Brigadier-General John Nicholson, (11 December 1822 – 23 September 1857) was an Ulster-Scot officer who rose to prominence during his career in British India. Born in Ireland, Nicholson moved to the Indian subcontinent at a young age and obtained a commission in the Bengal Army where he spent the majority of his career helping to expand the East India Company's territories in numerous conflicts, including the First Anglo-Afghan War, the First Anglo-Sikh War, and the Second Anglo-Sikh War. Nicholson created a legend for himself as a political officer under Henry Lawrence in the frontier provinces of British India, especially in the Punjab, and he was instrumental in the establishment of the North-West Frontier. Nicholson's most defining moment in his military career was his crucial role in suppressing the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a conflict in which he died.

A charismatic and authoritarian figure, Nicholson led a life whose controversial exploits have created a polarized legacy; contemporary descriptions of Nicholson presented him as the man who was crucial in suppressing the Indian Rebellion, while more recent historical accounts have described him as an "imperial psychopath" and "a violent, manic figure, a homosexual bully; an extreme egoist who was pleased to affect a laconic indifference to danger".Michael Edwardes, Bound To Exile: The Victorians In India, Sidgwick & Jackson, London 1969, p100 His imposing physical appearance and noted deeds of valor and violence created an almost mythical status and even religious worship among the numerous tribes of the North-West Frontier whom Nicholson brought into the British Empire.

Background Nicholson was born on 11 December 1822 in Dublin, Ireland, the eldest son of Dr. Alexander Jaffray Nicholson and Clara Hogg, who were both descendants of Protestant Scottish settlers who had immigrated to Ireland as part of the Ulster Plantation. Dr. Nicholson died when John was eight after contracting an illness from one of his patients, after which the family moved to Lisburn, County Antrim. Nicholson was privately educated in Delgany and later attended the Royal School Dungannon, through the patronage of his maternal uncle, Sir James Weir Hogg, a successful East India Company lawyer and for some time Registrar of the Calcutta Supreme Court, and later a Member of Parliament. He left school soon after his sixteenth birthday and, as the eldest male in his family, obtained a cadetship in the East India Company army's Bengal Infantry thanks to his uncle. In early 1839, Nicholson spent several weeks under his uncle's tutorship in London, gaining an understanding of Indian matters, before departing Gravesend in mid February on the voyage to India where he would spend the majority of the rest of his life.

Early career On reaching India in July 1839, Nicholson was ordered to join the 41st Native Infantry at Benares on temporary attachment. After spending four months being drilled on the realities of military life, he was transferred in December, as a regular Ensign, to the 27th Native Infantry based at Ferozepore. Nicholson's arrival in India had been too late to participate in the initial invasion of Afghanistan as part of the First Anglo-Afghan War. However, in November 1840, the 27th Native Infantry was ordered up to relieve one of the infantry units already in Afghanistan as part of the British occupying force and marched through the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan in January 1841.

After initially being garrisoned in Kabul, Nicholson's regiment was moved to Ghazni where he first met Neville Bowles Chamberlain who would become the first of the close band of friends Nicholson would form throughout his time in India. The British force's relatively peaceful occupation duties were soon superseded by Afghan anger against the rule of Shah Shujah Durrani, who had acceded to the throne thanks to British support. Following the outbreak of a revolt led by Wazir Akbar Khan, the main British garrison at Kabul was besieged and annihilated as it tried to retreat from Afghanistan in January 1842. This defeat left smaller British garrisons scattered throughout Afghanistan, including Nicholson's at Ghazni, besieged by Afghan tribesmen during the freezing winter of 1841. Although the garrison at Ghazni was well supplied, Nicholson's commander, Colonel Palmer, capitulated after the Afghans promised safe passage out of Afghanistan. The Afghans, however, immediately disregarded this promise and attacked the British. Nicholson was, with two other junior officers, separated from the rest of the garrison and led two companies of infantry in fortified buildings as they held off the Afghan attack for two days. The British soon ran out of food and water but Nicholson initially refused to surrender as it would mean abandoning his Indian sepoys to their fate. However, after being ordered to lay down his arms by Colonel Palmer, Nicholson was forced to watch in tears as his sepoys were slaughtered after refusing to convert to Islam.

Nicholson – together with ten other British Army officers – was held captive at Ghazni in a filthy, ordure-ridden, lice-infested cell between 10 March and 19 August 1842. With the approach of the British "Army of Retribution", the captive officers began to receive considerably better treatment and they were taken to join other British prisoners of war in Kabul on 24 August where they dined with the leader of the revolt, Akbar Khan.Stocqueler, app no.. 10; citing Lieut. Andrew Crawford, 1st Regiment of Cavalry, Shah Shuja's Force, "Narrative of the captivity of Colonel Palmer and other officers at Ghuzni during and after the insurrection at Cabul 1841." Following the Battle of Kabul, Nicholson and the rest of the British prisoners were released in September 1842, after six long months of captivity.

Despite the British victory, their position in Afghanistan was no longer tenable and the army began the difficult process of retreating back to Peshawar. Following the trail which was still littered with thousands of dead from the previous disastrous attempt at withdrawal by a British army in January, Nicholson's regiment was part of the final rear guard as the British force was harassed through the Khyber Pass. On 1 November 1842, Nicholson was briefly reunited with his younger brother Alexander, who had arrived in India only a few short months before and was now helping to escort the British force through the pass. Alexander's unit was ambushed and overwhelmed two days later and it was the nineteen-year-old Nicholson who was the first to find the mutilated body of his younger brother; his severed genitalia had been stuffed in his mouth.Stuart Flinders, Cult Of A Dark Hero, Bloomsbury 218, p23 This disturbing experience, as well as his experience of the Afghan War as a whole, is said to have deeply affected Nicholson and left him with "an intense feeling of hatred" of Afghans and the entirety of India. Nicholson's first experience of war had also, however, instilled a "near-messianic sense of destiny" on him and he now believed it was his duty to spread Christian civilization into what he considered a "heathen" land.

Following the return of the British forces from Afghanistan, Nicholson was first stationed at Peshawar, and later for two years at Moradabad. These two years were largely uneventful for Nicholson who concerned himself mainly with military matters and mastering the Urdu language. In November 1845, on passing his Urdu vernacular examination, Nicholson was posted to the Delhi Field Force which was being organised at that time, as the threat of a war with the Sikh Kingdom of the Punjab loomed near.

Anglo-Sikh Wars and the Punjab

Upon the outbreak of the First Anglo-Sikh War in December 1845, Nicholson was serving as a staff officer in the commissariat department of Sir Hugh Gough's field force which marched into the Punjab. In this role, Nicholson's main responsibility throughout the war was keeping Gough's force well supplied with provisions and ammunition. Following the decisive British victory at the Battle of Sobraon in 1846, Nicholson was taken under the wing of Henry Lawrence along with several other similarly aged officers such as Herbert Edwardes, James Abbott, Neville Chamberlain, Frederick Mackeson, Patrick Alexander Vans Agnew, William Hodson, Reynell Taylor, Harry Burnett Lumsden, Henry Daly, John Coke, this group was known as Henry Lawrence's "Young Men". As part of this small band of young and driven men, Nicholson was given much power as a political officer on the North-West Frontier. His first posting in this new role was in July 1846 to the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir where he was to help solidify the rule of the British-installed Maharaja, Gulab Singh. Singh, however, was not a popular ruler in Kashmir and Nicholson took part in the suppression of a revolt against his rule. He spent the remainder of 1846 isolated in the Kashmir Valley serving as the sole British advisor to Singh at his court in Srinagar. To his relief, Nicholson was recalled to Lahore by Lawrence in February 1847. Nicholson's next significant assignment was helping James Abbot win over the various tribes of the Hazara region which he did by partaking in a daring nighttime raid against the Tahirkheli tribe's mountain stronghold, after which Nicholson and Abbott would form a strong friendship.

The murders of Patrick Vans Agnew and Lieutenant William Anderson on 20 April 1848 signalled the beginning of a Punjab-wide Sikh rebellion which soon became the Second Anglo-Sikh War. Initially, the East India Company was unprepared to deploy their army to the Punjab which meant that their political officers, including Nicholson, were completely isolated and effectively on their own in trying to maintain the British presence in the Punjab. It was in this vulnerable position that Nicholson was to display his soon to be characteristic nature of acting decisively and on his own initiative. He left Peshawar with a troop of irregular Pakthun horsemen and rode straight for the vital fort at Attock which, if controlled by the enemy, could sever the British line of communication. Upon arrival to the fort at first light, Nicholson rode straight past the stunned Sikh sentries guarding the main gate. When the Sikh sepoys further inside the fort raised their weapons against him, Nicholson leaped from his horse and wrestled the musket away from the nearest sepoy before shouting at them to lay down their arms and leave the fort, which the stunned Sikh garrison promptly did. This action, which was to become the first of Nicholson's famed exploits among the Sikhs, had enabled him to secure the vital fort without firing a single shot. Nicholson followed up this action just days later when he heard a Sikh infantry regiment were moving through the Margalla Hills in order to join the rebellion. Nicholson left Attock with his trusted irregulars and met the Sikh force camped at a Muslim cemetery. Nicholson rode up to the enemy camp and demanded to speak with their Colonel whom he gave one hour to submit their loyalty to him and be spared or else be destroyed "to a man". The Sikhs argued for an hour in front of the imposing figure of Nicholson, who sat motionless on his horse for the entire duration. Upon the hour mark, the Sikhs returned to Nicholson and declared their willingness to submit to his authority, thus cementing the growing legend of Nicholson among the Sikh population.