Chandrakanta Singha’s last battles: Mahgarh and Assam Choky

01The king fights back

When Chandrakanta tried to throw off Burmese control, Bagyidaw sent Mingimaha Tilwa in February 1821. Chandrakanta fled to Guwahati and then into Company territory. There he raised a force largely of Sikh soldiers, retook the Assam Choky in October 1821 and Guwahati in December, and by 15 March 1822 had camped at Mahgarh near Jorhat. His Sikh troops beat the Burmese there, though their commander, Chataniya Singh of Lahore, was killed.

02Bandula arrives

Bagyidaw then sent Maha Bandula with a fresh army, which the Assamese accounts put at twenty thousand men. Bandula attacked and defeated Chandrakanta in April 1822. The king fell back to Guwahati and down the river to the Assam Choky, the old frontier post facing Goalpara, where Tilwa caught up with him in June 1822 and beat him again. Chandrakanta crossed into British territory. The Burmese proclaimed Tilwa Raja of Assam, and the line of Ahom kings that began with Sukaphaa in 1228 ended its rule.

03Face to face with the Company

With Burmese troops now on the Company’s frontier and demanding the fugitive king, the two empires stood face to face on the Brahmaputra. Chandrakanta later surrendered to the Burmese on a promise that he would be restored, and was imprisoned instead. Two years later the First Anglo-Burmese War began, and the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826 handed Assam to the Company.