General Claude Auguste Court

Claude Auguste Court was a French soldier who served the Sikh kingdom for about sixteen years. He was born on 24 September 1793 at Saint-Cezaire in France, joined the French army in 1813 and was dismissed after Waterloo in 1815. In 1818 he left for Baghdad and joined Persian forces being trained by former Napoleonic officers, among them Jean-Baptiste Ventura. In Persia he met the Neapolitan Paolo Avitabile, and the two reached Lahore in early 1827.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh took him into the artillery. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he trained gunners, organised batteries and set up arsenals and magazines on European lines, and with Sardar Lahina Singh Majithia supervised the Maharaja’s foundries. The Friday Times adds that the main ordnance factory stood near the Lahore Idgah.

Key moments

• He earned a prize of Rs 30,000 for the first shell cast at the Lahore foundry and Rs 5,000 for making the fuse. His pay was Rs 2,500 a month plus a jagir, and he was promoted general in 1836.
• 1834: he took part in the expedition to Peshawar. 1837: he was at the battle of Jamrud, where Hari Singh Nalwa fell.
• January 1841: after the death of Nau Nihal Singh he backed Sher Singh and helped besiege the Lahore Fort. On 26 January his own regiments mutinied over pay and ransacked his house, and he fled across the Sutlej. He came back in April 1841 once Sher Singh arranged his reinstatement.
• 5 and 6 April 1842: with Avitabile he stormed the Khyber Pass to support General Pollock’s crossing from Afghanistan.
• September 1843: after Sher Singh was assassinated he fled to Ferozepur. He left the Sikh service in 1843 and moved to France in 1844 with his family.

What he is remembered for: Court was one of the European officers who helped build the Khalsa army’s gun park into a modern force. He was also an antiquarian. He dug at Manikyala near Jhelum and at Peshawar, and wrote for the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Journal Asiatique. The Manikyala inscription he found helped J. Prinsep decipher the Kharosthi script and is now in the Lahore Museum. He died in Paris on 21 January 1880, aged 86.