Far and near and low and louder

On the roads of earth go by,

Dear to friends and food for powder,

Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten

Bleach the bones of comrades slain,

Lovely lads and dead and rotten;

None that go return again.

a. e. housman, ‘A Shropshire Lad’

T

he ease with which the conquest of southern Afghanistan

had been accomplished created a sense of euphoria among the

British military and political establishment. A jubilant Macnaghten

reported in glowing terms to Auckland about the army’s victories and the

relatively low cost in terms of casualties. Military commanders were so

confident Afghanistan had been pacified that Keane’s Bombay division

was sent back to India, while the Bengal army was promised that all but

one brigade would return home by the end of September. News of the

fall of Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul was also greeted with exaltation in

London and the prime minster, Lord Melbourne, exploited these military

successes to silence Tory opposition to the war and so ensured his fragile

administration was able to cling on to power for a few months longer.

Flushed with victory and the rewards and honours that inevitably

followed, the army settled down in Kabul as if the country was an ocean

of calm. Autumn brought a glut of fresh fruit and the officers enjoyed the

pleasures of hunting, horse racing, cricket, amateur dramatics and, when

winter set in, ice skating on the Hashmat Khan lake. One enterprising

individual even built a sailing boat. Burnes’s cellar of fine wines and spirits

and his lavish entertainments quickly became the talk of the cantonment,

especially since the amusements included a troupe of nauch girls. Several

six

The Death of the ‘Great Experiment’,

1839–43