January

1785-1839

General of the Sikh Army and Military Governor of Peshawar

Jean Francois Allard was born in St. Tropez, in the south France. Aged eighteen he enlisted himself in the ‘23rd Regiment’ of the French army, later transferring to the ‘Neapolitan Regiment of the Dragoons’ for active service in Spain. Elevated to the rank of Lieutenant in the ‘Imperial Dragoons of the Old Guard’, when Napoleon Bonaparte landed at Golfe Juan near Antibes with 600 men in March 1815, he was fortunate to have escorted Napoleon to Paris. In 1818, he arrived in Persia and served Prince Abbas Mirza for four years and with his comrade Jean Baptiste Ventura arrived in the dominions of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1822. The Maharaja offered him the task of reorganising the cavalry and he ordered that the battalion under Colonel Sheikh Basawan be transferred to the control of Jean Francois Allard to raise a regiment of dragoons and one of lancers. In 1829, he raised the Fauj-i-Khas or the Royal Brigade comprising of infantry, cavalry and artillery units, which was 6000 strong under his direct command. The standards of the regiment were the tricolours of the French flag inscribed with the motto ‘Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh’ (Victory of the Almighty) with each regiment depicting the Imperial eagle. The Sikh cavalry under General Allard achieved a high level of efficiency that his ‘Cuirassiers’ were now the finest noble looking troops of the Sikh army. In 1826, he married, according to the local customs of the Punjab, a young princess Bannu Pan Dei, the daughter of Raja Menga Ram of Chamba. In 1834, he was officially granted permission to return to France along with his growing family. The Maharaja endeavoured every means of dissuading him from leaving, who even at the last moment quoted “At least leave your children with me then I will be assured that you will return for them”. After a short stay in France he was back in Calcutta in 1836, bringing with him a consignment of arms and other munitions and was ecstatically received by the Maharaja. But sadly on the 23rd January 1839, he suddenly died from chronic heart failure in Peshawar. His body was interred, as he wished, in the mausoleum of his infant daughter Marie Charlotte in the rear garden of his mansion in Lahore.