Another project, that of driving the Afghans from Mahmood Khan's fort,
commanding the direct road between the cantonments and the Balla Hissar,
and of occupying it with a British force, was so far advanced that the
time for the attempt was fixed, and the storming party actually warned,
when some petty objection intervened and the enterprise was abandoned,
never to be revived.
The rising was not three days old when already Elphinstone had lost
heart. On the 5th he had written to Macnaghten suggesting that the latter
should 'consider what chance there is of making terms,' and since then he
had been repeatedly pressing on the Envoy the 'hopelessness of further
resistance.' Macnaghten, vacillating as he was, yet had more pith in his
nature than was left in the debilitated old general. He wrote to
Elphinstone on the 18th recommending, not very strenuously, the policy of
holding out where they were as long as possible, and indeed throughout
the winter, if subsistence could be obtained. He pointed out that in the
cantonments, which he believed to be impregnable, there were at least the
essentials of wood and water. Arguing that a retreat on Jellalabad must
be most disastrous, and was to be avoided except in the last extremity,
he nevertheless ended somewhat inconsistently by leaving to the military
authorities, if in eight or ten days there should appear no prospect of
an improvement of the situation, the decision whether it would be wiser
to attempt a retreat or to withdraw from the cantonments into the Balla
Hissar.
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