The First Anglo-Afghan War - Part Four: The Disastrous British Retreat from Kabul

The First Anglo-Afghan War - Part Four: The Disastrous British Retreat from Kabul

Imagine leaving Kabul in the depths of winter.

Snow was all across the mountains. Food was running short. Thousands of civilians were travelling alongside the soldiers.

Image info:

Last Stand of the 44th Regiment at Gundamuck

Date: 1898

Artist: William Barnes Wollen

And somewhere ahead was Jalalabad, more than 90 miles away.

They had been promised safe passage.

Within days, the retreating column would be almost completely destroyed.

In Part Three, we saw how the growing resentment against the British occupation finally erupted into the Kabul uprising of 1841. British political officers were killed, including Sir William Macnaghten, and Major-General William Elphinstone's position became increasingly desperate.

Today I want to continue the story and find out what happened when Elphinstone finally agreed to abandon Kabul.

On the 6th of January 1842, approximately 4,500 British and Indian troops marched out of the city accompanied by around 12,000 camp followers.

These were not just soldiers retreating from a battlefield.

Among the column were servants, labourers, families, women and children with baggage animals carrying what supplies could still be taken.

They were heading for the British garrison at Jalalabad.

The agreement which they left Kabul under was supposed to provide them with protection.

It did not.

The column was soon being attacked as it struggled along narrow roads and through mountain passes. Afghan fighters occupied the surrounding heights, while cold and snow caused further suffering to the people who were already exhausted and badly supplied.

Some froze to death.

Others collapsed from exhaustion.

Many were killed in the repeated attacks.

And as the column became stretched out along the route, maintaining any kind of military order became increasingly difficult.

The retreat became a fight for survival.

Muhammad Akbar Khan, one of the principal Afghan leaders, continued negotiating with the British officers. At different points, British women, children and officers were handed over or taken into his custody.

Although becoming a captive must have been terrifying, it ultimately saved the lives of a number of people who otherwise might have remained with the doomed column.

Those who continued towards Jalalabad were disappearing in terrifying numbers.

Eventually, only a tiny remnant of the original force remained.

Near Gandamak, on the 13th of January 1842, surviving soldiers of the 44th (East Essex) Regiment found themselves surrounded.

They made a final stand.

The 44^th was the only British infantry regiment in Elphinstone’s retreating force and most of those who had survived that far were killed in the fighting at Gandamak. A handful survived or were taken prisoner.

But one exhausted figure was still moving towards Jalalabad.

His name was Dr William Brydon, an assistant surgeon.

DR William Brydon

Badly wounded and riding an exhausted horse, Brydon finally reached the British position at Jalalabad on the 13th of January.

The sight of him arriving alone became one of the most famous images of the entire war.

It also produced a story that has been repeated ever since: that Brydon was the only survivor of the Kabul retreat.

That is not quite true.

A number of people survived because they had been taken captive or held as hostages, while there were other survivors from the fighting. But Brydon's extraordinary arrival at Jalalabad came to symbolise the destruction of the retreating force.

Only a few years earlier, British forces had entered Afghanistan expecting to remove one ruler, install another and secure their political influence in the region.

Now an army had effectively disappeared along the road from Kabul.

It was one of the greatest military disasters of the Victorian era.

But Britain was not prepared to allow the story to end there.

Forces were already holding out at Jalalabad and Kandahar, and new armies would soon advance back into Afghanistan.

In Part Five, I want to find out what happened when the British returned towards Kabul - and whether their objective was rescue, revenge, restoring their reputation, or a mixture of all three.

 

Wartime Schooldays: Evacuees, Air Raids, Digging for Victory and Playground Fights

Wartime Schooldays: Evacuees, Air Raids, Digging for Victory and Playground Fights

Imagine arriving at school in the morning and not knowing whether you would spend the day learning arithmetic, digging vegetables, sheltering from an air raid or being sent home because there was simply nowhere for your class to go.

For children growing up during the Second World War, education could look very different from the school day we recognise today.

Today I want to find out what happened to Britain’s schoolchildren during the war, including something we sometimes forget: when thousands of evacuees arrived in new towns and villages, they did not always receive a warm welcome from the local children.

When war began in September 1939, the education system was immediately disrupted.

Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren were evacuated from cities considered vulnerable to bombing. Many travelled with their teachers, but once they reached the countryside they often had to join local schools that were already full.

There simply were not enough classrooms.

Some schools operated shift systems, with local children attending lessons during one part of the day and evacuees using the building during another. Lessons could also take place in church halls, village halls and other temporary accommodation.

In some areas, formal schooling was severely reduced for weeks or even months.

Some school buildings were requisitioned for wartime purposes but others were damaged or destroyed by bombing.

And then there were the teachers.

Men who had been teaching before the war could be called into military service, while other teachers left for different forms of war work. Retired teachers and others were sometimes brought in to help, but staffing shortages added another problem to an already disrupted system.

Children also had to learn how to respond to something no previous generation of British schoolchildren had experienced on such a scale.

Air raids.

Schools practised drills. Children learned how to reach shelters quickly and were expected to bring their gas masks with them. Lessons might suddenly stop when an air-raid warning sounded, with everyone heading for whatever shelter was available.

Wartime education was not only about reading, writing and arithmetic.

Children were encouraged to take part in the wider war effort.

Under the Dig for Victory campaign, school grounds and gardens could be turned over to growing food. Children learned to plant and tend vegetables, helping to increase food production at a time when imported supplies were under enormous pressure.

For some pupils, digging, planting and harvesting became almost another school subject.

There were also collections for salvage. Children gathered things up like waste paper and metal, and schools encouraged thrift and discouraged unnecessary waste.

And then there was the social side of evacuation.

It is tempting to imagine evacuated children arriving in country schools and immediately making lots of new friends.

Sometimes they did.

But not always.

Evacuees could arrive with unfamiliar accents, different clothes and different habits. Local children might think of them as outsiders, and evacuees sometimes thought the countryside children were strange.

There could also be resentment.

Local classrooms were suddenly more crowded. Teachers had new pupils to accommodate and village life had changed.

Arguments, name-calling and playground fights between evacuees and local children certainly happened.

We know this was not simply a general possibility because some evacuees later remembered it happening to them. Frederick Edward Wooding recalled bullying and fights among boys during his wartime schooldays, while Michael Wetton, who was evacuated to Gloucestershire in 1940, remembered being bullied by local children. Experiences varied enormously, and many evacuees did make good friends, but for some children arriving at a strange school meant coping not only with homesickness and unfamiliar lessons, but also with teasing, arguments and sometimes physical fights.

City children might be mocked for their accents or lack of knowledge about country life, while evacuees could also tease their new classmates. For children who were already frightened, homesick and separated from their parents, even a playground disagreement could feel enormous.

Of course, friendships formed too. Some evacuated children remained close to the people they met for the rest of their lives.

Wartime schooling was therefore far more than lessons interrupted by air raids.

For an entire generation of children, the war followed them right through the school gates.

If you had been an evacuee arriving at a completely new school, what do you think you would have found hardest: the lessons, the homesickness or trying to make new friends?

Nicholas Carew: Henry VIII’s Favourite Who Helped Bring Down a Queen - Then Fell Victim to Tudor Politics Himself

Nicholas Carew: Henry VIII’s Favourite Who Helped Bring Down a Queen - Then Fell Victim to Tudor Politics Himself

In my previous Tudor post, we looked at the Exeter Conspiracy and the destruction of families who were accused of threatening Henry VIII’s throne.

But there was another man drawn into its aftermath.

And his story is particularly striking because he had once been one of Henry VIII’s closest companions.

Sir Nicholas Carew had spent years beside the king - hunting, jousting and enjoying the pleasures of the Tudor court. But in 1539, Henry sent him to the scaffold.

So how did a royal favourite end up accused of treason?

Nicholas was born towards the end of the 15th century into the Carew family of Beddington in Surrey. He entered royal service when he was still young and became closely associated with Henry VIII. Contemporary evidence shows that Carew belonged to the group of young courtiers who shared the king’s sporting interests and entertainments.

Henry clearly valued him.

In 1522, Nicholas was appointed Master of the Horse, an important position in the royal household, and he was repeatedly trusted with diplomatic missions. He attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold and travelled abroad on the king’s business.

But Nicholas was also closely connected with the more conservative faction at court.

He appears to have remained sympathetic towards Catherine of Aragon and her daughter Mary, and he was certainly no enthusiastic supporter of Anne Boleyn.

By 1536, Anne’s position had become dangerously unstable. Nicholas was among the courtiers who benefited from her fall, and he was associated with the group supporting Jane Seymour, who would become Henry’s third wife only days after Anne’s execution.

For Nicholas, it must have seemed that he had backed the winning side.

And for a while, he had.

He was elected a Knight of the Garter in 1536, one of the highest honours Henry could bestow. Even in 1537, Nicholas still appeared to be firmly within the king’s favour and took part in the ceremonies surrounding the christening of the future Edward VI.

Then the political atmosphere changed again.

In 1538, Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, Henry Pole, Lord Montagu, and others were arrested during what became known as the Exeter Conspiracy.

Nicholas knew some of these men.

Worse still, he apparently questioned the way Exeter had been prosecuted.

Investigators claimed that Nicholas had been involved in earlier conversations with Exeter and that correspondence between them had deliberately been destroyed. Whether this amounted to a genuine conspiracy against Henry remains debated, but in the Tudor court even the suggestion of disloyalty could be fatal.

Nicholas was arrested on the 31st of December 1538 and sent to the Tower.

On the 14th of February 1539, he was tried for treason and accused of supporting Exeter and criticising the proceedings against him.

He was found guilty.

On the 3rd of March 1539, Sir Nicholas Carew was executed on Tower Hill.

It was an extraordinary reversal.

A man who had grown up around Henry, entertained him, hunted with him, represented him abroad and risen to one of the most prestigious positions at court had become another casualty of the political fear surrounding the king.

There is also a rather grim irony to Nicholas Carew’s story.

Only a few years earlier, he had been associated with the faction that helped remove Anne Boleyn from power.

Now he had discovered the same lesson that so many people around Henry VIII eventually learned.

Helping someone else fall did not make you safe.

At Henry VIII’s court, yesterday’s favourite could very easily become tomorrow’s traitor.

Do you think Nicholas Carew was genuinely involved in a conspiracy against Henry VIII - or had Tudor politics simply caught up with him?

The Children Who Stayed Behind: What Happened to Those Who Were Never Evacuated?

The Children Who Stayed Behind: What Happened to Those Who Were Never Evacuated?

Imagine watching your classmates leave with little suitcases and labels tied to their coats, while you turned around and went home with Mum.

Would you have felt lucky because you could stay with your family?

Or frightened because everyone seemed to be telling you that the children leaving were being sent somewhere safer?

Over the last couple of days, we have looked at evacuee children waiting while strangers decided who would take them, and at brothers and sisters who sometimes found themselves separated.

But there was another group of wartime children whose story is spoken about far less.

The children who stayed behind.

Today I want to find out why some children were never evacuated, why others went away only to return home, and what life was actually like for those who remained in Britain's towns and cities as the war came increasingly close.

It is easy to imagine that almost every child from Britain's vulnerable cities was evacuated. In reality, that was far from the case.

Evacuation was voluntary, and although enormous numbers left during the first evacuation beginning on the 1st of September 1939, not every child went. In fact, more than two million children were not evacuated and remained in towns and cities while hundreds of thousands of others were sent away.

Why would parents take that risk?

For many, the answer was painfully simple.

They could not bear to send their children away.

Parents were being asked to hand over sons and daughters without necessarily knowing exactly where they would live, who would care for them or how long the separation would last. Some mothers decided that whatever happened, the family would face it together.

And some children simply begged not to go.

Others had been evacuated and hated being away. They were homesick, unhappy with their billet or desperate to see their parents. During the first months of the war, the bombing that everyone had expected did not immediately come. By January 1940, almost half of those originally evacuated had returned home.

To many parents, keeping a frightened child in the countryside while apparently nothing was happening back home began to seem unnecessary.

Then came the Blitz.

Suddenly, children who had stayed or returned found themselves living through the danger evacuation had been intended to protect them from.

Their everyday lives could be strangely ordinary and terrifying at the same time.

School was badly disrupted. Some schools had closed because teachers and pupils had been evacuated, others were damaged or requisitioned. Children could receive lessons in temporary classrooms, other buildings and even small groups in private homes.

Then the sirens might sound.

Lessons stopped.

Children ran for shelters.

At night they could sleep in Anderson shelters in gardens, under the stairs, in communal shelters or in Underground stations. The following morning they might walk along streets where windows had disappeared, houses had been damaged and what was left was piles of rubble.

And somehow they still played.

Children collected shrapnel, swapped pieces with friends, played among bomb sites and invented games from the strange new world around them. Rationing, blackout curtains, gas masks and air-raid warnings simply became part of childhood.

The memories of real children who stayed behind show just how complicated that experience could be.

Derek Milton grew up in Kennington, London, and was not evacuated. His Imperial War Museums oral-history interview describes his memories of German bombs around Kennington, sheltering at home, watching aircraft during the Battle of Britain and eventually experiencing the V1 and V2 attacks.

Monica White, who spent much of the war in Croydon, later remembered how children were expected to keep their fears largely to themselves because they did not want to make their already worried parents more unhappy. She eventually was evacuated to Sussex and remembered an extraordinary feeling of relief when she realised she was somewhere she no longer felt frightened.

In Sheffield, Jean Whitfield experienced something far worse. Her mother was killed by a bomb while hanging out washing. Jean later remembered a neighbour comforting her afterwards with freshly baked lemon tarts - such an ordinary little detail beside an almost unimaginable loss.

In Liverpool, Ernie Gaskell remembered his father reassuring him that the strong slates on their roof would protect them.

They could not.

And Betty Harris, remembering her childhood in wartime Sheffield, described education constantly being interrupted. At times children were taught in small groups in parents' homes. She also remembered walking into the city with her father after bombing and discovering familiar shops had simply disappeared.

So what did the children who stayed think about the evacuees who had gone?

There was probably no single answer.

Some must have wondered whether their friends were having wonderful adventures in the countryside. Others may have envied their safety once the bombing began.

But many were simply relieved that they had not been separated from Mum and Dad.

And returning evacuees sometimes brought stories that made staying home seem preferable - tales of terrible homesickness, strict foster families or the misery of living with complete strangers.

Neither group necessarily had the easier childhood.

One faced separation from home and family.

The other remained with the people they loved but sometimes watched war destroy the world around them.

Perhaps that is what makes the story of wartime evacuation so complicated.

There was no completely safe choice.

If you had been a parent in 1939, what would you have done - sent your children somewhere safer without you, or kept the family together and taken the risk?

The Other Men Who Wanted England: The Forgotten Rivals Behind the Norman Conquest

The Other Men Who Wanted England: The Forgotten Rivals Behind the Norman Conquest

Most of us remember 1066 as a fight between two men: Harold Godwinson and William of Normandy.

But England's crown had attracted far more attention than that.

In our last post about the Norman Conquest, we looked at why William believed England should be his, and why Harold took the crown instead. Today I want to widen the story, because behind those two famous rivals were several other men with ambitions, claims or connections to the English throne.

And one of the strongest claims belonged to a boy who is often almost forgotten.

When Edward the Confessor died without children on the 5th of January 1066, England did not operate under a simple rule that the crown automatically passed to the nearest relative. The wishes of the previous king, the support of the leading nobles and the ability to actually rule and defend the kingdom all mattered.

That left plenty of room for argument.

Harold Godwinson

Harold II 

Harold was Earl of Wessex and probably the most powerful man in England when Edward died. He was not a member of the old royal House of Wessex, but according to English tradition Edward entrusted the kingdom to Harold at the end of his life.

The leading men of England accepted him, and Harold was crowned on the 6th of January 1066.

As far as Harold was concerned, he was the legitimate king.

Unfortunately for him, several other men disagreed.

William, Duke of Normandy

Image info:

Harold II

Date 13th century

William's claim is the one we explored previously.

The Normans maintained that Edward had promised William the English throne years earlier. They also claimed that Harold had sworn an oath supporting William's succession while in Normandy.

Whether Edward's promise was really as clear as William later claimed is still debated, but William certainly believed- or at least insisted - that Harold had taken a crown that should have been his.

He intended to collect it with an army.

Harald Hardrada of Norway

Then there was another Harald.

Image info:

The Battle of Stamford Bridge

Harald Hardrada

Harald Hardrada was King of Norway, one of the most formidable warriors of the eleventh century, and his claim came from an older Scandinavian agreement.

Years earlier, Harthacnut, the Danish king who had also ruled England, and Magnus the Good of Norway were said to have agreed that if either died without an heir, the survivor would inherit his kingdoms.

Harthacnut died childless. Magnus consequently claimed rights over England, although Edward the Confessor became king instead.

When Magnus died, Hardrada eventually regarded those rights as having passed to him.

It was a rather complicated route to the English crown- but Hardrada was prepared to test it with several thousand warriors.

He invaded northern England in September 1066.

Edgar Ætheling – the boy with perhaps the best blood claim

Image info:

Edgar Aetheling

And then we come to the man - or rather boy -who tends to disappear behind the more famous names.

Edgar Ætheling was probably only about thirteen or fourteen.

But his ancestry mattered a lot.

He was the grandson of King Edmund Ironside and the great-grandson of Æthelred the Unready. He belonged directly to the old royal House of Wessex.

In purely dynastic terms, Edgar had an exceptionally strong claim.

His problem was that England in 1066 needed more than a royal family tree.

With powerful foreign rivals threatening England, Edgar’s youth and lack of an established military and political power counted heavily against him.

But he did not disappear.

After Harold was killed at Hastings, leading English nobles actually elected Edgar king.

He was never crowned.

Within weeks, William's advance forced Edgar and his supporters to submit. The boy who arguably possessed the strongest hereditary connection to the old English kings never really got his chance to rule.

Tostig Godwinson - did Harold's own brother want the crown?

Image info:

Tostig, Harold and Edward the Confessor

This one is more complicated.

Tostig was Harold's younger brother and had previously been Earl of Northumbria. After a rebellion against his rule in 1065, Tostig was driven into exile- and Harold accepted his removal.

Tostig was furious.

During 1066 he raided England and eventually joined Harald Hardrada's invasion.

Was Tostig himself trying to become king?

Possibly, but we should be careful. The evidence does not allow us to confidently place him alongside William, Harold and Hardrada as a definite claimant. His immediate ambitions may have been to recover his lost position and destroy his brother rather than take the crown personally.

Whatever his ultimate aim, his actions were important.

Tostig encouraged and then joined Hardrada's attempt to conquer England. Harold Godwinson was forced to fight his own brother at Stamford Bridge.

Both Tostig and Hardrada were killed there on the 25th of September 1066.

And then there was Sweyn Estrithson of Denmark…

Sweyn is perhaps the most easily forgotten name in this story.

King Sweyn II of Denmark was the nephew of Cnut the Great, whose Scandinavian empire had once included England. Scandinavian rulers had not forgotten that connection, and Sweyn saw an opportunity.

He did not become one of the principal invaders during the great succession crisis of 1066, so it would be misleading to describe him as an equal fifth claimant alongside Harold, William, Hardrada and Edgar.

But his interest in England was very real.

In 1069, after William had become king, a major Danish fleet arrived in England and joined forces with Edgar Ætheling and English rebels. They captured York and presented William with one of the most serious challenges of his early reign.

Even Hastings had not completely settled the question of who would control England.

So the struggle for England was never simply Harold versus William.

There was Harold Godwinson, chosen and crowned.

William of Normandy, claiming a promise and an oath.

Harald Hardrada, reaching back to an old Scandinavian agreement.

Edgar Ætheling, the young descendant of England's ancient royal house.

Tostig Godwinson, whose exact ambitions remain uncertain but whose actions helped bring another invasion to England.

And in the background, Sweyn of Denmark, representing a Scandinavian claim.

And by the end of 1066, most of them had either surrendered, been defeated or were dead.

The Evacuee Children Who Left Home Together - Then Found Themselves Separated

The Evacuee Children Who Left Home Together - Then Found Themselves Separated

Yesterday we spoke about one of the most unsettling parts of wartime evacuation: children arriving in unfamiliar towns and villages and waiting while strangers decided whose homes they would go to.

But imagine getting through that journey with your brother or sister beside you, perhaps the only familiar person you had left, and then discovering that you were not going to be allowed to stay together.

Today I want to find out about the evacuee siblings who were separated after they arrived, why it happened and whether they were able to see each other again.

For many children, leaving Mum and Dad was frightening enough. A brother or sister could give them a little security. They had travelled together, knew the same home, missed the same parents and understood exactly what the other child was going through.

Then the billeting process could take even that away.

Children were usually evacuated as part of school groups, and when they reached their destination they had to be found places in local homes. Some people could accommodate two or more children, but others had room for only one. In some places, prospective foster families effectively chose the children they were prepared to take.

Keeping brothers and sisters together could be difficult. Research into the evacuation has found that siblings hoping to be billeted together could actually be among the last children chosen because taking them meant accepting two, three or sometimes more children rather than one.

Age could make things even more complicated too. Older and younger siblings might attend different schools and travel in different groups, and the availability of suitable billets could determine where each child finally ended up.

For the children involved, this could make an already frightening experience considerably worse.

One former evacuee, Irene Mead, was 13 when she was evacuated from Birmingham to Stratford-upon-Avon with her two younger brothers, aged 11 and nine. When they arrived, the children were split up.

Irene remembered crying on her first night because she missed her brothers.

But her story had a happier twist. She discovered that they had been billeted in the house next door. After that, the siblings were able to see one another every day.

Others were determined not to let themselves be separated at all.

One evacuee who was eight years old when sent to Denham in 1939 later recalled arriving with a 13-year-old brother. The children insisted that they would not be split up. It caused difficulties while homes were being found, but eventually somebody agreed to take them both.

Not every separation was caused by a shortage of space. In one later study of former evacuees, a woman identified as Wendy remembered being separated from her sister because her sister had an infection. Decades afterwards, it was still one of the first memories she associated with evacuation. She described the separation as terribly upsetting.

Whether separated siblings could see each other afterwards depended largely on where they had been placed. Some, like Irene and her brothers, were fortunate enough to live only doors apart and could meet regularly. Others might be in different houses around the same village or town and still see one another at school.

But if they were sent farther apart, meetings could become much more difficult. Letters, postcards and occasional visits might be the only contact they had.

Evacuation was intended to protect children from bombing, and for many it undoubtedly did.

But safety came with an emotional price.

For a frightened child standing in a strange village, a brother or sister might have been the last little piece of home they had left.

And sometimes, even that was taken away.

The First Anglo-Afghan War - Part Three: The Kabul Uprising That Turned Occupation into Disaster

The First Anglo-Afghan War - Part Three: The Kabul Uprising That Turned Occupation into Disaster

For two years, British leaders had tried to convince themselves that Kabul was under control.

Akbar Khan

Date: 1842

Artist: Vincent Eyre

Then, on the 2nd of November 1841, a crowd gathered outside the home of one British officer.

Within hours, he was dead.

And the British occupation of Kabul was beginning to fall apart.

In Part Two, we saw how British and East India Company forces had captured Kabul and restored Shah Shuja to the Afghan throne. At first, the invasion seemed to have been a success. But beneath the surface, resentment was growing.

Alexander Burnes

Date: 1843

Collection: British Museum

Shah Shuja was still deeply unpopular with many Afghans, while the continuing presence of foreign troops was causing increasing hostility. British officials had also been paying subsidies to tribal leaders to maintain their support and help keep important routes open. When some of those payments were reduced, an already dangerous situation became even more unstable.

Image info:

General William Elphinstone

Date: 1836 - 1839

Artist: William Salter

There was another serious problem.

Instead of remaining inside the formidable Bala Hissar fortress, much of the British force was based in a poorly positioned cantonment outside Kabul. Thousands of British and Indian troops, servants and camp followers were living in a position that would be extremely difficult to defend if the city rose against them.

On the morning of the 2nd of November 1841, that danger became very real.

A crowd gathered outside the Kabul home of Sir Alexander Burnes, the Scottish explorer and political officer who had played an important part in British involvement in Afghanistan.

The situation rapidly turned violent.

Burnes, his brother Charles and others with them were killed, and the house was looted.

But what happened next was just as important.

The British response was hesitant.

Major-General William Elphinstone, who commanded the garrison, was in poor health and increasingly unable to provide the decisive leadership the crisis demanded. While British commanders debated what to do, the uprising spread and resistance gathered strength.

What might once have been contained was becoming something much larger.

On the 5th of November, Afghan fighters captured the main commissariat fort, containing much of the British garrison’s food and other essential supplies.

Food and other vital supplies were lost.

Winter was approaching.

And the British position was becoming weaker by the day.

The uprising soon got an important leader in Muhammad Akbar Khan, the son of the deposed ruler Dost Mohammad. Opposition to the occupation was now developing into a wider insurrection, and the British found themselves increasingly trapped.

Sir William Macnaghten, the senior British political representative in Kabul, attempted to negotiate a way out.

But on the 23rd of December 1841, during negotiations with Akbar Khan, Macnaghten was killed.

By then, the situation had changed completely.

The force that had marched triumphantly into Kabul in 1839 was no longer in control.

Its supplies were dwindling. Its leadership was divided. Armed resistance surrounded it. And the freezing Afghan winter was closing in.

The British now faced a terrible decision.

Remain in Kabul and try to recover the situation...

Or leave.

In January 1842, they were forced into agreeing to withdraw.

And what happened next would turn a failing occupation into one of the most infamous disasters in British military history.

Part Four: The Retreat from Kabul – When an Army Disappeared into the Snow

Had you heard about the Kabul uprising before, or only about the disastrous retreat that followed?