Misjidi, were dead. Abdullah Khan had died of those injuries sustained during the battle for the Bemaru Hills which had caused the insurgents temporarily to fall back. Mir Misjidi had simply vanished. One Afghan employed by Mohan Lal claimed to have shot Abdullah Khan with a poisoned musket ball from behind a wall during the fighting, while another asserted he had strangled Mir Misjidi while he slept and then disposed of his body. Both demanded the promised blood money. Mohan Lal refused to pay up—in Abdullah Khan’s case because he doubted the truth of the supposed killer’s story and in the case of Mir Misjidi because the assassin could not produce the head as proof.
Whatever his precise role in engineering what were clearly political killings, Mohan Lal rightly assessed that the fate of the British depended on the wishes of the Afghan people and their chiefs. On 24 November Osman Khan sent an envoy to the cantonments offering terms. As Lady Sale wrote that day, “They say they do not wish to harm us, if we will only go away; but that go we must and give them back the Dost; that Mohammed Akbar Khan (his son) will be here tomorrow with 6,000 men; and that if we do not come to terms, they will carry the cantonment; and that they are ready to sacrifice 6,000 men to do so.”
Despite the bellicose undertones, the offer was a relief to Elphinstone at least. Macnaghten asked him for his formal opinion in writing, presumably to produce in any future inquiry, on whether the British could maintain a military presence in Afghanistan any longer. Elphinstone for once was utterly decisive: “ I beg to state that, after having held our position here for upwards of three weeks in a state of siege, from the want of provisions and forage, the reduced state of our troops, the large number of wounded and sick, the difficulty of defending the extensive and ill-situated cantonment we occupy, the near approach of winter, our communications cut off, no prospect of relief, and the whole country in arms against us, I am of the opinion that it is not feasible any longer to maintain our position in this country, and that you ought to avail yourself of the offer to negotiate which has been made to you.”
Epilogue
Remember the rights of the savage as we call him … remember the happiness of his humble home … the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows is as inviolable in the eyes of Almighty God as can be your own.
—WILLIAM GLADSTONE, PRIME MINISTER OF BRITAIN, 1879
Now was the time for analysis and blame-sharing. Sir Jasper Nicolls, commander in chief in India, wrote to Ellenborough, succinctly listing eight reasons for the campaign’s failure.
1st:
Making war with a peace establishment.
2nd:
Making war without a safe base of operations.
3rd:
Carrying our native army … into a strange and cold climate, where they and we were foreigners, and both considered as infidels.
4th:
Invading a poor country, and one unequal to supply our wants, especially our large establishment of cattle.
5th:
Giving undue power to political agents.
6th:
Want of forethought and undue confidence in the Afghans on the part of Sir William Macnaghten.
7th:
Placing our magazines, even our treasure, in indefensible places.
8th:
Great military neglect and mismanagement after the outbreak.
His reasons, all valid, contain a mix of the political and the military, the strategic and the tactical. There is no doubt that the military disaster on the scale that occurred on the retreat from Kabul could have been avoided by better leadership of the army in Kabul.
Back in Britain, politicians and others concentrated on the political and moral aspects, both more subjective and more difficult to analyze. Sir John Kaye, the historian who collected many of the primary documents and indeed published in full those that had been expurgated or omitted from the government’s publication justifying the war in 1839, saw the hand of God in the
Whatever his precise role in engineering what were clearly political killings, Mohan Lal rightly assessed that the fate of the British depended on the wishes of the Afghan people and their chiefs. On 24 November Osman Khan sent an envoy to the cantonments offering terms. As Lady Sale wrote that day, “They say they do not wish to harm us, if we will only go away; but that go we must and give them back the Dost; that Mohammed Akbar Khan (his son) will be here tomorrow with 6,000 men; and that if we do not come to terms, they will carry the cantonment; and that they are ready to sacrifice 6,000 men to do so.”
Despite the bellicose undertones, the offer was a relief to Elphinstone at least. Macnaghten asked him for his formal opinion in writing, presumably to produce in any future inquiry, on whether the British could maintain a military presence in Afghanistan any longer. Elphinstone for once was utterly decisive: “ I beg to state that, after having held our position here for upwards of three weeks in a state of siege, from the want of provisions and forage, the reduced state of our troops, the large number of wounded and sick, the difficulty of defending the extensive and ill-situated cantonment we occupy, the near approach of winter, our communications cut off, no prospect of relief, and the whole country in arms against us, I am of the opinion that it is not feasible any longer to maintain our position in this country, and that you ought to avail yourself of the offer to negotiate which has been made to you.”
Epilogue
Remember the rights of the savage as we call him … remember the happiness of his humble home … the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows is as inviolable in the eyes of Almighty God as can be your own.
—WILLIAM GLADSTONE, PRIME MINISTER OF BRITAIN, 1879
Now was the time for analysis and blame-sharing. Sir Jasper Nicolls, commander in chief in India, wrote to Ellenborough, succinctly listing eight reasons for the campaign’s failure.
1st:
Making war with a peace establishment.
2nd:
Making war without a safe base of operations.
3rd:
Carrying our native army … into a strange and cold climate, where they and we were foreigners, and both considered as infidels.
4th:
Invading a poor country, and one unequal to supply our wants, especially our large establishment of cattle.
5th:
Giving undue power to political agents.
6th:
Want of forethought and undue confidence in the Afghans on the part of Sir William Macnaghten.
7th:
Placing our magazines, even our treasure, in indefensible places.
8th:
Great military neglect and mismanagement after the outbreak.
His reasons, all valid, contain a mix of the political and the military, the strategic and the tactical. There is no doubt that the military disaster on the scale that occurred on the retreat from Kabul could have been avoided by better leadership of the army in Kabul.
Back in Britain, politicians and others concentrated on the political and moral aspects, both more subjective and more difficult to analyze. Sir John Kaye, the historian who collected many of the primary documents and indeed published in full those that had been expurgated or omitted from the government’s publication justifying the war in 1839, saw the hand of God in the
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