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tempt to force the Khyber Pass, he remained passive until joined by Major-general Pollock, who now took the command of the forces destined for the relief of Jellalabad. General Pollock fixed his quarters at Shumsher, where the army was encamped on a large plain, about fifteen miles from the mouth of the Khyber Pass. A portion of the force under his command consisted of Sikhs, the troops of the Maha Rajah Shere Sing, ruler of the Punjab, under General Avitabile.

Attempts were made to purchase from the Khyberries an unmolested passage through the dangerous defiles, and after negotiations had been carried on for some time, it was agreed that for a certain sum General Pollock's army should be allowed to march unopposed. Part of this is said to have been actually paid, and as the accounts from Jellalabad represented General Sale as in want of immediate succour, General Pollock determined to advance forthwith with a force of about 8.000 men; although two brigades, consisting of 4,000 men, under the command of Colonel Bolton, had not yet joined him. From Jumrood on the eastern side, the Khyber Pass extends for twenty-eight miles towards Jellalabad, and for twenty-two miles of this, the defiles have hitherto been considered as impassable to an army, if opposed by an enemy. As far as the fort of Ali Musjid the Pass is deep and uninterrupted. This fort is situated in the middle of the defile on an isolated hill, and completely commands the Pass. "For about seven miles beyond, the ascent is somewhat uniform till near Lundu Khana, where, for a couple of miles, it runs along the face of a frightful precipice, like the galleries by

which the Simplon is traversed." On the 5th of April at half-past three in the morning, the troops, under the command of General Pollock, began their march. It was found that the Khyberries were determined to oppose their progress, and they had fortified the mouth of the Pass with a strong breastwork of stones and bushes. The hills on the right and left were rocky and precipitous, and presented great difficulties to the ascent of troops. Two columns, however, were detached by General Pollock from the main body, which were compelled to make a considerable détour to the right and left before they could commence the ascent. The enemy were in force on the heights on either side, but the two columns advanced in gallant style, and gained possession of the crest of the hills, driving all opposition before them. When the heights were in our possession, General Pollock ordered the main column to enter the mouth of the Pass, and destroy the barrier, which the enemy abandoned as soon as they saw that the hills were crowned by the British troops. As the latter advanced along the heights, the Khyberries retreated, and the main column under General Pollock pushed forward up the Pass, driving all opposition before them.

The fort of Ali Musjid was evacuated by the enemy, and a portion of the troops of the Maha Rajah Shere Sing, the Sikhs, was placed in possession of it, in order to keep the Pass open. This body of men had behaved with great gallantry; and in a proclamation subsequently issued by Lord Ellenborough, from his head quarters at Benares, they are mentioned in terms of high praise.

General Pollock now met with

little opposition. On the 9th of April, his advance-guard reached Lundu Khana, and the whole force had cleared the Pass before the 14th of April. This is the first instance in history of an army forcing its way through these dreaded defiles against an enemy. Even Nadir Shah, the great Persian conqueror of India, was compelled to purchase from the Khyberries an unmolested passage for his troops. And although the British troops had not to engage in a contest with the enemy throughout the whole of their advance, it was owing to the determined courage with which they gained possession of the heights, and drove the Khyberries before them when they first entered the Pass, that the hostile forces retreated before them, and thus enabled our army to march in comparative safety through defiles which, properly defended, would be impassable. The Sikh troops were left in possession of the Khyber Pass; and on the 27th of April, the two brigades consisting of about 4,000 men, which General Pollock had been unable to wait for, commenced their march through it, under the command of Colonel Bolton. The advance of these troops had been delayed; and, as we before mentioned, the urgency of General Sale's situation did not allow General Pollock to stay for their arrival.

On the morning of the 16th of April, the troops under the command of the latter General came in sight of Jellalabad, after a march of thirteen days since leaving Jumrood.

The greeting on both sides was most enthusiastic. The garrison thronged the walls of the fortress, and loud cheers, mingling with the roar of cannon, attested

the joy with which the beleaguered troops welcomed the arrival of their deliverers.

But we must now detail the events that had taken place at Jellalabad, before the seasonable junction was effected; and we cannot do better than give part of a despatch from Sir Robert Sale, in which, at some length, he narrates what had occurred since reaching Jellalabad, in November last year. It is dated "Jellalabad, 16th April, 1842:"

"I found the walls of Jellalabad in a state which might have justified despair as to the possibility of defending them. The enceinte was far too extensive for my small force, embracing a circumference of upwards of 2,300 yards. Its tracing was vicious in the extreme; it had no parapet excepting for a few hundred yards, which there was not more than two feet high. Earth and rubbish had accumulated to such an extent about the ramparts, that there were roads in various directions across and over them into the country. There was a space of 400 yards together on which none of the garrison could show themselves, excepting at one spot: the population within was disaffected, and the whole enceinte was surrounded by ruined forts, walls, mosques, tombs, and gardens, from which a fire could be opened upon the defenders at twenty or thirty yards.

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The garrison took full possession of the town in such a state on the morning of the 15th of Novem ber, and in the course of the day the place, and detached hills by which on one side it is commanded, were surrounded and surmounted by a force of not fewer than 5,000 insurgents. A general attack on

the 14th of November ridded us of these enemies; and a similar array, brought against us a fort night afterwards, was dissipated by a second sally, on the 1st of December. But we had seized the town, having in our possession not quite two days' provision and corn for our men and horses, and beheld the arduous task before us of striving to render the works defensible, and collecting supplies for our magazine from the midst of a fanatical and infuriated people, with very narrow means in the way of treasure to purchase them. I appointed Captain Broadfoot, Shah Soojah's sappers, garrison engineer, and Captain Abbot, of the Artillery, a commissary of ordnance. Captain M'Gregor, political agent, gave me the aid of his local experience, and through his influence and measures our dak communication with India was restored, and a great quantity of grain collected, whilst the unremitting and almost incredible la bours of the troops, aided by the zeal and science of Captain Broadfoot, put the town in an efficient state of defence. Captain Abbott made the artillery disposition in the ablest manner, and used every exertion to add to and encourage our resources, in the way of gun and musket ammunition, in both of which we were deficient for the purposes of a siege. Lead and powder were procured in and about Jellalabad, and a quantity of cartridges discovered in an old magazine, and thus the troops completed to 200 rounds per man. It is to be remarked that I might, in the second week of November, have marched upon Pesh-Bolak, relieved from investment the corps of Jazalchees, under Captain Ferris, and with it operated a doubtful

retreat upon Peshawur. But I felt it to be my duty to give support to the last moment to our troops struggling against their numerous enemies at Cabul, and maintain for them a point on which to retreat and rally, if they met with reverse,

"On the 9th of January, I was summoned by the leaders of the Affghan rebellion to give up the place, in fulfilment of a convention entered into by the political and military authorities at Cabul; but, as I was fully assured of the bad faith of our enemies, I refused to do this, and on the 13th received the melancholy intelligence of the disastrous retreat of our troops from the capital, and their annihilation in the Ghilzee defiles, by the rigours of the climate, and the basest treachery on the part of those in whose promises they had confided. Almost at the same time, it became known to us that the brigade of four regiments marched to my succour from Hindoostan, had been beaten in detail, and forced to fall back upon Peshawur. My position was most critical; and I might, whilst our enemies were engaged in plundering the force from Cabul, have attempted, and perhaps effected, though with heavy loss, a retreat across Khyber; but I resolved at all hazards on not relinquishing my grasp on the chief town of the valley of Ningrahar, and the key of eastern Affghanistan, so long as I had reason to consider that our Government desired to retain it. The discouragements of my garrison at this moment were very great, their duties most severe, their labours unceasing, and the most insidious endeavours made by the enemy to seduce the native portion of them from their alle

giance. But their fidelity was unshaken; and their serenity amidst labours and privations, unclouded. With reference, however, to the state of fanatical excitement and national antipathy which prevailed around us, I had been compelled, as a measure of prudence, to get rid, first of the corps of Khyber rangers, and next of the detachment of Jezalchees, and a few of the Affghan sappers, and a body of Hindoostanee gunners, who had formerly been in the employment of Dost Mahomed Khan. Works had in the meantime been completed, of which the annexed reports and plans of Captain Broadfoot contain ample details. Gene rally, I may state, they consisted in the destruction of an immense quantity of cover for the enemy, extending to the demolition of forts and old walls, filling up ravines, and destroying gardens, and cutting down groves, raising the parapets to six or seven feet high, repairing and widening the ramparts, extending the bastions, retrenching three of the gates, covering the fourth with an outwork, and excavating a ditch ten feet in depth, and twelve feet in width, around the whole of the walls. The place was thus secure against the attack of any Asiatic enemy, not provided with siege artillery.

"But it pleased Providence, on the 19th February, to remove in an instant this ground of confidence: A tremendous earthquake shook down all our parapets, built up with so much labour, injured several of our bastions, cast to the ground all our guard-houses, demolished a third of the town, made a considerable breach in the rampart of a curtain in the Peshawur face, and reduced the Cabul gate to a shapeless mass of ruins. It

savours of romance, but it is a sober fact, that the city was thrown into alarm, within the space of little more than one month, by the repetition of full one hundred shocks of this terrific phenomenon of nature.

"The troops turned with indefatigable industry to the reparation of their walls; but, at the moment of the great convulsion, Sirdhar Mahomed Akbar Khan, Burukzye, the assassin of the late Envoy, and treacherous destroyer of the Cabul force, having collected a body of troops, flushed with a success consummated by the vilest means, had advanced to Murkhail, within seven miles of our gates. He attacked our foraging parties with a large body of horse, on the 21st and 22nd of February, and soon after establishing his head-quarters to the westward two miles from the place, and a secondary camp to the eastward about one mile distant, invested the town, and established a rigorous blockade. From that time up to the 7th of April, the reduced garrison was engaged in a succession of skirmishes with the enemy, who, greatly superior in horse, perpetually insulted our walls by attacks and alerts, and compelled us daily to fight at a disadvantage for forage for our cattle. The most remarkable of those affairs were those of the cavalry under Lieutenant Mayne, commanding a detachment of Shah Soojah's 2nd Cavalry, and Jemadar Deena Singh's 5th Light Cavalry, already reported; a sally under Colonel Dennie, C. B., to defeat a suspected attempt of the enemy to drive a mine, on the 11th of March; the repulse of an assault upon the transverse walls to the northward of the place, on the

24th of the same month, by detachments under Captain Broadfoot (who was severely wounded), and Captain Fenwick, Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry; the capture of bullocks and sheep by Lieutenant Mayne, on the 30th and 31st of January, and the seizure of large flocks of the latter, in the face of Mahomed Akhbar's army, by a force of infantry under Captain Pattison, H. M.'s 13th Light Infantry, and of cavalry under Captain Oldfield, on the 1st inst. These successes were crowned by Providence, by the issue of the brilliant and decisive attack on the camp of the Sirdhar, on the 7th inst."

This last event took place as follows:

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On the evening of the 5th of April, information was brought into Jellalabad by spies from the Affghan camp, that the force under General Pollock had been enabled to force the Khyber Pass, and had retreated towards Peshawur; and next morning a feu de joie and salute of artillery were fired by Akbar Khan in honour, as was pretended, of the event. It was also reported that the Affghans were sending additional reinforcements to defend their frontier passes.

General Sale accordingly determined to make an attack upon the Affghan camp, in the hope of relieving himself from blockade, and facilitating the advance of General Pollock to the fortress:

On the morning of the 7th of April, three columns of infantry were formed; the central mustering 500 strong, under BrigadierColonel Dennie; the left of the same strength, under LieutenantColonel Monteath; and the right, amounting to 360 men, under

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"The troops issued from the Cabul and Peshawur gates at daylight this morning. So far from the Sirdhar (i. e. Akbar Khan) having made any dispositions to avoid the encounter, his whole force (not falling short in all of 6,000 men), was formed in order of battle; for the defence of his camp, its right resting on a fort, and its left on the Cabul River; and even the ruined works within 800 yards of the place, recently repaired, were filled with Ghilzie marksmen, evidently prepared for a stout resistance. The attack was led by the skirmishers and column under Captain Havelock, which drove the enemy, in the most satisfactory manner, from the extreme left of his advanced line of works, which it pierced, and proceeded to advance into the plain; whilst the central column directed its efforts against a square fort upon the same base, the defence of which was obstinately maintained. With the deepest regret I have to record, that, whilst nobly leading his regiment to the assault, Colonel Dennie, C. B., of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, received a shot through his body, which shortly after proved fatal. rear of the work having been finally gained by passing to its left, I gave orders for a combined attack upon the enemy's camp. It was in every way brilliant and successful. The artillery advanced at the gallop, and directed a heavy fire upon the Affghan centre;

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