another rush by ghazi fighters completely broke the square.
Shelton still would not signal the retreat. Standing there seemingly impervious to death or serious injury, he shouted to his men to hold firm, even though, as he later described, he was struck by no less than five balls, “ none of which did much harm; one spent ball hit me on the head and nearly knocked me down; another made my arm a little stiff. ” Colonel Oliver, though, had had enough. Shouting that he was too fat to run, he began, rather than retreat, to walk doggedly toward the enemy, who duly shot him dead. When the British later recovered his body, his head had been cut off, together with the finger on which he had habitually worn a handsome diamond ring.
A panic-stricken retreat by the British infantry and cavalry followed, captured graphically by Eyre: “All order was at an end; the entreaties and commands of the officers, endeavouring to rally the men, were not even listened to, and an utter rout ensued down the hill in the direction of cantonments.” The Afghan cavalry galloped after them, slashing and firing until ordered to desist by their commander, Osman Khan, another of Dost Mohammed’s numerous nephews. Lady Sale, peering from her rooftop, was surprised to see him circling around clusters of British soldiers, waving his sword above his head but for some reason not attempting to kill them. As the exhausted troops ran back toward the cantonments, Elphinstone tottered outside the gates to attempt to rally them, but to no avail. Lady Sale overheard him complain later to Macnaghten, “Why Lord, Sir, when I said to them ‘Eyes right,’ they all looked the other way.”
The battle for Bemaru had been an unqualified disaster, exposing British ineptitude and low morale to the Afghans and to the British themselves. Three hundred British troops had been killed or left lying in the field, to be killed and mutilated by the Afghans. Those still living felt themselves, in Captain Lawrence’s words, to be “doomed men.” To Eyre, 23 November was the day that finally “decided the fate of the Kabul force” when “even such of the officers as had hitherto indulged the hope of a favourable turn in our affairs began at last reluctantly to entertain gloomy forebodings as to our future fate.”
That fate rested in the hands of three men who could not agree and none of whom was “the able pilot” Eyre thought essential to steer them from disaster. Elphinstone wished to negotiate as he had been advocating almost from the start of the rising. Macnaghten, however, was determined to wait a little longer before taking a humiliating step that would, in his eyes, be mere capitulation. Shelton, who had amply demonstrated what Eyre called his “dauntless” personal bravery at Bemaru, still wanted to march immediately from Kabul to Jalalabad, an idea from which, according to Captain Lawrence, Macnaghten recoiled as both disastrous and dishonorable and “to be contemplated solely in the very last extremity.” It would mean abandoning vast amounts of British property and Britain’s ally Shah Shuja, “to support whom was the main object of our original entrance into Afghanistan.” Also, the troops would suffer immensely from the bitter cold, while the thousands of camp followers would “inevitably be destroyed.”
Shah Shuja, watching from the Balla Hissar the rapidly declining fortunes of the allies on whom his life and fortunes depended, and alarmed by evidence that the insurgents were bribing some of his own men to desert their posts, added his opinion to the debate. Overcoming his earlier objections, he sensibly suggested that the British garrison should withdraw from the cantonments and join him in the Balla Hissar. As Henry Havelock had observed in happier times, the citadel was “the key to Kabul. The troops who hold it ought not to suffer themselves to be dislodged but by a siege; and they must awe its populace with their mortars and howitzers;
Shelton still would not signal the retreat. Standing there seemingly impervious to death or serious injury, he shouted to his men to hold firm, even though, as he later described, he was struck by no less than five balls, “ none of which did much harm; one spent ball hit me on the head and nearly knocked me down; another made my arm a little stiff. ” Colonel Oliver, though, had had enough. Shouting that he was too fat to run, he began, rather than retreat, to walk doggedly toward the enemy, who duly shot him dead. When the British later recovered his body, his head had been cut off, together with the finger on which he had habitually worn a handsome diamond ring.
A panic-stricken retreat by the British infantry and cavalry followed, captured graphically by Eyre: “All order was at an end; the entreaties and commands of the officers, endeavouring to rally the men, were not even listened to, and an utter rout ensued down the hill in the direction of cantonments.” The Afghan cavalry galloped after them, slashing and firing until ordered to desist by their commander, Osman Khan, another of Dost Mohammed’s numerous nephews. Lady Sale, peering from her rooftop, was surprised to see him circling around clusters of British soldiers, waving his sword above his head but for some reason not attempting to kill them. As the exhausted troops ran back toward the cantonments, Elphinstone tottered outside the gates to attempt to rally them, but to no avail. Lady Sale overheard him complain later to Macnaghten, “Why Lord, Sir, when I said to them ‘Eyes right,’ they all looked the other way.”
The battle for Bemaru had been an unqualified disaster, exposing British ineptitude and low morale to the Afghans and to the British themselves. Three hundred British troops had been killed or left lying in the field, to be killed and mutilated by the Afghans. Those still living felt themselves, in Captain Lawrence’s words, to be “doomed men.” To Eyre, 23 November was the day that finally “decided the fate of the Kabul force” when “even such of the officers as had hitherto indulged the hope of a favourable turn in our affairs began at last reluctantly to entertain gloomy forebodings as to our future fate.”
That fate rested in the hands of three men who could not agree and none of whom was “the able pilot” Eyre thought essential to steer them from disaster. Elphinstone wished to negotiate as he had been advocating almost from the start of the rising. Macnaghten, however, was determined to wait a little longer before taking a humiliating step that would, in his eyes, be mere capitulation. Shelton, who had amply demonstrated what Eyre called his “dauntless” personal bravery at Bemaru, still wanted to march immediately from Kabul to Jalalabad, an idea from which, according to Captain Lawrence, Macnaghten recoiled as both disastrous and dishonorable and “to be contemplated solely in the very last extremity.” It would mean abandoning vast amounts of British property and Britain’s ally Shah Shuja, “to support whom was the main object of our original entrance into Afghanistan.” Also, the troops would suffer immensely from the bitter cold, while the thousands of camp followers would “inevitably be destroyed.”
Shah Shuja, watching from the Balla Hissar the rapidly declining fortunes of the allies on whom his life and fortunes depended, and alarmed by evidence that the insurgents were bribing some of his own men to desert their posts, added his opinion to the debate. Overcoming his earlier objections, he sensibly suggested that the British garrison should withdraw from the cantonments and join him in the Balla Hissar. As Henry Havelock had observed in happier times, the citadel was “the key to Kabul. The troops who hold it ought not to suffer themselves to be dislodged but by a siege; and they must awe its populace with their mortars and howitzers;
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