But had he been right in resorting to war in the first place? Ellen-borough, who was delighted by the outcome, had no doubts; nor did Napier, who afterwards claimed his conscience was clear. As details of the origins of the war became known in Britain there was a public outcry. There were allegations, first raised by the Bombay Times in May 1843, that British officers had violated the amirs’ harems and carried off the most attractive odalisques for their own pleasure. The incident was represented as an insult to all Muslims. Imagining, perhaps ingenuously, that they had entered the harems willingly, the newspaper lamented the misfortunes of women ‘who three months since were sharers of a palace and in the enjoyment of the honours of royalty, [and are now] the degraded lemans of the Feringhi [foreigners]’.11 These allegations were indignantly denied by the officers of Napier’s army.
More serious were the charges made by Outram on his return to Britain. He accused Napier of having deliberately engineered the war through intransigence and underhand manoeuvres when it was clear that the amirs wanted a peaceful accommodation with the Company. Defending his attack on Napier in February 1844, Outram argued that the general had in fact destabilised the Sind, where peace now rested on a garrison of 10,000 which the province could not afford. Many soldiers were succumbing to the heat and fevers and the rest only stuck it out for additional allowances. Napier’s aggression had driven many Baluchis into Afghanistan and their incursions might eventually compel the Company to mount a second invasion of that country.12 Outram also had a personal axe to grind; he imagined that Napier had laid a ‘stigma’ on him by ‘shameless misrepresentations’ of his conduct, and he wished to clear his name in order to continue what had been a promising career in India.13
Outram’s case was taken up in the Commons in February 1844 by Lord Ashley, better known as the champion of exploited working children, who depicted the Sind episode as a ‘foul stain’ on national honour. Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister, was obliged to defend Ellenborough, but he did so without much conviction. While ministers might impose a ban on governor-generals annexing territory, ‘there was some great principle at work wherever civilisation and refinement come in contact with barbarism’ which unavoidably led to the acquisition of land in the interests of security. Some members may have wondered, if this was the case, why Ellenborough had been forbidden to annex territory in the first place.14 As with Wellesley and the Marathas, the Sind affair was an instance of a ministry being embarrassed by an uncontrollable proconsul. In the end, Ellenborough and Napier were vindicated. The censure motion was rejected by 134 votes, with Disraeli and his precious ‘Young England’ Tories voting against the government while the Whig Palmerston joined forces with Peel.
The political reverberations of the Sind affair continued for some months. Punch made the famous pun in which Napier sends the message ‘Peccavi’ (I have sinned) to Ellenborough. The ageing Montstuart Elphinstone likened Ellenborough’s behaviour to that of a bully who, having been knocked down in a street brawl (i.e. Afghanistan), returned home to pummel his wife (i.e. attack the Sind), which was a reasonable analogy.15 Ellenborough had also injured the directors in that area where they were most sensitive, their pockets. He had ignored claims for patronage from their protégés as well as dissipating revenues in the Wellesley manner on wars neither they nor the government had wanted. In April 1844, the board asked for his recall and Peel agreed, much to the amusement of Punch, which believed that its members always did what the government told them. A cartoon showed a carriage pulled by ‘well-trained hacks’ (the directors) running out of control to the horror of the coachmen, Peel and Wellington. Napier survived Ellenborough’s recall, remaining in the Sind where he was soon bogged down in one of those protracted ‘savage wars of peace’ against local bandits.
II
It was commonly but wrongly believed that Ellenborough’s replacement, his brother-in-law Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Hardinge (created Viscount Hardinge in 1846), would continue his predecessor’s policies, even though Peel had urged him to maintain peace as far as it was possible.16 Hardinge would have liked to have done this. He was fifty-nine, a high-minded, paternalist Tory who had campaigned in the Peninsula, lost a hand at Ligny and served in several Cabinets. Hardinge arrived in India in September 1844 with his head full of schemes for the regeneration of its peoples; he wanted to open more schools, train more Indian doctors, found universities and invest millions in a network of railways.17
His dreams remained largely unfilled. The new Governor-General was quickly distracted from good works by events in the Punjab, the now deliquescent Sikh state which Ellenborough would have liked to have invaded and annexed if he had stayed in office. His reasons for intervention, which were also to be Hardinge’s, were a mixture of fear and expediency.
The object of fear was the Khalsa, the Sikh army. It was later described by Hardinge as Britain’s ‘bravest and most warlike and most disruptive enemy in Asia’, which was a fair assessment of its qualities. The Khalsa had been created by Ranjit Singh and a body of European and American professional instructors, many of them veterans of Napoleon’s army. They had taught the Khalsa’s soldiers to fight and drill in the Western manner, making them the most efficient fighting men in India, next to the Company’s troops. There were some who argued that the two were equal; Sir Harry Smith thought Sikh gunners the equal of their French counterparts, whose fire he had encountered as a rifleman in the Peninsula. The Khalsa possessed 376 cannon, but its backbone was 45,000 infantrymen, all dressed in blue turbans and red jackets and armed with modern muskets, manufactured in Lahore. The Punjabi cavalry were less numerous and less impressive. There were about 26,000, of whom at least three-quarters were irregulars, some picturesquely dressed in chain mail, breastplates and helmets.
The death of Ranjit Singh had left the Khalsa the most powerful force in Punjabi politics. But it was muscle without a brain, for no political or military figure emerged to lead it or harness its energies. This deficiency was partly made good when the soldiers created their own command structure, which was akin to that of the soviets adopted by the Russian army in 1917; each battalion elected five representatives who, together, formed a governing committee. Its primary concern was the Khalsa’s rights to substantial and regular pay.
While the men of the Khalsa strengthened its internal bonds, the rest of the Punjab drifted into anarchy as various court factions jockeyed for control of Ranjit Singh’s heir, the infant Maharaja Dalip Singh. Intelligence of the ever-changing state of play in Lahore regularly reached Hardinge, much of it lurid and all of it disturbing. He heard that the court was ‘a hotbed of vice’ presided over by Dalip Singh’s nymphomaniac mother, the Maharani Jandin. She was, Hardinge discovered, ‘a handsome debauched woman of thirty-three, very indiscriminate in her affections, an eater of opium’.18 Not by any stretch of the imagination an ideal regent, she and her son were the only hope of some future stability, and so the Company made it plain that any attempt to supplant the young prince would invite military intervention. This was the last thing the Governor-General wanted, as it would draw Britain into the racial and religious entanglements of a state where hitherto the Sikh minority had lorded it over the Hindu and Muslim majority. The latter would, he believed, have welcomed British justice and ‘a mild administration’, but he dreaded a situation arising in which the Company’s army was employed to collect the grinding taxation imposed by the Punjab’s landowning class.19
Events forced Hardinge’s hand. During 1844 and the first part of 1845 the Khalsa had been employed against Gulab Singh, the Rajput Raja of Jammu, a warlord who had been secretly offering to deliver the Punjab to the British. During September spies in Lahore were reporting that the Khalsa was inclining towards a giant plundering raid into British territory. It was rumoured that the Maharani Jandin was giving it every encouragement in order to get the soldiers well away from Lahore and the temptation to indulge in Praetorian politics. Hardinge carefully avoided offering any provocation, for he did not
want to be branded an aggressor by London or, in his words, get into another ‘Sind scrape’. When, in September 1845, a Sikh vakil (emissary) abused his position to tempt sepoys to desert from the Firozpur garrison, no action was taken, although he was kept under close surveillance. His efforts did not come to much; thirty sepoys deserted from a garrison of over 10,000.20
Hardinge combined a policy of wait-and-see with the prudent and, as far as possible, secret despatch of 5,000 extra troops to the region south of the Sutlej. At the end of September, he set off from Calcutta to join them, making the by now customary Governor-General’s progress up the Ganges to Agra and Delhi, from where he intended to travel north to the frontier. On 3 December, he and his entourage reached Ambala, where he heard that a fortnight ago the Khalsa had crossed the Sutlej. Their move was a technical infraction of the 1809 Anglo-Punjabi treaty, and provided Hardinge with a justification for the declaration of war on 13 December.
The British were about to fight their first and only ‘modern’ war in India against an army of 60,000 who matched them in discipline, training and weaponry. Confronted with this force, Hardinge could not afford to take risks and so, by the beginning of December, he had approximately 54,000 men deployed on the frontier, over a fifth of the entire Indian army. Command was in the hands of Gough, who imagined, as did many others, that the reputation of the Company’s soldiers and good, old-fashioned head-on charges with bayonet, sabre and lance were still all that was needed to win battles in India, even against professional soldiers with up-to-date weapons.
Gough’s tactical thinking belonged to what might be called the Ritchie–Hook school of warfare: victory came from continually ‘biffing’ the enemy. He was a 66-year-old Anglo-Irishman who had fought under Wellington but learned little from him, believing that relentless applications of what in his brogue he called ‘could steel’ would solve every tactical problem. ‘He is brave as a lion but has no headpiece’ commented one of his officers.21 Another observed that Gough’s tactics were perfect for dealing with opponents such as the Marathas but ‘to hasten forward under all disadvantages and attack the enemy’ was not the way to beat the Khalsa.22 Gough swept aside all criticism and was furious when he was censured, particularly by subordinates.23 Hardinge, who placed himself under Gough’s command, found the old man ‘peevish and jealous’. There were awkward moments when he attempted to curb his commander’s impetuosity, but, in time, he came to appreciate his bluff good nature.24 Sir Harry Smith was less charitable; he regarded Gough as a cantankerous dunderhead and relations between the two were strained.25
The rank and file warmed to the old war horse, whom they nicknamed ‘Tipperary Joe’, and believed he was a decent sort who had their welfare at heart. Private George Tookey of the 14th Light Dragoons told his family how Gough had visited him and other wounded men in hospital, speaking to them in a familiar manner as if they had been officers.26 At the head of his troops, Gough was a splendidly eccentric figure. A watercolour sketch of him with his staff during the battle of Sobraon shows him ginger-whiskered, mounted on a grey, carrying a riding crop and wearing a long white overcoat, which he called his ‘fighting coat’, and a huge white conical turban.27 He led from the front and men would die for him. Battle-weary soldiers somehow found fresh energy and courage whenever he appeared among them. Gough’s greatest contribution to the war was sustaining the confidence of his army during crises which would have broken the nerve of less resolute generals.
A more imaginative man would have been overwhelmed by the task he faced, for a single defeat would have had dangerous repercussions throughout India. The future of British India was at stake, for the Khalsa posed the last and most formidable challenge to the Company’s monopoly of military power. As he travelled to the front, Hardinge was apprehensive about the effect the Punjab crisis might have on restless elements elsewhere in the country. He took special care to cultivate the Raja of Patiala, whose territories lay immediately south of the Sutlej. He remained loyal and was rewarded with £4,000 a year in lands when the war was over. Sir Harry Smith was infected with Hardinge’s pessimism, imagining that if the Sikhs captured Ludhiana, the ‘general blaze of revolt’ would spread across northern India, perhaps beyond.28
Gough was lucky in his adversaries. Before crossing the Sutlej, the Khalsa’s committees had given absolute command to Tej Singh and Lal Singh, both experienced generals. But their hearts were not in the war, for they were both convinced that sooner or later the Punjab would pass under British control. In that event they hoped to secure senior posts in the new administration, which in fact they did.29 On the battlefield, their lack of commitment was reflected in a series of operational errors. The two generals threw away their superiority in numbers and artillery, elected to fight a defensive campaign and handed the initiative to their enemies.
The Sikh high command began the campaign with a show of tentative bravado, moving forward to engage Gough at Mudki during the afternoon of 18 December. It was a golden opportunity; British units were still concentrating and the army approaching the fortified village of Mudki was briefly resting after an exhausting forced march. The clouds of dust thrown up by the approaching cavalry alerted Gough and the Sikhs lost the element of surprise. The Sikh cavalry screen was soon dispersed by a combination of British cavalry and horse artillery. They provided time for the infantry to form, which was no easy matter for the surrounding countryside was broken up by clumps of thorn trees. A general advance was ordered by Gough and the battle assumed the pattern that would be followed by its successors, with a mass attack in the teeth of Sikh artillery and musket fire. Shortly after midnight, the Sikhs retired to their fortified positions at Ferozeshah. In what had been an inconclusive contest the British casualties were 848, of whom 52 were officers. It was noted that the Sikh gunners had singled out officers as targets, believing that, once leaderless, the Company’s troops would lose the will to fight.30
The sheer determination of the British attack had made some impact on the Sikh generals who, thereafter, stuck to the defensive. The war became one of attrition with the Khalsa tied down behind earthworks defended by cannon. Gough, believing that delay launching an attack weakened his men’s resolve, pressed ahead with an offensive against Ferozeshah on 21 December. His overall strategy was to break his opponent’s nerve by persistent offensives. It paid off, but only just, and at the cost of casualties unparalleled in any previous Indian campaign.
Outnumbered by four to one and outgunned, Gough repeatedly stormed the Ferozeshah defences and took them after a struggle which lasted thirty-six hours. ‘This was fighting indeed,’ remembered the veteran Sita Ram. ‘I had never seen anything like it before.’31 The 62nd Regiment lost 260 men in ten minutes and were thrown back by the weight of the Sikh cannonade, and stunned sepoys imagined that the all-conquering British army was about to be defeated. Nightfall brought little respite, for it was bitterly cold, and fatigued, hungry, and thirsty survivors slept in the open. A supreme effort was needed the next morning. It was accomplished in splendid style, at least by Sir Harry Smith, who led four British battalions ‘as if they were upon Parade’ with colours flying towards the Sikh breastworks. The defenders were overwhelmed and driven back beyond their camp. For a dangerous moment, their general Tej Singh considered a cavalry counter-attack that would have swept through the British force, which was low in ammunition and already engaged in looting the Khalsa’s baggage. Inexplicably he retired; a stroke of luck which restored the confidence of many sepoys.32 One British participant believed, with some justice, that the battle of Ferozeshah had decided ‘the fate of the British empire in India’.33
Mudki and Ferozeshah had upheld the mystique of the Company’s army. The price of moral superiority had been very high, with casualties of over 3,000. Some regiments, like the 3rd Light Dragoons, had been reduced to below half strength. Reinforcements were on hand, trudging up from Meerut, and Gough wisely chose to wait for his siege train before attacking the Sikh entrenchments and field work
s at Sobraon. In the meantime, a new crisis had occurred as a substantial Sikh force under Ranjodh Singh menaced Ludhiana and lines of communication to the east. It was engaged on 28 January 1846 at Aliwal by a detachment of 2,400 under Sir Harry Smith. It was yet another straightforward frontal attack in which the Sikhs were thrust from their positions by what Smith described as ‘a bold and intrepid advance’ by infantry, cavalry and artillery. The 16th Lancers charged Sikh infantry, who threw down their muskets and surged to meet the horsemen with swords and shields, which may have been why Smith described Aliwal as ‘a stand-up gentlemanlike battle’. He was a popular officer of the tough old school who knew how to draw courage and devotion from his men. One recalled fondly how, as he wandered through the camp in the evening, he would call ‘Trumpeter, order a round of grog; and not too much water’ whenever he encountered a group of soldiers.34
Reinforced and now supported by powerful siege guns, Gough began his onslaught against the Sobraon lines on 10 February. The battle became another slogging match and lasted for two days. Discipline and sheer doggedness triumphed again in a fourth collision between shells, round shot, grape and musketry and flesh and bone. According to Smith, it was almost as tough going as Waterloo, ‘a brutal bulldog fight’ in which British regulars ‘laid on like devils’.35 So did the Gurkhas, who used their kukris ‘with unaccountable zeal among the Sikhs’.36 The British lost 2,000 men, a seventh of their strength; the Sikhs 10,000, about a third of theirs. The greater part died struggling to cross the Sutlej under heavy fire. The British had won the war, but by a narrow margin and after Gough had taken some considerable risks. But then, as Sir Harry Smith wrote afterwards: ‘India runs on the cast of a Die.’37
What was left of the Army of the Sutlej entered Lahore in fine style. A band played ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ and a procession of hundreds of captured cannon passed through the streets to remind onlookers that the Khalsa had been scattered and emasculated. But Hardinge was reluctant to press the advantages of the recent victories. A few months before, Peel had allowed him a free hand in dealing with the Punjab, but both Prime Minister and Governor-General were adverse to outright annexation. They were also against the Punjab becoming another Indian ‘subsidiary state’, which would have permitted a rapacious landlord class to batten down on their tenants with the assistance of Company troops. Hardinge preferred a compromise which would allow the Company a degree of political influence in the Punjab and guarantee a secure border against Afghanistan. The Punjab was stripped of some of its most fertile lands, worth £400,000 a year, on the banks of the Sutlej; forced to pay a £1.5 million indemnity; and Kashmir was handed over to Gulab Singh. Dalip Singh remained maharaja and his mother continued to act as regent under the guidance of a new resident, Sir Henry Lawrence. Political agents were established in other major Punjabi towns supported by British garrisons and locally raised units. It was soon discovered that many former Khalsa men and Pathans from the frontier districts were glad to put their talents to the Company’s use in return for regular wages.
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