all attempts to negotiate with them. Instead, the Dil brothers began to gather and raise an army to resist the occupation. The exhausted British troops took 2 months to recuperate following their expedition to Kandahar, it was not until after the end of June 1839, that Keane ordered his troops to march on Kabul. It was around this time that Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Empire had died, kicking off a dynastic struggle that eventually tore the Sikh Kingdom apart. Keane left behind his heavy siege guns oddly and set out, harassed all along the route by Irregular cavalrymen from Gul Muhammad, or Guru Hotak, and Sultan Muhammad Khan Tokhi. All of whom refused the customary for passage for payment, nonetheless, if they had accepted, the British expedition would be forced to search through everything they had, as their treasury was empty. Dost Mohammad was taken by surprise from the southern army's march, as he believed they would march on Herat, and a second army would attack from Peshawar. Dost Mohammad also believed Keane would bypass Ghazni, since the Afghans found the fort impenetrable, as a result, no reinforcements were sent to the city. Nor did Dost Mohammad's son, Haidar Khan, who was governor of Ghazni, strengthen its defenses. Instead, Dost Mohammad sent Afzal Khan, another one of his sons, to join the Ghilzai raiders, hoping to draw the British away from their base in Kandahar and attack them at Sayyadabad, between Ghazni and Maidan Shah. Keane, however, did not have the intention of leaving an enemy fort unoccupied behind his lines, as a result, he took the Tokhi stronghold of Qalat-i Ghilzai by storm and installed a garrison there. On 21 July 1839, the army arrived at Ghazni, with an assault led by Afzal Khan and the Ghilzais being driven off. This assault by Afzal Khan saw over 64 prisoners being taken, with them being handed over to Shah Shuja, where he tried them as rebels. The Ghilzai retorted that since the king was a “Kafir” and a “friend and slave of infidels”, they had every right to resist him and to fight on. One Ghilzai prisoner drew a knife and Shah Shuja was nearly mortally wounded, before being saved by a bodyguard, who had threw himself between the King and his assailant, taking the blow instead Shah Shuja responded by condemning all prisoners to death, and his executioner