Battle of Deeg

01Under the walls

While Yashwantrao rode into the Doab with his cavalry, his infantry brigades and artillery stood between the lakes and the walls of Deeg, the Jat palace-fortress built by Suraj Mal. On 13 November 1804 Fraser attacked them. The Holkar guns fired grape at close range until the gunners were bayoneted at their pieces, and Fraser lost a leg to a cannon ball and died days later. Monson finished the action, taking most of Holkar’s guns, while the survivors fell back into Deeg. Four days later Lake caught Yashwantrao’s cavalry at Farrukhabad.

02The fort falls

Lake brought up siege guns and opened batteries against Deeg in December. On the night of 23 December his troops stormed the breach, and by the next morning the town and the fort were in Company hands. The garrison escaped to Bharatpur, eighteen miles away. There, in January 1805, Lake began the siege that failed four times before the mud walls of Raja Ranjit Singh.

Person · 3 Dec 1776 – 28 Oct 1811Yashwantrao HolkarA son of Tukoji Holkar, Yashwantrao fought his way to the head of the Holkar house, beat the Peshwa and Shinde together at Pune in 1802, and then took on the East India Company. He destroyed Monson’s column in 1804 and helped hold Bharatpur against four British assaults in 1805.Read →