The men breakfasted at eight o’clock, and at nine were ready for the advance. The attack commenced by General Macpherson’s brigade carrying a village which the Afghans had occupied in advance of the range. Without maps, it is difficult in the extreme to describe battles; but it may be briefly said that Generals Macpherson and Baker advanced round the end of the Pir-Paimal, carried village after village, in some of which a desperate defence was made by the enemy, and so at last, winning every foot of the ground by hard fighting, they swept round the hill, and turned the enemy’s left. Many of the men were killed by Ghazees, who shut themselves up in the houses of the villages and sold their lives dearly, firing upon our troops until house after house was carried by storm. The whole ground was orchard and enclosed fields, and each of these was the scene of a conflict. Behind the northern hill, where the country is cut up by water-courses and canals between the river and the slopes, the Afghans made their last stand. A deep water-cut, twelve feet broad, with banks two or three feet high, and with cultivated fields in front, served them as an excellent defence. The banks had been ingeniously loopholed for rifle fire, and two camps lay in rear of it. The Highlanders, however, carried the place with a rush, losing upwards of 40 men as they did so. The rest of the enemy, numbering from 8000 to 10,000, who had been gathered in the orchards, were driven round the rear of the line of hills. Wherever they tried to rally, the British were upon them, and at last the fugitives reaching their camp, the whole body of Ayoub’s army took to flight, although his regular regiments had never been engaged during the day, the whole fighting having been done by the irregulars.
In four hours from the time the fight began, the Afghan army was driven from the position it had taken up, its camp and all its appurtenances falling into our hands, as well as thirty-one guns and two Horse Artillery guns, which had been captured at Maiwand. They had made certain of victory, for not a tent was struck, nor a single mule-load of baggage off.
This action, which completely crushed the force of Ayoub, concluded the campaign.
The battle cost the lives of three officers—Lieutenant-Colonel Brownlow, commanding 72nd Highlanders, Captain Frome, 72nd Highlanders, and Captain Straton, 2nd battalion 22nd Foot. Eleven officers were wounded, 46 men were killed and 202 wounded. The enemy’s loss was about 1200 in killed alone. Their work was over; and as General Stewart, with the army of Cabul, had retired from beyond the borders of Afghanistan on the one side, so General Roberts, with his relieving force, fell back on the other, and the Afghan Campaign came to a close.
Chapter Fourteen.
The Zulu War—1879.
Towards the end of the year 1878, serious disputes arose between the British authorities of Natal and Cetewayo, the King of the Zulus, a savage monarch possessing a large army of warriors, composed of men well-trained according to the savage idea of warfare, and possessed of extreme bravery.
The ill-feeling had commenced at the time that the British took over the Transvaal. Between the Boers and the Zulus great hostility prevailed, the Boers constantly encroaching upon the Zulus’ ground, driving off cattle, and acting with extreme lawlessness. The Zulus had long been preparing for retributive warfare; and as the Boers had proved themselves shortly before unable to conquer Secoceni, a chief whose power was as nothing in comparison with that of Cetewayo, the Zulus deemed that they would have an easy conquest of the Transvaal. The occupation of that country by the English baulked them of their expected hopes of conquest and plunder, and a very sore feeling was engendered. This was heightened by the interference of the English with the tribal usages. Wholesale massacres had been of constant occurrence in Zululand, the slightest opposition to the king’s will being punished not only by the death of the offender himself, but by the destruction of all the villages of the tribe to which he belonged. Every fighting man was in the army, and the young men were not permitted to marry until the king gave permission, such permission being never granted until after the regiment to which the man belonged had distinguished itself in fight. Hence it happened that frequently the men were kept single until they reached middle age, and this privation naturally caused among the whole of the younger population an intense desire for war.