Massacre of Elphinstone's Army - Aftermath

Aftermath

The annihilation of about 16,500 people left Britain and India in shock and the Governor General, Lord Auckland, suffered a stroke upon hearing the news. In the Autumn of 1842 an "Army of Retribution" led by Sir George Pollock, with William Nott and Robert Sale commanding divisions, levelled Kabul. Sale personally rescued his wife Lady Sale and some other hostages from the hands of Akbar Khan. However, the slaughter of an army by Afghan tribesmen was humiliating for the British authorities in India.

Of the British prisoners, 32 officers, over 50 soldiers, 21 children and 12 women survived to be released in September 1842. An unknown number of sepoys and other Indian prisoners were sold into slavery in Kabul or kept as captives in mountain villages.One sepoy, Havildar Sita Ram, escaped from Afghanistan after 21 months of slavery and rejoined his former regiment at Delhi

The leadership of Elphinstone is seen as a notorious example of how the ineptitude and indecisiveness of a senior officer could compromise the morale and effectiveness of a whole army (though already much depleted). Elphinstone completely failed to lead his soldiers, but fatally exerted enough authority to prevent any of his officers from exercising proper command in his place.

Historians still debate whether Akbar Khan ordered the massacre, sanctioned it, or was unable to prevent it. Some of the British officers and families taken hostage later claimed that Akbar Khan had called out "Spare them!" in Persian, but "Kill them!" in Pushtu to the tribesmen. Either way, the British reaction to such an atrocity must have been clear to him. He died near the end of 1847, possibly poisoned by his father Dost Mohammad, who may have feared his ambitions.

Dost Mohammed remained a British prisoner till the end of 1841 when he was set free by the British authorities who, after they took their revenge on Kabul, had resolved to abandon any attempts to intervene in the internal affairs of Afghanistan. After Shuja Shah was assassinated in April 1842, Dost Mohammed quickly reestablished his authority. He died on 9 June 1863 of natural causes, one of the few Afghan rulers in the past thousand years to do so. Interestingly, even after the two British invasions of his country, he did not intervene in any manner during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

German poet Theodor Fontane learned of the massacre during his visit to England in 1844. The events preoccupied him his whole life and 54 years later, just before his death, he wrote a striking ballad about the disaster.