THE FAR EAST, VOL. II (OF 2)***


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MILITARY SERVICE AND ADVENTURES IN THE FAR EAST:

Including Sketches of the Campaigns
Against the Afghans in 1839,
and the Sikhs in 1845-6.

BY A CAVALRY OFFICER.

In Two Volumes.

VOL. II.






London:
Charles Ollier,
Southampton Street, Strand.
1847.




CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


  CHAPTER I.

  The commander-in-chief returns to England--Disastrous
  insurrection throughout Afghanistan--Jellalabad holds
  out, and General Pollock advances upon Caubul                   p. 1


  CHAPTER II.

  Visit to Agra--Journey through Central India via Gwalior
  and Indore to Bombay                                              16


  CHAPTER III.

  Arrival in Calcutta--Departure for the south-western frontier--Arrival
  at Merut--State of affairs on the north-western
  frontier--The Sikh military establishment--The British
  position                                                          37


  CHAPTER IV.

  The British forces--The Sikh army cross the Sutlej--The
  battle of Moodkee--Position and operations considered             65


  CHAPTER V.

  The army advance to attack the Sikhs in their entrenched
  camp at Ferozeshuhur--The actions of the 21st and 22nd
  of December--Sikhs retreat behind the Sutlej--Observations        91


  CHAPTER VI.

  Assemblage of the British forces on the Sutlej--Sikhs
  threaten to recross--Sir Harry Smith detached towards
  Loodiana--Skirmish near Buddewal                                 133


  CHAPTER VII.

  Sir Harry Smith advances to attack the Sikhs in their camp--The
  battle of Aliwal--The enemy defeated and driven
  across the river--Observations                                   163


  CHAPTER VIII.

  Sir Harry Smith's division march to rejoin the head-quarters
  of the army--Preparations to eject the enemy from their
  position on the British side of the river                        207


  CHAPTER IX.

  The battle of Sobraon--The enemy defeated and driven
  across the river with enormous loss                              223


  CHAPTER X.

  The British forces cross the Sutlej, and are concentrated at
  Kussoor--Visit of Ghoolab Singh and Dhuleep Singh to
  the Governor-general--The army advance to Lahore--The
  Sikh army disperse, and surrender their guns                     249


  CHAPTER XI.

  Ratification of the treaty--Observations on the effects likely
  to be produced thereby--Conclusion                               269




MILITARY SERVICE

IN THE FAR EAST.




CHAPTER I.

 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF RETURNS TO ENGLAND--DISASTROUS INSURRECTION
 THROUGHOUT AFGHANISTAN--JELLALABAD HOLDS OUT, AND GENERAL POLLOCK
 ADVANCES UPON CAUBUL.


After the breaking up of the army of the Indus, Sir John Keane
proceeded down the Indus, and shortly afterwards embarked for England,
where those honours, titles, and pecuniary rewards awaited him, which
would have entitled him to the appellation of one of the most fortunate
soldiers who ever acquired laurels in India--had he survived long to
enjoy the distinction.

Fortunate, indeed, may Sir John Keane be termed, in having brought to
an apparently successful conclusion a campaign which was founded in
error and injustice, and placed in the hands of the commander-in-chief
with the fullest assurance of the directing arm of Providence leading
the small band through a country of which the little that was known
should have induced a supposition that an army provided with an
insufficient amount of supplies must meet with enormous difficulties.
By some unaccountable fatality, the Afghans neglected the advantages
thus afforded them, and thereby induced a supposition that the warlike
spirit of the tribes who had overrun and conquered Hindostan had
departed for ever; and that a handful of British soldiers would be
sufficient to maintain possession of a country inhabited by a nation
whose hands were fitted at their birth to the cimeter, and whose eyes,
when capable of distinguishing objects with accuracy, were directed
along the barrel of a rifle.

Trusting, doubtless, in the resources of their monarch to repel the
British invasion, no coalition was formed amongst the mountain tribes;
but when the abhorred Feringhee had seized their king and established
himself in the land of their fathers, and when, moreover, they beheld
him, lulled into security, break up his forces and march the greater
portion of his army homewards through the jaws of the tremendous
portals of Afghanistan, the lighted torch flew with resolute speed
from the valley of Quetta to the mountains of Kohistan. The Ghilzie,
whose heel had been bruised, but whose arm was not unnerved, roused
his brethren to vengeance, and the eloquence of Akbar, pleading for
the diadem which had been snatched from his ambitious hopes, found a
responsive echo in the heart of every true Barukzye.

A tribe of insolent plunderers had established themselves in the Khoord
Caubul, and had the audacity to interfere with the letter-carriers.
The gallant Sale, with his brigade, hastened to brush these intruders
from the surface of the mountains, but the band of robbers had swollen
to an army; and though, by desperate valour and unwearied exertion, a
passage was forced through every obstacle, yet the passes closed upon
the isolated brigade, and the communication with the ill-fated garrison
of Caubul was cut off for ever.

Red with the slaughter of their enemies, and faint from their own
wounds, the wearied band of soldiers, under Sale, threw themselves
into Jellalabad. Then burst the startling intelligence over the plains
of India that an insurrection had broken out amongst the far-distant
mountains of Afghanistan, and that our fellow-soldiers were ill
provided with sustenance, short of ammunition, and enveloped amongst
countless swarms of enemies. I will not enter minutely on the details
of that insurrection, which shook the fabric of our Eastern power
to its centre, brought unmerited obloquy on the British name, and
entailed the most harrowing series of disasters on the hapless army in
Afghanistan that England's history can record in her military annals.

The task of recapitulating the succession of horrors which took place
in Caubul has been undertaken by eye-witnesses and sufferers from the
small remnant of the Caubul garrison who escaped.

Amongst that catalogue of miseries and massacre we have the consolatory
reflection that the Afghans found no grounds to assert that the
British, though worn with toil, and pierced by incessant cold,
derogated in aught from their national fame. From the first struggle on
leaving the entrenched camp at Caubul, unto the final catastrophe at
Gundamuk, the Afghans were cautious of meeting our fellow-countrymen
at close quarters. When they tried the experiment, led by the alluring
satisfaction of revelling in Feringhee gore, they found that, although
heart-broken and disorganized, the Briton was ever ready to die facing
his enemy. Peace to the manes of those maligned and hapless warriors,
whose bones are bleaching on every height and valley of that rugged
desolation (fit scene for such a catastrophe) which disfigures the
face of the country, from the gates of the Bala Hissar to the walls
of Jellalabad! And, peace to the ashes of the worthy and amiable
Elphinstone! It rested not with him that, suffering under bodily
weakness and worn by mental anxieties in his arduous command, he should
have lived to end his honourable days in an enemy's camp. The soldier
has no choice but to obey the authority which places him in command,
and those authorities are answerable to their countrymen for the
selection.

But the British power fell not with her general and his army. Kandahar
was held with security in the iron grasp of Nott.[1] The little
garrison of Khelat-i-Ghilzie held resolutely their post against the
repeated and determined attacks of their blood-thirsty foe; and the
haughty Akbar, with the bravest of his mountain tribes, was checked in
his murderous career under the walls of Jellalabad. The "illustrious
garrison" maintained their isolated post against cold, starvation, the
overwhelming mass of vaunting Afghans, and against the convulsions
of nature when an earthquake cast down their fortifications and left
no artificial barrier, beyond their weapons, between the hordes of
Afghanistan and Sale's devoted band.

Vain were the efforts made by the Native Infantry Brigade, from
Peshawur, to force the passage of the Khyber, for the spirit of those
savage mountaineers was roused; every hill was watched with untiring
vigilance, and the two regiments which penetrated to Ali Musjid had
little cause to congratulate themselves on their undertaking. At
length, the "avenging army," under the guidance of General Pollock,
having traversed the Punjaub with rapid strides, arrived at the gorge
of the Khyber, and joyfully received the tidings of Jellalabad being
still in the hands of Sale.

Resting awhile to give breath to his soldiers, and to see his army
properly equipped, the gallant general (armed with full discretionary
power from the noble and sagacious Ellenborough, whose strong arm now
guided the helm of India) prepared to advance. From every village
and fastness of the gloomy Khyber the gathering call had gone
forth, and the ready mountaineers hastened to the defence of their
hereditary defiles; but their haste was of no avail, for the Britons
were advancing to save their gallant countrymen, to retaliate on the
authors of the Caubul atrocities, and to