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    Battle Story: Maiwand 1880
    Battle Story: Maiwand 1880
    Battle Story: Maiwand 1880
    Ebook212 pages2 hours

    Battle Story: Maiwand 1880

    By Edmund Yorke

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    The Battle of Maiwand was a key clash in the Second Anglo-Afghan War and one of the most serious defeats of the British Army during the ‘Great Game’. British and Indian troops, in an attempt to intercept Afghan forces at the Maiwand Pass, disastrously underestimated the strength of the enemy and were heavily defeated. If you want to understand what happened and why – read Battle Story.Detailed profiles explore the personalities of the British and Afghan leaders, Brigadier General George Burrows and Ayub Khan.Diary extracts and quotes detail the intense fighting and the causes of the British defeat.Maps examine the movements of the British and Afghan forces as they clashed at the Maiwand PassContemporary images place the reader at the forefront of the unfolding action.Orders of battle show the composition of the opposing forces’ armies.Packed with fact boxes, this short introduction is the perfect way to explore this crucial battle.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateMar 1, 2013
    ISBN9780752492551
    Battle Story: Maiwand 1880

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      Book preview

      Battle Story - Edmund Yorke

      For Louise, Madeleine and Emily

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      Several individuals and key institutions have played a significant role in the research and production of this book. The archival and library staff of The National Army Museum; British Library, London; the Rifles Museum, Salisbury; (especially Curator Lieutenant Colonel Cornwall and his curatorial assistant, Mr McIntyre) and the Ghurka Museum, Winchester have been particularly helpful in regard to access to the papers of Lord Roberts and Lord Lytton and to a selection of the many first-hand accounts, letters and diaries of the British survivors of Maiwand.

      At the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the library and archival staff of the Royal Military Academy Library and Archives, notably Senior Librarian Andrew Orgill, Deputy Librarian, John Pearce and Assistant Ken Franklin have also been extremely supportive especially in regard to access to the Hogg Papers and many rare regimental histories and memoirs. Several academic colleagues , notably Director of Studies, Mr Sean McKnight, Head of War Studies, Dr Duncan Anderson, Retired Sandhurst curator Dr Tony Heathcote and Senior Lecturer Dr Gregory Fremont-Barnes have also been a source of great encouragement and advice, and the latter has kindly provided some valuable images from his private collection.

      I would also like to thank my great friend Lieutenant Colonel Ian Bennett (RASC/RCT retired) whose close links to the Royal Berkshire Regiment have proved invaluable. Dr John Peaty of the Defence Geographical Centre supplied some valuable maps. Friends of the Ghurka Museum, Alan (RMP retired) and Jacqui Marsh have also been of great help. At The History Press, Jo de Vries and her editorial team, especially Paul Baillie-Lane, must also be congratulated for their great patience, support and efficiency in the publication of this work.

      Above all, I must thank my parents and wider family, and also my wife Louise and my two delightful daughters, Madeleine and Emily, for their steadfast loyalty, love and support during the hectic days and weeks preparing this work for publication.

      CONTENTS

      Title

      Dedication

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      Timeline

      Historical Background

      Uneasy Peace 1843–63

      ‘Russophobia’ Revived

      Descent into Conflict 1874–78

      The Outbreak of War 1878

      The Armies

      The British and their Allies

      The Afghan Forces

      The Days Before Battle

      The Battle of Peiwar Kotal

      The Campaign of the Peshawar Valley Field Force

      The Campaign of the Kandahar Field Force

      The Massacre of the Cavagnari Mission, September 1879

      The Second ‘Revenge Campaign’; Charasia to Maiwand, 1879–1880

      Arrival at Kabul

      The Siege and Defence of Sherpur

      The Battle of Ahmed Khel

      The Battlefield: What Actually Happened?

      Crisis in the South; The Road to Maiwand

      The Battle of Maiwand

      After the Battle

      The Kabul to Kandahar Relief Force

      The Battle of Deh Khoja

      End Game: The Battle of Kandahar,

      September 1880

      The Legacy

      Political Legacies

      Military Legacies

      Legacies for the Afghan People

      Orders of Battle

      Further Reading

      Copyright

      INTRODUCTION

      Poor young Olivey, 66th, who was carrying one of the Colours was asked by a sergeant to let him carry it as he (young Olivey) was wounded … He threatened to shoot the sergeant with his revolver and said he would rather die by the colour than relinquish it in defeat. He was shot dead five minutes later.

      Captain Slade, RHA, to his mother

      (Rifles Museum Archives (hereafter RMA))

      It was mid-September, 1880 and they were following back along the line of retreat taken by Brigadier-General Burrows’ shattered brigades after their disastrous encounter with Sirdar Ayub Khan, Ruler of Herat … They began to find desiccated bodies, more and more until over a hundred soldiers corpses had been discovered, all that was left of the poor wretches who had given up or lain down to die, or had been attacked by the local villagers … a move forward over to the scene of fighting … the European and Indian bodies had been left lying where they were under burning sun or sheeting rain until a hasty internment had been carried out...

      Description of the first visit to Maiwand battlefield by burial parties of the 2nd Bombay Infantry Brigade, September 1880 (extracted from Maxwell, My God Maiwand, pp.1–3)

      The Battle of Maiwand, fought on 27 July 1880 constitutes one of the most devastating military disasters of Queen Victoria’s Afghan campaign. After a string of victories at Peiwar Kotal, Ali Masjid, Futtehabad, Charasia, Sherpur and Ahmed Khel, achieved over two campaigns in Afghanistan, both Gladstone’s Liberal government and the Victorian public were profoundly shocked by the scale of this defeat. Brigadier General Burrows’ 2,700-man brigade suffered 43 per cent casualties with 21 officers and 948 men killed and 169 wounded, in addition to around 800 native followers and drivers who perished alongside them. The six companies of the 66th Foot, Royal Berkshires, comprising 516 men, alone lost 286 officers and men, a 62 per cent loss. Only a very few other Victorian defeats exceeded such a high mortality rate, notably Isandlwana, fought over eighteen months earlier, where more than 20,000 Zulu warriors destroyed a 1,700-strong British garrison, (over 75 per cent killed) and the retreat from Kabul in the First Anglo-Afghan War, when a 16,500-strong British army was virtually annihilated by an estimated 10,000-strong Afghan insurgent force (over 90 per cent killed).

      The main aim of this short introductory book, deploying my own recent primary resourced research and the views of many contemporary accounts and several leading experts, is to present for non-specialists and general military history enthusiasts, a clear and hopefully balanced and concise narrative of this famous battle. To tell the story completely, we will have to touch on the details of the main preliminary battles as well as the hitherto neglected and often vital political, economic and military support afforded to the British by their indigenous Tajik, Hazara and Qizilbash allies. Sadly, as we shall see, these loyal, if sometimes intractable and unpredictable, allies were not present to assist the British at the Battle of Maiwand. The opinions expressed in this work are my own and do not reflect those of the Ministry of Defence, or Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

      TIMELINE

      HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

      The origins of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) and the great disaster of Maiwand can traced back to the outbreak of ‘Russophobia’ in the early nineteenth century, Britain’s prolonged fears of a Russian invasion of India, the ‘jewel in the Crown’ of her expanding empire. After successfully repelling and deterring French Napoleonic threats to India before 1815, Britain entered into an increasingly tense relationship with the Russian Empire, her erstwhile ally in the struggle against Napoleon. By the mid-1830s the deepening Russian friendship with Persia and the alleged pro-Russian sympathies of the neighbouring Afghan Amir, Dost Mohammed, seriously alarmed the British authorities. In what became known as the ‘Great Game’, Britain again launched a number of diplomatic missions to neighbouring independent states such as Persia, Sind and the Sikh Kingdom in the Punjab to secure influence against perceived Russian political infiltration. Matters came to a head when the hard-pressed Dost Mohammed allowed a Russian envoy, Lieutenant Vitkevitch, to officially reside at his court in Kabul. The invasion of Afghanistan by a Russian-backed Persian army seeking to capture the long-claimed key strategic city of Herat in September 1837 proved to be the final straw. It convinced Lord Auckland, the recently arrived British Governor General in Calcutta, that this was the prelude to a major Russian invasion of Afghanistan with dire implications for the future security of the Raj.

      Map of the campaign in Afghanistan, highlighting significant battles: Peiwar Kotal, Ali Masjid, Ahmed Khel, Charasia, Maiwand and Kandahar.

      On 1 October 1838, Auckland issued his Simla Manifesto, which, by accusing Dost Mohammed of organising a conspiracy against British India, effectively represented a declaration of war against Afghanistan. An alliance under the Tripartite Treaty had been earlier constructed (June 1838) with the powerful Sikh Kingdom and an Afghan army-in-exile led by the deposed Afghan Amir, Shah Shuja. During the next few months an invading and supporting army totalling over 40,000 men was mobilised and, after an arduous 1,200-mile (2,000km) journey and a major victory at Ghazni in July 1839, the ‘puppet’ Amir Shuja entered Kabul on the back of British gold and bayonets for what turned out to be a corrupt rule lasting barely three years and culminated in his own brutal assassination. The infamous and tragic story of the British occupation (see Yorke, Kabul 1841–2) has been recounted many times before, but a combination of political, military and financial overstretch and incompetence, combined with an underlying fundamental misunderstanding of Afghan culture, led to a jihad, or national religious uprising, spearheaded by the exiled Dost Mohammed’s son, Akbar Khan, which surrounded and eventually destroyed the main 5,500-strong British garrison at Kabul. The Deputy Envoy, Sir Alexander Burnes, and the Envoy himself, Sir William MacNaghten, were murdered and their dismembered remains ostentatiously displayed on the gates of Kabul’s great medieval bazaar. Of the 16,500-strong Kabul Brigade, barely 100 Europeans and a few hundred sepoys (Indian soldiers in British service) and camp-followers survived the subsequent 90-mile (145km) winter retreat or ‘death march’ from Kabul to Jalalabad in January 1842.

      The problem of financing the Afghan War. (Punch, 7 December 1878)

      The final curtain to Britain’s first disastrous Afghan adventure was one of brutal revenge as, between April and October 1842, two invading armies led by Major Generals Pollock and Nott carved a swathe of destruction along the return route to Kabul, culminating in the sack, or virtual sack, of the major city of Istaliff and of Kabul itself.

      Thus, the First Anglo-Afghan War left a bitter legacy in Afghanistan. As the weary British Army slowly demobilised, ‘all that they

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