By the middle of December the British had
started on their return march, pursued as far as the Indus by the
Afghans, and by this hurried conclusion to the war lessened their
prestige in Asia to an enormous degree.
As Sir Henry Rawlinson wrote:
"It was not so much the fact of our retreat; disaster would have
been diminished, if not altogether overcome; but retreating as we
did, pursued even through the last pass into the plains by an
implacable enemy, the impression became universal in India as well
as in Central Asia, that we had simply been driven back across the
mountains."
A very able Hindu gentleman, very loyal to the British, traced the
mutiny of 1857 in a great measure to the Afghan campaign of 1842. He
said: "It was a direct breach of faith to take the Sepoys out of
India. Practically they were compelled to go for fear of being
treated as mutineers, but the double pay they received by no means
compensated them for losing caste. The Sepoys mistrusted the
Government from that time forward, and were always fearing that
their caste would be destroyed; besides, the Kabul disaster taught
them that Europeans were not invincible.
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