Now addio! Ever your most affectionate Niece,
Victoria R.
Lord Fitzgerald and Vesci to Queen Victoria.
THE FALL OF CABUL
10th March 1842.
Lord Fitzgerald, with his most humble duty to your Majesty, begs leave most humbly and with deep sorrow to lay before your Majesty reports which he has only within this hour received.
They are to be found in a despatch from the Governor and Council of Bombay, and unhappily confirm, to an appalling degree, the disastrous intelligence from Afghanistan. The commercial expresses, which reached London yesterday, gave to the public some of the details of the fall of Cabul; and Lord Fitzgerald laments that it is his painful duty most humbly to inform your Majesty that the despatches just arrived confirm to their full extent the particulars of Sir William Macnaghten's fate, and of the fate of that remnant of gallant men who, on the faith of a capitulation, had evacuated that cantonment which they had defended with unavailing courage.
In addition to the despatch from the Council of Bombay, Lord Fitzgerald humbly ventures to submit to your Majesty a letter addressed to him by Mr Anderson, the Acting-Governor of that Presidency, with further details of these melancholy events.
The despatches from the Governor-General of India come down to the date of the 22nd of January (three days previous to the tragical death of Sir William Macnaghten). Lord Auckland was then uninformed of the actual state of the force in Cabul, though not unprepared for severe reverses.