'One side of the Interior of the Square under the Hill at Shewukee where the British Prisoners resided: The Other Side of the Interior of the Square if the Zenana at Shewukee', 1842 (c)

Lithograph from the series, 'The Defence of Jellalabad by Major Gen. Sir R H Sale GCB' 1841-1842. 24 lithographs by Hullmandel and Walton, 49 Great Marlborough Street, drawn by W L Walton, published by J Hogarth, H Graves and Company, Pall Mall, 1846 (c).

At the start of the 1st Afghan War (1839-1842), Brevet-Colonel Sale commanded the 1st Bengal Brigade during the advance on Kandahar. He then took part in the march to Kabul and led one of the storming columns at Ghazni in July 1839. For his services Sale was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and received the local rank of major-general. In late 1841 Sale's brigade was sent back to India; but it encountered such hostility from the Ghilzai tribesmen of the Khoord-Kabul Pass, whose subsidies had been cut, that it had to seek refuge at Jellalabad fort on 12 November 1841.

Despite being ordered to return to Kabul following the murder of the British envoy, Sale decided to ignore these instructions. Resisting his personal desire to return to protect his wife and daughter who were in the Afghan capital, he at once set about preparing the half-ruined fortress for a siege. The ramparts were widened and parapets raised. In addition, cover outside the walls was removed by demolishing buildings and filling ditches. The garrison withstood a siege from mid-November 1841 until April 1842 when the besieging Afghans retired partly as a result of Sale's own sorties, including a brilliantly planned and successful attack on Akbar Khan's lines on 7 April, and partly upon the approach of Major-General George Pollock's Army of Retribution.