rming
temptations to conspiracy, which Lieutenant Eyre, a principal artillery
officer on the spot, has failed to notice; and if he failed to notice
them in his book _a fortiori_, he must have failed to notice them
officially, whilst yet it would have been in time. There were those
things done in Cabool by the "fantastic tricks" of men dressed in
authority, which, placed in their proper light, go far to explain all
the horrors that ensued. We know not whether they made "the angels
weep," or rather made the devils laugh, when hovering over Coord
Cabool: but this we know, that they are likely to make the hair stand
on end of all considerate men in this land of energetic foresight.

[1] "_Heads_," we say, because it is one amongst the grievous neglects
of the military writers, that they have made it impossible for us to
describe the Affghan soldiery under any better representative term, by
giving no circumstantial account of the arms or discipline prevailing
through the Affghan forces, the tenure of their service, &c. Many had
matchlocks; but many, we presume, had only swords; and artillery the
Affghans had none, but what they had been suffered to steal in Cabool.

_Fifthly_, It may be asked, What is the moral of this dreadful affair?
What inferences in the way of warning are to be drawn from it? This is a
topic untouched by all the writers on the Affghan war. But undoubtedly
the Cabool reverse was not more fitted to fix attention as a judgment
for the past than as a warning for the future; not more as being (or
being thought) the reaction from a public wrong, authorized by English
councils, than as a premonitory case, showing us what may be expected
under the recurrence of similar circumstances. Circumstances altogether
similar are not likely to recur in two centuries; but circumstances only
in part similar, a commander-in-chief incapacitated by illness, or a
second-in-command blind with infatuation, might easily recur in critical
or dreadful emergencies. Such circumstances _did_ happen in the Nepaul
campaigns; imbecility in more leaders than one, as abject as that at
Cabool. And though it could not lead to the same awful results where
there had not been the same elaborate _preparation_ of folly, and upon
ground so much nearer to the means of rectification, still it was then
sufficient to tarnish the lustre of our arms for the time, and, under
worse circumstances, would menace worse misfortunes. Neither is this
all; there