SHAH SHUJA, an Afghan monarch of the Saddozai clan. He was a younger brother of Zaman Shah ; and on hearing of Zarnan Shah's defeat and blinding when at Peshawur, he pro claimed himself king, and in September 1801 marched upon 'Caul, with an ,ariny of 10,000 strong. Ho was at first victorious, but was eventually defeated by the Diturani, under Futtel, Khan. Ile was seized at Peshawur, in 1812, by Jahandad Khan, governor of Attock, and was carried prisoner t,o Kashmir, frorn which he was subsequently permitted to proceed to Lahore. Ilanjit Singh treated him harshly, and compelled him to give up the Koh-i-Nur diamond. He at length escaped disguised as a mendicant, but again failing to obtain Kashniir, lie joined his family tit Lodhiana in September 1816. In ltilti he made another attempt .from Lodhiana, and failed. On the 28th January 1833, he set out on another attempt, defeated the Sindians in a hard battle, but was defeated before Kandahar. After having been twice driven from the throne of Ktibul, during Earl Auckland's administration, on the 7th August 1839 he was replaced in Kiibul by the aid of a British army. After a brief supre macy he WILS assassinated, and Dost 3luhrumnad Khan, who by this time had become a prisoner in Calcutta, was restored. But during the interval the Afghans had driven the British from Kabul. Sir Alexander Burnes and his brother Lieutenant Charles Burnes were assassintited ; then Sir William MacNaughten fell by the hands of Akbar Khan, Dost Muhammad'a favourite son ; and on the morning of the 6th January 1842, the E. I. Co.'s forces issued through an opening in the ramparts that the engineers had made during the night, and commenced their retreat from Kiibul towards Hindustan, accompanied by a large number of women and children. By the evening of the next day, the force had gone a distance of but ten miles, and halted on some high ground at the entrance of the Klitird Kitbul pass, where the great mass of men, women, and children, horses, ponies, and camels lay down, to find a winding-sheet in the snow, there being neither shelter, nor firewood, nor food. On the next day they halted, in expectation of promised supplies of food, which never arrived. The women and children and married officers were handed over to Akbar Khan's protection on the following morning. The retreating force resumed its march through the pass towards Jalalabad, but when toiling in the narrow defile, the Afghans destroyed great numbers. Not a single sepoy wa.s left, and all the baggage was gone. Soon after daybreak, the remnant of the force, still ten miles from Jugdulluk, pushed on with an energy which at the commencement of the retreat might have saved it from destrtiction. The
retreating soldiers contested every inch of ground to Jugdulluk, where they halted all night and throughout the day. About 8 o'clock on the evening of the 12,th, the remaining soldiers, now reduced to about 120 of H.M. 44th Regi ment and 25 artillerymen, resumed their march. Though impeded by unarmed cainp followers, whom the Afgha»a, knife in hand, destroyed, the soldiers bravely fought their way. Iletween the steep walls of the Jugdulluk pass there is a hilly road, up which the men struggled, exposed to the fire of the Afghans, till, on nearing the summit, they found tho mouth of the pass closed by a barricade of bushes and branches of trees, i at the foot of which, though bravely fighting, officers, soldiers, and camp followers were stricken clown ; and on tho 13th January 1842 the sun rose at Gtindamuk on the twenty officers and forty-five European soldiers who had cleared the barricade, and struggled on to that place,-1111 that was left of tho many thousands of that army. A captain and a few privates were taken prisoners ; the rest were masaacred. A few had pushed on frotn Surkh-Ab. One by one they bad fallen by the way, until the number was reduced to six,—three captains, one lieutenant, and two medical officers. When they reached Futtehabad, 16 miles from Jalalabad, some peasants eame ont, spoke to the fugitives, and offered them bread, whilst eating which one of the captains and the lieutenant were cut down ; tho others rode off, but were pursued and taken, and three of the remaining number were slain. So out of a host of 16,000, or if women and children be included, about 26,000, of the army of the Indus, ono man, Dr. Brydon, alone survived to reach Jalalabad, where, wounded, exhausted by famine, worn out by fatigue, and borne by a jaded pony, he told his dismal tidings to General Sale,who held thatfortress.
Lord Ellenborough relieved the Earl of Auck land, and during his administration Geneml Nott, at the head of one brigade, marched towards Ghazni, and General Pollock, at the head of another, towards Kabul. Ghazni was taken emily by assault, and General Nott united his force with that of General Pollock, who had marched through the Khaibar pass to Kabul. Here the troops of Akbar Khan were defeated, and the place as far as possible desolated. The officers and their families who had surrendered to Akbar Khan, by whom they had been im prisoned, were released, and soon afterwards the army retired from Afghanistan to India, where it WAS received with honours by the Government at Ferozpur.