Battle of Mudki, 1845: the first battle of the Sikh Wars

Mudki was the first battle of the wars that ended with the British annexation of the Punjab. It was a small battle by the standards of what followed, fought in a few hours of failing light, and it decided little. But it showed both sides what the rest of the war would look like: a Sikh army that fought hard and well, generals on the Sikh side whose loyalty was in doubt, and a British commander who believed in going straight at the enemy.²

The Punjab after Ranjit Singh

Until 1839 the Punjab was ruled by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who kept an uneasy alliance with the British while building up the Khalsa, the Sikh army, into a powerful force. The National Army Museum calls it probably the most formidable opponent the British faced on the subcontinent: regular infantry trained on European lines, who even wore red coats, irregular cavalry, and an artillery of a particularly high standard.³

Ranjit Singh died in 1839, and the Punjab fell into chaos. Short-lived rulers followed one another, some of them murdered, and the infant Duleep Singh was eventually installed as Maharaja with his mother as regent. The British strengthened their cantonment at Ferozepore on the frontier; some officials, the museum notes, hoped for war. On 11 December 1845 the Khalsa crossed the Sutlej River into British territory. Both sources suggest that members of the Sikh court, eager to cut the army down to size, may have encouraged the move.⁴

Two Sikh armies

One Sikh army under Tej Singh advanced on Ferozepore, but made no effort to attack the exposed British garrison there. A second, under Raja Lal Singh, moved toward Mudki, about 18 miles away. Its size is given differently. The museum puts it at 10,000 cavalry, 4,000 infantry and 22 guns; BritishBattles.com, following the reconnaissance made that day by Major George Broadfoot, gives probably around 2,000 infantry with the same cavalry and guns.⁵

The commander-in-chief in India, Sir Hugh Gough, marched to relieve Ferozepore with the Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge, at his side. Their Army of the Sutlej numbered about 12,000 British and Indian troops with 42 guns.⁶

An attack at sunset

On 18 December, after a long day's march, the British approached Mudki. By the time the army came up, the Sikhs had pulled back to a position beyond the village on the edge of the jungle. Fearing that they would slip away into the scrub, Gough ordered an immediate attack, although his men were exhausted.⁷

As night fell, five troops of horse artillery and two field batteries opened fire into the jungle fringe. Gough sent cavalry around both Sikh flanks. In the dusk and the dust, the 3rd Light Dragoons and the Governor-General's Bodyguard charged into the Sikh line and turned its flank, while a brigade of Bengal cavalry went around the other flank. The National Army Museum names this charge, against the Khalsa's left, as the decisive moment.⁸

In the center the infantry went forward with three British regiments, the 9th, 31st and 50th Foot, in the lead. Threatened by Sikh horsemen, one brigade formed squares, and when the order came to re-form and advance only the 50th obeyed at once; the divisional commander, Sir Harry Smith, seized one of its colors and led it into the Sikh lines. The Sikh infantry fought fiercely and their gunners did great damage. In the hand to hand fighting two British generals were killed, Sir John McCaskill and Sir Robert Sale, the defender of Jalalabad in the First Afghan War. In the growing darkness British units fired into each other, until night ended the battle and the Sikhs withdrew.⁹

A costly victory

BritishBattles.com gives Gough's losses as 872 killed and wounded, nearly half of them in four British regiments; the 31st Foot alone lost 157 men. Sikh losses are not known, but they left 17 guns behind. Lal Singh, the museum notes, had left the field well before the end, while his rank and file stood and fought.¹⁰

Gough was criticized for the bill. Hardinge thought he should have waited for the Sikhs to come out of the jungle and attack; Gough feared that they would refuse battle and melt away. His men called his headlong method the Tipperary Rush, and he went into action in a long white coat meant to draw fire away from them. The Sikhs, for their part, admired the 3rd Light Dragoons enough to call them the Devil's Children. Neither side gave quarter, there or in the battles that followed.¹¹

What Mudki decided

In the museum's words, the battle decided little. Three days later Gough attacked a Sikh army of around 40,000 men, again under Lal Singh, behind the entrenchments of Ferozeshah, and took them only after two days of fighting and at heavy cost. The war was won at Aliwal and Sobraon in early 1846. Lal Singh and Tej Singh were later accused of helping the British and betraying their own troops, a charge whose truth is still disputed; BritishBattles.com points to correspondence between Lal Singh and a British officer early in the war. Gough fought the Sikhs again three years later, at Chillianwala, again with a headlong attack and again at heavy cost.¹²