To avoid letting others reap the fisherman's reward, the Tsarist Government did not want to provoke a war with Britain at this time. Britain, at the eye of the storm, needed no further mention.
Since when had Britain ever been so valiant as to run onto the continent and wage war against a great power?
Even if it truly came to war, Britain would pull in a bunch of cannon-fodder allies and swarm the enemy together. Going it alone was out of the question.
The Tsarist Government was wary of Britain's strength, while the London Government was even more wary of the Russian Bear's strength. Most importantly, there was little to gain from defeating Russia, but losing could mean sacrificing India.
Having personally experienced the ferocity of Afghan guerrillas, the British Government no longer felt any attachment to Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, those people, too, bullied the weak and feared the strong. Against the British Indian colonial army, one of them could fight two; yet when faced with the unreasonable Russian Bear, the Afghan guerrillas had achieved nothing remarkable.
This was hardly strange. Though the Afghan people were fierce by nature, local resources were barren, land suitable for agriculture was limited, and so was the population that could be supported.
Because of the war, the local population had become even smaller. The Tsarist Government had also deployed more than two hundred thousand Russian Army troops in Afghanistan, bringing the ratio of soldiers to civilians to one to ten.
One Russian soldier watching ten Afghan civilians—how could they possibly stir up trouble? No matter what, the Grey Beast's fighting power was far greater than that of the Indian colonial army.
If the troops Britain had stationed in Afghanistan back then had all been main-force units rather than British Indian corps, they would not