Many felt they should have another crack at the British, especially given the harsh terms of the peace treaty which ended the first war. 1866), both of whom gained prominent positions under the new British rule. The ordinary Sikh troops and the misls felt that they had been badly let down by the generals, particularly Tej Singh (1799-1862), the Sikh commander-in-chief, and Lal Singh (d. Time and again, defensive tactics were used when a more aggressive use of cavalry might well have gained the Sikh army a victory. While the EIC troops had been courageous and disciplined, the Sikh losses were in no small part because several of the top Sikh commanders in the field had one eye on what their positions would be should a regime change come about. With the exception of Aliwal, all the battles resulted in a high number of casualties for both sides. Although the Sikh army was well-trained and well-equipped, particularly its artillery arm, it suffered defeats in all four major battles of the war: the Battle of Mudki on 18 December 1845, the Battle of Ferozeshah on 21-22 December, the Battle of Aliwal on 28 January 1846, and the Battle of Sobraon on 10 February. The First Anglo-Sikh war broke out when a large Sikh army crossed the Sutlej River into EIC territory on 11 December 1845. The Sikhs would now have to fight the seemingly unstoppable armies of the East India Company. In the wider world of empires, the British no longer considered the Sikh Empire a useful buffer zone in case of expansion of the Russian Empire into Afghanistan and northern India – the so-called Great Game. Confident that some of the Sikh misls in the east supported closer ties with the EIC, the British prepared for war in the Punjab and amassed an army of 40,000 men to the southeast of the Sikh state. The EIC exploited the turmoil and conquered the Sindh province (southwest of the Punjab) in 1843. The next and final target of the EIC was northwest India and the Punjab, the heartland of the Sikh Empire. Next came expansion in the far northeast and more victories in the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814-1815) and the three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824-1885). The EIC kept on expanding and defeated the southern Kingdom of Mysore in the three Anglo-Mysore Wars (1767-1799) and the Maratha Confederacy of Hindu princes in central and northern India in the three Anglo-Maratha Wars (1775-1819). The British East India Company had been grabbing territory since its victories at the 1757 Battle of Plassey and the 1764 Battle of Buxar, which gave the British a vast and regular income in local taxes, besides other riches. The war, which started off as a rebellion against British colonial rule, included the high-casualty Battle of Chillianwala, but the conflict was finally won by the EIC with a decisive victory at the Battle of Gujrat in February 1849. The Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-9) once again saw the British East India Company defeat the Sikh Empire in northern India.
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