In 1845, a Sikh army of 40,000 with 40 guns crossed over the Sutlej. One army under Tej Singh advanced towards Ferozepur but made no effort to surround and attack the British cantonment. Eighteen miles away, another under Lal Singh advanced on a British force that was resting at Mudki. The Sikh guns and infantry formed up in a dense jungle with the Ghorchurra (irregular cavalry) deployed on the flanks. Though better equipped than the British cavalry and highly skilled, they had never succumbed to the discipline imposed by Ranjit Singh on his infantry and artillery and proved to be the weakest link in most encounters. Their charge was repulsed by a counter charge of the British cavalry that then struck the Sikh artillery and infantry but they stood firm even against a subsequent assault by the main British force. As darkness descended, the Sikh artillery which mainly consisted of heavy guns inflicted substantial casualties on the EIC troops with grapeshot. Though the Sikhs were driven from the field, the gunners managed to save more than half their guns.
Lal Singh now established a well-entrenched position at Ferozeshah with 47,000 troops and 88 guns of all calibers. The battle opened with a terrific artillery duel in which the Sikh artillery outperformed that of the enemy. Since the barrels of the Sikh guns were heavier and could fire a bigger charge, they outranged the British. Being better trained, the gunners also had a 3:2 advantage in the rate of fire. The artillery concentrated on the British battalions and the 4th Division broke. By the evening all four divisions of the Army of the Sutlej that had been assembled for battle by the EIC, had penetrated the Sikh ramparts but with heavy casualties.
There now occurred a repeat of what happened a hundred years earlier at Plassey. During the night Lal Singh fled the camp with all his Ghorchurras and the crews of 60 guns and when Tej Singh arrived in the morning he declined to give battle. The British C-in-C General Gough remarked after the battle: “Never did a native army, having so relatively slight an advantage in numbers, fight a battle with the British in which the issue was so doubtful as at Ferozeshah; and if the victory was decisive, opinion remains divided as to what the result might have been if the Sikh troops had found commanders with sufficient capacity to give their qualities full opportunity.”
Following this narrow victory, the Army of the Sutlej was too shaken to pursue the Sikhs whom themselves were dispirited but with reinforcements arriving within a few weeks, they again established a bridgehead at Sobraon. A smaller force of 7,000 men and 20 guns, crossed higher up the Sutlej to menace the supply lines of the British who detached a division under Sir Harry Smith to clear this threat to their rear. The two forces clashed at Aliwal where once again the Sikh artillery and infantry performed exceedingly well but the cavalry underperformed. Unlike other battles of both Anglo-Sikh Wars, the Sikh’s retreat at Aliwal became a disorderly rout and they abandoned most of their guns.
General Gough who commanded the Army of the Sutlej through both campaigns was reluctantly persuaded to wait to attack Sobraon till the arrival of Harry Smith’s division and heavy guns. As at Ferozeshah, the Sikhs had established a strong entrenchment around their camp on which a two-hour bombardment by heavy guns had little effect. After a feint, a British division attacked the Sikh right, where according to information provided by Lal Singh, the defenses were weaker. However, the division was driven back by the murderous fire of the Sikh artillery followed by counter-attacks, and its commander was killed.
The British then attacked along the entire front and broke through in a number of places. Because a large number of Sikh gunners had fallen in the previous battles, their artillery was firing high. The weak right was finally breached and the cavalry and guns of the EIC pushed through. Once again treachery had prevailed both by Lal Singh as well as Tej Singh who left the battle early and with guns deployed across the river, fired at the bridge. Already under strain because of three days of rain that swelled the river, the bridge broke when the Sikh soldiers started crossing, trapping 20,000 on the far bank. None of them surrendered, fighting till the last.
The First Anglo-Sikh War ended with the Sikhs surrendering the whole of the Jallundar Doab, ceding Kashmir and the hill states between the Beas and the Indus. A limit was placed on the size of the army and a British resident was also placed at Lahore. However, resentment against the British interference in the affairs of the Kingdom grew into a general uprising that culminated in a second war. It began with a rebellion in Multan in April 1848, that led to a siege by the British which lasted nearly a year.
The campaign in northern Punjab opened in November 1948 when a British contingent of cavalry and artillery with an infantry brigade failed to attain a surprise crossing over the Chenab at Ramnagar (present Rasulnagar below Wazirabad). A detachment of Sikhs on the left bank executed a planned withdrawal drawing British cavalry and horse artillery into the soft dry sand of the wide river bed where they came under heavy fire from heavy batteries well concealed on the right bank. The British horse artillery was outgunned and forced to retire and 3000 Ghorchurras crossed the river to follow up the success. The main British contingent of two regiments of cavalry made a countercharge but recoiled after exposure to the Sikh artillery. For once the Ghorchurras responded wel l and wheeling back, struck the British cavalry, causing heavy casualties.
Two months later in January 1949 the British and Sikh Army clashed at Chillianwala. It was one of the bloodiest battles fought by the EIC in spite of the fact that Sher Singh’s Army was not more than 10,000 but he had 60 well-serviced guns. General Gough had 15,000 with 100 guns but his tactics as in some of the earlier battles were ill-thought and deeply criticized for headlong attacks resulting in heavy casualties. The Sikh artillery in combination with counter-charges by infantry and cavalry played an overwhelming role in stopping the advance of a division toward the right wing. The British brigade twice nearly reached the gun lines but in the process was almost ‘broken’. On the other flank, the British cavalry brigade lost direction, wheeled all the way back, and masked their guns. Taking advantage of this, the Ghorchurras fell upon the British horse artillery. The final losses to Gough’s army were 2,512 killed and wounded of which a comparatively high proportion was British rather than Indian.
The British C-in-C claimed a victory but actually, the battle ended in a stalemate with doubts expressed by the British press about the results of the campaign. General Gough’s blunder was the poor use of artillery. “With so tremendous a pack of artillery and supply of mortars as that at his disposal,” wrote a reporter, “It might have been imagined that …… our ordnance could have told on them fearfully at a range to which their shot could not have reached”. Gough was removed from command but before his replacement could arrive, the two sides again clashed at Gujrat a month and a half later.
![A realistic artists view of the terrain at Chillianwala battlefield](https://historicaltourspakistan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/THE-ANGLO-SIKH-WARS-THE-BATTLE-OF-CHIILLIANWALA-5.jpg")
Gough would not repeat this mistake at the final battle of the campaign. The Sikhs opened the battle with all their guns but their untrained gunners fired before the British were in range and revealed their positions. Capitalizing on this error, the British batteries safely redeployed and for the next three hours pounded the Sikh artillery. The heavy artillery advanced to successive forward positions driving back the Sikh, and the Horse and light field batteries broke their ranks. The Sikh defenses were then practically a walkover but some of the gunners stuck to their guns till the bitter end ensuring the legacy of their artillery lived on. The Battle of Gujrat was the swan song of the Sikh kingdom and the remnants of Sher Sing’s army surrendered on the outskirts of Rawalpindi. The British were now masters of the whole of India from Bengal till Peshawar.
To commemorate the battle a monument was erected on a mound near Chillianwala that remains in relatively good condition. The main 75-foot sandstone obelisk has inscriptions in four languages. Next to it are some tombs and three long trench graves where the dead were hastily buried the following morning in freezing rain by the shocked and demoralized survivors. In 1871 the Viceroy of India, Lord Mayo, donated a white marble cross.
Two years ago I received a request from Tim Willasey-Wilsey who was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College, London. He had visited the site in 1993 and subsequently wrote an article on the ‘The Battle of Chillianwala and the “Lost Graves” of the 24th Foot’. For some unknown reason, the battalion freshly arrived from the UK was ordered: “There must be no firing, the bayonet must do the work”. It advanced very rapidly, but lost cohesion and also lost touch with the rest of the brigade in the thick scrub. Trying to attack Sikh guns head-on, they suffered the most debilitating casualties from grapeshot. Over 50 percent of the casualties inflicted by the Sikhs befell the 24th Foot, which suffered 590 killed and injured. During the visit, three mass graves of 24th Foot were discovered in enclosures on the road to Moong. Most of their casualties were buried close to where they fell because the sight of their bodies being brought to the main graves at Chillianwala lashed to the camels was too demoralizing for an army already so shaken by the battle.
In 1993 the three mass graves of 24th Foot were in good repair but since then they have suffered greatly and little remains. When I agreed to help Tim in restoring the enclosures, he put me in contact with the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA). BACSA is a charity organization that helps to conserve old European cemeteries over a wide area of South and East Asia. In 1983 in a joint effort, the organization refurbished the pyramid graves of Brig Gen Cureton and Lt Col Havelock near Rasulnagar (old name Ramnagar) below Wazirabad. In another joint effort in 2000, this time with the Hussars, a boundary wall as well as memorial plaques were erected.
BACSA was most receptive to the idea and asked for a work and cost proposal. I found a very efficient contractor who is a Pakistani Christian and carried out a survey of the graves/enclosures. Each enclosure was 25m x 25m and surrounded by a one-meter-high perimeter wall. They had indeed suffered greatly and were overgrown with scrub and bushes. The material had also been vandalized. The remains of two enclosures closer to a village were still visible but a third which was 500 meters away from the road had been nearly obliterated. Clearly, there was a lot of work that needed to be done and a quote was sent to BACSA that was duly accepted. Since Chillianwala is 160 km from Islamabad, the mobilization of labor and resources took a little time but finally work commenced on clearing the site. That is when we ran into the first problem. Having lain practically undisturbed for 170 years the first two enclosures were a nesting site for snakes and the third was burrowed by porcupines.
BACSA desired that the original material should be used but what was left of the brick walls and its foundations had been badly corroded by a high water table brought about by the cultivation of rice and sugarcane. Therefore, new foundations were necessary and the walls would have to be completely reconstructed with new bricks. Fortunately, the contractor knew of a brick kiln that provided flat bricks exactly of the original size. The pace of work increased as the late monsoons cleared. After the foundations had been laid the old material was used as a base for a concrete floor within the enclosures so that scrub would not grow again.
While dismantling the old walls a brick was found embedded into the base of one of the pillars. On one side are the letter KAPAX which can’t be deciphered and on the other is an inscription in capital letters – Erected by the Government School of Engineering Rasul. Tracing the history of the school enables us to put an approximate year to the erection of the graves of 24th Foot. Following a directive by the British Government of Punjab the Oriental College at Lahore started conducting a survey class in 1873. In 1906, a School of Engineering was established on the campus of the Mayo College of Arts (now the National College of Arts) in Lahore. However, there were limited areas for practical training and in 1912, it was shifted to Rasul in the District of Mandi Bhaudin which is downstream the town of Jhelum on the river by the same name.
