On
October 1, 1838,
Lord Auckland issued the
Simla Manifesto, which stated that due to
Dost Mohammed's dalliance with non-
British interests, he was considered
unfriendly, and would be removed from the throne of
Afghanistan and replaced with
Shah Shujah. Thus began a great misadventure, and one of the most humiliating defeats of the British. There was only one survivor of the
Army of the Indus that had gone in to accomplish this action.
"When you're
wounded and left,
On
Afghanistan's
plains,
And the
women come out,
To cut up your remains,
Just roll on your
rifle,
And blow out your
brains,
And go to your Gawd,
Like a
soldier."
Rudyard Kipling
Background:
In June of
1838,
Ranjit Singh,
Shah Shujah and the
British signed a secret agreement whereby Shah Shujah would relinquish his claim to
Peshawar and in return be assisted in his desire to regain the throne of
Afghanistan.
The
Army of the Indus marched into Afghanistan in
1838, avoiding the
Khyber Pass, as
Ranjit Singh was unwilling to allow such a large force to pass through his domain.
On
April 25th, 1839, the force arrived at
Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, where Shah Shujah was accepted, though somewhat grudgingly.
However, the Brits faced quite a different story at
Ghazni, a hilltop
fortress that had prepared for siege. Through the efforts of
Henry Durand,
Lieutenant of the
Bengal Engineers (a British
sapper), and intelligence given by
Mohan Lal, a Kashmiri who had acquaintances on the inside, the British were able to take Ghazni with the loss of only 17 men.
The Brits left Ghazni on
June 30, 1839 and arrived in
Kabul in early
July 1839. Kabul fell without a shot fired, but there was a cold reception for the invaders.
The
Retreat from Kabul began on January 6th, 1842 and would in end an 'awful completeness' as the
historian John Kaye said, barely a week later.
(more info to come, voters...this node's not quite finished)