Page:Our Indian Army.djvu/586

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562
OUR ANGLO-INDIAN ARMY.

opposition. This grand operation was accomplished with the incredibly small loss of fourteen killed, 104 wounded, and seventeen missing; the first including one, and the second three officers.

On the 6th of April the fort of Ali Musjid was attacked, and possession taken after a slight resistance: a full command was thus obtained of the Khyber Pass, and the route lay open to Jellalabad, where General Pollock arrived with little further opposition on the 16th, under a joyful salute of seventeen guns from the garrison, while the two united and victorious armies hailed each other with loud and enthusiastic cheers.

While these transactions were taking place at Cabul and Jellalabad, Candahar continued to be maintained by General Nott, who, like Sir Robert Sale, refused to obey the order extorted from General Elphinstone for the surrender of the place. Prince Sufter Jung, a son of Shah Sujah, seconded the hostile chiefs in plundering the adjacent villages, and exciting the people to rise against the British; but on the 7th of March, General Nott moving out of the city with the larger part of his force to attack the enemy, drove them before him across the Turnack, and then across the Urgundab. On the 9th he was able to approach sufficiently near to open his guns on them, when they dispersed in every direction. During his absence a strong detachment of the enemy made an attack on the city, and succeeded in burning one of the gates; but they were repulsed with great loss by Major Lane, of the 2nd Bengal Native Infantry, the officer in command of the garrison.

General England, who in the middle of March had been repulsed in an attempt to convey stores to Candahar from Sinde, being reinforced at Quetta, on which place he had fallen back, advanced again in the end of April to effect his object, and fully succeeded. The strong fortress of Khelat-i-Ghiljie had been maintained by our troops with great difficulty during the winter, surrounded by a hostile people, who early in spring formed lines of cir-