The ill-omened evacuation by our doomed people of the cantonments wherein for two months they had undergone every extremity of humiliation and contumely, was begun on the dreary winter morning of January 6th, 1842. Snow lay deep on plain and hill-side; the cruel cold, penetrating through the warmest clothing, bit fiercely into the debilitated and thinly clad frames of the sepoys and the great horde of camp followers. The military force which marched out of cantonments consisted of about 4500 armed men, of whom about 690 were Europeans, 2840 native soldiers on foot, and 970 native cavalrymen. The gallant troop of Company's Horse-Artillery marched out with its full complement of six guns, to which, with three pieces of the mountain train, the artillery arm of the departing force was restricted by the degrading terms imposed by the Afghan chiefs. In good heart and resolutely commanded, a body of disciplined troops thus constituted, and of a fighting strength so respectable, might have been trusted not only to hold its own against Afghan onslaught, but if necessary to take the offensive with success. But alas, the heart of the hapless force had gone to water, its discipline was a wreck, its chiefs were feeble and apathetic; its steps were dogged by the incubus of some 12,000 camp followers, with a great company of women and children. The awful fate brooded over its forlorn banners of expiating by its utter annihilation, the wretched folly and sinister prosecution of the enterprise whose deserved failure was to be branded yet deeper on the gloomiest page of our national history, by the impending catastrophe of which the dark shadow already lay upon the blighted column.

The advance began to move out from cantonments at nine A.M. The march was delayed at the river by the non-completion of the temporary bridge, and the whole of the advance was not across until after noon. The main body under Shelton, which was accompanied by the ladies, invalids, and sick, slowly followed. It as well as the advance was disorganised from the first by the throngs of camp followers with the baggage, who could not be prevented from mixing themselves up with the troops. The Afghans occupied the cantonments as portion after portion was evacuated by our people, rending the air with their exulting cries, and committing every kind of atrocity. It was late in the afternoon before the long train of camels following the main body had cleared the cantonments; and meanwhile the rear-guard was massed outside, in the space between the rampart and the canal, among the chaos of already abandoned baggage. It was exposed there to a vicious jezail fire poured into it by the Afghans, who abandoned the pleasures of plunder and arson for the yet greater joy of slaughtering the Feringhees. When the rear-guard moved away in the twilight, an officer and fifty men were left dead in the snow, the victims of the Afghan fire from the rampart of the cantonment; and owing to casualties in the gun teams it had been found necessary to spike and abandon two of the horse-artillery guns.

The rear-guard, cut into from behind by the pestilent ghazees, found its route encumbered with heaps of abandoned baggage around which swarmed Afghan plunderers. Other Afghans, greedier for blood than for booty, were hacking and slaying among the numberless sepoys and camp followers who had dropped out of the column, and were lying or sitting on the wayside in apathetic despair, waiting for death and careless whether it came to them by knife or by cold. Babes lay on the snow abandoned by their mothers, themselves prostrate and dying a few hundred yards further on. It was not until two o'clock of the following morning that the rear-guard reached the straggling and chaotic bivouac in which its comrades lay in the snow at the end of the first short march of six miles. Its weary progress had been illuminated by the conflagration raging in the cantonments, which had been fired by the Afghan fanatics, rabid to erase every relic of the detested unbelievers.

It was a night of bitter cold. Out in the open among the snow, soldiers and camp followers, foodless, fireless, and shelterless, froze to death in numbers, and numbers more were frost-bitten. The cheery morning noise of ordinary camp life was unheard in the mournful bivouac. Captain Lawrence outlines a melancholy picture. 'The silence of the men betrayed their despair and torpor. In the morning I found lying close to me, stiff, cold, and quite dead, in full regimentals, with his sword drawn in his hand, an old grey-haired conductor named Macgregor, who, utterly exhausted, had lain down there silently to die.' Already defection had set in. One of the Shah's infantry regiments and his detachment of sappers and miners had deserted bodily, partly during the march of the previous day, partly in the course of the night.

No orders were given out, no bugle sounded the march, on the morning of the 7th. The column heaved itself forward sluggishly, a mere mob of soldiers, camp followers and cattle, destitute of any semblance of order or discipline. Quite half the sepoys were already unfit for duty; in hundreds they drifted in among the non-combatants and increased the confusion. The advance of the previous day was now the rear-guard. After plundering the abandoned baggage, the Afghans set to harassing the rear-guard, whose progress was delayed by the disorderly multitude blocking the road in front. The three mountain guns, temporarily separated from the infantry, were captured by a sudden Afghan rush. In vain Anquetil strove to rouse the 44th to make an effort for their recapture. Green was more successful with his handful of artillerymen, who followed him and the Brigadier and spiked the pieces, but being unsupported were compelled a second time to abandon them. On this march it became necessary also, from the exhaustion of their teams, to spike and abandon two more of the horse-artillery guns; so that there now remained with the force only a couple of six-pounders. While the rear-guard was in action, a body of Afghan horse charged on the flank, right into the heart of the baggage column, swept away much plunder, and spread confusion and dismay far and wide. The rear of the column would probably have been entirely cut off, but that reinforcements from the advance under Shelton pushed back the enemy, and by crowning the lateral heights kept open the thoroughfare. At Bootkhak was found Akbar Khan, who professed to have been commissioned to escort the force to Jellalabad, and who blamed our people for having marched out prematurely from the cantonments. He insisted on the halt of the column at Bootkhak until the following morning, when he would provide supplies, but he demanded an immediate subsidy of 15,000 rupees, and that Pottinger, Lawrence and Mackenzie should be given up to him as hostages that the force would not march beyond Tezeen until tidings should arrive that Sale had evacuated Jellalabad. Those officers by the General's instructions joined the Afghan chief on the following morning, and Akbar's financial requisition was obsequiously fulfilled. After two days' marching our people, who had brought out with them provisions for but five and a half days, expecting within that time to reach Jellalabad, were only ten miles forward on their march.

Another night passed, with its train of horrors—starvation, cold, exhaustion, death. Lady Sale relates that scarcely any of the baggage now remained; that there was no food for man or beast; that snow lay a foot deep on the ground; that even water from the adjacent stream was difficult to obtain, as the carriers were fired on in fetching it; and that she thought herself fortunate in being sheltered in a small tent in which 'we slept nine, all touching each other.' Daylight brought merely a more bitter realisation of utter misery. Eyre expresses his wonderment at the effect of two nights' exposure to the frost in disorganising the force. 'It had so nipped even the strongest men as to completely prostrate their powers and incapacitate them for service; even the cavalry, who suffered less than the rest, were obliged to be lifted on their horses.' In fact, only a few hundred serviceable men remained. At the sound of hostile fire the living struggled to their feet from their lairs in the snow, stiffened with cold, all but unable to move or hold a weapon, leaving many of their more fortunate comrades stark in death. A turmoil of confusion reigned. The Afghans were firing into the rear of the mass, and there was a wild rush of camp followers to the front, who stripped the baggage cattle of their loads and carried the animals off, leaving the ground strewn with ammunition, treasure, plate, and other property. The ladies were no longer carried in litters and palanquins, for their bearers were mostly dead; they sat in the bullet fire packed into panniers slung on camels, invalids as some of them were—one poor lady with her baby only five days old. Mess stores were being recklessly distributed, and Lady Sale honestly acknowledges that, as she sat on her horse in the cold, she felt very grateful for a tumbler of sherry, which at any other time would have made her 'very unladylike,' but which now merely warmed her. Cups full of sherry were drunk by young children without in the least affecting their heads, so strong on them was the hold of the cold.

It was not until noon that the living mass of men and animals was once more in motion. The troops were in utter disorganisation; the baggage was mixed up with the advance guard; the camp followers were pushing ahead in precipitate panic. The task before the wretched congeries of people was to thread the stupendous gorge of the Khoord Cabul pass—a defile about five miles long, hemmed in on either hand by steeply scarped hills. Down the bottom of the ravine dashed a mountain torrent, whose edges were lined with thick layers of ice, on which had formed glacier-like masses of snow. The 'Jaws of Death' were barely entered when the slaughter began. With the advance rode several Afghan chiefs, whose followers, by their command, shouted to the Ghilzais lining the heights to hold their fire, but the tribesmen gave no heed to the mandate. Lady Sale rode with the chiefs. The Ghilzai fire at fifty yards was close and deadly. The men of the advance fell fast. Lady Sale had a bullet in her arm, and three more through her dress. But the weight of the hostile fire fell on the main column, the baggage escort, and the rear-guard. Some of the ladies, who mostly were on camels which were led with the column, had strange adventures. On one camel was quite a group. In one of its panniers were Mrs Boyd and her little son, in the other Mrs Mainwaring, with her own infant and Mrs Anderson's eldest child. The camel fell, shot. A Hindustanee trooper took up Mrs Boyd en croupe, and carried her through in safety; another horseman behind whom her son rode, was killed, and the boy fell into Afghan hands. The Anderson girl shared the same fate. Mrs Mainwaring, with her baby in her arms, attempted to mount a baggage pony, but the load upset, and she pursued her way on foot. An Afghan horseman rode at her, threatened her with his sword, and tried to drag away the shawl in which she carried her child. She was rescued by a sepoy grenadier, who shot the Afghan dead, and then conducted the poor lady along the pass through the dead and dying, through, also, the close fire which struck down people near to her, almost to the exit of the pass, when a bullet killed the chivalrous sepoy, and Mrs Mainwaring had to continue her tramp to the bivouac alone.

A very fierce attack was made on the rear-guard, consisting of the 44th. In the narrow throat of the pass the regiment was compelled to halt by a block in front, and in this stationary position suffered severely. A flanking fire told heavily on the handful of European infantry. The belated stragglers masked their fire, and at length the soldiers fell back, firing volleys indiscriminately into the stragglers and the Afghans. Near the exit of the pass a commanding position was maintained by some detachments which still held together, strengthened by the only gun now remaining, the last but one having been abandoned in the gorge. Under cover of this stand the rear of the mass gradually drifted forward while the Afghan pursuit was checked, and at length all the surviving force reached the camping ground. There had been left dead in the pass about 500 soldiers and over 2500 camp followers.

Akbar and the chiefs, taking the hostages with them, rode forward on the track of the retreating force. Akbar professed that his object was to stop the firing, but Mackenzie writes that Pottinger said to him: 'Mackenzie, remember if I am killed that I heard Akbar Khan shout "Slay them!" in Pushtoo, although in Persian he called out to stop the firing.' The hostages had to be hidden away from the ferocious ghazees among rocks in the ravine until near evening, when in passing through the region of the heaviest slaughter they 'came upon one sight of horror after another. All the bodies were stripped. There were children cut in two. Hindustanee women as well as men—some frozen to death, some literally chopped to pieces, many with their throats cut from ear to ear.'

Snow fell all night on the unfortunates gathered tentless on the Khoord Cabul camping ground. On the morning of the 9th the confused and disorderly march was resumed, but after a mile had been traversed a halt for the day was ordered at the instance of Akbar Khan, who sent into camp by Captain Skinner a proposal that the ladies and children, with whose deplorable condition he professed with apparent sincerity to sympathise, should be made over to his protection, and that the married officers should accompany their wives; he pledging himself to preserve the party from further hardships and dangers, and afford its members safe escort through the passes in rear of the force. The General had little faith in the Sirdar, but he was fain to give his consent to an arrangement which promised alleviation to the wretchedness of the ladies, scarce any of whom had tasted a meal since leaving Cabul. Some, still weak from childbirth, were nursing infants only a few days old; other poor creatures were momentarily apprehending the pangs of motherhood. There were invalids whose only attire, as they rode in the camel panniers or shivered on the snow, was the nightdresses they wore when leaving the cantonments in their palanquins, and none possessed anything save the clothes on their backs. It is not surprising, then, that dark and doubtful as was the future to which they were consigning themselves, the ladies preferred its risks and chances to the awful certainties which lay before the doomed column. The Afghan chief had cunningly made it a condition of his proffer that the husbands should accompany their wives, and if there was a struggle in the breasts of the former between public and private duties, the General humanely decided the issue by ordering them to share the fortunes of their families.

Akbar Khan sent in no supplies, and the march was resumed on the morning of the both by a force attenuated by starvation, cold, and despair, diminished further by extensive desertion. After much exertion the advance, consisting of all that remained of the 44th, the solitary gun, and a detachment of cavalry, forced a passage to the front through the rabble of camp followers, and marched unmolested for about two miles until the Tunghee Tariki was reached, a deep gorge not more than ten feet wide. Men fell fast in the horrid defile, struck down by the Afghan fire from the heights; but the pass, if narrow, was short, and the advance having struggled through it moved on to the halting-place at Kubbar-i-Jubbar, and waited there for the arrival of the main body. But that body was never to emerge from out the shambles in the narrow throat of the Tunghee Tariki. The advance was to learn from the few stragglers who reached it the ghastly truth that it now was all that remained of the strong brigade which four days before had marched out from the Cabul cantonments. The slaughter from the Afghan fire had blocked the gorge with dead and dying. The Ghilzai tribesmen, at the turn into the pen at the other end of which was the blocked gorge, had closed up fiercely. Then the steep slopes suddenly swarmed with Afghans rushing sword in hand down to the work of butchery, and the massacre stinted not while living victims remained. The rear-guard regiment of sepoys was exterminated, save for two or three desperately wounded officers who contrived to reach the advance.

The remnant of the army consisted now of about seventy files of the 44th, about 100 troopers, and a detachment of horse-artillery with a single gun. The General sent to Akbar Khan to remonstrate with him on the attack he had allowed to be made after having guaranteed that the force should meet with no further molestation. Akbar protested his regret, and pleaded his inability to control the wild Ghilzai hillmen, over whom, in their lust for blood and plunder, their own chiefs had lost all control; but he was willing to guarantee the safe conduct to Jellalabad of the European officers and men if they would lay down their arms and commit themselves wholly into his hands. This sinister proposal the General refused, and the march was continued, led in disorder by the remnant of the camp followers. In the steep descent from the Huft Kotul into the Tezeen ravine, the soldiers following the rabble at some distance, came suddenly on a fresh butchery. The Afghans had suddenly fallen on the confused throng, and the descent was covered with dead and dying.

During the march from Kubbar-i-Jubbar to the Tezeen valley Shelton's dogged valour had mainly saved the force from destruction. With a few staunch soldiers of his own regiment, the one-armed veteran, restored now to his proper mÉtier of stubborn fighting man, had covered the rear and repelled the Ghilzai assaults with persevering energy and dauntless fortitude. And he it was who now suggested, since Akbar Khan still held to his stipulation that the force should lay down its arms, that a resolute effort should be made to press on to Jugdulluk by a rapid night march of four-and-twenty miles, in the hope of clearing the passes in that vicinity before the enemy should have time to occupy them.

That the attempt would prove successful was doubtful, since the force was already exhausted; but it was the last chance, and Shelton's suggestion was adopted. In the early moonlight the march silently began, an ill omen marking the start in the shape of the forced abandonment of the last gun. Fatal delay occurred between Seh Baba and Kutti Sung because of a panic among the camp followers, who, scared by a few shots, drifted backwards and forwards in a mass, retarding the progress of the column and for the time entirely arresting the advance of Shelton's and his rear-guard. The force could not close up until the morning, ten miles short of Jugdulluk, and already the Afghans were swarming on every adjacent height. All the way down the broken slope to Jugdulluk the little column trudged through the gauntlet of jezail fire which lined the road with dead and wounded. Shelton and his rear-guard handful performed wonders, again and again fending off with close fire and levelled bayonets the fierce rushes of Ghilzais charging sword in hand. The harassed advance reached Jugdulluk in the afternoon of the 11th, and took post behind some ruins on a height by the roadside, the surviving officers forming line in support of the gallant rear-guard struggling forward through its environment of assailants. As Shelton and his brave fellows burst through the cordon they were greeted by cheers from the knoll. But there was no rest for the exhausted people, for the Afghans promptly occupied commanding positions whence they maintained a fire from which the ruins afforded but scant protection. To men parched with thirst the stream at the foot of their knoll was but a tantalising aggravation, for to attempt to reach it was certain death. The snow they devoured only increased their sufferings, and but little stay was afforded by the raw flesh of a few gun bullocks. Throughout the day volley after volley was poured down upon the weary band by the inexorable enemy. Frequent sallies were made, and the heights were cleared, but the positions were soon reoccupied and the ruthless fire was renewed.

Captain Skinner, summoned by Akbar, brought back a message that General Elphinstone should visit him to take part in a conference, and that Brigadier Shelton and Captain Johnson should be given over as hostages for the evacuation of Jellalabad. Compliance was held to be imperative, and the temporary command was entrusted to Brigadier Anquetil. Akbar was extremely hospitable to his compulsory guests; but he insisted on including the General among his hostages, and was not moved by Elphinstone's representations that he would prefer death to the disgrace of being separated from his command in its time of peril. The Ghilzai chiefs came into conference burning with hatred against the British, and revelling in the anticipated delights of slaughtering them. Akbar seemed sincere in his effort to conciliate them, but was long unsuccessful. Their hatred seemed indeed stronger than their greed; but at length toward nightfall Akbar announced that pacific arrangements had been accepted by the tribes, and that what remained of the force should be allowed to march unmolested to Jellalabad.

How futile was the compact, if indeed there was any compact, was soon revealed. The day among the ruins on the knoll had passed in dark and cruel suspense—in hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, in the presence of frequent death; and as the evening fell, in anguish and all but utter despair. As darkness set in the conviction enforced itself that to remain longer in the accursed place was madness; and the little band, leaving behind perforce the sick and wounded, marched out, resolute to push through or die fighting. In the valley the only molestation at first was a desultory fire from the camping Ghilzais, who were rather taken by surprise, but soon became wide awake to their opportunities. Some hurried forward to occupy the pass rising from the valley to the Jugdulluk crest; others, hanging on the rear and flanks of the column encumbered with its fatal incubus of camp followers, mixed among the unarmed throng with their deadly knives, and killed and plundered with the dexterity of long practice. Throughout the tedious march up the steeply rising defile a spattering fire came from the rocks and ridges flanking the track, all but blocked by the surging concourse of miserable followers. The advance had to employ cruel measures to force its way through the chaos toward the crest. As it is approached from the Jugdulluk direction the flanking elevations recede and merge in the transverse ridge, which is crowned by a low-cut abrupt rocky upheaval, worn down somewhat where the road passes over the crest by the friction of traffic. Just here the tribesmen had constructed a formidable abattis of prickly brushwood, which stretched athwart the road, and dammed back the fugitives in the shallow oval basin between the termination of the ravine and the summit of the ridge. In this trap were caught our hapless people and the swarm of their native followers, and now the end was very near. From behind the barrier, and around the lip of the great trap, the hillmen fired their hardest into the seething mass of soldiers and followers writhing in the awful Gehenna on which the calm moon shone down. On the edges of this whirlpool of death the fell Ghilzais were stabbing and hacking with the ferocious industry inspired by thirst for blood and lust for plunder. It is among the characteristics of our diverse-natured race to die game, and even to thrill with a strange fierce joy when hope of escape from death has all but passed away and there remains only to sell life at the highest possible premium of exchange. Among our people, face to face with death on the rocky Jugdulluk, officers and soldiers alike fought with cool deadly rancour. The brigadier and the private engaged in the same fierce mÊlÉe, fought side by side, and fell side by side. Stalwart Captain Dodgin of the 44th slew five Afghans before he fell. Captain Nicholl of the horse-artillery, gunless now, rallied to him the few staunch gunners who were all that remained to him of his noble and historic troop, and led them on to share with him a heroic death.

All did not perish on the rugged summit of the Jugdulluk. The barrier was finally broken through, and a scant remnant of the force wrought out its escape from the slaughter-pit. Small detachments, harassed by sudden onslaughts, and delayed by reluctance to desert wounded comrades, were trudging in the darkness down the long slope to the Soorkhab. The morning of the 13th dawned near Gundamuk on the straggling group of some twenty officers and forty-five European soldiers. Its march arrested by sharp attacks, the little band moved aside to occupy a defensive position on an adjacent hillock. A local sirdar invited the senior officer to consult with him as to a pacific arrangement, and while Major Griffiths was absent on this errand there was a temporary suspension of hostilities. The Afghans meanwhile swarmed around the detachment with a pretence of friendship, but presently attempts were made to snatch from the soldiers their arms. This conduct was sternly resented, and the Afghans were forced back. They ascended an adjacent elevation and set themselves to the work of deliberately picking off officer after officer, man after man. The few rounds remaining in the pouches of the soldiers were soon exhausted, but the detachment stood fast, and calmly awaited the inevitable end. Rush after rush was driven back from its steadfast front, but at last, nearly all being killed or wounded, a final onset of the enemy, sword in hand, terminated the struggle, and completed the dismal tragedy. Captain Souter of the 44th, with three or four privates all of whom as well as himself were wounded, was spared and carried into captivity; he saved the colours of his regiment, which he had tied round his waist before leaving Jugdulluk. A group of mounted officers had pushed forward as soon as they had cleared the barrier on the crest. Six only reached Futtehabad in safety. There they were treacherously offered food, and while they halted a few moments to eat two were cut down. Of the four who rode away three were overtaken and killed within four miles of Jellalabad; one officer alone survived to reach that haven of refuge.

The ladies, the married officers, and the original hostages, followed Akbar Khan down the passes toward Jugdulluk, pursuing the line of retreat strewn with its ghastly tokens of slaughter, and recognising almost at every step the bodies of friends and comrades. At Jugdulluk they found General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton, and Captain Johnson, and learned the fate which had overtaken the marching force. On the following day Akbar quitted Jugdulluk with his hostages and the ladies, all of whom were virtually prisoners, and rode away through the mountains in a northerly direction. On the fourth day the fort of Budiabad in the Lughman valley was reached, where Akbar left the prisoners while he went to attempt the reduction of Jellalabad.