The British Retreat from Afghanistan in 1842,
Afghanistan has been the crossroads of mighty empires since Alexander the Great invaded the country in ancient antiquity. Thus, over the centuries mighty empires have sought to control Afghanistan and Central Asia, a quest which in the 19th century was called “The Great Game”. In the late 1830’s, both the borders of the British Empire and Russian Empire were closing in on Afghanistan. The British had gained complete control over India and it was feared that Russia would use their influence in Afghanistan to meddle with British trade interests in the region.
In July of 1839 the British invaded Afghanistan with a force of 30,500 soldiers from the British East India Company. They were able to quickly capture the major cities of Afghanistan including the capitol of Kabul. The British ousted the current ruler of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed, and replaced him with a puppet king. To maintain British control, they left 8,000 soldiers to occupy the country, 4,500 in Kabul, with the rest scattered in outposts in the countryside. While conquering Afghanistan was relatively easy for the British, keeping it would be far more difficult. The son of Dost Mohammed, Akbar Khan, gathered together a guerrilla army which attacked the British throughout the country. In addition, individual tribes throughout Afghanistan used the opportunity to conducts raids of their own. Especially ripe for the picking were British supply lines from India. It was not long before supplies shrank to a trickle.
By 1841 it was becoming increasingly clear that the British could not hold the country. In Kabul itself British officers were routinely attacked and killed by Afghani mobs. Without supplies and reinforcements, for British commander Major General Sir William Elphinstone, it was quite clear that his army had only one option, to retreat or face total destruction.
On January 6th, 1842 Elphinstone’s Army set out from Kabul for the safety of the British garrison at Jalalabad over 90 miles away. The army consisted of 4,500 Indian and British soldiers, as well a 12,000 civilian camp followers. The trek was especially hazardous because of the lack of supplies, the harsh Afghan winter, the exceedingly rough terrain of the Hindu Kush Mountains, and worst of all, the ambushes conducted by Pashtun Ghilji tribesmen who inhabited the mountains. Under negotiations, Akbar Khan had agreed to provide escorts for the retreating army so that the Ghiliji would not attack them. Instead Akbar alerted them to their retreat. When the column reach the passes of the Hindu Kush, they were met by Ghiliji tribesmen armed with muskets and captured artillery. They took sniper shots from high cliffs and fired grapeshot rounds from cannon in narrow passes, wiping out whole sections of the column at a time. Experts marksmen who were experienced at hunting and fighting in the mountains, the Ghiliji often shot down men from ranges that were so far away the British couldn’t even fire back.
The retreat through the Hindu Kush Mountains was slow and arduous, hampered by terrain and snow. Many soldiers perished due to exposure, frostbite, hunger, and disease. Many other soldiers committed suicide along the way. After only traveling 26 miles, the column had lost 3,000 people. Then military cohesion began to break down as soldiers mutinied and deserted. But of course, there was no where to go, and those who turned around and attempted to escape back to Kabul or flee into the mountains were either killed or captured by the Ghiliji. In the midst of this chaos, Elphinstone himself was captured and taken prisoner. As the march progressed, soon Afghan guerrillas were able to isolate and massacre whole units and groups of men. Finally on the 12th of January, the column reach the final pass on their journey, which was blocked by a large group of tribesman. By then the army was reduced to 200 soldiers and 2,000 camp followers. The path behind them was also blocked by Afghan tribesmen, and more tribesmen littered the mountains. With nowhere to go, the new commander of the army, Brigadier Thomas Anquetil ordered the men to charge. Only two small groups were able to break through. One group 60 men fled to the hills near the village of Gandamak, where they were surrounded and annihilated. The other group consisted of 12 cavalrymen, who were shot at the rest of the way to Jalalabad.
On January 13th, 1 British officer, a company surgeon named William Brydon, and a handful of Indian soldiers rode into Jalalabad. When asked where the rest of the army was, Brydon responded, “I am the rest of the army”.
They were all that remained of the 16,500 that had left Kabul a mere week ago. 2,000 were captured, most of whom were sold into slavery at the markets of Kabul. Among the captured were Gen. Elphinstone, an old officer who was at his prime during the Battle of Waterloo, he didn’t live long in captivity and died in April.
After the destruction of Elphinstone’s army British garrisons at Jalalabad and Kandahar were also attacked by Akbar’s forces. The British East India Company and regular British Army sent more armies and beat back the Afghans, even conducting a reprisal attack on Kabul itself, but the British could never tame Afghanistan and bring it under their control. By late 1842, all British forces had withdrawn from the country.
The British would go to war two more times with Afghanistan in the 19th and early 20th century. While in both wars they won many tactical and strategic victories, trying to sculpt Afghanistan into a proper British colony was as fleeting as trying to build a sandcastle with dry sand. Over the upcoming decades, neither the British, nor the Soviets, nor the Taliban, nor the Americans could truly control Afghanistan, rather most of the country remains pretty much the same as it had been when Alexander the Great first stepped foot in the country in ancient times. There is a damn good reason why Afghanistan is called “the graveyard of empires”.
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