[6] The 60th Native Infantry.
[7] Two days before, Captain (afterwards Sir Henry) Lawrence, Assistant to Mr. Clerk, whose later career justified the high expectations which were formed of him during his connexion with the North-Western Agency, on his way out after a dacoity party, met the intelligence of the Caubul outbreak, and immediately after forwarding it on to Mr. Clerk went to Colonel Wild, to urge him to push on the 60th and 64th Regiments, and to warn the Light Infantry Battalion and some details of the 10th Cavalry, for service beyond the frontier.—[Capt. Lawrence to Mr. George Clerk: Nov. 14, 1841. MS. Records.]
[8] Mr. Clerk sent forward the 30th, which was Wild’s regiment, in order that the colonel might take command of the brigade, General Boyd having thrown out a hint that he was a more efficient officer than the colonels of the other regiments.
[9] These artillerymen were on their way to Afghanistan to relieve the company then in the country, serving with Abbott’s battery.
[10] Two nine-pounders and a howitzer.
[11] Sir Jasper Nicolls to Government: January 24th, 1842.
[12] Sir Jasper Nicolls to Government: January 23rd. See also private journal, “Thanesur, January 23rd.—Mr. C. joined us on the ground. He is anxiously in favour of our sending forward more troops, in view, I believe, to our undertaking the re-conquest of Caubul. To this I decidedly object. We have neither funds nor men available, without in the latter instance leaving India so bare as to risk its safety.”—[MS. Records.]
[13] Supreme Government to Sir Jasper Nicolls: January 31, 1842.—[Published Papers.]
[14] Papers relating to Military Operations in Afghanistan. Lord Auckland’s private letters were still more decided on these points. “I should be glad,” he wrote to Sir Jasper Nicolls on the 10th of February, “to hear that Sir R. Sale has been able to withdraw his brigade from a position so perilous as to make me regard its possible fate with extreme anxiety.” Two days afterwards he wrote to the same correspondent: “I have from the beginning believed a second conquest of Caubul with our present means to be absolutely impossible.”—[MS. Correspondence.]
[15] It was, moreover, of great importance to accelerate the movement, because it was believed that any day might witness the appearance of the Barukzye horsemen on the road between Peshawur and Jellalabad. “Time is most precious to us,” wrote Mackeson to Clerk; “a few days more may see a party of the Barukzye troops in the plains of Ningrahar, and then thousands will be required where hundreds now would do the work.”