Excerpt from The Military Operations at Cabul, Which Ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842 With a Journal of Imprisonment in Afghanistan
The original manuscript of this Journal was sent by Lieutenant Eyre in parts, as it was finished, and as opportunity offered, to a military friend in India. Even when the last part reached his hands, the eventual liberation of the Cabul prisoners was a matter of painful uncertainty; and his judgment prompted him to transmit it entire, and without comment, to the Authors immediate relations in this country. There is a point connected with its publication now, which must not be thought to have been disregarded from any anxiety that this account should be the first: it is, the question whether it should have been withheld until the result of the inquiry now pending in India should be known. It is considered that sufficient delay has been already incurred to insure this end, and that all such investigations will have been closed before a copy of this book can find its way to India. The Journal is therefore at once printed as it came, in concurrence with the writers own idea that it cannot fail to interest the British public.
Note by the Editor. - I have received information from very high authority, which makes it incumbent on me, in candour, to append this note to a second edition; and I am sorry it was not in time to appear also in the first. I flatter myself that the general tone of this work will prove sufficiently that any supposed misstatement therein will have been made most unintentionally, and on authority which must have appeared to the Author very sufficient. In his absence I cannot do less than append the following observations, which are furnished me to qualify the passages of the text alluded to:
P. 5. With reference to the alleged neglect to send a force against the Nijrow chiefs, I am assured that the Envoy pressed this measure upon the General, but he refused the troops.
P. 8. I am assured that Lord Auckland never knew, until after the insurrection, that the pay of the Giljyes had been stopped, and that the measure originated with the Envoy.
P. 10. Lastly, I am authorized to say that it is not correctly stated that Lord Auckland did not receive General Elphinstone's resignation as soon as the General wished: that the General joined the force in April; and in September, Lord Auckland received his medical certificate, and wrote to him by the first mail to beg of him to give up the command to the next in order, until a successor could be found.
While readily giving insertion to any counter-statements so conveyed to me as to guarantee their accuracy, I must be allowed, on my brothers part, to express an opinion that, being on terms of intimate friendship with General Elphinstone, he must have had no less authority than the Generals information for making at least that statement last referred to: but I am sure he would regret to be the means of propagating any thing not strictly true, from whatever source derived.
The following notes were penned to relieve the monotony of an Affghan prison, while yet the events which they record continued fresh in my memory. I now give them publicity in the belief that the information which they contain on the dreadful scenes lately enacted in Aftghanistan, though clothed in a homely garb, will scarcely fail to be acceptable to many of my countrymen, both in India and England, who may be ignorant of the chief particulars. The time, from the 2d November, 1841, on which day the sudden popular outbreak at Cabul took place, to the 13th January, 1842, which witnessed the annihilation of the last small remnant of our unhappy force at Gundamuk, was one continued tragedy.
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