abul. London: John Murray.

This is the first connected account that has appeared of the military
disasters that befell the British army at Cabul--by far the most signal
reverse our arms have ever sustained in Asia. The narrative is full of a
deep and painful interest, which becomes more and more intense as we
approach the closing catastrophe. The simple detail of the daily
occurrences stirs up our strongest feelings of indignation, pity; scorn,
admiration, horror, and grief. The tale is told without art, or any
attempt at artificial ornament, and in a spirit of manly and
gentlemanlike forbearance from angry comment or invective, that is
highly creditable to the author, and gives us a very favourable opinion
both of his head and of his heart.

That a British army of nearly six thousand fighting men--occupying a
position chosen and fortified by our own officers, and having
possession, within two miles of this fortified cantonment, of a strong
citadel commanding the greater part of the town of Cabul, a small
portion only of whose population rose against us at the commencement of
the revolt--should not only have made no vigorous effort to crush the
insurrection; but that it should ultimately have been driven by an
undisciplined Asiatic mob, destitute of artillery, and which never
appears to have collected in one place above 10,000 men, to seek safety
in a humiliating capitulation, by which it surrendered the greater part
of its artillery, military stores, and treasure, and undertook to
evacuate the whole country on condition of receiving a safe conduct from
the rebel chiefs, on whose faith they placed, and could place, no
reliance; and finally, that, of about 4500 armed soldiers and twelve
thousand camp-followers, many of whom were also armed, who set out from
Cabul, only one man, and he wounded, should have arrived at Jellalabad;
is an amount of misfortune so far exceeding every rational anticipation
of evil, that we should have been entitled to assume that these
unparalleled military disasters arose from a series of unparalleled
errors, even if we had not had, as we now have, the authority of Lord
Ellenborough for asserting the fact.

But every nation, and more particularly the British nation, is little
inclined to pardon the men under whose command any portion of its army
or of its navy may have been beaten. Great Britain, reposing entire
confidence in the courage of her men, and little accustomed to see them
overthr