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The towns should be laid in ashes and the fields sown with salt. Above all, the Residency and the Palace must come down. So shall Burnes, McNaghten, and many another gallant fellow know that his countrymen could avenge if they could not save him! It is hard when others are gaining glory and experience to be stuck in this miserable valley.

Sir William McNaghten, the chief political officer in Cabul, went still further, and in April 1840 not only urged a march on Bokhara, but also contemplated sending a Mission to Kokand, in order, as he said, 'to frustrate the knavish tricks of the Russians in that quarter.

The local control was vested in a mixed military and civil council, consisting of General Elphinstone, unfitted by disease and natural irresolution from exercising the functions of command, and Sir William McNaghten, the British envoy, whose self-confidence and trust in the treacherous natives made him an easy victim.

General Elphinstone, who was in command, writing to Sir W. McNaghten on November 24, said that 'from the want of provisions and forage, the reduced state of our troops, the large number of wounded and sick, the difficulty of defending the extensive and ill-situated cantonment we occupy, the near approach of winter, our communications cut off, no prospect of relief, and the whole country in arms against us, I am of opinion that it is not feasible any longer to maintain our position in this country, and that you ought to avail yourself of the offer to negotiate that has been made to you.

'We are in a stew here, wrote Sir William McNaghten in September; 'it is reported that the whole country on this side the Oxus is up in favour of Dost Mahomed, who is certainly advancing in great strength. Again, in a letter to Lord Auckland, he said 'that affairs in this quarter have the worst possible appearance' and he quoted the opinion of Sir Willoughby Cotton, that 'unless the Bengal troops are instantly strengthened we cannot hold the country.

Another British force of twelve thousand men, under General Pollock, was organized at Peshawur, to punish the Afghans, and, so far as might be, retrieve the errors of Elphinstone and McNaghten. Pollock's operations were, in the sense of retaliation, successful.

This was conclusive. Our Envoy early in December met the Afghan chiefs, and agreed that we should immediately evacuate the country, and that Dost Mahomed, who was in exile in India, should return. On December 23, Sir William McNaghten was treacherously murdered at a conference with the Afghan Sirdars, within sight of the British cantonment, and then came the end.

As there was no intelligent concert of action among the British leaders, the garrison melted away in detail, the Afghan auxiliaries refused to fight, or turned their arms against the Europeans. Sir William McNaghten was murdered by Akbar, at a council in sight of the garrison.