Chitral 1895: An Episode of the Great Game

In 1895, a small Indian Army garrison, commanded by Surgeon-Major Sir George Scott Robertson and Captain Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, was besieged by a joint Chitrali and Pathan army at the fort of Chitral. Despite the odds being heavily stacked against them, Robertson’s beleaguered little garrison held out for forty-eight days until a relief expedition was able to fight its way through to the rescue. The siege and subsequent relief is a story of valor and sheer determination in the face of a stubborn adversary and extreme weather conditions, all played out on the often-mountainous terrain of the northwestern border of British India. Robertson described events in Chitral as a ‘minor siege’, but the siege and subsequent relief should be viewed as an important episode in Britain’s ‘Great Game’ with Russia, which would have serious consequences for the British several years later. Indeed, the retention of Chitral by the Indian Government would be a contributing factor to the mass uprisings along the northwest Frontier of India during late 1897. In reality, it was anything but a minor siege.