There were many things in Lord Auckland's Indian career of
which it behoved him to repent, but it must go to his credit that he gave
Pollock high command, and that he could honestly proclaim, as he made his
preparations to quit the great possession whose future his policy had
endangered, that he had contributed toward the retrieval of the crisis by
promptly furthering 'such operations as might be required for the
maintenance of the honour and interests of the British Government.'
Brigadier Wild reached Peshawur with a brigade of four sepoy regiments
just before the new year. He was destitute of artillery, his sepoys were
in poor heart, and the Sikh contingent was utterly untrustworthy. To
force the Khyber seemed hopeless. Wild, however, made the attempt
energetically enough. But the Sikhs mutinied, expelled their officers,
and marched back to Peshawur; Wild's sepoys, behaving badly, were driven
back with loss from the mouth of the pass, and Wild himself was wounded.
When Pollock reached Peshawur on February 6th, 1842, he found half of
Wild's brigade sick in hospital, and the whole of it in a state of utter
demoralisation. A second brigade commanded by Brigadier-General
McCaskill, had accompanied Pollock, the sepoys of which promptly fell
under the evil influence of Wild's dispirited and disaffected regiments.
Pollock had to resist the pressing appeals for speedy relief made to him
from Jellalabad, and patiently to devote weeks and months to the
restoration of the morale and discipline of the disheartened sepoys of
his command, and to the reinvigoration of their physique.
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