It was a spectacular victory: the impregnable fortress of Ghazni had been captured within seventy-two hours of the army first sighting it. As well as a thousand fatalities, around 300 Afghans were wounded and 1,500 taken prisoner. In contrast, the British suffered only seventeen killed with around sixty-five wounded.98 But, as Durand later pointed out, the success of the assault was largely due to luck, as by leaving behind the siege guns and marching without sufficient supplies Keane had “committed a grievous military error;
