First chapter The Afghan Wars_ History in an Hour - Rupert Colley

Retribution was swift. A force under the command of Sir George Pollock and Robert Sale, husband of Lady Sale, stormed through Afghanistan, relieved the garrison at Jalalabad and, in September 1842, forced its way into Kabul where Lord and Lady Sale were emotionally reunited. But Pollock was too late to save Shah Shuja, who had been murdered in April 1842, or Elphinstone, who had died, a broken man, in captivity the same month. William Nott, one of Pollock’s second-in-commands, described Elphinstone as ‘the most incompetent soldier who ever became general’.

Pollock, who had been ordered to ‘leave some lasting mark of the just retribution of an outraged nation’, blew up Kabul’s Great Bazaar. Then, having rescued the remaining British hostages, he returned to India.

British prestige had been partially restored and its honour satisfied, but with the restoration of Dost Mohammad to the Afghan throne, the whole farcical and tragic episode had achieved nothing.

Thirty-six years later, in 1878, the Great Game was played again.