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

by Sir John William Kaye

But a great calamity was now about to befall the Jellalabad garrison. On the morning of the 19th of February the men were busied with their accustomed labour. With their arms piled within reach, they were plying axe and shovel, toiling with their wonted cheerfulness and activity at the defences, which they had begun to look upon with the satisfied air of men who had long seen their work growing under their hands, and now recognised the near approach of its completion. They had worked, indeed, to good purpose. Very different were the fortifications of Jellalabad from what they had been when Sale entered the place in November.[41] They were now real, not nominal defences. The unremitting toil of nearly three months had not been without its visible and appreciable results. It seemed, too, as though the work were about to be completed just at the time when the defences were most needed. Akbar Khan was in the neighbourhood of Jellalabad, and every day Sale expected to be called upon to meet the flower of the Barukzye horse on the plain. But on this 19th of February, when the garrison were flushed with joy at the thought of the near completion of their work, a fearful visitation of Providence, suddenly and astoundingly, turned all their labour to very nothingness. There was an awful and mysterious sound, as of thunder beneath their feet; then the earth shook; the houses of the town trembled and fell; the ramparts of the fort seemed to reel and totter, and presently came down with a crash.[42] On the first sound of the threatened convulsion the men had instinctively rushed to their arms, and the greater number had escaped the coming ruin; but it is still among those recollections of the defence which are dwelt upon by the “illustrious garrison” in the liveliest spirit of jocularity, how the field-officer of the day—a gallant and good soldier—but one who had more regard for external proprieties than was generally appreciated in those days, was buried beneath a heap of rubbish, and how he was extricated from his perilous position by some men of the 13th, under circumstances which even now they enjoy in their retrospect with a relish which years have not impaired.[43]

But although the earthquake which threw down the walls of Jellalabad, wrought in a minute more irreparable mischief than a bombarding army could have done in a month, in nowise disheartened by this calamity, the garrison again took the spade and the pick-axe into their hands, and toiled to repair the mischief. “No time,” says Captain Broadfoot, “was lost.advanced in two heavy columns The shocks had scarcely ceased when the whole garrison was told off into working parties, and before night the breaches were scarped, the rubbish below cleared away, and the ditches before them dug out, whilst the great one on the Peshawur side was surrounded by a good gabion parapet. A parapet was erected on the remains of the north-west bastion, with an embrasure allowing the guns to flank the approach of the ruined Caubul gate; the parapet of the new bastion was restored, so as to give a flanking fire to the north-west bastion, whilst the ruined gate was rendered inaccessible by a trench in front of it, and in every bastion round the place a temporary parapet was raised. From the following day all the troops off duty were continually at work, and such was their energy and perseverance, that by the end of the month the parapets were entirely restored, or the curtain filled in where restoration was impracticable, and every battery re-established. The breaches have been built up, with the rampart doubled in thickness, and the whole of the gates retrenched.”—Such, indeed, was the extraordinary vigour thrown into the work of restoration—such the rapidity with which the re-establishment of the defences was completed, that the enemy, seeing soon afterwards no traces of the great earthquake-shock of the 19th of February, declared that the phenomenon must have been the result of English witchcraft, for that Jellalabad was the only place that had escaped.

If Akbar Khan, who at this time was within a few miles of Sale’s position, knew the extent to which the defences of Jellalabad had been weakened, he committed a strange oversight in not taking advantage of such a casualty. The garrison felt assured that the Barukzyes would not throw away such a chance; and they made up their minds resolutely for the encounter. Intelligence had just been received of the publication of the government manifesto of the 31st of January; and this spasmodic burst of energy and indignation, welcomed as an indication of the intention of the Supreme Government to wipe out at all hazards the stains that had been fixed upon the national honour, fortified and re-assured the heroes of Jellalabad, who had so long been grieving over the apparent feebleness and apathy of the official magnates at Calcutta.[44]

Sale published the proclamation in garrison orders; and the result did not belie his expectation. Like the chiefs of the Jellalabad force, the junior officers and men had felt, with acute mortification, the neglect to which they had seemingly been subjected.[45] But now, that Lord Auckland had declared that he regarded the disasters that had befallen us merely as so many new opportunities of demonstrating the military power of the British Empire in the East, the hearts of the brave men, who had been so long defying the enemy that had destroyed Elphinstone’s army, again began to leap up with hope and exultation; and as they saw their defences rising again, almost as it were by supernatural agency, before their eyes, they began rather to regret the caution of the Barukzye chief, which seemed to restrain him from venturing under the walls of Jellalabad.

There seems, indeed, to have been in the Afghan camp a strange shrinking from anything like a hand-to-hand encounter with the intrepid soldiers of Sale’s brigade. The reluctance of Akbar Khan to near the walls of Jellalabad is a painful commentary upon the arrogance and audacity of the Afghans, who a few weeks before had been bearding Elphinstone and Shelton under the shadow of the Caubul cantonments. Akbar Khan now seemed resolute to risk nothing by any dashing movement, that might decide, at once, the fate of the Jellalabad garrison. Instead of assaulting the place he blockaded it.

He seemed to trust to the efficacy of a close investment; and so moved in his troops nearer and nearer to our walls, hoping to effect that by starvation which he could not effect by hard fighting in the field. And so, for some time, he continued, drawing in more and more closely—harassing our foraging parties, and occasionally coming into contact with the horsemen who were sent out to protect the grass-cutters. Not, however, before the 11th of March was there any skirmishing worthy of record. Then it was reported that the enemy were about to mine the place. Sungahs had been thrown up on the night of the 10th, and the enemy were firing briskly from behind them. It was plain that some mischief was brewing; so on the morning of the 11th, Sale, keeping his artillery at the guns on the ramparts, sent out a strong party of infantry and cavalry, with two hundred of Broadfoot’s sappers. Dennie commanded the sortie. As they streamed out of the Peshawur gate of the city, Akbar Khan seemed inclined to give them battle. But ever as the enemy advanced the hot fire from our guns drove them back. They could not advance upon our works, nor protect the sungahs which our skirmishers were rapidly destroying. It was soon ascertained that the story of the mine was a mere fable; ammunition was too scarce to be expended on any but necessary service; so there was nothing more to be done. Dennie sounded the recall. The British troops began to fall back upon their works; and then the enemy, emboldened by the retrograde movement, fell upon our retiring column. No sooner had our people halted and reformed, than the Afghans turned and fled, but still they wrought us some mischief, for they wounded Broadfoot; and those were days when an accident to the garrison engineer was, indeed, a grievous calamity. Not a man, however, of Sale’s brigade was killed. The carnage was all among the enemy.

The remainder of the month passed quietly away—but the anxieties of the garrison were steadily increasing. Provisions had become scarce; ammunition was scarce; fodder for the horses was not to be obtained. It was obviously the design of the enemy to reduce the garrison by a strict blockade. It would be difficult to exaggerate the eagerness with which, under such circumstances, they looked for the arrival of succours from Peshawur. Excellent as were Pollock’s reasons for not proceeding to the relief of Jellalabad until his force was strengthened by the arrival of the European regiments on their way to Peshawur, it is easy to understand, and impossible to condemn, the eagerness with which Sale and Macgregor continued to exhort him to advance for their succour.[46]

Pollock had expected that the dragoons would reach Peshawur by the 20th of March; but on the 27th they had not arrived; and the General wrote to Jellalabad, explaining the causes of delay, but still hoping that he would be able to commence his march on the last day of the month. “There appears,” he wrote, “to be nothing but accidents to impede the advance of the dragoons. They were five days crossing the Ravee. I have sent out 300 camels to help them in; and I hope nothing will prevent my moving on the 31st. God knows I am most anxious to move on, for I know that delay will subject us to be exposed to very hot weather. But my situation has been most embarrassing. Any attempt at a forward movement in the early part of this month I do not think would have succeeded, for at one time the Hindoos did not hesitate to say that they would not go forward. I hope the horror they had has somewhat subsided; but without more white faces I question even now if they would go. Since the 1st we have been doing all to recover a proper tone; but you may suppose what my feelings have been, wishing to relieve you, and knowing that my men would not go. However desirable it is that I should be joined by the 31st Regiment, your late letters compel me to move, and I hope, therefore, to be with you by about the 7th. I cannot say the day exactly, because I want to take Ali-Musjid. When that is taken, your situation may, perhaps, become better.”[47] The dragoons reached Pollock’s camp on the 30th, and on the following day he began to move forward.