This is a story of adventures and survival, is a story of victory and defeat. A story of battelfields, of dreams, of struggles, of gains and losses. But, above all, this is a love story. Love for a woman, for a man. Love for a country. Love for freedom.
A story that could have been written by a great novelist of past centuries, Alexandre Dumas or Emilio Salgari would have loved it. And is also the story of a thread, an invisible, thin but resistant thread: a thread that has unraveled for four generations without ever falling apart or breaking. A thread, unknown to most, that unites Saint Tropez, France to India through space and time. This is the story of Jean Francois Allard, Bannu Pan Dei and Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The story virtually begins on the battlefield of Waterloo, after the defeat of Napoleon. Jean Francois Allard, captain of the Seventh Hussars decorated with the Legion of Honor from the hands of the Emperor himself, had survived the massacre of his regiment because he was not there: he had been sent off the battlefield to bring orders.
After the defeat, like many officers, he had been confined in his place of birth: Saint Tropez. Little more than a village of fishermen at that time. A village from where, if you were young and ambitious, if you had lived the dream of the Emperor, you could only dream of running away. Jean Francois, who had left the place many years before thinking he would leave for good, could not bear the inactivity, could not bear the confinement. He kept dreaming: dreaming to join Giuseppe Bonaparte who had fled to America and from there start a new life. Trying to get out of there, Allard managed to obtain a permission to visit his uncle in Livorno, Italy: from there, he thought, he could catch a ship and go to America. But, for many reasons, it wasn’t possible. He missed the ship, could not stay more there. He went to Sicily then, then left Italy. Away, far away from France, from Saint Tropez, from that quiet, abscondend life. He was a soldier, so he started looking for an Army. Persia was his first stop, where Abbas Mirza was ruling and where Jean Francois started serving in the Army of the Crown Heir: for a short while, because the English did not trust or want a captain of Napoleon leading troops, and forced the king to fire him. Roads, and dust, and adventures, accompanied by another Napoleon soldier, Jean Baptiste Ventura. Hopes and despair.
The road to East stopped in Punjab: the independent kingdom of Punjab, led by the great Maharaja Ranjit Singh. After assuring himself of their credentials, the Maharaja assigned to Allard and Ventura the task for reorganising his Special Forces. Allard was made in charge of Cavalry and Ventura was to supervise the infantry. Together, the two were responsible for the Fauj-i-Khas, a kind of elite commando unit with one of the finest and toughest men on board that earned the respect even of the East India Company forces in subsequent battles. The cavalry (Fransisi Sowar) was originally formed by two regiments raised by Allard on 16 July 1822-Rajman Khas Lansia and Rajman Daragun. In place of the traditional ghorcharas, who protested against the new drills, fresh recruitments were made. Allard raised another regiment of Dragoons in 1823. By 1825, the Fauj-i-Khas (infantry, cavalry and artillery) was 5000-6000 strong. The training was based on a French pamphlet Allard had brought with him.
All the words of command were in French. Allard commanded the whole force, and took orders only from the Maharaja. Ventura, under Allard’s orders, was in charge of the infantry. The uniform of the Fauj-i-Khas was inspired by the uniform of Napolean’s Grande Armee; the standards of the regiments were the tricolour French flag, inscribed with the motto Vaheguru Ji Ki Fateh, and each regiment had the Imperial Eagles. Sikh cavalry, under Allard, had achieved a very high level of efficiency. His Cuirassiers, a “turbaned edition” of the steel-clad horsemen of the Garde Imperiale, were the most noble-looking troops on parade. The men and horses were well picked, their accoutrements were of the finest quality and the regularity and the order in which they manoeuvred could scarcely be matched by the East India Company’s cavalry across the border. Besides the European form of drill, Allard introduced the use of carabine among the Sikh troops. Four years later Allard and Ventura were joined by the Neapolitan Paolo Di Avitabile, who later became Governor of Peshawar and a legend, known with the name of Abu Tabela.
Allard however, like many of the foreign generals, was no ordinary soldier. He was a cultured man, a man who writed poetry, a numismatic expert. Someone who had started studying Urdu and Persian. A charming man, they say. Who soon becomes one of the Maharaja’s closest friends. The years go on, quickly. Jean Francois now owns a stunning palace in Lahore next to the Anarkali Tomb, and has a satisfactory life. when Ranjit Singh sends him to Chamba, at the court of his cousin Raja Menga Ram for an official visit. To collect taxes, maybe. And here a little mistery starts. Dumas or Salgari would introduce at this point and present in the best way young Bannu, one of the daughters of the king of Chamba.
I can only say, from her portraits, she had big, sweet black eyes and an alluring half smile. I can only say this because we know very little of this part of the story, and the legends circulating into the family don’t really help to clarify it. We don’t really know how things went. The only thing we know for sure is that when Allard went back to Lahore, the twelve years old Bannu was travelling with him. She ran away with him, maybe. Or maybe she was taken as an hostage. What is certain is that, a year later, Jean Francois married the young Bannu: a love marriage, for which, they say, Bannu was disowned by her family. The two were happy, though. In the splendid palace of Lahore, where Bannu gave birth to seven children and where they occupied an important place at the court of Ranjit Singh.
One day, however, General Allard witnessed a sati, quite common in India at those times, and he was shocked. He began to imagine what could and would happen to Bannu if he died in India on the battlefield, and then decided to take the whole family back to France, back to to Saint Tropez. Where he built a palace for his beloved Bannu and for the kids. A palace where he barely lived, but that still stands (reduced half of the original size) at the centre of the little French town. Leaving his family and half of his heart in France, Allard returns to Lahore and to his army. To his palace, to the battlefield. He will return to France only one more time before dying, in 1839, in Peshawar.
The Maharaja had in fact sent General Allard to help General Avitabile to subdue the unruly frontier tribes. His body was brought to Lahore with full military honour with ceremonies and gun salutes all the way to the destination and where he had been buried with honors worthy of a royal prince. Even though Pakistan, after partition, did not bother to honor the memory of the French general, same way it did not bother to keep the memory of Ranjit Singh: Allard’s grave is abandoned, the palace has been taken by the Government. But let’s go back to France. To the other side of the sea, in Saint Tropez, where Bannu who owns, beside the palace, also a beautiful country house and many acres of land that touch the sea, walks every day to the beach. There she stops for hours, they say, looking at the deep blue expanse of water. Water that divides but at the same time, in some way, connects her to her husband. Water that she hopes will bring Jean Francois back, water that brings instead, at a point, the news of his death.
Bannu, Bannu the princess who loves red and bright colors, the one who’s fond of intricate and beautiful embroideries, Bannu with her many children is a widow now and will have to raise her kids alone. Knowing of Jean Francois death, she takes a decision: she will convert to Catholicism because, in her own words, when she dies “I’ll be in the same Heaven as my husband”. Her personal way, says Henry Prevost-Allard who directly descends from Bannu and Jean Francois, of sacrificing herself on the death of her husband. That husband for whom she had abandoned everything without looking back and to whom she longed to be united forever. Of her, in the family, remain the portraits depicting her alone or with her children. Shawls and dresses with exquisite embroideries, vestiges of a time that seems to belong to fairy tales.
There are still the shoes with a tiny heel of little Marie-Charlotte, her first daughter who died just over two years old and is buried in Lahore next to her father. There’s also Jean Francois’ Legion d’Honneur, and is odd to think Napoleon actually touched that. But above all, remains the very strong bond with India transmitted to her children and from them to their children: a bond still so strong that the Allards continue to consider themselves, as they always did, partly Indians. The Pandey palace (or Pan Dei, as they say in French) is still there, even tough has been sold many years ago and now converted in an horrible pretentious hotel where any memory of Bannu has been removed. But Bannu and the general, along with the Maharaja Ranjit Singh, still live, in the form of marble busts, in a pretty little garden in Saint Tropez. They live in street names, in the downtown buildings. In the family memories transmitted and carefully preserved, in the travels of the Allards to India on the traces of memory, in the relationship of the Allards and of the town of Saint Tropez with Chamba and with the Indian state of Punjab, with the Sikh community all over the world that still honours General Allard and is still close to the family. Pakistan, henry was telling me, never bothered to acknoledge any connection of sort. Bannu is buried in a stone grave in the local cemetery, which overlooks the sea. Forever close to that deep blue she loved so much, forever reunited to her Jean Francois. And I, I’ve always imagined her like this. At the sunset, in that golden hour that mekes the sea of Saint Tropez even more blu than it is, that light wich softens and blur the contours of sky and earth.
She wears one of her beautiful embroidered tusser shawls and stands upright, waiting. And perhaps looking towards India. Forever.
