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Updated: June 20, 2025
There was no relaxation in the rate of marching, and Khelat-i-Ghilzai was reached on the eighth day from Ghuznee, showing a daily average of nearly seventeen miles. The 24th was a halt day at Khelat-i-Ghilzai, where Sir Frederick Roberts received a letter from General Primrose in Candahar, describing the sortie made on the village of Deh Khoja and giving details of his situation.
At length the enemy gave way. The British pushed on. The support, under Colonel Croker, advanced, and the reserve speedily followed; and soon the colours of the 13th Regiment, planted by the brave young Ensign Frere, as well as those of the 17th, were flying out in the morning breeze from the ramparts of Ghuznee. The struggle within the fort, for a considerable time, was most desperate.
His march was uneventful until about midway between Khelat-i-Ghilzai and Ghuznee, when on the 28th the cavalry, unsupported and badly handled in a stupid and unauthorised foray, lost severely in officers and men, took to flight in panic, and so gave no little encouragement to the enemy hanging on Nott's flank.
On the 21st of July the army arrived before the famous fortress of Ghuznee, which was considered impregnable by the Afghans. The city of Ghuznee lies between Candahar and Cabul, about 230 miles distant from the former, and 90 from the latter place. It stands on the extreme points of a range of hills, which slope upwards and command the north-east angle of the Balla Hissar.
Here he had to stay waiting for ammunition and supplies, which eventually reached him, escorted by a force under Sir R. England, and on the 10th of August he marched to Cabul, passing on the way the fort of Ghuznee. This, it will be remembered, had been valiantly taken by storm by our troops three years before, now it was again in Afghan hands.
No difficulties were met with, and scarce a shot was fired on the way down. In seven days Ghuznee was reached, in fifteen Khelat-i-Ghilzai, the marching being no less than 15.7 miles per day, not an extraordinary distance for a single regiment to perform, but a wonderful feat for a force containing some 18,000 persons, and 9000 baggage animals, marching through mountainous valleys.
General Heatherstone looked keenly at the supplicant, but was silent to his appeal. "I was in Ghuznee with you when the walls were all shook down by an earthquake, and when we found forty thousand Afghans within gunshot of us. You ask me about it, and you'll see whether I'm lying or not.
A few moments of darkness and confusion, and then the foremost soldiers caught a glimpse of the morning sky, and pushing gallantly on, were soon established in the fortress. Three hearty, animating cheers, so loud and clear that they were heard throughout the general camp, announced to their excited comrades below that Dennie and his stormers had entered Ghuznee.
His last victories were gained in advanced life, and are ranked with the highest of those actions to which England owes her wonderful Oriental dominion. Lord Keane was verging upon sixty when he led the British forces into Afghanistan, and took Ghuznee. Against all her old and middle-aged generals, her kings and princes apart, England could place but very few young commanders of great worth.
Having fulfilled Lord Ellenborough's ridiculous order to carry away from the tomb of Sultan Mahmoud in the environs of Ghuznee, the supposititious gates of Somnath, a once famous Hindoo shrine in the Bombay province of Kattiawar, Nott marched onward unmolested till within a couple of marches of Cabul, when near Maidan he had some stubborn fighting with an Afghan force which tried ineffectually to block his way.
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