The soldiers were some of the toughest ever produced, and they belonged to the army of the world's greatest superpower. Yet even they wilted under the 110-degree heat as the dust they raised, whipped up by the wind, choked their throats and stung their eyes. The mountainous terrain made for an uneven march, the high altitude left them gasping for breath, and behind each rock face and within every ravine lurked the possibility of ambush. This was the road to Kandahar in 1880. And for the British and Indian troops and their commander, Major General Frederick Sleigh Roberts, there were hundreds of miles still to go.

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The Great Game
In the Victorian Age, India was the jewel of the British empire and Britain's foreign policy was shaped around keeping the subcontinent secure from external threats, especially that posed by Russia. Afghanistan, a barrier between the two expanding empires, became the setting for an ongoing succession of intrigues, known famously as the 'Great Game.'

The rivalry stemmed from Russia's attempts to dominate Turkey and secure access through the straits of Constantinople. Britain had guaranteed Turkey's sovereignty and was willing to use its superior navy to blockade the Black Sea and close off the Dardanelles if the Russians made any aggressive maneuvers. In response, Russia drew up well-publicized plans to march an army through Afghanistan and into India should hostilities ever break out.

As long as both nations stayed their ambitions and upheld the results of diplomacy, most of the tensions between them could be resolved. That balance was upset in Britain's general election of 1874, however, when the Conservative Party under Benjamin Disraeli ousted William Gladstone's Liberal government. In Conservative minds, the foreign guarantees secured by the Liberals were worthless unless backed by military force. Both the secretary of state for India, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, and the region's new governor-general, E. Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Earl of Lytton, strongly supported that stance. It was only a matter of time before there was a major quarrel with Russia, and, sure enough, it came when Russia declared war on Turkey in 1877. As the tsar's troops marched on Constantinople, Britain sent a large naval presence to the Dardanelles and began amassing a counterinvasion force on Malta. Russia reacted by preparing to march a 15,000-man army through Afghanistan into India. To ensure Afghan cooperation, a Russian diplomatic mission met with the kingdom's emir, Sher Ali.

This put Sher Ali in a difficult position. He drew a large British 'pension' with two main provisos: keep the peace along the Northwest Frontier of India, and reject any diplomatic advances from Russia. Accepting the tsar's men would certainly cause Britain to withdraw its funding and possibly provoke an invasion. If he rejected the Russian mission and hostilities did break out, however, then the Russians would march through Afghanistan and almost certainly depose the emir on the way. Making the best of a bad situation, Sher Ali accepted the Russian mission, but kept it in Kabul (spelled Cabul in Victorian Britain) with protracted negotiations and noncommittal promises–while hoping that the British would understand that he was only playing for time.

Lytton's War
As Sher Ali hoped, Britain and Russia settled their differences peacefully at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the Russian mission prepared to withdraw. His hopes that the British would appreciate his predicament were soon dashed, however. Lord Lytton was furious, labeling the emir 'a savage with a touch of insanity' and demanding that he welcome a British embassy, along with conditions that were likely to reduce both Sher Ali's and his country's power. Even if the emir had been well disposed to receiving the embassy, however, his countrymen were not. The First Afghan War of 1842, in which British forces had avenged the deaths of the soldiers and citizens massacred on a retreat from Kabul, was still fresh in the Afghans' memories. By accepting the embassy and its terms, Sher Ali would in effect be signing his own death warrant. Thus the emir warned the British mission's leader, Joseph Chamberlain, to turn back at the border, which he promptly did.

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