Afghans Crush British at Maiwand: Empire's Worst Loss

Afghan warriors under Ayub Khan destroyed a British brigade near the village of Maiwand in one of the most devastating defeats the British Empire suffered in the nineteenth century. Of roughly 2,500 British and Indian troops who engaged, nearly a thousand were killed in a single day of fighting, with survivors retreating forty-five miles to Kandahar in desperate disorder. The battle occurred during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, a conflict driven by British anxiety over Russian expansion toward India. Britain had installed a friendly emir in Kabul and was in the process of withdrawing most of its forces when Ayub Khan, the deposed ruler of Herat, marched an army of roughly 25,000 toward Kandahar. Brigadier General George Burrows led a mixed force of British regulars and Indian troops to intercept him near the Helmand River. Burrows was outnumbered roughly ten to one, but British commanders had grown accustomed to technological superiority compensating for numerical disadvantage. At Maiwand, that assumption collapsed. Afghan artillery, including modern breach-loading guns, matched British firepower. When Ayub Khan's cavalry swept around the flanks and his infantry pressed the center, several Indian regiments broke under the pressure. The 66th Berkshire Regiment fought a rearguard action that became legendary in British military lore, with the regiment nearly annihilated defending a walled garden to cover the retreat. A Pashtun folk heroine named Malalai reportedly rallied wavering Afghan fighters at a critical moment by using her veil as a standard, becoming one of Afghanistan's most celebrated national figures. British survivors, many wounded and without water, staggered back to Kandahar across forty-five miles of desert. The disaster prompted General Frederick Roberts to lead a famous forced march from Kabul to Kandahar, covering 320 miles in twenty days, and defeat Ayub Khan in a subsequent battle. Arthur Conan Doyle later gave Dr. John Watson, Sherlock Holmes's companion, his war wound at Maiwand, embedding the battle permanently in English literature.