History of the War in Afghanistan, Vol. 2 (of 3) / Third Edition

by Sir John William Kaye

Rattray was soon despatched. A party of the enemy, crossing the plain and seeing the wounded officer at their mercy, discharged their pieces into his head and body. They then invested Pottinger’s position, firing upon him from the shelter of the numerous water-courses and walls. But assistance was now at hand. Lieutenant Haughton, the adjutant of the Goorkha corps, was moving down from Charekur. As soon as he appeared in the vicinity of the garden. Captain Codrington made a sortie, and united himself with the relieving force. The enemy were driven out of the garden with severe loss. Evening was by this time closing in. The enemy had got possession of the Charekur road, and before any measures of future defence could be concerted between the two officers, Codrington was obliged, after leaving some details with Pottinger, to move off his Goorkhas to his own fortified barracks. On the following day, with four companies of Goorkhas, and a six-pounder gun, Codrington moved down from Charekur, to relieve Pottinger’s guard, and to supply his little garrison with ammunition. Owing mainly, however, to the impetuosity of a company of young soldiers,[153] the column met with a check, and was compelled to fall back on Charekur. Ensign Salisbury was mortally wounded, and many men of the Goorkha regiment fell on the retreat.

Seeing little prospect now of being relieved, and finding his ammunition reduced to a few rounds in the pouches of his men, Pottinger determined, after nightfall, to attempt a retreat on Charekur. Disguising his intentions by collecting grain during the day, as for a protracted defence, he eluded the vigilance of the enemy, and disencumbering himself of his Afghan followers, and all whose fidelity there was any reason to suspect, he mustered the Hindostanees outside the postern, upon the pretext of making a sortie upon the enemy, and then marched for the barracks. Avoiding the main road, and skirting the edge of the mountain, the little party, under cover of the night, made good its retreat, and united itself with the main body of the Goorkha regiment at Charekur.[154]

On the morning of the 5th of November the enemy assembled in large bodies around the fortified barracks; and, after attacking the outposts, closely invested the place. Codrington commanded the regiment. Pottinger, divesting himself of his political character, became the artillery officer again, and took charge of the guns. Moving out with a field-piece to support the skirmishers, he was wounded by a musket-shot in the leg. But there was too much work in hand for one of his temper to succumb at once to such an accident as this. The enemy were pressing fiercely on. Codrington and his Goorkhas were confined to the barracks and a few mud huts in their immediate neighbourhood. They stood their ground manfully and well. But the hostile multitude poured like a torrent upon the little band of devoted men.[155] The Goorkhas were driven from the huts. They saw their gallant commander fall mortally wounded; but they returned undaunted to the attack. Haughton, the adjutant, was now at their head. He led the men gallantly to the charge, and drove back the enemy beyond the gardens they had occupied in the morning. Again and again the Afghans returned to the attack. But the little body of Goorkhas, with heroic courage, held their ground till night put an end to the conflict.

Amidst the tears and lamentations of his sepoys, Codrington, with his death-wound upon him, but still manfully striving to walk, had tottered, under support, to the cantonment, but had there fallen to the ground, and in an agony of thirst and calling for water, had then been carried into his house and placed on a bed, where now disabled by suffering, Eldred Pottinger was lying. Being supplied with writing materials, he wrote, as best he could, a letter to his wife, gave her picture into Pottinger’s safe keeping, and prepared himself to die. He lingered for two days, and then was laid in the grave by his faithful followers, beside one of his young companions in arms.

Meanwhile the unequal contest had continued. At a distance of some three hundred yards from the barracks there was a castle, the towers of which so effectually commanded them, that it was necessary to occupy the post with a garrison of fifty men. But it was not very easy to retain it. The enemy increased greatly in numbers on the 6th; and, in spite of the successful sorties of the Goorkhas, drove back their outposts, and confined them within the narrow limits of their barracks. On the following day, the castle garrison, betrayed by the regimental Moonshee, were induced to surrender. The enemy took possession of the place, and from its commanding towers poured in a galling fire on the Goorkhas in the barracks. The position of the little garrison was now becoming more and more critical. Cut off by the enemy, water had become lamentably scarce. They had lost half their officers and a large number of their comrades. The enemy had increased in number and in fury, and completely commanded their position. To shut themselves up in their barracks was to die of thirst; to attempt to fight their way out was to be cut to pieces.

On the 8th, the enemy offered them terms. The condition was, that they should become Mahomedans. “We came to this country,” said Pottinger, in reply, “to aid a Mahomedan sovereign in the recovery of his rights. We are therefore within the pale of Islam, and exempt from coercion on the score of religion.” To this they replied, that the King himself had ordered the attack; and asked if Pottinger would surrender on receiving his Majesty’s orders. “I can do nothing,” said Pottinger, “without a written order from the King.” And with this the negotiations ended.

But there was an enemy more terrible than these infuriated crowds of Kohistanees and Nijrowees. The garrison was suffering agonies of thirst.[156] On the 10th, the last pool of water was drawn; and half a wine-glass of the precious fluid was served out to each fighting man. On the 11th there was not sufficient to serve out to the whole party. At night they stole out with their lotahs concealed under their clothes, lest the shining metal should betray them, to snatch a few drops of water from a neighbouring spring. But the enemy discovered the practice, and shot down the wretched men. Parties were then sent out to cover the water-carriers; but the soldiers, mad with the tortures of thirst, quitted their ranks, and could not be restrained from rushing forward in search of the liquid life for which they had so long been languishing. Every new effort to obtain water, however well devised, failed from the same cause. The parties, which moved out as disciplined soldiers, soon, in the madness of their sufferings, became a disorderly rabble—soon were at the mercy of the enemy, who shot them down, in their helplessness, like sheep.

All hope was now at an end. The garrison were reduced to a party of two hundred fighting men. They had but thirty rounds of ammunition for each musket in store. The wretched Goorkhas were literally perishing with intolerable thirst. Pottinger and Haughton took counsel together; and determined to make a desperate effort to save the remnant of their little force by a rapid unencumbered march to Caubul. Accordingly, on the evening of the 13th of November, the Goorkhas evacuated Charekur. Pottinger led the advance. Haughton had, on the afternoon of that day, been disabled by a sabre-cut from a jamadar of artillery, whilst apprehending a party of deserters; and was now scarcely able to sit his horse. Mr. Grant, a medical officer—not the first medical officer who has played the part of the true soldier in battle, and justified the claims of his profession to the soldier’s honours and rewards—having spiked all the guns with his own hands, led out the main body; whilst Ensign Rose brought up the rear. The order of march was soon lost. The little force became a disorderly rabble, struggling on with the one object of allaying at the first pool of water the torments of unendurable thirst. It was impossible to keep them together—impossible to lead them in safety to the capital. Pottinger and Haughton were exhausted by the pain of their wounds. They could render no service to their men; and would have perished had they remained behind. So they determined on pushing on to Caubul. A single sepoy of the Goorkha corps, who plodded on with weary feet beside the horsemen, Pottinger’s English writer, and the regimental bunyah, were their only companions. The route was unknown to them, and they had no guide; but they struggled on through many difficulties and much danger, and at last reached the neighbourhood of Caubul. Here the peril thickened around them. Descending into the Caubul plain behind the lake, and intending to cross the cultivated ground to the cantonments, at the back of the Shah’s garden, at Killa Bolundee, they missed the turning, and soon found themselves in the midst of the enemy’s sentinels. Fearing to attract attention by turning back, they then made for Deh-Afghan, but finding the place occupied by the enemy, and being closely challenged by the sentries, they were compelled to pass into the city. Pursuing the lanes and bazaars along the river bank, and narrowly escaping death from a volley fired upon them by one of the enemy’s picquets, they made their way at last to the cantonments. The regiment in the mean while had perished. Rose and Grant were slain by the enemy,[157] and scarcely a man escaped to tell how his comrades had been miserably destroyed.[158]