Sikh Kingdom of Ranjit Singh

Entering Lahore in 1799, Ranjit Singh ruled a Punjab which over a forty year reign, he would extend from the Khyber Pass to the borders of Tibet. His first campaign was to the city of Amritsar in 1802. Taking the city of Harmandir Sahib, the holiest of the Sikh sites, not only enlarged his kingdom, it also gave him supreme authority as leader of the Sikhs. Ranjit Singh gilded the Harmandir Sahib to create the Golden Temple. Having moved north and asserted his newly won authority over the major trade routes from Afghanistan and Kashmir, Ranjit Singh began moving to the dominions south and east of the satluj river. This brought him into conflict with the flourishing empire of the British East India Company. After uniting the factious Sikh misls with shrewd diplomacy, arresting the designs of the British gave him little difficulty. In 1809, the British signed a treaty of friendship that sealed their borders. It would be nearly forty  years before they found opportunity to excuse to enter the rich lands of Punjab.

If it was the unity of the Sikh people that gave Ranjit Singh the authority to reign, it was his hoed and feared Khalsa Army that gave him the power to extend the kingdom. Ranjit Singh's egalitarian character and pragmatic approach towards relishing his ambitions created a Khalsa Army manned by all manner of warrior races. This blend of Gurkhas, Biharis, Oriyas, Punjabi Muslims, Pathans as well as Sikhs formed nineteenth-century Asia's most powerful and united fighting force.

The campaign generals were all native Punjabis, while the men were drilled and marshaled by nearly one hundred foreign mercenaries, including formal Napoleonic generals as well Italians, Americans, Spaniards, Germans, Irish and Greeks. Under this unique mix of military styles, the maharaja remodeled the Khalsa army into a force that was revolutionary in India at the time. He was able to harness the fighting prowess of the Akali forces, led by the charismatic Phula Singh, who was called to provide front-line warriors for Ranjit Singh's newly organized army. Although the Akalis remained aloof from the petty politics of the lavish Sikh courts, they were admitted as the stoutest and bravest of the warriors during the reign of Ranjit Singh. 

The first real proof of Ranjit Singh's revamped army was against Shah Sujah, the retreating ruler of Afghanistan, who was ousted from Kabul and came to Ranjit Singh for assistance. Before reaching Ranjit Shah was taken prisoner by the local hill rajas of Kashmir. Ranjit's army rescued the prisoner and routed his enemies. Ranjit Singh was more than satisfied to accept the enforced gratitude of the Shah and relieve him of the treasured Koh-i-noor, one of the largest diamonds in the world. The sleek machine that was the Khalsa army triumphed repeatedly. In 1818, Ranjit Singh captured Multan and the neighboring districts and twelve months later annexed all Kashmir to his Kingdom. By 1823, the battle-hardly Khalsa had decimated the Afghan and Pathan forces of the North West Frontier and the entire territory right up to the Khyber Pass passed into Ranjit Singh's control.

This was the pinnacle of Sikh rule in northern India. For a few short years, the capital of Lahore rivaled any of the royal courts in Europe. Sikh art flourished during this period of relative peace with the patronage afforded by the rich courts of Punjab. Weapons once produced for purely functional purposes were now being reproduced by the Sikh artisans in styles and materials that reflected the glory and superiority of the Sikh power in Punjab. Ranjit Singh and his generals were victorious. They had tactfully subdued the misls, overpowered their enemies, bullied their neighbors and outwitted the British. The British matched Ranjit's artifice by taking strategic lands under their protection in attempt to force the Sikhs to break the treaty. Instead, Ranjit coolly consolidated his borders and to the utter astonishment of the British, prepared to take Afghanistan. He was checkmated in 1838 when the British entered into negotiations with the Afghan ruler and maneuvered Ranjit Singh into signing treaty which finally defined his borders on the one frontier which had, up till then, remained undefined.

However, the following year, on June 27 1839, at the height of his power, Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab died at Lahore in one of the many lavish palaces that he had built.