Battle of Maiwand

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The Battle of Maiwand was one of the largest battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The battle ended in a serious defeat of the British Army but was also very costly to the Afghans. In fact, the Afghan victory at Maiwand was at a cost of over 7,000 Afghan warriors and 1,123 British and Indian soldiers - a pyrrhic victory.

Before the battle the campaign had gone well for the British. They had previously decisively defeated Afghan tribesmen and troops at Ali Musjid, Peiwar Kotal, Kabul and Ahmed Khel. Furthermore, they had managed to occupy countless towns and villages including Kandahar, Dakka and Jellalabad.

While dealing with some mutinous Afghan troops about fifty miles from Kandahar, George Burrows, a British brigadier-general, was confronted by a large Afghan army en route from Herat. What followed was a lengthy and bloodthirsty battle of attrition, which saw the 66th Regiment (later called the Royal Berkshire Regiment) almost destroyed due to a combination overwhelming Afghan numbers, superior Afghan artillery and use of terrain, an inexperienced Indian regiment, and the debatable leadership of Burrows.

This battle dampened morale for the British side, but was also partly a disappointment for Ayub Khan, Governor of Herat and commander of the Afghans in this battle, because he had lost so many men to gain a small advantage over his imperialistic enemy. Ayub Khan did manage to shut the British up in Kandahar, resulting in General Frederick Roberts' famous 314-mile relieving march from Kabul to Kandahar in August 1880. The resulting Battle of Kandahar on the 1st September was a decisive victory for the British.

Rudyard Kipling, who had researched this battle in 1892, had submitted this small yet dramatic poem about the action at Maiwand ('That Day', extract):-

"There was thirty dead an' wounded on the ground we wouldn't keep -
No, there wasn't more than twenty when the front began to go;
But, Christ! along the line o' flight they cut us up like sheep,
An' that was all we gained by doing so.

I 'eard the knives be'ind me, but I dursn't face my man,
Nor I don't know where I went to, 'cause I didn't 'alt to see,
Till I 'eard a beggar squealin' out for quarter as 'e ran,
An' I thought I knew the voice an' - it was me!

We was 'idin' under bedsteads more than 'arf a march away;
We was lyin' up like rabbits all about the countryside;
An' the major cursed 'is Maker 'cause 'e lived to see that day'
An' the colonel broke 'is sword acrost, an' cried."

Poems of the victory at Maiwind have passed into Pashtun and Afghan folklore.

A monument was built in the 1950s on the Maiwand Square in Kabul in commemoration of the battle by an Afghan architect Is-matulla Saraj.

Dr. John H. Watson, fictional companion of Sherlock Holmes, was wounded in the Battle of Maiwand (as described in the opening chapter of "A Study in Scarlet") and invalided out of the British Army.

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