Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/172

 CHAPTER XI

Close of Lord Auckland's Rule

It was a bitter moment for Lord Auckland when, in the last days of January, he learned that the Kábul Force had ceased to exist. There are some still living who remember the white face he wore on this occasion. Within a few weeks of his return homewards, — for a new Governor- General, appointed by a new Tory Ministry, was on his way to Calcutta — the whole fabric of his Afghán policy had been shattered by a blow which laid his own reputation in the dust. How such a thing could have happened to some 4,000 good British troops, assailed by only twice or thrice as many ill-armed Afghans, was more, he wrote home, than he could understand. Had not history taught him that such troops should be more than a match for ten times their number of Asiatic foemen? During the past year his eyes had been opened to the dangers of a policy which he had never pursued with a whole heart. Writing to the India House on the 22nd of December, when news from Kábul had reached him down to the middle of the previous