1st. The troops under my command have just made a long and very difficult march of upwards of 300 miles, and they have been continually marching about for the last six months, and most certainly require rest for a day or two—the same with my camels and other cattle. I lost twenty-nine camels yesterday, and expect to-day’s report will be double that number.
2nd. I am getting short of supplies for Europeans and natives, and I can see but little probability of getting a quantity equal to my daily consumption at this place. I have little or no money.
3rd. I have so many sick and wounded that I fear I shall have the greatest inconvenience and difficulty in carrying them; and should any unnecessary operations add to their number, they must be left to perish. If I remain here many days I shall expect to lose half my cattle, which will render retirement very difficult.
4th. I sincerely think that sending a small detachment will and must be followed by deep disaster. No doubt Mahomed Akbar, Shumshoodeen, and the other chiefs, are uniting their forces, and I hourly expect to hear that Sir R. Shakespear is added to the number of British prisoners. In my last affair with Shumshoodeen and Sultan Jan, they had 12,000 men; and my information is that two days ago they set out for Bameean.
5th. After much experience in this country, my opinion is that, if the system of sending out detachments should be adopted, disaster and ruin will follow.
6th. After bringing to your notice, showing that my men require rest for a day or two, that my camels are dying fast, and that my supplies are nearly expended, should you order my force to be divided, I have nothing to do but implicitly to obey your orders; but, my dear General, I feel assured you will excuse me when I most respectfully venture to protest against it under the circumstances above noted. I could have wished to have stated this in person to you, but I have been so very unwell for the last two months that I am sure you will kindly excuse me.
Yours sincerely,
Wm. Nott.[308]
On the following day, Nott having excused himself on the plea of ill health from visiting Pollock in his camp, Pollock, waiving the distinction of his superior rank, called upon his brother-general. The conversation which ensued related mainly to the question of the despatch of the brigade in aid of the recovery of the British prisoners. Nott had made up his mind on the subject. He was not to be moved from his first position. There were few besides himself who considered the arguments which he advanced to be of the overwhelming and conclusive character which Nott himself believed them to be; and it was, at all events, sufficiently clear, that as it was of primal importance on such a service to lose the least possible amount of time, it was desirable to detach a brigade from Nott’s camp, in preference to one from Pollock’s, if only because the former was some ten miles nearer to Bameean than the latter. Nott was inflexible. Government, he said, “had thrown the prisoners overboard”—why then should he rescue them? He would obey the orders of his superior officer, but only under protest. So Pollock returned to camp, and delegated to another officer the honourable service which Nott had emphatically declined. Sir Robert Sale was not likely to decline it. Though his own heroic wife had not been one of the captives, every feeling of the soldier and the man would have responded to the appeal.
So Sale took out with him a brigade from the Jellalabad army, and pushed on in pursuit of Shakespear and the Kuzzilbashes. But already had the release of the prisoners been effected. They had accomplished their own liberation. Sale met them with Shakespear and the Kuzzilbash escort on their way to Pollock’s camp.