Two weeks later, in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The ancient city, encircled by stark, jagged mountains, had become a true island—cut off from the world, smothered by winter and hostility.
Inside its walls, the 1st Bengal Brigade of the British Army had been besieged for more than a month. Powder and provisions were nearly gone. The men, gaunt and hollow-eyed, drifted like ghosts through their camp. Their commander, General William Elphinstone, weakened by illness and crushed beneath his catalogue of misjudgments, spent his days on a cot, sighing into the stale air.
Everyone believed the end would be annihilation.
And then—precisely when despair had settled like frost upon every soul—
a message descended from the heavens.
Quite literally.
At dawn, an enormous balloon painted with the Union Jack rose behind the British lines and drifted, borne by the icy wind, over the besieged city.
In its wicker car stood a messenger of the Royal Promotion Association, holding a brass megaphone. His voice boomed over the ramparts.
"Soldiers of Kabul! Hear me! I bear the command of His Highness Prince Arthur Lionheart!"
"His Highness has reached India! He has not abandoned you! He will lead you out of this cursed valley with his own hand!"
"Reinforcements are marching! Supplies are coming!"
The words fell upon the camp like divine prophecy. A stunned silence broke into wild, roaring cheers.
"It's His Highness Arthur! The man who works miracles!"
"We're saved! God has not forsaken us!"
Hope—violent, overwhelming—burst through the ranks.
Outside the walls, the Afghan tribal host stared upward at the great floating contraption. Many had never seen a balloon. To more than a few, it appeared a celestial beast. Warriors who had moments earlier been sharpening blades now dropped to their knees, muttering prayers.
But this was merely the first movement in Arthur Lionheart's grand design.
That very afternoon, a second phase began.
Dozens of smaller, unmanned balloons rose from behind the British positions. They carried not men but bundles upon bundles of leaflets—printed in Pashto by the Daily Mirror's portable press under Dickens's direction.
The papers fluttered down like winter snow across the Afghan encampments.
The message was sharp, irresistible, and deadly in its simplicity.
On the front, in the largest type:
"Brothers of the Ghilzai and Durrani tribes!
Your deposit—£50,000 in gold—has been delivered.
Your weapons—the 'Wrath of Heaven' six-shot revolvers,
and the 'Eagle's-Eye Spear' breech-loading carbines—await you!"
"Now is the hour to honour your pledge.
Turn your spears upon the stubborn fools who resist.
Their cattle, their flocks, their women, their lands—yours for the taking."
On the reverse, an even crueler blade:
"To those who still resist—open your eyes!
Your allies have sold you for British gold and British steel.
Will you still bleed for Dost Mohammad, who abandoned you long ago?"
"Lay down your arms. Make way.
Mercy and life will be granted."
"Refuse—and you shall face not only our guns but
the butcher's knives of your treacherous 'friends' behind you."
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The tribes who had taken British money—believing their bargain a secret—found their names hung in the air for all to see. Their pretence collapsed. They turned upon their neighbours at once, lest they be the first to be accused.
The tribes who had not been bought were horrified. Betrayal seemed to glare at them from every direction. Brothers in arms the day before now stormed their tents with foreign revolvers and British gold in their belts.
The Afghan siege exploded into chaos, suspicion, and fratricide.
At that precise moment, Arthur Lionheart's main operation began.
Major-General Cotton, commander at the forward line, followed the Prince's "information warfare" plan to the letter. His headquarters was positioned beneath the balloon used for reconnaissance, its observers equipped with long-range naval telescopes and a direct wired telegraph connection to the ground.
Reports streamed in with uncanny clarity.
"Sir! Ghilzai warriors spotted in the valley at three o'clock! They are fighting the Kandaharis!"
"Sir! A small enemy detachment is retreating from the ridge at eleven o'clock! The path is clear—no sign of ambush!"
Cotton stared at the flurry of precise, near-omniscient messages. It felt less like war and more like commanding a sand-table exercise in which every hidden piece had already been revealed.
He lifted the command token and spoke decisively:
"Transmit my order! All units—target the ridge at eleven o'clock!
Advance by alternating cover! Move at once!"
What followed was one of the most extraordinary spectacles in modern military history.
More than ten thousand British soldiers, with full banners and steady lines, marched directly beneath the noses of tens of thousands of Afghan tribesmen—choosing, with serene confidence, the safest and most undefended route.
So little resistance did they meet that some companies even paused along the retreat to roast mutton taken from their would-be assailants.
The Afghan tribes, consumed by their own civil quarrel and terrified of each other's motives, scarcely noticed the British withdrawal. Their entire energy was spent upon plunder, suspicion, and the settling of old grudges newly inflamed by printed ink.
A month later.
General Elphinstone's "expeditionary force"—weary, thin, but astonishingly intact—emerged from the Khyber Pass and united with General Cotton's relieving column.
Men wept openly.
Before them flew the Union Jack, brilliant against the mountains. Behind the colours stood crates of tinned meat and medicines. To the rescued soldiers, it seemed the hand of Providence—and the genius of one man—had plucked them from the very brink of hell.
"God save the Queen!
God bless His Highness the Prince!"
The shout rolled through the passes like thunder.
In the governor's residence at Peshawar, Arthur Lionheart received the news by telegraph. He smiled faintly as General Earle brought the confirmation.
"General," he said, "inform London that I have settled the Afghan disturbances."
"And send word to the tribal chiefs whom we have rescued:
that I, Arthur Lionheart, on behalf of the British Empire,
recognise their proud independence."
"But—"
"In return for our generous assistance, Afghanistan shall henceforth serve as a strategic buffer and friendly commercial partner of the Empire. They will repel any intrusion from the north—from Tsarist Russia—or answer to us."
"And if they doubt our resolve… the next balloon shall carry more than printed leaflets."
Thus, a century-long humiliation—one that had cost Britain nearly twenty thousand lives—was transformed by Arthur Lionheart's blend of silver, ingenuity, and psychological warfare into a near-perfect "victorious retreat," yielding immense strategic advantage at minimal cost.
From that moment forward, his title—
"The God of War"—
became unquestioned throughout the Imperial Army.