If they should fight their way to the citadel, they would be besieged
there without food. They must go, whatever the risk or hardships. On
the 6th of January the fatal march began,--a march of four thousand five
hundred soldiers and twelve thousand camp-followers, besides women and
children, through a mountainous country, filled with savage foes, and in
severe winter weather.
The first day's march took them but five miles from the works, the
evacuation taking place so slowly that it was two o'clock in the morning
before the last of the force came up. It had been a march of frightful
conditions. Attacked by the Afghans on every side, hundreds of the
fugitives perished in those first five dreadful miles. As the advance
body waited in the snow for those in the rear to join them, the glare of
flames from the burning cantonments told that the evacuation had been
completed, and that the whole multitude was now at the mercy of its
savage foes. It was evident that they had a frightful gantlet to run
through the fire of the enemy and the winters chilling winds. The snow
through which they had slowly toiled was reddened with blood all the way
back to Cabul. Baggage was abandoned, and men and women alike pushed
forward for their lives, some of them, in the haste of flight, but
half-clad, few sufficiently protected from the severe cold.
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