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

by George Bruce

  General Willshire arrived early in the morning of 13 November 1839, on the plain before the fortress and walled town. The Khan’s force of about 2,000 men and five guns were assembled on steeply rising hills about 300 yards north-west of the town wall. Willshire had 1,000 infantry and six 6-pounder guns. He saw that the Khan had little faith in his fortifications, to prefer to place his troops out on the hillside in the open.

  The three red-coated infantry regiments advanced in column, while the British 6-pounders opened fire at 700 yards with shrapnel and case-shot. Mehrab Khan’s guns answered seconds later, but their shot fell wide of the advancing British infantry, who continued at a steady march in face of sharp jezail fire.

  The accurate case-shot and shrapnel from the British guns soon knocked down so many of the defenders that they lost courage and fled down the hillside back into the town, dragging their guns with them. The British charged to try to reach the gate first, but were just too late — the last of the defenders ran in and the great gates were slammed. The British sought cover near the walls while General Willshire brought up his artillery. A few shells blew down the gate and the infantry burst their way inside. Another column burst in through another gate and both grimly fought their way through the town to the citadel. Here, these gates were blown down by gunpowder and soon the British colours were fluttering from the topmost tower. The Afghans were finally subdued by late afternoon.

  About 400 of them were killed, including the Khan himself, shot through the heart in reward for his stubborn bravery — he could have escaped with his wife and son and doubtless returned later to rule again.

  Lieutenant Loveday, one of the political officers present, witnessed the Khan’s funeral next day. ‘There was one little hole in his breast,’ he noted, ‘which told of a musket-ball having passed through. He had no clothes on, except his silk pyjamas. One of his slaves whispered to me for a shawl; alas! I had nothing of the kind, but remembered a brocade bed-cover which I had bought in my days of folly and extravagance at Delhi. I called for it immediately and gave it to the Khan’s servants, who were delighted with this last mark of respect and wrapping up the body in it placed their deceased master on a charpoy and carried him to the grave.’

  But Loveday’s respect failed to outweigh the hatred of Mehrab Khan’s son for the men who had killed his father. He was not long after to undergo torture and death at the hands of the young prince.

  Thirty-one British were killed in the attack and 107 wounded. Among the wounded at Kelat was Tom Holdsworth, who took part in the storming of Ghazni. ‘As the man who fired at me was so very close,’ he wrote home, ‘the ball (1¼ oz.) went clean through and so saved me the unpleasant process of having it extracted by the doctors. I had my right flank exposed… and so the ball passed through my right arm into my right side and passing downwards to the rear came out at my back an inch from my backbone.’

  Holdsworth yet recovered completely from this severe wound and was fighting again two months later. The ball was probably sterilised by the hot flame of the exploding powder.

  The loot, which included the crown and zenana jewels was at first estimated to be worth about £60,000 but the jewels were eventually sold for much less than their true value and the total sum of prize money was no more than about £10,000.

  Meantime, in September 1839, events which decided the future fate of the British garrison in Kabul had occurred. When it was decided to keep British troops there, the question of how they were to be lodged arose. Lieutenant Durand, the engineer then concerned, wanted possession of the Bala Hissar, which secured command of the entire capital. He pointed out this to Macnaghten, stressing that in it only 1,000 men and a few guns would be able to defy the whole of Afghanistan.

  But Shah Shuja saw in the plan the risk of permanent British power. He therefore opposed it for various trivial reasons and Macnaghten yielded even while admitting that the objections were ridiculous.

  General Sale expected to be in command in Kabul when Keane left for India in November 1839, and he too had a voice in the placing of troops for its defence. Durand relates how he took Sale over the different locations outside the city and over the Bala Hissar, telling him and Macnaghten that it was impossible before winter to build quarters for a brigade and its attached cavalry and guns outside the Bala Hissar. Inside, on the other hand, by utilising what was already there, it was possible to make good accommodation.

  Sale agreed, and the Shah, informed that both the General and the Engineer had decided upon the Bala Hissar, reluctantly assented. Durand goes on to say that thinking the issue was decided, he immediately set the pioneers to work improving the defences and building cover within the walls for the troops, the stores and the ammunition. But the Shah no sooner learnt that the work had begun than he complained that the troops in the citadel above would overlook his royal palace and harem — that its occupation by the British would make him unpopular — and that he had already received strong protests.

  Macnaghten, says Durand, with fatal weakness again yielded and peremptory orders were issued for the work to stop.

  Durand therefore asked Macnaghten, who with the Shah was about to leave for the milder climate of Jellalabad for the winter, to allow the officers to occupy Dost Mahommed’s two large houses, one at each end of a spacious garden in which Macnaghten was then living; and the men in the outbuildings near by, all of which were surrounded by a high wall at the foot of the Bala Hissar.

  But Macnaghten for some reason rejected this proposal too. Durand tenaciously clinging to his objective of keeping troops in the Bala Hissar at all costs, then asked that the stables should be cleaned out for occupation by the sepoys and that H.M.’s 13th Regiment, then below strength, should be put in temporary huts close by.

  This was agreed, and Durand seemed to have got what he wanted. Once in military occupation of the Bala Hissar, he thought, it was most unlikely that the troops would leave it and the occupation of the entire stronghold was in time likely to follow.

  ‘But the Shah,’ relates Durand, ‘as well as the Afghans, were averse to a measure which, so long as the British troops remained in Afghanistan, would keep Kabul subject to their efficient control. And Macnaghten, being in the false position of having to reconcile the declared intention of the Government to withdraw the army… with its present actual military occupation in force, wavered on the adoption of the necessary measures of precaution which might countenance the suspicion of a purpose… permanently to hold the country.’

  Macnaghten accompanied the Shah on his winter stay in Jellalabad and the troops wintered fairly comfortably in the Bala Hissar, the British now convinced that they were there for good. But upon his return to Kabul in April 1840 the Shah objected, again Macnaghten foolishly yielded. Surprisingly, General Cotton, who on Keane’s departure had returned to military command in Afghanistan, agreed.

  The troops were marched out and their accommodation was taken over by the three or four hundred ladies of the Shah’s harem.

  And so in an arrangement that sounds like a sequence in a musical comedy was founded the fate of the British army. And now on a stretch of low swampy ground in an utterly defenceless position, commanded on all sides by hills, cantonments for the troops were built.

  Afghan forts in the plain overlooked each of the circular bastions supposed to protect the new British cantonments and these forts were neither knocked down nor occupied. The cantonments, which were about 1½ miles north-west of the Bala Hissar, and measured 1,000 by 600 yards, were made still harder to defend by crowding in upon Macnaghten’s gardens and residences in which attackers could take shelter.

  Having tamely quitted the Bala Hissar for, in the military sense, the worst possible position, the British Commander-in-Chief, General Cotton, now agreed to establishing his ammunition and weapons in an unfinished fort some 300 yards outside the fortified cantonments dominated by an Afghan fort some 400 yards eastwards. The stores of food and medicines upon which depended the army’s very existence
were placed, it is hard to believe, farther away in another fort.

  Macnaghten seems to have insisted upon Cotton’s acceptance of these gross military blunders. His object was to convince the Afghans that their conquerors had so little suspicion or fear of them that they did not even need to place their food and ammunition inside their own camp.

  In the end, General Cotton had either to agree to this stupidity or ask to resign his command. He had evidently been given the command in preference to General Nott in Kandahar because that old campaigner had already made it clear that he would not tolerate interference from Macnaghten and his political officers.

  When, however, General Cotton’s command was confirmed, leaving General Nott in command at Kandahar, instructions to Macnaghten from the Governor-General stated that now Shah Shuja was established on the throne the new General’s powers would be less than General Keane had enjoyed.

  In the administration of good order and military discipline, General Cotton would have full control, but ‘the disposal and employment of the force would be under political direction’. The military authorities would, of course, be consulted on both matters, and ‘in the moving and cantonments of the troops both military and political considerations would be attended to’.

  But the political officers would decide whether military operations should be undertaken and the Commander-in-Chief should merely give his opinion as to their practicability. The Envoy also would be in sole command of the Shah’s force.

  Thus the military had now been fully subordinated to the civil power in an occupied and unfriendly country. And of this the first outcome had been expulsion of the army from the Bala Hissar, their establishment in cantonments that could hardly be defended and the placing of their food and ammunition beyond their control outside their camp.

  The Afghans could easily put the British at their mercy, were they to exploit this situation.

  Shah Shuja’s newly won empire was divided into two military commands at this time. The northern one had its headquarters in Kabul, the capital, and included also Ghazni, Jellalabad and the surrounding provinces, east as far as Peshawar, but excluding it. The southern one, commanded by General Nott, including Kandahar, Quetta, Khelat, Dadar, Gundava and the small but important fort of Ghiresk.

  At the time of General Keane’s departure for India in November 1839, H.M.’s 13th Light Infantry and the 35th Native Infantry with six field-guns besides the citadel guns were to garrison Kabul, supported by a regiment of the Shah’s cavalry and some of his artillery, under the immediate command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dennie, the hero of Ghazni.

  The 4th Brigade, including the 48th Native Infantry, the 2nd Light Cavalry, a troop of Skinner’s Horse and six guns were to occupy Jellalabad.

  Ghazni was to be held by the 16th Native Infantry, a troop of Skinner’s Horse and whatever were available of the Shah’s force. The 42nd and 43rd Native Infantry were to be stationed with some of the Shah’s force and the heavy artillery under General Nott’s command at Kandahar.

  The total Anglo-Indian regiments left in Afghanistan were thus one British Regiment, the 13th Foot, seven of the Native Infantry, one of Native cavalry and one of artillery. The total number of fighting-men, British, sepoy, Afghan and Sikh amounted to about 20,000 with about 70 or 80 guns. Thirteen thousand of these were the Shah’s force, leaving about 7,000 well-trained Anglo-Indian troops. But events were soon to show that these were not nearly enough.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Shah Shuja’s only possible hope of getting the support of the chiefs and so reigning fairly peacefully was to try to emulate the rule by consent of Dost Mahommed. But it soon became only too plain that the Shah lacked the necessary capacity. By the late autumn of 1839 he had made himself hated even by the friendly chiefs who had called to pay homage to him.

  His coldness, his lack of respect for them, his demand that they should throw themselves on their faces before him at the start of an audience — this, no less than flagrant injustice and misrule, made them hurry away, with the idea of rebellion growing in their minds.

  Shah Shuja’s failure marked a serious parting of the ways. If to rule the chiefs by guile, diplomacy and consent was beyond him, then, Macnaghten decided, they must be ruled in the only other way — by the destruction of their age-old power and influence. But to do so would demand a powerful army, ready and able to crush insurrection swiftly — a far bigger force than the British then had or could afford to keep in Afghanistan.

  Macnaghten decided that the people must therefore be turned somehow against their chiefs — leaders to whom they were attached by strong ties of blood, social custom and economic interest. Despite having too few troops and those marked for eventual withdrawal, he adopted this dangerous policy.

  He first set out to form regiments of tribesmen to enforce the Shah’s rule over the chiefs, believing that since the troops were to be paid by the royal treasury and commanded by British officers they would be willing to act against their own leaders.

  The chiefs saw what was afoot, forgot their own feuds and united in resentment against the Shah. The new regiments, on the other hand, showed dislike for the training and leadership of the infidel British and were never reliable.

  The Khyber tribesmen were among those few who had eventually welcomed the Shah’s return. In gratitude, without telling Macnaghten, he had promised them a huge subsidy for protecting traffic through the pass — that is, for refraining from attacking it.

  The tribesmen did not receive the promised money. They revolted. Troops were sent to attack them but meantime the political officer concerned, Captain Mackeson, had negotiated an annual subsidy of £8,000 — four times more than Dost Mahommed had ever paid for similar restraint. The subsequent reduction of this sum was later to lash the tribesmen into a full-scale revolt.

  Dr. Lord, meantime, at Bamian had launched various minor attacks against nearby rulers which, while in no way helping to consolidate the British position, caused resentment. Lord eventually wrote to Macnaghten for reinforcements on the grounds that he feared an attack soon by Dost Mahommed; and these were sent to him.

  But the former king was then in no position to attack anyone. He had been living quietly in Kooloom, from where he had written to the Khan of Bokhara, trying to make an ally of him. The Khan, thinking it might do no harm were he to seize this enemy of the British, invited him for a friendly visit, then imprisoned him.

  But Dr. Lord’s skirmishings and advances had alarmed neighbouring rulers and one of them saw in the seizure of Dost Mahommed — the one ruler who had opposed the infidel invaders — a danger to them all.

  This man, the Khan of Kokan, now warned his brother the Khan of Bokhara, against the imprisonment of Dost Mahommed and demanded that he be speedily released. To help the Khan make up his mind he deployed a force on his frontier.

  Dost Mahommed was then allowed to escape and to become once more a magnet for all the discontented chiefs in Afghanistan. Thus, Dr. Lord’s futile playing at soldiers had brought the former ruler his freedom, which, in the strictly ethical sense was no doubt desirable, but politically, as regards the safety of Shah Shuja and the British, was one of the worst things that could have happened.

  The spring of 1840 now heralded, as well, renewed rebellion by the Ghilzye tribe. Those fierce warriors saw a new power in the land that threatened their traditional supremacy, and the transit-dues which, apart from their flocks, brought them a living. They began to attack military messengers, the post and even convoys. General Nott sent a reconnaissance force of about 200 cavalry and found that the chiefs had assembled enough tribesmen to cut all the communications between Kabul, Kandahar and Jellalabad.

  Macnaghten now realised with a shock that the Ghilzyes were actually in open rebellion and that his far-flung communications were at their mercy.

  He requested General Cotton in Kabul to supply whatever troops were necessary to put them down. But meantime General Nott on 7 May 1840 had sent against them a battalion of 800 of
the Shah’s infantry with four siege guns of the horse artillery, the entire force in command of Captain Anderson. A sharp engagement followed that showed once again the supremacy of the British under good officers.

  For thirty minutes the Ghilzyes withstood a blast of shot and shell, after which they swept from their positions and charged down upon the bayonets of Anderson’s infantry, but these, commanded by three English officers, stood firm.

  The Ghilzyes withdrew, reformed under the devastating shrapnel fire and charged again, only to be thrust back once more, when they retired leaving 200 dead on the field and more slain by the guns in their earlier position. ‘The combat was a sharp one and very creditable to the courage of the Ghilzyes, who though superior in numbers were without artillery,’ Durand noted.

  General Nott learned afterwards that in two days’ time 10,000 Ghilzyes would have gathered, instead of 3,000 and that if he had weakened his garrison at Kandahar in facing them, they would have stormed it in force and could have overwhelmed it. The Ghilzye rebellion had not been finally extinguished, however. The ashes of revolt still glowed.

  Throughout the summer of 1840, hostile risings against Macnaghten’s government of sentry boxes occurred from one end of the country to the other. In August a force of 500 infantry and three howitzers escorting a supplies convoy of 1,200 camels and 500 bullocks through the Bolan Pass was ambushed by Baluchi tribesmen. Major Glibborn, surrounded by the rocky sunbaked hills shimmering in the burning heat, tried hard to beat off the attacks while keeping control of the unwieldy convoy. Held down in a defensive position, his force ran out of water, suffered severely in a temperature nearing 100 degrees and finally was forced to retreat, losing 200 sepoys killed and many wounded, as well as more than 1,000 camels with their supplies, and all the bullocks.