The Kabul Insurrection of 1841-42. By Major-General Sir Vincent Eyre.
Edited by Colonel G. B. Malleson. (W. H. Allen.)—This is a very seasonable reprint (with additions and reflections suggested by subsequent events) of a narrative which .made a profound sensation at the time, costing the Great Duke, as the author tells us, a sleepless night. Lieutenant Eyre, as he then was, being one of the married officers, was given up as a hostage to the Afghans, and thus escaped the fate which overtook the whole, one solitary fugitive excepted, of the army which retreated from Cabul. He begins his narrative with • the successful defence of Herat, a defence to which Lieutenant Eldred Pottinger, of the Bombay Artillery, mainly contributed, and carries us through all the dismal scenes of incapacity and treachery of which the history of our occupation of Cabul is made up. Never, surely, were greater or more fatal mistakes committed than those by which General Elphinstone and Sir William Macnaughten, between them, inflicted upon England this terrible disaster. It is not likely that these mistakes will be repeated. We shall not attempt to occupy Afghanistan again. For all that, this book is worth reading, not only for its intrinsic interest, but for its political value ; and the sad record of misfortune and failure is not unfrequently relieved by stories of successful daring.
Previous page
