15. SOAS Library, PP MS 55/21, diary, 20 November 1879; Trousdale, pp. 108,114 & 133; IOL, Mss Eur. F108/98(a), P3/57,15 November 1879; MacGregor, III, pp. 60-1, 70-3 & Appendix A.
16. Hanna, III, pp. 149-50; F. Harrison, Martial Law in Kabul, London, 1880, reprinted from Fortnightly Review of 1879; quote from Ripon’s diary on p. 95 is from A. Denholm, Lord Ripon 1827-1909: a Political Biography, London, 1982, pp. 126-30; Blake, Disraeli, p. 700; MacGregor, III, Appendix A; White’s comment is in IOL, Mss Eur F108/98(a), P3/64, 13 April 1880.
17. Anglesey, British Cavalry, III, p. 227.
Chapter 7
1. SOAS Library, Durand Papers, MS PP 55/31, No. 19, 25 October 1879.
2. IOL, Mss Eur F108/101(a), P/69 & P/40,16 & 23 November 1879.
3. IOL, L/MIL/5/682, No. 8392 incl R’s telegrams; Heathcote, Afghan Wars, p. 126; Soboleff, Anglo-Afghan Struggle, pp. 201-2; Hanna, II, pp. 158-9; IOL, Mss Eur. C405, Duke, pp. 212-15.
4. IOL, Mss Eur. F108/97(a) & 98(a), P2/56(a) & P3/58,both 2 December 1879.
5. Trousdale, p. 132.
6. IOL, L/MIL/5/683, No. 12518, R’s dispatch, 7 March 1880; Trousdale, pp. 101, 122-3 & Note 135; Heathcote, Afghan Wars, p. 127; SOAS Library, PP MS 55/21,19 December 1879; Sykes, Durand, pp. 104-5; Hanna, Roberts in War, p. 41 argues that had Massy not ordered his guns to fire, a terrible disaster would have ensued. Massy by his own account admitted that the guns came into action without his knowledge or orders; a good example of Hanna’s prejudice against Roberts.
7. Bobs 92-19.
8. IOL, Mss Eur. C405, Joshua Duke, p. 262, manuscript note by Roberts in pencil.
9. Robson, The Road to Kabul, pp. 158-9.
10. Ibid., pp. 148-59; Hanna, III, pp. 175 et seq.; IOL, Eur MSS C405, Duke, pp. 231-71; IOL, L/MIL/5/682, Nos. 8375, 8376, 8380, 8384, 8385, 8387; Heathcote, Afghan Wars, pp. 127-32.
11. Mss Eur. C405, Duke, p. 271, inscription in pencil.
12. SOAS Library, Durand Papers, MS PP 55/21, long entry 19 December 1879. Sykes biography omits. For Roberts’s cheerfulness see G. Younghusband, A Soldier’s Memories, pp. 227-8.
13. IOL, Mss Eur. C405, Duke, p. 280.
14. Rait, Haines, pp. 276-7.
15. Gardyne, Lieutenant Colonel C.G. and Gardyne, Lieutenant Colonel A.D.G., The Life of a Regiment: The History of the Gordon Highlanders from 1816-1898, London, 1929, pp. 133-5; SOAS Library, PP MS 55/ 21, Durand diary, 30 December 1879; MacGregor, III, pp. 119-27; IOL, L/MIL/5/683, No. 8392; WO106/63, appendix III; Soboleff, Anglo-Afghan Struggle, p. 75; ibid., p. 86 is clearly too low, a figure gleaned from the press.
16. NAM Gough papers, 8304-32-215.
17. Soboleff, Anglo-Afghan Struggle, p. 86.
18. Roberts’s diary: Bobs 92-19; IOL, L/MIL/5/683, no. 8392.
19. Hensman, Afghan Wars, p. 277.
20. Ibid., p. 282.
21. Gardyne and Gardyne, The Life of a Regiment, p. 135; Diver, Maud, ‘Bobs Bahadur’, The Cornhill Magazine, vol. xxxviii (January-June 1915), pp. 27-9; IOL Mss Eur F108/101 (a), P6/43.
Chapter 8
1. Gardyne and Gardyne, The Life of a Regiment, pp. 135-6; IOL, Mss Eur. F108/101(a), P6/39, 8 February 1880.
2. Massy’s removal: IOL, L/MIL/5/681, No. 1959, R’s report 20 October 1879; L/MIL/5/683, No. 12513, Adjutant General Greaves to R, 9 February 1880 and Roberts to Greaves, 21 February 1880 enclosing Massy’s defence; NAM, Gough papers 8304-32-220, 29 February 1880, italics original; Robson, Roberts in India, docs. 111-12,117-18, 134 & 146; see also MacGregor’s views, Trousdale, pp. 122-3 and NAM, Haines papers 8108/9/-40-4, Greaves to Haines, 2 March 1880. That Roberts had prepared the ground with his own letters is undoubted, as Robson shows; that this indicates he was wrong and Massy his rival as Trousdale claims is nonsense.
3. NAM, Haines papers, 8108/9-46-10, 13, 18, Cambridge to Haines, 5 & 26 March, 30 April 1880; Bobs 160, to Major General Martin Dillon, 23 February, 15 May & 9 June 1880; Robson, Roberts in India, p. 170; Soboleff, Anglo-Afghan Struggle, pp. 60-1: ‘We consider it necessary to state that ... the English cavalry did not show any aptitude for good work.’
4. MacGregor, III, appendix A; SO AS Library, Durand PP MS 55/21, 10 January 1880; Robson, Roberts in India, p. 432, n9 & nlO.
5. Blake, Disraeli, pp. 597-607, 670-5, 697-8 & 711-2; Feuchtwanger, Democracy and Empire, pp. 108-11; Roberts, History of British India, p. 447; Denholm, Anthony, Lord Ripon 1827-1909: A Political Biography, London, 1982, pp. 128-9.
6. NAM, Gough papers 8304-32-221, 5 March 1880; Elsmie, Stewart, p. 296; Heathcote, Afghan Wars, pp. 122-3 offers defence.
7. Robson, pp. 177-8; Robson, Roberts in India, p. 182.
8. MacGregor, IV, pp. 96-7; Robson, pp. 180-7; Heathcote, Afghan Wars, pp. 132-7. ‘A ram caught in a thicket’: Lytton, Personal and Literary Letters, ii, p. 202.
9. Heathcote, Afghan Wars, pp. 137-41; Elsmie, Stewart, pp. 331-3; IOL, L/MIL/5/683, No. 11,834 enclosing Stewart’s dispatch, 5 May 1880; IOL/P& S20/MEMO 3.
10. Maxwell, L., My God! Maiwand, London, 1979, pp. 56-7.
11. Elsmie, Stewart, pp. 321, 324 & 344.
12. Roberts, History of British India, p. 447.
13. IOL, Mss Eur. 108/98(b), P3/64, 13 April 1880; Robson, Roberts in India, p. 186; Elsmie, Stewart, p. 350, quoting letter to wife, 27 May 1880. The argument that Stewart’s march was forgotten, Roberts’s remembered, is specious. It got Stewart the Commander-in-Chiefship and was still argued in The Times nearly half a century later. The Times, 19 January 1929, p. 8, letter from ‘J.E.D’.
14. James, Lord Roberts, pp. 146-7; Heathcote, Afghan Wars, p. 144; Elsmie, Stewart, p. 360.
15. NLS, Melgund-Minto papers, Lady R to M, 24 March, 19 May & 24 August 1880; Trousdale, p. 204: ‘Did about as good a stroke of business as I have done for some time. Wrote a draft letter to Norman bucking up Bobs.’ Lady R’s brother-in-law J.D. Sherston wrote to The Times in April 1880 on Roberts’s behalf.
16. Balfour, Lord Lytton’s Indian Administration; Lutyens, Lyttons in India; Gopal, British Policy in India, pp. 115-27; Moon, British Conquest and Dominion of India, pp. 836-62; D. Washbrook, ‘Lytton’, ODNB. Charles Allen pointed out to me that recent economic historians have condemned Lytton’s policies. He is the particular villain of Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World, London, 2001.
17. Wolf, Ripon, II, p. 20; see also, Denholm, Lord Ripon.
18. Balfour, Lord Lytton’s Indian Administration, pp. 409 et seq.; Wolf, Ripon, II, pp. 21-4; Roberts, History of British India, pp. 446-9.
19. Robson, pp. 204-11; Elsmie, Stewart, pp. 365-6.
Chapter 9
1. Rait, Haines, p. 297nl.
2. Soboleff, Anglo-Afghan Struggle, pp. 264-8.
3. BL, Add Mss 43,574, Ripon papers, ff.141 et seq.; Wolf, Ripon, ii, pp. 28-9; Maxwell, My God! Maiwand, pp. 85-9 & 92-3.
4. MacGregor, V, pp. 331-5; Maxwell, My God! Maiwand; Heathcote, Afghan Wars; Robson, ‘Maiwand, 27 July 1880,’ JSAHR, vol. 51 (1973), pp. 194-221 and ibid., ‘The Kandahar Letters of the Rev. A. Cane,’ JSAHR, LXIX (1991), p. 206; The Times, 23 March 1883, G.W. Forrest’s account drawn from narratives of survivors; Anglesey, British Cavalry, III, pp. 252-63, for casualties.
5. IOL, Eus Mss F108/113, PP1/8, Lady Brooke to Mrs White, 13 August 1880.
6. Kandahar Correspondence, I. pp. 68, 74-74A, 223, Nos 197, 203 & 223; Elsmie, Stewart, pp. 375-6; Robson, pp. 210-11; Rait, Haines, pp. 306-9; Haines papers 8108/9-30, Nos 2 & 3, both Haines to Ripon, 1 August 1880; MacGregor in his diary records Stewart looking at a Roberts memorandum on 3 August which he did not like; by then the decision had been made. Trousdale, p. 220. White’s subsequent summary in IOL, Mss Eur. 108/2 dated Simla, 18 October 1880 is pertinent: ‘Roberts, a commander well known for his dash and administrative ability as a soldier, had volunteered to lead ten thousand men across Afghanistan from Kabul to Kandahar. This plan, warmly supported by the bolder spirits, awed the timid and shocked the men of rule. That General Ro
berts should be launched alone to struggle unsupported and without a base against the combinations which were sure to be organised against him seemed to the latter to be to send him to his destruction. There were others, however, who judged the emergency great enough, and the chances of success good enough, to set aside the usually accepted principles of theoretical warfare. Lord Ripon took upon himself the responsibility for Roberts’s march.’
7. Hensman, Afghan War, p. 444; NAM Badcock 2005-12-9-2 (1880 diary).
8. Robson, pp. 211-12; IOL, Mss Eur. F108/98(a), P3/75, 19 October 1880; Elsmie, Stewart, pp. 375-7 & 385-7.
9. Kandahar Correspondence, I, p. 124.
10. Ibid., I, p. 135.
11. IOL, Mss Eur. 1227/2, 9 August 1880.
12. Kandahar Correspondence, I, pp. 114, 125 & especially Chapman’s account, pp. 228a-230.
13. IOL, Mss Eur. C212/2, f. 62; Ashe, Major W., Personal Records of the Kandahar Campaign, London, 1881, pp. 127-9 gives an imaginative account, demolished by Lepel Griffin’s letter to The Times, 21 October 1881, p. 6 as ‘melodramatic trash, only fit for a South London music-hall’.
14. Travers, ‘Kabul to Kandahar 1880’, JSAHR, vol. 59 (1981), p. 216.
15. IOL, Mss Eur. D625/14, ‘Abstract’, 28 August 1880; NAM Warre papers, 8112/54-625 & 713, 3 September & 4 August 1880.
Chapter 10
1. Kandahar Correspondence: Appendix, item No. 2, pp. 2-3.
2. A. Forbes, Afghan Wars 1839-1842 & 1878-1880, London, 1892, pp. 307-9; Diver, M., Kabul to Kandahar, London, 1935, pp. 171-2.
3. Robertson, Kurum, Kabul and Kandahar, pp. 199-201.
4. Vaughan, My Service in the Indian Army, p. 230; Hensman, Afghan War, pp. 476 & 485.
5. Chapman, Lieutenant Colonel E.F., “The March from Kabul to Kandahar in August, and the Battle of the 1st September 1880/ Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, xxv (1882), pp. 282-315; NAM, Badcock 2005-12-9-2, 1880 diary, entries 3 August-1 September 1880, not all legible.
6. Kandahar Correspondence, appendix, pp. 7-11, No. 5; Roberts quote: James, Lord Roberts, p. 159.
7. Robson, ‘Kandahar Letters of Rev Cane’, pp. 216-18; Maxwell, My God! Maiwand, pp. 210-15.
8. Kandahar Correspondence: appendix, pp. 7-11, no. 5.
9. Trousdale, p. 237 n235; 41 Yrs, II, p. 354; Kandahar Correspondence, pp. 182-3 & 198a; James, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, pp. 159 & 160.
10. Vaughan, My Service in the Indian Army, p. 236; Travers, E., ‘Kabul to Kandahar, 1880: Extracts from the diary of Lieutenant E.A. Travers, 2nd PWO Goorkhas’, JSAHR, vol. 60 (1982), p. 39; IOL, Mss Eur F108/101(c ) & (d), P6/73, 6 September 1880; Hensman, Afghan War, p. 504; Robson, pp. 256-7; 41 Yrs, ii, p. 356; Robson, ‘Kandahar Letters of Reverend A. Cane’, p. 217; Gerard, Leaves from the Diary, p. 302.
11. MacGregor, VI, p. 29n; Cadell, Sir P., The Bombay Army, London, 1938, p. 244; Robson, pp. 251-3; Beckett, The Victorians at War, p. 50; WO106/63, Appendix XII.
12. NAM, Haines 8108/9-30, No. 11; Hensman, Afghan War, p. 522; Robertson, Kuram, Kabul and Kandahar, pp. 209-11; ‘Only a third had rifles’: MacGregor, V, p. 43.
13. Hanna, III, pp. 504 & 515; Hanna, Lord Roberts in War, p. 55.
14. Kandahar Correspondence, I, pp. 210 et seq., and especially No. 394, pp. 212-212a; MacGregor, V, pp. 135-41; Chapman, ‘Kabul to Kandahar’; Vaughan, My Service in the Indian Army, pp. 286-93; Robson, pp. 259-60; IOL, Mss Eur. F108/101(b) & (c), P6/73, 6 September 1880, White to his wife; Gerard, Leaves from the Diary, pp. 304-6; Robertson, Kurum, Kabul and Kandahar, p. 215.
15. Hensman, Afghan War, p. 521.
16. Travers, ‘Kabul to Kandahar’, JSAHR, 60 (1980), p. 38; Vaughan, My Service in the Indian Army, p. 240.
17. Vaughan, My Service in the Indian Army, p. 240.
18. Kandahar Correspondence, I, p. 220b, No. 613a.
19. Wolf, Ripon, II, pp. 32-3; Kandahar Correspondence, I, p. 208; Elsmie, Stewart, p. 388; Trousdale, pp. 239-40; James, Lord Roberts, p. 160.
20. ‘One dissenting voice’ ignores the snide comments of Wolseyites, Brigadier Baker Russell telling Wolseley it was ‘a most ill managed scramble.’ This is refuted by of all people the critical Hanna, see Lord Roberts in War, p. 55, ‘the battle of Kandahar was the battle of a good tactician ... General Roberts kept his troops well in hand, every division, brigade and regiment mutually supporting each other.’
21. Trousdale, pp. 63,125,129,154,159, 217, 221, 233, 236-7 & 239-40; on trying three columns, Travers, ‘Kabul to Kandahar’, p. 223. MacGregor agrees that three columns was a muddle, but blames MacPherson. His views on Roberts’s executions at Kabul stand up much better than those on his leadership.
22. Kandahar Correspondence, appendix, pp. 9-10, No. 5.
23. Bobs 5504 item No. 38, results of a medical board of officers, Kandahar, 8 September 1880. ‘Possible duodenal ulcer’: ibid., item Nos 39 and 40, orders from Adjutant General.
24. NLS, Melgund-Minto papers, 19 September 1880.
25. Hanna, III, p. 564 ; Robson, p. 277 and appendix 6 on p. 297 for the estimate of 1,850 dead in battle. Hanna, III, p. 564 thinks a figure of about 50,000 for overall losses on both sides not exaggerated.
26. Trousdale, p. 144.
27. Various newspapers in Bobs 139, vol. 1.
28. Vaughan, My Service in the Indian Army, pp. 224 & 229.
29. Bobs 139, vol. 8, The Manchester Guardian, 17 June 1893; Hanna, II, p. 291; Farwell, B., Seekers of Glory: Eminent Victorian Soldiers, New York, 1986, p. 174.
Chapter 11
1. Kandahar Correspondence, I, p. 356, Sir G. White’s memo No. 915. Also in Mss Eur F108/2, typescript memo, 18 September 1880.
2. IOL, L/MIL/5/684, No.14, 429.
3. Bobs 5504, item No. 38, 8 September 1880.
4. NAM, Haines papers 8108-9-46-37, 23 September 1880.
5. Hibbert, C, Queen Victoria in her Letters & Journals, London, 1984, p. 265.
6. James, Lord Roberts, pp. 175-6.
7. Ibid., p. 173; IOL, Mss Eur F243, 3, vol. Ill, 25 December 1882.
8. Durand, White, I, preface; Sykes, Durand, preface, pp. 11-12, 336, 341-2; Durand stood for Parliament in 1906 favouring Roberts’s national service; NAM 1969-03-8-40 photograph, for which I am grateful to Dr A. Massey and P. Dodd; MacGregor, III, pp. 60-70 & 73; B. Robson, ‘The Strange Case of the Missing Official History’, Soldiers of the Queen, 76 (March 1994), pp. 3-6; NAM, Gough papers 8304-32-221, 5 March 1880; see also Younghusband, Story of the Guides, pp. 115-16.
9. Spiers, E., The Late Victorian Army 1868-1902, Manchester, 1992, pp. 2-24; Barnett, Corelli, Britain and Her Army 1509-1974, London, 1974, pp. 304-10. Sir J. Fortescue’s classic History of the British Army ends with a brief nod at Cardwell.
10. James, Lord Roberts, pp. 170-1; NAM, Haines papers 8108/9-47-7, 18 February 1881.
11. Churchill College, Cambridge, Amery papers, AMEL2/5/2, Gen Beckett to Amery, 30 March 1903.
12. Hamilton, Ian, Listening for the Drums, London, 1944; Strachan, Politics of the British Army, pp. 95-6; Beckett, I.F.W., ‘Wolseley and the Ring,’ Soldiers of the Queen 69 (June 1992), pp. 14-25; ‘musical chairs’: Preston, ‘Wolseley, the Khartoum Relief Expedition and the Defence of India’, p. 272.
13. Carrington, C, Rudyard Kipling, London, 1955, pp. 82-3.
14. MacGregor’s death: Life & Opinions, II, p. 397.
15. IOL, Mss Eur F108/101(i), P6/312, 30 October 1899 & 101(e), P6/180, 8 January 1887.
16. NAM, Gough papers, 8304-32-350 to 357; Hanna, I, preface & III, pp. 550-8; Hanna, Lord Roberts in War.
17. Bobs 139, vol. 10 for reviews of 41Yrs; for Rawlinson and Pole-Carew letters, ibid. 61/6 & 59/23; W. Churchill’s mother: Churchill, Randolph, Winston Churchill: Companion Volume I, Part 2,1896-1900, London, 1967, p. 744.
18. Elsmie, Stewart, pp. 406-23.
19. Ibid., p. 411.
20. Robson, Roberts in India, p. 325.
21. Ibid., pp. 232, 317 & 324-5.
22. The Times, 27 March 1900, p. 9. A
lso Chapman, Lieutenant Colonel E.F., ‘Two years under Field Marshal Sir Donald Stewart in Afghanistan 1878-80’, originally published in Bhckwoods Magazine, Edinburgh, 1902, pp. 255-63.
23. Much of the latter part of this chapter is covered in my article in Beckett, I.F.W., The Victorians at War: New Perspectives (Special Publication of the Society for Army Historical Research, No. 16, 2007), pp. 59-74; letter from Lieutenant General G. Ellison to The Times, 3 October 1932, p. 10, and Ellison, ‘Lord Roberts and the General Staff/ The Nineteenth Century and After (December, 1932), pp. 722-32.
24. Brett, M.V. (ed.), Journal and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher, 4 vols, London, 1934-8), I, p. 432.
25. d’Ombrain, N., War Machinery and High Policy: Defence administration in peacetime Britain 1902-1914, Oxford, 1975, pp. 141 et seq.
26. IOL, Mss Eur. D951/3, f.223 Lady R to Sir O.T. Burne.
27. The Times, 24 December 1907, p. 6.
28. Roberts’s daughter’s account, Bobs 205; Sir John French’s words, The Illustrated War News, Part 15, 18 November 1914; Rawlinson, Major General Sir F. Maurice, The Life of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent, London, 1928, p. 116; Scottish Rifles: Imperial War Museum, the 1912-1922 Memoirs of Captain M.D. Kennedy.
29. Spear, Oxford History of India, p. 256; Sykes, Durand, pp. 218-23; Robson, pp. 277-8.
Select Bibliography
Manuscript and Other Sources
British Library: India Office Library
Mss Eur. A208, Roberts to ‘Lady Dorothy’.
Mss Eur. A164, two letters from Roberts to Sir Donald Stewart.
Mss Eur. C212, three albums of newspaper cuttings 2nd Afghan War.
Mss Eur. C262, journal of Hugh Bixby Luard.
Mss Eur. C336/10, notes by Sir Torick Ameer Ali on Roberts, Lockwood Kipling and the 2nd Afghan War.
Mss Eur. C405, ‘Recollections of the Cabul Campaign, 1879 and 1880’ by Colonel Joshua Duke (1847–1920), Indian Medical Service 1868–1902, 1914–1917; privately printed version 1882, annotated by Field Marshal Sir Frederick Sleigh, 1st Earl Roberts of Kandahar, then Commander-in-Chief, Madras Army.
The March to Kandahar- Roberts in Afghanistan Page 22