Alexander Gardner (soldier)
Encyclopedia
Alexander Haughton Campbell Gardner (Gordana Khan) (1785–1877) was a traveller, soldier and mercenary
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...

. He travelled to Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

 and Punjab
Punjab region
The Punjab , also spelled Panjab |water]]s"), is a geographical region straddling the border between Pakistan and India which includes Punjab province in Pakistan and the states of the Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and some northern parts of the National Capital Territory of Delhi...

 and served in various military positions in the region.

Biography

By his own accounts he was born in Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

 to a Scottish father and an Anglo-Spanish mother. According to Baron von Hügel
Charles von Hügel
Charles von Hügel was an Austrian army officer, diplomat, botanist and explorer, now primarily remembered for his travels in northern India during the 1830s...

, who met Gardner in 1835, he was Irish, but the evidence for that assertion is obscure.

Gardner went to Ireland in about 1809. He returned to America in 1812, but finding his father dead he returned to Europe and never went back to America. From Europe he travelled to Astrakhan
Astrakhan
Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:...

 where his brother was working, but when his brother died in 1817 he tried to secure a position in the Russian Army. When that failed he left Russia and spent the next 13 years wandering through Central Asia.

In 1823 he was captured in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

 by Habib Ullah Khan, the nephew of Dost Mohammed Khan. Habib Ullah was fighting his uncle for the throne of Kabul, and he recruited Gardner to his cause as the commander of 180 horsemen. After an attack on a pilgrim caravan Gardner married one of the captives and went to live in a fort near Parwan where a son was born to the couple. When Habib Ullah was defeated in 1826, Gardner's wife, a native woman, and his baby boy were murdered by Dost Mahommed's forces. Gardner fled north with a few companions and near the River Oxus his party were attacked by 50 horsemen: they lost eight out of their thirteen men and the survivors were all wounded but were able to escape. Their route now lay towards Badakhshan
Badakhshan
Badakhshan is an historic region comprising parts of what is now northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan. The name is retained in Badakhshan Province which is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, in the far northeast of Afghanistan, and contains the Wakhan Corridor...

 and the valley of the Kokcha; the Oxus was finally crossed opposite the Shakhdara to reach the valley of Shignan, still in the year 1826. From this point his narrative is fragmentary and very hard to understand, large parts being highly improbable or impossible. He claimed to have reached Yarkand on 24 September but the year is uncertain, either 1827, 1828 or 1829 are possible, certainly he was there by 1830. He returned to Afghanistan, and visited Kafiristan
Kafiristan
Kāfiristān or Kāfirstān was a historic name of Nurestan , a province in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, prior to 1896. This historic region lies on, and mainly comprises, basins of the rivers Alingar, Pech , Landai Sin, and Kunar, and the intervening mountain ranges...

, possibly the first westerner to do so. In August 1831 he left Afghanistan as an outlaw for the Punjab, where he was appointed Commandant of Artillery. He served in this position for many years before he was transferred to the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh
Ranjit Singh
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji was the first Maharaja of the Sikh Empire.-Early life:...

, where he was one of between 32 and 100 Western soldiers in Ranjit's army. He was later promoted to the rank of Colonel by Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
He remained in the Sikh army after Ranjit Singh's death in 1839, but after the First Anglo-Sikh War
First Anglo-Sikh War
The First Anglo-Sikh War was fought between the Sikh Empire and the British East India Company between 1845 and 1846. It resulted in partial subjugation of the Sikh kingdom.-Background and causes of the war:...

 he joined the service of Gulab Singh, Maharajah of Kashmir, and spent the rest of his life in Srinagar.

Gardner was involved in numerous gun fights and sword fights during his career. He was described as being six foot, with a long beard, an all around warrior and fighter. Gardner was known to have saved the City of Lahore in 1841 when his comrades abandoned him and he fired the guns that killed 300 enemies. He is described by Keay as continuing to suffer the effects of 14 wounds in later life.

Gardner remained in the service of the Maharajas as they came and went, and witnessed the fall of the Punjab as a sovereign kingdom. This he vividly described in his book on the Fall of the Sikh Empire.

Gardner kept a journal, much of which was lost. Extracts were published in 1853, and attracted controversy. His exploits were so bizarre that the geographer Sir Henry Yule disbelieved them. In later life, Gardner related his adventures to several prospective biographers, and after his death the surviving material was published in Soldier and Traveller: memoirs of Alexander Gardner; edited by Major Hugh Pearse.

Gardner appears as a major supporting character in the novel Flashman and the Mountain of Light
Flashman and the Mountain of Light
Flashman and the Mountain of Light is a 1990 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the ninth of the Flashman novels.-Plot introduction:Presented within the frame of the supposedly discovered historical Flashman Papers, this book describes the bully Flashman from Tom Brown's Schooldays...

.

Further reading

The full text of Memoirs of Alexander Gardner at Archive.org
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