tewart as Chief of the
Staff, and the latter taking up the same position with me.]

[Footnote 6: Lieutenant-General Primrose succeeded Sir Donald Stewart
in command of the troops at Kandahar.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER LX.
1880

Affairs at Kandahar--The Maiwand disaster
--Relief from Kabul suggested--A force ordered from Kabul
--Preparations for the march--The Kabul-Kandahar Field Force
--Commissariat and Transport

For more than six months rumours had been afloat of Ayub Khan's
determination to advance on Kandahar; but little attention was paid to
them by the authorities at that place until towards the end of May,
when a Sirdar, named Sher Ali,[1] who had been a few days before
formally installed as Wali, or Ruler, of Kandahar, informed the
political officer, Lieutenant-Colonel St. John, that the British
occupation of Kabul had had the effect of bringing about a
reconciliation between the various chiefs at Herat, who had placed
themselves under the leadership of Ayub Khan and induced him to
proclaim a _jahad_. Sher Ali, who evidently considered this news
authentic, declared his belief that his own troops,[2] who were then
engaged in collecting revenue in Zamindawar, would desert to Ayub Khan
as he approached Kandahar, and he begged that a brigade of British
soldiers might be sent to Girishk to support him.

On General Primrose communicating this information to the
Commander-in-Chief in India, he recommended to the Government that the
Bombay reserve division, located at Jacobabad, Hyderabad, and Karachi,
should be mobilized so soon as it became certain that Ayub Khan really
contemplated this move, as in his opinion the garrison at Kandahar
would be left dangerously weak after a brigade had been detached for
Girishk.

Ayub Khan's movements, however, were not ascertained until the 27th
June, when he had advanced halfway to the Helmand; it was too late
then to mobilize troops so far off as Jacobabad, Hyderabad, and
Karachi with any chance of their being in time to check his onward
march. The news of his approach spread rapidly, and had the most
disturbing effect in Kandahar and its neighbourhood. The Governor's
authority daily diminished, and many of the inhabitants left the city.

Ayub Khan had with him, when he started from Herat on the 15th June,
7,500 men and ten guns as the nucleus of an army, which he calculated,
as he moved forward, would be strongly reinforced by