Jean-Baptiste Ventura
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.
Jean-Baptiste Ventura was born in Italy in 1794, served in Napoleon's army, and arrived in Lahore with Allard in 1822.
He trained the Sikh infantry in European drill and commanded it for twenty years, and served as governor of several districts, including Dera Ismail Khan. In 1830 he excavated the great Buddhist stupa at Manikyala near Rawalpindi, finding coins and relics, one of the first archaeological digs in the Punjab.
He left the Punjab in 1843 after Sher Singh's assassination and died in France in 1858.
Born in the Duchy of Modena into an Italian Jewish family, he had fought for Napoleon against the Austrians in 1814 before travelling east through Persia and Afghanistan. Locally the European-trained corps he and Allard built was called the Francisi Campu, the French legion, and by 1833 a third of the Punjab's troops were under its officers.
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.
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.
Saint-Cyr-trained French officer who cast and commanded Ranjit Singh's artillery and mapped and dug the antiquities of the Punjab.