156 ISLAM AT WAR
Afghan tribesmen continued to swarm about the British cantonments snip-
ing and threatening to exploit any weakness.
An attempt in November to occupy the heights overlooking the British
camp and thus lessen the sniping ended badly. The Hindu sepoys, appalled
at the bleak climate, alien people, and unfamiliar landscape of the country,
performed poorly; a British regiment refused to advance; and the army
eventually stumbled forward into the fire of the tribal war bands when a
misunderstood signal prompted the whole assault force to form a square.
Square, a stationary formation good for repelling cavalry, is disastrous for
defending against musketry attack, as the tightly packed soldiers are dif-
ficult to miss. In short order the entire army was routed back to the can-
tonments. This was to be the only serious battlefield effort to hold on to
the husk of early British Afghan aspirations.
By January 1842 it was clear that nothing could be made of the adven-
ture, and the army attempted to withdraw down the Khyber Pass. The
huge column of 16,500 dispirited soldiers, camp followers, and baggage
ambled out of Kabul and into a series of ambushes that bled it dry. On
January 13, the last holdouts of the British 44th Regiment were slain at
the village of Gandamak. Of the entire army, only one survivor remained.
This First Afghan War was an excellent introduction to the frontier for
England. The hillmen were fine fighters. They had no very good reason
to fight, but they had no reason not to either. England’s military force was
large, but rather useless, like that of the Russians sent 160 years later.
Such an army quickly becomes more of a target than an active force.
Likewise, a defensive posture is essentially useless when dealing with
raiders. One must move forcefully against them and the villages that sup-
port them in order to curtail their attacks. The British learned as much,
and while they still had mistakes to make in Afghanistan, the empire
would—in the end—provide a good check to the mountain tribesmen.
In November 1878 another British army invaded Afghanistan, thinking
to forestall an Afghan-Russian alliance that would place tsarist troops on
the Indian border. The fear of a Russian invasion was an ongoing Anglo-
Indian nightmare throughout the late nineteenth century. This fear, cou-
pled with punitive expeditions against tribal raiding parties, would fuel
almost continuous fighting on India’s northwest frontier well into the
twentieth century.
A full division of 12,800 men armed with breech-loading rifles, and
seventy-eight guns served as the striking force, and another dealt with
raids on the lines of supply by Afridi and Mohmand tribesmen. On De-
cember 1 a pitched battle ensued between Lord Roberts’s brigade and the
Afghan regular army at Peiwar Kotal. Outnumbered two to one by an