Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750–1914. Richard Holmes
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in its way: ‘The East India Company has swallowed too many camels,’ wrote Auckland’s military secretary, ‘to strain at this gnat.’73
Ranjit ruled in the best tradition of oriental despots. He bore the insults offered him by his Akali regiments of religious extremists with indifference, ‘until they are involved in any great crime, such as robbery or murder, when he shows no mercy, and they are immediately deprived of either their noses, ears, arms or legs, according to the degree of their offence’. One man thought that it would be amusing to look into Ranjit’s zenana – the women’s quarters – from a mango tree, and was ‘in a few minutes dismissed without either ears or nose, and died in a few hours’.74 Already old and unwell, Ranjit did not improve matters by drinking ‘wine extracted from raisins, with a quantity of pearls ground to powder mixed with it … ’. This brew was:
as strong as aquafortis, and as at his parties he always helps you himself, it is no easy matter to avoid excess. He generally, on these occasions, has two or three Hebes in the shape of the prettiest of his Cachemiri girls to attend upon himself and his guests, and gives way to every species of licentious debauchery.75
When Ranjit died in 1839, to be accompanied to the funeral-pyre by four of his wives and seven slave girls, his eldest son took over, only to be poisoned in 1840: his own son was ‘accidentally’ killed when his elephant collided with a gateway on his way home from the funeral. Sher Singh, the army’s nominee, was head of state until his assassination in September 1843. Dalip Singh, Ranjit’s youngest son, then ascended the throne, though power lay in the hands of his mother, the Maharani Jandin. She was described by Sir Henry Hardinge, who replaced Ellenborough as governor-general, as ‘a handsome debauched woman of thirty-three, very indiscriminate in her affections, an eater of opium’.76
But it is more true to say that, while this lethal dynastic merry-go-round spun on, the real power was the Khalsa, the Sikh army. Ranjit had created the most powerful native force in India by welding together disparate elements, including Sikhs, Hindus and Moslems, and using foreign military experts to train them. In 1822 two Napoleonic veterans, Jean François Allard and Jean Baptiste Ventura, brought infantry and cavalry training manuals with them, and Henri Court, another Frenchmen, cast guns at Lahore arsenal and trained some of Ranjit’s gunners. Although many foreigners left, or were dismissed, in the disturbances following Ranjit’s death, as late as 1844 there were twelve Frenchmen, four Italians, one Prussian, two Greeks, seven Eurasians, one Scotsman, three Englishmen, three Germans, two Spaniards and a solitary Russian attached to his forces.
Perhaps the most spectacular of the whole polyglot crew was Paolo di Avitabile, a tough Italian soldier of fortune who went up to govern Peshawar. Captain Osborne, who breakfasted with some of them, thought that ‘they do not seem very fond of his [Ranjit’s] service, which is not to be wondered at, for they are both badly and irregularly paid, and treated with little respect or confidence’.77 By the time Ranjit died his regular army numbered some 70,000 horse and foot, supported by over 300 cannon, cast in six arsenals. Some of these were good copies of Mughal pieces, and others were modelled on cannon presented to Ranjit by the East India Company.78 In addition to its regular troops, the Khalsa had irregular gorchurra cavalry and perhaps 3,000 Akali religious zealots.
But if the Khalsa, with its smart uniforms and well-drilled infantry, looked like a European army, it did not behave like one. Regiments had all-ranks committees called panchaychats, which met to form an army council most concerned with that thing so dear to soldiers’ hearts: substantial and regular pay. Hardinge, a high-minded and paternalistic Tory, would have avoided involvement in the Punjab if he could, for he had ambitious social and economic projects and was anxious to avoid another ‘Sind scrape’. However, some Sikhs favoured a plundering raid across the Sutlej, and were encouraged by the Maharani Jandin, because this would at least get the Khalsa out of Lahore. When a Sikh emissary tried to persuade some of the sepoy garrison of Ferozepur to desert, Hardinge did not rise to the bait, but he moved more troops to the frontier and travelled there himself. He reached Ambala on 3 December 1845 to hear that the Sikhs had crossed the Sutlej, violating the provisions of their 1809 treaty with the British: he declared war at once.
The short but bloody campaign that followed was complicated not only by the stormy relationship between Hardinge and his commander in chief, Sir Hugh Gough, but by the fact that Tej Singh and Lal Singh, the two chief Sikh commanders, appointed by the army council on the outbreak of war, believed that the British would triumph and were anxious to emerge on the winning side. Hardinge’s political agent at Lahore, the energetic Major George Broadfoot, supplied intelligence that was often contradictory, but was secretly and independently in touch with both Tej and Lal Singh. Because of Hardinge’s reluctance to be seen to provoke the Sikhs the British were weak in numbers; and they were not helped by Gough’s conviction that the Sikhs, what Hardinge had called ‘the bravest and most warlike and most disruptive enemy in Asia’, could be viewed as a traditional Indian army, strong in numbers but weak in cohesion.
On 18 December the Khalsa pushed hesitantly forward to catch Gough on the march at Mudki. Gough rallied, formed up on difficult ground and attacked the Sikhs, but the battle ended inconclusively, with the Sikhs falling back on their main position at Ferozeshah. Gough attacked them there on the 21st, and after a terrible day’s fighting, spent a cold night on the field. Things looked so bleak that Hardinge had his state papers burnt, sent Napoleon’s sword (a present from Wellington) for safe-keeping and ordered Prince Waldemar of Prussia, ‘who had accompanied the army as an amateur’, to a place of safety. Gough was reinforced by Harry Smith’s division before dawn on the 22nd, but it took another day’s fighting to make the Sikhs draw off.
Even then they might have won, for fresh Sikh troops appeared when the British were at their last gasp. Gough later said that while he had no doubt about offering battle on the 22nd – ‘my determination is taken rather to leave my bones to bleach honourably at Ferozeshah than they should rot dishonourably at Ferozepore’ – the appearance of this new force briefly dismayed him:
We had not a shot with our guns, and our Cavalry Horses were thoroughly done up. For a moment I felt a regret (and I deeply deplore my want of confidence in Him who never failed me nor forsook me) as each passing shot left me on horseback. But it was only for a moment, and Hugh Gough was himself again.79
Gough’s forces suffered 2,415 casualties, and it was a striking fact that although his native regiments easily outnumbered his British, 1,207 of those hit were Europeans. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lawrence believed that this was in part a legacy of Afghanistan, where ‘by far our worse loss was the confidence of our native soldiery’.80 Sita Ram – using the word Sirkar, for ‘state, government, supreme authority’ – would have concurred:
It was well known during the Afghan War the Sirkar itself had been afraid. It had ordered the artillery to fire more that year to remind the people of Delhi of its power. But the disasters in Kabul went a long way towards showing that the Sirkar was not so invincible as had always been supposed.81
Hardinge himself thought that: ‘The British infantry as usual carried the day. I can’t say I admire sepoy fighting.’82 When his men cheered Hardinge and Gough after the battle, one honest commanding officer said: ‘Sir, these cheers of my men are not worth having; only a few of the regiment were with me during the night.’83 And perhaps Indian reluctance was caused by more than the Company’s bruised iqbal or their awareness of the fighting quality of the Sikhs. There was a feeling that the Sikhs were the last independent power in India: if the Company