The Fall of the Kingdom of Punjab

by Khushwant Singh

  Mudki was a field action of not very great military significance. To the British even this skirmish was an unpleasant surprise. Their casualties were 872 dead and wounded. Amongst those killed were Quartermaster-General Sir Robert Sale, Sir John McGaskill and Brig. Bulton. Punjabi snipers had taken a heavy toll of British lives. The British realised that they were up against the most determined fighters they had met on the Indian subcontinent. Gough sent word to Ferozepur warning Littler not to be drawn into an action on his own but to join him as soon as possible. More reinforcements were ordered from Ambala, Meerut and Delhi. Lord Hardinge relinquished his superior position of Governor-General and agreed to become second-in-command to the Commander-in-Chief.

  Battle of Ferozeshahr—21st December 1845

  Lal Singh was safely ensconced behind the stockades at Ferozeshahr while his men were grimly fighting at Mudki. On paper the plan still was for Tej Singh to take Ferozepur from Littler and then join Lal Singh to fight the enemy coming up from Mudki. Far from accounting for Littler’s force of under 8,000 men, Tej Singh, who had as many as 30,000 men under his command, did not even bother to keep a watch on enemy movements and allowed Littler to slip out of Ferozepur in broad daylight.

  Gough and Hardinge had left Mudki at 2 a.m. on the same night and arrived at Ferozeshahr by 10 a.m., where Littler joined them in the afternoon.

  Gough did not want to take the chance of Tej Singh coming down from Ferozepur to join Lal Singh at Ferozeshahr and immediately ordered an assault on the Punjabi entrenchments. The battle commenced at 4 p.m. on 21st December (which was the shortest day of the year), with a charge by Littler’s Cavalry and Infantry. The Punjabis repulsed Littler’s Hindustanis with terrible slaughter. Punjabi guns were well placed and fired with greater rapidity than the British. Gough threw in his cavalry. Punjabi infantry met the enemy charge with musket-fire and then in a hand-to-hand combat. When the light began to fail, Gough poured in all he had in one desperate advance of cavalry, infantry and artillery on all sides of the horse-shoe in which the Punjabis were entrenched. The battle raged with extreme intensity through the dust and gloom of twilight. A shell hit the Punjabi powder magazine which blew up with a tremendous explosion and set many of the neighbouring tents on fire. The Punjabis turned the misfortune to their advantage by falling on parties of the enemy who had penetrated their entrenchments. At midnight the moon rose over the Sutlej and lit up the battlefield giving the Punjabis yet another opportunity to liquidate enemy pockets. There was no fight left in the British, their men were parched with thirst for all the wells were in the Punjabi camp,—and it had turned bitterly cold. By 3 a.m. (22nd December) the last of the enemy advance units of Sir Harry Smith’s brigade were repulsed and every inch of the ground that had been lost earlier had been recovered.

  On the night of the 21st and 22nd, the fortunes of battle were definitely on the side of the Punjabis. The British suffered terrible casualities; every single member of the Governor-General’s staff had been killed or wounded: amongst the dead was the notorious Broadfoot. Gough had his horse shot under him. That frosty night, ‘the fate of India trembled in the balance.’ Sir Hope Grant, one of the British Generals who fought the Anglo-Sikh wars, wrote: ‘Truly that night was one of gloom and never perhaps in our annals of Indian warfare, has a British army on so large a scale been nearer to defeat which could have involved annihilation. The Sikhs had practically recovered the whole of their entrenched camp: our exhausted and decimated divisions bivouacked without mutual cohesion over a wide area . . .’

  Lord Hardinge sent his son and the Bavarian Prince Waldemar, who was his guest, back to Mudki with the sword he had been given for his services in the Napoleonic campaigns with instructions that in the event of a defeat all his private papers were to be destroyed. An entry in Robert Cust’s diary shows that the British Generals had decided to lay down their arms: ‘December 22nd News came from the Governor-General that our attack of yesterday had failed, that affairs were desperate, that all state papers were to be destroyed, and that if the morning attack failed, all would be over: this was kept secret by Mr. Currie and we were concerting measures to make an unconditional surrender to save the wounded, the part of the news that grieved me the most.’

  The British Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gough, admitted ‘that some brave men lost nerve and urged retreat upon Ferozepur’ but he had resolved, as he said in his own words, ‘rather to have my bones to bleach honourably at Ferozeshahr than that they should rot dishonourably at Ferozepur’.

  When at long last the sun came up on the plains of Ferozeshahr the worst fears of the British were confirmed. Tej Singh arrived with his army from Ferozepur, fresh and eager for battle. The British guns had little ammunition left to fire and their men were too exhausted to fight. ‘We had not a shot with our guns, and our cavalry horses were thoroughly done up,’ wrote Lord Gough. The British resigned themselves to their fate and expected the Punjabis to give them the coup de grace. The situation in the British camp at that time is described by Sir Harry Smith in his autobiography: ‘The ammunition for our guns was fully expended, and our troops were literally exhausted, and we could not attack what would have been an easy prey under other circumstanaces.

  Tej Singh’s guns opened fire. The British artillery did not answer. Then, without any reason, the Punjabi guns also became silent and a few minutes later, Tej Singh ordered the army to withdraw. The battle-eager soldiers were bewildered. A Nihang drew his sword, rushed up to Tej Singh and asked him to explain his order. Tej Singh joined the palms of his hands together and said with great humility that he was doing this in the interest of the Khalsa as he wished to attack the enemy in the rear. The soldiers were mollified and followed Tej Singh. It was then that the men who had fought so gallantly at Ferozeshahr the preceding night discovered that their commander Lal Singh had also decamped earlier. Argument and dissension broke out in the Punjabi camp.

  It did not take Lord Gough long to appreciate that Lal Singh and Tej Singh had fulfilled their treacherous undertakings and he ordered his troops to make one more charge on Ferozeshahr. The defenders who had expected Tej Singh to relieve them were taken by surprise. They fled from their entrenchments, abandoning their guns, 80,000 lbs of gun-powder and all their stores.

  Thus ended the battle of Ferozeshahr—a battle won by the Punjabi soldiers but lost by their traitorous commanders.

  Soon after the debacle, Tej Singh visited the British camp and had an interview with Lord Hardinge. What passed between the two is not known: but from the subsequent treatment the British accorded to the traitor, it is not hard to guess.

  Buddowal—21st January 1846

  The British army followed up its victory at Ferozeshahr by moving up to the river Sutlej where Gough decided to wait for reinforcements before trying to push on to Lahore. Lal Singh and Tej Singh did not avail themselves of the opportunity of fighting a weakened enemy. Ferozeshahr had taken much of the fight out of the Khalsa army and it readily believed the story that the British had suffered so much that they would not try to cross the river.

  The complacent mood lasted a few days. Then information was received that large enemy reinforcements with guns and munitions were moving northwards from Delhi and Ambala. It was also learnt that these reinforcements would first halt at Ludhiana and then go downstream along the Sutlej to Ferozepur.

  A Sikh force of 8,000 men with seventy guns was posted at Phillaur to keep an eye on the enemy movements at Ludhiana. It was commanded by Ranjodh Singh Majithia who had with him Raja Ajit Singh of Ladwa—the only Malwai chief who had joined his compatriots. The two Sardars crossed the river and in rapid marches liberated the forts of Fatehgarh, Dharamkote, Gangarana and Buddowal (which had been in the territory of Ladwa but occupied by the enemy) and encamped at Baran Hata, seven miles from Ludhiana. The Sikhs stole into Ludhiana Cantonment and set many barracks on fire. The enemy depot at Bassian was also threatened.

  Lord Gough ordered Sir Harry Smith to go to the relief of Ludhiana. Smit
h went upstream from Ferozepur keeping a few miles away from the left bank of the Sutlej. Ranjodh Singh Majithia marched his column alongside the enemy and continued harrying him whenever the opportunity presented itself. Smith tried to make a detour when he came to Buddowal. Ranjodh Singh did not let him by-pass the fort and attacked his rear with great vigour and captured Smith’s baggage train and stores.

  Sir Harry Smith paid tribute to Ranjodh Singh Majithia’s tactics at Buddowal. ‘It was the most scientific made during the war,’ he wrote in his autobiography. ‘And had he known how to profit by the position he had so judiciously occupied he would have obtained wonderful success. He should have attacked me with the vigour his French tutors would have displayed and destroyed me, for his force compared to mine was overwhelming; then turned about on the troops at Ludhiana, beaten them and sacked and burnt the city.’

  This was also the opinion in the Punjab. The bard Shah Mohammad says that Ranjodh Singh had an open road to Delhi. Apparently, Majithia had no support and was unwilling to follow up his success. He was also in danger of being trapped between the enemy force on the Sutlej and their advancing reinforcements. He withdrew a few miles from Buddowal and dug himself in near the village of Aliwal on the banks of the Sutlej.

  A few days later Sir Harry Smith received the reinforcements he was expecting and turned on Majithia and Ladwa at Alival.

  Aliwal—28th January 1846

  The battle was fought on the morning of Sunday, 28th January 1846. The Punjabis formed themselves into defensive triangles and as usual started their cannonade before the enemy was within range. The British let the Punjabis exhaust their fire, discovered the exact location of their guns and then moved in to attack the weakest flank. At the crucial hour, the officers, including the Commander, Ranjodh Singh Majithia, deserted their troops. The men refused to retreat and fought with desperate valour. When the British cavalry charged, Sikh infantrymen drew the enemy’s lances towards their bodies to get close enough to smite the horsemen with their kirpans. ‘Although their leader, Ranjodh Singh, was the first to fly and basely quit the field leaving his brave followers to conquer or lose, their courage never quailed,’ wrote Humbley. ‘Again they rallied and made one last and vigorous effort. Though defeat had made them desperate they fought like men who jeopardised all.’ Large numbers were killed in battle; many were pushed into the river and drowned. Fifty-six Punjabi guns fell into the hands of the British.

  Historians still dispute the importance of Aliwal. The official British version taken from Sir Harry Smith was that it was a great British victory. There are others who state that it was a mere skirmish magnified into a great battle by Smith to atone for his defeat at Buddowal. Dr. Andrew Adams in his Wanderings of a Naturalist in India writes: ‘Aliwal was the battle of the despatch, for none of us knew we had fought a battle until the particulars appeared in a document, which did more justice to everyone concerned. As an Irishman would say, we gained a disadvantage at Budiwal, by the baggage of the army falling into the hands of the enemy; that no exaggeration could turn Aliwal into a victory; but shortly afterwards, a few shots, and the charge of a squadron or two in pursuit of a host of retreating Sikhs, were magnified into a grand combat, and thus the plain of Aliwal has been recorded as the scene of one of India’s marathons.’

  Sabraon-10th February 1846

  Aliwal may not have been as great a victory as was later made out by Sir Harry Smith, but it did take a heavy toll of Punjabi armament and the initiative passed out of their hands to the enemy. The British Commanders could now bide their time till they had sufficient force to strike whenever they wanted to and at the most vulnerable point.

  Which city would the British attack first, Lahore or Amritsar? That was the question uppermost in the minds of the Punjabi military commanders. Once again they made a foolish decision to defend both at the same time and divided their forces. The larger portion of the army was entrenched in a horse-shoe curve of the Sutlej near the village of Sabraon, so as to block the enemy advance to Lahore. Lal Singh was posted a little higher up the river at Harike to prevent a surprise move on Amritsar.

  Punjabi entrenchments at Sabraon were on the left bank of the river with a pontoon bridge connecting them with their base camp. Tej Singh had a brick tower built from which he could watch the action; the tower was well behind the front line and close enough to the bridge for a quick get- away. The bridge was also guarded by Tej Singh’s personal bodyguard. All this could be ascribed to personal cowardice, but the way Tej Singh dispersed his force leaves no room for doubt that he wanted to ensure the defeat of the Khalsa army. Big guns were placed behind high embankments and consequently immobilised for offensive action. The infantry was also entrenched and could not therefore be deployed to harass the invaders. The enemy was thus given complete freedom to move about and choose his time and point of attack. The greatest blunder that Tej Singh made was not to have learnt a lesson from Ranjodh Singh Majithia’s defeat at Aliwal, namely that a river in the rear can be a death-trap. Or, perhaps, he knew the lesson too well! What little chance the Sikhs had of holding out against an enemy superior in men, munitions and leadership, was lost by treachery. In the first week of February, Lal Singh sent his emissary to the British camp with a map giving the disposition of the Sikh entrenchment at Sabraon. The British Commander was not one to rely on the word of a traitor and sent a young peasant lad into the Punjabi camp. The ‘Sabraon boy’, as he came to be known, confirmed the information sent by Lal Singh.

  The Punjabi army had traitors to lead it at the front and traitors in the rear to stab it in the back. Rani Jindan sent for Gulab Singh Dogra from Jammu and entrusted him with the task of negotiating with the British. Punjabi Mussulman regiments, which had been left behind to guard the capital, were ordered to proceed to the Sutlej, and Dogras occupied the fort and the barracks in the Cantonment. Gulab Singh refused to forward provisions of gun-powder to the army at Sabraon and opened communications with the Governor-General, Lord Hardinge.

  A delegation of Army Panches came from the front-line to make a representation to the Durbar. They complained loudly that their men had had nothing to eat for several days and had subsisted on parched gram and carrots pulled out from the fields. Rani Jindan told them that she had been given to understand that Gulab Singh had forwarded plenty of food and munitions. ‘No,’ protested the Panches, ‘we haven’t had rations enough for a bird to peck at—chirian di hazri—give us food, give us powder and shot or we will not fight.’

  There was a moment of tense silence. Then from behind the screen where Jindan sat, a hand shot out and flung a bodice at the Panches. ‘Wear that, you cowards,’ shouted the Maharani. ‘I’ll go in trousers and fight myself.’

  The men felt ashamed of themselves. ‘We will go,’ they shouted back, ‘we will lay down our lives for your son and the Khalsa Panth.’

  Punjabi inactivity after Aliwal allowed the British plenty of time to get fresh reinforcements, ammunition and a siege train. When all was ready they decided to leave Tej Singh where he was at Sabraon and to cross the Sutlej lower down at Ganda Singh Wala. This plan was abandoned as the peasantry in the neighbourhood was found to be extremely hostile. Instead, Gough and Hardinge decided to make a frontal assault on the Punjabi entrenchments at Sabraon and destroy their army at one blow. This was undoubtedly planned in the confidence that the Sikh commander was on their side.

  On 7th February it began to rain heavily. For the next two days the sky remained overcast and the downpour continued unabated. The Sutlej began to rise and within forty-eight hours rose more than seven inches, making all the fords unfordable; only one rickety pontoon bridge connected the army entrenched on the left bank with its base. Lord Gough was quick to seize the opportunity. On the evening of 9th February 1846, he marched out of Ferozepur, and under cover of darkness, surrounded the Punjabis at Sabraon.

  On the morning of 10th February 1846, a heavy mist spread from the river over the rain-sodden fields and enveloped both the Punjabi
and British armies. When the sky cleared and the sun’s rays dissipated the mist, the Punjabis found themselves encircled between two horse-shoes: facing them were the British who covered their entrenchments from one end to the other and behind them was the Sutlej, now in spate. This time the British artillery took the initiative. Sikh guns were quick to reply. Then both artilleries ceased fire. There was half-an-hour of nerve-wracking silence—and the guns began barking again. British cavalry made a feint charge and withdrew after confirming the exact location of the Punjabi guns. The cannonade was resumed by the British with better results. In two hours the British guns put the Durbar’s artillery out of action. The Punjabis had in any case run out of powder and shell. British cavalry charged the Punjabi entrenchments from three sides.

  The traitor Tej Singh was the first to fly. ‘He ran like a lunda kutta—a dog with a docked tail,’ said a soldier contemptuously. It appeared subsequently that Tej Singh had not only intended to desert himself but had even tried to induce other Sardars to do likewise. When Sham Singh Attariwala refused, Tej Singh taunted him; ‘If you are all that brave, let’s see you take an oath on the Granth. I know you will join me in the end.’

  ‘Never,’ replied the Attariwala Sardar, and swore that he would rather be killed than give way to the English. He dressed himself in pure white and went into the thick of battle.

  Tej Singh crossed the pontoon bridge to safety. As soon as he was across, he had the bridge destroyed.

  Before leading his men to what he knew would be his last battle, Sardar Sham Singh dismissed his syce and told him to return to his village, Attari; ‘Tell them that Sham Singh will not be coming home.’ The band which rallied around him were killed to a man.