The Dark Defile by Diana Preston

Author:Diana Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walker Books
Published: 2017-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

It is not feasible any longer to maintain our position in this country.

—MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM ELPHINSTONE, NOVEMBER 1841

As the insurrection entered its second week, the mood in the Kabul cantonments grew bleaker. Elphinstone’s precarious physical condition had been worsened by a bad fall from his horse, and he was no longer able to ride around the cantonments to inspect the defenses. On 9 November he reluctantly recalled his second-in-command, Brigadier Shelton, from the Balla Hissar to take charge of the cantonments. The Afghans made no attempt to oppose Shelton, who brought his men in safely, though there was some momentary alarm when Shelton, who had ridden ahead, spied in the distance what he thought was a group of jezail-toting Afghans. It turned out to be only a pack of pariah dogs.

Many welcomed Shelton’s arrival, expecting “wonders from his prowess and military judgement,” as Lady Sale wrote. However, as she also observed, the new arrangement was not a happy one. Shelton was openly contemptuous of Elphinstone and “often refused to give any opinion when asked for it by the general.” He brought his bedroll to councils of war so that when he became bored he could simply curl up and go to sleep. Elphinstone, who found Shelton “contumacious” and “actuated by ill feelings” toward him, often interfered with or countermanded his orders, leaving more junior officers confused as to their instructions.

The brigadier was not a man who bothered to hide his feelings. Having decided that the British could never survive the winter in Kabul, he told everyone so, further lowering the morale that his arrival in the cantonments had been expected to enhance. Shelton was also openly rude to Macnaghten. When Mackenzie took him to task about it, Shelton replied, “Damn it, Mackenzie, I will sneer at him, I like to sneer at him!” Lady Sale quickly grew to dislike Shelton and was irritated by his determination to get out of Afghanistan and back to India at the earliest opportunity, writing: “It may be remarked that, from the first of his arrival in the country, he appears to have greatly disliked it, and his disgust has now considerably increased. His mind is set on getting back to Hindustan.” She likened his presence to “a dark cloud shadowing us.” Eyre wrote that, “from the very first, [Shelton] seemed to despair of the force being able to hold out the winter in Kabul and strenuously advocated an immediate retreat to Jalalabad. This sort of despondency proved unhappily very infectious. It soon spread its baneful influence among the officers and was by them communicated to the soldiery. The number of croakers in garrison became perfectly frightful, lugubrious looks and dismal prophesies being encountered everywhere.”

Shah Shuja, abandoned by Shelton and besieged in the Balla Hissar, knew that if the British indeed departed Afghanistan, either death or exile would be his likely fate. Mohan Lal, in one of his stream of intelligence reports from his hiding place in the city, reported that Shah Shuja had

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