Retreat from Kabul: The First Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-1842 (Conflicts of Empire)

by George Bruce

  A stretch of waterless desert now lay ahead. Keane had no alternative but to advance and make the best of it. He set the army moving again at daybreak on 21 April. The temperature rose to 120 degrees, the wells found along the route contained only undrinkable muddy saline water.

  ‘At 3 p.m. no water in camp,’ Major Hough noted. ‘Thermometer in the tent at 3 p.m. 102 degrees; in the sun 130 degrees. Great suffering among the soldiers, European and native, and the cattle… The artillery horses beginning to knock up; no grain and very scanty forage.’

  Next day, before sunrise, the force marched over a mountain pass of broken stony ground. ‘The country after quitting the pass had such great ascents and deep descents, that it represented a sea of rocks and stones,’ Hough noted. ‘As you ascended you lost sight of the troops descending and when at the top of the ascent, you could not see those in the descent, to the front or rear, unless close on the brow towards it; thus we could only see the troops near us; the rest were lost to our view.’

  The cavalry suffered worst, and in the blazing heat of the afternoon Brigadier Arnold marched ahead to find water, his horses having been without any the whole day and little the day before.

  The heat bounced back off the stony waste and after five or six miles the horses could barely walk. The troopers dismounted, led them by the bridle, even goaded them with lances to prevent them lying down to die in the heat, but several dropped dead.

  At last a patch of green came into view and soon the cool gleam of the River Dori. Scenting the water, the horses stampeded weakly towards it — and now occurred a desperate race between animals and men, for the troopers were frightened that the water might be scarce and the horses would drink it all.

  But there was plenty of water — too much. Some of the animals toppled weakly down the banks, fell into it and drowned through sheer weakness. That night the army camped beside the river, expecting the next day to make a formal entry into Kandahar with the Shah at their head.

  But Macnaghten and Shuja, determined to show a bold front, led the Shah’s troops in a night march on the city without even the courtesy of a message to General Keane. A salute of guns in honour of the Shah’s entry at daybreak was the first the surprised Keane heard of the event. Fuming, he wrote an immediate protest to Auckland about an act which endangered the Shah’s life and the success of the entire enterprise.

  Fortunately, the Afghans were avoiding resistance at this stage. ‘The king was surrounded by his loving subjects and his ragamuffin soldiers,’ Lieutenant Henry Fane wrote, in a sarcastic letter to a friend, ‘but by very few men of rank or consequence.’

  The mob cheered the ruler they knew to be a British puppet imposed upon them by British bayonets, yet when the price of grain and other food soared as a result of the approaching armies, their smiles changed to open indifference and secret hostility.

  By 4 May the gardens outside the walled city of Kandahar were gay with the white tents and fluttering pennants of the entire force of 15,000 troops, as well as the small brown tents and stalls of nearly 50,000 camp-followers, while 10,000 camels and 3,000 horses as well were tethered near by.

  But Keane’s army was a sorry reflection of the proud force it had been at its Indian bases, for since 29 March it had been that unlikely body, an army on half-rations with its horses on half-rations, or less, too. The Bengal contingent had marched 1,005 miles in 137 days in following the plans of Lord Auckland’s armchair strategists in India.

  But at least the force had occupied Kandahar peacefully and had gained the first of its objectives — a reliable base in Afghanistan. Keane was now well placed to carry out his remaining ones, which were: the capture of the ex-chiefs of Kandahar, who were likely to become a focus of future resistance to Shuja; the defeat of Dost Mahommed, and the capture of the fortresses of Ghazni and Kabul; the enthronement of Shuja and the destruction of any other resistance to him.

  Shuja was duly proclaimed Shah a day or so later during a grandiose display staged to impress the indifferent Afghans with British military power.

  But the army — so far engaged only in fighting the climate, the terrain and a few tribesmen — was soon to have to prove itself in action against troops traditionally known for their zeal in battle. And worst of all, the errors of the past had made Keane desperately short of food.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Three urgent needs faced General Keane, camping in the fierce heat with his army outside the ancient city of Kandahar. These were: to build up the strength of men and animals by rest and plenty of food; to lay in reserve stocks of grain and store cattle and to buy horses and camels to replenish transport.

  All of these needs presented problems. The wheat was not ripe; the little left in the granaries at Kandahar had become enormously dear. Moreover, a convoy of 2,000 camels expected from Shikapore with 300 tons of it had arrived with only 60 tons.

  Keane was forced to keep his troops on half-rations when he wished to strengthen them by giving them all the food he could. In face of their meagre diet the troops stuffed themselves with the fruit which could be bought so cheaply in Kandahar — plums, pears, pineapples, apricots, nectarines. Many of them as a result were hit by a mild form of dysentery, so their health instead of improving tended to get worse.

  At the same time no less than £300,000 was spent in the first ten days in Kandahar buying camels, horses and a few store cattle. Soon the money chests were all but empty and local bankers were refusing to negotiate loans — though there was no question but that they would be honoured.

  Then reliable Afghan secret agents brought reports that, unlike his brothers, the rulers of Kandahar, Dost Mahommed intended to fight the British and was then deploying a large army in the field between Ghazni and Kabul. This army was said to be daily strengthened and made ready for action.

  For want of proper food supplies Keane’s force was unable to march on and attack while the enemy was still vulnerable. He was thus reaping the first bitter fruits of marching his army more than 1,000 miles into hostile territory without making solid, sure and certain arrangements to feed it. Lord Auckland’s faith in the assurances of his political advisers — that friendly chiefs would supply food to the invaders — had made the army a hostage to fortune.

  On 11 May Keane sent a force under Brigadier Sale to attack the hostile Kandahar chiefs in their fortress at Ghirisk. So bad was the army’s health that he had to find fit men — 1,700 infantry, artillerymen and cavalry — from seven different units. He was then forced to send them on a journey of 160 miles there and back with a likely battle on arrival on half-rations for only twenty days. Sale’s orders were to slaughter the chiefs and the garrison should they resist.

  Meantime, the so-called friendship of the Kandahar people to the force had given way to open hostility. Camp-followers and camel-men were frequently murdered. Thieves stole camels and horses, then sold them back again to the army. When the thieves — who often killed as well — were caught and ordered by Keane to be hung, Macnaghten, on Shah Shuja’s behalf, countermanded the executions — it would antagonise the people.

  Wrathfully, Keane protested in a letter to Lord Auckland: ‘The country round Kandahar is as full of robbers as Kuch Gandava; and the King’s name goes for nothing outside the palace gates unless backed by an overwhelming force. Robberies and murders go on daily and nightly, and, as my correspondence with Mr. Macnaghten will show, I am precluded from doing justice to those who look to me to protect them and the property of the government.’

  Macnaghten insisted that these forays were the work of individual tribesmen and in no way reflected the genuine feelings of the people, which, he continued to insist, were friendly. But towards the end of May two officers, Lieutenants Inverarity and Wilmer, were returning from a fishing expedition, upon which they had gone unarmed, contrary to orders, when they were attacked by a party of Afghan swordsmen. Wilmer beat off his attackers with a stick, but Inverarity was so badly wounded by sword cuts that he died before sunset.


  Keane’s fears for his security in obviously hostile country must now have increased tenfold. Impatiently, he sat in his spacious tent in the beautiful old garden blooming luxuriantly below the walls of Kandahar, wrote angry letters to Auckland and waited for news of the arrival of the expected food and money he needed to be able to move again.

  A camel convoy carrying 750 tons of grains and another with 10 lakhs of rupees (£100,000) were now both overdue. Keane feared that they might have fallen into the hands of Afghan raiders or have been intercepted by detachments sent out by Dost Mahommed. Early in June he sent a small but powerful force of cavalry, artillery and infantry to find and protect them.

  Brigadier Sale had meantime returned from his expedition to Ghirisk at the end of May. He had crossed the River Helmund on rafts made of empty rum casks, only to find that the fort was deserted and that the hostile Kandahar chiefs had fled and taken refuge — it later turned out — in Persia.

  Macnaghten, anxious for an advance into the country and an end to the campaign, urged Keane to march at once with the Bengal division only, leaving the Bombay division at Kandahar to follow on with the rations and treasure when these arrived.

  Macnaghten assured Keane that there would be no danger in advancing with a smaller force, because he would personally stake his credit that not a single shot would be fired against the King on his march to Kabul.

  It was stupid advice but Keane, equally tired of waiting, at first agreed, but before issuing orders to the troops, whom he had placed in readiness to march on 1 June, consulted his confidante Captain Thomson, the engineer officer. Thomson bluntly reminded him of one simple fact — that he, not Macnaghten, was responsible for the army’s success or failure, and he advised Keane ‘to consider whether he had found the information hitherto given by the political department in any single instance correct’.

  Keane’s hair must have stood on end when Thomson thus revealed the possible danger into which he had nearly let the plausible Macnaghten lead him. He immediately warned Macnaghten that he had changed his mind and that the entire force would march together when the rations arrived.

  A day or two later, on 10 June, he also told Macnaghten in a letter that he intended to form his own intelligence department, because at present he was practically without one. ‘I have never seen the like in any army,’ he protested. ‘The Indian government differs from others, and tries to do more by policy and negotiation than by the sword. You have given me every assistance, but, after I leave this, I feel it will be proper for me to have my own intelligence department.’

  Keane, who already had won back procurement of supplies from the political department to his own military commissariat, thus took one more step in his efforts to free the army from the paralysing control of the political officers.

  On 1 June he issued the order of march to Kabul, placing the troops in a state of readiness but, of all things, ordering the four 18-pounder siege guns to be left behind at Kandahar. These guns were designed for battering down strong fortifications.

  At the time, Keane’s reasons for this were based on Macnaghten’s positive assurances that the army would not be opposed at Ghazni; and in the unlikely event of opposition, upon an assurance from Captain Thomson that the walls at Ghazni — though regarded by Asians as unassailable — did not need such powerful guns as the 18-pounders to breach them; and, finally, by a plea from Brigadier Stevenson, the artillery commander, that his transport animals were still not equal to the task of hauling these heavy guns. Keane is reported to have agreed in a flash of temper.

  Later, having decided that he was unable to rely upon Macnaghten’s military intelligence he made no reassessment but accepted Thomson’s second-hand information about the walls of Ghazni — even when reports came through that Dost Mahommed had sent his own son to organise and strengthen the defence.

  Brigadier Stevenson’s plea that it would be hard to get the guns there, he could have brushed aside — bearing in mind the tremendous efforts over much harder terrain to haul them to Kandahar. The only question remaining was — should he gamble on the normally reliable Thomson’s information — even though, if the gamble were to fail, his force would face destruction?

  A simple analysis, but Keane either failed to make it or too readily accepted the opinion of his subordinates, and having once done so failed later to countermand his orders. And so the big 18-pounder guns were to be left behind at Kandahar.

  Meantime, the situation improved with the safe arrival on 8 June of a convoy with 10 lakhs of rupees (£100,000). But later, the detachment he had sent out to protect the food convoy returned without even finding it. Keane impatiently sent out another — a body of irregular Afghan cavalry in the command of a freebooting chief named Uzeem Khan.

  The vast food convoy of 3,000 camels toiling through the scorching mountains and deserts of. southern Asia had in fact become a vital target for Dost Mahommed, who knew well enough that without it the British army might starve.

  He determined to stop it reaching them, but instead of attacking Surwar Khan, the leader, and his followers, who had contracted to bring it to Kandahar, he sent agents to persuade them to come over to him with the camels and their loads.

  Disguised as camel-men these agents quietly and persistently spoke of the great rewards that would follow were they to desert the British and join Dost Mahommed. Then Uzeem Khan with his 200 swordsmen arrived on the scene. More than half Surwar Khan’s men had already opted for Dost Mahommed, and the leader himself was wavering.

  Uzeem Khan swore that he and his men would oppose this treachery with their lives. They won the day. All Dost Mahommed’s agents but one fled, and this man Uzeem Khan made prisoner.

  Thus, by great firmness and a vigilance which kept his men night and day on the alert, he defeated Dost Mahommed’s emissaries in their efforts to divert the convoy. On 23 June, the 3,000 camels laboured at last into Kandahar under Uzeem Khan’s watchful eye.

  Keane, aware of the zeal and bravery the Afghan had shown, had him brought to his tent, warmly thanked the bearded, turbaned warrior and presented him with a handsome pair of English matchlock pistols together with his price for the job. This affair was a notable instance of Afghans fighting willingly and ably for the British against their own countrymen — probably an outcome of the hostility of the different tribes towards each other, and of the lack of a developed and constant national feeling among them.

  Believing now that at last he had enough grain to march with full bread rations all the 190 miles to Kabul, Keane joyfully issued marching orders for two days’ time, 27 June. But to his utter fury, the camel-men flatly refused to go a step farther — their wives and families, they pleaded, were in Dost Mahommed’s power and would certainly be harmed were they themselves known to have accompanied the invading army.

  Vainly, Keane stormed and threatened. The most that Surwar Khan, their leader, would do was to sell his camels to them, but without drivers the camels were useless. Keane was now faced with a choice of either buying the camels and then waiting until enough drivers could somehow be found while the army waited eating its rations in idleness and the enemy grew stronger; or, pushing on and hoping for the best and this, in an apparent fury of impatience he did, deciding to march as he had planned on 27 June, leaving the grain for which he had waited so long in store at Kandahar, together with the 18-pounder guns. A force of 2,000 he left as a garrison.

  His army was now in desperate straits for food — there was barely enough to march the 190 miles to Kabul at 10 miles a day and the fortress of Ghazni lay some 100 miles ahead with Dost Mahommed’s army beyond it.

  Keane’s actions and letters all confirm that he was an impetuous, quick-tempered man who embarked on a course of action after only the most superficial consideration. But once having made up his mind he stopped worrying and hoped for the best.

  Thus he let himself be convinced that he could deal with Ghazni with light artillery. As for grain — well, it was harvest time up in the Afghan
highlands and doubtless it would be possible to buy or requisition some. He issued an order, headed Supplies on the March: ‘Every encouragement must be given to the people of the country… to bring in grain and other supplies and officers Commanding Regiments will assign some spot in the vicinity of their standard… for the people to sell their goods in. A steady N.C.O. must be present with them, throughout the day, to see that they are not maltreated…’ It will be seen how little disposed were the villagers to sell, however.

  The moon was favourable, so the assembly was sounded soon after midnight on 27 June and the men of the first column of the Bengal force — the headquarters, the cavalry, three batteries of artillery and a brigade of infantry, about 3,000 men altogether — poured from their tents, to begin the first stage of the march to the fortress, about 100 miles north-east in the highlands.

  A long column of light blue, the cavalry brigade under Brigadier Arnold led the way, made up of the 2nd and 3rd Regiments of Light Cavalry, both Indian, stiffened by Her Majesty’s 16th Lancers. Headquarters, with the three Generals, Keane, Cotton and Willshire, came next, in the first column, followed by the infantry in their thick, red broadcloth swallowtail coatees, high black leather shakos with brass-covered chin straps and white duck trousers stiff with pipe clay — probably still wet from last night’s application. After them rumbled the batteries of artillery, 6-pounders, 9-pounders, 24-pounders, howitzers and mortars — twenty-eight guns in all, with their attendant carriages and ammunition wagons.