But so steady and
accurate was the fire of the Guides, that even these brave fanatics
feared to face the open, and the attack melted away. Sir Frederick
Roberts, with the eye of the born general seizing the right moment,
launched his cavalry and artillery in counterstroke and pursuit, till
when the sun set that night fifty thousand of the chivalry of the Afghan
nation had been swept from sight and hearing, and nothing but a vast
solitude remained where teeming thousands stood lately.
Thus collect, and thus disappear, the great yeomen armies of
Afghanistan. To-day they are not; to-morrow they are assembling in their
thousands from the four quarters of the compass; a few days, and they
have melted away like snow. The explanation is simple enough. The fiery
crescent goes forth, summoning the faithful, every man with his arms and
ammunition and carrying in his goatskin bag food enough to last him for
a week. Commissariat or Ordnance Departments there are none; thus as
each soldier finishes his food or his ammunition, or both, he hies him
home again for a fresh supply; perhaps he returns, and perhaps he has
had enough fighting for the present, and does not. And so is it with all
the fifty thousand.
The Guides did not see any more serious fighting till April, when,
together with a wing of the 92nd Highlanders under Major White,[22] and
two guns of F.-A. Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, they fought a gallant
little action with about five thousand of the enemy at Charasiab near
Kabul.
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