As Keane moved forward,
there fell to him the guns which the Dost had left in the Urgundeh
position. On August 6th he encamped close to Cabul; and on the following
day Shah Soojah made his public entry into the capital which he had last
seen thirty years previously. After so many years of vicissitude,
adventure and intrigue, he was again on the throne of his ancestors, but
placed there by the bayonets of the Government whose creature he was, an
insult to the nation whom he had the insolence to call his people.
The entry, nevertheless, was a goodly spectacle enough. Shah Soojah,
dazzling in coronet, jewelled girdle and bracelets, but with no
Koh-i-noor now glittering on his forehead, bestrode a white charger,
whose equipments gleamed with gold. By his side rode Macnaghten and
Burnes; in the pageant were the principal officers of the British army.
Sabres flashed in front of the procession, bayonets sparkled in its rear,
as it wended its way through the great bazaar which Pollock was to
destroy three years later, and along the tortuous street to the gate of
the Balla Hissar. But neither the monarch nor his pageant kindled the
enthusiasm in the Cabulees. There was no voice of welcome; the citizens
did not care to trouble themselves so much as to make him a salaam, and
they stared at the European strangers harder than at his restored
majesty.
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