William George Keith Elphinstone

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Major-General William Elphinstone

Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone, CB, (1782–April 23, 1842) was an officer of the British Army during the 19th Century. 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 16-17,000 (most of whom were East India Company troops). 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, which saw his command all but wiped out in a massacre. Elphinstone died as a captive in Afghanistan some months later.

There is a fictional depiction of these events in George MacDonald Fraser's historical novel Flashman (1969), the first volume of the fictional Flashman Papers series.