The next day was one of more appalling disaster. It brought to light a new evil that threatened destruction to the beleagured force. The commissariat fort—the magazine in which all the stores, on which our troops depended for subsistence, were garnered up—was outside the cantonment walls. It was situated about 400 yards from the south-west bastion of the cantonment. On the preceding day, the detachment in charge of the fort had been raised to a subaltern’s guard of eighty men. It was now threatened by the enemy. Another fort, still nearer cantonments, known as Mahomed Sheriff’s Fort, was already in possession of a hostile garrison;[123] and the King’s gardens, between which and the cantonments this fort was situated, were swarming with the insurgents. The communications between the British cantonments and the commissariat fort were thus intercepted by the enemy; and the position of the slender guard posted for the defence of the latter was therefore one of imminent peril. The enemy laid siege to the fort; and began to mine beneath the walls. Surrounded as he was by a far superior force, and seeing no possibility of repelling the assaults of the enemy, Lieutenant Warren, who commanded the guard, officially reported the danger of his position; and set forth that, unless re-inforced, he should be obliged to abandon his post. The letter was conveyed to the General, who ordered out two companies of the 44th Regiment, under Captains Swayne and Robinson, to reinforce the party at the commissariat fort, or enable them to evacuate it in safety.[124] They had not proceeded far, when the enemy, posted in Mahomed Sheriff’s Fort opened upon them with deadly execution. The galling fire of the concealed marksmen checked their progress. Captains Swayne and Robinson were shot dead. Other officers were wounded. There seemed to be no chance of success. To move onward would only have been to expose the detachment to certain destruction. The officer upon whom the command of the party had devolved, determined, therefore, to abandon an enterprise from which nothing but further disaster could arise. He brought back his party to cantonments; and so another failure was added to the list.
Another was soon to be recorded against us. In the course of the afternoon, the General determined to try the effect of sending out a party, consisting mainly of cavalry, to enable Lieutenant Warren to evacuate the commissariat fort. But this party suffered more severely than the preceding one. From the loopholes of Mahomed Sheriff’s Fort—from every tree in the Shah’s garden—from whatever cover of wood or masonry was to be found—the Afghan marksmen poured, with unerring aim, their deadly fire upon our advancing troops. The unseen enemy was too strong for our slight detachment. The troopers of the 5th Cavalry fell in numbers beneath the fire of the Afghan matchlocks. The forward movement was checked. The party retreated; and again the enemy gathered new courage from the contemplation of our reverses.
In the mean while, it had become known to the commissariat officers that the General contemplated the abandonment of the fort, in which not only our grain, but our hospital stores, our spirits, wine, beer, &c., were garnered. Dismayed at the thought of a sacrifice that must entail destruction on the entire force, Captain Boyd, the chief commissariat officer, hastened to General Elphinstone’s quarters, and entreated him not to withdraw Lieutenant Warren from the fort, but to reinforce him with all possible despatch. The General, ever ready to listen to advice, and sometimes to take it, heard all that was advanced by the commissariat officer, readily assented to its truth, and promised to send out a reinforcement to the fort. But no reinforcement was sent. Night was closing in upon the cantonment, and Captain Boyd, to his bitter disappointment, perceived that no preparations were making for the promised movement towards the fort. Asking Captain Johnson to accompany him, he again proceeded to the General’s quarters, where the two officers, in emphatic language, pointed out the terrible results of the sacrifice of our supplies. Again the General listened; again he assented; and again he would have promised all that was required; but other officers were present, who put forth other opinions; talked of the danger of the movement; urged that it would be necessary, in the first instance, to capture Mahomed’s Sheriff’s Fort; and so the General wavered. But at this juncture, another letter from Lieutenant Warren was brought in. It represented that his position had become more insecure; that the enemy were mining under the walls, and the Sepoys escaping over them; and that if reinforcements were not speedily sent, he should be compelled to abandon his position.
This brought the General round again to the opinion that reinforcements ought to be sent; he promised that, soon after midnight a detachment should be under arms to take Mahomed Sheriff’s Fort, and to strengthen Warren’s position; and the requisite orders were accordingly issued. But later counsels prevailed. The march of the detachment was postponed to the following morning; and, before it moved, the little garrison had abandoned the fort and returned to cantonments, leaving all our supplies in the hands of the enemy, and inspiring them with fresh confidence and courage. Warren, a man of a reserved and taciturn nature, but of great courage and resolution, had done his best to defend the place; and had set an example of personal daring to his men, which ought to have inspired and invigorated them. On one occasion, amidst a deadly shower from the Afghan jezails, he had advanced alone, and torn down the national standard which the Afghans had planted at the gate of the fort. But the Sepoys had lost heart. It was impossible to continue the defence of the place. So the little party escaped by working a hole from the interior of the fort underneath the walls, by the aid of tools which had been sent them for a different purpose on the preceding night.[125]
Nor was this our only loss. The commissariat fort, in which the supplies for Shah Soojah’s force were stored, was on the outskirts of the city. In 1840, when a general rising was deemed no unlikely occurrence, Captain Johnson laid in a supply of 17,000 maunds of attah for Shah Soojah’s force, and had erected godowns for their reception within the Balla Hissar, where early in 1841 the grain was all laid up in store. The King, however, subsequently exercised the royal privilege of changing his mind. The godowns were inconveniently situated; and Captain Johnson was ordered to remove the grain from the citadel, and, having no better place for its reception, to convert his camel-sheds, on the outskirts of the city, into a godown fort.[126] In this fort, on the 2nd of November, there were about 8000 maunds of attah. Captain Mackenzie (who had then been for some months in charge of the executive commissariat of the Shah’s troops), an officer of high character, greatly and deservedly esteemed by the Envoy and all the officers of the force, was at this time in charge of the fort. On the morning of the 2nd of November, it was attacked by the armed population of Deh-Afghan. Throughout the whole of that day Mackenzie held his post with unvarying constancy and unshaken courage. Everything was against the little garrison. Water was scarce; ammunition was scarce. They were encumbered with baggage, and overwhelmed with women and children. Reinforcements were written for in vain. Captain Trevor, who occupied, with his family, a neighbouring fort, despatched repeated letters to cantonments, importuning the Envoy to reinforce these isolated posts. But in vain they turned their straining eyes towards the cantonment, “looking for the glittering bayonets through the trees.”[127] Not a company came to their relief. Instead of assistance they received nothing but melancholy tidings of disaster. A demonstration from the cantonment would have saved them. Captain Lawrence had volunteered to take two companies to the relief of the fort; but permission was denied to him. The Kuzzilbashes, too, were ready to declare themselves on the side of the British. Khan Sheeren Khan was, indeed, at Trevor’s house. But when the chiefs saw that not an effort was made by the British commanders to vindicate our authority, or to save the lives of our officers, they prudently held aloof and refused to link themselves with a declining cause.
On the 3rd of November, “about the middle of the day,” the enemy got possession of Trevor’s house; and it soon became certain that Mackenzie, with all his gallantry and all his laborious zeal—working day and night without food and without rest—conducting the defence with as much judgment as spirit—could not much longer hold his post. His men were wearied out; his ammunition was exhausted; his wounded were dying for want of medical aid. He had defended his position throughout two days of toil, suffering, and danger; and no aid had come from cantonments—none was likely to come. So yielding at last to the importunity of others, he moved out of the fort, and fought his way, by night, to cantonments. It was a difficult and hazardous march; and, almost by a miracle, Mackenzie escaped to encounter new dangers, to sustain new trials, and to live in habitual gratitude to God for his wonderful preservation.
The abandonment of our commissariat stores not only threatened the British force with instant starvation, but made such a lamentable exposure of our imbecility, that all who had before held aloof, thinking that the British nation would arise and crush the insurgents, now gathered heart and openly declared themselves against us. The doubtful were assured; the wavering were established. There was a British army looking over the walls of their cantonment at an ill-armed enemy—almost a rabble—gutting their commissariat fort. There were the spoliators, within four hundred yards of our position, carrying off our supplies, as busily as a swarm of ants. “The godown fort,” wrote Captain Johnson in his journal, “was this day something similar to a large ants’ nest. Ere noon, thousands and thousands had assembled from far and wide, to participate in the booty of the English dogs, each man taking away with him as much as he could carry—and to this we were all eye-witnesses.” The troops were grievously indignant at the imbecility of their leaders, who had suffered them to be so ignominiously stripped of the very means of subsistence; and clamoured to be led out against the enemy, who were parading their spoils under the very walls of the cantonment.
The feeling was not one to be checked. Lieutenant Eyre went to the quarters of the General, urged him to send out a party for the capture of Mahomed Sheriff’s Fort, and volunteered to keep the road clear for the advance of the storming party. With some reluctance the General assented, and wrote to the Envoy saying, that after due consideration he had determined on attacking the fort, with fifty men of the 44th, and 200 Native Infantry. “We will first try to breach the place,” he added, “and shell it as well as we can. From information I have received respecting the interior of the fort, which I think is to be relied on, it seems the centre, like our old bazaar, is filled with buildings; therefore, if we succeed in blowing open the gate, we should only be exposed to a destructive fire from the buildings, which, from the state of preparation they evince, would no doubt be occupied in force, supported from the garden. Carrying powder-bags up under fire would have a chance of failure. Our men have been all night in the works, are tired, and ill-fed; but we must hope for the best, and securing our commissariat fort with the stores.”[128]
It was in this letter, written scarcely three days after the first outbreak of the insurrection, that the General first hinted at the necessity of treating with the insolent enemy. “It behoves us,” he wrote, “to look to the consequences of failure: in this case I know not how we are to subsist, or, from want of provisions, to retreat. You should, therefore, consider what chance there is of making terms, if we are driven to this extremity. Shelton must then be withdrawn, as we shall not be able to supply him.” What hope was there for the national honour after this? What but failure was likely to result from an expedition undertaken under such auspices? The party was sent out under Major Swayne. It seems to have stood still, when it ought to have rushed forward. The opportunity was lost; and the General, who was watching the movement from the gateway, ordered the detachment to be withdrawn. The Sepoys of the 37th regiment who had been eager to advance to the capture of the fort, were enraged and disappointed at being held back; and the enemy, more confident and presumptuous than before, exulted in a new triumph.
Whilst affairs were in this distressing and dispiriting state at Caubul, our outposts were exposed to imminent danger; and it was soon only too plain that the insurrection was not confined to the neighbourhood of the capital. At Kardurrah Lieutenant Maule, of the Bengal Artillery, commanding the Kohistanee regiment, with his adjutant and sergeant-major, had been cut to pieces at the outset of the insurrection, by the men of his own corps; and now intelligence came in that the Goorkha regiment, posted at Charekur in the Kohistan, where Eldred Pottinger was acting as Political Agent, was threatened with annihilation. Captain Codrington, the commandant, and other officers had been killed; and as water was failing the garrison, there was little chance of its holding out. The Envoy communicated these sad tidings to the General, who wrote in reply, that the intelligence was “most distressing;” and asked whether “nothing could be done by the promise of a large reward—a lakh of rupees for instance, if necessary, to any of the Kohistan chiefs,” to bring off the little garrison.