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First Anglo-Afghan War

The First Anglo-Afghan War (ده انګريز افغان اولني جګړه) was fought between the British Empire and the Emirate of Kabul from 1838 to 1842. The British initially successfully invaded the country taking sides in a succession dispute between emir Dost Mohammad Khan (Barakzai) and former King Shah Shujah (Durrani), whom they reinstalled upon occupying Kabul in August 1839. The main British Indian force occupied Kabul and endured harsh winters. The force and its camp followers were almost completely massacred during the 1842 retreat from Kabul.

The British then sent an Army of Retribution to Kabul to avenge the destruction of the previous forces. After recovering prisoners, they left Afghanistan by the end of the year. Dost Mohammed returned from exile in India to resume his rule.

It was one of the first major conflicts during the Great Game, the 19th century competition for power and influence in Central Asia between Britain and Russia.

Causes
The 19th century was a period of diplomatic competition between the British and Russian empires for spheres of influence in South Asia known as the "Great Game" to the British and the "Tournament of Shadows" to the Russians. With the exception of Emperor Paul (whose 1800 order to invade India was cancelled after his assassination in 1801), no Russian tsar ever seriously considered invading India. However, for most of the 19th century, Russia was viewed as "the enemy" in Britain; any Russian advance into Central Asia, into what is now Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was always assumed (in London) to be directed towards the conquest of India, as the American historian David Fromkin observed, "no matter how far-fetched" such an interpretation might be. In 1832, the First Reform Bill lowering the franchise requirements to vote and hold office in the United Kingdom was passed, which the ultra-conservative Emperor Nicholas I of Russia openly disapproved of, setting the stage for an Anglo-Russian "cold war", with many believing that Russian autocracy and British democracy were bound to clash. In 1837, Lord Palmerston and John Hobhouse, fearing the instability of Afghanistan, the Sindh, and the increasing power of the Sikh kingdom to the northwest, raised the spectre of a possible Russian invasion of British India through Afghanistan. The British tended to misunderstand the foreign policy of the Emperor Nicholas I as anti-British and intent upon an expansionary policy in Asia; whereas in fact though Nicholas disliked Britain as a liberal democratic state that he considered to be rather "strange", he always believed it was possible to reach an understanding with Britain on spheres of influence in Asia, believing that the essentially conservative nature of British society would retard the advent of liberalism. The main goal of Nicholas's foreign policy was not the conquest of Asia, but rather upholding the status quo in Europe, especially by co-operating with Prussia and Austria, and in isolating France, as Louis Philippe I, the King of the French was a man whom Nicholas hated as an "usurper". The duc d'Orleans had once been Nicholas's friend, but when he assumed the throne of France after the revolution of 1830, Nicholas was consumed with hatred for his former friend who, as he saw it, had gone over to what he perceived as the dark side of liberalism. The idea that Russia was a threat to the East India Company is one version of events. Scholars now favour a different interpretation that the fear of the East India Company was in fact the decision of Dost Mohammed Khan and the Qajar Ruler of Iran to form an alliance and extinguish Sikh rule in Punjab. The British feared that an invading Islamic army would lead to an uprising in India by the people and princely states therefore it was decided to replace Dost Mohammed Khan with a more pliant ruler. "Rumours could cost lives and Empire itself. Therefore instead of fixating on the oriental other, the East India Company played up the threat of the Russian bear".

In 1834, Shah Shuja Durrani invaded Kandahar with the aid of the British, but was defeated.

The Company sent an envoy to Kabul to form an alliance with Afghanistan's Amir, Dost Mohammad Khan against Russia. Amidst the Afghan civil war, the Sikhs seized Peshawar from the Peshawar sardars and subjugated them. The British feared the Dal Khalsa, and they considered the Sikh army to be a far more formidable threat than the Afghans who did not have a well-disciplined army, instead of having only a tribal levy where under the banner of jihad tribesmen would come out to fight for the Emir. For this reason, Lord Auckland preferred an alliance with the Punjab over an alliance with Afghanistan. The British could have had an alliance with the Punjab or Afghanistan, but not both at the same time.

When Governor-General of India Lord Auckland heard about the arrival of Russian envoy Count Jan Prosper Witkiewicz (better known by the Russian version of his name as Yan Vitkevich) in Kabul and the possibility that Dost Mohammad might turn to Russia for support, his political advisers exaggerated the threat. Alexander Burnes, the Scotsman who served as the East India Company's chief political officer in Afghanistan, described Witkiewicz: "He was a gentlemanly and agreeable man, of about thirty years of age, spoke French, Turkish and Persian fluently, and wore the uniform of an officer of the Cossacks". The presence of Witkiewicz had thrown Burnes into a state of despair, leading one contemporary to note that he "abandoned himself to despair, bound his head with wet towels and handkerchiefs and took to the smelling bottle". Dost Mohammad had in fact invited Count Witkiewicz to Kabul as a way to frighten the British into making an alliance with him against his archenemy Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja of the Punjab, not because he really wanted an alliance with Russia. The British had the power to compel Singh to return the former Afghan territories he had conquered whereas the Russians did not, which explains why Dost Mohammad Khan wanted an alliance with the British. Burnes wrote home after having dinner with Count Witkiewicz and Dost Mohammad in late December 1837: "We are in a mess home. The emperor of Russia has sent an envoy to Kabul to offer...money [to the Afghans] to fight Rajeet Singh!!! I could not believe my own eyes or ears." On 20 January 1838, Lord Auckland sent an ultimatum to Dost Mohammad telling him: "You must desist from all correspondence with Russia. You must never receive agents from them, or have aught to do with them without our sanction; you must dismiss Captain Viktevitch [Witkiewicz] with courtesy; you must surrender all claims to Peshawar". Burnes himself had complained that Lord Auckland's letter was "so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give offense", and tried to avoid delivering it for long as possible. Dost Mohammad was indeed offended by the letter, but in order to avoid a war, he had his special military advisor, the American adventurer Josiah Harlan, engage in talks with Burnes to see if some compromise could be arranged. Burnes in fact had no power to negotiate anything, and Harlan complained that Burnes was just stalling, which led to Dost Mohammad expelling the British diplomatic mission on 26 April 1838.

British fears of a Persian and Afghan invasion of India took one step closer to becoming a reality when negotiations between the Afghans and Russians broke down in 1838. The Qajar dynasty of Persia, with Russian support, attempted the Siege of Herat. Herat, in Afghanistan, is a city that had historically belonged to Persia; the Qajar shahs had long desired to take it back. It is located in a plain so fertile that is known as the "Granary of Central Asia"; whoever controls Herat and the surrounding countryside also controls the largest source of grain in all of Central Asia. Russia, wanting to increase its presence in Central Asia, had formed an alliance with Qajar Persia, which had territorial disputes with Afghanistan as Herat had been part of the Safavid Persia before 1709. Lord Auckland's plan was to drive away the besiegers and replace Dost Mohammad with Shuja Shah Durrani, who had once ruled Afghanistan and who was willing to ally himself with anyone who might restore him to the Afghan throne. At one point, Shuja had hired an American adventurer - Josiah Harlan - to overthrow Dost Mohammad Khan, despite the fact Harlan's military experience comprised only working as a surgeon with the East India Company's troops in the First Burma War. Shuja Shah had been deposed in 1809 and had been living in exile in British India since 1818, collecting a pension from the East India Company, which believed that he might be useful one day. The British denied that they were invading Afghanistan, claiming they were merely supporting its "legitimate" Shuja government "against foreign interference and factious opposition." Shuja Shah by 1838 was barely remembered by most of his former subjects and those that did viewed him as a cruel, tyrannical ruler who, as the British were soon to learn, had almost no popular support in Afghanistan.

On 1 October 1838, Lord Auckland issued the Simla Declaration attacking Dost Mohammed Khan for making "an unprovoked attack" on the empire of "our ancient ally, Maharaja Ranjeet Singh", going on to declare that Shuja Shah was "popular throughout Afghanistan" and would enter his former realm "surrounded by his own troops and be supported against foreign interference and factious opposition by the British Army". As the Persians had broken off the siege of Herat and the Emperor Nicholas I of Russia had ordered Count Vitkevich home (he was to commit suicide upon reaching St. Petersburg), the reasons for attempting to put Shuja Shah back on the Afghan throne had vanished. The British historian Sir John William Kaye wrote that the failure of the Persians to take Herat "cut from under the feet of Lord Auckland all ground of justification and rendered the expedition across the Indus at once a folly and a crime". But at this point, Auckland was committed to putting Afghanistan into the British sphere of influence and nothing would stop him from going ahead with the invasion. On 25 November 1838, the two most powerful armies on the Indian subcontinent assembled in a grand review at Ferozepore as 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 with Lord Auckland himself present amid much colorful pageantry and music as men dressed in brightly colored uniforms together with horses and elephants marched in an impressive demonstration of military might. Lord Auckland declared that the "Grand Army of the Indus" would now start the march on Kabul to depose Dost Mohammed and put Shuja Shah back on the Afghan throne, ostensibly because the latter was the rightful Emir, but in reality to place Afghanistan into the British sphere of influence. Speaking in the House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington condemned the invasion, saying that the real difficulties would only begin after the invasion's success, predicting that the Anglo-Indian forces would rout the Afghan tribal levy, only to find themselves struggling to hold on, as the Hindu Kush mountains and Afghanistan had no modern roads, and calling the entire operation "stupid" since Afghanistan was a land of "rocks, sands, deserts, ice and snow".

Forces
British India at this time was a proprietary colony run by the East India Company, which had been granted the right to rule India by the British Crown. India was only one of several proprietary colonies in the British Empire around the world, where various corporations or individuals had been granted the right to rule by the Crown, with for instance Rupert's Land, which was a vast tract covering most of what is now Canada being ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company, but India was easily the most wealthy and profitable of all the proprietary colonies. By the 19th century, the East India Company ruled 90 million Indians and controlled 70 million acres (243,000 square kilometres) of land under its own flag while issuing its own currency, making it into the most powerful corporation in the world. The East India Company had been granted monopolies on trade by the Crown, but it was not owned by the Crown, though the shares in the East India Company were owned by numerous MPs and aristocrats, creating a powerful Company lobby in Parliament while the Company regularly gave "gifts" to influential people in Britain. The East India Company was sufficiently wealthy to maintain the three Presidency armies, known after their presidencies as the Bengal Army, the Bombay Army and the Madras Army, with the supreme field headquarters for commanding these armies being at Simla. The East India Company's army totaled 200,000 men, making it one of the largest armies in the entire world, and was an army larger than those maintained by most European states. The majority of the men serving in the presidency armies were Indian, but the officers were all British, trained at the East India Company's own officer school at the Addiscombe estate outside of London. Furthermore, the politically powerful East India Company had regiments from the British Army sent to India to serve alongside the East India Company's army. Officers from the British Army serving in India tended to look down on officers serving in the company's army, and relations between the two armies were cool at best.

The regiments chosen for the invasion of Afghanistan came from the Bengal and Bombay armies. The commander in India, Sir Henry Fane, chose the regiments by drawing lots. The units from the Bengal Army going into Afghanistan were Skinner's Horse, the 43rd Native Infantry and the 2nd Light Cavalry, which were all Company regiments while the 16th Lancers and the 13th Somersethire Light Infantry came from the British Army in India. The units from the Bombay Army chosen for the Grand Army of the Indus were the 19th Native Infantry and the Poona Local Horse, which were Company regiments, and the 2nd Queen's Regiment, the 17th Lincolnshire Regiment, and the 4th Dragoons, which were all British Army regiments. Of the two divisions of the Grand Army of the Indus, the Bombay division numbered fifty-six hundred men and the Bengal division numbered ninety-five hundred men. Shuja recruited 6,000 Indian mercenaries ("Shah Shujah's Levy") out of his pocket for the invasion. Ranjit Singh, the elderly and ailing Maharaja of the Punjab and the British assembled in a grand review at Ferozepore as 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. Ranjit Singh agreed to a treaty with the British viceroy Lord Auckland to restore Shah Shoja to the Afghan throne in Kabul. In pursuance of this agreement, the British army of the Indus entered Afghanistan from the south, while Ranjit Singh's troops went through the Khyber Pass and took part in the victory parade in Kabul. Accompanying the invasion force were 38,000 Indian camp followers and 30,000 camels to carry supplies.

The Emirate of Afghanistan had no army, and instead under the Afghan feudal system, the tribal chiefs contributed fighting men when the Emir called upon their services. The Afghans were divided into numerous ethnic groups, of which the largest were the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and the Hazaras, who were all in their turn divided into numerous tribes and clans. Islam was the sole unifying factor binding these groups together, though the Hazaras were Shia Muslims while the rest were Sunni Muslims. The Pashtuns were the dominant ethnic group, and it was with the Pashtun tribes that the British interacted the most. The Pashtun tribesmen had no military training, but the ferociously warlike Pashtuns were forever fighting each other, when not being called up for service for the tribal levy by the Emir, meaning most Pashtun men had at least some experience of warfare. The Pashtun tribes lived by their strict moral code of Pashtunwali ("the way of the Pashtuns") stating various rules for a Pashtun man to live by, one of which was that a man had to avenge any insult, real or imagined, with violence, in order to be considered a man. The standard Afghan weapon was a matchlock rifle known as the jezail.

British invasion of Afghanistan
The "Army of the Indus" which included 21,000 British and Indian troops under the command of John Keane, 1st Baron Keane (subsequently replaced by Sir Willoughby Cotton and then by William Elphinstone) set out from Punjab in December 1838. With them was William Hay Macnaghten, the former chief secretary of the Calcutta government, who had been selected as Britain's chief representative to Kabul. It included an immense train of 38,000 camp followers and 30,000 camels, plus a large herd of cattle. The British intended to be comfortable – one regiment took its pack of foxhounds, another took two camels to carry its cigarettes, junior officers were accompanied by up to 40 servants, and one senior officer required 60 camels to carry his personal effects.

By late March 1839 the British forces had crossed the Bolan Pass, reached the southern Afghan city of Quetta, and begun their march to Kabul. They advanced through rough terrain, across deserts and 4,000-metre-high mountain passes, but made good progress and finally set up camps at Kandahar on 25 April 1839. After reaching Kandahar, Keane decided to wait for the crops to ripen before resuming his march, so it was not until 27 June that the Grand Army of the Indus marched again. Keane left behind his siege engines in Kandahar, which turned out to be a mistake as he discovered that the walls of the Ghazni fortress were far stronger than he expected. A deserter, Abdul Rashed Khan, a nephew of Dost Mohammad Khan, informed the British that one of the gates of the fortress was in bad state of repair and might be blasted open with a gunpowder charge. Before the fortress, the British were attacked by a force of the Ghilji tribesmen fighting under the banner of jihad who were desperate to kill farangis, a pejorative Pashtun term for the British, and were beaten off. The British took fifty prisoners who were brought before Shuja, where one of them stabbed a minister to death with a hidden knife. Shuja had them all beheaded, which led Sir John Kaye, in his official history of the war, to write this act of "wanton barbarity", the "shrill cry" of the Ghazis, would be remembered as the "funeral wail" of the government's "unholy policy".

On 23 July 1839, in a surprise attack, the British-led forces captured the fortress of Ghazni, which overlooks a plain leading eastward into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The British troops blew up one city gate and marched into the city in a euphoric mood. During the battle, the British suffered 200 killed and wounded, while the Afghans suffered 500 killed and 1,500 captured. Ghazni was well-supplied, which eased the further advance considerably.

Following this and an uprising of Tajiks in Istalif, the British marched to Kabul with no resistance from Dost Mohammad's troops. With his situation rapidly deteriorating, Dost Mohammed offered to accept Shuja as his overlord in exchange for becoming his wazir (a common practice in Pashtunwali), which was promptly turned down. In August 1839, after thirty years, Shuja was again enthroned in Kabul. Shuja promptly confirmed his reputation for cruelty by seeking to wreak vengeance on all who had crossed him as he considered his own people to be "dogs" who needed to be taught to obey their master.

In the absence of the traditional winter capital of Peshawar, on November 2 Shuja left the Bala Hissar to seek refuge from the cold in Jalalabad.

Qalat/Kalat
On 13 November 1839, while en route to India, the Bombay column of the British Indian Army attacked, as a form of reprisal, the Baloch tribal fortress of Kalat, from where Baloch tribes had harassed and attacked British convoys during the move towards the Bolan Pass.

Dost Mohammed flees to Bukhara and growth of Resistance
With Shah Shuja's regime continuing to grow in unpopularity, resistance already began formulating in Autumn 1839, with raids from Ghilzais attacking the Kabul-Ghazni road led to the death of British Lieutenant Colonel Herring. Beyond the Hindu Kush, diplomats of Dost Mohammad were sent to the rulers of Balkh and Bukhara to appeal to them for aid against the British. These risks forced the British to continue to keep troops they were planning to send back to India. Dost Mohammad's request for aid, however, did not come lightly received, as Dost Mohammad had invaded the realm of Balkh just before the British invasion. As from this invasion, Dost Mohammad had annexed Saighan, Balkh, Kahmard, and Duab.

In the winter of 1839, against the advice of Jabbar Khan, Dost Mohammad traveled to Bukhara to be received in person to appeal to the ruler of Bukhara in person. Dost Mohammad along with his sons, Akram Khan and Afzal Khan were initially well received, respected as guests. However, it came clear that the ruler of Bukhara was not willing to support Dost Mohammad. Instead, Dost Mohammad was essentially put under house arrest, and later treated as a prisoner. Suspicions even rose that the ruler of Bukhara would try to have Dost Mohammad and his sons poisoned. It was not until the following summer did Dost Mohammad escape, and through a series of events, made his way to Khulm. However, following this, he found out that Jabbar Khan had accepted Mcnaghten's offer of amnesty and took back the women and children of Dost Mohammad's camp. Despite his family being in British hands, Dost Mohammad did not show any intent to surrender.

The Mir Wali raised a force of over 6,000 Uzbeks, and in September 1840, marched up to Surkhab, forcing the British to abandon their outposts of Ajar, Kahmard, and Bajgah, falling back on Bamiyan. During the encounter at Bajgah, half of Shah Shuja's cavalry while the entire force's officers defected to the resistance's side, while the remaining Afghan levies were captured and disarmed. Dost Mohammad followed up this success by marching on Bamiyan, however he encountered Colonel Dennie, who had an army of Gurkhas and native cavalrymen. Despite being outnumbered, Dennie ordered his Gurkhas to storm the enemy positions, successfully routing the Uzbek army. Dennie then pursued the retreating army with his cavalrymen, slaying those who had defected and the rest of the Uzbek army.

Following this victory, Dr Lord, the political officer in Bamiyan, offered Dost Mohammad honourable exile in India if he surrendered. Only to be informed that Dost Mohammad was “determined to conquer or fall in the attempt”. The Mir Wali and Murad Beg had sought co-operation, as they believed Dennie posed a threat and could possibly march all the way to Khulm. Dennie, however, was not in a position to do so due to the already overstretched Bamiyan garrison facing shortage of manpower, and as a result, they decided not to garrison Saighan, Kahmard, or Ajar. Threats of a British sponsored attack from Herat by Shah Kamran were a threat, and this forced the Wali of Maimana to pledge allegiance to Shah Shuja's rule.

Battle of Parwan Darra and the “Surrender” of Dost Mohammad Khan (2 November 1840)
On 2 November 1840, Dost Mohammad finally confronted Sale's forces, halting his advance and engaging battle at Parwan Darra. Dost Mohammad held a strong defensive position with over 400 cavalrymen, with his forces dug in on a ridge overlooking Sale's advance. Sale sent Captain Fraser and his Bengal horse force to attack the enemy infantry, however, only a handful of men followed the order, leaving the British officers to charge against the Afghan force alone and essentially without any support. Dr Lord, earlier political officer of Bamiyan who offered Dost Mohammad terms of surrender was killed amongst this fighting that broke out. According to Dalrymple, Lord led a cavalry charge which was too late to realize that the rest of the force fled from the field. Fortunately, Fraser survived this charge and returned to British lines, however, with his sabre nearly severed at the wrist.

Dost Mohammad, seeing what had happened ordered his cavalry to lead a counter-attack, whereupon the disorganized Bengal horse force was routed, with the Afghan Cavalry chasing them in pursuit and killing many. According to the depictions of Jonathan Lee, the 2nd Bengal Horse was disgraced for their inability to follow orders, later disbanded, and erased from records. Nonetheless, following this route, Sale ordered his infantry and Qizilbash to storm the heights, and after heavy fighting and heavy casualties, they secured the ridge, to their dismay where they saw Dost Mohammad withdraw his forces in good order. Both sides withdrew, and later, the Afghans re-occupied the ridge, which was left undefended. With the ridge position, they fired onto the British camp below. As the following day came, Timur Mirza and Burnes urged Sale to abandon the campaign. This was due to the Afghan troops loyal to Shah Shuja who had not deserted, already being on the edge of mutiny, as well as Sale losing hundreds of men and many more wounded with nothing to show for it. With supplies running low as well, he obliged and returned to Charikar, crossing the Panjshir river, with those villages he had campaigned for at great cost quickly being reoccupied.

Despite Sale having little to show for the campaign and the trail of devastation left by him, Sale called Parwan Darra a victory. However he was unable to conceal the fact of the 2nd Bengal horse defying orders, and as a result, many British officers were killed. Atkinson, the armies surgeon general, called the encounter a “disaster”, Kaye also called the battle a defeat. However, early in the evening of 2 November 1840, a horsemen identified as Sultan Muhammad Khan Safi rode up to Macnaghten, as with this, he was followed by another lone horsemen, who came up to Macnaghten. This horsemen was no other than Dost Mohammad Khan.

Dost Mohammad's surrender has been given much speculation by historians as to why he surrendered. A number of explanations range from Dost Mohammad's surrender, oddly even after his victory at Parwan Darra. According to Jonathan lee, some of these depictions include Dost Mohammad believing that the British were destined to rule between the Indus and more. Others claim according to Jonathan lee, that, after the defeat at Saighan, Dost Mohammad was free to surrender without loss of honour. Another theory being that Dost Mohammad surrendered due to the brave suicidal charge done by Captain Fraser and Dr Lord, where he could have recognized resistance as futile. This theory however, did not make any sense as where the 2nd Bengal horse faced many defy orders to charge with them, the British lost multiple men due to this and inevitably, the battle. Another theory to Dost Mohammad's surrender was his family being in custody with the British, and about to be exiled to British India. This theory is even less credible, however, due to the fact that the British promising to treat them honourably, as Dost was in no position regardless to change this. Nonetheless, whatever reason Dost Mohammad had surrendered for, it was clear he was not surrendering as a defeated man, as he had successfully defeated the British at Parwan Darra, and even forced their withdrawal from Bamiyan. The revolt in Kohistan also put the military favor within Dost Mohammad's reach, yet for some reason, he decided to give up resistance. Mohan Lal gives the most clear and coherent theory was to why Dost Mohammad surrendered, as according to Lal, Dost Mohammad Khan was plotted against, and in battle, a sniper planned to assassinate him. As further explained by Lal, this was plotted out by Kohistani Amirs, who would then blame the British for this. Lal's accounts and claims are supported by letters to Dost Mohammad Khan from Sultan Muhammad Khan of Nijrab, who had warned the Amir of a plot that was circulating from Maliks who were planning to betray and assassinate him. Abd al-Karim Alawi, who wrote a near contemporary account of the First Anglo-Afghan War, elaborates further on the details of this plot. According to Al-Karim, Sales and Burnes were in contact with the Malik of ‘Ali Hissar, who agreed to kill or capture Dost Mohammad and his two sons in exchange for a substantial payment. According to confidential information shared by British officers, Macnaghten and Burnes had been intercepting communications from Sultan Muhammad Khan of Nijrab, and his supporters. As a result, Macnaghten forged a letter from a well-wisher in Kabul, sending a letter to Dost Mohammad Khan, where it warned the Amir of a plot on his life. Dost Mohammad Khan, having read this letter, was convinced that there was indeed, a plot on his life, as he did not have reason to trust the Kohistanis, as decades prior, he attacked and razed the region. As a result, the only person he seemed to have trusted was Sultan Muhammad Khan of Nijrab. As a result, Dost Mohammad’s options were limited, as the Mir Wali and Murad Beg signed a treaty with Shah Shuja, no longer offering sanctuary for Dost Mohammad. His experience in Bukhara and how he had to escape swayed Dost Mohammad from trying to seek refuge in Balkh, as he could be imprisoned, or even killed. Therefore, he went to the only choice he could think of, the British. The British cantonment at Kabul was only a few hours ride from Parwan Darra, and he had already received assurances that he would be treated honourably in captivity and exile. As a result, Dost Mohammad’s “surrender” is treated by Jonathan Lee and many other historians as nothing akin to surrender, rather seeking refuge with the British government through an old tradition of grabbing the stirrup. An old Turco-Mongolian tradition called rikab giriftan. Atkinson states that Dost Mohammad was seeking the protection of the British government through this action, and as a result, a famous sketch was produced showing Macnaghten and Dost Mohammad shaking hands as a sign of friendship. According to Jonathan Lee, Akbar Khan had later stated that his father “Thrown himself upon the honour of the British government, in times of need”. Macnaghten was elated to hear the news, as according to Jonathan Lee, he stated: “The Afghans are gunpowder and the Dost is a lighted match”. Dost Mohammad was treated honourably, and even was housed in the Bala Hissar, with Dost Mohammad allowed to meet his family, and write to his sons that were in open resistance. Dost Mohammad was also allowed to ride on horse with an escort. During his stay in the Bala Hissar, he held a secret court, with many coming to pay their respects to the former Amir. This had shown Dost Mohammad's popularity, and opposite to Shah Shuja's claims, Shah Shuja was seen as unpopular by many. In Macnaghten's letters, it was shown that he expressed sympathy for Dost Mohammad, showing a very clear contrast to what he referred to him now compared to two years prior, where he denounced Dost Mohammad in the Simla declaration. Macnaghten even asked the Governor General to treat Dost Mohammad better than when they had Shah Shuja in his exile, since to his statement: “We ejected the Dost, who never offended us, in support of our policy, of which he was the victim”.

Occupation and rising of the Afghans
The majority of the British troops returned to India, leaving 8,000 in Afghanistan, but it soon became clear that Shuja's rule could only be maintained with the presence of a stronger British force. The Afghans resented the British presence and the rule of Shah Shuja. As the occupation dragged on, the East India Company's first political officer William Hay Macnaghten allowed his soldiers to bring their families to Afghanistan to improve morale; this further infuriated the Afghans, as it appeared the British were setting up a permanent occupation. Macnaghten purchased a mansion in Kabul, where he installed his wife, crystal chandelier, a fine selection of French wines, and hundreds of servants from India, making himself completely at home. Macnaghten, who had once been a judge in a small town in Ulster before deciding he wanted to be much more than a small town judge in Ireland, was known for his arrogant, imperious manner, and was simply called "the Envoy" by both the Afghans and the British. The wife of one British officer, Lady Florentia Sale created an English style garden at her house in Kabul, which was much admired and in August 1841 her daughter Alexadrina was married at her Kabul home to Lieutenant John Sturt of the Royal Engineers. The British officers staged horse races, played cricket and in winter ice skating over the frozen local ponds, which astonished the Afghans who had never seen this before.

Afghanistan had no army, and instead had a feudal system under which the chiefs would maintain a certain number of armed retainers, principally cavalry together with a number of tribesmen who could be called upon to fight in a time of war; when the Emir went to war, he would call upon his chiefs to bring out their men to fight for him. In 1840, the British strongly pressured Shuja to replace the feudal system with a standing army, which threatened to do away with the power of the chiefs, and which the Emir rejected under the grounds that Afghanistan lacked the financial ability to fund a standing army.

Dost Mohammad successfully defeated the British at the battle of Parwan Darra on 2 November 1840. However, following his victory, he surrendered and was sent to India in exile after hearing rumours of assassination plots against him.

In 1839–40, the entire rationale for the occupation of Afghanistan was changed by the Oriental Crisis when Mohammad Ali the Great, the vali (governor) of Egypt who was a close French ally, rebelled against the Sublime Porte; during the subsequent crisis, Russia and Britain co-operated against France, and with the improvement in Anglo-Russian relations, the need for a buffer state in Central Asia decreased. The Oriental Crisis of 1840 almost caused an Anglo-French war, which given the long-standing Franco-Russian rivalry caused by Nicholas's detestation of Louis-Philippe as a traitor to the conservative cause, inevitably improved relations between London and St. Petersburg, which ultimately led to the Emperor Nicholas making an imperial visit to London in 1844 to meet Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister Lord Peel. As early as 1838, Count Karl Nesselrode, the Russian Foreign Minister, had suggested to the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, Lord Clanricarde, that Britain and Russia sign a treaty delimiting spheres of influence in Asia to end the "Great Game" once and for all. By 1840 Clanricarde was reporting to London that he was quite certain a mutually satisfactory agreement could be negotiated, and all he needed was the necessary permission from the Foreign Office to begin talks. From Calcutta, Lord Auckland pressed for acceptance of the Russian offer, writing "I would look forward to a tripartite Treaty of the West under which a limit shall be placed to the advance of England, Russia and Persia and under which all shall continue to repress slave dealing and plunder". Through Britain rejected the Russian offer, after 1840 there was a marked decline in Anglo-Russian rivalry and a "fair working relationship in Asia" had developed. The British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston rejected the Russian offer to end the "Great Game" as he believed that as long as the "Great Game" continued, Britain could inconvenience Russia in Asia to better achieve her foreign policy goals in Europe much more than Russia could inconvenience Britain in Asia to achieve her foreign policy goals in Europe. Palmerston noted that because the British had more money to bribe local rulers in Central Asia, this gave them the advantage in this "game", and it was thus better to keep the "Great Game" going. Palmerston believed it was Britain that held the advantage in the "Great Game", that the Russian offer to definitely mark out spheres of influence in Asia was a sign of weakness and he preferred no such treaty be signed. From Palmerston's viewpoint accepting the Russian offer would be unwelcome as the end of the "Great Game" in Asia would mean the redeployment of Russian power to Europe, the place that really counted for him, and it was better to keep the "Great Game" going, albeit at a reduced rate given the tensions with France. At the same time, the lowering of Anglo-Russian tension in the 1840s made holding Afghanistan more of an expensive luxury from the British viewpoint as it no longer seemed quite as essential to have a friendly government in Kabul anymore.

By this time, the British had vacated the fortress of Bala Hissar and relocated to a cantonment built to the northeast of Kabul. The chosen location was indefensible, being low and swampy with hills on every side. To make matters worse, the cantonment was too large for the number of troops camped in it and had a defensive perimeter almost two miles long. In addition, the stores and supplies were in a separate fort, 300 yards from the main cantonment. The British commander, Major-General George Keith Ephinstone who arrived in April 1841 was bed-ridden most of the time with gout and rheumatism.

Between April and October 1841, disaffected Afghan tribes were flocking to support resistance against the British in Bamiyan and other areas north of the Hindu Kush mountains. They were organised into an effective resistance by chiefs such as Mir Masjidi Khan and others. In September 1841, Macnaghten reduced the subsidies paid out to Ghilzai tribal chiefs in exchange for accepting Shuja as Emir and to keep the passes open, which immediately led to the Ghazis rebelling and a jihad being proclaimed. The monthly subsidies, which were effectively bribes for the Ghazi chiefs to stay loyal, was reduced from 80,000 to 40,000 rupees at a time of rampant inflation, and as the chiefs' loyalty had been entirely financial, the call of jihad proved stronger. Macnaghten did not take the threat seriously at first, writing to Henry Rawlinson in Kandahar on 7 October 1841: "The Eastern Ghilzyes are kicking up a row about some deductions which have been made from their pay. The rascals have completely succeeded in cutting communications for the time being, which is very provoking to me at this time; but they will be well trounced for their pains. One down, t'other come on, is the principle of these vagabonds".

Macnaghten ordered an expedition. On 10 October 1841, the Ghazis in a night raid defeated the Thirty-fifth Native Infantry, but were defeated the next day by the Thirteenth Light Infantry. After their defeat, which led to the rebels fleeing to the mountains, Macnaghten overplayed his hand by demanding that the chiefs who rebelled now send their children to Shuja's court as hostages to prevent another rebellion. As Shuja had a habit of mutilating people who displeased him in the slightest, Macnaghten's demand that the children of the chiefs go to the Emir's court was received with horror, which led the Ghazi chiefs to vow to fight on. Macnaghten, who had just been appointed as the governor of Bombay was torn between a desire to leave Afghanistan on a high note with the country settled and peaceful versus a desire to crush the Ghazis, which led him to temporize, at one moment threatening the harshest reprisals and the next moment, compromising by abandoning his demand for hostages. Macnaghten's alternating policy of confrontation and compromise was perceived as weakness, which encouraged the chiefs around Kabul to start rebelling. Shuja was so unpopular that many of his ministers and the Durrani clan joined the rebellion.

On the night of 1 November 1841, a group of Afghan chiefs met at the Kabul house of one of their number to plan the uprising, which began in the morning of the next day. In a flammable situation, the spark was provided unintentionally by the East India Company's second political officer, Sir Alexander 'Sekundar' Burnes. A Kashmiri slave girl who belonged to a Pashtun chief Abdullah Khan Achakzai living in Kabul ran away to Burne's house. When Ackakzai sent his retainers to retrieve her, it was discovered that Burnes had taken the slave girl to his bed, and he had one of Azkakzai's men beaten. A secret jirga (council) of Pashtun chiefs was held to discuss this violation of pashtunwali, where Ackakzai holding a Koran in one hand stated: "Now we are justified in throwing 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 right here and now, otherwise these English will ride the donkey of their desires into the field of stupidity, to the point of having all of us arrested and deported to a foreign field". At the end of his speech, all of the chiefs shouted "Jihad". November 2, 1841 actually fell on 17 Ramadan which was the anniversary date for the battle of Badr. The Afghans decided to strike on this date for reasons of the blessings associated with this auspicious date of 17 Ramadan. The call to jihad was given on the morning of 2 November from the Pul-i-khisti mosque in Kabul

Lady Sale wrote in her diary on 2 November 1841: "This morning early, all was in commotion in Kabul. The shops were plundered and the people all fighting." That same day, a mob "thirsting for blood" appeared outside of the house of the East India Company's second political officer, Sir Alexander 'Sekundar' Burnes, where Burnes ordered his sepoy guards not to fire while he stood outside haranguing the mob in Pashto, attempting unconvincingly to persuade the assembled men that he did not bed their daughters and sisters. Captain William Broadfoot who was with Burnes saw the mob march forward, leading him to open fire with another officer writing in his diary that he "killed five or six men with his own hand before he was shot down". The mob smashed in to Burnes's house, where he, his brother Charles, their wives and children, several aides and the sepoys were all torn to pieces. The mob then attacked the home of the paymaster Johnston who was not present, leading to later write when he surveyed the remains of his house that they "gained possession of my treasury by undermining the wall...They murdered the whole of the guard (one officer and 28 sepoys), all my servants (male, female, and children), plundered the treasury...burnt all my office records...and possessed themselves of all my private property". The British forces took no action in response despite being only five minutes away, which encouraged further revolt. The only person who took action that day was Shuja who ordered out one of his regiments from the Bala Hissar commanded by a Scots mercenary named Campbell to crush the riot, but the old city of Kabul with its narrow, twisting streets favored the defenders, with Campbell's men coming under fire from rebels in the houses above. After losing about 200 men killed, Campbell retreated back to the Bala Hissar. After hearing of the defeat of his regiment, Shuja descended into what Kaye called "a pitiable state of dejection and alarm", sinking into a deep state of depression as it finally dawned on him that his people hated him and wanted to see him dead. Captain Sturt was sent to the Bala Hissar by Elphinstone to see if it were possible to recover control of the city later that afternoon, where his mother-in-law Lady Sale noted in her diary: "Just as he entered the precincts of the palace, he was stabbed in three places by a young man well dressed, who escaped into a building close-by, where he was protected by the gates being shut." Sturt was sent home to be cared for by Lady Sale and his wife with the former noting: "He was covered with blood issuing from his mouth and was unable to articulate. He could not lie down, from the blood choking him", only being capable hours later to utter one word: "bet-ter". Lady Sale was highly critical of Elphinstone's leadership, writing: "General Elphinstone vacillates on every point. His own judgement appears to be good, but he is swayed by the last speaker", criticising him for "...a very strange circumstance that troops were not immediately sent into the city to quell the affair in the commencement, but we seem to sit quietly with our hands folded, and look on".." Despite both being in the cantonment, Elphinstone preferred to write letters to Macnaghten, with one letter on 2 November saying "I have been considering what can done tomorrow" (he decided to do nothing that day), stating "our dilemma is a difficult one", and finally concluding "We must see what the morning brings". The British situation soon deteriorated when Afghans stormed the poorly defended supply fort inside Kabul on 9 November.

In the following weeks, the British commanders tried to negotiate with Akbar Khan. Macnaghten secretly offered to make Akbar Afghanistan's vizier in exchange for allowing the British to stay, while simultaneously disbursing large sums of money to have him assassinated, which was reported to Akbar Khan. A meeting for direct negotiations between Macnaghten and Akbar was held near the cantonment on 23 December, but Macnaghten and the three officers accompanying him were seized and slain by Akbar Khan. Macnaghten's body was dragged through the streets of Kabul and displayed in the bazaar. Elphinstone had partly lost command of his troops already and his authority was badly damaged.

Destruction of Elphinstone's army
On 1 January 1842, following some unusual thinking by Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone, which may have had something to do with the poor defensibility of the cantonment, an agreement was reached that provided for the safe exodus of the British garrison and its dependents from Afghanistan. Five days later, the withdrawal began. The departing British contingent numbered around 16,500, of which about 4,500 were military personnel, and over 12,000 were camp followers. Lieutenant Vincent Eyre commented about the camp followers that "These proved from the very first mile a serious clog on our movements". Lady Sale brought with her 40 servants, none of whom she named in her diary while Eyre's son was saved by a female Afghan servant, who rode through an ambush with the boy on her back, but he never gave her name. The American author James M. Perry noted: "Reading the old diaries and journals, it is almost as if these twelve thousand native servants and sepoy wives and children didn't exist individually. In a way, they really didn't. They would die, all of them - shot, stabbed, frozen to death - in these mountain passes, and no one bothered to write down the name of even one of them". The military force consisted mostly of Indian units and one British battalion, 44th Regiment of Foot.

They were attacked by Ghilzai warriors as they struggled through the snowbound passes. On the first day, the retreating force made only five miles and as Lady Sale wrote about their arrival at a village of Begramee: "There were no tents, save two or three small palls that arrived. Everyone scraped away the snow as best they might, to make a place to lie down. The evening and night were intensely cold; no food for man or beast procurable, except a few handfuls of bhoosay [chopped stew], for which we had to pay five to ten rupees". As the night fell and with it, the temperature, dropped well below freezing. The retreating force then learned that they lost all of their supplies of food and their baggage. On the second day all of the men of the Royal Afghan Army's 6th regiment deserted, heading back to Kabul, marking the end of the first attempt to give Afghanistan a national army. For several months afterwards, what had once been Shuja's army was reduced to begging on the streets of Kabul as Akbar had of all of Shuja's mercenaries mutilated before throwing them on the streets to beg. Despite Akbar Khan's promise of safe conduct, the Anglo-Indian force was repeatedly attacked by the Ghilzais, with one especially fierce Afghan attack being beaten off with a spirited bayonet charge by the 44th Foot.

While trying to cross the Koord-Kabual pass in the Hindu Kush that was described as five miles long and "so narrow and so shut in on either side that the wintry sun rarely penetrates its gloomy recesses", the Anglo-Indian force was ambushed by the Ghilzai tribesmen. Johnson described "murderous fire" that forced the British to abandon all baggage while camp followers regardless of sex and age were cut down with swords. Lady Sale wrote: "Bullets kept whizzing by us" while some of the artillerymen smashed open the regimental store of brandy to get drunk amid the Afghan attacks. Lady Sale wrote she drank a tumbler of sherry "which at any other time would have made me very unlady-like, but now merely warmed me." Lady Sale took a bullet in her wrist while she had to watch as her son-in-law Sturt had "...his horse was shot out from him and before he could rise from the ground he received a severe wound in the abdomen". With his wife and mother-in-law by his side in the snow, Sturt bled to death over the course of the night. The incompetent, naive and gullible Elphinstone continued to believe that Akbar Khan was his "ally", and believed his promise that he would send out the captured supplies if he stopped the retreat on 8 January. Adding to the misery of the British, that night a ferocious blizzard blew in, causing hundreds to freeze to death.

On 9 January 1842, Akbar sent out a messenger saying he was willing to take all of the British women as hostages, giving his word that they would not be harmed, and said that otherwise his tribesmen would show no mercy and kill all the women and children. One of the British officers sent to negotiate with Akbar heard him say to his tribesmen in Dari (Afghan Farsi) – a language spoken by many British officers – to "spare" the British while saying in Pashto, which most British officers did not speak, to "slay them all". Lady Sale, her pregnant daughter Alexandria and the rest of British women and children accepted Akbar's offer of safe conduct back to Kabul. As the East India Company would not pay a ransom for Indian women and children, Akbar refused to accept them, and so the Indian women and children died with the rest of the force in the Hindu Kush. The camp followers captured by the Afghans were stripped of all their clothing and left to freeze to death in the snow. Lady Sale wrote that as she was taken back to Kabul she noticed: "The road was covered with awful mangled bodies, all naked".

In the early morning of 10 January, the column resumed its march, with everyone tired, hungry, and cold. Most of the sepoys by this time had lost a finger or two to frostbite, and could not fire their guns. At the narrow pass of Tunghee Tareekee, which was 50 yards long, and only 4 yards wide, the Ghizye tribesmen ambushed the column, killing without mercy all of the camp followers. The Anglo-Indian soldiers fought their way over the corpses of the camp followers with heavy losses to themselves. From a hill, Akbar Khan and his chiefs watched the slaughter while sitting on their horses, being apparently very much amused by the carnage. Captain Shelton and a few soldiers from the 44th regiment held the rear of the column and fought off successive Afghan attacks, despite being outnumbered. Johnson described Shelton as fighting like a "bulldog" with his sword, cutting down any Afghan who tried to take him on so efficiently that by the end of the day no Afghan would challenge him. On the evening of 11 January 1842, General Elphinstone, Captain Shelton, the paymaster Johnston, and Captain Skinner met with Akbar Khan to ask him to stop his attacks on the column. Akbar Khan provided them with warm tea and a fine meal before telling them that they were all now his hostages as he reckoned the East India Company would pay good ransoms for their freedom, and when Captain Skinner tried to resist, he was shot in the face. Command now fell to Brigadier Thomas Anquetil.

The evacuees were killed in huge numbers as they made their way down the 30 mi of treacherous gorges and passes lying along the Kabul River between Kabul and Gandamak, and were massacred at the Gandamak pass before a survivor reached the besieged garrison at Jalalabad. At Gandamak, some 20 officers and 45 other ranks of the 44th Foot regiment, together with some artillerymen and sepoys, armed with some 20 muskets and two rounds of ammunition to every man, found themselves at dawn surrounded by Afghan tribesmen. The force had been reduced to fewer than forty men by a withdrawal from Kabul that had become, towards the end, a running battle through two feet of snow. The ground was frozen, the men had no shelter and had little food for weeks. Of the weapons remaining to the survivors at Gandamak, there were approximately a dozen working muskets, the officers' pistols, and a few swords. The British formed a square and defeated the first couple of the Afghan attacks, "driving the Afghans several times down the hill" before running out of ammunition. They then fought on with their bayonets and swords before being overwhelmed. The Afghans took only 9 prisoners and killed the rest. The remnants of the 44th were all killed except Captain James Souter, Sergeant Fair, and seven soldiers who were taken prisoner. The only soldier to reach Jalalabad was Dr. William Brydon and several sepoys over the following nights. Another source states that over one hundred British were taken prisoner. One British NCO fled from Gandamak to Gujrat India on foot according to a source cited from The Times of 2 March 1843 by Farrukh Husain who writes: "The oddest account of escape from Gundamuck concerns that of a dark-skinned faqir who appeared in India in rags but was in fact a Scottish non commissioned officer who fled all the way to a British army Camp Deesa in Gujrat India, "This morning a strange man came into camp, covered with hair, and almost naked his face burnt very much; he turned out to be Lance-Sergeant Philip Edwards of the Queen's 44th Regiment who escaped the general slaughter at Gundamuch, Afghanistan, and after travelling 15 months in a southerly direction by the sun, he found his way into camp here, not knowing where he was.""

Many of the women and children were taken captive by the Afghan warring tribes; some of these women married their captors, mostly Afghan and Indian camp followers who were wives of British officers. Children taken from the battlefield at the time who were later identified in the early part of the 20th century to be those of the fallen soldiers were brought up by Afghan families as their own children.

Second British expedition
At the same time as the attacks on the garrison at Kabul, Afghan forces beleaguered the other British contingents in Afghanistan. These were at Kandahar (where the largest British force in the country had been stationed), Jalalabad (held by a force which had been sent from Kabul in October 1841 as the first stage of a planned withdrawal) and Ghazni. Ghazni was stormed, but the other garrisons held out until relief forces arrived from India, in spring 1842. Akbar Khan was defeated near Jalalabad and plans were laid for the recapture of Kabul and the restoration of British control.

However, Lord Auckland had suffered a stroke and had been replaced as governor-general by Lord Ellenborough, who was under instructions to bring the war to an end following a change of government in Britain. Ellenborough ordered the forces at Kandahar and Jalalabad to leave Afghanistan after inflicting reprisals and securing the release of prisoners taken during the retreat from Kabul.

In August 1842 General William Nott advanced from Kandahar, capturing Ghazni and partially demolishing the city's fortifications. Meanwhile, General George Pollock, who had taken command of a demoralized force in Peshawar used it to clear the Khyber Pass to arrive at Jalalabad, where General Sale had already lifted the siege. From Jalalabad, General Pollock inflicted a further crushing defeat on Akbar Khan. As the expedition advanced through Afghanistan, they bore witness to the countless dead comrades who perished following the retreat from Kabul. This enraged the British who took revenge on Afghan civilians by razing villages, murdering men and raping women. Neville Bowles Chamberlain described the killings as "truly wicked." The combined British forces defeated all opposition before taking Kabul in September. A month later, having rescued the prisoners and demolished the city's main bazaar as an act of revenge for the destruction of Elphinstone's column, they withdrew from Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass. Dost Muhammad was released and re-established his authority in Kabul. He died on 9 June 1863. During his lifetime no Russian mission was established in Afghanistan. Dost Mohammad is reported to have said:

"I have been struck by the magnitude of your resources, your ships, your arsenals, but what I cannot understand is why the rulers of so vast and flourishing an empire should have gone across the Indus to deprive me of my poor and barren country."

Aftermath
Many voices in Britain, from Lord Aberdeen to Benjamin Disraeli, had criticized the war as rash and insensate. The perceived threat from Russia was vastly exaggerated, given the distances, the almost impassable mountain barriers, and logistical problems that an invasion would have to solve. In the three decades after the First Anglo-Afghan War, the Russians did advance steadily southward towards Afghanistan. In 1842, the Russian border was on the other side of the Aral Sea from Afghanistan. By 1865 Tashkent had been formally annexed, as was Samarkand three years later. A peace treaty in 1873 with Amir Alim Khan of the Manghit Dynasty, the ruler of Bukhara, virtually stripped him of his independence. Russian control then extended as far as the northern bank of the Amu Darya. The war would also be renowned as the "greatest military humilation of the nineteenth century" for the British.

In 1878, the British invaded again, beginning the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

Lady Butler's famous painting of Dr. William Brydon, initially thought to be the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad, helped make Afghanistan's reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies and became one of the great epics of empire.

In 1843, the British army chaplain, G.R. Gleig, wrote a memoir of the disastrous First Anglo-Afghan War, describing it as: "a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated”."

The Church of St. John the Evangelist located in Navy Nagar, Mumbai, India, more commonly known as the Afghan Church, was dedicated in 1852 as a memorial to the dead of the conflict.

Financial cost of the war
During the fiscal year of 1840—1841, the campaign in Afghanistan had cost over 1 million British pounds. Furthermore, half a million pounds were used towards the upkeep of garrisons in Sindh. The upkeep costed the Indian government heavily, drawing them into a deficit of over a million pounds, to which the government was borrowing loans heavily. This became increasingly unsustainable, and as a result, British forces in Afghanistan were ordered to be reduced to all but two regiments, with one being in stationed Kabul, and the other in Kandahar. Auckland intended to withdraw most troops by the next year, also informing Macnaghten that by 1842, spending had to be cut from 1 million pounds, to just 30,000.

Battle honour
The battle honour of 'Afghanistan 1839' was awarded to all units of the presidency armies of the East India Company that had proceeded beyond the Bolan Pass, by gazette of the governor-general, dated 19 November 1839, the spelling changed from 'Afghanistan' to 'Affghanistan [sic]' by Gazette of India No. 1079 of 1916, and the date added in 1914. All the honours awarded for this war are considered to be non-repugnant. The units awarded this battle honour were:
 * 4th Bengal Irregular Cavalry – 1st Horse
 * 5th Madras Infantry
 * Poona Auxiliary Horse – Poona Horse
 * Bombay Sappers & Miners – Bombay Engineer Group
 * 31st Bengal Infantry
 * 43rd Bengal Infantry
 * 19th Bombay Infantry
 * 1st Bombay Cavalry – 13th Lancers
 * 2nd, 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry – mutinied in 1857
 * 2nd, 3rd Companies of Bengal Sappers and Miners – mutinied in 1857
 * 16th, 35th, 37th, 48th Bengal Infantry – mutinied in 1857
 * 42nd Bengal Infantry (5th LI) – disbanded 1922

Fictional depictions

 * It was depicted in an 1842 panorama in London. The exhibition was advertised as: "a comprehensive and interesting VIEW OF CABUL, including every object of interest in the city, the Bala Hissar, the river Cabul, with a distant view of the Himalaya Mountains and the Pass of Khurd Cabul, where the British army were so treacherously destroyed. The whole illustrated by numerous groups of figures descriptive of the manngers of the Afghanese."
 * The First Anglo-Afghan war is depicted in a work of historical fiction, Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser. (This is Fraser's first Flashman novel.)
 * The ordeal of Dr. Brydon may have inspired the story of Dr. John Watson in Conan Doyle‘s first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet, although his wound was suffered in the second war.
 * Emma Drummond's novel Beyond all Frontiers (1983) is based on these events, as are Philip Hensher's Mulberry Empire (2002) and Fanfare (1993), by Andrew MacAllan, a distant relation of Dr William Brydon.
 * G.A. Henty's children's novel To Herat and Kabul focuses on the Anglo-Afghan War through the perspective of a Scottish expatriate teenager named Angus. Theodor Fontane's poem, Das Trauerspiel von Afghanistan (The Tragedy of Afghanistan) also refers to the massacre of Elphinstone’s army.
 * Victoria (2017) episode "A Soldier's Daughter" dramatizes Brydon's survival in the retreat. In the show, Queen Victoria responds to the loss of life in the retreat with a speech at the launch of HMS Trafalgar (1841), and by privately meeting and honouring Brydon.

title: First Anglo-Afghan War


text:
Baron Moyne

Baron Moyne, of Bury St Edmunds in the County of Suffolk, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1932 for the Hon. Walter Guinness, a Conservative politician. A member of the prominent Guinness brewing family, he was the third son of the 1st Earl of Iveagh, who was himself the third son of Sir Benjamin Guinness, 1st Baronet, of Ashford.

His son, the 2nd Baron, was a poet and novelist. He was the first husband of Diana Mitford, one of the famous Mitford sisters, who went on to marry the fascist Sir Oswald Mosley.

, the title is held by their eldest son, the 3rd Baron, who succeeded in July 1992. As a male agnatic descendant of both the 1st Earl of Iveagh and the first Guinness Baronet of Ashford, he is also in remainder to those two titles.

Barons Moyne (1932)

 * Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne (1880–1944)
 * Bryan Walter Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne (1905–1992)
 * Jonathan Bryan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne (b. 1930)

The heir apparent is the present holder's second but eldest-surviving son, the Hon. Valentine Guy Bryan Guinness (b. 1959). The heir apparent's heir presumptive is his half-brother, the Hon. Sebastian Walter Denis Guinness (b. 1964).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Baron Moyne


text:
Baron Milne

Baron Milne, of Salonika and of Rubislaw in the County of Aberdeen, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 26 January 1933 for Field Marshal Sir George Milne. He had previously served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. As of 2009 the title is held by his grandson, the third Baron, who succeeded his father in 2005.

Barons Milne (1933)

 * George Francis Milne, 1st Baron Milne (1866–1948)
 * George Douglass Milne, 2nd Baron Milne (1909–2005)
 * George Alexander Milne, 3rd Baron Milne (b. 1941). Lord Milne is an antiquarian, a Freeman of the City of London and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Grocers.

The heir presumptive is the present holder's brother, the Honourable Iain Charles Luis Milne FCA (b. 1949)

The heir presumptive's heir apparent is his elder son Iain Eduardo Alexander Milne (b. 1990).

title: Baron Milne


text:
Baron Mottistone

Baron Mottistone, of Mottistone in the County of Southampton, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1933 for the soldier and Liberal politician J. E. B. Seely. He was the fourth son of Sir Charles Seely, 1st Baronet, and the uncle of The 1st Baron Sherwood. The 4th Baron Mottistone succeeded his half-brother in 1966 (who in his turn had succeeded his elder brother in 1963). He notably served Lord Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight from 1986 to 1995 and as the last governor of the Isle of Wight between 1992 and 1995 and was succeeded by his son as the fifth baron, in 2011. In turn, the fifth baron was succeeded by his elder son in 2013.

Barons Mottistone (1933)

 * John Edward Bernard "Jack" Seely, 1st Baron Mottistone (1868–1947)
 * Henry John Alexander Seely, 2nd Baron Mottistone (1899–1963)
 * Arthur Patrick William Seely, 3rd Baron Mottistone (1905–1966)
 * David Peter Seely, 4th Baron Mottistone (1920–2011)
 * Peter John Philip Seely, 5th Baron Mottistone (1949–2013)
 * Christopher David Peter Seely, 6th Baron Mottistone (b. 1974)

The heir presumptive is the present baron's younger brother Hon. Richard William Anthony Seely (b. 1988).

title: Baron Mottistone


text:
Baron Milford

Baron Milford is a title that has been created three times, once in the Peerage of Ireland and twice in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. All three creations have been for members of the same family. The first creation came in the Peerage of Ireland in 1776 when Sir Richard Philipps, 7th Baronet, of Picton Castle was made Baron Milford (there was no territorial designation). However, this title became extinct on his death in 1823, while the baronetcy was passed on to a distant relative (see the Viscount St Davids). The title was revived in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1847 when Sir Richard Philipps, 1st Baronet, of Picton Castle was created Baron Milford, of Picton Castle in the County of Pembroke. Born Richard Bulkeley Philipps Grant, he was the son of John Grant and Mary Philippa Artemisia, daughter of James Child and Mary Philippa Artemisia, daughter of Bulkeley Philipps, uncle of the first Baron of the first creation. He succeeded to the Philipps estates in 1823 and assumed the surname of Philipps the same year. In 1828 he was created a Baronet, of Picton Castle in the County of Pembroke, in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. However, Lord Milford was childless and the titles became extinct on his death in 1857. He devised his estates to his half-brother Reverend James Henry Alexander Gwyther, who assumed the surname of Philipps. James's daughter Mary Philippa married Charles Edward Gregg Fisher, who assumed the surname of Philipps and was created a Baronet, of Picton, in 1887 (see Philipps Baronets).

The title was revived for a second time in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1939, when Sir Laurence Philipps, 1st Baronet, was made Baron Milford, of Llanstephan in the County of Radnor. He had already been created a Baronet, of Llanstephan in the County of Radnor, in 1919. Philipps was the sixth son of Sir James Philipps, 12th Baronet, of Picton Castle, and the younger brother of John Philipps, 1st Viscount St Davids and Owen Philipps, 1st Baron Kylsant. He was succeeded by his son, the second Baron. He became a Communist and was disinherited by his father. Lord Milford is the only member of the Communist Party of Great Britain to sit in the House of Lords. the titles are held by his grandson, the fourth Baron, who succeeded his father in 1999.

Barons Milford; First creation (1776)

 * Richard Philipps, 1st Baron Milford (1744–1823)

Barons Milford; Second creation (1847)

 * Richard Bulkeley Philipps, 1st Baron Milford (1801–1857)

Barons Milford; Third creation (1939)

 * Laurence Richard Philipps, 1st Baron Milford (1874–1962)
 * Wogan Philipps, 2nd Baron Milford (1902–1993)
 * Hugo John Laurence Philipps, 3rd Baron Milford (1929–1999)
 * Guy Wogan Philipps, 4th Baron Milford (born 1961)

The heir apparent is the present holder's son the Hon. Archie Sherwood Philipps (born 12 March 1997)

title: Baron Milford


text:
Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett

Alfred Moritz Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, PC, FRS, DL (23 October 1868 – 27 December 1930), known as Sir Alfred Mond, Bt between 1910 and 1928, was a British industrialist, financier and politician. In his later life he became an active Zionist.

Early life and education
Mond was born in Farnworth, Widnes, Lancashire, England, the younger son of Ludwig Mond, a chemist and industrialist who had emigrated from Germany, and his wife Frieda, née Löwenthal, both of Jewish extraction. He was educated at Cheltenham College and St. John's College, Cambridge, but failed his natural sciences tripos. He then studied law at the University of Edinburgh and was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1894.

Business career
Following this he joined his father's business Brunner Mond & Company as director, later becoming its managing director. He was also managing director of his father's other company, the Mond Nickel Company. Other directorships included those of the International Nickel Corporation of Canada, the Westminster Bank and the Industrial Finance Investment Corporation. His major business achievement came in 1926 when he worked to create the merger of four companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), one of the world's largest industrial corporations at the time. He became its first chairman.

Political career
Mond was also involved in politics and sat as Liberal Member of Parliament for Chester from 1906 to 1910, for Swansea from 1910 to 1918 and for Swansea West from 1918 to 1923. He served in the coalition government of David Lloyd George as First Commissioner of Works from 1916 to 1921, and as Minister of Health (with a seat in the cabinet) from 1921 to 1922. After losing his seat at the 1923 general election, he returned to Parliament as a Liberal for Carmarthen at a by-election in August 1924, holding the seat until his elevation to the peerage in 1928. Although a supporter of the "New Liberalism" in his early political career and a "vocal proponent of constructive social reform" in the postwar government, Mond became a Conservative in January 1926 after falling out with Lloyd George over the former Prime Minister's controversial plans to nationalise agricultural land.

Mond was created a Baronet, of Hartford Hill in Great Budworth in the County of Chester, in 1910, and was admitted to the Privy Council in 1913. In 1928 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Melchett, of Landford in the County of Southampton.

Mondism
In the aftermath of the 1926 General Strike, Mond led efforts to establish cooperation between workers (represented by trades unions and the General Council of the TUC) and the large employers; this short-lived initiative became known as Mondism.

Benefactions, Zionism and honours
[[Image:Alfred Mond cartoon from Punch - Project Gutenberg eText 16707.png|thumb|The Iconoclast Sir Alfred Mond: "I'm sorry to have to disturb Your Majesty, but, owing to the shortage of sites—"

George III: "Shortage of sights, indeed!" Cartoon from Punch, 18 August 1920]] Mond's father had bequeathed a collection of old master paintings to the National Gallery, and Alfred provided housing for them in 1924. In 1929 he provided land in Chelsea for the Chelsea Health Society.

An enthusiastic Zionist, in 1920 Mond donated ten thousand pounds to Vladimir Jabotinsky. The following year he visited Palestine with Chaim Weizmann. He contributed money to the Jewish Colonization Corporation for Palestine and wrote for Zionist publications. He became President of the British Zionist Foundation and made financial contributions to Zionist causes. Melchett founded the town of Tel Mond, now in Israel. He also started building what is now one of the few private houses on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, now known as Villa Melchett. Tel Aviv and several other Israeli cities have a Melchett Street commemorating him.

One of Mond's most enduring contributions to Zionism did not come through direct political means but through his enthusiastic and active support of Pinhas Rutenberg, to whom the British Government granted exclusive concessions to produce and distribute electricity in Palestine. Mond sat on the Board of the Palestine Electric Company and promoted the case of the company in London's political and industrial circles.

Mond was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1928 and received a number of honorary degrees from Oxford, Paris and other universities.

Personal life
In 1894 Mond married Violet Goetze and they had one son, Henry Ludwig, and three daughters, Eva Violet, Mary Angela, and Norah Jena. Mond died in his London home in 1930, and his son succeeded in the barony.

Publications

 * Industry and Politics (1927)
 * Imperial Economic Unity (1930)

Literary references
Mond is mentioned in T. S. Eliot's 1920 poem A Cooking Egg. He is also – along with the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – widely considered to be the inspiration behind Mustapha Mond, one of the ten world controllers in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World.

title: Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett


text:
Baron Moran

Baron Moran, of Manton in the County of Wiltshire, is a title in the peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 8 March 1943 for the physician Charles Wilson (10 November 1882 – 12 April 1977). He is chiefly remembered as Winston Churchill's personal physician during the Second World War and was president of the Royal College of Physicians from 1941 to 1949. His diary of his association with Churchill—that continued to Winston's death in 1965—was published in 1966.

He was succeeded in 1977 by his eldest son, the second baron, a diplomat who notably served as British Ambassador to Hungary and Portugal and as British High Commissioner to Canada from 1981 to 1984. He was one of the 90 hereditary peers elected to remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, where he sat as a crossbencher.

In 2014 the title passed to the latter's son, James McMoran Wilson, the 3rd Baron Moran.

Barons Moran (1943–)

 * Charles McMoran Wilson, 1st Baron Moran (1882–1977)
 * (Richard) John McMoran Wilson, 2nd Baron Moran (1924–2014)
 * James McMoran Wilson, 3rd Baron Moran (b. 1952)

The heir apparent is the present holder's son, Hon. David Andrew McMoran Wilson (b. 1990).

title: Baron Moran


text:
Baron Mountevans

Baron Mountevans, of Chelsea in the County of London, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, created in 1945 in favour of the celebrated Antarctic explorer, Admiral Sir Edward Evans. the title is held by his grandson, the fourth Baron, who succeeded his brother in 2014.

Barons Mountevans (1945)

 * Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans (1881–1957)
 * Richard Andvord Evans, 2nd Baron Mountevans (1918–1974)
 * Edward Patrick Broke Evans, 3rd Baron Mountevans (1943–2014)
 * Jeffrey Richard de Corban Evans, 4th Baron Mountevans (b. 1948)

The heir apparent is the present holder's son, the Hon. Alexander Richard Andvord Evans (b. 1975).

Line of succession

 * Coronet of a British Baron.svg Admiral Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans (1881–1958)
 * Coronet of a British Baron.svg Richard Andvord Evans, 2nd Baron Mountevans (1918–1974)
 * Coronet of a British Baron.svg Edward Patrick Broke Evans, 3rd Baron Mountevans (1943–2014)
 * Coronet of a British Baron.svg Jeffrey de Corban Richard Evans, 4th Baron Mountevans (b. 1948)
 * (1) Hon. Alexander Richard Andvord Evans (b. 1975)
 * (2) Hon. Julian James Rowntree Evans (b. 1977)
 * (3) Hon. Edward Broke Evans (b. 1924)
 * (4) Julian Phillip Broke Evans (b. 1956)
 * (5) William Garth Evans (b. 1959)

title: Baron Mountevans


text:
Talk:Mute (music)

Other Meanings
Deleted the 'other meanings' section. This is covered by the Mute disambiguation page.

Karl Naylor 16:13, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Brass mutes
We need pictures! Any offers?--Light current 02:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll try to remember to take one this weekend. - mako 07:04, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Una corda
"On older pianos it was possible by use of the soft pedal to play only one, two or all three strings, making the distinction between una corda (one string) and due corde (two strings) meaningful, but this is no longer the case"

I sincerely doubt that concert quality instruments have abandoned the use of the Una Corda pedal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.39.163.114 (talk • contribs)

 * I think what is meant is that the pedal can no longer be used to play two strings (for the majority of the keyboard with string in threes), shifting only between one string and all three. I don't know if this is true or if it is available on modern pianos. Rigadoun (talk) 17:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Merging
I second the motion to merge the two, but also recommend the section on this page be cleaned up a bit and separated into smaller sections making it easier to navigate —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.34.0.92 (talk) 23:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC).

Notation and Stopping the Horn
Perhaps a section can be added displaying the correct (or most used) notation for each instruments when using mutes. Also, should "stopping" the Horn be covered in this article?

Directions for muting
This section is beginning to look untidy, because we have discovered the a commonly used term for mute (in at least the world of the orchestra, etc.), that Italian word beginning with "s", and then realise we have to accommodate "with, without, not-mentioning-either", alongside each of: the abbreviation, the (grammatically correct) feminine noun, the (commonly used) masculine noun, then the singular and plural forms of masculine and feminine.

It needs someone to apply some clear economical thinking here and come up with something better.

The words to play with are:

"con" / "senza" / "___"

followed by

"sord." / "sordino" / "sordina" / "sordine" / "sordini"

My mute and I have played in orchestras and chamber music for many years, but shall say no more and throw this to someone else to try tidying. Good luck. P0mbal (talk) 23:09, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

 * What about the instances in French and German music which frequently read mit/ohne Dämpfer (or gedämpft) or avec/sans sourdine(s)? — $PЯINGεrαgђ  05:44 19 January, 2009 (UTC)
 * It's the Italian, important because it's the common language of (classical, etc.) music, which is untidy. The French/German comment seems relatively neat. Addition of gedämpft might be good. Should there be a new section on the language stuff, or just neaten? P0mbal (talk) 11:05, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I suggest that Sordino be merged into this article. From what I understand it's talking about the same kind of object. --Eusebius (talk) 09:26, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Much of the material from the Sordino article that is not already covered can be merged into the Mute article. I suggest that a abbreviated form of the Sordino article should remain specifically talking about it as a musical term. The Mute article should primarily be focused upon the physical objects. Ngaskill (talk) 07:31, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds sensible. --Eusebius (talk) 09:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Aye, sensible... Question remains about what to do with the Sordino content relating to the sordun, a double-reed wind instrument with a folded bore. See Rackett for another instrument along similar lines. Right now, Sordun redirects to Sordino, which seems kind of a sub-optimal way to arrange it all. __Just plain Bill (talk) 11:59, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, the material on the double-reed instrument needs to be put somewhere. Sordun seems like the logical place.  So the redirect page can become an article, and Sordino can become a disambiguation page.  That would make more sense in Wikipedia than 1911 Britannica's procedure of lumping everything together in one article. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 01:14, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure it is sensible, as long as there is a reference to exactly what Sordina/o means exactly. For instance, if someone has an accordion with a sordina chamber and they switch it on, but do not hear much of a difference, they would look up the word, and find no answer.  On my accordions, it would not make too much sense to think of the word "mute" when using the sordina chamber, as it is a very slight change in timbre.  64.149.54.106 (talk) 19:14, 3 September 2009 (UTC)Nick D.
 * Yes This is sensible. I am a 5th grade piano player and I understand that sordino means, in Italian, means 'add mute pedal' Yuyu.ma (talk) 05:45, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

New sub-sections
I have created sub-sections for each different type of string and brass mutes. My model was the article Bowed string instrument extended technique. I think this change makes the article easier to navigate if you are looking for a specific mute. Also, whereas previously all the wiki-links for – let's say – plunger mutes linked to the brass section of the article, we can now link them to the new Plunger mute sub-section of the article instead. Any objections or comments? Squandermania (talk) 20:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good; seems nicely carved at the joints the way you're supposed to. __Just plain Bill (talk) 01:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

"Robinson" mute?
Andre Jolivet asks for a Robinson mute in one of his trumpet concertos. It gives a very soft, "distant" sound. Is this another mute or one of those describes in the article? -- megA (talk) 12:04, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Google is better for answering questions like this: http://www.trumpetmaster.com/vb/f131/robinson-mute-28527.html __ Just plain Bill (talk) 14:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * indeed - thanks. -- megA (talk) 18:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

What Do U Mean by Stem?
From article: "Miles Davis often played through a Harmon mute without the stem." Could you please explain what is meant by stem? The word "stem" occurs only that one time in the article. (PeacePeace (talk) 18:17, 20 May 2016 (UTC))
 * This is in the section on the Wah-wah mute, yes? You will see in the paragraph preceding that statement a reference to the mute being in two parts, the smaller part is described as " a cup on a tube that can be slid in or out, or removed completely, depending on the composer's direction or the player's preference". This is sometimes called the "stem". I can see that this could be made clearer. Thanks for calling attention to this defect.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:49, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Bias and Advertising on the Mute page
What is Wikipedia's policy for editing pages with the intent of advertising a certain brand? Under brass mutes, I only see images for mutes under the Soulo brand. While they are definitely mutes of high quality, they are hardly the only mutes on the market; in fact, they are relative newcomers. I find it highly suspicious that the same user has applied images for Soulo's products to the page, right in the same time frame as each product was released on the market. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.70.242.57 (talk) 14:55, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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Rewriting
Hi all,

I decided to rewrite the article from scratch on account of the lack of RS and excessive detail/OR in some sections. The edit history of the rewrite can be found here:. It incorporates a couple sentences or so from the original article, but the rest is my own work.

If anyone has a solotone, derby/hat or whispa mute and would like to record audio for it, that would be great! I'm getting a friend to record a violin mute example, so that should be put in shortly. Also, it might be nice to have a recording of a straight mute on trombone. My overall goal for this article is to get it to GA. Cheers, Ovinus (talk) 08:06, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Alright, I have fixed some cite errors and the article looks fine to me. Any recommendations for article improvements would be appreciated! Ovinus (talk) 09:30, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

 * The section on brass mutes, at first skim, seems thorough and sourced. One nit I would pick is that a good practice mute does not "severely limit the airflow," at least not the trombone Sshhmute I've played with, in my comfortable registers. I suspect it's a case of "some do, some don't." If that is so, it could use clarification.

 * The string section, IMO, is not yet up to GA standard.

 * Over the decades, a wide variety of mutes have been used, not all of them three-pronged. See, for example, the Heifetz type mute, as well as various slide-on mutes such as the Tourte type, which can be parked on the afterlength when not in use. Saying things about the mass of a "typical" mute is difficult to justify, without seeing more context from the supporting source. In general, three-pronged ebony mutes are more massive than the small rubber slide-on types.

 * Similarly, laying out the details of which overtones are reduced on which string is difficult to justify in an article aimed at a Wikipedia audience, and may not have robust support in the source. Mutes come in different styles, and their placement may be adjusted to suit the taste of the performer, or section leader in an orchestral context.

 * I have seen a clip-on mute from somewhere in the mid-twentieth century, made of gracefully sculpted, polished metal with felt padding, whose action resembles that of the common clothespin seen in this image. That mute's tone changed noticeably, depending on where on the bridge the performer put it. Even a basic three-pronged ebony mute offers a range of possible placements. Without seeing behind the source's paywall, I cannot tell if the author accounted for that and other variations, when measuring which overtones were "weakened and strengthened".

 * In summary, I see "opportunities for improvement" in the string section of this article, mostly to do with selecting sourced information relevant to the topic. Just plain Bill (talk) 14:10, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the review Bill, I'll work on finding sources for the string mute section. The main issue I'm running up against is not many good online sources for the topic; 98% of the relevant sources are pseudo-promotional material from companies who sell mutes. I will remove the information about overtones, except for the fundamental not being reduced part, which seems to apply in the vast majority of cases. If you're aware of any good sources on string mutes, please let me know. Sincerely, Ovinus (talk) 14:13, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I should note that while I'm relatively knowledgable about brass mutes (being a trumpet/trombone player), I don't know much about mutes on stringed instruments besides the info I've read in my books, some of which are rather old. Ovinus (talk) 14:27, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * My sense of a muted string sound is that the high overtones are much reduced, while the fundamental remains prominent in the mix. The tone shaping kind of resembles that of a "stone lined" cup mute for brass, as I hear it. Of course, a heavy practice mute reduces everything across the board, which after all is its job. Sources? Hmm... I will see what I can turn up, but it may take a while. Just plain Bill (talk) 14:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Your description of a muted string seems consistent with all the sources I've found on the topic, including the one about the overtones. Since it's behind a paywall, here's the relevant details for you:

Ovinus (talk) 14:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm looking for the patent of the Heifetz mute, but can't seem to find anything. There is, however, this, which mentions Heifetz as a previous inventor, as well as this NYT article, which mentions that Heifetz patented a mute under his name. Perhaps the patent will provide key details about the mute for the article. Ovinus (talk) 14:57, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Found this: http://www.theheifetzmute.com/, which is obviously not an RS, but might provide some hints for where to look. It mentions that the mute was invented by Henryk Kaston, who also patented it (see this patent). So NYT got it wrong! Anyway, the patent looks to be a pretty thorough exposition of the Heifetz mute; I'll try to extract the most important info. Ovinus (talk) 15:01, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, that particular patent seems to be for a different mute invented by Kaston, not the Heifetz. I can't find the 1949 patent they apparently jointly filed, despite numerous sources claiming they did. Ovinus (talk) 15:17, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't have a Heifetz style mute handy, but was able to get hold of a two-hole Tourte type (like the cello mute shown in the article, but sized for a violin) long enough to weigh it at 1.25 grams. A three-prong ebony mute here weighs 5 grams, closer to the one used in that overtone study.

 * That "felt" mute resembling a fancy spring metal clothespin weighs 35.6 grams, which is surprising, since I've seen it used as a performance mute. For context, a rubber "Ultra" viola practice mute weighs 23.7 grams, while online searching shows the old M&M "brass knuckle" mutes weighing nearly 50 grams, and the currently popular Artino rubber-coated metal practice mute at 65 grams. Don't worry if all this is TMI at the moment; I'm partly putting it here so I can come back to it later.

 * One thing I'd like to do, if you don't get there first, is make it clear in the first sentence of the string section that performance mutes and practice mutes are two different things, even though there may be edge cases of avant-garde composers calling for heavy mutes to be used in performance.

 * Thanks, and please carry on; I will have my eyes on this, and will pitch in to the article as opportunity and inspiration arise. Just plain Bill (talk) 15:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's pretty fascinating, not TMI at all! I've amended the section to include information about the Heifetz, Tourte, Finissima, Bech, and wire mutes, which I was able to find decent sources for, as well as some info about the different effects of metal, rubber, and rubber-coated metal practice mutes. The source Rossing p.206 states "Typical violin mutes have masses of about 1.5 g," which means, given your measurements, they're probably measuring a Tourte mute (that would make sense, given its popularity). I won't include it in the article though, since that would be WP:SYNTH territory. Thanks for your input. Ovinus (talk) 16:06, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Wrt the violin mute recording, since you have a mute, maybe you could do the recording? Just a simple phrase with and without the mute. My friend recorded that, but I realized that I can't just upload it to Commons for copyright reasons, and it would be rather tedious to go through the whole OTRS process. Ovinus (talk) 07:14, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Should be able to record and upload a clip in the next day or so, other activity permitting. Thinking of a couple of measures from J.S. Skinner's "Miss Shepherd" that descends mostly stepwise from A above the treble staff to G below the staff, covering most of the first-position range of the instrument. Bare bridge, then round Tourte performance mute, then a rubber practice mute. Could be fun... Just plain Bill (talk) 14:01, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Awesome! I look forward to hearing it :). With regards to your ce/removal of the paragraph on techniques, two of the techniques did involve a mute being used (putting it on the strings on the side of the bridge and bowing a mute attached directly to the string). I've restored that information, but let me know if you disagree. Anyway, I'll work on finding RS for the first paragraph. Cheers, Ovinus (talk) 15:35, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Bowing a mute attached to the string's speaking part seems pretty far from mainstream technique. I've never seen or heard anything like it; of course that doesn't mean anything in terms of encyclopedic sourcing. As a side note, I did once witness a degree recital where the trombone soloist rolled the rim of his bell around on the strings under the lid of the accompanist's piano. I'd call that kind of thing more interesting than inspiring. Without access to the source for bowing a mute, I can't say much more about it. Just plain Bill (talk) 16:14, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Sounds like they really deserved that degree!! I see, it did seem very weird to me. I'll ask my piano teacher who has access to the Grove Dictionary to see if there's any info on this technique, but for now it seems nonnotable so I will remove it and merge the other technique. Thanks! Ovinus (talk) 16:18, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * By the way, Sevsay p.47 says: "1. Mutes can be placed behind instead of on the bridge.

2. A mute of appropriate size can be placed on the strings between the bridge and the end of the fingerboard. Both sides of the mute are then stroked with the bow. Cello and double bass are best suited for this technique." I, too, can't find any other sources about #2. Ovinus (talk) 16:33, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Here is a bare-bones demo clip:

Just plain Bill (talk) 00:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

With the rough edges I hear, I want to wait a while before putting it into the article. It is possible that I can coax another take from the violinist. Just plain Bill (talk) 02:42, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I like the choice of music. The effect of the performance mute is very subtle, but the practice mute's effect is much clearer. Any updates? Cheers, Ovinus (talk) 20:18, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Violins are famous for sounding different under the ear than out in the room. In the recording, the tonal effect of the performance mute was more obvious on lower notes, only partly consistent with what I heard. Still trying to get a decent recording with simple desktop PC, a Shure SM58, and various preamp/mixer gear. Something wonky about the audio chain may mean that the webcam mic is a better choice. Blrgh. That was fairly close mic placement, which probably didn't help, and the violinist is recovering from an injury, which definitely didn't help. I haven't forgotten about it, and when there is something to post, this is the place. Regards, Just plain Bill (talk) 20:39, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mute (music)


text:
Baron Milverton

Baron Milverton, of Lagos and of Clifton in the City of Bristol, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 10 October 1947 for the colonial administrator Sir Arthur Richards. He had previously served as Governor of Nigeria. His eldest son, the second Baron, succeeded in 1978.

Barons Milverton (1947)

 * Arthur Frederick Richards, 1st Baron Milverton (1885–1978)
 * Fraser Arthur Richard Richards, 2nd Baron Milverton (1930–2023)
 * Michael Hugh Richards, presumed 3rd Baron Milverton (born 1936)

The heir apparent and last heir to the title is the present holder's son Arthur Hugh Richards (b. 1963)

title: Baron Milverton


text:
Baron Morris of Kenwood

Baron Morris of Kenwood, of Kenwood in the City of Sheffield, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1950 for the Labour politician Harry Morris. He had previously represented Sheffield Central and Sheffield Neepsend in the House of Commons. the title is held by his grandson, the third Baron, who succeeded his father in 2004.

Barons Morris of Kenwood (1950)

 * Harry Morris, 1st Baron Morris of Kenwood (1893–1954)
 * Philip Geoffrey Morris, 2nd Baron Morris of Kenwood (1928–2004)
 * Jonathan David Morris, 3rd Baron Morris of Kenwood (b. 1968)

The heir apparent is the present holder's son the Hon. Benjamin Julian Morris (b. 1998)

title: Baron Morris of Kenwood