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

by George Bruce

  On 13 January working parties were digging a ditch round the north-west angle. Their arms were piled near by and a squadron of cavalry with horses saddled were ready to go to their support if they were attacked.

  There was a sudden shout from a sentry on the west wall, facing Gundamuk. He pointed into the distance — a mounted man was approaching. Officers levelled their telescopes and saw one of their own people ‘faint, as it seemed, from travel, if not sick or wounded’, noted Gleig.

  A crowd of officers and men gathered. ‘It is impossible to describe,’ says Gleig, ‘the thrill which ran through men’s veins as they watched the movements of the stranger.’

  A body of cavalry galloped out to help him. He was brought in supported in the saddle, covered with wounds, bleeding and faint, ‘gripping in his hand the hilt and a bit of the blade of his sword’.

  He looked like a messenger of death.

  They lifted him gently off his pony. Between gasps and groans he said he was Dr. Brydon and that apart from a few hostages he believed he was the sole survivor of the Kabul force.

  A shudder of horror ran through the assembled troops. It seemed to them beyond belief that Elphinstone’s once magnificent little army had thus been slaughtered. ‘What went wrong? How could this have happened?’ — these were surely the questions everyone was asking.

  General Sale sent out a squadron of cavalry along the road to Futtehabad to search for, or to fight and rescue any survivors in Afghan hands.

  Sorrowfully at dusk they returned to say they found no one alive — only three mutilated bodies, those of Dr. Harpur and Captains Collyer and Hopkins, who had escaped with Brydon.

  That night, and for several nights, General Sale ordered that lanterns should be hung on the ramparts, whose glimmer could guide any night-marching survivors to safety. Alert sentries peered into the darkness, bugles from time to time sounded the shrill notes of the advance, but they played a requiem for the fallen, for there was no one to answer. The Kabul force had been annihilated — a whole army had fallen.

  What can be said in favour of this pointless and tragic war? Nothing. To India — and India paid — it brought oppressive taxation, the delay of reforms and the postponement of enterprises that would in time have made life a little easier. All this built up hatred for the English.

  To England it brought not one single benefit, military or political — only loss of life and of military prestige, which she had to try to retrieve in a campaign of retribution.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Lord Auckland received the news of the Afghan disaster on 30 January 1842. Characteristically he tried to minimise it by issuing a pompous proclamation saying that he considered it only ‘a new occasion for displaying the stability and vigour of the British power and the admirable spirit and valour of the British-Indian army’.

  Already, while the news of the insurrection was drifting in during December and January, he had sent a brigade to Peshawar and had ordered another 3,000 men to prepare to march. To command this relief force, he nominated another sick officer, Major-General Lumley. Just in time the doctors reported adversely on his health and spared the force the likelihood of still greater disaster. General Pollock, a capable and experienced soldier, was appointed instead, and he, as well as Nott in Kandahar, were given full powers to act as they saw fit.

  Then on 21 February, Generals Nott at Kandahar, and Sale at Jellalabad, received letters signed by Akbar’s prisoners, General Elphinstone and Major Eldred Pottinger, stating that the troops under their command should at once retreat to India. Both Generals had reported to the Government of India their intention of taking no action upon this letter.

  Elphinstone’s action was viewed ‘with the most severe displeasure’ by the Government. It directed that a full military inquiry should be instituted into all the circumstances connected with the direction of affairs at Kabul, superseded Elphinstone in his command by General Pollock and directed that Elphinstone’s authority should wholly cease.

  Whether news of his disgrace ever reached this broken and pathetic man is hard to say. He was to die in captivity on 22 April. Meantime Nott was officially informed that it was of the ‘highest importance that he should maintain his position in concentrated strength at Kandahar until he may receive further instructions’.

  He replied that he had never for one moment contemplated retiring. ‘And as to treating with these people, I never will, and I hope no Englishman will think of doing so… I hope yet to assert the honour of Old England in this mountain land…’ After Elphinstone, what a stirring note.

  General Sale’s garrison of about 2,000 men had only 150 rounds each and were short of food as well. Pollock was known to have reached Peshawar by early February and optimistic expectations of his early arrival cheered the garrison, which at one time had been on the point of surrendering.

  But Pollock was then unable to march. His army was not yet ready for the severe test of penetrating the Khyber Pass against a determined enemy.

  On 15 February rows of white tents appeared a few miles away from the walls of Jellalabad. They were those of Akbar Khan and an army of 19,000 men. Having annihilated General Elphinstone’s force Akbar had come to repeat his triumph. But the Jellalabad defences had been made ready by hard spade work of both officers and men to withstand the heaviest assault.

  On 19 February an earthquake destroyed all that they had done in three months. It was vividly described by the force’s chaplain, G. R. Gleig: ‘Colonel Monteith, who happened to be the field officer for the day had ascended one of the bastions and was sweeping the horizon with his telescope, when all at once the earth began to tremble and there was a noise not so much like thunder as of a thousand heavily laden wagons rolling and jolting over an ill-paved street.

  ‘The whole of the plain began to heave like billows on the surface of the ocean, and walls and houses, splitting asunder, came tumbling down upon the space which an instant before had been crowded with workmen. The whole of the parapets which had been constructed with so much skill and diligence were thrown down with a fearful crash into heaps of ruins. Happily very few lives were lost.’

  Colonel Monteith was buried in the ruins. General Sale rushed to the rescue and laid hold of Monteith’s head, which was the only part of him visible. Monteith, noted Mackenzie, was a great dandy and took most particular care of his wig, which he oiled and dressed throughout the siege with great tenderness and pains. When he felt someone tugging at his head he came round and cried: ‘Let go of my head!’ Sale in his joy at finding he was alive, tugged ten times harder, whereupon the Colonel exclaimed in wrath: ‘Who is the scoundrel tugging at my hair?’ which speedily caused his gallant old friend to let go.

  The defences were restored with feverish energy, but the shortage of food was now dangerous. It was therefore decided to attack, and on 7 April Akbar’s force was routed — baggage, artillery, ammunition, horses, arms of every kind and food were captured. With the remnants of his army the beaten chief fled towards Kabul. The British casualties were light, but the heroic Colonel Dennie died leading a charge.

  Two days earlier, on 5 April, Pollock had finally marched from Peshawar to penetrate the formidable Khyber Pass. His troops were confident and well trained; the orders for the advance known in detail by all officers. The enemy were cleared from the heights by shrapnel; the heights were seized and held skirmishers until the columns had passed. And so General Pollock forced this 28-mile-long defile for the first time in modern history.

  The army relieved Jellalabad on 16 April. They were played in to the tune of ‘Eh, but you’ve been a lang time o’coming.’ A salute was fired and a great cheer burst forth.

  General Pollock in Jellalabad and General Nott in Kandahar both now had the same ambition — to march to Kabul enter the city and crush the group of chiefs who had slaughtered Elphinstone’s force.

  Another act of the Kabul tragedy now occurred. Shah Shuja was murdered as he descended from the Bala Hissar by the son of Newab Zuma
n Khan. A fierce struggle then broke out between Shah Shuja’s sons, and Mahommed Akbar and his followers, for the right to rule the country.

  A new Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, had meantime succeeded Auckland, and he brought with him a new policy. It involved the removal of British forces as soon as possible, even if this meant abandoning the prisoners and hostages.

  He accordingly wrote to General Nott on 19 April ordering him to ruin the defences of Kandahar and march immediately to India, via Quetta, with his entire army. General Nott replied that the decision was regrettable, but he would do so as soon as he received money to pay his troops — they’d had no pay for three months — and much-needed provisions and ammunition.

  General Pollock, too, then received orders to withdraw from Jellalabad back through the Khyber to Peshawar. All responsible political and military officers in India vigorously attacked Ellenborough’s orders, but despite this and the strong feelings which news of the Kabul massacre had created in England, Lord Ellenborough seemed fixed in his determination to retire both Nott’s and Pollock’s forces. October was fixed upon as the date.

  Meantime, General Nott had defeated the Afghans decisively in a series of useful actions. He took good care that these were fully reported to the Governor-General.

  Ellenborough then wrote directly to Nott congratulating him, but gave no indication of a change of mind. Nott fumed and fretted at Kandahar, certain that his army alone could vindicate British honour. ‘Pollock’s army was not necessary,’ he wrote to his daughters in Calcutta. ‘The troops under my command would have taken Ghazni and destroyed the Bala Hissar at Kabul. I told Lord Auckland so in December, last; but what is the good of talking of it? I am ordered to sneak away, though with my beautiful regiments I could plant the British banner on the banks of the Caspian.’

  Nott was an outstanding military practitioner of pax Britannica.

  Meantime, Mahommed Akbar had gained possession of Kabul and though he had been defeated by Sale at Jellalabad still revelled in his possession of captive officers, troops, women and children as well as the disastrous defeat British policy had suffered at his hands.

  More and more Nott chafed at inaction as the summer wore on; soon he would have to prepare to ‘sneak away’. Then on 22 July while out for an early morning walk a package from the Governor-General was brought to him. Nott read that now that his camel transport had been reinforced, Lord Ellenborough supposed that he could for the first time move his army with ample equipment for any service. He therefore left it to Nott to decide by which route he should withdraw his troops from Afghanistan.

  ‘If you determine upon moving upon Ghazni, Kabul and Jellalabad, you will be… dependent entirely upon the courage of your army for the opening of a new communication by an ultimate junction with Major-General Pollock.’

  Ellenborough told Nott in this remarkable letter which Kaye terms ‘a masterpiece of Jesuitical cunning’, that he must retire his army, but if he wished he could do so by way of Ghazni and Kabul. This was like ordering a retreat from Brussels to Strasbourg via a fighting advance to Amsterdam. And the responsibility for the decision was placed firmly upon Nott’s shoulders.

  General Pollock was also to be allowed to support Nott, though the Governor-General did not anticipate that he would move any troops to Kabul, but merely make a forward movement in that direction. Lord Ellenborough told him that if he did make this forward advance he would do so entirely on his own responsibility; and that in any case his instructions were to retire to Peshawar as soon as possible.

  The Governor-General had thus manoeuvred both generals into a dangerous corner: if they took the easy way out and retreated into India without military action, theirs would be the shame; and if they advanced and were defeated, the blame and disgrace would be theirs, not the Governor-General’s. But were they to win, Lord Ellenborough would share the praise and the awards at least equally. History affords few if any situations so completely based on ‘heads I win tails you lose’.

  But both Nott and Pollock were confident of the ability of their troops to defeat the Afghans, and neither man gave a damn for retreating first. Yet it was vital that they should march so as to reach Kabul together from their different directions so as to bring overwhelming force to bear. Correspondence from one side of Afghanistan to the other in these conditions was risky indeed.

  When his letters to Nott appeared to have been intercepted, Pollock — who had been trying to negotiate the release of the prisoners with Akbar — sent a letter to Nott through Akbar. Apparently a friendly greeting, secret information was written in rice-water, and when iodine was applied it was revealed. Thus Akbar was used as the tool of his own defeat.

  Having meantime detained the prisoners and hostages in forts in and just outside Kabul, where, after great hardship and privation they were now comfortable, Akbar occupied himself, among other things by torturing Mohan Lal — to make him produce 30,000 rupees. ‘All my feet is wounded by bastinadoing… red pepper is burnt before my nose and eyes… he says he will pull out my eyes and burn my body with a hot iron,’ the unhappy British agent wrote to Pollock. Just in time, General Pollock, in a severe letter telling Akbar he would be held responsible for Mohan Lal’s good health, stopped this torture.

  In August, the final battles in the campaign of retribution occurred. General Nott quit Kandahar on 8 August 1842 and marched towards Ghazni. He engaged Shumsoodeen, the Governor, in the field and defeated him, capturing guns, tents, ammunition and supplies with moderate losses to his own army. Soon after this the defenders of the fortress of Ghazni surrendered without firing a shot. Nott destroyed its defences and marched on towards Kabul.

  Meanwhile, Generals Pollock and Sale marched on Kabul on 20 August with a force of 8,000 men full of hope and courage. Pollock had kept his final intentions secret — even General Sale — whose wife and daughter were still in Akbar’s hands — was crazy with joy at the prospect. ‘Hurrah!’ he wrote to Pollock. ‘This is good news. All here are prepared to meet your wishes and to march as light as possible… I am so excited I can scarce write.’

  The first division of Pollock’s army engaged the Afghans at Jugdulluk. Large bodies of the Ghilzyes thronged the hilltops ready to shoot down the British just as they had done in January. General Pollock ordered his howitzers to hit them with shrapnel, but well hidden in the rocky hilltops the Ghilzyes stood their ground even when the shells burst among them. They poured a hot jezzail fire on to the British.

  Pollock thereupon ordered the infantry to scale the heights and root out the Ghilzyes at bayonet point. The redcoats responded with a loud cheer, storming the steep hillside and scattering the enemy. The Ghilzyes retired to the topmost height, but even here they weren’t safe — the redcoats stormed even this precipitous peak. ‘Seldom have soldiers had a more arduous task to perform and never was an undertaking of the kind surpassed in execution,’ Pollock wrote in his report. The victory was complete.

  Then on 13 September the biggest army that Akbar Khan could put into the field was beaten even more decisively at Tezeen.

  The battles were now over and the remnants of the Afghan force fled through the mountains to find safety wherever they could.

  Pollock marched his army forward without delay, camped on the Kabul racecourse on 15 September and planted his standard high up on the Bala Hissar. General Nott continued his advance from the south, defeated the Afghans in two more engagements 2nd camped outside Kabul two days later.

  The great bazaar and many other buildings were destroyed; retribution was complete and national pride restored. Meantime, General Sale rode hard westwards, caught up with the prisoners at Bamian three days later and embraced his wife and daughter. Together with the other prisoners, Lady Sale and Mrs. Sturt had freed themselves when Akbar’s defeat became known.

  Nott and Pollock in due course led their forces back to India successfully and took part in a grand military parade to commemorate their victories. Both generals received the order of the
Grand Cross of the Bath and in addition Nott was made British Envoy to the King of Oude, on the borders of northern India, a most cherished appointment. Lord Ellenborough, for his part in the final victories, was made an earl.

  Lord Auckland had earlier been welcomed back in England with acclamations and in the new Whig government was rewarded for all the harm he had done with the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. Of the more deserving men who played a part in the war, both George Lawrence and Colin Mackenzie rose to the top of their professions, with the rank of lieutenant-general. Eyre became General Sir Vincent Eyre, but Shelton’s career was short-lived. He returned to England and took command of his regiment, but soon after was killed when his horse threw him on the parade ground at Dublin. It is sad to record that his men cheered.

  General Sir Robert and Lady Sale and Mrs. Sturt, who by now had born her dead husband a daughter, sailed to England, where, as celebrities the General and his wife were received by Queen Victoria. One of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting was horrified by the stories of this ‘red-faced man with a comical expression’ and complained that he ‘talked of cutting men down as if they were nettles’. Later Sale returned to India, and died in action in the Sikh War.

  But events in Kabul only reached their full circle of absurdity towards the end of 1842. Dost Mahommed, having been freed by the British, was then allowed to return unconditionally to the throne of Afghanistan. He ruled until he died in 1863, a neighbour whom the British in India knew only too well would repulse invasion from whatever direction it came.

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