1813
Battle of Attock
The setting
Haidru, near Attock on the Indus, in modern Punjab, Pakistan
Open ground near the Indus crossing, in July heat. The Afghan force had come a long way to fight in it and the Sikhs had not.
Reveal the outcome
Recorded sideDurrani Empire
Recorded resultdefeated; withdrew across the Indus
Sikh victory. The first time a Sikh army beat an Afghan army in a set-piece field engagement.
How the atlas explains it
Mokham Chand refused to be drawn while the Afghan cavalry was fresh, held his line through the heat of the day, and let the guns do the work. Ghaus Khan's artillery was the arm the Afghans could not answer: Durrani strength was mobile horse, and mobile horse has no reply to guns it cannot reach. The Sikh army won by declining the battle the enemy was equipped to fight.
What followed
The hinge of the whole lane. Afghan power in the Punjab had rested for seventy years on the assumption that Afghan cavalry beat Punjabi infantry, and this ended it. Every later Sikh conquest - Multan, Kashmir, Peshawar - proceeds from the fact established here. ⚠ It also establishes the arm the empire would be identified with and eventually be destroyed by: the artillery.