W. G. Osborne

William Godolphin Osborne (29 March 1804 to 28 December 1888) was a British Army officer who served as military secretary and aide-de-camp to the Governor-General of India, Lord Auckland, from 1836 to 1841. He is in this record as the author of The Court and Camp of Runjeet Sing, published in London in 1840, the journal of the British missions to Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1838. It is one of the most quoted European eyewitness accounts of the Sarkar Khalsa in the Maharaja's last years.

Who he was. Osborne was a son of Francis Osborne, 1st Baron Godolphin, and a close relative of Lord Auckland, whom Westminster School's records call his cousin. He was commissioned an ensign in the 26th Foot in 1835 and retired in 1842. He later added Elphinstone to his name.

The 1838 missions. Osborne first came to the Punjab in May 1838 as a member of Sir William Macnaghten's mission to Ranjit Singh, and met the Maharaja in late May at Adinanagar, where he was spending the hot weather. His journal runs from 19 May to 13 July 1838. Ranjit Singh signed the Tripartite Treaty with the British and Shah Shuja on 26 June 1838. Osborne came again in December 1838, when the Governor-General met the Maharaja at Firozpur.

What the book says. It opens with an introduction on the origin and rise of the Sikhs, then the journal, then a few letters, one of them from the Maharaja, and carries sixteen lithographic portraits that Osborne drew himself. Osborne writes that Ranjit Singh could neither read nor write yet built a powerful state by force of mind, personal energy and courage. He calls him mild and merciful as a ruler but also faithless and deceitful, says he ruled sternly, and says that except in open warfare he had never been known to take life. He found the Sikh army disciplined and efficient, below the British army but above the forces of other Indian princes, and he describes the men around the Maharaja, among them Fakir Azizuddin, Sher Singh, Dhian Singh and Hira Singh.

Key moments

• 1836: becomes military secretary and aide-de-camp to Lord Auckland.
• May to July 1838: with Macnaghten's mission in the Punjab; writes the journal.
• December 1838: returns with the Governor-General for the meeting at Firozpur.
• 1840: the book is published in London.

What he is remembered for. Osborne's pages are quoted for Ranjit Singh's character and for the court and army of Lahore. B. J. Hasrat, introducing the book in the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, adds that Osborne said he wrote only to pass the tedium of camp life, but that the book's real aim was to draw English attention to the north-west frontier and to the chance of annexing the Punjab after the ailing Maharaja's death.