The Military Operations at Cabul

Eyre's record of part of the debacle of the First Afghan War of 1839-42. Following the murder of Alexander Burnes in 1841 the British force was besieged in Kabul. They were eventually allowed to evacuate and began the retreat back towards India. On the way the Afghans demanded the surrender of the married officers and their families as hostages and they spent nine months in captivity in various forts, the experience being recorded by both Eyre and Lady Sale in diaries, before being rescued by General Sir George Pollock. The rest of the retreating column of 16,500 including women and children perished in the mountains due to the harsh winter and attacks from local tribesmen. Of the contingent only one British soldier, Dr. William Brydon, and a few sepoys managed to reach Jalalabad.

Eyre's portfolio of the portraits of the prisoners was issued separately but was intended to be bound up with either Eyre's or Lady's Sale's journal of the ordeal, as here.

Fourth edition; 8vo; xxvii, 436 pp., folding plan, lithograph frontispiece and 15 lithographed portraits and plates from Eyre's 'Portraits of the Cabul Prisoners' bound in, one folding, some on india paper and mounted, light spotting to one or two plates original pictorial green cloth gilt, spine rubbed and faded with a couple of small nicks, new endpapers, preserved in modern cloth drop-back box, morocco label, spine faded, a very good copy.

Bobins 240.