Sir Henry Marion Durand

Sir Henry Marion Durand was an engineer officer of the East India Company's Bengal Army who fought in the war that ended the Sikh state and finished his career as Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. He was born in France on 6 November 1812 (his tomb gives 15 November), trained at the Company's military seminary at Addiscombe, and reached India in May 1830 as a Second Lieutenant of Bengal Engineers.

Key moments

• 1839: with the Afghan expedition, he helped blow in the Kabul gate at Ghazni.
• 1848 to 1849: returning to India in late 1848, he served on the staff of Colin Campbell at the battles of Chillianwala and Gujrat in the Second Anglo-Sikh War, and received a brevet majority and the war medal with two clasps (Dictionary of National Biography).
• 1857: Lord Canning appointed him Central India agent. As acting Political Agent at Indore he organised the evacuation of the Residency after a mob entered it on 1 June, and later took part in operations that reclaimed western Malwa. He was made brevet colonel in November 1857.
• 1861 to 1870: Foreign Secretary of India from 1861, then, from 1865, member of the Governor-General's council in charge of the military department.
• May 1870: Lord Mayo appointed him Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. He took office on 1 June 1870.
• 31 December 1870: near Tank on the frontier, his howdah was crushed against a gateway as his elephant passed under it, and he was thrown against a wall. He regained consciousness and died on 1 January 1871.

What he is remembered for. Durand is remembered as one of the soldier-administrators of the Raj. His first service in the Punjab was against the Khalsa army, and his last post, held for about seven months, was the government of the province the Sikh state had once ruled. His son Henry Mortimer Durand published his biography in 1883, and his own writing includes The First Afghan War and its Causes (1879).