William George Keith Elphinstone

Major-General William Elphinstone

Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone CB (1782 – 23 April 1842) was an officer of the British Army during the 19th century.

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]

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 portrayed as sublimely incompetent and indecisive, and when Flashman describes his command of the cataclysmic retreat from Kabul, he epitomizes Elphinstone's military ineptitude by stating: "If you had taken the greatest military geniuses of the ages, placed them in command of our army, and asked them to ruin it as speedily as possible, they could not - I mean it seriously - have done it as surely and swiftly as he did."

Another reference to Elphinstone's singular lack of talent again comes from Flashman: "But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgement - in short for the true talent for catastrophe, Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day...".

Or this: "Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with a touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again."

See also

• Massacre of Elphinstone's Army
• Flashman

Notes

1. ^ First Afghan War - Battle of Kabul and Retreat to Gandamak
2. ^ Macrory (1972), pp.267
3. ^ Macrory (1972), pp.261-262

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

Persondata
Name	Elphinstone, William George Keith
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1782
Place of birth
Date of death	23 April 1842
Place of death