The March to Kandahar- Roberts in Afghanistan

by Rodney Atwood

  11. The Amir Abdur Rahman. Lytton’s ‘ram caught in a thicket’, an astute but brutal ruler who helped Roberts’s march to speed British departure and the defeat of his main rival. He ruled Afghanistan for thirty-nine years. (British Library, the India Office collection)

  12. Crossing the Zamburak Kotal on the Kabul-to-Kandahar March by Louis William Desanges. Desanges was not in Afghanistan, but his painting, completed in 1882 for Queen Victoria, does catch the disorderly appearance of the column on the march amidst looming mountains. (Courtesy of both Garen Ewing and the Royal Artillery Institute)

  13. The battle outside Kandahar. Boy’s Own history come true as George White leads the Gordons to victory. For the magazine he is drawn in traditional scarlet, not the new-fangled khaki which British and Indians wore in Afghanistan. The heroism of Gurkhas, Sikhs and Scotsmen confirmed Roberts in his view of the superiority of the ‘martial races’. (Mary Evans Picture Library)

  14. Hardinge (left, Bombay), Roberts (centre, Madras) and Stewart (right, Bengal), the three Indian Army commanders-in-chief when Stewart was in overall charge, gathered for a ‘camp of exercise’, i.e. combined manoeuvres; although junior, Roberts seems to be giving the instructions. (National Army Museum, Roberts Collection)