the men were before my eyes, and they were certainly sorry apologies for sepoys. The appearance of the citadel was as warlike as that of the city we had passed through, sand-bags and bags of flour, &c., being well to the fore wherever there was a gate to be strengthened or a wall to be made more imposing. The tower in the citadel upon which Captain Keyser, of the 7th Fusiliers, had his chief heliograph station, was topped by a circular wall of bags some five feet high, and from this point there was a good view of all the surrounding country. The northern wall, with the Eedgah Gate, looking towards Mazra, had its complement of the ever-repeating sand-bags, and in the north-west corner bastion was the 40-pounder which had shelled Picquet Hill and our cantonments, when Ayub rashly pitched his tents within range.
It is difficult of course, after a lapse of time, to pick up the threads of a story, especially when that story has for its moral indecision and disaster; and therefore, in dealing with events before and during the siege of Candahar, I have to guard against being led away by the hasty criticism or loose talk of irresponsible persons. I would rather leave such facts as I have gathered to speak for themselves than formulate conclusions which must of necessity be based upon other men’s evidence. Not having seen with my own eyes movements and actions which had most serious results, I can only present them as they were pictured to me by eye-witnesses. To make the story clearer, reasons must be given for certain positive moves made by those holding authority among the besieged garrison; the more general question of passive defence being governed by other conditions, such as the morale and strength of the force at the Lieutenant-General’s disposal, the numbers and capacity of the enemy, and their probable intentions.
Ayub Khan’s forces made their appearance about Candahar on the 7th of August, ten days after the Maiwand defeat, and such was their confidence at that time that they occupied part of our cantonments, and pitched their camp well within range of our 40-pounders. They were soon aware of their error, when shells began to burst even in the Surteep’s tent, and they withdrew to a safer distance, and set to work in a less obtrusive but more systematic way. Against the northern face of the city wall, and, for the most part, against the western face also, they could do nothing; there were no villages or enclosures to cover their movements. To the north the plain is covered with graves, while on the west there is a clear space at least one mile in breadth between the cantonments and the Herat Gate. On the south-west were groups of enclosures with high mud walls, twelve or eighteen inches thick, guarding the orchards and vineyards of Shikarpur and Deh Haji villages which lay in rear of them. These gave cover to their sharp-shooters, good positions for their guns, and accommodation and food to any large body of men they might mass within them. The deep water-channels of an open karez were also available as shelter-trenches and first parallels, if the Afghans so far understood the art of war; and altogether the Shikarpur Gate and the south-west corner bastion of the city wall were likely to be menaced. How admirably the Naib Hafizulla, who was said to be the guiding spirit of Ayub’s army, recognized the advantages of an approach from this direction I will explain presently. There was open country (cultivated fields lying fallow) facing the portion of the southern wall to the east of the Shikarpur Gate; but there were many low walls in this direction also. The eastern face, equally with the Shikarpur Gate and the southwestern line of defence, might be looked upon as attracting an attack, or at least a strong demonstration, owing to the nearness to the Cabul Gate of the large village of Deh-i-Khwaja. The distance in a direct line from the gate to the village walls was less than 1,000 yards, and the intermediate space was not, as on the western face, clear of every obstacle, but was traversed by lands with low boundary walls and by a water-channel running alongside the road leading from the city through the village. Deh-i-Khwaja covers several acres of ground, and as each house has an independent door, and is connected with its neighbour by stout mud walls, the place presents no salient point to a storming party where a position could be seized and made good. In the hands of resolute men each house would become a miniature fort to be taken before the next one could be approached. I suppose this fact was known to the officers who were responsible for the attack ultimately made upon the place. In addition to the cover offered by the low walls between the village and the eastern wall, there was, a few yards outside the Cabul Gate, a pile of buildings used as a serai. We could not of course occupy these, and we had not had time to destroy them. They would have formed the connecting link, and a very strong one, between Deh-i-Khwaja and any party told off to assail the Cabul Gate.
The enemy in their over-confidence, or by wrongly estimating our military power in Afghanistan, intended to reduce the garrison to weakness by starvation, and then to assault two or more gates, the irregulars led by ghazis being anxious to carry the city at the point of the sword. To avoid such a complication as our army cutting its way out, the villages on the south and Deh-i-Khwaja on the east were occupied in force, and earthworks thrown up along the line of karez near the Shikarpur group of villages. Guns were mounted at several points from which shells were pitched with fair accuracy into the citadel or burst over particular bastions. One gun, said to be a 6-pounder, was placed in Deh-i-Khwaja, an embrasure being formed by cutting through a mud wall some twelve feet high, and piling up on either side earth and the débris of a house which these amateur engineers demolished. This gun did little or no damage when it was fired at the Cabul Gate, but the rifle fire from the walls of the village seriously annoyed such working parties as were sent out by the garrison to destroy the low walls bounding the roads through the fields. General Primrose at last ordered that no more parties should go outside the gates, so that the cover existing for an attacking force was left intact. Day by day it was noticed that Deh-i-Khwaja was crowded with men, and suspicion became rife that preparations were being made for forcing the Cabul Gate and “rushing” the defences on that side by a swarm of irregulars. Now the word “ghazi” carried dismay into the hearts of many of the garrison—as it does still no doubt—and it became an open question whether it was not time to break through the inaction which prevailed, and force a fight on a small scale outside the walls. It was impossible to shell the place effectually, as three of our 40-pounders were in position on the north-west and southern bastions, and our 9-pounders over the Cabul and Durani Gate could not hope to be of any great use against thick mud walls and domed houses. The two mortars of the heavy battery might plump shell into the midst of the houses, but they would not scare its defenders away. The original plan of the sortie was, I believe, conceived by Major Hills, Commanding Royal Engineers, who advised that a party of cavalry should be sent out in the early morning by the Eedgah Gate (facing north) and work round in rear of the village of Khairabad, which should then be “rushed” by some 500 or 600 infantry. Khairabad was within 400 yards of the northern walls of Deh-i-Khwaja, and the latter village was to have been taken by an attack in rear, where it was probably undefended. The 6-pounder gun was to be spiked, or brought away if time allowed, and the loopholed walls fronting the city were to be destroyed. There was nothing impossible in this plan, and the sortie, if at all well managed, ought to have proved a success. But certain modifications were made which spoiled all. On the morning of the 16th of August, 300 sabres, under command of Brigadier-General Nuttall, swept round in rear of the village, and, as was expected, the men in Deh-i-Khwaja began to leave, seeing their retreat thus cut off. The usual garrison which flocked in every morning and left at nightfall had not arrived, and they would probably have known but little of the affair until afterwards, if a fatal blunder had not been committed before the infantry went out. This was a cannonade of half an hour’s duration, from the 9-pounders and the two howitzers. General Brooke, commanding 600 men chosen from the 7th Fusiliers, 19th and 28th Native Infantry, asked that the village might be shelled before his troops went out. The unusual noise aroused every armed man in the southern villages, and even those further away on the east; and they poured out to see what was the meaning of the cannonade. They soon learnt Deh-i-Khwaja was being attacked, and they hastened to its assistance. In the meantime our cavalry had a splendid chance at some 400 or 500 men on ground which could not have been better for a charge. But General Nuttall considered the time had not yet come to use his sowars, and he contented himself with following the enemy, who were making for broken ground on the south. Eventually a troop was ordered to charge, and they did good execution; but the fugitives had then got cover and opened a smart fire upon the cavalry, who had to draw off a little, particularly as more men were pressing up from the Shikarpur villages. In the meantime the half-hour’s cannonade had come to an end, and the infantry had moved out; such men as still held the village were on the alert, and our troops were met by a heavy fire from the long line of loopholed walls. The attacking force was divided into three parties of about 200 men each, General Brooke taking the centre party, whose object was to penetrate the village by the road from the city, while the other parties moved off to right and left. It was this central party which suffered the heaviest loss. They rushed along the narrow road with a dry watercourse of some depth on their left hand, passed the gun and got into the village. But they were little better off than before; for every wall was loopholed, every door blockaded. All they could do was to press forward and watch for an opportunity of seizing one or more houses in rear, whence they could work back, clearing the walls and courtyards, so as to allow of the Sappers demolishing the outer wall facing the Cabul Gate. To attempt street fighting was hopeless, as our men could see no enemy; only the muzzles of rifles, many of them breech-loading, looked down upon them. General Brooke forced his way right through the place, and as the rear walls were not loopholed his party had a respite for the time. He then moved along towards the north, but returned when he could find no point which served to give him a chance of making his hold good. The party to the left under Colonel Heathcote did not enter the village but lined the walls in the fields, keeping up a heavy fire to draw off the defenders’ attention. On the right, Trench of the 19th Bombay Infantry had got possession of a large walled garden to the south of the village, whence he drove such of the enemy as made a stand. The sortie was being watched by General Primrose and the garrison from the walls; but owing to a thick haze little could be seen of what was going forward. The continuous[continuous] firing showed the village had not been captured, and swarms of irregulars could now and again be distinguished running across the open country as if making for Deh-i-Khwaja. General Primrose therefore ordered the troops engaged to be recalled, and directed the artillery and infantry on the walls to cover the retirement. The orders were passed on to General Brooke. The two parties under Colonel Heathcote and Trench (killed about this time) began to fall back, leaving the third batch of 200 men, still in the rear of the village, quite unsupported. The cavalry also made for the Cabul Gate; the rifle fire from the enemy, who were following them up, costing them many horses. Our retirement was the signal for the advance of every Afghan who had been held in check by the cavalry in the open. The garden Trench’s party had held was occupied by them, and every wall in the fields in the south-east was lined with their skirmishers. For General Brooke to withdraw safely under such conditions was almost impossible. He tried to make his way back by the road leading through the heart of the village; but the fire from the loopholes was too terrible, and he turned off to his left, coming out into the fields just where a few walls gave cover to his men and enabled them to rally. In the confusion which prevailed his party were mistaken for “ghazis,” and a 40-pounder began to shell them. Fortunately the shells were too high, and did no mischief. No supports were sent out to aid him, though appeals were made to General Primrose to allow skirmishers to line the low walls outside the Cabul Gate in a south-easterly direction.[[51]] General Brooke had supported Lieutenant Cruickshank, R.E., severely wounded, and had brought him out of the village. They rested behind a wall while a handful of men were got together to cover their retreat towards the walls, still a thousand yards away. But the fire from the loopholes was too heavy, and as the General tried to cross to the shelter of another wall he was shot down. A sergeant of the 7th Fusiliers with him was killed, and two Bombay Sappers wounded, and then the two officers had to be left to their fate. Their men were harassed by continuous fire at almost point blank ranges, and the sortie ended by forty of our dead being left on the ground, while twice that number of wounded were received within the walls. The details of the killed and wounded, officers and men, are given in the despatches. The total casualties were about 200; and this short story of how the sortie was made and how little it bore the character of a “success,” which I see it has always been called by General Primrose, may help you to appreciate what occurred. There is no charge against the soldiers; all are said to have fought well and to have shown great steadiness; but the departure from the original plan was fatal, and no supports being left for General Brooke’s party to fall back upon, gave the enemy the chance of cutting our men up in detail. There are other features of the sortie which I have no doubt men who were in it can fill up. I have been through Deh-i-Khwaja and over the ground outside, and I can fully appreciate how General Brooke failed to make good his hold of the village.
Candahar, 12th September.
I have described the position taken up by Ayub Khan’s forces on the eastern side of Candahar, and the sortie made on August 16th against the Deh-i-Khwaja village. Major Hills, the Engineer officer commanding, had warned General Primrose that he would not be responsible for the safety of the city if Deh-i-Khwaja were left untouched, so high an estimate was placed upon the capacity of the enemy. On the 17th the guns directed against the city, more apparently for the purpose of annoying the garrison than with any idea then of systematic bombardment, were the 6-pounder in Deh-i-Khwaja, an Armstrong breech-loader, and one of our Royal Horse Artillery 9-pounders on Picquet Hill, a 6-pounder in an embrasure near the Head-Quarters’ Garden facing the western wall, and another 6-pounder in a garden to the south-west, distant 1,100 yards from the Shikarpur Gate, and somewhat nearer the south-west corner bastion. The guns on Picquet Hill were answered by a 40-pounder in the north-west bastion, and their fire was plainly meant to make the citadel as uncomfortable as possible for the troops crowded within it. One of these guns was silenced on the 16th, and was believed to have been dismounted. The 6-pounder near the Head-Quarters’ Garden was fired at uncertain intervals at the bastions on the western face, in the hope, apparently, of injuring whatever men might be on duty on the wall. It was on the south-west that the greatest pains were taken by Ayub’s amateur “engineers,” and here the contour of the ground favoured them immensely. The group of villages known to the garrison under the general name of Shikarpur was protected by many walled gardens and vineyards, which had in their front two deep karez water-channels, then quite dry, as the canals from the Argandab River and local springs had been blocked so as to cut off the usual water supply of Candahar. The karez in vogue in Southern Afghanistan is different to that we have been accustomed to further north. Instead of an underground canal, with openings at stated intervals, wherefrom the earth excavated is thrown up in mounds, there is a deep open channel cut from six to twelve feet deep, along the banks of which the earth and mud are thrown up so as to form a formidable ditch. The stream at the bottom is of no great depth, and courses along to lower levels very quietly, no rapid fall being allowed. There are usually minor channels running out from the main karez, unless the water has to be taken to a level several miles away from the original spring. The Shikarpur gardens and villages afforded ample cover for a large body of men, and the karez channels in front were seized upon as offering ready-made trenches in which to form batteries and a line of breastworks for riflemen. The “works” raised by the enemy still stand almost untouched, and a few days ago I went over them with an engineer officer who was in Candahar during the siege. From his explanation, and my own observations, I may be able to give a fair idea of the engineering skill which some, at least, of Ayub’s officers could boast. That nothing came of this attempt to raise batteries and breastworks is due to the rapid advance of the relieving force from Cabul, the enemy not having time to complete their lines, and being forced to abandon the siege when it was yet in its infancy. In the sixteen or seventeen days they were at work they made very creditable progress; and, left undisturbed, they might have caused the garrison much trouble and annoyance.
It is believed that the first plan of the Naib Hafizulla, who controlled the Afghan army, was to raise a number of batteries to play upon the Shikarpur Gate and that part of the wall lying between that gate and the south-west bastion; riflemen were to be pushed as near the bastion as possible, sheltered by protecting walls and ditches in the fields; and then an assault was to be made by the fanatical irregulars led by their ghazis. Scaling ladders were to be used, and, under cover of a terrific fire directed upon the defenders of the southern wall, the grand attack was to be delivered. There would probably have been other attacks made from the south-east and east, and the ghazis were confident of success after their victory over General Burrows’s Brigade. The affair of the 16th warned Hafizulla that it was dangerous to have guns exposed to a sudden sortie, and in the Shikarpur direction he took every precaution to guard against an attack from the garrison being successful. Every enclosure had its walls loop-holed above and below, to give a double line of fire, and along every ditch and water-channel clods of earth were piled to form a low projecting parapet for the men lining them. The ground is much broken and cut up in every direction, mounds of earth being scattered at intervals where the cultivators had been compelled to excavate deeply for the karez. Riding towards the outward belt of walled vineyards and gardens—many of the latter containing trees of large growth and thick foliage—we followed the narrow road leading from the city; and at about 1,000 yards from the walls we came upon what our engineers would call the trenches. These were the upper and lower channels of the karez, quite dry, as I have before mentioned. The channels were connected by narrow cuttings eight feet deep, in the most approved manner, in exact imitation of the zig-zag way in which parallels are pushed forward in civilized warfare. These cuttings were not very numerous, it is true, but then the works had not been completed. Instead of the men having to expose themselves by climbing up and down the deep banks of the karez, openings were cut leading to the enclosures and villages in rear. One bend of the karez left the line exposed to flanking fire from the walls of the city, and to negative this traverses of earth and mud had been built up at every 20 feet. This portion of the works was very skilfully done, the parapet in front, as being exposed to shell-fire, being two or three feet thick. In rear of these “trenches” were the batteries in their half-completed state. The low mounds of earth I have spoken of were cut down, and a semicircular space, open in rear, cleared away, the earth being banked up so as to form a substantial parapet facing citywards. Two embrasures had been cut through in each battery, branches of trees being used to strengthen them and allow the earthwork to settle down into solid form. The parapet and its protecting embankment were of sufficient strength to resist the heaviest shell that could be thrown from our own guns. On looking through the embrasures in one battery we found that one gun could be trained upon the Shikarpur Gate and the other upon the south-west bastion. Every thing was completed in this battery, and the marks of wheels showed that a field gun had been in position. A little to the right was a more pretentious battery, plainly meant for three or four guns, judging from the size of the space cleared. The ground was sloped gradually down to the fields in rear of these batteries, and cover could be given to the horses and drivers belonging to the guns. The 6-pounder which fired daily upon the walls had a snug corner to itself in a clump of trees. The embrasure had been made very ingeniously. A bank of earth, 12 or 15 feet thick at its base, had been built up, with its right resting on the trunk of a stout tree with long over-reaching branches. One of these branches, which stretched out at right angles four feet above the ground, had the earthwork piled above and below it, so that it formed a strong support to the embankment. There were two embrasures, one, as usual, pointing upon the Shikarpur Gate; and I believe the gun was so hidden by the foliage of the trees that from the walls it was difficult to detect the embrasures except by the flash of the gun. Some of our shells had been, however, well pitched, the trunk of the tree being barked and splintered. The gunners were quite safe, of course, unless a shell actually burst in the embrasure itself, which was extremely unlikely. Standing in rear of the earthwork one could appreciate the security of the men who had held it, and with what impunity they could bang away at our bastions. The line of karez was followed in a westerly direction, and all along its banks we traced the low parapet formed of clods of earth. The walls of the enclosure had their rows of loopholes, and when working parties were sent out from the city three days after the raising of the siege, they found that good cover existed to within 300 yards of the corner bastion. There was always lively rifle-fire going on whenever any one showed on the parapet of the city wall, but the Afghans outside had generally the best of the position, as they were quite hidden from sight. A piece of open ground in rear of the karez between two enclosures was rather a dangerous place for them to cross, although 1,000 yards from the walls. Marksmen with Martinis fired volleys whenever they saw a group hurrying across, and the bullets generally told. Many of the walls have been thrown down by our working parties; and in one garden, full of large trees casting a pleasant shade, is the Field Hospital of the garrison. Thence we passed towards the Head-Quarters’ Garden (now occupied by General Phayre and his Staff), and had a look at the embrasure whence a 6-pounder used to fire into the city. The gun was placed on the steep bank of the main karez, and was banked up to its muzzle, which was some ten feet above the bottom of the water cut. There was broken ground in front, intersected by irrigation channels, and in rear some low-walled enclosures in which are now located a number of our transport animals. Here my interesting journey came to an end, and I returned to quarters in cantonments, favourably impressed with the rude evidences of the enemy’s skill. It was at first believed that a European adventurer was with Ayub Khan, from the admirable way in which his artillery was handled and the dispositions made for investing Candahar; but this idea is now exploded. It is more probable that there were in Herat men who had seen service in the Turkish army in Asia Minor, or even north of the Bosphorus, in the late war against Russia. These men could have picked up some idea of entrenchments and be able to apply their knowledge under the direction of the Naib, the only Afghan General who seems to know how to handle his men. Others there may be who have learned a smattering of the principles of civilized warfare in Persia or the Russian Khanates; but in any case there was a decided improvement in their method to that of the men we fought in and about Cabul.
CHAPTER V.
An Account of the Defeat of General Burrows at Maiwand—The Disaffection among the Wali’s Troops—Intrigues between Local Sirdars and Ayub Khan—The Desertion of the Wali’s Infantry—General Burrows at Girishk—His Orders—Ayub Khan’s Line of Advance from Farrah—The Helmund River Fordable at all Points—The Routes from Girishk to Candahar—Strategical Importance of Girishk—General Burrows’ Council of War on July 15th—Retirement of the Brigade upon Khusk-i-Nakhud[Retirement of the Brigade upon Khusk-i-Nakhud]—Defective Cavalry Reconnaissances—Ayub Khan’s Advance upon Maiwand—His Arrival at Sangbur—General Burrows’ Movement from Khusk-i-Nakhud to intercept the Afghan Army—The Action at Maiwand—Comparative Strength of the British and Afghan Forces—General Burrows’ First Disposition of Attack—An Artillery Duel—The effect upon the Brigade of acting on the Defensive—Advance of the Afghan Irregulars—The Behaviour of Jacob’s Rifles on the Left—Confusion among the Native Troops—Defeat and Rout of the Brigade—Ineffectual Attempt to make the Cavalry Charge—The Retreat to Candahar.