War: First Anglo-Sikh War
Date: 18th December 1845
Place: On the south bank of the Sutlej River in the Punjab in North West India.
Combatants: British troops and Indian troops of the Bengal Presidency against Sikhs of the Khalsa, the army of the Punjab.
Generals: Major General Sir Hugh Gough and General Sir Henry Hardinge, the Governor General of Bengal, against Lal Singh.
Size of the armies: A British and Bengal army of 12,000 troops and 42 guns against a Sikh army of 10,000 cavalry, 4,000 infantry and 22 guns.
Uniforms, arms and equipment (this section is identical for each of the battles in the Sikh Wars): The two wars fought between 1845 and 1849 between the British and the Sikhs led to the annexation of the Punjab by the British East India Company and one of the most successful military co-operations between two races, stretching into a century of strife on the North West Frontier of British India, the Indian Mutiny, Egypt and finally the First and Second World Wars.
British Side
General Gough commanded the British/Indian army at 6 of the 7 major battles (not Aliwal). An Irishman, Gough was immensely popular with his soldiers for whose welfare he was constantly solicitous. The troops admired Gough’s bravery, in action wearing a conspicuous white coat, which he called his “Battle Coat”, so that he might draw fire away from his soldiers.
Gough’s tactics were heavily criticized, even in the Indian press in letters written by his own officers. At the Battles of Moodkee, Sobraon and Chillianwallah Gough launched headlong attacks considered to be ill-thought out by many of his contemporaries. Casualties were high and excited concern in Britain and India. His final battle, Goojerat, decisively won the war, cost few of his soldiers their lives and was considered a model of care and planning.
Every battle saw vigorous cavalry actions with HM 3rd King’s Own Light Dragoons and HM 16th Queen’s Royal Lancers particularly distinguishing themselves. The British light cavalry wore embroidered dark blue jackets and dark blue overall trousers, except the 16th who bore the sobriquet “the Scarlet Lancers” for their red jackets. The headgear of the two regiments of light dragoons was a shako with a white cover; the headgear of the lancers the traditional Polish tschapka.
HM regiments of foot wore red coats and blue trousers with shakos and white covers.
The Bengal and Bombay light cavalry regiments wore pale blue uniforms. The infantry of the presidency armies wore red coats and peakless black shakos.
The weapons for the cavalry were the lance for the lancer regiments and sword and carbine for all; the infantry were armed with the Brown Bess musket and bayonet.
Commands in the field were given by the cavalry trumpet and the infantry drum and bugle. In the initial battles the Sikh artillery outgunned Gough’s batteries. Even in these battles and in the later ones the Bengal and Bombay horse and field artillery were handled with great resource and were a major cause of Gough’s success.
Many of the more senior British officers had cut their military teeth in the Peninsular War and at the Battle of Waterloo: Gough, Hardinge, Havelock of the 14th Light Dragoons, Cureton, Dick, Thackwell and others. Many of the younger men would go on to fight in the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny.
Sikh Side
The Sikhs of the Punjab looked to the sequence of Gurus for their spiritual inspiration and had established their independence fiercely resisting the Moghul Kings in Delhi and the Muslims of Afghanistan. The Sikhs were required by their religion to wear the five “Ks”, not to cut their hair or beard and to wear the highly characteristic turban, a length of cloth in which the hair is wrapped around the head.
The Maharajah of the Punjab, Ranjit Singh, whose death in 1839 ended the Sikh embargo on war with the British, established and built up the powerful Sikh Army, the “Khalsa”, over the twenty years of his reign. The core of the “Khalsa” was its body of infantry regiments, equipped and trained as European troops, wearing red jackets and blue trousers. The Sikh artillery was held in high esteem by both sides. The weakness in the Sikh army was its horse. The regular cavalry regiments never reached a standard comparable to the Sikh foot, while the main element of the mounted arm comprised clouds of irregular and ill-disciplined “Gorcharras”.
The traditional weapon of the Sikh warrior is the “Kirpan”, a curved sword kept razor sharp and one of the five “Ks” a baptized Sikh must wear. In battle, at the first opportunity, many of the Sikh foot abandoned their muskets and, joining their mounted comrades, engaged in hand to hand combat with sword and shield. Horrific cutting wounds, severing limbs and heads, were a frightful feature of the Sikh Wars in which neither side gave quarter to the enemy.
The commanders of the Sikh armies in the field rarely took the initiative in battle, preferring to occupy a fortified position and wait for the British and Bengalis to attack. In the opening stages of the war there was correspondence between Lal Singh and the British officer, Major Nicholson, suggesting that the Sikhs were being betrayed by their commander.
Pay in the Khalsa was good, twice the rate for sepoys in the Bengal Army, but it was haphazard, particularly after the death of Ranjit Singh. Khalsa administration was conducted by clerks writing in the Persian language. In one notorious mutiny over pay Sikh soldiers ran riot looking for anyone who could, or looked as if they could, speak Persian and putting them to the sword.
The seven battles of the war and the siege of the city of Multan were hard fought. Several of the battle fields were wide flat spaces broken by jungly scrub, from which the movement of large bodies of troops in scorching heat raised choking clouds of dust. As the fighting began the dust clouds intermingled with dense volumes of musket and cannon smoke. With the thunder of gunfire and horse hooves, the battle yells and cries of the injured, the battles of the Sikh Wars were indeed infernos.
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Account: On 11th December 1845 a British army crossed the Sutlej River to attack the Sikhs in the southern Punjab towns of Ferozepore, Ludhiana and Ambala. The First Sikh War had begun.
Until the death of the great Sikh ruler of the Punjab, Ranjit Singh, relations between the Sikhs and the British East India Company had been harmonious. British had co-operated with the Ranjit Singh during the First Afghan War and the Sind War. Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839 triggered acrimonious disputes within his family and with the powerful Khalsa, seeing dispute British took their chance to take over the Ranjit Singh’s raj.
Ranjit Singh, during his long rule, had turned the Khalsa into an efficient and powerful fighting force, but one that required an iron hand to keep it in check. While Ranjit Singh had been such an iron hand, his successors were not. In the war that broke out in 1845 the British were fortunate that the rulers of the Punjab did all they could to betray their army as it fought the British.
Even though the British had for some time expected exactly such an eruption by the Sikh army across the Sutlej, one of the five great rivers of the Punjab, inadequate preparations had been made.
The British authorities were reluctant to expose the Bengal sepoy army to Sikh propaganda which claimed that soldiers joining their army could expect a doubling of their pay. It was feared that any success on the part of the Sikhs would cause sepoys to desert.
The Sikh force of 50,000 men and 200 guns commanded by Tej Singh moved towards Ferozepore, held by a British garrison of some 7,000 troops, but did not attack it.
The British commander-in-chief, Sir Hugh Gough, accompanied by the Governor General, Sir John Hardinge, assembled troops from Ambala and Ludhiana and moved forward to relieve the garrison at Ferozepore and attack the Sikhs. The force took the name of the “Army of the Sutlej.”
On 18th December 1845, after a long day’s march, the Army of the Sutlej approached the small town of Moodkee. A reconnaissance commanded by Major George Broadfoot discovered a body of Sikhs, probably around 2,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry and 22 guns, in occupation of the town.
By the time the Army of the Sutlej came up the Sikhs had withdrawn to a position behind the town on the edge of the jungle. Fearing that the Sikhs might withdraw into the jungle at their back Gough ordered an immediate attack and the army, in spite of its state of exhaustion marched out of the town.
As night fell the five troops of horse artillery galloped into action, soon joined by the two batteries of field artillery. The Bengal guns opened a bombardment, firing into the jungle fringe where the Sikh force was positioned.
Meanwhile Gough ordered his cavalry brigades to attack around each of the Sikh flanks: on the right the brigade commanded by Brigadiers White and Gough comprising HM 3rd Light Dragoons, a wing of the 4th Bengal Light Cavalry, the Governor General’s Bodyguard and the 5th Bengal Light Cavalry. On the left the brigade under Brigadier Mactier comprising the other wing of the 4th Bengal Light Cavalry and the 9th Bengal Light Cavalry.
In the twilight caused by darkness and the clouds of dust churned up by the horses’ hooves, the 3rd Light Dragoons and the Governor General’s Bodyguard charged into the Sikh line on the edge of the jungle, turning the Sikh flank.
On the left flank the 4th and 9th Bengal Light Cavalry charged home on the Sikh line.
In the centre the infantry advanced to the attack, Smith’s division on the right, McCaskill’s division, only a brigade in strength, in the centre and Gilbert’s, equally reduced in size with 45th BNI detached to guard the baggage, on the left. The British battalions, HM 9th, 31st and 50th Foot, led.
As the infantry advanced on the Sikh positions Wheeler’s brigade on the right of the line, threatened by a mass of Sikh cavalry, formed squares. With the Sikhs driven off and the order to form line and continue the advance, only HM 50th complied, leaving the two BNI regiments of the brigade in square. The divisional commander, General Smith, seized one of the 50th’s colours and led the regiment into the Sikh lines.
The infantry attack drove the Sikhs from their positions after savage hand to hand fighting, in which two British generals, McCaskill and Sale, were killed.
In the gathering gloom friendly units fired into each other until finally complete darkness brought the battle to an end, the Sikhs withdrawing into the jungle.
Casualties: Gough’s army of British and Bengal Native regiments suffered 872 killed and wounded in the battle. The predominant role played by four of the British regiments in the fighting is reflected in their casualties (414 in total):
HM 3rd King’s Own Light Dragoons suffered 61 killed and 35 wounded from a strength of 497, with 105 horses killed and 23 injured.
HM 9th Foot suffered 52 casualties.
HM 31st Foot suffered 157 casualties.
HM 50th Foot suffered 109 casualties.
42nd BNI suffered 89 casualties.
The British lost two generals killed: Sir John McCaskill and Sir Robert Sale (the commander at Jelalabad in the First Afghan War).
Sikh casualties are not known but may have been substantial. They lost 17 guns.
Follow-up: Gough was criticized for the heavy casualties incurred in his headlong assault. Hardinge took the view that Gough should have waited for the Sikhs to come out of the jungle and begin their attack before launching a counter-attack.
Regimental anecdotes and traditions:
• General Gough’s simple but expensive tactic of headlong attack was ruefully called by the army the “Tipperary Rush”.
• In action Gough wore his “Battle Coat”, a long white coat intended to draw enemy fire to him and away from his soldiers.
• Sergeant Jones of the 31st Foot rescued his regiment’s colours from the stricken ensigns and received an immediate battlefield commission.
• The Sikhs admired the conduct of the 3rd King’s Own Light Dragoons at Moodkee, giving them the nickname of the “Devil’s Children”; in Punjabi “Shaitan-ke-Bachche”. The Sikhs complained that the 3rd Light Dragoons came down on them “like a flash of lightning”. The regiment was given the nickname of the “Moodkeewallahs” by the rest of the army, which the regiment enthusiastically embraced.
• Captain Tritton of the 3rd King’s Own Light Dragoons captured a Sikh standard in the battle and Lance Sergeant Hinds with a party of troopers took two guns after cutting down the gunners.
• Several light dragoons were killed after falling into the hands of the Sikhs. In later battles of the war the 3rd attacked with the cry “Remember Moodkee” and gave no quarter. Throughout the Sikh Wars it was not the practice of either side to give quarter.
• One of the Indian officers of the 47th Bengal Native Infantry captured a Sikh cannon during the battle.
Source:
• History of the British Army by Fortescue.
• History of British Cavalry by the Marquis of Angelsey.