The first great crisis for Chamberlain and his troops began on 12 November as the Pathans made a new attempt to recapture the Crag, launching one attack after another throughout the night and the following morning. After forty-eight hours under constant fire the defenders of Crag Picquet broke and ran. In the confusion, sepoys manning sangars lower down the slope also panicked and joined in the retreat. Brigadier Neville Chamberlain was in the camp directly below but, because of the thick mists overhanging the mountainside and the clouds of black smoke from all the firing, was unable to tell what was going on. Alarmed by a stampede of camp-followers past his tent, he ran out and called for the 101st Royal Bengal Regiment. Quite fortuitously, this British regiment was about to take up new positions, and was already lined up before moving out. It was ordered to retake the Crag at all costs. The heights were stormed and the Crag reclaimed, but at such cost that a temporary truce was called to allow both sides to collect and bury their dead.
Chamberlain’s positions on the slopes of Laloo on the south side of the pass had by now become extremely vulnerable. Reynell Taylor was anxious to make some gesture to the Bunerwals to show that the British had no designs on their territory, so on the night of 16–17 November all the troops on the heights of the Guru mountain range north of the pass were quietly withdrawn. This gesture went down well with the Bunerwals, who from this time onwards no longer played an active role in the fighting. But it failed to curb the fighting zeal of the Hindustanis. Interpreting the withdrawal as a sign of their enemy’s weakening resolve, they responded with a near-suicidal rush on the camp’s front breastworks in the valley itself, and were only repulsed after the fiercest hand-to-hand fighting. Shaken, Chamberlain despatched a blunt call for help to Montgomery: ‘I find it difficult to meet the enemy’s attacks… If you can give some fresh corps to relieve those most reduced in numbers and dash, the relieved corps can be sent to the plains and used in support. This is urgent.’
A day later the Pathans and Hindustanis made their third and last attempt on the Crag Picquet. As before, they attacked in repeated waves and, as before, the two hundred men holding the picquet finally lost their nerve and abandoned the position. But this time the enemy’s capture of the Crag took place in broad daylight and was seen from every corner of the camp. Every field gun and rifle was brought to bear on the attackers, pinning the new occupiers down until a reserve corps could be brought up. Now it was the turn of the other British regiment present, the 71st Highland Light Infantry, to show its mettle.
Despite being warned by Reynell Taylor to stay out of harm’s way, Neville Chamberlain chose to lead from the front: ‘The prospect of failure pressed upon the mind and he could stand it no longer.’ Both he and Taylor were at the head of the Highlanders as they retook the Crag at the point of the bayonet, and for his pains Chamberlain received a bullet in the arm, smashing the bones of his elbow. The surgeon who removed the bullet was his old friend Henry Bellew.
In Lahore Sir Robert Montgomery received Chamberlain’s call for reinforcements with alarm. Not only did he have no troops to send but he had been warned by Major Hugh James in Peshawar that ‘the excitement was spreading far and wide’ along the Afghan border: ‘The Momunds on the Peshawar border were beginning to make hostile demonstrations… Rumours were also reaching me from Kohat of expected raids by the Wuzeerees and Othman-Khail. Emissaries from Cabool and Jellalabad were with the Akhoond, who had been further reinforced by Ghuzzun Khan, the chief of Dher, and 6000 men.’ The Pathans and Hindustanis had now suffered in excess of two thousand dead and perhaps three times that number wounded, but the British losses were proportionately just as severe: 18 officers and 213 men killed, and another 731 wounded.
Montgomery concluded that the only thing for it was to authorise Chamberlain to withdraw. He ordered Major James to Ambeyla to replace Reynell Taylor and to tell Chamberlain to pull out ‘if it was desirable on military terms’. James found Chamberlain in too much pain to be able to discuss the situation in detail – but set in his belief that a withdrawal would be ‘most unadvisable’.
The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Rose, now intervened, overruling Montgomery, and ordered troops from Amballa and elsewhere in the plains to proceed by forced marches to Peshawar. Major ‘Bobs’ Roberts, at that time attached to Rose’s headquarters staff, was sent up to Ambeyla to report on the true state of affairs. He found Chamberlain confined to his tent but adamant that a withdrawal would only encourage the Pathans to extend the fighting along the Frontier. Furthermore, there were clear signs that the Bunerwals and Swatis were beginning to lose heart: ‘They had borne the brunt of the campaign, and had lost many men, and they now found their valley overrun, and their limited supplies eaten up by crowds of hungry mountaineers from distant provinces.’
On 10 December a delegation of Buner khans and maliks approached the camp under a flag of truce, and an agreement was worked out by which they would allow the British to expel the Hindustanis from the Mahabun Mountain provided there was an immediate withdrawal thereafter. It seemed that the fighting was over – until the agreement became known to the Akhund of Swat. He had now come round to Abdullah Ali’s view that the British were intent on conquest, and that what was at stake here was his religion. Setting aside his long hostility to the Wahhabis and their teachings, the Akhund called every Swati of fighting age to arms to protect his faith. For a second time the hillsides around became crowded with tribesmen and their encampments: ‘Standards might be counted by the dozen, and the watchfires at night betokened the presence of many thousands.’ By mid-December it was estimated that fifteen thousand Pathans were massed on the slopes of Laloo mountain alone.
Half the relieving force were now gathered at Nowshera, awaiting the arrival of Sir Hugh Rose and the remaining troops. But so critical had the situation at Ambeyla become that Major James asked General Garvock, commanding this first brigade of three regiments, to march without further delay. His troops reached Ambeyla on the morning of 15 December and were immediately thrown into action: ‘General Garvock directed “the advance” to be sounded down the centre of the line. At that signal 5,000 men rose up from their cover, and, with loud cheers and volleys of musketry, rushed out at the assault – the regiments of Pathans, Sikhs, and Goorkhas all vying with the English soldiers as to who should first reach the enemy’. Their assault carried on up and along the Laloo mountain range, pushing the enemy down from the hills and into the Chamla valley, where they could be harried by the cavalry and dispersed.
Characteristically, the last to offer resistance was a large body of Hindustanis, described by ‘Bobs’ Roberts as ‘a band of ghazis’, who made a desperate charge just when it appeared that the fighting was all over. ‘At the critical moment,’ wrote Roberts, ‘Wright, the Assistant Adjutant-General, and I, being close by, rushed in among the Pioneers and called on them to follow us. As we were personally known to the men of both regiments they quickly pulled themselves together and responded to our efforts to rally them… We were entirely successful in repulsing the Ghazis, not a man of whom escaped. We counted 200 of the enemy killed; our losses were comparatively slight – 8 killed and 80 wounded.’
By the following day the dozens of Pathan tribes and clans who had gathered about the Ambeyla Pass were on their way back to their homes, leaving only the Bunerwals and the Amazais, whose lands extended along the southern edge of the Chamla valley and the hills above. The Bunerwals had taken no part in the most recent fighting, and their leaders now came to a new agreement with Reynell Taylor: if he promised to remove all British troops from their soil, they would themselves expel the remaining Hindustanis from the Mahabun Mountain and destroy their stronghold at Malka.