第38章

THE CAMP OF LAHORE

An unusually beautiful and dry spring favoured the advance of the Russian army through the mountains.In the north of India the temperature kept at an average of 68 degrees F., and day after day the sun streamed down from a cloudless blue sky upon the broad plains of the Punjab, through the bright green of which the Russian troops, in their white summer uniforms, pushed on like long streaks of silver.

Everything pointed to the fortune of war being on their side, for they had overcome the difficult and dreaded passage at Attock with unexpected ease.

The commander of this lofty fortress received orders not to break down the bridge across the Indus until General Blood's army, which was directed to hold Peshawar and the Khyber Pass, had effected its retreat and had to the last man passed the river.

The bridge at Attock, which is a high structure built across the narrow bed of the Indus, which here foams down with swirling swiftness, is considered a masterpiece of engineering.It is built in two tiers, the upper of which carries the railway, while the lower forms a road for carriages, beasts of burden, and foot-passengers.On either side of the river is a fortified gate.The English commander of Attock trusted to the strength of the forts standing some 800 feet above the river, and imagined the Russians to be still far away.

The Russian vanguard had crossed the river Cabul, which joins the Indus at Attock, at a point a few miles above the city, and thus appeared simultaneously with General Blood's troops before the fortress.

Blood's troops were passing the bridge in endless long columns.

Their movement was often checked by blocks, caused by the dislocation of the several units, and so it came about that, in the early morning, a superior Russian force had, unperceived by the English, reached the northern end of the bridge just as a gap had been caused in the English columns.

The thick fog of the morning had hidden the approach of the Russians from the English outposts.The Russians at once occupied the bridge, and so cut off the remainder of the English that were on the northern bank from their main body that had already crossed the bridge.The commander of the Russian advance guard was himself quite astounded at the success that the fortune of war had thrown into his lap: had not the fog rendered the scouting on both sides illusory, and had not chance allowed him to fall in with this gap in the English columns, the chances would, considering the narrowness of the road, have been much more favourable to the English than for him, and the battle would probably have ended with the defeat of his forces.As it was, General Ivanov, who had crossed the Khyber Pass, came upon the English rearguard, and five thousand men of the Anglo-Indian troops had to surrender after a short struggle.Two thousand English and three thousand Mohammedans fell into the hands of the Russians.As soon as the Mohammedan-Indians were informed by the victors that they were fighting for the true faith against the infidels, they went over without more ado to the Russian side.

The commander at Attock refused to surrender the fortress, and trained his guns upon the Russian columns; but, in consequence of the fog, the batteries did not inflict much damage upon the Russians, who being now in possession of the bridge continued their advance to the south.

But, however, before the march that had thus been so successfully begun was continued, the Russian commander-in-chief collected, not far from Attock, all the troops that had crossed the Hindu-Kush in small detachments, and united them with the army corps advancing from Afghanistan, so that he now disposed of an army of seventy thousand men.

It was a blood-stained road upon which this host travelled behind the retreating English army.This was the road upon which Alexander the Great in days of yore entered India.Here, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Afghan sovereign Ibrahim Lodi had fought with the Grand Mogul Baber; here, a few decades later, Mohammed Shah Adil, the generallissimo of the Afghans, when at the head of fifty thousand horse, five hundred elephants, and innumerable infantry, was defeated by the youthful Grand Mogul Akbar.Still more bloody was the battle, which about the middle of the eighteenth century the Afghan Sultan Ahmed Shah Durani fought with the great Mahratha princes, Holkar Sindhia, Gaekwar and the Peschwas; and here, once again, all the horrors of war raged, when in the year 1857, the English Generals Havelock, Sir James Outram, Sir Colin Campbell, Sir Hugh Rose, Sir John Lawrence, and Sir Robert Napier, crushed with pitiless severity the dangerous sepoy mutiny.East and West had, in gigantic struggles, fought together on this spot so full of legends, this the cradle of mankind.

Hundreds of thousands of human lives had been sacrificed on this blood-drenched soil, and yet again was a decisive battle impending, destined to be engraved with a steel pencil on the tablets of the world's history.

The movements of the Russian army had upset the plan of the English generals.The English corps which had collected at Mooltan were quickly pushed on to Lahore, as soon as the Russians' intention to proceed to the south-east became clear.The time which General Ivanov required for concentrating his troops at Attock rendered it possible for the English to reach Lahore.Here their forces were considerably increased by the strong garrison, and each day new regiments came in from Delhi and Lucknow, which brought the strength of the army commanded by Sir Bindon Blood up to the number of one hundred thousand combatants.

The English prepared for a decisive battle, for already the head of the Russian columns was no further than ten English miles north of the mausoleum of the Emperor Jahangir at Shah Dara, a military station scarcely eight English miles north-west of Lahore.