On 18 October 1863 Chamberlain’s force set off from its marshalling point outside Nowshera. To preserve the element of surprise Chamberlain had been ordered not to take up his command until the last moment, but when he arrived he found his troops already on the move – and hopelessly unprepared. ‘I never before had such trouble or things in so unsatisfactory a state,’ he wrote to his brother. ‘Carriage, supplies, grain-bags, all deficient. Some of our guns and the five and a half inch mortars have to be sent back as useless.’ Unlike the unencumbered and fast-moving force that had assembled under Brigadier Cotton five years earlier, this was a body twice as large and three times as slow. The column marching towards the Mahabun Mountain was swollen by ‘long lines of elephants, camels, bullocks and carts, transporting huge tents, together with tables, chairs, bedsteads, carpets, crockery, and many other unwieldy and unnecessary items of officers’ and soldiers’ equipment; and to these impedimenta must be added the hordes of native followers, who, far outnumbering the fighting men, have been and still are the invariable appendage of an Indian army.’ It took an entire day for this procession to reach the mouth of the Daran Pass, the point at which Cotton’s army had entered the hills in 1858.
Reynell Taylor had handed over the commissionership of Peshawar to his deputy, Major Hugh James, so that he could accompany Chamberlain as the expedition’s political officer. But after consulting with Montgomery he had taken the fateful decision not to give the Bunerwals advance notice of the invasion of their lands, on the grounds that ‘our intentions would assuredly have been communicated’. Not until Chamberlain’s army was encamped in full view at the southern foot of the Mahabun Mountains did Taylor despatch envoys to the chiefs of the Bunerwals, the Chamlawals, the Swatis and all the other Yusufzai tribes in the mountains with copies of a proclamation stating that his forces were about to enter the Chamla valley. His proclamation assured them that the intrusion was taking place ‘with no intention of injuring them or of interfering with their independence, but solely because it was the most convenient route by which to reach the Hindustani fanatics, and to effect their expulsion from the Mahaban.’
That same night the army struck its tents and marched along the edge of the plains to the mouth of the Ambeyla Pass, which the head of the column reached at dawn the following day. The Guides Infantry then begin the climb to the head of the pass, the kotal, with the rest of the army following on behind. The response of the Bunerwals and Chamlawals was entirely predictable. As Major Hugh James, Reynell Taylor’s successor as Commissioner of Peshawar, afterwards wrote, ‘Was it likely that a brave race of ignorant men would pause to consider the purport of a paper they could not read, when the arms of a supposed invader were glistening at their doors?’
Chamberlain’s plan was to have the bulk of his troops up and over the kotal and in occupation of the head of the Chamla valley by nightfall. Reynell Taylor’s scouts had assured him that ‘the pass presented no military obstacles’, but they were wrong: the expected mule track turned out to be nothing more than the bed of a stream ‘encumbered with boulders and large masses of rock’. Only by walking in single file was the advance guard able to reach the kotal, at which point they came under fire directed down on them from the crags above. The hills on every side were covered in low brushwood and jutting rocks and boulders – perfect cover for the tribesmen with their long-barrelled jezail flintlocks, clumsy to handle and load but remarkably accurate up to a quarter of a mile. However, the Guides and Punjab Frontier Force infantry who led the advance were adepts at just this style of mountain warfare and they skirmished forward, forcing the tribesmen back up the mountainside. By early afternoon the western end of the Chamla valley had been secured and picquets set up on all the surrounding spurs. But when night fell not a single baggage animal had reached their camp, and several thousand men were still stuck at the bottom of the pass.
After a night made sleepless by continual sniping Chamberlain met with his senior officers to take stock of the situation. He concluded that until the mule track through the pass had been improved by his engineers it was best to ‘make no further movement in advance’. For two days his force did little but strengthen its existing positions.
This delay was to prove fatal. The Hindustani stronghold of Malka was twenty miles away at the far end of the Chamla valley. The latest intelligence suggested that it was now garrisoned by a combined force of more than a thousand Hindustanis and their Sayyed allies, convincing proof that the supply chain was back in operation with a vengeance. ‘They were drilled in our system,’ noted the official account of the campaign of the Hindustanis, ‘and some were clothed like the sepoys of the old Indian Army. Three of their jemadars [junior officers] were non-commissioned officers of the late 55th Regiment Native Infantry… They numbered in the commencement about 900 men, most of whom had been wrought up to a pitch of fanaticism, and were prepared to lay down their lives.’ The Bunerwals and the Chamlawals together could muster up to twelve thousand fighting men, but they were still in disarray and remained so until their chiefs had met to decide how to respond to this armed incursion. In similar circumstances the younger, fitter Chamberlain who had shown such ‘dash’ in his earlier days would surely have pushed on with his advance column of fast-moving Punjab Frontier Force troops, as Cotton had on Mangalthana in 1858. But Chamberlain’s preoccupation with the difficulties of bringing supplies through the nine-mile stretch of the Ambeyla Pass caused him to hang back.
It was not until the morning of 22 October that a small force of mixed cavalry and infantry was sent forward to reconnoitre the Chamla valley. At first it appeared deserted, and the scouting party was able to push on down the valley for eleven miles before turning back. But it then had to fight its way back to camp, and was saved only by a moonlight cavalry charge. That same night a letter was brought into camp by one of Reynell Taylor’s spies: it was addressed to the Buner chiefs and signed jointly by Amir Abdullah Ali, leader of the Hindustani Fanatics, and Sayyed Umar Shah, leader of the Sayyeds. Although it appeared to anticipate Reynell Taylor’s proclamation, it had in fact been written in response to it:
The evil-doing infidels will plunder and devastate the whole of the hilly tract – especially the provinces of Chumla, Bonair, Swat etc. – and annex these countries to their dominions, and then our religion and our worldly possessions would entirely be subverted… The infidels are extremely deceitful and treacherous, and will, by whatever means they can, come into these hills, and declare to the people of the country that they have no concerns with them, that their quarrel is with the Hindustanees, that they will not molest the people, even as much as touch a hair of their heads… They will also tempt the people with wealth. It is therefore proper for you not to give in to their deceit, for when they should get an opportunity, they will entirely ruin, torment, and put you to many injuries, appropriate for themselves your entire wealth and possessions, and injure your faith.
Chamberlain’s delay had allowed the Hindustanis and their Sayyed allies to seize the initiative, giving them time to send their call out not only to the Bunerwals but to every khan and malik in the hills. The very next morning groups of armed tribesmen began to appear on the surrounding crests, coming from almost every quarter, each group headed by standard-bearers carrying green and black flags and supported by drummers. Among them were seen a large lashkar or war party of men whose distinctive black waistcoats and blue shirts identified them as Hindustanis. With every passing hour more tribesmen joined them, so when darkness came the mountains overlooking the Ambeyla gorge and the valley beyond were ringed with camp fires. It was now learned in Chamberlain’s headquarters that the Buner chiefs had met in jirga and had sent an appeal to the Akhund of Swat, calling on him to come to their aid.