The French naturalist Jacquemont, who visited Lahore in 1831, calls him the ‘Suleiman Bey’ of Ranjit Singh, a reference to a renowned Frenchman who commanded the Ottoman forces at the time. Jacquemont also provides some interesting glimpses into how Ranjit Singh managed his European officers. According to him, Allard was ‘well paid at 100,00 Francs a year, but is half a prisoner of Ranjit Singh, who takes care to make him spend the whole of his income every year to destroy any desire to leave him’.
Allard was thirty-seven years old when he arrived at Lahore. He had lived a soldier’s life for years and finally, he was a man of consequence. A courtier. Wealthy. And one of the Maharaja’s favourites. Now, adventures of a different sort lay ahead.
Chamba, a small principality in the Himalayas in modern-day Himachal Pradesh, paid tribute to Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It was an ancient kingdom, which had been ruled by an unbroken line of kings for nine hundred years. Bannou Pan Dei was born to Raja Menga Ram and Banni Panje Dei in Chamba on 25 January, 1814. The circumstances in which she met Allard have not been preserved by history. It would probably be a good assumption that the twelve-year old daughter of a Hindu Raja would likely not have encountered the French General in any social setting, even though Allard did travel many times to the Kangra and Chamba hills in the course of military campaigns. Most likely it was a match arranged or at least blessed by the Maharaja. Allard was married in March 1826, and took up residence with his wife in Lahore at a property that included the tomb of the legendary courtesan Anarkali.
The Allards had seven children; Elise (born 1830), Amélie (born 1831), Jean François Auguste (born 1832), Théophile (born 1834) and Félicie (born 1835); two children died in infancy and were buried in Lahore. In 1834, Bannou Pan Dei, her four children and two of her female attendants accompanied Allard to France. The reason given to Ranjit Singh for the journey was that the children needed a Christian education. However, later in a newspaper interview in France, Allard spoke of another reason. Being much older than his wife, he was sure that he would die before her. Since his wife came from an orthodox Hindu royal family, he feared that she would be obliged to commit sati (be burnt alive with him according to the prevalent Hindu custom of the time) if he died in Punjab. In July 1835 Bannou Pan Dei settled down in Saint Tropez and remarried Allard in a French civil ceremony. Since she was a Hindu, they could not be married in a church.
The children were thus legitimised according to French law and Allard made arrangements for their education between December 1835 and April 1836. He then left France for Punjab, never to see his family again. There are several descriptions in French newspapers from the time of Bannou Pan Dei Allard of her social life in Saint Tropez, her travels and her connections with the high society of her time. In 1841, she decided to convert to Christianity and was baptised in the church of Saint Tropez, the King and the Queen of France having accepted to be her godfather and godmother.
On 25 July, 1845, Madam Allard lost her younger daughter, Felicie (born in Calcutta on 2 February, 1835) and she got special permission to bury her in her garden, according to the Punjabi custom. She had purchased a new estate in Saint Tropez along the sea, where she lived among her souvenirs and paintings.
It was said in Saint Tropez that she never accepted the death of her husband in Peshawar in 1839, and every evening she walked to the seaside to wait for him. In 1853, the fortune of the Allard family was estimated at 462,000 francs of which 134,000 francs belonged to Bannou Pan Dei and 82,000 francs to each of the four children. She died in Saint Tropez on 13 January, 1884, and is buried in the Allard family tomb in the ‘Cimetiere Marin’ of Saint Tropez.
As a matter of interest, the Allard residence is now an upscale B&B in Saint Tropez, which today is a fashionable resort. It is called the Pan Dei Palais and still retains many trappings of its owners’ life in Lahore!
Allard received the rank of general in the French army and the Cross of the Legion of Honour from King Louis Philippe. He was also appointed Political Agent of the French government at the court of Lahore. He returned to Punjab via Calcutta in early 1837, bringing Ranjit Singh gifts and a letter from Louis Philippe, the King of France. In Calcutta, he met Emily Eden, the sister of the then Governor General, Lord Auckland. Emily Eden was a writer and a keen observer. Her letters were subsequently published and provide a wealth of anecdotes about the various notables of the period that she met, as the Governor General’s sister.
In a letter written on 6 December, 1836, she recounts interesting details about Allard including his ‘immensely long beard’ and his ‘moustachios’. Clearly, Allard, like the other European officers in Ranjit Singh’s court had adopted Punjabi dress and wore a flowing beard like a Sikh Sardar. Martin remembers him thus: ‘Monsieur Allard, the General of the regular cavalry, was a distinguished officer in the Imperial army of France, and a man of high character and conciliatory manner; he adopts the Seick costume in allowing his beard to grow, and has married a native woman.‘
Allard’s master was overjoyed at his return to Lahore and was delighted by the large haul of cuirasses, pistols and carbines that Allard had brought back from France. Allard had been in considerable financial difficulty because of the failure of the Palmer Bank, where he had cached most of his savings. Ranjit Singh proceeded to pay him for all the weapons he had brought back and then somewhat unexpectedly bestowed thirty thousand rupees upon him as leave pay. It is said that at this gesture of generosity, the Frenchman burst into the following words in Persian, much to his king’s delight:
O God! May my King live Long!
May the firmament be as a slave in his service!
May I reach his Royal Court and be honoured!
And should I ever disobey his command
May death come over me.
When I die, let my grave be in Lahore
And may my remains be interred in Anarkulee.
His wish turned out to be prophetic. General Allard died of heart failure in Peshawar on 23 January, 1839. In accordance with his wishes, his body was brought to Lahore for burial. All along the way, salutes were fired at every important town or station the body passed through. On arrival at Shahdra, three miles from Lahore, where he had first arrived, from Kabul, seventeen long years ago, the three-mile stretch to Anarkali was lined with troops and minute guns were fired as the funeral procession progressed.
Lieutenant William Barr, a British officer of the Bengal Horse Artillery, who was on his way to Afghanistan with British, Sikh and Afghan troops to restore Shah Shuja to the throne, writing about the funeral procession in his book Journal of a March from Delhi to Peshawur and hence to Cabul mentions that ‘regiments were paraded in honour’ of the Frenchman and that for a while, Ranjit Singh’s advisers were worried about letting him know of Allard’s death, since Ranjit Singh himself was ailing at that time.
General Allard was nearly fifty-four years old when he died. He was buried beside his daughter in the little mausoleum he had built for her in the grounds of Kapurthala House in Lahore, formerly his residence.
Maharja Ranjit Singh passed away on 20 June, 1839, within six months of the death of one of his most beloved generals and courtiers.
Thus ended the saga of the Chevalier of Lahore.
THE RISE OF THE DOGRAS
On 5 November, 1840 Maharaja Kharak Singh, the oldest son of Ranjit Singh and his successor passed away. During his brief reign, Kharak Singh who possessed none of his father’s brilliance, had been virtually deposed by his son Naunihal Singh, a very ambitious and capable young man in whose hands, many believed, the Sikh empire would be safe.
Fate, however intervened, as the young prince was returning to the palace after cremating his father, a day later.
A day after Kharak Singh’s death, his body was cremated in accordance with Sikh custom, and two of his queens and eleven of his slave-girls were burnt with him. The Hindu custom of Sati was followed even though the deceased king had been a staunch believer in Sikh doctrine, which expressly forb
ade the practice. Maharaja Naunihal Singh stood for a time by the funeral pyre, which had been erected in the open space opposite the mausoleum of Ranjit Singh. Always an impatient man, he did not stay until his father’s body was completely consumed by the flames as etiquette demanded, but went to a nearby tank for a cleansing bath. The entire court was in attendance as were five elephants, tethered a small distance away. Colonel Alexander Gardner, from whose account historians have been able to reconstruct the events of the day, was also present at the beginning of the cremation of Maharaja Kharak Singh, and stood right by Prime Minister Raja Dhian Singh Dogra.51 Before the new Maharaja left the spot, Gardner was instructed by Dhyan Singh to bring forty of his artillerymen without being told why they were being summoned. By the time he returned, a major catastrophe had occurred.
Maharaja Naunihal Singh had passed through an archway on his return from bathing, accompanied by his dear friend Raja Udham Singh Dogra, the eldest son of Raja Gulab Singh Dogra, the Prime Minister’s older brother. The two young men entered the archway together and as they emerged from it a loud crash was heard. Beams, stones, and tiles fell from above, and the Maharaja and Udham Singh Dogra fell to the ground. Udham Singh Dogra was killed on the spot, but Maharaja Naunihal Singh managed to stagger to his feet, clutching his injured head and asking for water. Raja Dhian Singh Dogra rushed forward to attend to the king, ignoring his own fallen nephew. The Maharaja was was carried into the palace, the doors were closed, and admission denied to everyone. Several of the principal courtiers begged to see the Maharaja, among them the Sandhawalias, close relatives of the royal family. Deeply anxious, the Maharaja’s mother, Rani Chand Kaur, beat the gates of the fort in vain, but was also refused admittance, as were the Maharaja’s wives and concubines.
The five palanquin bearers who had carried the Maharaja to the palace and all the servants in Gardner’s artillery camp were sent home. Two were soon put to death, two escaped from Punjab, and the fifth one was never seen again. One of the five men later told Gardner that when the Maharaja was put into the palanquin, he had a wound the size of a small coin, which was bleeding slightly. Oddly, when the doors to the royal apartments were finally opened by Raja Dhian Singh Dogra, copius amounts of coagulated blood were visible on the pillow on which Maharaja Naunihal Singh’s head rested. When the Sandhawalia chiefs and other prominent courtiers were finally admitted, they found Raja Dhian Singh Dogra disconsolate on the ground and Fakir Nuruddin, the royal physician, lamenting that all of his efforts had been to no avail and that he had been unable to save the young monarch.
Thus perished Maharaja Naunihal Singh on the day following the death of his father.
It is clear from Gardner’s account that he found the circumstances of Naunihal Singh’s death to be somewhat suspicious. The instructions he received before the accident to ‘bring forty … artillerymen in their fatigue dress’, the killing and/or disappearance of all five of the palanquin bearers who bore the injured king to the palace, the denial of access to the king’s anxious mother and relatives as he lay injured and finally the ‘blood in great quantities, both in fluid and coagulated pools’ around the king’s head, when it was known that he bled only slightly following the accident—all these suggested a conspiracy rather than an accident.
The man allegedly at the centre of the conspiracy did not escape the accident unscathed. He was injured by the falling debris and his nephew, Udham Singh, a close friend of the new king also perished. European historians and writers, including J.D. Cunningham and Lieutenant Colonel Steinbach have vilified him and suggested that he had murdered Maharaja Naunihal Singh, a view also espoused by Sikh historians such as Dr. Ganda Singh and Baba Prem Singh Hoti Mardan.
His name was Dhian Singh Dogra and he had faithfully served Ranjit Singh for many years, rising from humble beginnings to become his Prime Minister, his close confidante and the most powerful courtier in the Lahore Durbar.
The rise of the Dogras is a fascinating story that has more colour than many fictional tales of gallantry, intrigue and deceit!
Dhian Singh Dogra and his brothers, Gulab Singh and Suchet Singh, were Rajputs who hailed from the foothills between Kashmir and Punjab, a land that had never been united under a single ruler. The Rajputs had settled in the area after the invasion of Mohammad of Ghor in the twelfth century and had formed several small kingdoms such as Jammu, Khistwar and Bhadarwah, which were the vassals of the Mughal emperors. Raja Ranjit Deo of Jammu came into prominence after the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1739 and became independent, subduing many of his neighbouring hill states. His independence, however, was short-lived because the crumbling of the Mughal empire and the invasions of Ahmad Shah Durrani propelled the Sikh Misls into prominence. Jammu in particular, famed for its riches, became a bone of contention between the Sardars of the Kanhaya, Bhangi and Sukerchakia Misls, until Ranjit Deo submitted to the Bhangi Sardar, Jhanda Singh.
Ranjit Deo was succeeded in 1780 by his son Brij Lal, who was an ally of Maha Singh Sukerchakia, Ranjit Singh’s father, and sought to break the control of the Bhangis with Maha Singh’s help. The Bhangis sought an alliance with the Kanhayas, and with their help, defeated the joint forces of Brij Lal and Maha Singh, forcing the Raja of Jammu to pay tribute. Claiming that tribute from Jammu was in arrears, the Kanhaya Sardar Jai Singh decided to attack Jammu and this time recruited Maha Singh to help him. Maha Singh seized the opportunity and marched on Jammu on his own, plundering its fabled riches. Jammu, now impoverished, was left alone by the Sikh Sardars and quickly lost its influence, the Raja maintaining nominal control of the town of Jammu and its fort.
After the passing of Brij Lal, the much-reduced kingdom of Jammu passed to his infant son Sampurana Deo, who died in his childhood and then to Jeet Singh, a nephew of Brij Lal, with Mian Mota, a cousin of Brij Lal, acting as regent. Mian Mota’s younger brother was Zorawar Singh, whose son, Kishore Singh, a valiant soldier, held a small jagir (landholding) at Andarwah. Kishore Singh was thus a minor chief, albeit of noble Rajput blood, and his financial situation was not very sound. Kishore Singh was the father of the Dogra brothers, who gained such prominence and notoriety at the Lahore court. Gulab Singh was born in 1792, Dhian Singh in 1796 and Suchet Singh in 1801.
In 1808, driven by the incompetence of Raja Jeet Singh, Maharaja Ranjit Singh assigned a jagir to Sirdar Hukma Singh Chimni in the vicinity of Jammu, and he decided to attack Jammu and add it to his territory. Mian Mota mounted a spirited defense, supported ably by Kishore Singh and his teenaged sons, Gulab Singh and Dhian Singh and managed to repel the attackers. Tales of the bravery of the Rajput lads reached the court of Ranjit Singh and in 1809 he decided to employ Gulab Singh in his cavalry at the princely salary of two rupees a day. The young Dhian Singh had also entered Ranjit Singh’s service as did their father Kishore Singh.
In three years, Gulab Singh rose to command sixty ghorchurs (horsemen) and received from the king a jagir that yielded twelve thousand rupees. His brother Dhian Singh’s fortunes were on the rise as well; soon, he was master of a jagir worth two thousand rupees. The third brother, Suchet Singh was also given a position when he was a mere lad. The three brothers were all referred to as Mian (a title used for petty chiefs) and were seldom seen at court as they were often deployed in the field during various military campaigns.
In order to understand the rise of the Dogras, it is important to get a sense of the system of governance and the key players in Ranjit Singh’s court. Several travellers have left accounts of their visits to the Lahore court. Sahmat Ali, who was munshi or clerk to Claude Martine Wade, the British Resident in Ludhiana, and visited Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s court en route to Kabul, was particularly observant and has left a compelling account of the Maharaja’s court.52
Maharaja Ranjit Singh was an absolute monarch whose word was law. While he did have many able courtiers and advisors, ultimately, he was guided by his own judgement and opinions. A devout Sikh, he would never undertake anything significant without an ‘oracular’ rea
ding of the the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib. Although illiterate, he was very comfortable dictating his correspondence with foreign states and allies to his scribes and would then direct them minutely to make corrections. He was wont to hold his cards close to his chest and would not share thoughts and ideas until it was time to implement them.
In the early part of his reign, there was no official record-keeping and all business was transacted verbally. A native of Peshawar, Bhawani Das entered his employment and helped organise his administration into various offices or departments and started keeping meticulous accounts and preserving every record of importance. At the time of Sahmat Ali’s visit, there were twelve Daftars or offices under which the civil and military business of the government was transacted. Diwan Dinanath headed all the departments. The office of the Deodhidar or Royal Chamberlain was established around that time. Bhai Ram Singh, Bhai Govind Ram and Faqir Azizuddin were the Maharaja’s chief advisors on civil affairs. Faqir Azizuddin was also in charge of foreign affairs and responsible for most of the official correspondence with foreign states. Misr Beli Ram, a highly respected brahmin, was in charge of the crown jewels and the treasury. Sahmat Ali’s account also provides an interesting insight into how the business of the court was conducted and how the process evolved, as Ranjit Singh added able administrators to the court and started delegating key functions to them, while still keeping a tight grip on the affairs of the court and managing them at a fairly granular level. The reliance on the Guru Granth Sahib as an oracle is also an interesting observation; Sikhs will recognise this as the standard practice of starting any endeavour with a reading of the Guru Granth Sahib, but it must have seemed strange to external observers.
The ‘Deodhee’, referred to above, literally meant the door to the court. As part of the reorganisation of the court, the office of Deodhidar or Lord Chamberlain had been created. The Deodhidar occupied an important position in Ranjit Singh’s court. Literally the ‘keeper of the door’, he controlled access to the king’s court, which gave him great power and influence.
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