The Victory of General Sir Charles Napier at the Battle of Scinde

Napier, the commander of the Bombay Army of the British East India Company, was sent by the Governor General Lord Ellenborough to the province of Sind in 1843 to put down the Baluchi insurrection: ' ... when there were outbreaks of violence in Hyderabad, the main city of Sind, in December 1842 Napier began to move his troops up the Indus towards the city. ... when the British residency was attacked Napier moved swiftly and met the enemy on 17 February on the Fuleli River at Miani. Victory established Napier's almost mythic reputation, for he had only 2200 men, mostly sepoys, while the enemy had about 20,000. His losses, the dead and the wounded, amounted to fewer than 300, and he estimated that the amirs had lost 6000. Afterwards it was alleged that the bloodshed could have been avoided: the amirs had in fact signed the treaty, but Napier had not informed the governor-general. If Napier had indeed deliberately withheld the fact of the treaty's being signed, it was probably because he had already decided the amirs' fate. ... While many praised the annexation of Sind, for which Napier was made a GCB in November 1843, some criticized the action. According to Gladstone the whole cabinet was against it, questioning both its morality and its wisdom. Members of the East India Company board of directors, ever since Wellesley's great conquests, had been critical of the conquests made in their name. The Sind war and annexation were impolitic and unjust, some of them argued, and so far from increasing the revenues of India, they showed how Sind was a drain on government finances. There was, however, no disposition on the part of the authorities in India or Great Britain to return the kingdoms to the amirs.' (DNB). Napier subsequently served as Governor of Sind and Commander-in-Chief in India.