Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 7 - Retreat From Kabul

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

On our seventh episode we jump back in time to The Great Game. The British Empire invades Afghanistan and puts the most truthworthy idiot to ever be promoted general in charge. Nick has a hot take on the smell of 18th century men's genitals and Joe is left question what the hell a post-prostitute ritual bath is. Like, share, and review us on Itunes for the Glory of the British East India Company. Follow Lions Led By Donkeys on Twitter. Follow Joe on Twitter. Follow Nick on Twitter.

🎵 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am your host, Joe. This is my co-host, Nick. Why don't you say hi, Nick? Yeah, we do that. So today, we're going to jump in the way-way-back machine. We usually do that. So today we're going to jump in the way, way back machine. We usually do that. Yeah, we haven't covered anything modern ever. But we were the 90s once.

Yeah. But it was Russia 90s, so it's like the US 70s. We're going to go back to the era of the great game or what the russians called the tournament of shadows because the russians are way better at naming things just fucking awesome uh so we're gonna talk about the first anglo-afghan war or more exactly the british retreat from kabul i know it's fucking exciting i'm pumped That hung heavy on those motherfuckers, too. Yeah. How you doing today, Nick? I'm doing good. Trying to get over the fact that I'm drinking some strawberry bullshit.

Yeah, he picked up Perrier fucking sparkling natural mineral water for our vodka today, and it tastes like somebody ate a bushel of strawberries. Is bushel the correct word for strawberries? Why are you asking me? I don't know. I'm going to go with bushel. I'm going to go with race. It's not race-related.

It's fruit-related, all right? But they ate a whole bushel of strawberries and then just burped it into your nose. It's disgusting. I'm only saying that because I've known family members who work in strawberries. So that makes it worse. To hear more about Mexican history, go ahead and head back to our last episode. Anyway, before we get there, we have to actually explain the great game. I know I yada, yada, yada'd my way through all of World War I in two episodes now.

But, you know, the great game isn't something a lot of people are familiar with. It's not commonly taught in history classes. You won't catch it on the History Channel or Discovery Channel in between shows about pawn shops and, you know, American pickers or whatever. So we're actually going to go through it here. So Russia as a power was growing during the 1800s, and their influence expanded with their imperial ambitions. And soon the biggest asshole on the block, the United Kingdom,

began to get anxious as the upstart imperial power crept closer to Afghanistan. Russia kind of saw Central Asia as their playing field. That was supposed to be their sphere of influence. It was their version of Manifest Destiny to expand that way. So Afghanistan is, at this time, uncolonialized, which is surprising for this time in history. But it also bordered British India, also known as the British Raj or the jewel of the crown of the empire.

If Russia was to ally with or take over the Emirate of Afghanistan, they could use it as a launch pad to invade India, which is something Britain was constantly worried about because crushing the Indian people and milking their economy for all it's worth was pretty much how they funded everything back then. It was just a giant bank that was filled with human blood that they just took money from, which was actually something Napoleon planned to do in 1801 with Paul I of Russia. And it probably would have happened if Paul hadn't been assassinated. So, you know, they could have put a damper on their plans. And then, obviously, Napoleon invaded Russia, and everything kind of went downhill with their relations since then. I feel like we also need to point out who defined the name of the great game, Carl E. Meyer.

I don't know. Did you cover that? I did not. So Carl E. Meyer stated the state of the tensions between the two great European powers, known as the Great Game, as the clandestine struggle between Russia and Britain at this time for Central Asia, as Joe pointed out. So, it kind of sounds a lot like what a lot of people have called it is the 1800s version of the Cold War. Basically, it really was. And I find that really interesting because it's fucking sweet that it happened this

fucking early. Yeah. Once people gather enough power, the people caught in the middle are always going to end up being playthings. That happened, I mean, most people know about the intricacies of the Cold War, and we saw it in South America and Africa and everything in between. And this

is the prequel with black powder rifles instead. Sweet looking fucking rifles. And like most prequels, this one kind of sucked if you were British. So, of course, Russia thought it was their God-given right to own that neighborhood. And just like the British thought that their empire was their God-given right to own that neighborhood. And just like the British thought that their empire was their God-given right. Right. And that's the whole thing where it's like that imperial overconfidence

and political incompetency and misjudgment that fucks them up, in my opinion. Yeah, it's a great example of international realism where two powers who only believe that strength is expanding are eventually going to smack into one another right and that's why the shit doesn't work um eventually sick of russia's shit britain formed what they dubbed the army of the indus made up mostly of troops from the british east india company and we're not going to go too deep into the east india company because that fill an entire 20 episodes on its own. And there's probably a podcast out there that's going to cover that significantly better than we would in a paragraph.

Just know that they're effectively like if all the rules had been taken away from Halliburton and KBR in Iraq and the U.S. government just let them rule by decree. They are in effect a libertarian's wet dream. So the British Regular Army and that of the East India Company did not get along. The British Regular Officers looked at company counterparts like rejects and mercenaries, and they weren't entirely wrong. As for regular soldiers, the company was built upon the back of sepoys, or Indian soldiers' conscripts and things like that from the Raj. They had white soldiers as well and Europeans from various backgrounds

because they didn't really have much of a filter. Yeah. There wasn't much of a fucking coffee filter back then. Yeah, when you're running a... Well, they'd probably have a tea filter. A tea bag. There we go. Sorry.

I'm American. Yeah, get your caffeinated beverages correct um they just needed bodies to form their giant army um and it was fucking huge um but we won't go too far into that so this is a little bit more than imperial power grab uh they still had to cook up a cassius belly or a reason to go to war and they found one once they started digging amir muhammad dost khan the leader of the of most of afghanistan at the time because at this time in history like most parts of history afghanistan was the middle of a civil war um but he laid siege to the city of harat in the early 1800s harat and pashwar which is now part of pakistan had been ruled by some asshole

named shuja shah durrani who had declared himself king of all of afghanistan even though he controlled two parts of it right though his power never really extended past those two cities and he was only in power for two years before he getting deposed and chased off he found refuge in the loving arms of the british east india company who paid him a salary to just sit around the company was smart enough to know that he would be useful at some point lord uckland at this time published this similar declaration which condemned dost muhammad khan for making a quote unprovoked attack on our ancient ally which he's talking about the deposed king suja and he went on to talk about how the people still love suja shah throughout afghanistan

even though you know he didn't control all of Afghanistan, and would soon enter his realm, surrounded by his soldiers and supported against foreign interference. I have to assume he said all this with a straight face somehow, because he was foreign interference, but that's kind of how Britain did things. Now when the siege of Herat failed and Dost pulled back, Imperial Russia pulled out their advisors.

So at this time, Russia pulled out their advisors. So at this time, Russia had tons of advisors in there helping Dost Muhammad. Holy shit. Yeah. That was kind of like their version of rescinding military advisors, which were going to try to create a European-like army in Afghanistan. That sounds really funny. It does. Most prequels are depressing and bad, but this one's even worse.

So, Russia just washed their hands of the entire situation and moved on. They left Afghanistan, which actually got rid of the British pretext for invasion. All of that horseshit about Asian allies aside, this was all a pissing contest, and

they're ensuring that the Russiansussians didn't end up on the indian border and uh even though the british absolutely knew obviously news traveled slow back in the day but the british knew about the russian advisors and they knew that the advisors had left and that if you thought that was enough to convince the company that invasion wasn't necessary, you must be new to our show. Right. On November 25th, 1838, the Army of the Indus began their march to Kabul. Of course, everybody thought this would hardly be a challenge for the highly trained and battle-hardened forces of the company

and the British regular army. Hell, Afghanistan didn't even have a standing army. No matter how much Russia tried, it's just not how their society works. No, this motherfucker said sweet muskets though yeah the jazails were on point they were ancient but could still slaughter a red coat just as good um now we will cover soon and slaughter they will um afghanistan did not have a standing army because of how their society was ran um it was a tribal system which you can kind of think of as a feudal system where you know a lord or in this case a warlord or

chieftain would commit a certain amount of levies to the emir or the leader during a time of war they are armed with ancient gazelles which which we just talked about. They're traditional matchlock weapons. You can think of them as even older than brown best muskets. But they were passed on through family lines and decorated. I'm surprised I haven't seen some kind of artist hang one of these motherfuckers around their neck. It has covered in so much design and intricacies and shit. I can say that about the whole passing weapons through family lines because

as some may know i used to be a reenactor and i still consider myself one because player shut the fuck up he was a cosplayer so we had this one southern guy who used to always reenact the civil war confederacy granted he was a racist motherfucker shocking but there never would have seen that coming plenty of uh confederate reenactors that are actually there for just for the history but there are some that are pretty bad apples just like the world war ii ss reenactors but that's a different episode entirely i really plan on doing one of those in the future. Going on, this guy had a family

commemorative nice musket from the time. I think it was the Kentucky Long Rifle. I can't really remember. But it was every kill they've gotten hunting probably union hunting as well was marked on the stock and it was

nicely done and it was dangerous game honestly it looked really beautiful but the history behind it was kind of fucking evil well when you go into the history of most things it's evil um because as most people know my philosophy is humans are inherently bad and it takes a lot of work to make us good. Right. And we have yet to see the good. No. That's not what our show is about. If our show covered good things, it wouldn't be our show.

No. It would be something NPR had. We like to cover things that are bad because we like to make fun of it. And depressing things make us laugh because of everything. We hit ourselves the most anyway uh so the duke of wellington while speaking at the house of lords said this whole operation was stupid given that quote afghanistan has no roads was a land of rocks sand desert ice and snow and there is no infrastructure to handle such a movement of troops and the duke of wellington would be more

correct than he ever thought possible the company's advance into the country went off generally without a hitch they didn't have any you know large standing formations in their way though at one point they left behind their siege guns before they attempted to take the city of ghanzi and they managed to break through the gates because the gates were so old and battered from years of war and everything else that they just opened. It's probably just shitty carpentry work, like shitty craftsmanship. Yeah. They didn't measure twice, cut once.

It's like, I fucked it. Like, the gate will go here. That's essentially what I do for everything, and it pretty much works out pretty well. It's the work that you pay for, get exactly and uh and you know that personally i do thanks for having us move in your house there's dents all over my walls i just like to i would like to point that out so i have to get free work yeah uh i got what i paid

for um so the the gates which were broken They just walked right through. They also learned that their guest, Shuja Shah, was an insane person after he ordered all the Afghan fighters who were inside to be captured and beheaded. The company, not wanting to really make him look like a puppet, even though everybody knew he was a puppet, just let him go about his thing. And he let them slaughter whoever they wanted while everybody watched in horror. But I don't think they watched an horror well i mean like soldiers at the time wrote dispatches but they're like this is horrible like a whole bunch of people just get their heads sawn off but like a company leadership wise just lining up people and beheading them that's just par for the course for the east india company um but like their foot soldiers who signed up probably didn't think they're taking part in a giant horrific war crime machine probably that yeah shit but i also assume that they were probably fucking cheering on from the sideline there's a few sick fucks in the back they're like

fuck yeah let's go you won't do it yeah so the army of the indus marched on crushing das Das Muhammad's forces in every single battle that they met. Muhammad actually had the balls to mock the British chief representative of Kabul, William McNaughton, and sent him a letter that said, I am like a wooden spoon. You may throw me, hither and yon, but I shall not be hurt. So this guy had, like, enough guts to, like, yeah, I'm getting my ass kicked, but I'm still standing. Yeah. Like, but but you know

this isn't like rocky where or like the simpsons episode where homer became a boxer oh yeah like that one's way better than rocky dos never won he just kept losing the point where the british were gonna get tired and he was gonna go for a knockout blow never happened he just kept getting his ass kicked yeah um should he use the barbed wire yeah that's from the simpsons episode the stinger that's The stinger. That's the stinger. They don't allow that anymore. Soon the whole country fell under company control via their puppet Shuja Shah, and the majority of the 25,000-man army of the Indus turned around and went back to India,

leaving a small 8,000-man force behind to try to quell this whole country. Right. And you said you had something about how much this costs. Yeah, and the war cost was like, it was a shit ton. Like, the war cost is 15 million pounds at the time. But in today's time, it was around 50 billion pounds, and our currency is 80 billion. And it's the sound of sweet, sparkling,

disgusting strawberry water going into my cup. It's honestly also a sale because today's conflict costs immensely more. It should be noted that they left behind 8,000 people. We had at our peak, I think,

close to 200,000 in the country and we still fucking failed. Yeah. Sorry, we are still currently failing. Yes, we are. That's not over. Actually, someone died fighting there today, which is, what, let's tell you, the 8th? The 7th?

I don't have my days fucked up right now. Yeah, me too. But, you know, we're recording this on Saturday. The 7th. We're recording on the 7th. Yeah, and a soldier just died there in an insider attack. Right.

And what exactly did that force consist of? You said you had some stupid metrics. So you have your original soldiers, officers, and enlisted personnel. You have also the lives of 40 000 people 50 000 camels and these are 40 000 europeans yes which is fucking insane all for the life of trying to make a comfortable living for the i assume mainly the officers which is still an insane amount of people. Yeah. And this consisted also of

one grand piano, a fucking cat, a parakeet, and five maidservants. I'm surprised. I'm actually the only thing about that I'm surprised about is there's only five maidservants. That's honestly what I'm surprised about as well.

But when you're living in Kabul, times are tough. Yeah. I don't know. When when i went to kabul they had a barbecue and an officer's base and it was it was magnificent no they did they just call them aids now yeah uh so the afghans launched a guerrilla war as pretty much everybody saw coming against the british led by das muham, until he was captured and sent to exile in, ironically, India of all places in 1840. Eventually, Afghan noblemen, warlords, and chiefs turned against Shuja Shah like anybody with a fucking one wrinkle on their brain saw coming, and the company flocked towards, sorry, they turned against the company

and flocked towards Akbarbar khan who was the son of dost muhammad what the majority what was the majority of the afghan complaints well it turns out that the british just would not stop fucking afghan women and this like no there's all sorts of things here like they you they could complain about their lack of of controlling their own. Like, they could complain about their lack of controlling their own sovereignty. They could complain about colonialism. They could complain about the obvious giant boot that Shuja Shah was putting on them. But the main complaint in numerous accounts was of bathhouse orgies, people fucking in broad daylight in front of other people, not to mention the huge cottage industry of prostitution that sprang up.

So these motherfuckers did little to endure themselves, but meddled in the creating thriving markets and, you know, like prostitution and shit. They didn't create a thriving market with their dicks. Right. And they generated inflation up the ass. And, I mean, this is an army of thousands of soldiers with very little regulation. I can imagine like present day Afghanistan literally looked the exact same if we didn't have strict rules in place. Um, and just like today,

Afghanistan is a desperately poor country back then. Um, you can't really blame them for being turned out into prostitutes when like a piddly ass private's pay, um, was enough. It was a smart fortune in the country. The good old enlisted corps went out into the town, said, let's fucking get some prostitutes in here. And guess what?

This poor market, which is all Afghanistan was, was a poor market. That's all it was known for was its market. Yeah. It was a poor fucking country. They didn't really even find natural resources until recently. Yeah. Today. So all this, you know, amoral hooking and fucking royally pissed off the staunchly conservative, very religious Afghan chiefs.

Not to mention Shuja was so unpopular that many of his ministers fucking hated him and then just joined Akbar. Akbar met with many other leaders in kabul when what's known as a jerga or a clan meeting um and planned a general uprising one past two chief said quote and i need to say this is a direct quote from a first-hand account it's so fucking good um quote now we are justified in throwing off this English yoke. They stretch the hand of tyranny to dishonor private citizens great and small. Fucking a slave girl

isn't worth the ritual bath that follows it, but we have to put a stop to it right here and now. Otherwise, these English will ride the donkey of their desires into the field of stupidity to the point of having us all arrested and aborted to a foreign field um this kind of brings up a lot of questions to me um but mostly it speaks volumes of how well they think of one their dicks and two their own goddamn women like

dicks probably smell really bad dude i don't, they're not even upset about the hooking. They're just pissed they didn't use a ritual bath. Yeah. And I did a lot of weird Google searching here. I already know their ritual bath still sucks. Their dicks probably still smell. Like, I mean, this is the 1800s. Nobody was bathing that regularly in the first place.

Yeah, but still. Like, fucking if fucking Muhammad frommad from like across the table from me still smells like asshole i know it's his dick why would you why was assholes what what you're bringing more questions to the table now nick that's what we do here so like i did a lot of weird google searching um to the point that I had to delete my browsing history because I was looking for what the fuck ritual bath he was talking about after

banging on a prostitute. And I could find literally nothing. Holy shit, that's in the back of my mind. What is the ritual bath? Like bathing. There's some specific ritual bath he's thinking of and I could find nothing. I mean, I had one when I was a small child. A ritual bath? I thinking up and i could find nothing i mean i had one when i was a small child a ritual bath i assume that's what a uh how do some people say baptism baptism i don't think

but ritual bath maybe i i don't think that's the same i don't think it's the same but that's the only thing that comes to my mind because i was a former catholic, but that's the only thing that comes to my mind because I was a former Catholic. So that's the only thing that comes to mind for me. You know, I'm going to steer clear of the priest jokes so we can move on. He may have taken ritual bath after you were a page boy or whatever. So a lot of this boils down to what's known as the Code of Pashtun Wali, or the traditional legal code of the Pashtuns, the major ethnic group of Afghanistan. One of the tenets of Pashtun Wali is badal, or revenge.

This demand for revenge has absolutely no time limit and is passed down through families and tribal lines. Revenge can be demanded for something as little as a taunt, so you can imagine turning out a bunch of women into prostitutes registered somewhere on the revenge scale. Pair that tenant that of namus meaning the protection of women's virtues um so the company men had set up a powder keg full of hookers and they had absolutely no capability to control it how big is a powder keg to hold hookers? Like, how many hookers per powder keg? I'm not good at math, but I would assume, let's go with a baker's dozen of hookers.

Baker's dozen. So, Lord Cabool's commander, and the star of our show here today, is Lord William Elphinstone, was left to defend himself. Elphinstone was a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and was awarded the Companion of the Bath for his actions during the Battle of Waterloo. I will let you make your own jokes about what the Companion of the Bath award means. Because we still don't know what bath means in either sense. I'm going to assume he's really good at ritual hooker bathing. But I know my bathing session consisted of me being a baby getting drowned by a priest.

And I have the video, the VHS video, of me just getting fucking dumped like Achilles by the ankles. Crying and nobody fucking stopping the priest. You get dunked in a pool of water by an old man wearing wizard robes. Yeah, that motherfucker. Oh, man. As much as I'd like to

stay on that for a little bit longer. Oh, God. Don't worry, it'll probably be brought up again. So Elphinstone was old and way past his prime. By some accounts, he was suffering from some unknown illness that nobody ever really named or diagnosed, and they made him particularly frail and slow. Herbicipolitis.

Yeah, probably from not taking their ritual bath. Some said he could hardly stand under his own strength, and he was incredibly weak-minded. Lady Sale, a wife of an officer under his command, stated that his decisions are as easily changed by the last person he talked to. That sounds frighteningly familiar for somebody else that we know in this day and age, but... Not only was he physically slow, but he was mentally slow. And as the city burned around him, as the jihad was declared, he did absolutely nothing to stop it, which only encouraged further revolt.

It did not take long for the army's contonement, which was actually a mile and a half away from Kabul city center, to be surrounded and besieged by Afghan warriors. Yep. Admittedly stupid idea to situate their main defenses

outside of the city because there's actually a citadel which still stands to this day in the center of kabul i've seen it pretty cool i have not yeah um so it was born out of their idea to make shuja shah look like a legitimate ruler but really all it does doom them from the start elphinstone called for reinforcements from kandahar, but they turned around when they saw the mountain passes were blocked by snow. Elphinstone would have to stand on his own. On December 23rd, McNaughton knew that their situation

was completely and totally unattainable. He decided to meet with Ackbar and negotiate a peaceful withdrawal of troops. Before that, they were under relentless artillery, like fire fire from the surrounding hills they were getting fucked and when you think about that you have to see the area um we'll post some pictures of it um it is really really really easy to be in a tactically disadvantageous position

in the country of afghanistan which i nobody ever successfully invades it. Right. You're always surrounded on all sides by mountains, unless you're in Helmand, where it's flat. But this is far away from there. And like most armies that would later do the same thing, they just picked a flat spot in the middle of the valley to set their base up. Stupid. Yes. So along with 12,000 civilians that accompany the army is camp followers which we just talked about um and the camp followers are everything from merchants to tradesmen to

porters to soldiers families to the aforementioned hookers it was one cat and uh parakeets as well yeah uh i can't forget the uh i'm sure some kind of knighted cat i don't know why that's noted uh it must have been an important cat um it better have been a fucking cool looking cat first of all it was probably cool as shit because it was able to withstand a siege for a large period of time probably had like a gnarly well yeah they're trying to fucking save mittens from the fucking siege like i would too like i'd save my dog i'd yeah i'd totally save my dog from a siege of afghans uh always attempt um you know these camp followers or the parakeet the cat whatever were everything that armies ran on back then um so they were trying to save them akbar always an

agreeable man agreed to sit down for some tea and talks um when the british delegation showed up to the agreed upon spot at the agreed-upon time they were simply dragged from their horses and slaughtered their bodies were mutilated and drugged dragged through the streets of Kabul to everybody's horror Alphonse did nothing in response to these attacks and then he just promoted it major Eldred Pottinger to replace the dead guy and this is this is bad for you know 100 different reasons it pretty much show the afghans that the brits aren't going to stand and fight it shows that they're led by a weak person and they can do whatever they want um and you know

everybody at this point and the dispatches of the survivors at the time are saying elfin son's an idiot um and you know military attacked into quorum just did not allow them to like hey old man take a knee the future is now like well he was known as an incompetent soldier who became a general yeah by one of his counterparts which i don't know how i didn't write it down in my notes i completely forgot the general's name. I hope you have it. I don't. So, first of all, I don't like him because he was involved in Waterloo and deposed our glorious La Petite Caperelle.

May he always rest in peace. So the siege wore on, grinding the British down to a nub. Their army could not fight anymore. They were in disinfinity's position, and everybody was demoralized. On January 1st, Elphinstone to akbar's terms of withdrawal now um i'm not going to make the joke now it comes up later but now nobody wanted elphinstone to meet with him or agree with him for this withdrawal for obvious reasons because mcnaughton just fucking died meeting this guy right um so the terms of withdrawal were very unfavorable um all british gunpowder reserves had to be surrendered along

with most of their modern muskets and cannons um in return akbar promised a safe passage for the army and all camp followers all the way to jalalabad 90 miles away and it's january 1st and for some reason a lot of people think of afghanistan as like the middle east because americans are inherently stupid and whatever but it's not and what lord uckland said earlier about being nothing but rocks and snow and ice during the winter right is absolutely true um so this is going to be a tough march in the best circumstances um but the best circumstances just simply didn't exist um during this march i know i've made the joke before that uh russian history can be described with the with the quote and then things got worse

but so can this march um this column was shit uh yeah and then and then things just got worse um and on the first light of january 6th the column set off leaving shuja shah behind in kabul to his fate um once everybody was out of the main contunement afghan warriors quickly rushed in taking up the old british positions and began firing at the withdrawing column they then slaughtered all the people the british had left behind now there was a lot of um kids and wounded and sick that the brits left behind because um of course akbar being the generous man that he is said oh no they're fine we'll take care of them right um and then he just gentlemen like yeah destroyed them. I'm starting to think Akbar might be

a little bit of a bastard. Yes. Not that I can blame him. I can't blame him. So, along with giving up his arms and weapons and shit, the destruction of his column took three days. And

it was like 3,000 would die and all this bullshit. A lot would fucking die within 25 miles. They did not get far. No, they didn't. At fucking all. Not at all. So also part of the agreement was Akbar promised there was going to be an escort

to lead the army through the mountains. Well, the escort never showed up. And instead, the army came under fire from all sides, using those nice shiny new muskets that Elphinstone had just gifted them, and their old sweet gazelles. Pottinger urged Elphinstone to turn back and retake the Kabul fortress of Bala Hisar before it was too late, which was the central citadel. They could have done it. They absolutely could have done it, absolutely could have done it even with no cannon no nothing they

still had a 45 000 man or sorry a four 4500 man strong army against what were effectively feudal levies yeah with fucking muskets that looked like cursive um how dare you speak about that way um they look like fucking my signature when i write yeah it's credit my signature giselle yeah um they could have i mean this would have been a infantry assault they could have pushed them out of the area um the column at this time was around 16 000 um now obviously like we said the vast majority of those are camp followers um but elfinstone refused instead ordering them to keep on to jalalabad which i should remind you is 90 miles away in the middle of winter surrounded on all sides cold as fuck freezing i all right so i grew up in detroit

michigan um and the winters there are rough. They're not fun. But the coldest I have ever been in my life is sitting through a winter in Afghanistan. See, that's funny. The coldest I've been is in Texas when I first got there. It was 10 degrees. And I was like, what the fuck? Everybody lied to me. This doesn't happen in California.

I said Texas. God's sake, man, you grew up in California. I said Texas. That's what I meant. You grew up in California. Well, yeah. In California, it never gets cold. Literally never dips below 30 or 40. It's great. 30 is pretty cold after living in Texas for as long as I did. Anyway, so the column slowly limped on at the mercy of the Afghan tribesmen.

By the second day, the column was proving at a crawl. And you can imagine these, like, there's 10,000 plus civilians in this column who never thought they were going to be in a direct musket cannon fire. So they're freaking out. And the panicking civilians have to be herded around like cats. Literally, just one cat. Not the important cat.

It's like the plurality of cats. I imagine the parakeet probably flew away, because I would. Yeah, I would hope so. the parakeet probably flew away because I would. Yeah, I would hope so. Because the parakeet is not mentioned, so I imagine it flew away. Yeah, he actually is in the Afghan parliament to this day. He's known as a fucking god because nobody knows of him. His parakeet Christ.

So the panicking civilians slowed down the progression and made defending the column all but impossible because this is still the 1800s. Defending and attacking relies on, you know, block formations of lining up and putting large amounts

of muskets on target. You can't do that when you're trying to hurt all these people together and, like, it just doesn't work. Right. So, on the afternoon

of the second day, Akbar again met with Elphinstone. Coming down all the way from the mountains and playing stupid about the massive ambush they'd walked right into. He's like, Alpenstone sits down, and he's like,

You told me you'd give me this golem. Like, what's going on? Like, he's a doddering old idiot. He has, like, two aides to, like, help him sit down. And then Ackbar's like, Nah, bro, totally nothing to do with it. Instead, he actually blamed the Brits for leaving the base too early, and that's why his escort wasn't there, even though that was the agreed-upon time to leave the base.

Dude, your guy's fucking alarm clock went off early. And I know, at this point, all of you are probably thinking, we're probably thinking, Elephant's like, you know what, you're an asshole. You're clearly not right here. You would be wrong. You would be so fucking wrong. Instead, Elephant's would have agreed, like, our bad, and then he,

part of the agreement was, hey, you guys sit tight. Akbar's like, you guys sit tight. I'm gonna head out ahead. Dom, the cord couple will pass. I'm gonna to head out ahead. Dom the Cord Coup will pass. I'm going to talk to all these warlords and chieftains. Right. And, you know, we're going to get this right. We're going to squash this fucking beef.

Shit's going to get fucking cool. Like, we're going to be good. Yeah, we're going to squash this beef that clearly is, you know, not in the right here. And then you guys are going to march through completely safe. Elephantstone agreed. He agreed again. And at this point, this guy is either the dumbest, most trustworthy motherfucker in the face of the planet, or this could only make sense in someone's brain who's just, like, eaten alive by dementia.

Of course, Ackbar just rode ahead, using the extra time he had bought to set up an even better ambush. head, using the extra time they had bought to set up an even better ambush. Also, with that shit, along with the money that went towards them, and not enough soldiers and whatnot, I already went over the money, it didn't buy off the factions that were in the area

along with this pass. Part of the company's plan was to buy them all off. Exactly. And this had to do with heavy resistance on the way out. So they got fucked up. Every single officer present urged Elphinstone to instead leave the camp followers

behind for the time being and rush forward to fight through the ambush. Which actually to this day is what you're supposed to do for an ambush. You're supposed to push through it. If you have the chance. But what you don't do Is just let it

Form it in front of you Instead the army's cohesion fell apart entirely And the column only limped forward about six miles That day right to the ambush Once the column pushed through Any given ambush point The fighters descended down from the mountains And slaughtered the wounded and anybody who was left behind

Save Mittens! Save the cat! Save Mittens! So the cat died. Also, I'm just going to note that now because it is known that one cat was killed throughout the whole fucking column. And, you know, it's kind of strange that they note that the cat died because, like, you don't know a lot of the names of the soldiers who fucking died. Exactly.

But the cat is noted as to have died. But the parakeet was not long-lived the parakeet. Exactly. I know nothing about the parakeet. Long-lived the parakeet. Or the parakeet is immortal. The piano is probably still fucking at the ball. The fucking warriors made their way down to hell, and they're like, hey, cut that guy's head off.

Hey, shoot that cat. Oh, sick piano. Ba-dee-da-dee-da-dee like and they just start dropping beats in the middle of the ambush zone um but uh so by january 9th the column had moved only 25 miles but lost more than 3 000 people three days 25 miles many which is sad that's rough man that's fucking terrible. Many had died in the fighting, but an equal number had simply frozen to death. And a sizable number, looking at the misery around them and knowing that they were simply going to die from the Afghans or be slaughtered after they were wounded, shot themselves or stabbed themselves. And that's funny because there's a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Rudyard Kipling. Rudyard Kipling. I knew I'd fuck up his first name.

But Kipling's poem, The Young British Soldier, is basically written off a young British army's experience in the first Anglo-Afghan war, which states, When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains. And go to your god like a soldier. My personal favorite part of that is god is spelled like G-A-W-D.

G-A-W-D, yeah. Like dog. Ashley Simpson fucking wrote it. Yeah. And we actually covered Rudyard Kipling in an accident once before in our William Haig episode. Because Kipling got his son killed before in our William Hague episode because Kipling got his son killed in World War I.

Yes, yeah. So a handwritten report by Elphinstone from this period says that most of the surviving sepoys had lost fingers and toes from frostbite

and their muskets were frozen and completely useless. Witnesses say at this point Elphinstone had given up taking any control of the situation

and instead just sat there on his horse in silence as people died around him. Like, this dude just sitting on his horse in complete silence as people are blowing their fucking brains out around him and freezing to death. Like, this dude is sundowning so bad. Or his brain

is just, like, mush and dribbling out of his eye. Like, he's not even smooth brain. His brain has died. It's nothing but worms. I usually like smooth that i don't know about fucking brain coming out of your ear i've had what is known as clear fluid come out of my ear yeah cerebral spinal fluid you should get that checked out yeah it sucks so on the night of the ninth lady sale and the majority of the wives and the families of the soldiers, along with their servants, reluctantly accepted Akbar's assurances of protection again. At this time, pretty much mean that they would be be on the level that, you know, they'll pay the ransom, we'll go free. Because that's how things worked in the field of battle at the time.

It was very gentleman-like. But they weren't fighting gentlemen. They were fighting people that fucking hated them. Exactly. And different factions. So they did not give a fuck. Yeah. Exactly.

And different factions. So they did not give a fuck. Yeah. And actually, to Akbar's credit, he kind of, kind of held on to his agreement here. Unless they weren't white. All of the Sepoy's wives and all the Indian servants were murdered on the spot. So I imagine the cat was probably white. Because the cat died.

We don't know if this is when the cat died. So the cat could have died of crossfire or they saw the cat and they were like, this cat's fucking white. In my opinion, the cat died in We don't know if this is when the cat died. So the cat could have died of crossfire, or they saw the cat and they were like, this cat's fucking white. In my opinion, the cat died in the heroic last stand that we'll get to. Yes. That'd be fucking great. Like, mittens floating in a musket. So on the night of the 11th, the army consisted of only about 200 men.

200. Yes, very. And led by a General John Shelton. In a rare show of competence among the leadership of the column, he led a rearguard action against the Afghans. They huddled together to fight to the death in a small mud-walled compound around Jegal-e-Dak and fought off attack after attack of the Afghan warriors. Once again, Akbar, seeing he was being fought, approached them for negotiations.

And, at this point, being a competent commander, you know Shelton was like, you know what, Akbar, fuck you. Just kidding. He agreed to meet with them again. This is the most trustworthy army. Alright, so,

this is where I stop giving them credit. The British army at this point in time has been completely fucking brain dead, where Ackbar was some real-life Skyrim character whose speech skills at 100. No sense why anybody would fucking believe this guy. But, I mean, I also said that, like, seven negotiations ago. But, I guess... Trustworthy army for some fucking reason.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, I guess I get a commission in the British Army. So as soon as Sheldon and Elphinstone showed up to the meeting place, they were captured. Though they weren't killed, and the defense did not last much longer without their

leadership. The largest body of surviving men, which consisted of about 45 European soldiers and 20 officers, mostly from the 44th Regiment of Foot, ended up with their backs against the wall near the village of Gandamak, the path ahead blocked by snow.

With only 20 working muskets among them and two shots apiece, they decided, fuck it, we're going to make one last stand and die like soldiers. This time, when the afghans approached for negotiations and they did because why wouldn't you at this point if you're an afghan warlord you're like these guys are fucking stupid they keep stopping fighting us but it's funny how it

seems it it seems like the british culture fixates on the defeat of uh the 44th foot foot sorry and uh they don't focus on a year later the British fuck the Afghan army up well yeah because of this the second

Anglo-Afghan war and that's why I talk about it as well it's like this looks like what I see as propaganda

and it looks romantic and sexy that the 44th foot had their courageous stand and that's how I see it well they it's hard for looks romantic and sexy that the 44 foot had their courageous stand. And that's how I see it. Well, it's hard for like historical, even historical revisionism at this point.

When you're trying to talk about the war, nobody, like even in modern history, when you talk about like Vietnam and, you know, the War of 1812 or the Global War on Terrorism. Right, nobody talks about it. Well, when they talks about it well when they talk about they always they look for the diamond in the rough that sometimes is in diamond it's a pile of shit because i mean the only reason why the british were here is because they thought of some stupid fucking reason to go to war right and the 44th regiment of foot only had to make their last stand because of shitty foreign relations um and that is normal for the most part. I mean, that happens time and time again throughout history. And when the Afghans had them with their back against the wall,

they approached it for negotiations again. A British sergeant instead shot a weapon at them and said, not bloody likely. After firing what little ammunition they had, the small detachment was overrun and killed almost to a man. On January 13th, one British officer, an assistant surgeon named William Bryden,

breeding profusely from a sword wound that sheared off part of his goddamn skull. His fucking skull! And the only reason why it didn't kill him is to protect himself from the cold, he shoved a magazine into his hat, like a paper magazine, and it deflected

the sword blow just enough to only cleave off a small part of his head his fucking horse was wounded as well shot multiple times um he arrived at jalalabad an officer stationed in jalalabad asked bryden where the rest of the army was and Bryden answered only, I am the army. That was quoted. He said that shit. Upon hearing the news, what had happened to the army, Lord Uckland reportedly suffered a stroke.

Of the British prisoners, 32 officers, over 50 soldiers, 21 children, and 12 women survived to actually 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 akbar would actually eventually be betrayed like he did so many times and was poisoned by his own father who feared his ambitions can you make the joke now

what joke akbar it's a trap it's a trap you could have made that joke the whole time through the whole low-hanging fruit man low-hanging fruit not a lot of people know so eventually shuja shah was assassinated in april of 1842 and dast muhammad returned to rule until his death in 1863 and he died a peaceful death was not assassinated which is like only a few leaders in afghan history can say like and that is like to the current time how shuja fucking was assassinated was fucking funny as shit. Because he avoided conflict the whole fucking time.

He avoided conflict. From his fortress, around 25 April 1842, he emerged from his fortress as promptly assassinated by a... You're probably going to have to help me with this. This is a Barakazi. his fortress, and promptly assassinated by a...

You're probably going to have to help me with this. This is a... Barakazi? Barakazi? Yeah, the Barakazi clan. Barakazi clan. Yeah. They assassinated the fuck out of him.

25 April, 1842. Surprising he even lasted that long, because he unpopular since like before he stepped foot in the country. And I'm assuming like the time frame that he survived was just as long as it took Das Muhammad to like walk back to Afghanistan from India.

This dude was a straight fucking asshole. I mean like the first thing he did when he showed up was start cutting people's heads off. I'm sure not many people liked it either. Well well i mean when he declared himself king he still only controlled two cities exactly only lasted two years then and even then like around this time rulers barely clung on to power especially afghanistan exactly which is why the british and the russians were like it was easy it was it was an easily manipulated area because they knew that they didn't even have an army to fight them.

But that bit them in the ass. Exactly. So Elphinstone died in captivity and was buried in an unmarked grave where wherever that is remains to this day. Nobody ever reclaimed his body. And that's saying some shit. Because only a year later, the Brits came back and stomped them into the ground. But nobody's like, nobody thought to ask where he was buried. Yeah.

Thankfully for the Afghan people, nothing bad had ever happened to the region again in the history of the world. And they live in prosperity to this day. And I won't hear anything otherwise. Yeah, just kidding. So that is the retreat from kabul and that was depressing it was besides one officer who made it off a sheer fucking his head half sheared off and he actually wounded horse yeah and he thought he was the only one later to find out that there were more soldiers. But still, holy fuck.

Well, he was the only one to trickle into Jalalabad. Not being a hostage. Right. Other people survived. Right. As hostages. As slaves and hostages running into the mountains and whatever. And then Breton actually went on to keep fighting as a, well, fighting, you know, notionally as an assistant surgeon, and fought in Burma.

The dude just didn't know when to quit. Yeah, and by the British, this was one of their worst, what is it, strategic defeats since Singapore? Yeah, and Singapore happened, what, like a century to the day, or almost something crazy like that, which probably didn't weigh too well on their conscience. No. But that's a different topic for a different episode because it definitely deserves one.

But, yeah, that's our episode for this week. You can follow us on social media. The links will be in the episode notes as long as as well as our sources um and uh we have to go now because we have to go pick up tacos and watch ufc um because i paid way too much to watch dana white's high impact ballerinas it's better than i can explain it yeah um so thank you to everybody who is following us on twitter and whatever other podcast platform you use and um thanks to your support we might have a sponsor like i said last week hopefully yeah oh my god which is kind of insane to think about

um follow the podcast for all my stupid history of the day moments or follow us on Twitter please rate and review us on iTunes and all the other shits that you listen to and thank you have a good week later