William George Keith Elphinstone
Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone CB (1782 – 23 April 1842) was an officer of the British Army during the 19th century.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Born in Scotland in 1782; he was the son of William Fullerton Elphinstone, who was a director of the British East India Company, and nephew of Admiral George Keith Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith.
Elphinstone entered the British Army in 1804 as a lieutenant; he saw service throughout the Napoleonic Wars, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel by 1813, when he became commander of the 33rd Regiment of Foot, which he led at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. For his actions at Waterloo, Elphinstone was made a Companion of the Bath, as well as a knight of the Dutch Order of William and of the Russian Order of St. Anna. After his promotion to colonel in 1825, he served for a time as aide-de-camp to King George IV.
Elphinstone was promoted to major-general in 1837, and, in 1841, during the First Anglo-Afghan War, placed in command of the British garrison in Kabul, Afghanistan, numbering around 4500 troops, of whom 690 were European and the rest Indian.[1] The garrison also included 12,000 civilians, including soldiers' families and camp followers. He was elderly, indecisive, weak, and unwell, and proved himself utterly incompetent for the post; his inability led to the disastrous British retreat from Kabul during January 1842 [2], which saw his command all but wiped out in a massacre.
Elphinstone died as a captive in Afghanistan some months later, his body was dispatched with a small guard of Afghan soldiers to the British garrison at Jalalabad. Elphinstone's "faithful" batman Moore who had stayed with the General accompanied the body. En route, they were attacked by a "band of tribesmen", but eventually the body reached the garrison. Elphinstone is buried in an unmarked grave. [3]
[edit] Appearances in Fiction
There is a depiction of General "Elphy Bey" Elphinstone and the retreat from Kabul in George MacDonald Fraser's historical novel Flashman (1969), the first volume of the Flashman Papers series of novels.
Elphinstone is also briefly referenced in David Weber's science fiction novel, In Death's Ground (1997), the third novel in that author's Starfire series of novels.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ First Afghan War - Battle of Kabul and Retreat to Gandamak
- ^ Macrory (1972), pp.267
- ^ Macrory (1972), pp.261-262
[edit] References
- Stephen, Leslie (1889) Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XVII. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- Macrory, Patrick. 1972. Signal Catastrophe: The Story of the Disastrous Retreat from Kabul 1842. Book Club Associates, London.
- Macrory, Patrick. 2002. Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan, 1842. The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut. ISBN 978-1-59921-177-0
