The Dark Defile by Diana Preston Page A

for, in a land where every male has in his house, or about his person, a musket …, a sword and shield, a dagger … a contest in crooked lanes of flat-roofed houses with a population estimated at sixty thousand souls, would be unequal, excepting for very numerous forces indeed; in any case injudicious.”
    Elphinstone objected that the troops would never survive the two-and-a-half-mile contested march to the fortress, despite Shelton and his much smaller contingent having successfully made it in reverse two weeks before. Shelton himself argued that such a move would be pointless since they should quickly depart to India. Macnaghten, though, was torn. According to Lawrence, he thought “it might be the wisest ultimate course” but fretted that it “might also be to some extent disastrous.” Again it would mean abandoning large amounts of British and East India Company property—an issue that evidently loomed large in Macnaghten’s bureaucratic mind. He also feared the British would have to abandon their heavy artillery since it would be nearly impossible to drag it under fire to the citadel. Furthermore, in the Balla Hissar there would not be sufficient food or firewood to sustain so many. Macnaghten therefore decided to hang on in the cantonments in the hope that “ something may turn up in our favour ” and argued for remaining there a further eight to ten days.
    Macnaghten still hoped Sale might answer his call. Even after learning that the brigadier had marched from Gandamack for Jalalabad, he had sent a message to Captain George Macgregor, Sale’s political adviser, asking again for help. He complained that both he and Elphinstone had repeatedly written asking for the return of Sale’s brigade, to no avail: “ We learn to our dismay, that you have proceeded to Jalalabad. Our situation is a desperate one if you do not immediately return to our relief, and I beg you will do so without a moment’s delay. ” Though he could not know it, this letter would cross with one from Macgregor finally dashing any hopes that Sale’s men would return. The bearers of these messages were again the native messengers, the cossids , traveling on horseback or on foot. The risk of being intercepted was great, and their methods for concealing messages were ingenious. They bound the notes into their hair or hid them in lumps of wax they could swallow if captured. Captain Mackenzie wrote of “many a poor wretch” found lying by the roadside “with his throat cut from ear to ear and his body otherwise mutilated.”
    In the cantonments many listened to the debate about withdrawing to the Balla Hissar with anger and incredulity. Eyre thought it the most sensible course, and Lieutenant Sturt, recovering remarkably well from his stab wounds, urged “the absolute necessity of our now withdrawing our forces from the cantonments into the Balla Hissar” but, according to his mother-in-law, Lady Sale, was met by the cry of “How can we abandon the good buildings and property?” Mohan Lal also thought it bizarre that anyone should think it too dangerous to march to the Balla Hissar while believing that “to travel eight to ten days to Jalalabad through the frozen passes … occupied by the ferocious and plundering Ghilzais was … far from dangerous.” He had also grown convinced that the British would have no option but to negotiate their departure from Kabul unless “a portion of the people or chiefs wished [them] to remain.”
    Mohan Lal himself had been busy trying to buy support for the British, as Macnaghten had ordered. His attempts to encourage the Kizzilbashi community, under its leader Shirin Khan, to declare for the British had faltered in the face of the obvious inability of the British to suppress the rising. However, he had evidently fared better with his plans to purchase the assassination of some of the insurrection’s ringleaders. By the end of November both Abdullah Khan and another leading conspirator, Mir