Patrick Alexander Vans Agnew

Patrick Alexander Vans Agnew (1822–1848) was a British civil servant of the East India Company, whose murder during the Siege of Multan by the retainers of Dewan Mulraj led to the Second Sikh War and to the British annexation of the Punjab region.

Vans Agnew was the second son of Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Vans Agnew, a Madras officer of considerable reputation, and afterwards a director of the East India Company. After a very successful career at Haileybury College, where he gave evidence of superior talent and of judgment and force of character in advance of his years, Agnew joined the Bengal civil service in March 1841, and in the following year commenced his official life as assistant to the commissioner of the Delhi division.

In December 1845 he was appointed assistant to Major George Broadfoot, the superintendent of the Cis-Sutlej states, and was present at the Battle of Sobraon early in 1846. He was subsequently employed in settling the boundaries of the territory of Maharaja Gulab Singh, the new ruler of Kashmir, and in a mission to Gilgit.

In the spring of 1848, being then assistant to the resident at Lahore, he was sent to Multan with instructions to take over the government of that province from Mulraj, the dewan or governor, who had applied to be relieved of it, and to make it over to Khan Singh, another Sikh official, remaining himself in the capacity of political agent to introduce a new system of finance and revenue. On this mission he was accompanied by Lieutenant W. A. Anderson, of the Bombay Army, who had been his assistant on his mission to Gilgit, and also by Khan Singh, the dewan designate, and an escort of Sikh troops. The mission reached Multan on 18 April 1848. On the following day Agnew and Anderson were visited by Mulraj, and some discussion, not altogether harmonious, took place as to the terms upon which the province should be given over, Agnew demanding that the accounts for the six previous years should be produced. On 20 April, the two English officers inspected Multan Fort and the various establishments, and on their return to their camp in company with Mulraj were attacked and wounded (Anderson severely) by the retainers of the retiring dewan, who immediately rode off at full speed to his country residence. The two wounded Englishmen were placed by their attendants in an idgah, or fortified temple, where, on the following day, their Sikh escort having gone over to the enemy, they were brutally murdered by the adherents of Mulraj.

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