On 28 January 1846, near Aliwal on the Sutlej river in the Punjab, a British and Indian army under Major-General Sir Harry Smith routed a Sikh force under Ranjodh Singh Majithia and took all its guns. The victory, famous for the charges of the 16th Lancers, removed a threat to the British rear before Sobraon.
Battle of Aliwal
28 January 1846 · 180 years ago
A threat to the British rear
The First Anglo-Sikh War began in December 1845, when the army of the Sikh Empire, the Khalsa, crossed the Sutlej into territory held by the East India Company. After the costly battles of Mudki and Ferozeshah, the main armies faced each other along the river.1
In January 1846 a Sikh force under Ranjodh Singh Majithia crossed the Sutlej further upstream, threatening the British post at Ludhiana and the supply lines of the main army. The commander-in-chief, Sir Hugh Gough, sent Major-General Harry Smith to deal with it. Smith joined the Ludhiana garrison, gathered reinforcements and on the morning of 28 January marched on the Sikhs.2
The battle
The Sikhs held a ridge between the villages of Aliwal and Bhundri, with the Sutlej close behind them. When their guns opened fire, Smith sent his right-hand brigades against Aliwal village, which they carried, and then attacked the Sikh left and center. Sikh cavalry counterattacks were driven back, and the British infantry began to roll up the Sikh line.3
On the left, the 16th Lancers charged the Sikh horsemen and then rode into the Sikh infantry. The infantry formed squares, or rather triangles, as the historian Sir John Fortescue described them, and the Lancers broke through. The village of Bhundri was cleared, and the Sikh army fled in disorder across the fords, losing its guns in the fighting and in the river.4
The National Army Museum notes that some regard Aliwal as a “near perfect battle”; Fortescue wrote that the Duke of Wellington especially admired Smith's use of all three arms. The battle appears in our guides to the battles of India and the greatest cavalry charges.5
Numbers and losses
Smith had some 12,000 men and 32 guns. Sikh strength is uncertain: the National Army Museum gives about 20,000 men, while Smith wrote of 30,000 and Fortescue thought half that figure the safest estimate. The Sikhs lost all 67 of their guns.6
For British and Indian losses, the National Army Museum gives 141 killed, 413 wounded and 25 missing; Fortescue counts 589 casualties in all, about a third of them killed. The 16th Lancers alone lost some 140 men. About 3,000 Sikhs were killed, the figure the Sikhs themselves admitted, according to Fortescue.7
What followed
Aliwal removed the threat to the British rear and freed Smith to rejoin Gough. Smith was made a baronet, “of Aliwal”, for the victory. On 10 February 1846 the combined British army stormed the main Sikh position at Sobraon, and in the peace that followed the Sikh state ceded large territories to the British. A second war in 1848 and 1849 ended with the annexation of the Punjab.8
Also on this day
Battle of Awa
28 January 1868 · 158 years ago
The Tokugawa shogunate's navy under Enomoto Takeaki fought Satsuma ships loyal to the emperor's court off Awa, near Osaka, during Japan's Boshin War. Enomoto's squadron prevailed, one of the few successes the shogunate achieved in that war.
