Sieges of Anandpur
Years of attacks on Anandpur ended in a long siege in 1704. Starving, the Sikhs left on the night of 20 December on sworn promises of safe passage, and were attacked at once.
After the creation of the Khalsa in 1699, the hill rajas, led by Ajmer Chand of Kahlur, on whose land Anandpur stood, demanded that the Guru pay rent or leave. When he refused, they attacked in 1700 and again in 1701, and were beaten each time. They then turned to the Mughal governors of Sirhind and Lahore for help.
In 1704 a great combined army of the Mughals and the hill rajas surrounded Anandpur and laid siege to its forts. For months the Sikhs held out, making sorties, but food ran out; men ate leaves and bark. The besiegers offered safe passage under oaths sworn on the Quran by the Mughal commanders and on the cow by the rajas.
On a winter night in December 1704 the Guru, with his family and some fifteen hundred Sikhs, left Anandpur. The oaths were broken at once: the besiegers attacked the column at the Sarsa river. Anandpur was sacked. Among the defenders were the forty from Majha who had signed away their allegiance and gone home, and who would return to die at Muktsar.
Same era
Mughal Punjab, 1526 – 1705
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