HKB
[Sidenote: British vandalism]
Such was the state of affairs in India when Lord Ellenborough landed at Calcutta in February, to succeed Lord Auckland as Governor-General. The first trying need was to rescue the remaining British garrisons at Jellalabad and Kandahar. General Pollock, with a strong force of Sepoys, was sent through the Punjab and Peshawar. In April, he pushed his way through the Khaibar Pass, in the face of fierce resistance from the mountaineers. The relieving force reached Jellalabad none too soon. General Sale and his garrison were fighting for time. In a last sortie they had just inflicted a telling defeat on Akbar Khan and his besieging army. From Kabul the boy sovereign of the Afghans fled out of Akbar Khan's reach and put himself under the protection of General Pollock. Akbar Khan now wrote to General Pollock, offering to deliver up his British prisoners and hostages if he would withdraw from Afghanistan. Lord Ellenborough showed himself inclined to accept this proposition. The British officers at the front were furious. General Pollock wrote to Nott at Kandahar not to move until further instructions, while he himself reported to headquarters that he could not retire to Jellalabad for want of transports. Eventually, Lord Ellenborough consented to modify his instructions. Without waiting for this, General Nott was already marching on Kabul. Pollock, accompanied by Sale, left Jellalabad to support Nott's advance. In the Tezeen Valley the British came upon the scene of one of the bloodiest massacres of the retreat from Kabul. The sight of the murdered bodies of their comrades exasperated the soldiers. The heights around were bristling with Akbar Khan's men. In the face of a murderous fire from their matchlocks, the British stormed the heights and gave no quarter. Akbar Khan fled into the northern hills. In September, Nott's column took Kabul and hoisted the British flag over the Bala Hassar. The English captives managed to bribe their keepers and to join the rescuing army, amid general rejoicings. The British conquest of Afghanistan was followed by barbarous deeds of vandalism. The great bazaar of Kabul, one of the handsomest stone structures of Central Asia, was blown up by gunpowder. The city itself was turned over to loot and massacre. The bloodcurdling atrocities of the white men on that occasion kept alive the fierce hatred of all things British in Afghanistan for years to come. By the express orders of Lord Ellenborough the sacred sandalwood gates of Somnath, which had adorned the tomb of Mahmud of Ghasni since the Eleventh Century, were brought away as trophies of war.
[Sidenote: Boers driven from Natal]
[Sidenote: Foundation of Transvaal]
In South Africa, too, the seeds of enduring hatred were sown at this time. Scarcely had the new Boer community in Zululand become well settled when a proclamation was issued in Cape Town, declaring that Natal should become a British territory. Soldiers were despatched to Durban to support this claim. After some sharp fighting the Boers were driven out of the seaport. When the British Commissioner arrived at Pietermaritzburg, a stormy mass meeting was held. For two hours Erasmus Smith, the Boer predicant, argued in vain in behalf of his flock. In the end the Boer women passed a unanimous resolution that rather than submit to English rule they would emigrate once more. Pointing to the Drakensberg Mountains, the oldest of the women said: "We go across those mountains to freedom or to death." Over these mountains almost the whole population of Natal trekked their way into the uninhabited regions beyond. Only 300 families remained, the ancestors of some 10,000 Afrikanders of Natal in later days. On the other side of the Orange and Vaal Rivers the Boer emigrants founded once more their commonwealth, known later as the Transvaal, or South African Republic.
In Australia the first representative constitution was granted to the English colonists of New South Wales. Almost simultaneously with this began the agitation for separating Victoria from New South Wales.
[Sidenote: "The Sliding Scale"]
[Sidenote: British Income Tax]