
On March 29, 1849, Lord Dalhousie declared the conquest of the Punjab. Henry Miers Elliot, his foreign secretary, came in Lahore to acquire the signatures of the members of the Council of Regency and the minor monarch, Maharaja Duleep Singh. In a darbar convened in the Lahore Fort, with British forces on his right and his hapless Sardars on his left, the youthful Duleep Singh signed the paper that stripped him of his throne and country. There were various reasons for the Sikh loss. Following the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the administration of the Sikh Empire became disorganised. The East India Company, on the other side, had assembled an overwhelming army against them, comprising Bengal, Maratha, Rajput, and Jat men.
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