On the 5th of March, Lieutenants Edwardes and Fowler left Mastuj with orders to join the British agent at Chitral, and they had with them 20 Bengal Sappers and 40 men of the Kashmir Rifles, conveying sixty boxes of ammunition and seven days’ rations. The day on which they arrived at Reshun they heard rumours of opposition ahead of them, and therefore intrenched themselves as well as possible near the river. The next day they were attacked by the tribes, and finding the position too exposed, they carried the houses of the village close by with the bayonet, and hastily made them defensible, and succeeded by nightfall in getting in all their ammunition and supplies and all the wounded. Here the little force, now reduced to about 50 men, was regularly besieged. The first great difficulty was the want of water, as the enemy had diverted the rivulet, thus making it necessary for the garrison to go some distance under fire to bring in sufficient for their daily wants. Food was fortunately plentiful, as, in addition to the rations, eggs and fowls and flour were found in the village. The enemy, after several attempts to take the place by assault, contented themselves with besieging the village, doing as much damage as possible by a continuous fire from the cover of houses and trees, and at length succeeded in occupying a house not more than a few feet from the wall.
On the 13th the enemy hoisted a white flag, and informed the officers that there had been some fighting at Chitral but that now peace was made, and offering to let the garrison go either to Chitral or to Mastuj. Lieutenant Edwardes upon this agreed to a three days’ armistice, and sent letters to Chitral and Mastuj; meantime the garrison were well treated and supplies sent in to them. On the 14th the enemy proposed a game of polo, and invited the officers to come and see it. This invitation was unfortunately, as it turned out, accepted, for, although under the fire of their own men, the two officers were suddenly seized from behind and bound, and a sudden attack was made upon the house occupied by the troops. This was taken by assault, most of the sepoys being killed. On March 16th, the officers were taken to Chitral, where they found about a dozen of the sepoys who had been taken prisoners; after being kept here some time, they were sent to Drosh to Umra Khan. He treated them very well, and even offered to let them join the force in Chitral, but as he would not let their men accompany them they declined. They were afterwards taken with Umra Khan on his return to Jandol, and though strictly guarded were treated with every respect and courtesy, and finally sent in safety to Sir R. Low’s camp. The sepoys also were allowed to go unharmed—an act of forbearance on the part of Umra Khan almost without precedent among Pathans.
The affair of Reshun, which cost the lives of so many brave men, was the indirect cause of the loss of many more at the same time. For as soon as the British officers discovered the state of things at Reshun, they sent back word to Mastuj, and Captain Ross and Lieutenant Jones with 93 Sikhs at once set out to their assistance. Thirty-three men were left at Buni, and the remaining 60, with the two officers, pushed forward towards Reshun. On the way they had to pass through a narrow ravine with precipitous cliffs on either side. Here they were suddenly attacked by the enemy in great force from the cliffs above. Soon the enemy closed the end of the pass, and retreat or advance was equally impossible. For a time shelter was found in a cave, and an attempt was made to rush out of the defile in the night; but the enemy were found on the alert, and though the rifle fire could be faced, it was impossible to pass several stone shoots which were in the possession of the enemy, who could annihilate with avalanches of rocks any troops passing below. The cave was again occupied for a day, but without food, and therefore it was necessary to make one desperate effort if the men were to escape starvation. Accordingly, in the middle of the night a sudden rush was made, and after a desperate fight the sangars held by the enemy were taken, but with heavy loss, Captain Ross being among the first killed. Eventually, after desperate fighting, and a great number having been killed in crossing the stone shoots, a small remnant reached the end of the ravine; here a stand was made, and at length Lieutenant Jones with 17 men, of whom 9 and himself were wounded, returned to Buni, where the enemy did not attack them; and on the 17th reliefs arrived from Mastuj, to which the whole party returned. Here they were besieged, and would in all probability have in time been reduced by famine had not Colonel Kelly’s force arrived.
Colonel Kelly’s March.
While these stirring events were taking place on the frontier, the Indian Government had not been inactive, for in the month of March an army of 14,000 men was mobilised, under the command of Major-General Sir R. Low, the intention being originally that this expedition should be sent to Chitral through Swat and Bajour, starting in April. On receipt of the news of the disaster at Karagh it became necessary to not only advance the troops as early as possible, but also to take immediate steps for the relief of Chitral at the earliest possible moment, as it was known that that place was only supplied till the end of April. It was impossible to send troops from India to Gilgit for this purpose, as the passes would not be open till June. Most fortunately a force of the 32nd Pioneers, under Colonel Kelly, were at this time road-making at Bunji, on the Indus, only 38 miles from Gilgit; it was therefore determined to send Colonel Kelly with all the men he could collect to march as rapidly as possible to Chitral. On the 21st of March Colonel Kelly received orders by telegraph to march, and he set off the same afternoon. And a famous march it was!
On the 23rd of March the expedition set out from Gilgit. It consisted at starting of 400 men of the Pioneers, two guns of Number 1 Kashmir Mountain Battery, and 100 Hunza and Puniali Levies under their own chiefs; the officers with Colonel Kelly being Captain Borrodaile, Surgeon-Captain Browning-Smith, and Lieutenants Beynon, Bethune, Cobbe, Paterson, and Cooke; and these were joined at Gupis by Lieutenant Stewart, R.A., who took charge of the guns, and Lieutenant Oldham, R.E., with 40 Kashmir Sappers, and Lieutenant Gough with 100 Kashmir Rifles. It will be noticed that again the troops and non-commissioned officers were entirely native.
On April the 1st, in spite of five days’ snow, the column set out from Ghizr to attempt the Shandur Pass. The first difficulty was a stampede of the impressed native bearers, who had bolted in the night and were not collected again till late in the afternoon. After a few miles the guns stuck in the deep snow, and it was found impossible to get them along. Captain Borrodaile, with Lieutenant Oldham and 140 men, with the Hunza Levies, remained at Teru with provision for ten days. The rest of the column with the guns had reluctantly to return to Ghizr. The snow continuing, it was impossible to attempt the pass; but the Kashmirs set to work to dig a road from Teru through the snow to Langar, the camping-ground on their side of the pass, and on the next day the guns were got along to Teru and thence to Langar, but this was only effected by carrying the guns, carriages, and ammunition. These were divided amongst squads of four men, relieved every fifty yards, so that the progress did not exceed a mile an hour, the men being often up to their middle in snow in a bitter wind and a glaring sun. The camping-ground at Langar, some 13 miles from Teru, was not reached till near midnight, and the guns had to be left by their exhausted bearers a mile or so outside the camp. This was indeed a great achievement, but there remained still the pass. First there was a very stiff climb for about a mile, then a more gradual ascent up to 12,300 feet above sea-level, then five miles of fairly level plain, a sheet of glaring snow swept by a bitter wind. The distance from Langar to Laspur on the other side of the pass is only ten miles, but though Borrodaile’s party of Pioneers and Levies started early next day, they did not reach Laspur till evening. The villagers were as surprised as though the party had dropped from the moon, and thought it expedient to be friendly. The enemy had so implicitly relied upon the impossibility of getting through the pass in such extreme weather that no preparation to block our movements had been made. The next day the village was put into a state of defence, and supplies were collected, and with the aid of the villagers the guns were brought down. Both men and officers suffered severely; most had blue spectacles, but by the time the whole column had got over there were 68 cases of snow-blindness and 43 of frost. The opposition shown by the enemy as the column proceeded was overcome by the gunfire, which the Chitrali seemed quite unable to stand; and Mastuj, from which the enemy had retired on the same day in the direction of Chitral, was reached on the afternoon of the 9th of April. The march was continued the next day, and after a sharp fight on the 13th, in which Colonel Kelly lost eight men, Chitral was entered on the 20th. In this wonderful march the column had gone 350 miles in 35 days over a very difficult country, climbed a difficult pass, carrying the guns through the snow and in the face of an enemy. The men carried each two days’ rations; and only seven days’ rations being provided, after that the force had entirely to depend upon what the country afforded, which was very little.
The capture of the Malakand Pass.
We have now to return to the actions of the army, which, as we have seen, had been ordered to assemble under General Sir R. Low in March. The first Army Corps, consisting of 14,000 men, was mobilised at Nowshera and Hoti Mardan, with General Sir Bindon Blood, Chief of the Staff, and Lieutenant—Colonel H.S. Craigie, Assistant Adjutant-General; the three brigades being commanded by Generals Kinloch, Waterfield, and Gatacre. When the news arrived of the danger at Chitral the preparations were pressed forward, and on the 1st of April the troops were moved forward, marching without tents, and water supplies for only three weeks; and on the 2nd of April the second and third brigades were at Dargai, a village at the foot of the Malakand Pass. There are three passes into the Swat valley, namely, Malakand, Shakhot, and Morah; all of these were held by the enemy, but as it had been given out that the British intended to cross by the Shakhot Pass, to which the first brigade had been sent, the enemy were not in such force at Malakand as they should have been.
The fact was that when Sir R. Low learned that the greater part of the enemy were at the Shakhot and Morah Passes he determined to mislead them into staying there by acting as though he intended to attack the Shakhot Pass, and for this purpose marched the first brigade in that direction with orders to rejoin him if possible at Dargai by a forced night-march; intending that the three brigades should meet on the 2nd of April at 8 a.m. and carry the pass before the enemy had discovered their intention. The weather frustrated the carrying out of this plan, the night-march had to be abandoned and the attack postponed until the 3rd, but the plan of deceiving the enemy was quite successful, for the enemy had not time to get across the hills to help their comrades in the Malakand Pass. And this was fortunate, for the pass was so obstinately defended as it was that all three brigades, with the exception of one regiment held in reserve, were engaged in the attack.