Foreword: On October 1, 1838, Lord Auckland, the Viceroy of British India, signed the "Simla Declaration" in order to compete for Afghanistan, known as the "crossroads of Asia", and completely stop the idea of Tsarist Russia penetrating into the Indian Ocean through Afghanistan. In this manifesto, which decided the fate of the Afghans for almost a century, the British brazenly declared: the British entered Afghanistan not to conquer, but to ensure the independence and territorial integrity of Afghanistan, and once this task was completed, the British troops would completely withdraw from Afghanistan. At the beginning of 1939, under the command of General Cotton, a force of more than 20,000 people with a large number of family members and support personnel set out from India to start the first invasion of Afghanistan.
1. First entry into Kabul
In order to make their aggression seem more plausible, the British deliberately brought Shujasha Durrani, the puppet emperor of the former dynasty of Afghanistan who was in exile in India, and intended to build their own puppet regime based on Shujashah. Of the 20,000-strong army, only about 3,000 were British soldiers, and the rest were all conscripted Indian soldiers and mercenaries formed by the former puppet emperor Shujasha with British funding.
▲ British Expeditionary Force
In addition, about 38,000 family members, military vendors, and service personnel were also sent along with the army. The self-confident British encouraged their soldiers to bring their families with them before they left for Afghanistan, both to boost morale and to prepare for a permanent presence in Afghanistan in the future. In addition, a large number of merchants followed the army on their backs, providing the army with food, daily necessities, and repairing various equipment, as long as it was not war materials, they could be bought from these small merchants and peddlers.
▲ British troops
The remaining military administrators were responsible for setting up tents for the army, managing vendors, etc. All this also made the British army more like a mobile city, but in the subsequent battle, these accompanying personnel would seriously slow down the movement of the troops, and eventually the whole team would be harassed and blocked by the hungry wolf Afghan guerrilla forces, and finally destroyed. In April 1839, the mighty British expeditionary force entered Afghanistan from the Khojak Pass and successfully took Kandahar in the ensuing battle, while the army of the Barakzai dynasty in Afghanistan at that time was only 15,000 men, and the equipment was far behind the British army, so the Afghan soldiers along the way were powerless to resist and could basically only organize small-scale attacks.
▲The British army attacking the city all the way
After taking Kandahar, McNaughton, a staff officer of the British Expeditionary Force, couldn't wait to hold a coronation ceremony for Shujashah, announcing that Britain would support Shujasha as the new king of Afghanistan. Afghan speaker Dost Mohammed, who heard the news, was anxious on the spot, and when Tsarist Russia was repeatedly denied help, Dost Mohammed hurriedly sued the British army for peace, hoping that he would remain in Afghanistan as the prime minister of the new king Shujashah.
▲The coronation ceremony of the puppet emperor
There is no doubt that the British rejected the offer and said that unless Dost Mohammed relinquished all power, he would go to India to retire in peace. As a result, this request was rejected by Dost Mohammed. After negotiations broke down, the British Expeditionary Force, which had been resting in Kandahar for several months, began to attack Kabul and finally captured Kabul without any resistance in August, and Dost Mohammed was forced to flee to Bukhara in an attempt to make a comeback. In this way, the British entered Afghanistan without pressure, but all this was only the beginning, it was easy to occupy Afghanistan, but it was difficult to conquer Afghanistan.
2. Occupation does not mean conquest
After the victory, the British quickly reveled in their enjoyment. At the entrance ceremony into Kabul, the British staff officer and minister McNaughton deliberately walked in front of the new emperor Shujashah, showing his status as the emperor to the Afghan people. However, the arrival of the British army changed everything, a puppet emperor who had no feelings for the Afghan people and seemed out of place, a prince who oppressed the Afghan people everywhere, and a huge army that seriously consumed not many resources, the Afghan people began to become more and more resistant to this group of outsiders.
▲Dost Muhammad surrendered to the British
In November, Dost Muhammad, who was unwilling to be defeated like this, began to make a comeback, and the soldiers along the way chose to support him when they saw the return of his king, and finally Dost Muhammad defeated the Indian cavalry in Purwandara, but Dost Muhammad knew that he could not defeat the main force of the British army at all, so the victorious Dost Muhammad chose to surrender to the British army with dignity, and Dost Muhammad was sent to India under house arrest. Although the king's resistance ultimately failed, his willingness to resist shocked the entire Afghan nation.
▲ Akbar Khan
Soon the Afghan populace launched uprising after uprising, culminating in the formation of an insurgent army led by Dost Mohammed's son, Akbar Khan. In 1840, in order to change the situation, the British began to issue subsidies to the major tribes of Afghanistan, intending to buy these tribes with money. However, in September 1841, the British stopped the payment of subsidies due to financial pressure, which completely detonated the major tribes of Afghanistan, and the situation in Afghanistan became more and more critical, and the British were unable to control it.
▲ British troops in Afghanistan
On November 2, 1841, a major uprising broke out in Kabul at the call of Akbar Khan, and at that time there were more than 4,500 British troops in Kabul, most of whom were Indian soldiers, unable to resist the influx of rebels. On November 10, Akbar Khan led a large number of Afghan forces into Kabul, and when McNaughton sent a letter to help, he decided to bribe the rebels with money, divide them from within, and then take the opportunity to ask for help to relieve the siege.
▲ McNaughton
So McNaughton set his sights on Akbar Khan, and secretly sent a large amount of money to this "star of happiness and glory of Afghanistan", and promised to make Akbar Khan the prime minister and give him an annuity every year. As a result, Akbar Khan ostensibly agreed to the agreement proposed by McNaughton, and turned around and summoned many clan leaders to take out all of McNaughton's bribes, so that Macnaughton's plan to divide the rebel army within Macnaughton was completely ruined.
▲ British troops preparing to evacuate Kabul
Akbar Khan took the opportunity to invite McNaughton to negotiate peace talks on December 23, but the confident McNaughton was killed on the spot as soon as he got off his horse, and his body was dismembered and paraded through the streets. Having lost their backbone, the British immediately chose to compromise and agreed to evacuate Kabul after handing over most of their ammunition and artillery. At the same time, Akbar Khan kept the wives of all the married officers as hostages in exchange for Dost Mohammed, who was under house arrest in India, and thus began the Great Evacuation of Hell with more than 4,000 British expeditionary forces and 12,000 military personnel.
3. The Great Retreat from Hell
On January 6, 1842, the British army began a great retreat in the bitter cold, with 16,000 men planning to retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad, more than 200 kilometers away. Due to the harsh geography, cold weather, and lack of food and clothing, the 16,000 men walked less than 8 kilometers on the first day, and the rearguard was occasionally harassed by Afghan tribal forces, and the British always left a few corpses after each attack.
▲ British troops who are constantly attacked
What's more, the tribes involved in the attack did not participate in the negotiations with the British at all, so they could follow the British army if they wanted to. After two days and two nights of walking, the morale of the British troops, who did not have enough ammunition, lacked food and medicine, and a large number of people were frozen to death and frostbitten, completely fell to a low point. The commander ordered a quick passage through the Khurd-Kabul gorge after a short rest, only to be greeted by a sea of bullets and stones.
▲ British troops who were intercepted
The Afghan tribal forces frantically poured bullets into the canyon with absolute geographical superiority, while the British army chose to force their way through the canyon, and the result was that the British troops fell in batches, and at first the escort troops were able to do their duty to cover the families of the soldiers through the canyon, but as the casualties continued to increase, the atmosphere of terror gradually spread, so the battle quickly turned into an undisciplined rout, and everyone rushed forward desperately. Baggage, ammunition, women, children, the British army abandoned almost everything, at this time except for their lives, they did not care about anything, and finally after leaving more than 3,000 corpses, the British army passed through the gorge with difficulty.
▲Afghan fighters with weapons in hand
Seeing that the British army was about to be wiped out, Commander Elphinston returned to Kabul again to hope that Akbar Khan would abide by the withdrawal agreement, only to be taken hostage by Akbar Khan. By the time the British arrived at the Jagdalak Gorge, the hunting, the cold, and the starvation had already claimed most of the lives, leaving the British army with less than 200 combat soldiers, compared to less than 50 when they passed through the Jagdalak Gorge.
▲The last battle of the British soldiers
Having finally passed through the gorge, the cavalry of the Afghan tribe began to charge again and again, until they wiped out everyone. In the end, only one of the 16,000 soldiers and accompanying personnel, William Brighton, a military doctor, escaped to Jalalabad. The Afghans drove the British out of the capital Kabul with a big victory that could go down in history, and the British troops in Jalalabad, Kandahar and other places were extremely frightened after hearing about the experience of these 16,000 people, and either drove all the Afghans to hold on to the city, or directly withdrew to India.
▲ William Brighton, who escaped death
As for the puppet emperor Shujashah, he was killed by Akbar Khan's brother Chaman Khan, although the British army attacked again afterwards and occupied Kabul, and carried out three days and three nights of burns and looting in the city, but the anti-British sentiment in Afghanistan made the British army dare not sleep at night with their eyes closed. On October 12, 1842, the British withdrew to India, and it was not long before Dost Muhammad was released back to the throne.
▲ Dost Muhammad
In this way, Afghanistan's first war of resistance against Britain ended with a complete victory, and Akbar Khan also successfully used a majestic self-defense war to win the reputation of "Afghanistan's happiness and glorious star", and also fought for Afghanistan's peace for 36 years. The British were given just over 30,000 cold corpses and £150 million in war spending.