The Sutlej campaign medal to Captain J. D. Cunningham, Bengal Engineers, ‘Historian of the Sikhs’

Sutlej 1845-46, for Aliwal 1846, 1 clasp, Sobraon (Lieut. J: D: Cunningham Engineers) very fine £1200-1500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Joseph Davey Cunnningham, the eldest son of the author and poet Allan Cunningham, and brother of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Cunningham (See Lot 36), was born in Lambeth on 9 June 1812. He was educated at Mr Robertson’s day school in Pimlico, and at Mr Law’s in Chelsea. Thereafter he was tutored by George Darley, who predicted a brilliant mathematical career for him at Cambridge. Cunningham, however, wanted to be a soldier, and at his father’s request a Cadetship was secured for him in the Bengal Engineers by Sir Walter Scott.

He led a dazzling career at Addiscombe, emerging after the usual two year period, in 1831, as ‘first engineer (or first scholar)’, with the first prize for mathematics, the East India Company’s sword for good conduct, and the first nomination to the Bengal Engineers. He was next sent to Chatham where young engineer officers received their professional training and where he was joined after six months by his brother Alexander. Both greatly impressed their instructors, Colonels Pasley and Jebb. The amiable Colonel Pasley said of them ‘some few officers have equalled them, but none have surpassed them.’ The Cunningham brothers also secured the friendship of Colonel Jebb, a well known expert on ‘prison discipline’.

Joseph Cunningham arrived in India in February 1834 and was posted to the staff of the Chief Engineer in the Bengal Presidency, General MacLeod. Three years later, while still a Second Lieutenant, he was specially selected by the Governor-General, Lord Auckland, who was looking for a young man of promise to train for political work on the Sutlej frontier to assist Colonel (later Sir) Claud Wade with the special duty of fortifying Ferozepore. This duty naturally brought him in close contact with the Sikhs, the study of whose customs and manners he made the subject of his life’s work. His appointment afforded him a unique insight into Sikh affairs. In 1838, he was present at the interview between Auckland and the Sikh warlord Ranjit Singh.

In 1839, at the start of the Afghan War he was employed with the troops passing through Sikh territory on their way to the frontier. He accompanied Wade at the forcing of the Khyber Pass and was promoted Lieutenant in May 1839. The following year he was placed in charge of Ludhiana under Wade’s successor, G. Russell Clerk, and accompanied Brigadier Shelton’s force, as Political Officer, on the march through Sikh territory to Peshawar and then on to Cabul. He then accompanied Colonel Hugh Wheeler with the deposed Afghan leader, Dost Mohamed, back to British territory. In 1841, he was entrusted with a special mission to Tibet to see that the Raja of Jammu surrendered certain territories, which he had seized from the Chinese of Lhassa. After a year’s absence, he returned to be present at the interviews between Auckland’s successor Ellenborough and Dost Mohamed, and also those between Ellenborough and the Sikh chiefs at Ferozepore in December 1842. The next year, he was appointed assistant to the new Political Agent at Ferozepore, and in 1844-45 held the post of British Agent to the native state of Bahawalpur.

When the First Sikh War began in 1845, his specialist knowledge was keenly sought and he was first required to join Sir Charles Napier in Scinde, but after the battle of Ferozeshuhur he was summoned to join the headquarters of Sir Hugh Gough’s army and arrived in time to accompany the force under Sir Harry Smith, which was detached to counter the threat being made by a Sikh force under Ranjur Singh on Gough’s line of communications. Consequently, Cunningham was present at the engagement at Badhowal, which cost Smith two hundred casualties, and also at the victory over Ranjur at Aliwal on 28 January 1846. When Smith joined the main army, Cunningham was attached to the staff of the Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge, to whom he acted as Aide-de-Camp at the battle of Sobraon in February 1846, which brought the First Sikh War to an end, and, for the time being, resulted in the Punjab becoming a British Protectorate.

For services in the Sutlej Campaign, Cunningham was promoted Captain by Brevet on 10 December 1845, and on the conclusion of hostilities was appointed by Hardinge, whom he accompanied to Simla, to the lucrative post of Political Agent at Bhopal in Central India, where he could expect to earn four times his regimental pay. This posting now afforded Cunningham the leisure to write his History of the Sikhs, from the Origin of the Nation to the Battles of the Sutlej. Ever ‘studious’ and ‘greedy of knowledge’, there was no one more fitted than Cunningham to undertake such a work. ‘He had enjoyed intercourse under every variety of circumstances with all classes of men, and had free access to all the public records. It had been his duty to examine and report on the military resources of the country, and he had devoted all his talents to the task.’



In 1849, the work was completed and was received with critical aclaim in England, and he justly became recognised as the one authority on the subject of the Sikhs. Unfortunately, however, his extremely well written book gave full and painfully accurate details of the First Sikh War and asserted that the Sikh commanders Lal Singh and Tej Singh had been ‘bought’. Both Hardinge and Henry Lawrence, the newly appointed Chief Commissioner of the recently annexed Punjab, denied that there had been any private negotiations with any of the Sikh leaders, but the subsequent disgrace that fell on Cunningham and the confidential position which he had held, strongly suggested that he was revealing the truth. In 1850, Lord Dalhousie had him stripped of his appointment at Bhopal, and he was ordered to go on ordinary regimental service. The disgrace broke his heart, though he made no open or public complaint about his treatment. He refused to listen to his many supporters in England and quit the Company’s service, saying ‘it was a soldier’s duty to bear reprimand without a murmur, and to go wherever his superiors should order him’. In early 1851, having just been appointed to the Meerut Division of Public Works, he died suddenly near Umballa on 28 February 1851, aged thirty-eight years.

Refs: Dictionary of National Biography; Soldiers of the Raj (De Rhé-Philipe); Gentleman’s Magazine.