After all the waste and destruction of an expensive and unnecessary war of dubious legality, with the honour and reputation of British arms tarnished and British authority undermined; after spending £15 million (well over £50 billion in modern currency), exhausting the Indian treasury, pushing the Indian credit network to the brink of collapse and permanently wrecking the solvency of the East India Company; after losing maybe 40,000 lives, as well as those of around 50,000 camels; and after alienating much of the Bengal army, leaving it ripe for mutiny, the British had left Afghanistan much as
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