Battle Story: Kabul 1841-42

By Edmund Yorke

Kabul is a name that has had much resonance in current affairs over the last few years, however its place in military history can be charted much further back to the first British incursions into Afghanistan during the 19th century. The First Anglo-Afghan War saw British India attempting to obtain power over Central Asia by gaining control of Afghanistan. The British had little understanding or appreciation of the terrain or tribal warfare in Afghanistan and incurred heavy casualties, despite being far superior in training and weaponry than the Afghan warriors they faced. In 1841 the British, having held Kabul for several years in an attempt to stop the Afghans colluding with the Russians, relaxed their grip on the garrison, allowing the Afghans to rebel, leading to the slaughter of over 16,000 British and Indian troops and camp followers. The outrage from the disaster resounded throughout the British Empire and reinforcements were sent to Afghanistan in 1842 to quell the Afghan troops. However, a rash of uprisings broke out around Kabul, leading to the murder of Indian sepoys and the imprisonment of British officers. In retribution an army was sent to support the British retreat from Afghanistan, laying waste to the city of Kabul on their way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jan 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9780752481302

Book preview

For Louise, Madeleine and Emily

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Timeline

Historical Background

Origins of the First Afghan War, 1839–42

The March into Afghanistan

Halt at Kandahar

The Assault on Ghazni

The Occupation of Kabul

MacNaghten’s Folly

The Gathering Storm, 1840–41

The Armies

The British Forces

The Afghan Army

The Days Before Battle

Descent into Crisis

The Battlefield: What Actually Happened?

Phase 1: Rebellion

Phase 2: The Great Retreat

After the Battle

Revenge and Retribution

Maj. Gen. Pollock’s Retribution Campaign: The Defence and Relief of Jalalabad

Maj. Gen. Nott’s Campaign of Retribution

Final Retributions: The Sack of Kabul and Istalif

The Legacy

Orders of Battle

Further Reading

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank several individuals who supported my research for this book. Firstly my brilliant tutor at Reading University, Dr Garry Alder, Reader in History (retired), who first introduced me to the origins of this fascinating conflict in the early 1970s and continues to inspire my deep interest in Afghanistan. Once again Senior Librarian Andrew Orgill and his assistants, John Pearce and Ken Franklin, of the RMAS Library have provided expert advice and assistance. The various library and archival staff of the National Army Museum, the British Library, the London Library, the Oxford and Cambridge University Libraries and the Essex Regimental Museum have also provided valuable support. The commissioning editor, Jo de Vries, and her support team at The History Press must also be congratulated for their prompt and efficient production. I also wish to thank Dr John Peaty of the Defence Geographical Centre for supplying the excellent historical maps.

My great friend Lieutenant Colonel Ian Bennett (retired), a military historian and Second World War veteran who served in India, has again been a great source of advice and encouragement, as has my former colleague and retired archivist Dr Tony Heathcote, author of the most popular book The Afghan Wars, 1839–1919. I would also like to thank several RMAS colleagues, notably Mr Sean McKnight, Director of Studies RMAS, and Dr Duncan Anderson, Head of the War Studies Department, for their loyal support for this project and particularly Dr Gregory Fremont-Barnes for his great encouragement and pictorial assistance. Above all, I must express my deep appreciation for the unflinching love and support of my dear wife Louise and my children Madeleine and Emily.

NOTE ON MAPS: The anomalies and inconsistencies of spelling for placenames, etc on the maps reflect the originals.

INTRODUCTION

The First Afghan War proved to be not only a ‘signal catastrophe’ but also a classic example as to how such an operation should not be organised … the most disgraceful and humiliating episode in our history of war against an Asian enemy up to that time.

Field Marshal Templar, in Macrory, Signal Catastrophe, p. 7

The top of the hill was thickly strewn with bodies of the slain. Some were mere skeletons, while others were in better preservation. The hair was on their heads and their features were perfect, although discoloured. Their eyes had evidently been picked out by the birds of prey, which, wheeling in endless gyrations above my head, seemed to consider me an intruder on their domain … I turned from the sickening sight with a sad heart but a stern determination to lend my best efforts to paying the Afghans the debt of revenge we owed them.

Greenwood, Campaign, p. 135

The siege and fall of Kabul, November 1841–January 1842, represents not only the culmination of the first major military campaign of Queen Victoria’s reign, but one which resulted in one of its greatest and most tragic disasters. After a forlorn, largely incompetent defence of Kabul, little more than a few score Europeans and a few hundred sepoys and civilian followers survived the subsequent infamous mid-winter retreat by an estimated 16,000- to 16,500-strong British Army. One British regiment, the originally 600-strong 44th Foot (Essex Regiment) was virtually annihilated, an event comparable to the loss of 24th Foot, massacred by a massive Zulu army at Isandlwana, South Africa, thirty-seven years later. These losses were matched by a comparably high degree of suffering for the Afghan people when two avenging British ‘armies of retribution’ returned to carve a swathe of destruction through north-eastern Afghanistan, during which numerous villages were destroyed and which culminated in the brutal sacking of the major city of Istalif as well as Kabul itself.

The main aim of this short but largely primary-sourced book is to conduct a clear and hopefully balanced analytical narrative and assessment of this still controversial war. The opinions expressed in this book are my own and do not reflect those of either the Ministry of Defence or the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

TIMELINE

HISTORICAL

BACKGROUND

Origins of the First Afghan War, 1839–42

Britain’s interests in Afghanistan at the turn of the nineteenth century were primarily motivated by their desire to protect their ‘jewel in the crown’ – India. By the early 1800s and beyond to the outbreak of the First Afghan War, British rule in India had by no means been consolidated. To the north, in the Punjab, lay the powerful Sikh kingdom secured after 1825 by the powerful armies of the redoubtable ‘Lion of the North’, Ranjit Singh. Under his iron rule the Sikh kingdom remained fiercely independent, as did the adjoining if far less powerful Emirate of Sind. Even farther to the north and also outside British power lay the unstable kingdom of Afghanistan, which enjoyed a fractious relationship with its Sikh and Sind neighbours to the south.

Britain was only too well aware of the threat posed by Russia and France to India, and of the potential exploitation of these surrounding territories as routes of invasion, so throughout the early part of the nineteenth century they conducted repeated diplomatic missions to these outlying areas, a strategy later termed the ‘Great Game’.

As Russia’s influence in the Near East increased through their defeat of Persia in 1826, by 1835 the Afghan court had thus become a major focus of British diplomacy with the city of Herat in the country considered by the British as the strategic key for holding India. As British envoy, McNeill emphasised:

FRANCOPHOBIA

The French had never forgotten the loss of their Indian possessions during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and the main fears of a specific French invasion were triggered by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1798. This immediately offered the French a far more viable alternative invasion route to India via the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, avoiding the traditional sea route round the Cape which was already closely guarded by British naval fleets.

If to form a connection with the chiefs of Afghanistan more intimate than has hitherto been maintained is a part of the system … for organising the defence of the Northern frontier of India, it could … be … more advantageous to effect this arrangement while Herat still separates them from this Kingdom than after the act or incorporation of that principality within Persia which we could not urge them to set aside …

Reading University Archives

Meanwhile, Afghan internal politics had already entered yet another turbulent and bloody phase as the rival Sadozai and Barakzai dynasties fought to secure the Afghan throne. A year earlier, in 1809, the Sadozai ruler Shah Shuja had been overthrown and, with renewed fears of Russian expansion in the 1820s and 1830s, both he and his rival Barakzai successor to the throne of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed, became of more than a little interest to the British authorities in Calcutta.

Accelerated progress towards the outbreak of the First Afghan War now commenced. In January 1831, as part of the new complex network of diplomatic missions representing the first rounds of the renewed ‘Great Game’, a young, charming, flamboyant and highly talented diplomat, Lieutenant Alexander Burnes, was dispatched to the Sikh court at Lahore in the Punjab.

Afghanistan map. (DGC)

On his return from a meeting with Ranjit Singh at Rupar, Burnes stopped by at Ludhiana to meet the Afghan ruler in exile Shah Shuja, still dreaming of a return to power. Burnes’ initial impressions of Shah Shuja were, significantly, not favourable: ‘From what I learnt, I do not believe the Shah possesses sufficient energy to seat himself on the throne of Kabul; and, that, if he did regain it, he has not the tact to discharge the duties of so difficult a situation’ (Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, Vol. 2, p. 334).

THE ‘GREAT GAME’

Contrary to popular belief, the origins of Britain’s long political and military involvement in the ‘Great Game’ of Central Asia did not originate solely in ‘Russophobia’, the fear of a Russian invasion of Britain’s cherished Indian possessions. Indeed it was, initially, the threat of a French invasion of Britain’s ‘jewel in the crown’ and, specifically, the highly aggressive militarised Bonapartist state, which first exercised the minds of British politicians in London and East India Company officials in Calcutta.

By stark contrast, on a subsequent epic journey throughout Central Asia Burnes was far more deeply impressed by his first meeting in Kabul with Shah Shuja’s successor, Dost Mohammed. Describing Dost Mohammed as ‘the most rising man in the Cabool dominions’, Burnes’ recommendations, delivered to British Governor General Lord William Bentinck, were readily accepted and a stunned and disappointed Shah Shuja was temporarily returned to his political wilderness in Ludhiana. In despair, Shah Shuja signed a treaty in 1833 with his former host and rival, Ranjit Singh. The treaty allowed for a joint expedition to try to regain his throne, but Shah Shuja’s subsequent tiny expedition was brushed away by