India Board, 1st March 1842.
Lord Fitzgerald, with his most humble duty to your Majesty, requests permission humbly to submit to your Majesty, that the communications received yesterday at the India House present a dark and alarming picture of the position and danger of the British troops in Afghanistan.16
Although the Governor-General's despatch announcing these melancholy tidings also states that no strictly official intelligence had reached him from Cabul, yet the opinion of Lord Auckland evidently is, that the reports on which his despatch is founded are but too likely to be true.
From them it would appear that a numerous and excited native population had succeeded in intercepting all supplies, that the army at Cabul laboured under severe privations, and that in consequence of the strict investment of the cantonments by the enemy, there remained, according to a letter from the late Sir William Macnaghten to an officer with Sir Robert Sale's force, only three days' provision in the camp.
Under such circumstances it can perhaps be but faintly hoped that any degree of gallantry and devotion on the part of your Majesty's forces can have extricated them from the difficulties by which they were encompassed on every side.
Capitulation had been spoken of, and it may, unhappily, have become inevitable, as the relieving column, expected from Candahar, had been compelled by the severity of an unusual season to retrace its march.
The despatches from Calcutta being voluminous, and embracing minute unofficial reports, Lord Fitzgerald has extracted and copied those parts which relate to the military operations in Afghanistan, and most humbly submits them to your Majesty.
He at the same time solicits permission to annex a précis of some of the most important of the private letters which have been forwarded from India; and, as your Majesty was graciously pleased to peruse with interest some passages from the first journal of Lady Sale, Lord Fitzgerald ventures to add the further extracts, transmitted by Lord Auckland, in which Lady Sale describes successive actions with the enemy, and paints the state of the sufferings of the army, as late as the 9th of December.
Nothing contained in any of these communications encourages the hope of Sir Alexander Burnes's safety. In one letter the death of an individual is mentioned, who is described as the assassin of that lamented officer.
All of which is most humbly submitted to your Majesty by your Majesty's most dutiful Subject and Servant,