At this point Reynell Taylor still expected the Akhund, Abdul Ghaffur, to intervene in his favour, for as John Adye put it, ‘The influence of the Akhoond of Swat over all the hill and plain tribes of the Peshawur frontier is very great, and towards them he fills a position which I can best illustrate by comparing it with that of the Pope of Rome. If he declares against us, he will no doubt bring an immense amount of material as well as moral strength to the people of Bonair and the other tribes already in arms against us.’ But the Akhund was now facing his own internal challenge with the appearance of Sayyed Mubarak Shah, pretender to the title of Padshah of Swat, at the head of the Hindustanis. If he allowed the British invasion to proceed, he would lose all claim to moral authority as defender of Swat and hand the advantage to his rival.
Three days later Reynell Taylor’s worst fears were realised when a beating of massed drums was heard and a forest of waving banners crested the northern skylines, accompanied by a host estimated at four thousand strong. They were Swatis and in their midst was the Akhund himself, who now made camp on the hills overlooking the village of Ambeyla. According to the Akhund’s grandson, the first Wali of Swat, his grandfather had set out for Ambeyla alone, but ‘the news that Saidu Baba [the Akhund] was going for jehad spread like fire and hundreds of people joined him on the way, with the result that when he reached the battlefield at Ambeyla on October 26, there were four thousand volunteers on foot and one hundred and twenty five on horseback with him.’
Once it was known that their beloved Saidu Baba had lent his authority to the defence of Buner and Chamla, those who had previously wavered threw aside their scruples, seized their weapons and hurried over the passes to join in. By the end of October it was estimated that there were no fewer than fifty-five thousand fighting men gathered on the heights above Ambeyla, including ten thousand Swatis.
Chamberlain’s only concern now was to prevent his position from being overwhelmed. His picquets on the slopes on the north and south sides of the Ambeyla Pass were most at risk, the one overlooked by the Guru mountain range, the other by a high conical peak known as Laloo. The land dropped from these two high points in a series of irregular steps that formed bluffs, of which the most prominent was a position on the north side that came to be known as the Eagle’s Nest, and a sharp-pointed knoll on the south that was named the Crag Picquet. On the night of 24 October Chamberlain’s troops launched the first of a series of attacks to prevent these two positions from being encroached upon. Owing to the broken nature of the ground it was impossible to build continuous defensive lines or trenches, but wherever possible sangars were thrown up, loop-holed stone breastworks protected where possible by sharp-pointed sticks.
No sooner had these two strategic positions been secured than they were subjected to a succession of desperate assaults, with the Hindustanis almost invariably to be seen in the thick of the fighting. Thirty Hindustani dead were counted after the first attack, many of them young men of Bengali appearance. In the short truces that followed this and subsequent assaults it was observed that while the tribesmen came forward to collect their dead and wounded, the fallen Hindustanis were left untouched: ‘Their allies seemed to look upon the Hindustanis as earthen vessels, to be thrown at our heads in the day of battle, but of which it was quite superfluous to think of picking up the fragments if they happened to get broken in the fray.’
Despite their superiority in weaponry, the defenders were unable to prevent the tribesmen from launching repeated attacks on the most vulnerable sectors of their perimeter. These were always preceded by heavy fire from concealed positions, which allowed assault parties to work their way forwards through the rocks and brushwood until they were massed before one section of the defences. The attackers would then rise from cover with cries of ‘Allah-ho akbar’ (‘God is great’), raise their standards and charge: ‘The bolder spirits of the mountaineers – men armed with short swords, and who had fully made up their minds to a hand-to-hand fight – then advancing rapidly and with great courage to the very foot of the work, and collecting under cover of the rocks, would pause for a while to regain their breath, and prepare for a final rush.’
In an attack launched just before dawn on 30 October on the Crag Picquet a company of the 1st Punjab Infantry was overwhelmed and the position seized by the Hindustanis. At first light several hundred tribesmen to the rear could be seen moving down to join the Hindustanis, and a desperate counter-attack was launched: ‘A most exciting hand to hand fight ensued, in which Major Keyes was wounded, the enemy driven out at the point of the bayonet, the position recovered and three standards taken… The Hindustani fanatics lost 54 men killed on the spot, and 3 wounded.’ This was the first of three occasions in which the Crag Picquet changed hands.
After a week of heavy fighting Neville Chamberlain sat down to write a despatch outlining the seriousness of his position:
There is in fact a general combination of almost all the tribes, from the Indus to the boundary of Cabool, against us. Old animosities are, for the time, in abeyance; and under the influence of fanaticism, tribes usually hostile to each other are hastening to join the Akhoond’s standard. The Akhoond has hitherto been opposed to the Sitana Moulvie [Amir Abdullah Ali], who represents an exceptional set of Mahomedans; but at present the two are understood to be on friendly terms, and it is certain that the whole of the Hindoostanee colony are either at, or on their way to, Umbeyla… We are engaged in a contest in which not only are the Hindoostanees and the Mahabun tribes, but also the Swatees, the Bajourees, and the Indus tribes north of the Burrendo, with a large sprinkling of the discontented and restless spirits from within our own border.
An advance on the Hindustani stronghold of Malka was now out of the question, but so too was a retreat: ‘The only way to uphold the honour of our arms and the interests of the Government is to act on the defensive, in the position the force now holds, and trust to the effect of time, and of the discouragement which repeated unsuccessful attacks are likely to produce upon the enemy.’
So stand and fight became the order of the day, and for the next three weeks Chamberlain’s army had to contend with repeated attacks by day and by night, with intermittent sniping in between. At many points along the perimeter the two sides were now so close that the men were able to exchange taunts and insults. ‘The enemy’, recorded Major Frederick ‘Bobs’ Roberts, one of half a dozen Mutiny VCs present at Ambeyla, ‘used to joke with Brownlow’s and Keyes’s men [20th and 1st Punjab Infantry, both Muslim regiments] and say on these occasions, “We don’t want you. Where are the men of the lal pagriwalas? [14th Sikhs, who wore red turbans] or the goralog [white people]? They are better shikar [sport]!”’ Soldiers in all the Punjab Frontier Force units present found themselves fighting against men from their own tribes, and in several instances against brothers and other relatives. After one engagement a sepoy from Buner recognised his father lying among the enemy dead in front of his position. Remarkably, there was not a single desertion.