Major General William Elphinstone is considered by some
military historians to be “the most
incompetent soldier who ever became a general”, possessed of “the
leadership qualities of a sheep.”
Elphinstone’s road to disaster, however, was well paved and made broad
by others.
In 1838, Afghanistan
was a buffer state between British India and
the expanding Russian Empire. Energized
by real or imagined Russian plots in the country, the British rallied support behind
a prince favorable to British interests, marched into the country, and after a
short campaign installed a puppet king in Kabul
on August 6, 1839.
Many in British India now
felt that the mission had been accomplished.
It was time to bring the troops home.
Most of the victorious army marched home, but a permanent British
garrison was established in Kabul
to prop up the new regime. It needed
propping up. The British had replaced a
relatively popular ruler with a weak puppet. Scattered fighting erupted in the
surrounding countryside.
Increasingly frustrated with the costs of maintaining a
large garrison in Kabul, the British government eliminated the subsidies being
paid to the various tribes in the area around Kabul to keep the peace. Once the
subsidies ended, hostile activity increased even more.
Into this rapidly
deteriorating situation stepped Major General William Elphinstone, who
was assured by all, “You will have nothing to do here; all is peace.”
When Elphinstone arrived in Kabul his command consisted of
some 4,500 troops (British troops and Indian sepoys). Additionally, there were 12,000 army
dependents such as wives, children, and servants, living in the British
cantonment just outside of Kabul.
The military situation on the ground when Elphinstone
arrived was a tragedy waiting to happen.
The British had abandoned the city’s fortified citadel, the Bala Hissar,
to the puppet king and built the British cantonment some 1.5 miles outside of
the city in a low area surrounded by Afghan forts occupying the high
ground. These forts had been neither occupied
nor destroyed.
The cantonment itself was indefensible. According to
contemporary witnesses there had been, “a pretense of rendering the cantonments
defensible by surrounding the great parallelogram with the caricature of an
obstacle in the shape of a shallow ditch and feeble earthwork over which an
active cow could scramble.”
Elphinstone now nearly sixty was racked by gout and
rheumatism. He was soon unable to mount his horse un-aided. He was incapable of
reaching clear cut decisions and vacillated depending on the opinion of the
latest person with whom he spoke. One
officer wrote, that Elphinstone was “fit only for the invalid establishment on
the day of his arrival.”
On 2 November 1841 a revolt broke out in Kabul. A mob of insurgents stormed the house of one
of the senior British civilian officers and murdered him and his staff. Elphinstone took no action, which encouraged
the insurgents to press the British further.
The Afghans next stormed the poorly defended supply fort where the
British garrison’s provisions were housed.
After furious fighting around the small fort and repeated
calls for help, Elphinstone finally realized that he should do something. The relief force was surprised, however, to
find the survivors of the supply fort, having abandoned all hope of relief,
making a hasty retreat toward the cantonment.
Elphinstone’s inaction had resulted in the loss of most of the army’s
food and supplies.
A council of war proposed, as the winter was coming on,
either to retreat to the British stronghold of Jalalabad some ninety miles
away, or to move to the Bala Hissar, Kabul’s strong bastion. Elphinstone overruled the move to the Bala
Hissar and settled on retreat.
On the Afghan promise of a safe retreat, Elphinstone
capitulated on January 1, 1842, handing over the army’s gunpowder reserves,
most of the cannon, and all of the newest muskets.
The troops and twelve thousand civilians began the march to
Jalalabad on January 6. The sick and
wounded were left behind with a guarantee of their safety. They were murdered as soon as the last of
Elphinstone’s soldiers left the cantonment.
The retreat of
the column was an unmitigated horror.
Weather conditions were extreme, and the column was continually harassed
by the fire of Afghan tribesmen. The
first night, the column halted six miles from the city. The road was already strewn with the dead and
dying.
By the evening of January 9, some 3,000 of Elphinstone's
column had died due to enemy action, the freezing weather, or even
suicide. Elphinstone had ceased giving
any orders.
On the evening of January 11th, the wives of the British
officers accepted being taken hostage by the Afghans who anticipated a large
ransom for their release. The wives and
children of the Indian troops were all to die since they would not bring a
ransom.
Elphinstone and his
second in command also allowed themselves to become hostages, while the column
struggled on against certain death.
Elphinstone died of dysentery on April 23, 1842, while in captivity.
Only one British officer managed to reach Jalalabad. On 13 January, Assistant Surgeon William
Brydonrode through the gates of Jalalabad on an exhausted horse. Part of his
skull was sheared off by a sword. When
asked what happened to the army, he answered “I am the army.”
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