Claude Auguste Court
Saint-Cyr-trained French officer who cast and commanded Ranjit Singh's artillery and mapped and dug the antiquities of the Punjab.
Claude Auguste Court was born at Grasse in 1793, trained at the military academy of Saint-Cyr and fought at the battle of Leipzig in 1813. After Napoleon's fall he went east, served in Persia, and reached Lahore in 1827.
Ranjit Singh gave him command of a brigade and of the artillery of the Fauj-i-Khas. He set up a foundry at Lahore that cast guns and shells on French patterns, and trained the Sikh gunners who would nearly defeat the British at Ferozeshah.
He was also a scholar: he collected coins, excavated stupas near Peshawar and Manikyala, and made maps of the Punjab and its frontier. He married a Kashmiri woman, left Lahore after the murders of 1843, and died in Paris in 1880.
Connected
Veteran of Napoleon's cavalry who arrived in Lahore in 1822 and raised the Fauj-i-Khas, the elite French-drilled brigade of the Sikh army.
Italian officer who trained the Sikh infantry in European drill and later governed districts for Lahore. He also dug into a Buddhist stupa at Manikyala.
Neapolitan soldier who governed Wazirabad and then Peshawar for the Sikh Empire with notorious severity.
Sher-e-Punjab, the Lion of Punjab. United the misls into the Sikh Empire, ruled from Lahore for forty years and covered the Harmandir Sahib in gold.
Book of rubbings of Kushan coins by Claude Auguste CourtBritish Museum, London · photo Uploadalt (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA ↗