Battle of Mudki, 1845: the first battle of the Sikh Wars

Mudki was the first battle of the wars that ended with the British annexation of the Punjab. It was a small battle by the standards of what followed, fought in a few hours of failing light, and it decided little. But it showed both sides what the rest of the war would look like: a Sikh army that fought hard and well, Sikh generals whose loyalty was in doubt, and a British commander who preferred to go straight at the enemy.²

Who won the Battle of Mudki and why?

The British and Indian army of Sir Hugh Gough won. Its cavalry turned both flanks of the Sikh line, and its infantry, attacking in the dusk, drove the Sikhs out of the scrub and took 17 guns. The Sikh soldiers fought hard, but Lal Singh left them without direction, and night ended the fight before either side could do more.³

The Punjab after Ranjit Singh

Until 1839 the Punjab was ruled by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who kept an uneasy alliance with the British while building up the Khalsa, the Sikh army, into a powerful force. The National Army Museum calls it probably the most formidable opponent the British faced on the subcontinent: regular infantry trained on European lines, who even wore red coats, irregular cavalry, and an artillery of a particularly high standard.⁴

Ranjit Singh died in 1839, and the Punjab fell into chaos. Short-lived rulers followed one another, some of them murdered, and the infant Duleep Singh was eventually installed as Maharaja with his mother as regent. The British strengthened their cantonment at Ferozepore on the frontier; some officials, the museum notes, hoped for war. On 11 December 1845 the Khalsa crossed the Sutlej River into British territory. Both sources suggest that members of the Sikh court, eager to cut the army down to size, may have encouraged the move.⁵

The two men who led the army across the river held the highest offices in the state. By Cunningham's account Lal Singh had been made vizier and Tej Singh commander-in-chief in November 1845, and both were later accused of helping the British and betraying their own troops. Joseph Davey Cunningham, whose History of the Sikhs appeared in 1849, drew a sharp line between the leaders and the soldiers: every Sikh, he wrote, treated the cause as his own and would drag guns, drive bullocks and load boats himself, while the men at the top were “studiously treacherous” toward their followers.⁶

The march to Mudki

Hardinge, the Governor-General, wrote that he received precise word on 13 December that the Sikh army had crossed the Sutlej and was concentrating in force on its left bank. The troops from Umballa had already been on the move for three days. From the 14th they marched double stages on alternate days, and on the 18th they reached Mudki, about 20 miles from Ferozepore, after a march of 21 miles.⁷

The march had been punishing. Gough reported that his men had covered more than 150 miles in six days on roads of heavy sand, with scarcely time to cook their food. Gough and Innes, quoting the diary of Captain Arthur Borton of the 9th Foot, describe heavy ploughed land, low thorny jungle that broke all order, choking dust and days without food. The leading troops reached Mudki around midday, and the small Sikh pickets in the village fell back before them.⁸

Two armies

One Sikh army under Tej Singh lay before Ferozepore but made no attempt on the exposed British garrison there; Hardinge concluded that its commander meant to intercept the relieving army rather than risk an assault on the town. A second force under Lal Singh moved out toward Mudki to meet Gough.⁹

How big Lal Singh's force was is still uncertain. Gough's despatch repeated reports of 15,000 to 20,000 infantry, as many cavalry and 40 guns. Cunningham, writing four years later, thought it had in fact fewer than 2,000 infantry, about 22 guns and 8,000 to 10,000 horsemen. The National Army Museum gives 10,000 cavalry, 4,000 infantry and 22 guns.¹⁰

Gough had about 12,000 British and Indian troops and 42 guns by the museum's count, about 11,000 men by Cunningham's. Not all of them had arrived. Hardinge noted that two European and two native regiments were expected only the next day, and Gough and Innes point out that Major-General Gilbert's division was represented at Mudki by a single brigade of native troops.¹¹

The commanders' decisions

Both British commanders reported that the Sikhs came on to attack. Hardinge wrote that Broadfoot brought word, while the troops were cooking their meal, that the whole Sikh army was marching to surprise the camp; Gough said the news of the advance came at about three in the afternoon, when his exhausted men had scarcely had time to fall in. Gough and Innes think Lal Singh probably expected to meet only the smaller column from Ludhiana and did not know that the Umballa force had already joined it.¹²

Gough did not wait to receive the attack. He pushed his cavalry and five troops of horse artillery forward, found the Sikhs in position about two miles out, and ordered the infantry to follow with the field batteries. Sir Harry Smith, who commanded the 1st Division, thought this a mistake. In his account the troops were “hurried unnecessarily into the field” instead of standing compact on the open plain to receive the onslaught, and the cavalry and guns, after driving back the Sikh horse, were drawn into the bushy country where the Sikh infantry cost them heavy and, in his word, unnecessary loss. In battle Gough wore a long white coat, his “fighting coat”.¹³

On the Sikh side, Cunningham accused Lal Singh of drawing his men into an engagement and then leaving them to fight as their own courage directed, in keeping with what he called his original design; the National Army Museum also says Lal Singh left the field well before the end, while his rank and file stood and fought. Cunningham adds that Lal Singh was known at the time to be in contact with Captain Nicolson, the British agent at Ferozepore.¹⁴

The battle in the dusk

The ground was a dead flat of sand covered with low, thorny jhow jungle and dotted with sandy hillocks, so that every movement raised a cloud of dust. The Sikhs screened their infantry and guns behind the scrub and opened a heavy cannonade while Gough's twelve battalions formed from columns into line. His horse artillery and the two field batteries answered, and Gough judged that their fire soon slackened that of the Sikh guns.¹⁵

To cover the infantry, Gough sent his cavalry round both flanks. On the right the 3rd Light Dragoons, the Governor-General's Bodyguard, the 5th Light Cavalry and part of the 4th Lancers turned the Sikh left, swept along the rear of the infantry and guns, silenced the guns for a time and drove off the Sikh horse. On the left Brigadier Mactier, with the rest of the 4th Lancers and the 9th Irregular Cavalry, did the same against the Sikh right. Gough wrote that only the jungle kept these charges from doing more; the National Army Museum names the charge against the left as the decisive moment of the battle.¹⁶

Then the infantry went in, in echelon of brigades from the right with Smith's division leading, against an enemy almost invisible among the trees in the falling dark. The Sikh line was longer than Gough's, and its infantry and gunners stood their ground. In Smith's account Sikh soldiers climbed into the trees and shot down men of the 50th Foot. At the crisis of the fight Smith seized one of the 50th's colors and carried it toward a Sikh column, and the regiment charged with the bayonet. By his own count his division took twelve of the seventeen guns captured that night.¹⁷

The fighting cost the British army several of its senior officers. Sir Robert Sale had his left thigh shattered by grapeshot and died of the wound, Sir John McCaskill was shot through the chest at the head of his division and died at once, and Brigadier Bolton of the 1st Brigade was mortally wounded. The fighting went on for about an hour and a half in dim starlight and thick dust, in which some British troops were hit by the fire of their own side. The army stayed on the field for some hours and was back in camp around midnight.¹⁸

Counting the losses

The official return, dated 26 December, lists 215 killed and 657 wounded, 872 in all, among them 13 European officers killed and 39 wounded; Cunningham gives the same totals. Some 210 horses were killed. Regimental records compiled by Gough and Innes show where the loss fell hardest: the 3rd Light Dragoons lost 101 of the 497 men they took into action, the 31st Foot 175 and the 50th 125. Smith counted 437 killed, wounded and missing in his own 1st Division.¹⁹

Sikh losses were never established; Gough and Innes write only that the ground was covered with their dead and wounded. The captured guns are better documented. Gough and Hardinge both reported 17, and Cunningham gives the same number; the artillery commander's return lists 15 brought in and four more dismounted and left on the field, all of them heavier than British guns of the same caliber.²⁰

Neither side showed much mercy. The British accused the Sikhs of killing their wounded, and Gough and Innes record that “Remember Moodkee” became a cry in the 3rd Light Dragoons when they met the Sikhs again.²¹

What Mudki decided

Little, in the National Army Museum's view. The army halted on 19 and 20 December to rest, collect the wounded and bring in the captured guns, and was joined by two more European regiments. On the 21st Gough attacked the entrenched Sikh camp at Ferozeshah, which Hardinge put at 108 guns and more than 50,000 men; the museum gives around 40,000. Hardinge, using his authority as Governor-General, made Gough wait until Sir John Littler's division had come up from Ferozepore, and the position fell only after two days of fighting and at heavy cost.²²

The war was decided early in 1846. Smith won at Aliwal on 28 January, and on 10 February the main army stormed the Sikh bridgehead at Sobraon. The Treaty of Lahore that followed took the Jullundur Doab from the Sikh state, and Kashmir passed to Gulab Singh of Jammu as a separate state.²³

Lal Singh and Tej Singh were later accused of betraying their own army. The National Army Museum calls the motives of some Sikh leaders still disputed, while Cunningham had no doubt that they had led their men to defeat on purpose. Gough fought the Sikhs again three years later, at Chillianwala, once more with a headlong attack and once more at heavy cost.²⁴