Elphinstone's Retreat Prelude

January 13, 1840

In Kabul, the British garrison spent an unhappy winter as the emir's subjects muttered in the bazaars. The political agent Burnes had been assassinated the previous autumn; envoys murdered under flags of truce. General Elphinstone, old and sick, could not decide anything. His army would pay in January 1842. Of 16,500 soldiers and camp followers who marched out, exactly one European survived to reach Jalalabad.