The Dark Defile by Diana Preston Read Free Book Online

if their heads were freezing solid. But dutiful soldier that he was, he recalled a brigade that had departed six days earlier for India under its commander, Brigadier James Maclaren, and ordered them instead to march for Kabul. Nott’s personal feelings are clear from a letter to his daughters: “ I have received a positive order from the Envoy and Elphinstone to send troops to Kabul … This is against my judgment; 1st because I think at this time of year they cannot get there, as the snow will probably be four or five feet deep … besides which, it is likely they will have to fight every foot of the ground … I am obliged strictly to obey the orders of such stupid people, when I know these orders go to ruin the affairs of the British Government, and to cut the throats of my handful of soldiers … How strange that Macnaghten has never been right, even by chance!” He was equally open to Brigadier Maclaren, telling him, “ The despatch of this brigade to Kabul is none of my doing. I am compelled to defer to superior authority but in my own private opinion I am sending you all to destruction. ”
    In Kabul, although the British had taken the Rikabashi Fort and other strongholds, the insurgents, encouraged by Abdullah Khan and Amenoolah Khan, had merely been regrouping and had not gone away. Angry that the villagers of Bemaru, half a mile to the north of the cantonments on the road to Kohistan, were continuing to sell grain to the British, the insurgents drove them from their houses, seized their possessions, then positioned two guns—a 4-pounder and a 6-pounder—in the hills above the village, from where they began firing into the cantonments below. Macnaghten insisted the guns be captured. When Shelton objected that the risks were too great, Macnaghten replied, “ If you will allow yourself to be thus bearded by the enemy, and will not advance and take these two guns by this evening, you must be prepared for any disgrace that may befall us. ”
    The reluctant Shelton assembled four cavalry squadrons, seventeen infantry companies and two guns and on 13 November led them up into the hills around Bemaru. Charged by Afghan horsemen, the leading British troops held their fire, not discharging their Brown Bess muskets until the enemy was only ten yards away, but their volley failed to topple a single man or horse. Lady Sale, watching from her flat-topped roof where the chimney offered some protection from the bullets whizzing by, was terrified: “My very heart felt as if it leapt to my teeth when I saw the Afghans ride clean through them. The onset was fearful. They looked like a great cluster of bees.” Unlike many of her male compatriots, she admired Afghan fighting tactics, astutely identifying some of the reasons for their success: “Every horseman [carries] a foot soldier behind him to the scene of action, where he is dropped without the fatigue of walking to his post. The horsemen have two or three matchlocks or jezails each, slung at their backs, and are very expert in firing at the gallop. These jezails carry much further than our muskets.”
    The broken British ranks fell back under the ferocious onslaught but managed to re-form. As the British guns under the command of Lieutenant Eyre began to fire, providing them with cover, their own cavalry galloped into action, scattering the Afghans and capturing their 4-pounder gun. Eyre would have liked to seize the other gun as well but had to content himself with spiking it before obeying the order to withdraw to the cantonments because night was falling. The action had been a success but only a temporary one. Though both guns had been dealt with, the enemy almost immediately reoccupied the Bemaru Hills, shutting off the supply of grain from the villagers who lived there. Eyre wrote: “This was the last success our arms were destined to experience. Henceforward it becomes my weary task to relate a catalogue of errors, disasters and difficulties, which, following