 
Quetta 1839 Leaving Quetta to Kandahar
Unnatural Enemies - First Anglo-Afghan War - Part Two
by Paul
Situation Comedy
The British trek via the Sind had been both gruelling and costly but it had completely gazumped the Afghans. Dost Muhammad Khan had convinced the British would invade via the Khyber Pass had deployed his troops there. He had given command of his army to his most talented commander, his son Akbar Khan who had been victorious at Jamrud against the Khalsa in 1936. Dost Muhammad Khan now hastily called his troops back to Kabul expecting a British onslaught.
However the British never came. Instead they camped in Kandahar for over two month recuperating from the long march and awaiting supplies from India. This gave Dost Muhammad Khan a chance to garrison Ghazni with a contingent of his finest troops commanded by Akbar Khan. Ghazni was the greatest citadel in the country, with walls 10-20 metres high and a moat it was one of the most formidable fortresses in the whole of Asia.
Kandahar
Leaving Brigadier Nott with 3,000 troops to hold Kandahar the Army of the Indus marched in the summer heat towards Ghazni. The army began to meet the first signs of resistance on the way, snipers lodged in high passes tried to pick men off. These signs should have been a warning of what was to come. However, reliably informed by Burnes reconnaissance that the town was not garrisoned the decision had been made to leave the four large siege guns at Kandahar.
On the 23th of June to the raucous reception of Akbar Khan’s cannon and muskets the army arrived stood before the walls of Ghazni, realising the impossibility of their task, the city needing a full siege train for any chance of taking it. Fortunately once again finances were to prove more potent than guns in Afghanistan. Abdul Rashid a nephew of Dost Muhammad Khan, convinced his uncle’s cause doomed, fled the city to try and get in Shuja-ul-Mulk Shah’s good books. For quite a hefty bribe he was persuaded to give intricate details of the fortifications.
 
Ghazni 1839 & 1843
Abdul Rashid’s treachery revealed despite being a strong citadel, Akbar Khan had still bricked up all the gates bar one, the Kabul gate, that had been left accessible for reinforcements to arrive. Three nights later the army planned a desperate dawn assault on the gate. Lieutenant Henry Durand lead a small party of engineers carrying seventy five pound bags of gun powered on a daring mission. All the more daring because word had got to the Afghans they were coming.
Under the cover of a sandstorm the engineers attempted to make their way to place the powder against the gate. However the prepared Afghans opened fire while they were still 150 metres away. With great bravery Durand’s men carried on under fire and reached the gate gratefully freeing themselves of the powder bags as rocks and bricks were dropped on then from the walls above. Durand lit the fuse and the engineers then ran throwing themselves into the moat to await the explosion….. Nothing happened. The fuse had gone out. Durand then opened fire on the powder with his pistol attempting to ignite it that way, however this also proved unfruitful. There was only one thing left, Durand would have to go back to the gate a second time and light another fuse.
 
Ghazni 1848
As Durand scrambled back to the gate ducking musket ball and brick to light a second fuse. Captain Peak commanding the sappers decided the engineers had been taking so long they must surely have been killed. So he ordered his men forward with the intention of blowing up the gate himself. However as his men closed Durand laid the final touches to the explosives, lit a much shorted cotton fuse to reduce the chances of it going out and dived in a nearby ditch.
The seventy-five pound bags of gunpowder were overkill to say the least. The wooden gate was shattered and flew in pieces hundreds of feet in the air, much of the stone gatehouse came crashing down blocking the former wooden entrance with stone and a mushroom of smoke engulfed all like a peasouper. The advancing sappers caught in the shockwave were blown off their feet several yards backwards and killing the bugler.
With the burglar dead the sappers were unable to tell the forlorn hope not to charge because the gate was blocked by the fallen watch tower. Colonel Peat recovering from the explosion ran to intercept the advancing forlorn hope commander Brigadier ‘Fighting Bob’ Sale to inform him to call off the attack. Fighting Bob however decided to attack anyway.
The rubble filled gateway was strewn with Afghan dead, the massive explosion had caused carnage in it’s path. The forlorn hope were able to scramble into the city unopposed and were quickly followed by the main force. The heavily outnumbered Afghan defenders rallied in the town square and savage hand to hand fighting began. Fighting Bob was nearly killed whilst grappling with a huge Afghan but mostly individual Afghans were surrounded by groups of sepoys who mercilessly hunted them down and butchered them. In the fierce fighting that ensued, 1,200 Afghans were killed and 200 Sepoys Killed and wounded.
The fighting continued throughout the night, as the Afghan defenders held up in houses barricading the doors and windows. The British army had to take the city house by house. By the middle of the night the last resistance has been stamped out and the British began to sack the city looting and pillaging from house to house and discipline lost. Shuja-ul-Mulk Shah’s then rounded dozens of townsfolk an organised mass beheadings of any they suspected of being disloyal. The king had returned.
Financial Incentives
Unbeknown to the British, as they entered the city behind them lay a 13,000 strong Afghan army led by Dost Muhammad Khan lying in wait. In the two months the British had relaxed in Kandahar Dost Muhammad Khan had been busy. He had summoned his chiefs and assembled a force to meet the British with. When he heard they were marching on Ghazni he set out to the city’s aid. His spy’s informed him of the British attack on the Kabul gate so he deployed his army to fall upon the British rear as they were repulsed. To Dost Muhammad Khan and his chief’s utter amazement instead of holding out as he expected, the strongest citadel on his country, garrison with elite troops collapsed to the British in half a day. The bribes the British had paid to his chiefs not to join him had been generous, they had only agreed because they sensed a British disaster. Seeing a victory his entire army melted before his eyes leaving the artillery where it stood. Dost Muhammad Khan rode before them holding aloft a copy of the Koran begging them not to betray their country to infidels. Dost Muhammad Khan refused an offer by the British to surrender and with a few loyal followers headed north to Turkestan to look for support.
On the 7th August 1839 the British army entered Kabul without a shot being fired. Shuja-ul-Mulk Shah rode into the city on magnificent while stallion, dressed as a conquering Roman Emperor in purple robe and coronet, his 60 wives behind.
The British soon settled into Kabul life, within weeks the city was more like Bombay or Calcutta, with a splendid array of galas and balls, football, cricket and polo played in the fields, and horse racing and gambling which went down especially well with the locals.
Bala Hissur
The Army of the Indus moved into Bala Hissar a cold, gloomy, uncomfortable citadel high above the city until in September General Keane along with the Heroic Lieutenant Durand, and most of the cavalry returned to India leaving General Cotton in command. As well as the departure of the Bombay troops, garrisons had been left in, Ghazni, Kalat-iGhilzai (Qalat) and Kandahar. From the 15,000 troops that entered Afghanistan, were looking reparably thin on the ground.
The first winter in Afghanistan passed without much incident, but the wonder of the locals at their first introduction to the sport of ice skating. In spring Shuja-ul-Mulk Shah who had been wintering in the warmer Jallalabad returned to Kabul and requested the British Army vacated Bala Hissar to his harem.
The British garrison relocated to a cantonment outside the city walls. Quite why the army chose this cantonment is a mystery but a year later the decision would prove a disaster. The cantonment was located on low ground surrounded on all sides by hills. The camp also had no food or ammunition supplies which were kept in a fort over a kilometre away. Defence however was not in the British mind as a sea of tents were erected, bungalows built, gardens planted and families arrived from India settling in. Travel in relative to areas surrounding Kabul was possible and a tourist trade began to boom with British visiting the countryside and it’s ancient temples and mosques.
The curiosity of the strange foreigners with there strange ways and sports, the return of their rightful ruler and the stability the invasion had ushered in somewhat of a honeymoon period with the Afghans. It had been over a year since the British invaded and over six months that Kabul had been occupied and the enamour was beginning to fade.
Throughout 1840 on the surface all things for the British seemed to be going well. The country was quiet, the chieftains not rallying to Dost Muhammad Khan. But beneath the surface all was not well. The increasing discontentment with Shuja-ul-Mulk Shah’s rule. The free spending British troops had at first been a godsend to Afghan merchants but as trade boomed prices rose and the locals found themselves increasingly impoverished. The British army was now dispersed thinly across several garrisons and much of it returned to India. Without much offensive power and and extended supply line more and tribes took the opportunity to accept the free flowing British bribes. Is was more British money than military might controlling Afghanistan.
In the summer Dost Muhammad Khan with Russian aid raised an Uzbek army in Bokhara and marched on Kabul picking up disgruntled Afghans along the way. Bob Sale was sent out with a column to meet him with a force of cavalry and horse artillery. The battle turn into a shambles first for the British when their cavalry reined in at the charge and refused to close, then for the Afghans who impetuously charged the faltering British horse and were cut to shreds by the horse artillery firing grapeshot. Dost Muhammad Khan was forced to retreat the field. The next day Dost Muhammad Khan rode to Kabul and surrendered himself. The Amir knew after losing to the British it would be only days before he would be murdered. Instead the prospect of retirement to India, a British pension and who knows a potential comeback in later days seems the more appealing.
Discontentment among Afghans continued to rise in 1841 as did the corruption and brutality of Shuja-ul-Mulk Shah’s rule. Eventually even the British had enough and began to strip him of more and more of his power, leading him to complain of being a puppet. However despite all this forty pieces of silver in hand were well in control of the country and little hope of a successful Afghan resistance. Then parliament stepped in. The general election of that year returned a new government led by Robert Peel, which managed at a stoke of the pen to do what the Afghans had failed to do in two years. The Bombay Division was recalled reducing the Kabul garrison to just 3,500 men and the budget for bribes almost halved.
The Bombay Division was barely halfway to Quetta when the Ghilzais tribe holding the Khurd Kabul Pass for British supply trains started to run amok. So serious the threat fighting Bob Sale with a small force of 1,500 detached from the Bombay Division and stayed behind in Afghanistan to quell the Ghilzais and occupied Jallalabad.
Long Goodbye
By the end of 1841 the situation seemed bad to all but the British leaders. Soldiers were having stones hurled at them by angry mobs in Kabul. On the 2 of November an angry mob gathered at the villa of Alexander Burnes and he and his brother were murdered as they made their escape. Upon the news city wide rioting occurred has Afghan mobs burned and looted the shops of Hindu traders and hacked them down as they fled.
While this was happening the British commander Lord Elphistone did nothing. Had the army marched out to put down the riot the whole disaster may have been avoided. Instead by morning the whole city had gone over to the rebel cause. Leaving just the British in the cantonment and Shuja-ul-Mulk Shah in Bala Hissar. During the night worried about there food and ammo supplies at sortie was sent out to the small for a kilometre away only to meet the fort’s garrison abandoning the fort and heading to the cantonment. The next day over a 1000 Afghans looted the abandoned fort and carried off all the British supplies.
British Cantonment
The British garrison was now under siege, in the confines of the 1000 metre by 600 cantonment. Tribesmen lined the high hills all around sniping at them. The position was dire, Bala Hissar was now cut off from them, the cantonment was in low swampy ground and the food and medical store besieged in an old fort half a mile away. Elphinstone quickly acted, sending a company to fight it’s way to Bala Hissar and another to relieve the besieged grain store, both failed.
The British army was now faced with a dilemma, it would be unable to winter in the cantonment. The idea of fighting their way to Jabllabad to join fighting Bob was unrealistic, if they couldn’t even make it to Bala Hissar. Retreating to Jallabad would also mean abandoning Shuja-ul-Mulk Shah and leaving him to his fate in Bala Hissar.
The diplomat MacNaughton seemed keen to stay and fight, but the army commanders Elphinstone and Shelton had little stomach for it. However it was MacNaughton who held real power. At the end of November several moves were made to rectify the situation, marching out the cantonment and attacking the Bemaru Heights were the rebel artillery was raining fire on the cantonment down from and Bemaru Village one of the rebel’s main camps.
Brigadier Shelton reluctantly lead a force towards Bemaru Heights. The force was left in confusion by an Afghan cavalry charge and the 44th foot unable to form square, the 44th barely managing to fight of the attack. A few days later Shelton tried to take Bemaru Village with 800 men manoeuvring his single gun overnight onto heights over the village, many Afghans were seen retreating. The next morning he faced a large force of Afghans across an open plain. The gun did its working cutting sways through the Afghans for three hours until several thousand reinforcements arrived and attacked the outnumbered British. The poor tactical decision to take only one gun and two squadrons of cavalry by Shelton left the surrounded British infantry hopelessly stranded in squares and eventually overran.
Below the Surface
With the garrison near starvation, the last hope fell on Bob Sale leading a relief force. However Fighting Bob had ignored Elphinstone’s orders to come to their aid and instead was marching away from Kabul on Jalalabad. The last option for the British was for MacNaughton to try diplomacy where force of arms had failed.
At first things went well, when Akbar Khan agreed to allow the British to retreat from Afghanistan and for a promise no British soldier would ever set foot in the country again. However things turned sour when the camels and carts Britian paid him for to transport the sick and civilians out of the city were never delivered. With only three days food and no transport, things still looked dire.
On the surface things look simple, however deep divisions existed in the Afghan camp. The recent return of Dost Mohammed’s son Akbar to take over the leadership of the rebels was not welcomed by many who had been enemies of his father before the British invaded and a faction emerged supporting Shah Shuja. MacNaughton immediately began plotting with this faction, but unbeknown to him, his communiqués with them were intercepted by Akbar Khan who lured him out of the cantonment for a diplomatic mission and had him murdered.
With MacNaughton gone, there was no objection left to Elphinstone’s plan of a fighting retreat to the border. Akbar Khan was still making plans for an escort to peacefully escort the British, however intelligence from Kabul warned that he could not be trusted.
Retreat
On January 6, 1842 tired of waiting for Akbar’s escort, 690 British soldiers, 3,800 Indian troops, 36 British women and Children and 12,000 Indian women, children and camp followers began marching through the snow. Almost immediately Afghan troops swept into the empty cantonment looting all they could find.
The column had left with five days food to cover the 90 miles. Across the treacherous rocky ground and the freezing snow they made barely 4 miles a day. To the rear tribesmen raided the column and picked off stragglers. Even children could be seen stabbing the wounded. Many camp followers with no food could be seen sitting beside the road awaiting death in resignation.
Jezzail Snipers
Eventually the column reached the Khurd-Kabul Pass which was lined with Ghilzais who had fortified the heights, ready to attack the column. Akbar Khan rode out to appeal to the Ghilzais to let the column pass but the Ghilzais cared little for his authority. The Ghilzais rained fire down upon the column as it passed through inflicting some 3,000 casualties, mostly civilian.
The following day a messenger from Akbar Khan proposed that the only way he could protect them from the Ghilzais was for the married men and their families to to take to a nearby fort he had set up provisions in. Elphinstone took up the offer and over a 100 married men and their families departed.
The next day things were even worse. Ahead lay the Tunghi Taraki Gorge at one point so narrow that for 50 metres the column had to walk single file, all the time having Ghilzais pour fire and boulders upon them. Only the 44th infantry remained steady, suffering 50% casualtiest, managing to turn there last gun on the Afghans. The Indian regiments broke and were cut down to the man with Khyber Knives. Only 240 British soldiers, made it through along with 3,000 surviving women and children from the 12,000 that started that day.
Jagdalak Pass
The next obstacle was 20 miles ahead, the Jagdalak Pass. The survivors making their way through 2 feet of snow managed to reach the pass in two days, however a night ambush by Afghans reduce the beleaguered 44th to just 150 men. In the safety of the stone walls of Jagdalak Village Elphinstone met with Akbar Khan and offered to try and negotiate safe passage through the pass for the army. However the Ghilzais shown nothing but contempt for him and the British had lost faith in his ability who chose to brave the pass ignoring him.
As they made their way through that pass the few surviving 44th came under fire from Ghilzais on the heights. At one point sensing final victory the Ghilzais charged but were defeated by a last gasp bayonet charge by the 44th. However that night a mass of Afghans fell upon the camp sending the camp followers into a panic and the less than a hundred men of the 44th were scattered.
Last stand at Gandamak
The next day the last 20 survivors of the 44th made their last stand on an icy hill at Gandamak with the few cartridges they had each, then swords and bayonets. Eselwhere Dr William Brydon scrambled to safety, the sole survivor of the whole force.
690 British soldiers, 3,800 Indian troops, 36 British women and Children and 12,000 Indian women, children and camp followers had set out on the retreat, just over a hundred married taken in by Akbar Khan at the journey’s beginning survived.
William Brydon - sole survivor
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