British Massacred in Afghanistan

By late 1841 the British occupation of Afghanistan, which had installed the unpopular Shah Shuja in Kabul, had provoked widespread resentment. An uprising broke out in the capital, during which a senior British political officer was killed, and the increasingly isolated and poorly led garrison found its position untenable. Unable to hold the city, the British commanders negotiated an agreement to evacuate and return to India.

In January 1842 the British garrison, together with a large number of camp followers and their families, set out from Kabul on the long march through the mountain passes toward Jalalabad. They left under a promise of safe conduct, but the column was almost immediately exposed to attack in the snowbound passes by Afghan tribesmen who harassed and ambushed it relentlessly.

Over the course of the retreat the column was virtually annihilated by a combination of fighting, cold, and starvation, with thousands of soldiers and camp followers killed or taken captive. Only a handful of survivors reached safety, the destruction of the army becoming a byword for military disaster. The catastrophe shocked Britain, which mounted a punitive expedition later that year before ultimately withdrawing from Afghanistan.