Battle of Kandahar (1880)
The Battle of Kandahar, fought on 1 September 1880 outside Kandahar, was the last major engagement of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. A British relief army under General Frederick Roberts, having force-marched some three hundred miles from Kabul in three weeks, decisively defeated the Afghan forces of Ayub Khan west of the city.[1][2]
Maiwand and the siege
After stirring up anti-British feeling in Herat, Ayub Khan — a son of the late Amir Sher Ali Khan and a rival claimant to the throne — marched east in June 1880 with some ten thousand followers. A small British brigade under Brigadier George Burrows met him at Maiwand, forty miles west of Kandahar, on 27 July 1880, and was shattered: Indian recruits crumpled, Afghan levies switched sides, and despite a celebrated last stand by the 66th Regiment the survivors fled back to Kandahar. There, under Major-General Primrose, they were besieged by Ayub Khan's victorious army.[1][3][5]
The march from Kabul
To relieve the siege and restore British prestige, Roberts left the Sherpur cantonment at Kabul on 8 August 1880 with a field force of about ten thousand fighting men — a little over 2,800 of them Europeans — plus some eight thousand followers and roughly eight and a half thousand transport animals. Speed dictated everything: each trooper carried only twenty to thirty pounds of kit, no wheeled transport accompanied the column, and the only artillery was light mountain guns, while mules and camels bore the supplies.[1][3]
The chosen route ran through the fertile Logar Valley and then down the Ghazni road — roughly three hundred miles, with some accounts giving 320 for the longer line of march. The troops averaged fifteen miles a day, sometimes twenty, marching in the early morning to avoid the summer heat; at the worst stage five hundred men were falling sick daily, and Roberts himself, struck down with fever near the end, had to be carried in a dhooly — mounting a horse only when within sight of the city. The column entered Kandahar unopposed on 31 August 1880, having covered the distance in twenty days.[1][2][4]
The battle
Ayub Khan had lifted the siege on learning of Roberts' approach and retired to a strong defensive position in the hills west of the city, between the Baba Wali range and the Arghandab River, anchored on fortified villages. At about half past nine on the morning of 1 September, British guns opened a diversionary bombardment of the Baba Wali Pass while the main force swung around the Afghan flank. The 92nd Highlanders and the 2nd Gurkhas stormed the village of Gundimullah Sahibdad in close combat, and by midday both attacking brigades had carried the last stronghold, Pir Paimal. When the British finally pushed into Ayub Khan's camp at about one o'clock it stood deserted: his army had dissolved into full retreat toward Herat.[1][3][5]
Aftermath
Ayub Khan lost his entire artillery — including the two Royal Horse Artillery guns captured at Maiwand — together with his camp and vast stores of ammunition. Accounts of his losses differ: one gives about a thousand men killed, another estimates some 2,500 killed, wounded, and captured, while British and Indian casualties were around 250 killed and wounded. The victory closed the Second Anglo-Afghan War; the British evacuated Kandahar the following year, leaving Amir Abdur Rahman Khan in control of a unified Afghanistan, and an attempt by Ayub Khan to return ended in his final defeat at the hands of the new amir's armies. Roberts became a national hero, elevated as Lord Roberts of Kandahar, and his march passed into Victorian legend.[1][3][4]