Who won the Battle of Chillianwala?
Nobody won outright. On 13 January 1849 Sir Hugh Gough's East India Company army attacked Sher Singh's Sikh army through dense scrub near the Jhelum. The Company lost about 2,300 men, four guns and several colors, then fell back to Chillianwala at nightfall. Both sides claimed victory; the war was settled at Gujrat in February 1849.1
On 13 January 1849, near the village of Chillianwala close to the river Jhelum, the East India Company's Army of the Punjab under General Sir Hugh Gough attacked the Khalsa, the army of the Sikh Empire, led by Raja Sher Singh Attariwala. After an afternoon of fighting in dense scrub that lasted until dark, both armies were still in the field, both claimed victory, and the Company had lost about 2,300 men. The battlefield lies in present-day Pakistan, in the Punjab district of Mandi Bahauddin.2
Part of Battles of India · Before: Assaye, 1803 · Next: Saragarhi, 1897
The road to Chillianwala
The First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845 to 1846 left the Sikh state at Lahore beaten and under close British supervision; the National Army Museum notes that the British Resident exiled Maharani Jind Kaur, mother of the boy ruler Duleep Singh. In April 1848 Diwan Mulraj, governor of Multan, rose in revolt after two British officers sent to take over his province were killed by a crowd.3 › Battle of Mudki, 1845
Raja Sher Singh, son of the Hazara governor Chattar Singh, was sent with Lahore troops to crush the revolt but went over to Mulraj; the Sikh historian Ganda Singh links this to the British officer James Abbott's treatment of his father. Many Sikh soldiers left their regiments to join what the military historian Agha Humayun Amin calls a national rising. On 22 November 1848 Sher Singh threw back a Company attack at Ramnagar on the Chenab, an action the Sikhs saw as a victory. When Attock fell to Chattar Singh, Gough was told to beat Sher Singh before father and son could unite.4
The armies and their commanders
Gough, already the Company's commander in the first Sikh war, led British regiments and sepoys of the Bengal Army, roughly 12,000 to 14,000 men with 66 guns. Sher Singh's numbers are far less certain. The lowest common estimate is about 23,000, which Amin takes from the historian Malleson. The historian Fortescue and several later accounts give about 30,000, and World History Encyclopedia notes that Gough himself guessed 40,000. The Sikhs had about 60 to 62 guns, many of them light pieces. Their line ran through dense thorny scrub between the Jhelum and Chillianwala, with its northern end anchored on the Russool (Rasul) heights.5
The battle: an attack through the jungle
Gough's army marched from Dinga on 13 January and drove a Sikh outpost out of Chillianwala village. According to Amin, Gough meant to camp and attack the next day until Sikh guns opened fire. After about an hour of artillery exchange he sent his infantry forward at around 3 p.m., anxious not to lose the light. Thick thorny scrub, in places taller than a man, hid the Sikh guns and broke the Company's lines into small groups that lost touch with one another.6
The 24th Foot at the Sikh guns
In the center left, Brigadier John Pennycuick's brigade led the advance. Under orders not to fire, the British 24th Foot fixed bayonets, outpaced the sepoy battalions beside it and reached a Sikh battery alone. It took the guns but could not hold them. Grape shot and musketry from the scrub cut the regiment down, and Pennycuick and his son Alexander, who served in the same regiment, were killed. The National Army Museum gives the 24th's loss as 515 men, 238 of them killed; other tallies give 231 to 255 killed. Sir Charles Napier later wrote of the regiment: “Their conduct has never been surpassed by British soldiers on a field of battle”. The neighboring 25th and 45th Bengal Native Infantry also suffered heavily and lost colors.7
Confusion on the cavalry flank
On the far right, Brigadier Pope's cavalry brigade pushed into the scrub without skirmishers or supports. When Sikh horsemen came at it, an unclear order was taken as a command to retire, and the brigade, the 14th Light Dragoons and its Indian regiments alike, rode to the rear; accounts differ on which regiments turned first. Sikh cavalry, led according to Amin by Jawahir Singh Nalwa, overran horse artillery, and the Company lost four guns. Between Pope and the 24th, Gilbert's division fought its way into the Sikh positions and took several batteries, though Sikh troops worked round into its rear before they were driven off.8
Who won the Battle of Chillianwala?
Neither side won outright. Gough claimed victory because the Sikhs later gave up their position, while the Sikhs claimed it because they had broken part of his army, taken guns and colors and held their ground that night. Most historians call the battle indecisive, and a costly strategic setback for the East India Company.
Night on the field
As darkness fell, Gough pulled his army back to Chillianwala for water and to gather the wounded his men could find. The National Army Museum says Sikh troops then recovered 28 of the 40 guns taken from them, killed many British wounded left on the field and carried off three British colors. The 24th itself lost one of its two colors.9
Casualties: counting the cost
The National Army Museum and World History Encyclopedia put the Company's losses at about 2,300; the detailed return quoted by Amin is 602 killed, 1,651 wounded and 104 missing, 2,357 in all. Sikh losses are uncertain. British estimates put them near 4,000, figures that Majid Sheikh in Dawn calls vague. Amin notes that no independent, reliable Sikh account of the battle exists.10
The East India Company's view
Losses, a cavalry flight and lost guns and colors raised what the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism calls “a storm in England”, and Gough was widely blamed for clumsy frontal tactics. He insisted he had won, since the Sikhs eventually withdrew, but the government named Sir Charles Napier to replace him as commander-in-chief in India. Nearly a century after Plassey and Buxar, the Company's army had been fought to a standstill. The Worcestershire regimental museum, whose 29th Foot fought in Mountain's brigade, calls the result a draw, but a strategic check that damaged British prestige in India.11
The Sikh view
For the Khalsa, Chillianwala was the high point of the war. Ganda Singh, writing in the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, says plainly that Sher Singh “worsted the British” there. Amin calls Sher Singh's push into the jungle the best tactical decision of the war and stresses that the Sikhs kept the field. In Dawn, Majid Sheikh quotes Khushwant Singh's verdict that Chillianwala was “the worst defeat suffered by the British since their occupation of India”.12
Aftermath: Gujrat and annexation
Reinforced with troops and heavy guns from the Multan siege, Gough met the combined Sikh armies at Gujrat on 21 February 1849 with some 23,000 to 24,000 men and, using his artillery this time, routed them. Sher Singh and the remains of his army surrendered at Rawalpindi on 14 March, and on 29 March 1849 the Company annexed the Punjab. Napier arrived only after the campaign was decided; Gough gave up his command and was made a viscount. Sher Singh and his father were held prisoner until 1854, and Sher Singh died at Banaras (Benares) in 1858. Within a few decades Sikh soldiers were a mainstay of the British Indian Army, as at Saragarhi in 1897.13 › Battle of Gujrat, 1849
The battlefield today
Chillianwala is a village in Mandi Bahauddin district, in Pakistan's Punjab. A red stone obelisk stands in a walled cemetery on the mound where most of the British dead were buried. The Illustrated London News reported in 1853 that it was designed by Captain Harley Maxwell of the Bengal Engineers and built from stone quarried by Sikh workmen, and that its inscription, while honoring the Anglo-Indian army's dead, notes that countless warriors fell on both sides. The Worcestershire regimental museum notes that local people call the field Katalgarh, the house of slaughter. The nearby Jhelum is the ancient Hydaspes, where Alexander fought Porus, and Chillianwala has its place among the greatest battles in Indian history.14
