In the hours that followed, it was Mohan Lal who played the most crucial role in saving the British from the mess they had created for themselves. The previous day, as the invading army had been approaching the fortress, a senior Barakzai prince and rival of Dost Mohammad, Abdul Rashid Khan, had crossed the lines and surrendered himself to Mohan Lal, whom he knew from the munshi’s days as an “intelligencer” in Kandahar working for Wade in the mid-1830s. Debriefing him in his tent, Mohan Lal discovered that according to the Prince the fortress had one major weak point. Most of the fortress
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