Second Anglo-Sikh War

Who: Diwan Mulraj of Multan, Sardar Sher Singh Attariwala and his father Sardar Chattar Singh Attariwala, and the soldiers of the Khalsa army, against the East India Company under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie, with Generals Whish and Gough in the field.

What: The National Army Museum says the Khalsa soldiers and chiefs felt they had been betrayed rather than beaten in 1846, and that the Resident Henry Lawrence deepened the anger by exiling Maharani Jind Kaur.

• April 1848: After a dispute over taxation the Company ordered Mulraj replaced. The two British officers sent to take over at Multan, Vans Agnew and Anderson, were murdered, and Mulraj, who the National Army Museum says probably did not order the killings, was forced into open revolt.
• September 1848: Sher Singh's troops rebelled while serving in General Whish's force, and the siege of Multan was lifted. Chattar Singh joined the rising, and the frontier chiefs and Afghan allies with him.
• 22 November: Ramnagar, on the Chenab.
• 13 January 1849: Chillianwala, a bloody and inconclusive battle.
• 22 January: The citadel of Multan fell after a siege, and Mulraj was spared execution but sentenced to life imprisonment.
• 21 February: Gujrat. Gough used his guns first, and after about two hours of bombardment the Sikh lines broke and retreated in rout.
• March 1849: The Sikh army surrendered at Rawalpindi.

Where: From Multan in the south to the frontier at Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Attock, with the main field battles on the Chenab and Jhelum.

Why it mattered: On 29 March 1849 the Punjab was annexed and Maharaja Duleep Singh was deposed. The National Army Museum records that Sher Singh and Chattar Singh were held at Allahabad and released in 1854 but exiled for good from the Punjab, and that Chattar Singh died in Calcutta in 1855. Duleep Singh went into exile in Britain in 1854, and the Koh-i-Noor diamond was handed to Queen Victoria under the peace terms.

World History Encyclopedia calls these the bloodiest and most expensive wars the Company had fought. The heavy British losses at Chillianwala damaged the aura of British invincibility. After annexation the British began recruiting Sikhs in numbers, and Sikh troops later helped suppress the rising of 1857.