The Gurkhas, a mountain nation, had established themselves in Kathmandu and the valley of Nepal in the eighteenth century, but with the extension of British conquests in the nineteenth century their territories came under threat from the British in Bengal. The British found time and energy in 1814 to embark on a new war of aggression on the northern frontier of their Indian empire, a signal that marked a fresh wave of imperial expansion. Over the next thirty-five years they were to absorb two-thirds of the subcontinent, as eager generals gobbled up the territories of the Marathas, the Burmese, the Rajputs, the Sindhis and the Sikhs. Nepal was the first new territory in their sights, and the Gurkhas were ready for them. In October 1814, at the great Nepalese fort at Kalanga - a few miles north of Dehra Dun, close to the border with India - the Gurkhas and their commander, Bulbhadar Singh, secured a spectacular victory over a British invading force.
General Sir Rollo Gillespie, recently returned to India after the conquest of Java, had advanced into Nepal with an army of 3,500 men, ostensibly to define the frontier between Bengal and Nepal. Negotiations were held to determine the exact nature of the frontier, and the Gurkhas made a point of defending what they regarded as theirs. The British officers did not have everything their own way.
Dissatisfied with the progress of the talks, the British moved to settle their northern frontier by force. This was an ambitious undertaking. The Gurkhas had only a small force of some 12,000 soldiers, but they were defending a difficult terrain with which they were uniquely familiar. In the mountains of Nepal, the British found it difficult even to locate the people they were supposed to be fighting, and their troops and transport animals suffered from the cold.
With victory at the Kalanga fort, the war began well for the Gurkhas. It was an unpleasant reverse for the British. Bulbhadar Singh had placed cannon beside the fort’s main gate, and the British attack was beaten off with a chilling fire. When Gillespie tried to rally his men for a second charge, he himself was shot dead. Most of the casualties were British soldiers, and their two fruitless attacks resulted in 740 casualties. Charles Metcalfe, the British resident at Delhi, noted his disquiet in a letter of January 1815:1
We have met with an enemy who shows decidedly greater bravery and greater steadiness than our troops possess; and it is impossible to say what may be the end of such a reverse of the order of things. In some instances our troops, European and native, have been repulsed by inferior numbers with sticks and stones. In others, our troops have been charged by the enemy, sword in hand, and driven for miles like a flock of sheep.
Yet the Gurkha defenders of Kalanga had also suffered severely, and Bulbhadar slipped away with only seventy men. When the British eventually entered the fortress, they found it ‘in a shocking state, full of the mangled remains of men and women killed. . . by our batteries. . . The stench was intolerable. Upwards of ninety bodies were collected and burnt.’
The Gurkha victory at Kalanga was followed in November by the successful defence of a fort at Jaithak, north of the town of Nahan. The Gurkhas built a stockade to block the approach of British troops, and the British proved reluctant to advance. The Gurkhas fell on them with their kukris at the moment when the British were finally persuaded to storm the fort. The British soldiers took to their heels at once, as did their sepoys when they saw what was happening.
After these two Gurkha victories, with a third of Gillespie’s army destroyed and the commander killed, the British abandoned further offensive operations against the Gurkhas for the rest of the year. ‘Our power in India rests upon our military superiority’, Charles Metcalfe noted perceptively in 1815. ‘It has no foundations in the affections of our subjects. It cannot derive support from the good will or good faith of our neighbours.’2 When the British failed to demonstrate their military superiority, the political repercussions were considerable.
The struggle of the Gurkhas resumed the following year, but their territory was not finally subjugated until March 1816. The Gurkha resistance caused the British an important political defeat. Others - notably the rulers of what was left of the old Maratha Confederacy in central India - were encouraged to believe that the British could still be defeated. A fresh resistance struggle began in 1817.
World History
