Begum Samru was probably born in 1753 in Kutana, a small town in Meerut District near Delhi. Her father, Latif Ali Khan, was an Arab merchant, and her mother may have been one of his Kashmiri concubines. When her father died, both she and her mother were persecuted by her half brother, and they fled to Delhi in 1760. Begum Samru's mother probably became a courtesan and trained her daughter for a similar career.
At the age of twenty-two, Begum Samru became a camp follower of a mercenary army commanded by Walter Reinhard, an Austrian soldier who had deserted from the military forces of the Compagnie des Indes Orientales to pursue a tumultuous career training and leading the armies of various north Indian princes. Reinhard, like most European mercenaries in India, had adopted a false name and was known to his fellow soldiers as Sombre, or Samru.
Reinhard took command of a brigade of mutineers from the East India Company's army during the war between the Mughal emperor and the company (1763-1765). After surviving the disastrous Battle of Buxar by a timely retreat, he entered the service of the Jat rajah, Jawahir Singh. In 1775, during the wars in which the Maratha-led imperialist coalition attempted to reinstate the authority of the Mughal emperor in northern India, Samru defected to the imperial camp of Shah Alam along with his highly trained infantry and artillery. Shortly afterward he was given a large body of irregular cavalry and a jagir (revenue-collection rights to be used for the support of troops) over the estate of Sardhana to the northeast of Delhi. At some time during this period, Begum Samru became first his concubine and then his wife. When Reinhard died in 1778, the Sardhana estate and command of the army passed into her hands rather than those of his son by a former mistress, Zafariyab Khan. At the time, the Sardhana forces consisted of five battalions of regular infantry, forty cannon, and some 400 Rohilla cavalry under the direction of 300 European and Eurasian officers and gunners. The training of the army was carried out under an Italian soldier named Paoli, but he was assassinated during an attempted palace coup at Delhi in 1783.
The first test of Begum Samru's personal military and political skills came a few years later. Ghulam Qadir, a rebel general, advanced toward Delhi with a strong contingent of Sikh irregulars and attempted to remove the obstacle of Begum Samru's trained battalions through bribery. Samru refused the offer and marched to protect the emperor while his Maratha overlords stood idle, thus winning the close affection of Shah Alam. The next year, 1788, her troops formed the core of an imperial army sent to Gokalgarh to crush the rebel general Najif Quli Khan. Shah Alam deployed his least steady troops to advance the trenches against the enemy fortifications, and Najif Quli Khan was able to overwhelm them through a surprise night attack by his cavalry. At the same time, additional rebel forces struck and routed the imperial army's rearguard. During this crisis, Begum Samru drew up her forces and called the emperor and his household to the relative safety of her headquarters. Together with an Irish mercenary captain, George Thomas, she personally led an assault on the fort that threw the enemy into confusion and purchased sufficient time for Shah Alam's officers to rally the disorganized Mughal troops. For her role in the imperialists' victory, she was granted a khelat, or robe of honor, together with the titles "daughter of the emperor" and Zeb-ulNissa, or "ornament of her sex," as well as additional lands for the support of her troops.
George Thomas, who had served Begum Samru since 1787, resigned his post in 1792 upon discovering that she had secretly married his rival Le Vaisseau, one of her French artillerymen. Thomas joined the Marathas, received a jagir near Sardhana, and raised and trained his own small army. In 1795 his troops collided with those of the Begum, and she immediately marched to destroy him. Some of her officers who were friends of Thomas led a revolt en route, and Begum Samru and Le Vaisseau fled to Sardhana. Command of her troops was given to Zafariyab Khan, Walter Reinhard's son, who marched to arrest the Begum and her French husband. As the army approached Sardhana, Samru persuaded Le Vaisseau to seize the treasury and flee with her to British territory, and the two apparently agreed to commit suicide if they were captured.
Numerous accounts offer conflicting versions of what happened next. Most agree that upon being intercepted, Le Vaisseau killed himself and the Begum tried to fake her own suicide. However, she was captured and tortured by her enraged troops before being placed under house arrest by a sympathetic French officer named Saleur. She managed to communicate secretly with George Thomas, forming an alliance with her former officer and enemy, and the Irish mercenary quickly moved with his own forces to arrest Zafariyab Khan and reinstate her at Sardhana with support from the Marathas. Begum Samru soon augmented her army by 6,000 infantry, part of the attempt by the Maratha overlord, Sindiah, to create a large, European-style army capable of resisting that of the East India Company. She did not, however, employ her troops to assist George Thomas when, after being double-crossed by his Maratha allies, he attempted to establish his own kingdom in Haryana to the west of Delhi. Another mercenary force in the Maratha service, that of Perron, smashed Thomas's army in a particularly bloody campaign near Hansi in 1801-1802. A few months after Thomas's defeat, Sindiah went to war with the British, and most of Begum Samru's troops marched to central India under Saleur, where a quarter of them was annihilated by Major-General Arthur Wellesley's forces at the Battle of Assaye in 1803. Begum Samru surrendered her remaining battalions at Sardhana when the British drove the Marathas from Delhi, and the company confirmed her possession of the jagir. She became a staunch ally of the East India Company, which allowed her to retain her army.
She led her troops in the battle for the last time at the siege of the Jat city of Bharatpur in 1825.
Begum Samru may be considered one of the most successful mercenary commanders of late-eighteenth-century northern India. Under her leadership, the Sardhana army improved greatly in strength, discipline, and efficiency. Begum Samru was also noted for her abilities as an administrator who greatly enhanced the revenues of her jagir and created a civil and military infrastructure that formed the basis of the company's government and defensive organization in the Delhi region.
In 1781, Begum Samru took the unusual step of converting to Catholicism, an act as much of religious conviction as of political imagination. Though she shared no tongue with the priest who baptized her, and despite disapproval for having retained an Islamic appearance even after her conversion, the begum spent lakhs of rupees on Christian institutions (besides exchanges with the pope), constructing also what is considered north India’s largest church. All the same, becoming a Christian seemed a suitable strategy for a woman unhappy with Islamic restraints on her sex: Catholicism gave her the freedom she required to rule Sardhana while creating a legitimate (and distinct) space in contemporary Hindustani politics.
Begum Samru held court, wore a turban, smoked a hookah, converted from Islam to Catholicism, and dubbed herself Joanna, after Joan of Arc.
As a military commander, Begum Samru showed all the qualities that marked leadership in her tumultuous age. When it was necessary, she could be ruthless: Two maidservants who set fire to her buildings were buried alive at her orders.
Physical Characteristics: Begum Samru had slight stature and fair complexion.
Quotes from others about the person
"Begum Samru was able to use the moment of political transition to insert herself within those corridors of power and negotiate a space for herself." - Chakravarti
"She did not adhere to the traditional perception of women as self-sacrificing; instead, she did whatever was necessary to survive as a ruler." - Archana Garodia-Gupta
"She knew that the British would be the rulers in future, and one could assume that her religious conversion was to appease to them. Or, maybe she truly found her path in being a Catholic." - Garodia-Gupta
"Begum Samru was only emancipated Indian female most of these foreign acolytes would ever meet. They hung on her every word as she told of an age few could recall, of armies and atrocities, gallantry and treachery." - Julia Keay
"She never ate in the presence of her guests, and accounts vary as to whether she ever touched the wine... but when the memsahibs withdrew, she gestured to a servant to bring her hookah and then settled down to a companionable smoke amid the men and their cheroots." - Julia Keay
In 1767, a 45-year old European mercenary soldier named Walter Reinhardt Sombre from Luxemburg was stationed in Delhi and visited the Brothel area of Old Delhi where he met Begum who was then just 14 years old. Charmed by her beauty, he took her away with him. She started living with him as his lover and that he later married her.
