Battle of Miani

The Battle of Miani (or Battle of Meeanee) was a battle between British forces under Sir Charles Napier and the Talpur Amirs of Sindh, of today's Pakistan. The Battle took place on 17 February 1843 at Miani, Sindh in what is now Pakistan.

Background

According to Nadeem Wagan (a Sindh writer), the primary causes of the battle were the British desire to expand their British Raj and the British General Charles Napier's ambitions. The General had held previous position as Governor of the Greek island of Kefalonia with very limited scope for glory. The Talpur kingdom of Sindh was inefficiently and loosely governed by the Amirs and a relatively easy target as opposed to the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab. Napier moved his army aggressively from the East India Company's Bombay presidency area and entered the Sindh border. Negotiations ensued between the Talpur Amir in Hyderabad and Napier. An agreement was reached after the Amir gave significant concessions. Napier then started to move his army back towards Bombay and the Amir disbanded his army that had been mobilised. However, Napier was firmly determined in conquering Sindh and Hyderabad. Whilst moving towards Bombay and giving the impression of keeping the agreement that had been reached, he suddenly turned back towards Hyderabad on the pretext of hostile intentions by the Amir and marched with great speed towards the capital.

Battle

The Talpur were forced to quickly re-mobilise their army but could not do so effectively as the army was mostly raised on a voluntary basis in times of war and most of the Talpur Sardars (Lords) had returned home. Nevertheless, an army of around 8,000 - mostly cavalry - was raised and assembled at the battle ground of Miani. Disastrously for the Talpur another 8,000 troops under Mir Sher Muhammad Talpur (Sher-e-Sindh or "Lion of Sindh") failed to reach the battle ground in time. Napier had already successfully isolated the Amir of Khairpur (thereafter known as the great traitor by the Sindhi) by bribery and title. Thus the Talpur army assembled at Miani represented approximately a ⅓ of the Talpur military strength in Sindh. Although the East India Company later gave its troops numbered in the battle as around 2,800, contemporary Talpur records indicated the armies were approximately equal in numbers (around 8–10 thousand each) with the British having around 2,500 European officers and soldiers and the balance comprising Indian sepoys.

The difference in military technology and tactics was enormous. The East India Company's army was led by professionally trained British officers and troops and the Indian Sepoys were also well trained and disciplined. They were armed with smoothbore percussion or flintlock muskets which were accurate to 100–150 yards and supported by modern artillery. In contrast, the Talpur army comprised mostly cavalry armed with muskets, spears and swords and some old artillery pieces acquired from Persia. The tactic was the favoured Talpur cavalry charge. Contemporary records indicate that the Talpur army's morale was very high with the battle slogan being "we will die but not give up Sindh". Indeed, the Talpur died in thousands, in 4–5 hours of carnage, the Talpur cavalry charged in wave after wave and was mostly cut down long before it could reach British lines by rifle and artillery fire. It did eventually reach British lines and, according to Napier himself in his book on the battle (Conquest of Sindh), he had to ride amongst his officers and troops to stop them from falling back in disarray in the face of the ferocity of the Talpur who had reached the British lines. Of the Talpur army of 8,000 at Miani, contemporary Talpur and British records show that 5–6 thousand Talpur were killed (62–75%) whilst attacking the British lines. Reliable sources put the British casualties as 256^[2] as kept by the East India company's paymasters while according to Talpur records, the Company's army suffered 3,000 dead (although Napier gives a much lower casualty figure as he does for his total force).

Later, on March 24, 1843, Mir Sher Muhammad Khan Talpur, reached Hyderabad with his private army of around 8,000 and tried to liberate Sindh from the occupation of the British East India Company forces. He sent Napier a message giving the General 48 hours to vacate the Hyderabad Fort. Napier who was firmly entrenched in Hyderabad Fort and had recently been reinforced from Bombay replied by firing his artillery from the Fort walls. Mir Sher Muhammad Khan Talpur was subsequently defeated in the Battle of Dubba and thereafter conducted a guerrilla war for ten years before he eventually surrendered. The East India Company gave him amnesty as per agreement.

The amirs of Hyderabad suffered great loss, their fort was plundered, and amirs themselves were exiled to Rangoon, Burma – never to see Sindh again. Napier's post-conquest occupation of Sindh was absolute. Fifteen years later when the Indian Mutiny or 'War of Independence' in 1857 broke out, no shots were fired in Sindh. His manipulations of the history of his interactions with the Talpur dynasty and the history of the battle were likewise absolute and designed to glorify his position. However, debates that took place in the British Parliament for the post-conquest show the degree of concern that existed in UK on the action he had taken in Sindh.

The battle honours of "Meeanee" and "Hyderabad" are shared by the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment and a number of Indian regiments, whereas that of "Scinde" is borne by the Cheshire Regiment alone.

Casualties

Five thousand Sindhis were killed or wounded while fighting the British.^[3] The fallen Amirs of Sindh consisted of Mir Nasir Khan Talpur, his nephews Mir Shadad Khan Talpur, Mir Hussein Ali Khan Talpur, Mir Sher Muhammad Talpur, the Subedar of Hyderabad, Mir Rustam Khan Talpur, Nasir Talpur, Wali Mohammad Khan Talpur of Khairpur. Others such as Mir Ali Murad Khan Talpur was taken aboard the sloop HMS Nimrod and exiled to Burma.^[4]

A British journal said of the captive Sindhi Amirs: "The Amirs as being the prisoners of the state are maintained in strict seclution; they are described as Broken-Hearted and Miserable men, maintaining much of the dignity of fallen greatness, and without any querulous or angry complainngs at this unalleviable source of sorrow, refusing to be comforted".^[4]

References

Notes

Bibliography

• The London Gazette: no. 20212. pp. 1193–1195. 11 April 1843. Retrieved 22 November 2010. Dispatches from Major-General Sir Charles Napier, KCB
• The London Gazette: no. 20231. pp. 1893–1895. 6 June 1843. Retrieved 22 November 2010. Dispatches from Major-General Sir Charles Napier, KCB