Jean-Francois Allard and Jean-Baptiste Ventura, both veterans of Napoleon's armies, arrived at Lahore in 1822 after the Bourbon restoration left them without employment. Claude Auguste Court, a French artillery officer, and Paolo Avitabile, a Neapolitan, followed. Others came, including the Americans Josiah Harlan and Alexander Gardner.
They were engaged on terms that required them not to eat beef, not to smoke, to grow beards and not to leave the state's service without permission. Several married Punjabi or Kashmiri women and had families here.
Allard and Ventura raised the Fauj-i-Khas, the model brigade, on French drill with French words of command and its own tricolour standard. Court rebuilt the artillery and its foundry. Avitabile governed Wazirabad and then Peshawar.
Their effect was on training, drill, artillery casting and fortification. They did not command in the great campaigns, which stayed in Sikh hands, and several of them were mistrusted.
Most left after 1839. Ventura went to France, Court to Paris, Avitabile to Naples with a fortune. Allard died at Peshawar in 1839 and is buried at Lahore in the garden of his house, beside his daughter.
The graves in Lahore are among the few physical traces of a decade in which Napoleonic officers drilled Sikh infantry in Punjabi.
Between thirty and forty Europeans and Americans served the Lahore state at one time or another, in the army, the mint, medicine and the administration, and the list has never been fully compiled.
Their pay was extraordinary by the standards of any European army of the period, which is what brought them, and it was given in jagirs as often as in cash, so several of them held revenue villages in the Punjab.
They were paid extremely well, were required to adopt local dress and not to eat beef, and several married in the Punjab. Most left after 1839 with their money.