Ranjit Singh

1780 - Ranjit Singh, born on the 13th of November in Budrukhan, or Gujranwala, India.

1792 - He became chief of the Sukerchakias, a Sikh group. His inheritance included Gujranwala town and the surrounding villages, now in Pakistan.

1799 - In July, he seized Lahore, the capital of the Punjab. The Afghan king, Shah Zaman, confirmed Ranjit Singh as governor of the city.

1801 - Proclaimed himself maharaja of the Punjab. He had coins struck in the name of the Sikh Gurus, the revered line of Sikh leaders, and proceeded to administer the state in the name of the Sikh commonwealth.

1802 - He captured Amritsar, the most important commercial entrepôt in northern India and sacred city of the Sikhs. Thereafter he proceeded to subdue the smaller Sikh and Pashtun (Afghan) principalities that were scattered over the Punjab. But his later forays east were checked by the English.

1809 - He signed the Treaty of Amritsar fixing the Sutlej River as the eastern boundary of his territories.

1818 - His troops captured the city of Multan and six months later entered the Pashtun citadel, Peshawar.

1819 - In July, he finally expelled the Pashtuns from the Vale of Kashmir.

1820 - He had consolidated his rule over the whole Punjab between the Sutlej and the Indus rivers.

       - Began to modernize his army, using European officers to train the infantry and artillery. The modernized Punjabi army fought well in campaigns in the North-West Frontier (on the Afghanistan border).

1834 - He added Ladakh (a region of eastern Kashmir) to his kingdom, and his forces repulsed an Afghan counterattack on Peshawar.

1838  -He agreed to a treaty with the British viceroy Lord Auckland to restore Shah Shoja' to the Afghan throne at Kabul. In pursuance of this agreement, the British Army of the Indus entered Afghanistan from the south, while Ranjit Singh's troops went through the Khyber Pass and took part in the victory parade in Kabul.

1839 - He was taken ill, and he died at Lahore on the 27th of June, exactly 40 years after he had entered the city as a conqueror. In little more than six years after his death, the Sikh state he had created collapsed because of the internecine strife of rival chiefs.