Account: Victor Jacquemont on his meetings with Ranjit Singh

Victor Jacquemont in his travels to the Sub-continent met with Maharaja Ranjit Singh and he wrote an account of his audience.

Victor Jacquemont made a name for himself as a young intellectual in Paris during the 1820’s. In 1828, the National Museum of Natural History of Paris invited Jacquemont to work for them that gave him an opportunity to travel and collect samples in the United States, Canada, and finally India. His letters described his observations during his travels becoming a primary source for historical studies. In May 1829, he arrived in Calcutta and in March 1830 visited Delhi before travelling the Himalayas, Punjab, and Kashmir. His travels, however, placed a huge strained in his health to which he ultimately succumb on December 7, 1832 at the age of 31.

During his time in India, Victor Jacquemont made a visit to the Sikh Empire in 1830 to seek approval for his plan to visit Kashmir. In March 1831, he had an audience with Ranjit Singh and painted a rather negative description of the monarch.

His conversation is like a nightmare. He is almost the first inquisitive Indian I have seen; and his curiosity balances the apathy of the whole of his nation. He has asked a hundred thousand questions to me, about India, the British, Europe, Bonaparte, this world in general and the next, hell, paradise, the soul, God, the devil, and a myriad of others of the same kind, He is like all people of rank in the East, an imaginary invalid; and as he has a numerous collection of the greatest beauties of Kashmir, and the means of paying for a better dinner than anyone else in this country, he is generally annoyed that he cannot drink like a fish without being drunk, or eat like an elephant and escape a surfeit. Women now please him no more than the flowers of his parterre, and for a good reason – and this is the cruelest of his afflictions.

He is bound by neither law nor honor, when his interests do not enjoin him to be just or faithful; but he is not cruel. He cuts off the nose, ears, and a hand of very great criminals; but he never puts any to death. He is passionately fond of horses, quite to madness; and he carries on a murderous and expensive war against a neighboring province, in order to obtain a horse, which has been refused him either as a gift of a purchase. He has great bravery, a somewhat rare quality amongst the princes of the east; and although he has always succeeded in his military undertakings, it is by perfidious treaties and negotiations alone, that from a simple country gentleman he has become absolute king of the Punjab, Kashmir, etc., and is better obeyed by his subjects than the Mogul emperors in the zenith of their power. A Sikh by profession, a skeptic in reality, he every year pays his devotions at Amritsar; and, what is very singular, these devotions are paid at the tombs of several Muslim saints; yet these pilgrimages offend none of the puritans of his own sect.

He is a shameless scoundrel, and cares not a bit more about it than Henri III, formerly among us. It is true that between the Indus and the Sutlej, it is not even a peccadillo to be a scoundrel. But what horribly offends the morality of these good people is, that the king, not content with the women in his own seraglio, often fancies those of others; and what is worse, those which belong to everybody.

See also:
Ranjit Singh

Bibliography:

Jacquemont, Victor. Letters from India: Describing a Journey in the British Dominions of India, Tibet, Lahore, and Kashmir, During the Years 1828, 1829, 1830, 1831. London: Late Bull and Churton, 1834.