William Hay Macnaghten

Sir William Hay Macnaghten, 1st Baronet (24 August 1793 – 23 December 1841), was a British civil servant in India, who played a major part in the First Anglo-Afghan War.

William was the second son of Sir Francis Macnaghten, 1st Baronet, judge of the supreme courts of Madras and Calcutta, and was educated at Charterhouse.

Burnes was murdered on 2 November 1841; and under the elderly General William Elphinstone, who was also injured in a bad fall from his horse, the morale and confidence of the British/Indian army in Kabul drastically deteriorated.

[3] [4] Macnaghten tried to save the situation by negotiating with the Afghan chiefs and, independently of them, with Dost Mahammad's son, Wazir Akbar Khan.

The entire calamitous episode cast the gravest doubt on Macnaghten's capacity for dealing with the problems of colonial diplomacy.

A painting commissioned in the last year of Macnaghten's life, by James Atkinson
Portrait of Macnaghten from Prison Sketches. Comprising portraits of the Kabul prisoners, and other subjects by Vincent Eyre