Battle of Sobraon

01A camp with the river behind

The Khalsa had built a great horseshoe of earthworks on the left bank of the Sutlej at Sobraon, joined to its camp on the right bank by a single bridge of boats. Tej Singh, the commander-in-chief, and Lal Singh, the wazir, were both in secret contact with the British, as Cunningham and later historians record. The real fighting leadership fell to men like the old general Sham Singh Attariwala.

02Sham Singh’s last charge

On the morning of 10 February 1846 Gough’s guns bombarded the works, and then his infantry attacked. The first assaults were thrown back. Breaking in at last on the weaker western end, the Company troops fought along the trenches. Tej Singh crossed the river early, and the bridge was broken, whether by the swollen river or by design is still argued. Sham Singh Attariwala, dressed in white, led his men against the attackers and fell. The Khalsa soldiers fought with the river behind them; many drowned trying to cross.

Person · 1780–1839 CE; Maharaja 1801–1839Maharaja Ranjit SinghA misl chief’s son who lost an eye to smallpox as a child, Ranjit Singh took Lahore in 1799 and made one kingdom out of the Punjab, Multan, Kashmir and Peshawar. He covered the Harmandir Sahib in gilded copper and held the Khyber against the Afghans for forty years.Read →

03Lahore and Kashmir

The Company crossed the Sutlej and marched to Lahore. By the Treaty of Lahore of 9 March 1846 the boy Maharaja Duleep Singh kept his throne but lost the Jalandhar Doab, his army was cut down, and Kashmir was ceded in lieu of indemnity and sold to Gulab Singh of Jammu a week later. Sham Singh’s village of Attari, now on the border, keeps his memory each year.