The Kabul Insurrection of 1841-42

Couverture
Wm. H. Allen, 1879 - 335 pages
The Kabul Insurrection of 1841-42 by Sir Vincent Eyre (1811-81) is an updated and expanded edition of his The Military Operations at Cabul, originally published in 1843. Eyre was an officer in the Indian army who served as commissary of ordnance in the Kabul Field Force that marched into Afghanistan in the fall of 1839. He arrived in Kabul in April 1840, bringing with him a large quantity of ordnance stores. In November 1841 he was caught up in the uprising in Kabul by the Afghans against the Anglo-Indian force in which Sir Alexander Burnes was killed. The occupiers were besieged in their cantonments and Eyre was severely wounded. Under a treaty with the Afghan government, in early 1842 the Anglo-Indian force was given safe passage to evacuate the country. Accompanied by his wife and child, Eyre joined the column heading eastward but, along with the other British soldiers and civilians, he was taken hostage by the amir, Akbar Khan (1816-45, ruled 1842-45). The British hostages spent nearly nine months in captivity and suffered many privations, including severe cold and the effects of an earthquake and its aftershocks. In August 1842 the captives were marched north towards Bamyan in the Hindu Kush under the threat of being sold as slaves to the Uzbeks. They finally were released on September 20, after one of the prisoners, Major Pottinger, succeeded in buying off the Afghan commander of their escort. Prior to his release, Eyre had managed to smuggle the manuscript of his journal in parts to a friend in India, who sent it to England where, with the help of Eyre's relatives, it was published the following year as The Military Operations at Cabul, as were his Prison Sketches, Comprising Portraits of the Cabul Prisoners, and Other Subjects. Eyre went on to have a distinguished army career, and retired with the rank of major general in October 1863. With the onset of the Second Anglo-Afghan War in late 1878, Eyre decided to reissue his journal from the earlier war. Published in 1879, The Kabul Insurrection of 1841-42 contains a new author's preface and two new preliminary chapters, the first a brief account of Afghanistan and its inhabitants, the second a retrospective, from the vantage point of the late 1870s, on the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42). The contents of the older book are then reproduced, with the journal beginning at chapter four. The Kabul Insurrection of 1841-42 includes a fold-out map by Eyre of the Kabul cantonment and surrounding country that appeared in the older book, a sketch map of Afghanistan, and three appendices with the texts of documents relating to the 1841 uprising in Kabul.

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Page 271 - Deane of the Sappers, with whose assistance he dragged his friend on a quilt through the remainder of the pass, when he succeeded in mounting him on a miserable pony, and conducted him in safety to camp, where the unfortunate officer lingered till the following morning, and was the only man of the whole force who received Christian burial.
Page 93 - Skinner, the chief commissariat officer, at the time when this arrangement was made, earnestly solicited from the authorities a place within the cantonment for his stores, but received for answer that " no such place could be given him, as they were far too busy in erecting barracks for the men to think of commissariat stores.
Page 216 - Trevor, warned him of the danger ; to which he replied, " Dangerous it is, but, if it succeeds, it is worth all risks ; the rebels have not fulfilled one article of the treaty, and I have no confidence in them, and if by it we can only save our honour, all will be well ; at any rate, I would rather suffer a hundred deaths than live the last six weeks over again.
Page 277 - ... the mental and bodily powers of the strongest men, rendering them incapable of any useful exertion. Hope seemed to have died in every breast. The wildness of terror was exhibited in every countcTnance.
Page 236 - Dangerous it is ; but if it succeeds, it is worth all risks : the rebels have not fulfilled even one article of the treaty, and I have no confidence in them ; and if by it we can only save our honour, all will be well. At any rate, I would rather suffer a hundred deaths, than live the last six weeks over again.
Page 326 - I received two slight sabre-cuts, and a blow on the back of my head from a fellow, whose sword turned in his hand, which knocked me half off my horse, I escaped out of the crush, passing unhurt through two volleys of musketry from the whole picket, which, by that time, had become alarmed and had turned out. They pursued me; but I soon distanced them, crossing several fields at speed, and gaining a road which I perceived led round the western end of the Shah's garden. Proceeding cautiously along,...
Page 105 - Morning had, however, well dawned ere the men could be got under arms; and they were on the point of marching off, when it was reported that Ensign Warren had just arrived in cantonments with his garrison, having evacuated the fort. It seems that the enemy had actually set fire to the gate; and Ensign Warren, seeing no prospect of a reinforcement, and expecting the enemy every moment to rush in, led out his men by a hole which he had prepared in the wall. Being called upon in a public letter from...
Page 105 - It is beyond a doubt that our feeble and ineffectual defence of this fort, and the valuable booty it yielded, was the first fatal blow to our supremacy at Cabul, and at once determined those chiefs — and more particularly the Kuzzilbashes — who had hitherto remained neutral, to join in the general combination to drive us from the country.
Page 261 - At starting, large clods of hardened snow adhered so firmly to the hoofs of our horses, that a chisel and hammer would have been requisite to dislodge them. The very air we breathed froze in its passage out of the mouth and nostrils, forming a coating of small icicles on our moustaches and beards.
Page 264 - Here, again, the confusion soon became indescribable. Suffice it to say that an immense multitude of from 14,000 to 16,000 men, with several hundred cavalry horses and baggage cattle, were closely jammed together in one monstrous, unmanageable, jumbling mass. Night again closed over us, with its attendant train of horrors, — starvation, cold, exhaustion, death...

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