thly_, When local insurrection had arisen, whether directed (as
every body assumes) against the abuses of a system introduced by
ourselves, or (as _we_ assert) proper to the land, and hereditary to the
morbid condition of Affghan society--we shall expose the feeble and
inadequate solution yet offered by any military guide for the tragical
issue of these calamities. Kohistan, or particular cases, need not
detain us; but, coming at once _in medias res_ as to Cabool itself, we
shall undertake to show, that as yet we have no true or rational account
of the causes which led to the fatal result. What! four thousand five
hundred regular troops, officered by Englishmen--a number which, in the
last eighty years, had shown itself repeatedly able to beat armies of
sixty thousand men, armies having all the appurtenances and equipments
of regular warfare--was this strong column actually unable to fight its
way, with bayonet and field artillery, to a fortress distant only eighty
miles, through a tumultuary rabble never mustering twenty thousand
heads?[1] Times are altered with us if this was inevitable. But the
Affghans, you will say, are brave men, stout and stout-hearted, not
timid Phrygian Bengalees. True--but at Plassy, and again, forty years
after, at Assye, it was not merely Bengalees, or chiefly such, whom we
fought--they were Rohillas, Patans, Goorkhas, and Arabs; the three
first being of Affghan blood, quite as good as any Barukzye or Ghilzye,
and the last better. No, no--there is more to tell. The calamity
ascends to some elder source than the imbecility of General
Elphinstone, or the obstinacy of Brigadier Shelton. Others than the
direct accomplices in that disaster are included in its guilt; some of
the hitherto known only as the slain who have suffered by the
insurrection, and as the survivors who have denounced it. Amongst
_them_ lie some of those impeached by the circumstances. So far we
might add little to the satisfaction of the public; to see the rolls of
the guilty widening would but aggravate the sorrow of a calamity which
now it could do nothing to diminish. But oftentimes to know the persons
concerned in a great disaster, is a step to knowing something of its
causes. And this we will venture to say--that, in defiance of all
professional pedantry incident to military men and engineers, the
reader is likely to be of opinion that we, at a distance of 7000 miles,
have pointed out capital blunders, ensuring ruin and fo