Henry Hardinge

Recorded sideBritish East India Company

Recorded resultvictory

British victory, costly and confused.

It barely did. The action ran into darkness, British units fired into each other, and Gough's preference for the bayonet over the gun cost him men he did not need to lose. What decided it was that Lal Singh - the Sikh commander, and in secret communication with the British - broke off and withdrew with the battle undecided.

What followed

The opening battle of the First Anglo-Sikh War, and the first appearance of the pattern that runs through the whole war: a Khalsa army that fights extremely well under commanders who do not want it to win.

Recorded sideBritish East India Company

Recorded resultvictory

British victory, and by the account of the men who won it the narrowest of the century in India.

On the evidence, it should not have. The British spent the night of 21-22 December inside a captured entrenchment under Sikh artillery, disordered, short of ammunition, with the Governor-General destroying state papers against the possibility of defeat. On the morning of the 22nd Tej Singh brought a fresh and uncommitted Sikh army onto the field, made a demonstration, and withdrew it. The British position was saved by the enemy commander leaving.

What followed

⚠ THE ENTRY THE LANE EXISTS FOR. The Khalsa's own commanders, Lal Singh and Tej Singh, were in communication with the British before and during the war. Ferozeshah is the case where an army in a winning position was removed from the field by the man commanding it. The engagement idiom fits it as poorly as it fits Plassey, and for the same reason - and unlike Plassey, the army in question fought superbly. Two entries in this atlas, ninety years and one subcontinent apart, are decided the same way.

Recorded sideBritish East India Company

Recorded resultvictory

British victory, and the end of the First Anglo-Sikh War.

The Sikh army was entrenched on the wrong bank with one bridge. Tej Singh left the field early, crossed, and the bridge was damaged or cut behind him; the boats went. What followed was not a rout but a massacre of men who could not withdraw and would not surrender. Sham Singh Attariwala, who had had no part in the negotiations, put on white, told his men he would not leave, and was killed in the entrenchment with them.

What followed

The destruction of the Khalsa as a field army, and the Treaty of Lahore on 8 March 1846. ⚠ The atlas holds Sobraon and Aliwal three weeks apart for a reason: same army, same war, same enemy, and two entirely different mechanisms of defeat. Sham Singh Attariwala is the counter-example that keeps the treachery finding honest - the Sikh command was not uniformly compromised, and the man who was not compromised died on the position.