[Sidenote: City to be occupied versus cantonments.]
the few days at our disposal. Our only alternative was to accept another utterly false military position, and to occupy the whole City of Kandahar, it being impossible to place our force, small as it was, in the Citadel, nor (could we have done so) to have held the Citadel against an enemy in possession of the City. It is hardly necessary to point out the dangers in, and objections to, the occupation of the City, as they are self-evident, the first and chief one being the vastness of its size in comparison with the force at our disposal. The City, of which I give a rough plan on one of the foregoing pages, is a sort of irregular parallelogram, one side (N.) being 1,200 yards long; the W. 1,900 yards long, the S. 1,300 yards long, and the E. 2,000 yards long, a total length of wall of something under 4 miles, to protect which, and an additional half mile of wall in the Citadel, we should have, unless some portion of General Burrows' force returned, not quite 1,500 men. When I mention that to defend lines of this length, according to military rules, a force of 18,000 men is considered the correct thing--the almost hopelessness of the position may be imagined. Behind and within these walls lay a city with a population of 30,000, of whom 14,000 were men, out of whom it was no exaggeration to feel that half at least must of necessity be our deadly enemies, and that consequently, in addition to offering resistance to hordes without, we had to guard against treachery from within. The position, for these two reasons alone, was utterly wrong, but it was the sole possible alternative, and had to be accepted, and its difficulties and dangers dealt with as might be possible. The question of water was the urgent one, but as we knew the City had a sufficient supply for its inhabitants, of which we purposed to turn out at least one half, we trusted we should get enough for ourselves. The walls vary in height from 18 feet in the lowest place to 25 feet in the highest, and are about 20 feet thick at the base, and 12 to 14 feet broad at the parapet. There are 6 Gates--four principal ones--from which the various faces take their names, and 2 minor ones. The northern gate is called the Eedgah; the southern the Shikarpore, being the gate from which the main road to India leads; the western gate is the Kabul gate, and near it a smaller one known as the Bar Dourani; the eastern gate is the Herat gate, and close to it another called the Topkhana or Artillery gate. Along the walls, at intervals of 100 yards, are high turrets, which give the only flanking defence, very poor in quality and degree. This point hurriedly, but definitely and decidedly, settled, we had no time for conversation or consideration, as immediate action was necessary, the carrying out of which General Primrose placed unreservedly in my hands. The first thing to be done was to have the sick and ammunition conveyed to a place of safety in the Citadel, and as it was clear we could not use our heavy battery (viz., 4 40-pounders and 2 six-inch mortars), drawn by bullocks in the field, I sent it also without delay into the Citadel, and issued orders to all commanding officers to move all public and private property belonging to their regiments to the Citadel also.