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Updated: June 9, 2025
Candahar had held out during the advance of General Roberts. Indeed, Ayoub's forces had never ventured upon anything like a formidable attack upon it, believing that they would be able to starve out the garrison in time. A sortie had been made, but with disastrous effects, and the garrison were now standing strictly on the defensive.
Baker hustled them out of cover in the watercourses in the basin on the left, and while one stream of fugitives poured away across the river, another rolled backward into and through Ayoub's camp at Mazra.
Next day that village was found more strongly occupied, and on the 23d a reconnaissance in force came upon a body of Ayoub's horsemen in the plain below the Garmao hills, about midway between Sangbur and Maiwand.
The accepted analysis of Ayoub's army shows it to have consisted of 4000 regular infantry, 800 regular cavalry, 5000 tribal irregular infantry of whom an indefinite proportion was no doubt ghazees, and 3000 irregular horsemen. In artillery strength the two forces were nearly equal.
Four hundred and twenty philips, then, O dalal, and Allah pardon me my prodigality." Yet scarcely was his little speech concluded than Tsamanni with laconic eloquence rapped out: "Five hundred." "Y'Allah!" cried the Turk, raising his hands to heaven, and "Y'Allah!" echoed the crowd. "Five hundred and fifty," shrilled Ayoub's voice above the general din.
"Madam," replied Abou Ayoub's disconsolate widow, "a favourite of the commander of the true believers, a lady whose name is Fetnah, is the occasion of all our misfortunes."
All the merchants, incensed at the ill usage of Abou Ayoub's widow and daughter, shut up their shops, and kept themselves close within their houses. The ladies, instead of looking through their lattice windows, withdrew into the back parts of their houses. There was not a person to be seen in the public places through which those unfortunate women were carried.
Beyond this ravine was a wide expanse of level and partially cultivated plain across which, almost entirely concealed by the haze, Ayoub's army was marching eastward toward Maiwand village, which covers the western entrance to the pass of the same name.
But the discovery and capture of five more Afghan cannon near Babawali village was some consolation for the enforced inaction. Considerable numbers of Ayoub's troops had earlier pushed through the Babawali Pass, and moved down toward the right front of General Burrows' Bombay brigade in position about Picquet hill.
The sepoys who were prisoners with Maclaine testified that Ayoub fled about eleven o'clock, leaving the prisoners in charge of the guard with no instructions beyond a verbal order that they were not to be killed. It was more than an hour later when the guard ordered the unfortunate officer out of his tent and took his life. The victory was complete and Ayoub's army was in full rout.
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