For some time now I’ve been researching the make-up of the forces General Roberts commanded at the Battle of Charasiab.  There are many secondary sources which list these forces and they are largely consistent but like much else from the Second Afghan War, sometimes they are not.

One particular complication re: Charasiab is that for various reasons some regiments were split up into two or more elements and the seperate elements assigned to different sub-commands.  Another complication is that some units which were part of Roberts’ Kabul Field Force and made the march to Kabul were not present at the battle at all.

Luckily I managed to track down three primary sources online which I believe helped me work out a little more accurately which specific units and portions of units were directly involved in the battle, and where they were positioned.

In case you’re interested here are the three sources with a LINK to each:

(1)  41 YEARS IN INDIA – Lord Roberts’ 1896 autobiograpy

LINK TO 41 YEARS IN INDIA

(the above link can only bring you to the cover-page — to reach the related material scroll up to Chapter L (approach to Charasiab) and/or Chapter LI (the Battle itself) OR type “charasia” into the search bar and jump to the 3rd match)

(2)  RECOLLETIONS OF THE KABUL CAMPAIGN – written by Joshua Duke, who served as a Medical Officer during the campaign

(material related to Charasiab is contained in CHAPTER IV, starting on page 112 )

LINK to Chapter IV of RECOLLECTIONS OF THE KABUL CAMPAIGN

(3)  BULLETINS AND OTHER STATE INTELLIGENCE FOR THE YEAR 1880, COMPLIED & ARRANGED FROM THE OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS PUBLISHED IN THE LONDON GAZETTE

LINK to General Baker’s dispatch re: the battle

Before getting into the details re: the Army Lists, I’ll lay the scenario out very briefly:

October 1879.  A British Army under the command of Major-General Frederick Roberts is en route to Kabul, to exact vengeance for the massacre on September 3rd  of the British Embassy led by Major Cavagnari.  Due to a severe shortage of transport animals, General Roberts’ is unable to move his entire Kabul Field Force at once, instead moving first one portion, then sending the same pack animals back to move the other. 

On October 5th Roberts and the larger part of his Field Force reached the village of Charasiab (sometimes referred to in period writings as “Charasia”, “Charasiah”, or “Chaharasia”), located about 2 miles South of the last mountain-range seperating them from Kabul.

There were two roads for the British to take forward: one to the East, skirting the Logar River through the “Sang i-Nawaishta” Gorge on their right, and one to the West, skirting the Kabul River to their left.

The Afghans occupied the hills North of Charasiab and the mountains all around.

Although a substantial portion of his Field Force was still out of reach, on the morning of October 6th General Roberts chose to attack the Afghan positions before they could be further reinforced by additional tribesmen from nearby areas and regulars reported to be already en route.

General Roberts launched a feint attack to the East while dispatching his main attack to the West.  Despite the very strong advantage of the Afghan position, the British attack succeeded in routing all the assembled Afghan regular and tribal forces and clearing passage to both the East and West roads North to Kabul.  But it was a close-run thing, as Wellington might have put it, and despite resulting in a near-total victory* for the British, at several points during the course of the battle the result hung in the balance and might have gone either way

(*What could have made it a more “total victory” is if the British had been able to cut off or pursue and destroy the substantial Afghan forces which survived the battle and managed to escape.)

Over the past year or so I’ve posted a bunch of pics of my table laid out in various incomplete versions of what will hopefully in the not-too-distant future be its full Charasiab glory, as well as Google Earth images of the battlefield, but for now we’ll use two more familiar maps of the battlefield, the first from the “British Battles” website and the second from the “British Empire” site:

Without further ado, here’s my take on the British Order-of-Battle…

BRITISH FORCES PRESENT WITH MAJOR GENERAL FREDERICK ROBERTS AT CHARASIAB:


ARTILLERY
(combined Art. commanded by Capt. Swinley)

As with most battles of the Second Afghan War, historical reference concerning Afghan forces engaged at Charasiab consists almost exclusively of contemporary British estimates.  These range from “several thousand” to “thirteen regular regiments, (and) between eight and ten thousand (Tribal) Afghans.”  Standard size of Afghan regular infantry regiments on paper was 690 men but of course that does not mean that the 13 Afghan Infantry regiments present at Charasiab were all up to full compliment, and it’s very likely that few if any of them were.  There were also a great many Tribesmen ensconced on the mountains above the battlefield to the East and West, who never became engaged in the battle.  How many of them may be counted amongst Lord Robers’ “ten-thousand Afghans” I don’t know.  If things had gone differently, those additional Tribesmen would no doubt have descended upon the British, but that’s not what happened.  For this scenario, I only want to involve the Afghans occupying the hills and mountains on the battlefield itself.

From a more macro view, my “go-to” Colonial rules set The Sword And The Flame (aka: TSATF) suggests a Pathan-to-British ratio of 2:1 for “balanced” games.  But of course, the devil’s in the details, and it all comes down to the specifics of the scenario.  The scenario at Charasiab involves a substantial but by no means large Anglo-Indian army facing off against a larger Afghan force occupying a series of very strong defensive positions.  With the British having a grand-total of 192 figures (not counting the reserve, which for now I’m leaving out of play), twice as many troops for the Afghans might just be too much.  On the other hand, in reality the British were facing at least three or four to one odds in terms of troop strength and possibly more.

42 Inf. figs & 25 Cav. figs from Herat
(…or 85 Inf. figs & 25 Cav. figs – but is that just too much?!?!)

Again, depending on how well-balanced the scenario proves itself to be during play-testing, use of these potential Afghan reinforcements could provide an “equalizer” — though my expectation is that it is the British who will probably need more troops, perhaps to be provided by Robers’ real-world substantial reserve force, due to the very strong defensive positions occupied by the Afghans at the start of the game.

NOTE:  I have been unable to find ANY MENTION WHATSOEVER of Afghan Cavalry, be it Tribal irregular horsemen or Regular Army Cavalry troopers, being present at Charasiab.  The only mention of any mounted Afghans is a reference to mounted leaders on horseback atop the mountains at the North edge of the battlefield, encouraging their men and mocking the British.  If anyone reading this has read something to the contrary, relating to the presence of any regular or tribal Afghan cavalry being present during the battle, I’d love to hear from you!

Beyond the narrow matter of Afghan cavalry, if anyone out there has some supplementary or contradictory info with regard to the British order-of-battle as discussed above, I’d truly appreciate hearing from you in the comments section below!

…ONE LAST THING:

This is the first time in a LONG TIME I’ve put a post up here without any visual content whatsoever.  Even though I highly value the research and thought I put into the above post… I have something I figure I can add to spice things up just a lttle bit — my homemade version of the Sang-i-Nawishta monument that had stood at the Southern edge of the Sang-i-Nawishta Gorge since it was put there at the order of Mughal Emperor Sha Jahan some time in the early 17th Century.  Shah Jahan ordered a road built through the gorge, linking the Logar Valley with Kabul to the North.  When when the road was done the “Carved in Stone” monument was erected at its Southern entrance to mark the event.  Sang-i-Nawishta translates to “carved in stone” and became the name for the gorge itself.

After his army won the victory and he advanced North and occupied Kabul, General Roberts had the “Sang-i-Nawishta” stone transported to the Sherpur Cantonments and  placed in front of his tent.

Here’s my scratchbuilt attempt at a 28mm version, using a couple of garden wood-chips, a square shaped antique Mughal coin and an early 20th Century Iranian coin (turns out the winged lion holding a sword on those Iranian coins is almost identical to the 17th Century Mughal emblem used by Shah Jahan’s regime) mounted onto a 40mm Round Rock Base from Itar’s Workshop…