IRELAND—Rare maps used by the British Army for their winter campaign in Anglo-Sikh wars of 1845 have been discovered in an Irish Castle.
The maps formerly belonged to 1st Viscount Hugh Gough who was commander-in-chief of the British army in India for that campaign which took place during the regency of Maharajah Duleep Singh.
The find was made by British born writer Bobby Singh Bansal who was visiting Ireland to conduct research for his next project when he was shown the maps that had lay undetected in the castle attic for over 100 years.
After further examination he realized that the rare maps were in a very frail condition and required urgent restoration.
The unique maps reveal a wealth of information for any passionate military historian or private collector.
One of the maps depict the Battle of Sobraon which was fought on the 10 February 1846, between General Hugh Gough with 10,000 troops of the East India Company’s Bengal Regiment versus the mighty Khalsa Army of the ‘Lahore Durbar’ with 20,000 troops under the command of General Sham Singh Attariwala. Other maps include the Battle of Mudki, Battle of Maharajpore (1843) and the Battle of Chillianwalah fought under the leadership of Raja Shere Singh Attariwala where the Khalsa army won a decisive victory over the British in 1849.
After serving in the British Army, General Gough retired to a quiet life back home in Dublin, receiving a generous pension from the British government for services rendered. The maps remained within the Gough family in Ireland and Scotland but for reasons unknown were abandoned in one of the Gough estates in Galway until now.
Bansal has previously published ‘The Lion’s Firanghis: Europeans at the Court of Lahore’ in 2010, published by Coronet House and available on Amazon.com.
He is currently completing his next volume on ‘British Colonial Administrators of the East India Company’ and also a television documentary on the plight of Hindu & Sikh families of Kabul.
