Patrick Alexander Vans Agnew

In the spring of 1848, being then assistant to the resident at Lahore Sir Henry Lawrence, he was sent to Multan with instructions to take over the government of that province from Mulraj, the Nazim or governor, who had applied to be relieved of it, and to make it over to Sardar Kahan Singh Mann, a Sikh noble sympathetic to British interests, remaining himself in the capacity of political agent to introduce a new system of finance and revenue.

Bombay Fusilier Regiment,[1] who had been his assistant on his mission to Gilgit, and also by Sardar Kahan Singh Mann, the governor designate, and an escort of Sikh troops.

The two wounded Englishmen were placed by their attendants in an idgah, or fortified mosque, where, on the following day, their Sikh escort having gone over to the enemy, they were brutally murdered by the adherents of Mulraj.

Anderson had some time previously attracted the favourable notice of Sir Charles Napier in Sind, and the duties upon which Agnew had been employed, including his last most responsible and, as the event proved, fatal mission, sufficed to show the high estimation in which his services were held.

"If," wrote Sir Herbert Edwardes to one of his nearest relatives, "few of our countrymen in this land of death and disease have met more untimely ends than your brother, it has seldom been the lot of any to be so honoured and lamented."