[95] Sir W. H. Macnaghten to Captain Macgregor: October 18, 1841. MS. Records.
[96] Sir W. H. Macnaghten to Major Rawlinson.—[MS. Correspondence.]
[97] “The only officer killed, Wyndham, a captain of the 35th Native Infantry, fell nobly. Himself lame from a hurt, he had dismounted at that moment of peril to save the life of a wounded soldier, by bearing him from the combat on his charger. When the rear-guard broke before the onset of the Ghilzyes, Wyndham, unable to keep pace with the pursued, turned, fought, and, overpowered by numbers, fell beneath the swords and knives of an unsparing foe.”—[Calcutta Review.]
[98] I must give Mohun Lal’s own words, in spite of their eccentric phraseology: “On the 1st of November,” he writes, “I saw Sir Alexander Burnes, and told him that the confederacy has been grown very high, and we should fear the consequence. He stood up from his chair, sighed, and said he knows nothing but the time has arrived that we should leave this country.”—[Letter of Mohun Lal to J. R. Colvin, Esq., January 9, 1842.—MS. Records.] In a letter to another correspondent, Mohun Lal makes a similar statement; and adds that, upon the same night, Taj Mahomed called upon Burnes, to no purpose, with a like warning: “On the 1st of November I saw him at evening, and informed him, according to the conversation of Mahomed Meerza Khan, our great enemy, that the chiefs are contriving plans to stand against us, and therefore it will not be safe to remain without a sufficient guard in the city. He replied, that if he were to ask the Envoy to send him a strong guard, it will show that he was fearing; and at the same [time] he made an astonishing speech, by saying that the time is not far when we must leave this country. Taj Mahomed, son of Gholam Mahomed Khan, the Douranee chief, came at night to him, and informed what the chiefs intended to do, but he turned him out under the pretended aspect that we do not care for such things. Our old friend, Naib Sheriff, came and asked him to allow his son, with 100 men, to remain day and night in his place till the Ghilzye affair is settled—but he did not agree.”—[Letter of Mohun Lal to Dr. James Burnes.—MS. Correspondence.]
[99] This is stated on the authority of Sir William Macnaghten: “I may be considered culpable,” he said, in an unfinished memorandum, found after his death, “for not having foreseen the coming storm; to this I can only reply that others, who had much better opportunities of watching the feelings of the people, had no suspicion of what was coming. The late Sir A. Burnes was with me the evening before the insurrection occurred, and it is a singular fact that he should have congratulated me on my approaching departure at a season of such profound tranquillity.”—[Unpublished Papers of Sir W. H. Macnaghten.] See further illustrations of this subject in Appendix.
[100] “The principal rebels,” wrote Sir William Macnaghten, in a letter to Lord Auckland, of which only a fragment has been recovered, “met, on the night before, and [relying] on the inflammable disposition of the people of Caubul, they first gave out that it was the order of his Majesty to put all infidels to death, and this, of course, gained them a great accession of strength. But his Majesty has behaved throughout with the most marked fidelity, judgment, and prudence. By forged orders from him for our destruction, by the well-known process of washing out the contents of a genuinely sealed paper, and substituting their own wicked inventions. * * * *” (Sentence left imperfect.)—[Correspondence of Sir W. H. Macnaghten.]
[101] Statement of Emaum-oollah-Khan—a chuprassie in the service of Lieutenant John Conolly.—[MS. Records.]
[102] Hyder Khan, who had been cutwal of the city, and had been removed through Burnes’s instrumentality, is said to have brought fuel for the purpose from some contiguous hummams or baths.
[103] Statement of Bowh Singh, a chuprassie in Sir A. Burnes’s service.
[104] This is Bowh Singh’s statement. He says: “His brother, Captain Burnes, went out with him, and was killed dead before Sir Alexander.” Mohun Lal says that Charles Burnes was killed before his brother went down to the garden.