Misr Diwan Chand

Recorded sideSikh Empire

Recorded resultvictory

Sikh victory. Multan stormed on 2 June 1818 after a siege of roughly three months.

Multan had held out against Sikh attempts repeatedly for a generation. What changed was not resolve but ordnance: a siege train heavy enough to breach the walls, and the organisation to keep it supplied through a hot-season investment. The fortress fell to logistics as much as to the assault.

What followed

The end of Afghan authority in southern Punjab and the first demonstration that the Sikh state could reduce a first-class fortress. ⚠ Note for the record what happens to this same city thirty years later: the revolt at Multan in 1848 begins the war that destroys the empire that took it here.

Recorded sideSikh Empire

Recorded resultvictory

Sikh victory. Kashmir passed to Lahore and stayed there until 1846.

The hard part was the approach, not the battle: getting an army with guns over the Pir Panjal in usable condition. Once that was done the engagement itself was short. A previous Sikh attempt in 1814 had failed on exactly the thing that was got right here - the mountain crossing and the supply behind it.

What followed

Kashmir enters the Sikh Empire, and with it the revenue and the shawl trade that funded much of what followed. ⚠ The 1846 Treaty of Amritsar then SELLS Kashmir to Gulab Singh for 7.5 million rupees - the atlas's clearest case of a conquest becoming a line item in someone else's settlement.