Severe and humiliating as were those terms, they were not obtained
without difficulty. The terms put forward in the earlier drafts of the
treaty were yet more exacting, and the tone of the demands was abrupt,
contemptuous, and insulting. Pottinger had to plead, to entreat, to be
abject; to beg the masterful Afghans 'not to overpower the weak with
sufferings'; 'to be good enough to excuse the women from the suffering'
of remaining as hostages; and to entreat them 'not to forget kindness'
shown by us in former days. One blushes not for but with the gallant
Pottinger, loyally carrying out the miserable duty put upon him. The
shame was not his; it lay on the council of superior officers, who
overruled his remonstrances, and ground his face into the dust.
Our people were made to pass under the yoke every hour of their wretched
lives during those last winter days in the Cabul cantonments. The
fanatics and the common folk of the city and its environs swarmed around
our petty ramparts, with their foul sneers and their blackguard taunts,
hurled with impunity from where they stood at the muzzles of the loaded
guns which the gunners were forbidden to fire. Officers and rank and file
were in a condition of smouldering fury, but no act of reprisal or
retribution was permitted. If the present was one continuous misery, the
future lowered yet more gloomily.
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