Battle of Gujrat, 1849: the battle of the guns that ended the Sikh Wars

On a clear February morning in 1849, with the snow peaks of the Himalayas on the horizon, two armies faced each other across fields of young corn south of the town of Gujrat. Five weeks earlier the Sikhs had fought the British to a bloody standstill at Chillianwala. This time Lord Gough waited until he had the guns he wanted, and the result was the most complete victory of the Sikh wars.²

Who won the Battle of Gujrat and why?

Lord Gough's British and Indian army won. For the first time in the Sikh wars he had more guns than the Sikhs, and he used them first: a cannonade of two and a half hours silenced most Sikh batteries before the infantry advanced. Once the fortified villages fell, the Sikh line broke and the cavalry turned retreat into rout.³

Background: the road to Gujrat

The Sikh army, the Khalsa, was the creation of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who drilled its infantry on the European model during a reign that ended with his death in 1839. Without him the court at Lahore fell into a struggle for power, and in 1845 the first war with the British broke out. It ended in 1846 with the Treaty of Lahore and a British Resident controlling the court of the child maharaja Duleep Singh.⁴

Many Sikh nobles resented the new order, and many soldiers of the Khalsa believed that they had been betrayed rather than beaten. In April 1848 two British officers, Patrick Vans Agnew and William Anderson, were murdered at Multan, and its governor, Mulraj, was drawn into open rebellion. In September Sher Singh Attariwala, sent with Sikh troops to help the British besiege Multan, went over to the rebels. On 22 November his army and Gough's fought an indecisive action at Ramnagar on the Chenab.⁵

On 13 January 1849 at Chillianwala Gough attacked through thick scrub that hid the Sikh guns. The 24th Foot lost more than 500 men, the Sikhs carried off the colors of three regiments, and the army lost 2,300 killed and wounded by the count of the National Army Museum, 2,446 by that of the 1878 Compendium of Irish Biography. Gough claimed a victory, but three days of rain kept the armies apart while Sher Singh was joined by the army of his father, Chattar Singh. In London an order went out for Gough's recall, and Sir Charles Napier was named to succeed him.⁶ › Battle of Chillianwala, 1849

The commanders' decisions

After Chillianwala Gough resolved not to fight again until the troops from Multan reached him, and above all their heavy guns. The city fell in January and its besiegers, under General Whish, marched north. Major Mackeson, the political agent with the army, pressed Gough to attack the Sikh entrenchments at Rasul, but Gough would not be hurried.⁷

Sher Singh had problems of his own. The barren country by the Jhelum could not feed his army for long, and he could neither attack Gough where he lay nor march past him. He tried to tempt the British into a premature battle with demonstrations against their line, the strongest on 12 February. Gough answered with a few squadrons of cavalry and kept his army where it was.⁸

Then the Sikhs moved. Hoping to cross the Chenab and get round the British, they found the fords guarded, and on 14 February their army was reported at Gujrat. Gough broke camp the next day and closed in by short marches, each made in order of battle so that the Sikhs never knew when the blow would fall. Whish joined him on the march, and the last reinforcements came in on 19 and 20 February.⁹

One of them was the Bombay brigade of Brigadier Dundas. Gough and Innes complain of its irritating slowness on the way. Edward Thackwell, who served on his father's staff in the campaign, defends it: by his own account Gough had grown impatient, but the 60th Rifles had marched thirty miles on 18 February and fifteen more on the 19th, joining the army that night.¹⁰

Gough's plan used the ground. His right wing would strike the Sikh line between the two watercourses and push it back from the dry bed of the Dwara, so that his left wing could cross it with little loss and drive the Sikh right in on its center, while two cavalry brigades held the Sikh left. Gough and Innes believed that he would have fought Chillianwala the same way had the Multan guns reached him in time. Fortescue, writing in the 1920s, saw the same plan in both battles, but at Gujrat, on open ground, Gough could watch and control it.¹¹

Armies and commanders

Gough now had about 24,000 men and 96 guns, 18 of them heavy pieces. His infantry divisions were led by Sir Walter Gilbert, Colin Campbell and Whish, with Dundas's Bombay column on the left; Sir Joseph Thackwell led the cavalry of the left wing, and Brigadier Hearsey the irregular horse on the right. The Sikh army was reckoned at about 60,000 men. With it rode Afghan horsemen sent by Dost Mohammed, the emir of Kabul.¹²

The Sikhs stood south of the town in a rough crescent. Their right rested on the deep, dry bed of the Dwara, which curved round Gujrat, and their left on a smaller stream full of water that ran down to the Chenab. Between the two lay the villages of Bara Kalra and Chota Kalra, fortified and loopholed, with the regular infantry behind them and cavalry on both wings.¹³

The battle

The duel of the guns

Soon after dawn on 21 February Gough rode down his line in the white coat he wore in battle, to loud cheering, and the army moved off. The Sikh guns opened fire too early, at an unusual range, and gave away their positions. Gough halted his infantry out of reach and sent his batteries forward under cover of skirmishers.¹⁴

At nine o'clock the British guns opened, the lighter ones at about 600 yards by Fortescue's account and the heavier at 800 to 1,000; Gough and Innes put the line at some 800 yards. The Sikh gunners answered quickly, and the British artillery suffered considerably in the duel. But for two and a half hours the cannonade went on, and gun after gun of the Sikh batteries was knocked out.¹⁵

On the right, meanwhile, masses of Sikh horsemen tried again and again to turn Gough's flank. Hearsey foiled each attempt with his horse artillery and his squadrons, but the Sikhs never let him close with them.¹⁶

The villages

At half past eleven by Gough and Innes, at noon by Fortescue, the infantry deployed and the whole line advanced, the guns still leading. In front of Gilbert's division Bara Kalra seemed deserted, and a party of light troops went forward to occupy it. A storm of musketry from the loopholed houses stopped them. Brigadier Penny led the 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers into the village, and after an obstinate fight they cleared it.¹⁷

The Sikhs came back in a counterattack, and for a moment the Fusiliers were in danger. A troop of horse artillery galloped up and stopped the attack with grape at close range. To the right, the 10th Foot under Colonel Franks, with the 8th Native Infantry of Hervey's brigade, stormed Chota Kalra against heavy fire from the loopholes. The Sikhs tried more than once to stem the advance, and each time the horse artillery drove them back.¹⁸

West of the Dwara, the guns had swept the Sikh positions so thoroughly that Campbell's division advanced without firing a shot. On the far left the Afghan horse tried to turn the flank. Thackwell's horse artillery opened on them, and the Scinde Horse, supported by the 9th Lancers, charged and drove them off, taking two standards. On the right, a party of horsemen rode round the British rear toward the spot where Gough stood with his staff, until his escort, a troop of the 5th Light Cavalry under Lieutenant Stannus, cut them down.¹⁹

Turning point: the rout

Soon the whole Sikh army was in flight. Its men threw away their arms and scattered. The town of Gujrat, the Sikh camp, the baggage and most of the guns fell into British hands, and the country behind the battlefield was strewn with guns, wagons and tents.²⁰

Thackwell's cavalry pursued for twelve miles beyond Gujrat, until darkness fell and the horses of the batteries could go no farther. Edward Thackwell, who saw the pursuit, wrote that no quarter was given and that the country for miles was covered with the dead and dying.²¹

Losses

The victory was cheap by the standard of the Sikh wars. Gough and Innes give the British and Indian losses as 5 officers and 91 men killed and 24 officers and 646 men wounded, 96 killed and 670 wounded in all. Fortescue also counts 96 killed but just over 700 wounded.²²

Most of the losses fell on the attacks on the villages. Fortescue puts the casualties of Penny's brigade at Bara Kalra at 350; for one of its regiments, the 31st Native Infantry, Thackwell gives 128 rank and file killed or wounded and Fortescue nearly 150. Hervey's brigade lost about 150 at Chota Kalra by Thackwell's regimental figures and 170 by Fortescue's. No reliable count of the Sikh dead survives in these accounts.²³

Gough and Innes, writing a history of the Sikh wars in 1897, judged that there was no flaw in the conduct of the fight: with his artillery at last strong enough, Gough had used it to the full, and the battle was won before the line advanced. Fortescue called it a crushing victory at no great cost of life, and thought the losses would have been lighter still had Gilbert not been deceived by the empty look of Bara Kalra.²⁴

Aftermath

At dawn on 22 February Gilbert set off after the beaten army with a strong column and gave it no rest. Pressed hard, the Sikhs first returned their British prisoners, on 6 March by Gough and Innes and on 8 March by Fortescue, and then laid down their arms. Gough and Innes date the surrender to 12 March; Fortescue has chiefs coming in on the 10th and 12th and the whole army surrendering at Rawalpindi on 14 March, the date the National Army Museum also gives.²⁵

Gilbert then pushed on to Peshawar, and the Afghan horsemen fled back across the frontier. The Punjab was annexed to British India in March 1849: the National Army Museum dates the annexation to 29 March, and Gough and Innes describe the proclamation being read in full durbar at Lahore on 30 March. The boy maharaja Duleep Singh was deposed.²⁶

For Gough the battle came as an answer to his critics. His successor, Sir Charles Napier, arrived only after the war had been won. Both Houses of Parliament voted their thanks to Gough, and he was raised to a viscountcy. In his farewell order to the Army of the Punjab Gough wrote that what Alexander had attempted, the British Indian army had accomplished.²⁷

Legacy and memory

After the annexation the British began to recruit Sikhs into their army, impressed by the fighting qualities of the Khalsa. Less than ten years later, when the rising of 1857 shook British rule, the Punjab stood by the British and Sikh soldiers helped to suppress the revolt. Gough and Innes, writing in 1897, saw the Sikhs as a worthy foe who would prove worthy comrades in arms.²⁸

The men who served in the campaign received the Punjab Medal. Its reverse shows the Sikh army laying down its arms before a mounted general and his troops. The Royal Welsh Museum in Brecon, which keeps the relics of the 24th Foot from Chillianwala, has the medal in its collection.²⁹ › Battle of Mudki, 1845