Battle of Gujrat, 1849: the battle of the guns that ended the Sikh Wars

Gujrat was the last battle of the two Anglo-Sikh wars and one of the few that the East India Company won at small cost. After a string of costly frontal attacks, it showed Gough using his guns first and his infantry second, and it ended the independent Sikh state that Maharaja Ranjit Singh had built.²

The road to Gujrat

The First Anglo-Sikh War ended in 1846 with a treaty that left the Punjab nominally independent under the child Maharaja Duleep Singh, but with a British Resident at Lahore controlling the court. The National Army Museum describes the anger this caused among Sikh nobles and in the army, many of whose soldiers believed they had been betrayed rather than beaten. In 1848 a rebellion at Multan grew into a second war, and Sher Singh Attariwalla led the Khalsa army into the field.³

The campaign went badly for the British at first. On 13 January 1849 at Chillianwala Gough threw his infantry against Sikh guns hidden in thick scrub and lost about 2,300 men; the NAM notes that he claimed a victory while Sher Singh simply marched off to join his father, Chattar Singh. Three days of torrential rain followed, and the two armies did not meet again for more than a month.⁴

Waiting for the heavy guns

Gough refused to fight again until General Whish arrived with the division that had taken Multan, and with its heavy siege guns. Running short of supplies, the Sikhs left their camp at Rassool on 25 January and moved east toward Gujrat; according to the NAM they tried to cross the Chenab to strike at Gough's rear, but found the river swollen and the fords held by irregular cavalry under Lieutenants Lumsden and Hodson. They fell back to Gujrat, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Lahore, and dug in.⁵

By 20 February Gough had about 24,000 men and 96 guns. BritishBattles.com and the NAM put the Sikh army at 60,000, the NAM saying at least that many; the Royal Welsh Museum gives 50,000. The Sikh infantry and 59 guns stood in a line about two miles long between the dry bed of the Dwara and the Katela stream, with fortified villages in front, cavalry on both wings and 1,500 Afghan horsemen sent by Dost Mohammed on the right. Behind them rose the snow peaks of the Himalayas.⁶

The battle of the guns

Gough's army advanced soon after dawn on 21 February, Gough riding down the line in the white coat he wore in battle. When the Sikh guns opened fire, the infantry halted and the artillery went forward. EBSCO notes that Gough had first reconnoitered the Sikh line with care. For about two and a half hours the two artilleries fought it out, the British and Indian batteries outnumbering the Sikh guns nearly two to one. The NAM observes that the Sikh gunners had only hastily raised screens of brushwood this time, not the jungle that had hidden them at Chillianwala.⁷

When the Sikh fire slackened, the infantry went in. The hardest fighting was for the villages of Bara Kalra and Chota Kalra in front of the Sikh center, where the defenders fired from loopholed houses and the 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers were driven back once before horse artillery cleared the village with grapeshot at close range. On the left, Sikh and Afghan cavalry trying to turn the flank were stopped by artillery and a charge of the Scinde Horse and the 9th Lancers. A party of Sikh horsemen even rode around the British rear in an attempt to kill or capture Gough.⁸

Rout and surrender

Then the Sikh line broke. Unlike the steady withdrawals of earlier battles, BritishBattles.com writes, the formations collapsed into flight, and the cavalry pursued them for twelve miles toward the Jhelum until the horses could go no farther. EBSCO calls the pursuit relentless; the NAM says the retreat soon became a rout.⁹

The losses were lopsided. BritishBattles.com gives 96 killed and 750 wounded on the British and Indian side, and an estimated 2,000 Sikhs killed, wounded and captured, with 56 guns lost. General Gilbert followed the beaten army north. The date of the surrender differs: the NAM and BritishBattles.com put the laying down of arms at Rawalpindi on 14 March, the Royal Welsh Museum dates Sher Singh's surrender to 12 March.¹⁰

The end of the Sikh kingdom

On 29 March 1849 the Punjab was annexed by the East India Company. Duleep Singh was deposed and later sent into exile in Britain, while Chattar Singh and Sher Singh were imprisoned at Allahabad and, after their release in 1854, exiled from the Punjab for good. The Royal Welsh Museum notes that the battle rehabilitated Gough, who had been criticized for his frontal attacks and his failure to use his artillery.¹¹

There was a longer legacy. Impressed by the Khalsa, the British began recruiting Sikhs in large numbers, and within a decade Sikh soldiers helped put down the rising of 1857 against the very Bengal sepoys who had fought beside the British at Gujrat.¹²