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www.sikhsangat.com].
Truly awe inspiring accounts and what a pic!!.
Painting depicting the battle of Aliwal between the Sikh army and British invaders in 1846
“The Seikh Artillery, with whom we contended, were picked men, both for valour and size; the were indeed gigantic, their usual stature being from six feet to six feet three inches, muscular and active in proportion. We were only like Lilliputians in comparison with those huge monsters, and I marvel they did not kill us all and swallow us slick out the way. Had they been without tasting food for a while, I am sure we would have been but a scanty meal for their numerous army, but fortunately they had been well fed, or possibly we might have become their prey…..
We lost lots of men before we got to the enemy’s principal battery, for we were pushed, as it were, into the lion’s mouth; when we did reach it, the gunners resorted to their tolwols (giant swords) and we our bayonets, then came the tug of war with clashing steel in earnest. In describing, to the best of my ability, the most desperate conflict which took place, I might present to your imagination such scenes of horror as were never witnessed in this country. What a picture of horror I beheld when we and the Seikhs were straining every nerve to deeds of barbarity, wholly bent on mutual destruction, wielding sanguinary weapons, swords and bayonets. The ground in a few minutes was sprinkled with the blood of hundreds of brave men.
Those overgrown brutes of artillery men had great advantage over us, and they fought with unusual courage, many of their lives being bought at the price of ours, i.e, when some of our men plunged their bayonets into the Seikhs, they held them fast by the sockets with their left hands, and cut our men’s heads off with their massive tolwols, with deep regret I saw several of my comrades thus killed”.
J.W. Baldwin, A Narrative of Four Months’ Campaign in India Between the Years 1845-1846.“Our English cavalry with their blunt swords were most unequally matched against the Sikhs with tulwars so keen of edge that they would split a hair…
I remember reading of a regiment of British cavalry charging a regiment of Sikh calvary. The latter wore voluminous thick puggries round their heads, which our blunt swords were powerless to cut through, and each horsemen had also a buffalo hide shield on his back. They evidently knew that the British sword was blunt and useless, so they kept their horses still and met the British charge by laying flat on their horses’ necks, with their heads protected by their thick turbans and their backs by their shields; and immediately the British soldiers passed through their ranks, the Sikhs swooped round on them and struck back-handed with their sharp, curved swords, in several instances cutting our cavalry men in two”.
Sgt. William Forbes Mitchell (93rd Sutherland Highlanders) writing on the Anglo-Sikh Wars.
ਸਤਿਗੁਰਬਚਨਕਮਾਵਣੇਸਚਾਏਹੁਵੀਚਾਰੁ॥