The Battle of Ghazni took place in the city of Ghazni in central Afghanistan on Tuesday, July 23, 1839, during the First Anglo-Afghan War.
Prelude
In the 1830s, the British were firmly entrenched in India but by 1837, feared a Russian invasion through the Khyber and Bolan Passes as the Russian Empire had expanded towards the British dominion. The British sent an envoy to Kabul to form an alliance with Afghanistan's emir, Dost Muhammad against Russia. The Emir was in favour of an alliance but wanted British help in recapturing Peshawar which the Sikhs had captured in 1834. The British refused to help. Dost Muhammad then started negotiating with the Russians who had also sent an envoy to Kabul. This led the Governor General of India, Lord Auckland to conclude that Dost Muhammad was anti-British. British fears of a Russian invasion of India took one step closer to becoming a reality when negotiations between the Afghans and Russians broke down in 1838. This led to Persian troops, along with their Russian allies, attacking the city of Herat in western Afghanistan in an attempt to annex it. Russia, wanting to increase its presence in South and Central Asia, had formed an alliance with Persia, which had territorial disputes with Afghanistan as Herat had been part of the Persian empire and had only been taken over by Afghanistan in 1750. Lord Auckland's plan was to drive away the besiegers and install a ruler in Afghanistan who was pro-British. The British chose Shuja Shah Durrani to be the new leader of Afghanistan. He was the former ruler of Afghanistan and had formed a strategic alliances with Britain during the Napoleonic Wars against Russia and France, but had been deposed and was living in exile in Lahore.
Invasion of Afghanistan
The British assembled two divisions from their Bengal Army commanded by Sir Harry Fane and another force of a single division from Bombay under the command of Sir John Keane. The Bombay force, numbering some 6,000 men, would sail by sea and land near the Indus river and then march into Afghanistan to join Fane's forces. Before the invasion was set to begin, news had reached India that the Persians and the Russians had abandoned the siege of Herat. Many British officers then believed that there was no longer a reason to invade Afghanistan. However, Lord Aukland was adamant and pressed on. The size of the invasion force was reduced from three divisions to two because there was no longer any prospect of confronting Persian and Russian forces. The second Bengal division which was originally supposed to take part in the invasion was now relegated as a reserve force and would remain in India. The quickest route to Kabul was to march across the Punjab and enter Afghanistan by way of Peshawar and the Khyber Pass, but Ranjit Singh, the ruler of Punjab would never consent to such a large force crossing the Punjab. The invasion route had to be through the southern passes, with the approach to Kabul via Kandahar and Ghazni; a journey three times the distance of the direct route. Therefore, after an assembly in a grand review at Ferozepore, Ranjit Singh, the Maharajah of the Punjab brought out the Dal Khalsa to march alongside the sepoy troops of the East India Company and the British troops in India. Following the agreement between Ranjit Singh and British viceroy Lord Auckland to restore Shah Shoja to the Afghan throne in Kabul, the British army marched towards Afghanistan from the south whereas Ranjit Singh’s army marched through the Khyber Pass, which concluded with the participation in the victory parade in Kabul.
The Bengal Army, which now numbered some 9,500 men, would march inland towards Quetta after assembling in Ferozpur. In Quetta, it would link up with the Bombay Army and then invade Afghanistan. The Bengal Army would also be accompanied by 6,000 men led by Shuja Shah Durrani. The men under Durrani's command were Afghan exiles who believed that he was the rightful ruler of Afghanistan. The total size of the invasion force now numbered some 20,500 men. Sir Harry Fane refused to take part in the invasion because the Russians and Persians had abandoned the siege of Herat and the pretext for the invasion of Afghanistan was no longer there, and so the command of the invasion force passed to Sir John Keane.
The Bombay Army landed near the Indus river in December 1838 and continued to march until it met with the Bengal Army in Quetta. The Invasion force was short on supplies due to taking the longer southern route into Afghanistan, and also because many British supply convoys were lost to harassing attacks by tribesman in Baluchistan.