Retreat from Kabul: The First Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-1842 (Conflicts of Empire)

by George Bruce

  The prisoners were taken before the Shah, who questioned them about what he termed their rebellion and treason. Sir Alexander Burnes, who was present, says that one of them shouted that he would glory in taking the Shah’s life, because he was an infidel and he had brought into the country a whole army of infidels. To show that he was a man of his word, he drew a dagger and plunged it into the heart of one of the Shah’s attendants.

  The Shah’s cruel and vengeful nature now asserted itself and he ordered all but two of the forty-six prisoners — these two he pardoned — to be beheaded. They were dragged away.

  According to a British officer present, they were first tortured. ‘I was walking in the camp,’ he relates, ‘and came upon the King’s tents, at the rear of which I saw a fearfully bloody sight. There were forty or fifty men, young and old. Many were dead, others at their last gasp; others with their hands tied behind them; some sitting, others standing, awaiting their doom; and the King’s executioners and other servants amusing themselves (for actually they were laughing and joking and seemed to look upon the work as good fun) with hacking and maiming the poor wretches indiscriminately with their long swords and knives. I was so horrified at coming so suddenly upon such a scene of blood, that I was, for the instant, as it were spellbound. On inquiry I ascertained that the King had ordered this wholesale murder…’

  Keane, no doubt desperate with anxiety, was meantime at work in his tent on the details of the orders for the storming of Ghazni in the early hours of the next day. They were completed and made known to no one but the few senior officers in command later that evening.

  The entire army was now aware of its danger — and that the lives of all of them depended upon their being able somehow to burst into the great grey fortress towering above them on its rocky base and overcome the garrison. One can imagine how forlorn a hope it must have seemed to the English soldiery, awaiting this battle which could have no other end for them but victory — or death.

  To young Lieutenant Tom Holdsworth, of the Queen’s Royals, about to go into battle for the first time, the tension of the last hours of 22 July was by no means pleasant. ‘That day I shall never forget,’ he wrote to his father at home in Camberley. ‘It was a dismal one… There was a nervous irritability and excitement about us the whole day; constantly looking at the place through spy-glasses, etc.; and then fellows began to make their wills and tell each other what they wished to have done in case they fell; altogether it was not very pleasant and many longed most heartily for the morrow and to have it over. I felt as I used to do when I was a child and knew I must take a black dose or have a tooth drawn the next morning.

  ‘We were to be formed ready for the attack at 2 a.m., close to a high pillar, about half a mile from the fort. We were to advance under cover of the artillery, who were to fire over and clear the walls for us.

  ‘I laid down in my cloak directly after mess and being dreadfully tired never slept more soundly than I did the night before the storming of Ghazni.’

  Throughout the whole army, waiting that windy night within gunshot of the great fortress, there must have been tension, anxiety and dread. Had they not tempted fortune too far? Was their fate not now beyond recall?

  CHAPTER TEN

  The assault on Ghazni on 23 July 1839 hardly ranks as a textbook example of a classic storming attack. The outcome depended solely upon success in blowing up the Kabul gateway — a tactical move that normally would have been one of perhaps several others upon which victory depended.

  But in terms of daring, of courage, of single-minded determination to do or die, it ranks high. It is unique too in that all was over in so short a space of time — the outcome was decided almost at once.

  Pictorially, the scene could not have been bettered. The fighting was concentrated in one small area. On the hills overlooking the fortress or peering through one of the narrow windows of the citadel itself, high above the walls, an observer could see it all and tell by the rattle of musketry, the crash of steel, the shrieks of men locked in close and bloody combat how the assault progressed.

  For the British, all hung upon the courage and luck of the explosion party in reaching the gate under heavy fire — upon their skill in blasting it open, and upon the determination of Colonel Dennie’s storming party, which was to burst through the smoke and debris and clear the defenders for the main body of troops.

  The night of 22/23 July was dark and windy, favourable for screening the movements of the attackers. The artillery, some forty guns in all, moved off at midnight to take up as silently as possible chosen positions within 300 yards of the Kabul gate in a line facing the north-eastern walls. At the same time a regiment of Indian cavalry and three companies of sepoys marched round to the southern walls. There, under Captain Hay, they were to make a feint attack to draw away the defenders.

  During these movements, according to Lieutenant Henry Havelock, the wind blew strongly in gusts from the east, and occasionally loudly enough to muffle the tramp of the infantry columns and the rattle of artillery wheels. Led by Colonel Dennie, a tough and experienced fighting soldier who could be relied upon never to give in, 240 picked men of the Queen’s, the 17th, the 102nd and the 13th Foot assembled at the point of rendezvous half a mile from the fortress in readiness for their vital role as storming party.

  Behind them waited the remainder of the Queen’s Regiment and the 102nd Foot, all nominally at least, under the command of Brigadier-General Sale. A party of marksmen from the 13th and 17th Foot had already by 12.30 a.m. hidden themselves upon both sides of the gate, ready to give covering fire to the explosion party.

  Finally, Colonel Stalker with the Bombay 19th Native Infantry made ready to ward off any possible attack by Dost Mahommed’s army from the direction of Kabul.

  Orders were that these first movements should be carried out in dead silence, but the jingle of harness, the rattle of artillery wheels and the tread of the infantry were heard above the roaring wind. Yet the Afghans took no action, seemingly lulled into a false sense of security by the British failure to attack the night before.

  Earlier, the explosion party had assembled a few hundred yards from the moat bridge. They were Captain Peat, Lieutenants Durand and Macleod, and three sergeants, followed by eighteen Indian sappers carrying between them a 72-foot-long fuse and twelve sandbags, each of which held 25 lb. of gunpowder — 300 lb. in all, a massive charge, enough not just to blow down the gate, but to shatter it and the surrounding wall too.

  A minute after three o’clock, says Durand, ‘the morning star was high in the heavens and the first red streak of dawn had appeared’, when Captain Peat led his men in a steady walk through the twilight towards the bridge over the moat and the towering silent ramparts. At first all went well.

  The fifty yards away a hoarse challenge rang out from the ramparts and a few seconds later came a shot. Brilliant blue lights flared, a volley of jezail fire crashed from the loopholes and the crackle of muskets from Captain Hay’s feint attack echoed distantly. Angrily, the artillery opened up with a roar that reverberated between the fortress and the surrounding hills like a number of great metal doors slamming. Ghazni was under attack.

  Bullets ricocheted off the bridge as the explosion party crossed. Every loophole flashed fire, yet no shots came from the stone outer-works beside the bridge; the party crossed unharmed. Peat and a few infantrymen occupied a sally-port ready to repel any sortie from within.

  Amid the whine of musket rounds, Durand coolly edged along the foot of the fortress wall and set the first powder-bag with its attached fuse firmly at the foot of the gate. Through the gaps in the wood as he bent down he saw the Afghan guard sitting smoking, jezails in hand in fancied security.

  But the defenders above had left their loopholes for the ramparts to take better aim and hurl down huge pieces of masonry at the sepoys below hurriedly staking the bags under Macleod’s watchful eye. They received only glancing blows and the entire 300 lb. of gunpowder were piled against the huge gat
e.

  Durand and Robertson had meanwhile carefully uncoiled the fuse across the bridge. By another stroke of good luck it reached precisely to the sheltering sally-port there. Durand skipped into it and tried to light the fuse, blowing hard at the slow-match but failing to ignite it — had the fuse been even a yard shorter he would have been a certain target crouching in the open, with the light in his hands.

  When the fuse finally blazed, it went out as soon as he put it on the ground. In the partial shelter of the sally-port, Durand drew his pistol ready to flash the fuse, but first held it against the slow-match and once more blew hard. This time it burned steadily and after watching the flame creep over the bridge towards the gate Durand and Robertson ran back for cover towards their own lines.

  Confusion now followed. Durand shouted for Peat, to say that all was well and that his bugler could sound the advance to Dennie’s storming party. But Peat somehow missed him and fearing that both Durand and Robertson had been shot down, he crossed the bridge to find out what had happened just as the 300 lb. of gunpowder flashed with a deafening roar.

  The blast threw him head over heels and stunned him. He came to a minute later and stumbled through the darkness up to the gateway to see whether there was a clear passage for the assault. He saw only Afghan swordsmen on the far side of a pile of masonry and feared in his dazed state that the assault had failed.

  Durand, meanwhile, certain that the gate was down, looked for a bugler to sound the assault. But Peat’s bugler was dead, shot through the head.

  The fire from the battlements was heavy. Durand ran to an officer with the nearest group of skirmishers and asked for a bugler to sound the advance. Stupidly, this officer told him not to draw down fire upon the men by speaking and to apply for the bugler through the normal channels.

  Knowing that with every moment the element of surprise would be lost as the Afghans reinforced the breach, Durand did not stop to argue but turned and ran back desperately towards the troops’ assembly point. On the way he met Broadfoot, another engineer officer, who took over and, says Durand, gave Sale the news.

  But meanwhile, Dennie, who had followed closely behind the explosion party had saved the day. Without waiting for the signal had led his men in a furious rush over the bridge into fierce hand-to-hand fighting with Afghan swordsmen in the ruined gateway. In the smoke and dark-blue gloom sword-blade clashed against bayonet, shouts and cries of struggling, wounded men rang out.

  Led by Dennie, thrusting with his sword, the storming party won through to a wider, domed building leading from the gateway. Each section fired, then made way for the next one, all in turn pouring a deadly volley at the packed defenders. With a final bayonet charge they won through into an open square of the town and saw the stars twinkling above.

  Hyder Ali, the Governor, was at this time hotly debating with his chiefs in a council of war up in the citadel, the vital issue of where the women should be hidden to protect them from possible violation. Suddenly they heard the explosion rumble and the boom of the artillery, but they still had no idea that the British were in until the volleys of Dennie’s storming party crashed out in the streets below. Then there was panic among them.

  Dennie, once inside, should be rights have occupied the ramparts on both sides of the gate, so as to secure command of it and leave the glory of exploiting his own initial victory to Sale. But disdaining such a static role and seeing no sign of Sale’s men, he and the storming party with alternate volleys of musketry and bursts of cheering fought their way against the defenders up the steep winding streets into the town.

  It was as well that they did, for confusion had beset Sale and the main force. Dennie related: ‘Captain Thomson, commanding Engineers, who remained outside, under cover… perceiving that the advance had won the entrance, and hearing our cheers, followed by heavy firing, became anxious about the little band, apparently severely opposed, and sent Lieutenant Pigou to find Brigadier Sale and the main column.

  ‘He went back all the way to the minar and there he found Sale’s party — sitting down, and some fallen out. He communicated his message of our being in…’

  Sale then marched his men towards the bridge. Tom Holdsworth noted the scene on the way — ‘Whilst we were marching down to the attack the fire on both sides was at its height… I caught myself once or twice trying to make myself as small as I could.

  ‘As we got nearer the gate it grew worse and the enemy, from their loopholes began to pepper us. They threw out blue lights… which looked beautiful and the flames of their and our artillery, together with smaller flashes from the matchlock men… the roar of their big guns, the whizzing of their cannon balls and ours, the sighings of the bullets… made up as pretty a row as one would wish to hear.’

  Not far from the bridge, at the head of his column, Sale now met Peat, who, still half-concussed, called out — ‘Don’t go on — it’s a failure!’ Without even halting his men and sending scouts ahead to see what had happened, Sale ordered Bugler Wilson to sound the retire at once and his column went right about and retraced their steps.

  Dennie and the small storming party in the fortress were now isolated. It was a critical situation. Once having recovered from their surprise, the Afghans could subdue them by sheer weight of numbers.

  But Captain Thomson, still waiting at the bridge for the main column, grew desperate, finally ran back himself, overtook Sale as he marched back the way he had come and breathlessly assured him that Dennie was in and that for some considerable time.

  Bugler Wilson, described by one officer as ‘the best bugler I ever had’ possessed a small, shrill Light Infantry brass bugle that amid the greatest din was audible at some distance. Standing beside Sale he now piercingly sounded the ‘advance double’ without waiting for orders and so loudly that despite the crash of gunfire the column heard it and at once retraced their steps, finally crossing the bridge under heavy fire.

  At the gateway a violent rush of Afghan swordsmen drove the foremost of them back. Among others, Lieutenant Stock was knocked down. ‘I felt myself sinking amongst heaps of rubbish and broken timber,’ he related. ‘The first solid support I met with was the face of a dead man. With this for a point d’appui I contrived to rise and assisted in rallying the men.

  ‘To it we went again, under the inspiring influence of a British cheer, and this time charged so rapidly that we… contrived to get through all the cuttings, stabbing and shooting unscathed… The leading and particularly the rear companies were more roughly handled — some of the men literally cut to pieces.’

  Brigadier Sale was leading his men in another charge over the shattered timbers when an Afghan swordsman wounded him in the face, knocked him down and sprang on him to finish him off. Captain Kershaw of the 13th Foot thrust his sword clean through the Afghan’s body, ‘but still the desperado continued to struggle with frantic violence’.

  He wounded Sale again and the struggle ended only when Sale got his sword arm free and cleaved his attacker’s skull to the eyebrows. ‘Oh God!’ the Afghan was said to have cried, and, not surprisingly ‘never moved or spoke again’.

  Dennie’s four companies were now hard pressed. The Afghan garrison had made furious rallies, but the arrival of the main column and soon the reserve under Colonel Croker altered the balance. Through the narrow streets, pungent with the reek of gun smoke, the redcoats attacked mercilessly. The Afghans opened fire from balconies and windows — fifty of them died defending one tall building. Hundreds of frightened horses kicked and fought in the streets.

  Among the defenders, ‘there was horrible confusion and much carnage’, Kay relates. ‘Some, in their frantic efforts to escape by the gateway, stumbled over the burning timbers, wounded and exhausted, and were slowly burnt to death. Some were bayoneted on the ground. Others were pursued and hunted into corners like mad dogs and shot down with the curse and the prayer on their lips.’

  But the citadel above the town was undefended and by sunrise British colours fluttered from t
he battlements. Hyder Khan, the governor, was found hiding in a house with his women and given into the charge of Captain Burnes.

  Within two hours Ghazni had fallen — the British army was saved.

  More than 1,200 Afghan defenders were killed in this desperate assault, several hundred wounded, 1,600 unwounded made prisoner, while a few hundred escaped. British losses were 17 men killed and 165, including 18 officers, wounded.

  The capture of Ghazni was a brilliant but lucky achievement, for had the assault been launched even an hour later, it might well have been too late. Meer Ufzul Khan, the ‘fighting son’ of Dost Mahommed, was afterwards found to have been close on the British camp with 5,000 cavalry.

  He heard the firing as he approached, just after dawn, and soon the British flag waving from the citadel showed him that he was too late. He turned and fled hurriedly to Kabul, leaving scores of elephants and tons of baggage behind him six miles from the camp; these were swiftly seized by the British the next day.

  Moreover, an enormous amount of booty in Ghazni fell into British hands — about 3,000 horses — for the Afghans had rather absurdly stationed a force of cavalry inside, instead of out in the country where it could attack; nine artillery guns of various calibres with more than 2,000 rounds; 22,000 lb. of gunpowder, hundreds of flintlock and matchlock guns and pistols; and, most important, 80,000 lb. of flour, 354,000 lb. of wheat, 74,000 lb. of barley, 3,500 lb. of peas and smaller quantities of salt and various other edibles. For the first time for weeks the army was put on full rations — one of the fruits of victory.

  Keane was lucky in having engineer officers like Peat, Thomson and Durand, no less than fine fighting soldiers like Dennie and troops of the calibre of the storming party to save the day for him. But he took much of the credit for himself. And in a dispatch to the Governor-General magnified the exploit so much that it needed more words than Wellington’s report on the Battle of Waterloo.