text:  That a British army of nearly six thousand fighting men--occupying a position chosen and fortified by our own officers and having possession within two miles of this fortified cantonment of a strong citadel commanding the greater part of the town of Cabul a small portion only of whose population rose against us at the commencement of the revolt--should not only have made no vigorous effort to crush the insurrection; but that it should ultimately have been driven by an undisciplined Asiatic mob destitute of artillery and which never appears to have collected in one place above 10 000 men to seek safety in a humiliating capitulation by which it surrendered the greater part of its artillery military stores and treasure and undertook to evacuate the whole country on condition of receiving a safe conduct from the rebel chiefs on whose faith they placed and could place no reliance; and finally that of about 4500 armed soldiers and twelve thousand camp-followers many of whom were also armed who set out from Cabul only one man and he wounded should have arrived at Jellalabad; is an amount of misfortune so far exceeding every rational anticipation of evil that we should have been entitled to assume that these unparalleled military disasters arose from a series of unparalleled errors even if we had not had as we now have the authority of Lord Ellenborough for asserting the fact