Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

So pitiable and woe-begone a spectacle none there had ever beheld. The man seemed almost a corpse on horseback. He had fairly to be lifted from his saddle, and borne inward to a place of shelter and repose, while the animal was scarcely able to make its way to the stable to which it was led. As the traveller rested, eager questions ran through the garrison. Who was he? How came he in such a condition? What had he to tell of the army in the field? Did his coming in this sad plight portend some dark disaster?

This curiosity was shared by the officer in command of the fort. Giving his worn-out guest no long time to recover, he plied him with inquiries.

"You are exhausted," he said. "I dislike to disturb you, but I beg leave to ask you a few questions."

"Go on sir; I can answer," said the traveller, in a weary tone.

"Do you bring a message from General Elphinstone,—from the army?"

"I bring no message. There is no army,—or, rather, I am the army," was the enigmatical reply.

"You the army? I do not understand you."

"I represent the army. The others are gone,—dead, massacred, prisoners,—man, woman, and child. I, Doctor Brydon, am the army,—all that remains of it."

The commander heard him in astonishment and horror. General Elphinstone had seventeen thousand soldiers and camp-followers in his camp at Cabul. "Did Dr. Brydon mean to say—"

"They are all gone," was the feeble reply. "I am left; all the others are slain. You may well look frightened, sir; you would be heart-sick with horror had you gone through my experience. I have seen an army slaughtered before my eyes, and am here alone to tell it."

It was true; the army had vanished; an event had happened almost without precedent in the history of the world, unless we instance the burying of the army of Cambyses in the African desert. When Dr. Brydon was sufficiently rested and refreshed he told his story. It is the story we have here to repeat.

In the summer of 1841 the British army under General Elphinstone lay in cantonments near the city of Cabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in a position far from safe or well chosen. They were a mile and a half from the citadel,—the Bala Hissar,—with a river between. Every corner of their cantonments was commanded by hills or Afghan forts. Even their provisions were beyond their reach, in case of attack, being stored in a fort at some distance from the cantonments. They were in the heart of a hostile population. General Elphinstone, trusting too fully in the puppet of a khan who had been set up by British bayonets, had carelessly kept his command in a weak and untenable position.

The general was old and in bad health; by no means the man for the emergency. He was controlled by bad advisers, who thought only of returning to India, and discouraged the strengthening of the fortress. The officers lost heart on seeing the supineness of their leader. The men were weary of incessant watching, annoyed by the insults of the natives, discouraged by frequent reports of the death of comrades, who had been picked off by roving enemies. The ladies alone retained confidence, occupying themselves in the culture of their gardens, which, in the delightful summer climate of that situation, rewarded their labors with an abundance of flowers.

As time went on the situation grew rapidly worse. Akbar Khan, the leading spirit among the hostile Afghans, came down from the north and occupied the Khoord Cabul Pass, the only way back to Hindustan. Ammunition was failing, food was decreasing, the enemy were growing daily stronger and more aggressive. Affairs had come to such a pass that but one of two things remained to do,—to leave the cantonments and seek shelter in the citadel till help should arrive, or to endeavor to march back to India.

On the 23rd of December the garrison was alarmed by a frightful example of boldness and ferocity in the enemy. Sir William Macnaughten, the English envoy, who had left the works to treat with the Afghan chiefs, was seized by Akbar Khan and murdered on the spot, his head, with its green spectacles, being held up in derision to the soldiers within the works.

The British were now "advised" by the Afghans to go back to India. There was, in truth, nothing else to do. They were starving where they were. If they should fight their way to the citadel, they would be besieged there without food. They must go, whatever the risk or hardships. On the 6th of January the fatal march began,—a march of four thousand five hundred soldiers and twelve thousand camp-followers, besides women and children, through a mountainous country, filled with savage foes, and in severe winter weather.

The first day's march took them but five miles from the works, the evacuation taking place so slowly that it was two o'clock in the morning before the last of the force came up. It had been a march of frightful conditions. Attacked by the Afghans on every side, hundreds of the fugitives perished in those first five dreadful miles. As the advance body waited in the snow for those in the rear to join them, the glare of flames from the burning cantonments told that the evacuation had been completed, and that the whole multitude was now at the mercy of its savage foes. It was evident that they had a frightful gantlet to run through the fire of the enemy and the winters chilling winds. The snow through which they had slowly toiled was reddened with blood all the way back to Cabul. Baggage was abandoned, and men and women alike pushed forward for their lives, some of them, in the haste of flight, but half-clad, few sufficiently protected from the severe cold.