Battle of Aliwal

01The threat to Ludhiana

After the bloody stalemate at Ferozeshah in December 1845, the Khalsa held a bridgehead at Sobraon. Ranjodh Singh Majithia crossed upstream with a strong force and guns, burned part of the Ludhiana cantonment and cut at the Company’s supply line. Gough sent Sir Harry Smith with a division to clear him away. Ranjodh Singh took up a position between the villages of Aliwal and Bhundri, with the river behind him.

02Squares and lancers

On 28 January 1846 Smith attacked across open ground. His infantry took Aliwal village on the Sikh left, and his cavalry swept round. The British 16th Lancers charged the Khalsa infantry, which formed squares in the European manner and stood; the lancers rode through them twice, losing heavily. The Sikh line broke towards the fords, and most of its guns were left behind or lost in the river.

Dynasty · 1799–1849 CEThe Sikh Empire (Sarkar-i-Khalsa)Ranjit Singh took Lahore in 1799 and was proclaimed Maharaja of the Punjab in 1801. He united the Sikh misls into one state, pushed the Afghans back beyond the Khyber, and built the last great Indian army to face the British; ten years after his death the empire was annexed in 1849.Read →

03Before Sobraon

Aliwal freed Smith’s division to rejoin Gough. Thirteen days later the Company stormed the Sikh entrenchments at Sobraon, and the war ended. Cunningham, who served as a political officer in the campaign, wrote that the Khalsa soldiers fought well and their commanders failed them. Smith was made a baronet ‘of Aliwal’, and the town of Aliwal North in South Africa, founded when he governed the Cape, is named after the battle.