1841. Jelalabad, held by 2,400 men under General Sale, still
withstood the storm like a rock of iron. General Nott, the energetic
officer commanding at Kandahar, on receiving the news of the
destruction of the British, blew up the citadel of the town,
destroyed every thing not necessary to his object, and started,
August 8, 1842, for Ghazni, which he also destroyed, September 6th.


[Illustration: Gate of the Bazaar at Kabul.]


Another British force of twelve thousand men, under General Pollock,
was organized at Peshawur, to punish the Afghans, and, so far as
might be, retrieve the errors of Elphinstone and McNaghten.
Pollock's operations were, in the sense of retaliation, successful.
An eminent German authority wrote: "Kabul and other towns were
levelled with the ground; Akbar's troops were blown from guns, and
the people were collected together and destroyed like worms."
General Pollock carried the famous Khaiber Pass, in advancing to the
relief of Jelalabad in April, 1842. This was the first time that the
great defile--twenty-eight miles in length--had ever been forced by
arms. Timur Lang and Nadir Shah, at the head of their enormous
hosts, bought a safe passage through it from the Afridis. Akbar the
Great, in 1587, is said to have lost forty thousand men in
attempting to force it, and Aurangzeb failed to get through.

The misfortune of Elphinstone's command, great as it was, would have
been much more humiliating to England, had it not been for the
firmness of the gallant General Pollock, who, ordered to withdraw
with his command to Peshawur, by Lord Ellenborough, without