First published in 1849, this book, though a critical and popular success, was to be the cause of the premature end to a highly successful military career. Cunningham passed through Addiscombe and Chatham attracting high praise at both establishments, passing out of the former with the prize for mathematics and the sword for good conduct. On reaching India he was appointed to the staff of General Macleod, then Chief Engineer in the Bengal Presidency. In 1837 he became assistant to Sir Claud Wade, political agent on the Sikh frontier, a position he continued to hold under Wade's successors, G. Russell Clark and Colonel Richmond. During his time in the area he developed a profound knowledge of the manners and customs of the Sikh people which placed him in great demand at the time of the outbreak of the First Sikh War. He served on the staff of Napier, Gough and finally Sir Harry Smith, seeing action at Buddawal and Aliwal. When Smith joined the main army he was attached to the staff of Sir Henry Hardinge, to whom he acted as an additional aide-de-camp at the battle of Sobraon. For his services he was promoted to captain by brevet in December 1845, and at the conclusion of the war appointed by Hardinge to the lucrative position of political agent to Bhopal. In the comparative leisure afforded by this posting he had time to write the present history which assured his name as a historian, but led to his fall from grace with his superiors. His assertion that Lal Singh and Tej Singh had been bribed during the First Sikh War was challenged by Hardinge and Sir Henry Lawrence and in 1850 Cunningham was removed from his agency and returned to regimental duty. Within a year he had died at Umballa aged only 39.
8vo. Original brown embossed cloth, title gilt to spine. Map frontispiece, coloured in outline, similar folding map, genealogical tables. Marginally browned, hinges slightly cracked, cloth spotted and a little soiled, spine chipped at the head, but a very good copy, unopened.
