Battle of Chamkaur
In a mud fort the Guru and his remaining Sikhs held off a huge force. His sons Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh died leading sorties.
After the Sarsa, Guru Gobind Singh reached Chamkaur with his two elder sons and some forty Sikhs on 21 December 1704 and took refuge in a mud fortress, a garhi, belonging to a local landowner. The Mughal army of Wazir Khan and the hill rajas, many thousands strong, surrounded it.
The next day the defenders went out in groups of five to fight to the death, while the Guru shot arrows from the tower. His elder son Ajit Singh, about seventeen, asked to go and was armed by his father; he fell fighting. His younger brother Jujhar Singh, about thirteen, followed. By nightfall only a handful of Sikhs were left.
The five surviving Sikhs, acting as the Panj Pyare, ordered the Guru to leave to lead the Panth. Bhai Sangat Singh, who resembled him, put on the Guru's plume to deceive the besiegers. The Guru clapped his hands and called out as he left, so that it would not be said he slipped away in secret, and escaped into the night towards Machhiwara. The Zafarnama mocks the Mughal army: what can forty hungry men do against a host of ten lakh? Gurdwara Garhi Sahib and Qatalgarh Sahib mark the site.
The siege of the garhi
A planScroll sideways to see the whole figure →
- 1
The Sikhs go out in bands of five to fight in the open. Sahibzada Ajit Singh, 17, and Jujhar Singh, 13, fall leading them.
- 2
At night, at the Panj Pyare's bidding, the Guru leaves; Bhai Sangat Singh, who looked like him, stays in his place and dies at dawn.
Guru Gobind Singh's last journeys
Anandpur to Nanded, 1704 – 1708Same era
Mughal Punjab, 1526 – 1705
Babur's field guns and cavalry tactics destroyed a much larger Lodi army. Guru Nanak's hymns of the same years speak of the suffering of Babur's invasions.
Battle of MachhiwaraMay 1555 · Mughal victory; Humayun regains HindustanOn the Sutlej at Machhiwara the returning Mughals beat the Afghans of the Sur dynasty, and a month later won again at Sirhind.
Hemu, a Hindu general who had taken Delhi, was winning until an arrow struck his eye; his army broke and the boy Akbar's throne was saved.
The first armed clash of Guru Hargobind's time, fought over the founding of Sri Hargobindpur on the Beas.
Began over a hawk of Shah Jahan's that the Guru's Sikhs would not give back. A Mughal detachment attacked during a wedding in the Guru's family and was beaten off.
Fought in the Malwa over horses the Sikh Bidhi Chand had recovered from imperial stables, which had originally been gifts for the Guru.
Painde Khan, once the Guru's own commander, led a Mughal army against him and was killed. The young Tyag Mal fought so well he was renamed Tegh Bahadur.
A skirmish as the Guru withdrew from Kartarpur towards Kiratpur.