A melancholy interest attaches to the visit paid by Sir Frederick Roberts
to the Balla Hissar on the 11th. Through the dirt and squalor of the
lower portion he ascended the narrow lane leading to the ruin which a few
weeks earlier had been the British Residency. The commander of the
avenging army looked with sorrowful eyes on the scene of heroism and
slaughter, on the smoke-blackened walls, the blood splashes on the
whitewashed walls, the still smouldering debris, the half-burned skulls
and bones in the blood-dabbled chamber where apparently the final
struggle had been fought out. He stood in the great breach in the
quarters of the Guides where the gate had been blown in after the last of
the sorties made by the gallant Hamilton, and lingered in the tattered
wreck of poor Cavagnari's drawing-room, its walls dinted with
bullet-pits, its floor and walls brutally defiled. Next day he made a
formal entry into the Balla Hissar, his road lined with his staunch
troops, a royal salute greeting the banner of Britain as it rose on the
tall flagstaff above the gateway. He held a Durbar in the 'Audience
Chamber' in the garden of the Ameer's palace; in front and in flank of
him the pushing throng of obsequious Sirdars of Cabul arrayed in all the
colours of the rainbow; behind them, standing immobile at attention, the
guard of British infantry with fixed bayonets which the soldiers longed
to use.
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