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[1843-1844 A.D.]

was so broken that after two slight actions in June, when Shere Muhammed was routed and fled into the desert, the war was at an end.

Sind was annexed to the British possessions, and Sir Charles Napier was appointed its governor. He ruled the country for four years. He saw the great natural resources of Sind, and he led the way in rendering them available for commercial purposes by costly public works. The great branch of the Indus was opened to restore the fertility of Cutch. A gigantic pier was constructed at Karachi, by which a secure harbour was formed; and now the port is connected with the Indus by a railway. He made the revenue of the province sufficient to support the expenditure for its civil and political administration. But above all, he made the native population prosperous and contented under the British rule.

The state of the people under his wise government is thus described by Sir William Napier, the historian of the Sind War: "The labourer cultivates in security his land; the handicraftsman, no longer dreading mutilation of his nose or ears for demanding remuneration for his work, is returning from the countries to which he had fled, allured back by good wages and employment. Young girls are no longer torn from their families to fill the zenanas of the great, or sold into distant slavery. The Hindu merchant and Parsee trafficker pursue their vocation with safety and confidence; and even the proud Baluchi warrior, not incapable of noble sentiments, though harsh and savage, remains content with a government which has not meddled with his right of subsistence, but only changed his feudal ties into a peaceful and warlike dependence. He has, moreover, become personally attached to a conqueror whose prowess he has felt in battle, and whose justice and generosity he has experienced in peace."

The close of the year 1843 was marked by another great military success in India. The state of Gwalior was in 1804 placed under the protection of the British government. The successor of the rajah who died in 1843 was a minor, and a regent was appointed, with the approbation of the governorgeneral. The regent was expelled by the Mahrattas, and the British resident was insulted. Lord Ellenborough, to whom war appeared a noble pastime in which an amateur might laudably indulge, immediately sent Sir Hugh Gough from Agra with fourteen thousand troops; and on the 29th of December he fought the battle of Maharajpur, when the Mahrattas were defeated with great loss. On the same day, Major-General Grey also defeated the Mahrattas at Punniar. The usurping government immediately submitted, and the strong fortress of Gwalior was occupied by a British governor. These warlike proceedings, however brilliant and successful, were not acceptable to the majority in the direction of the East India Company.e [In the next year they recalled Lord Ellenborough.]

SIR HENRY HARDINGE AND THE WAR WITH THE SIKHS

Sir Henry Hardinge, who had served with great distinction in the Peninsular War, and at the famous battle of Waterloo, where he had the misfortune to lose his left arm, arrived at Calcutta in July, 1844, and began his government by such measures as were most likely to maintain peace, and advance the civilisation of the country.

Soon after his arrival he published a document stating that, in all appointments to public offices throughout Bengal, preference would be given to those among the candidates who had been educated in the government schools, especially to such as had distinguished themselves by their attainments; and

[1844 A.D.] this regulation was to apply to the subordinate as well as to the higher situations; so that in appointing a public officer, even of the lowest grade, a man who can read and write is preferred to one who cannot. But Sir Henry's pacific intentions were speedily frustrated, and he was compelled by circumstances to engage in a war, the final result of which not only extended the British dominion in India, but was probably also the means of preserving it.b

Although seceders in some respects from the orthodox religion of the Hindus, the Sikhs retain so many essential articles of the Brahmanical faith, that they may be justly classed among the Hindu races. In the original institution, the Sikhs were a religious community, who, in consonance with the benevolent objects of their founder, Nanak Shah, a native of the Punjab, proposed to abolish the distinctions of caste, and to combine Hindus and

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Mohammedans in a form of theistical devotion, derived from the blended abstractions of Sufiism and the Vedanta, and adapted to popular currency by the dissemination of the tenets which it inculcated, in hymns and songs composed in the vernacular dialects. These still constitute the scriptural authority, the Adi Granth, "the book" of the Sikhs. The doctrines and the influence of the teachers gave a common faith to the hardy and intrepid population of the upper part of the Punjab, and merged whatever distinctive appellations they previously possessed in the new general designation of "Sikhs," or "disciples," which thenceforth became their national denomi

nation.

As their numbers increased, they attracted the notice of the Mohammedan rulers, and were subjected to the ordeal of persecution. They had recourse to arms: under a succession of military leaders, the sword became inseparably associated in their creed with the book; and their ranks were recruited by fugitives from political disorder and fiscal oppression, who

[1844 A.D.]

readily adopted a faith which made but trifling demands upon their belief, and differed in few material points from that which they professed. Community of danger became the bond of both a religious and a social organisation, and a nation grew out of a sect. As the birth-place of their founder Nanak, and of the teacher who in a still greater degree gave to the Sikhs their characteristic peculiarities, Guru Govind Singh was the Punjab, it was there that they congregated and became organised, in spite of the efforts of the viceroys of Lahore for their suppression, until they had become masters of the whole of the country from the Sutlej to the Indus.g

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Sir A. Lyall calls attention to the fact that "an insurrectionary movement is always particularly dangerous if it takes a religious complexion.' The Sikhs regarded their first prophet as having suffered martyrdom, and there had been engendered in their minds an abiding hatred of Islam because of the persecution to which they had been subjected by the later Mughal emperors. Although they were repeatedly and severely punished, they as often rose up again against their oppressors. Ahmed Shah overthrew them with great slaughter in 1761; yet a year later they retaliated by killing his governor at Sirhind; and in 1764 they revolted at Kandahar. Ahmed Shah, however, managed to retain a fairly firm control over the Punjab to the time of his death in 1773; but his successors were less powerful, and the Sikh confederation became stronger and stronger."

RANJIT SINGH OF LAHORE

Ranjit Singh was about twelve years old when the death of his father, in 1792, left him in possession of a large territory, of which his mother assumed the government during his minority; and being an ambitious, unprincipled woman, she entirely neglected the education of her son, as a means of retaining her own power; so that the boy was not even taught to read or write. She became, at length, so unpopular that she was assassinated-some say with the connivance of her son, who assumed the government at the age of seventeen, a short time before the fall of Tipu Sahib.

It happened that young Ranjit had improved the opportunity to perform some service for Shah Zaman, king of the Afghans, who in return invested him with the government of Lahore [1798]; and after the dethronement of that monarch, Ranjit asserted his independence, and with the general consent of the Sikhs took the title King of Lahore, and soon established his authority over the whole of the Punjab.

Ranjit Singh, being anxious to keep on friendly terms with the British government, concluded a treaty with an envoy sent to his court for that purpose, by which he agreed not to attempt to extend his territories to the east, beyond the boundary of the Sutlej river; but this treaty did not limit his ambition in other directions; and during the civil wars of the Afghans that followed the dethronement of Shah Shuja, he made great additions to his kingdom, both on the south and the west. The unfortunate Shuja, when he fled from Kabul, had at first sought shelter at Lahore, where he was detained for some time as a prisoner, and compelled to give up all the jewels; so that Ranjit Singh became, in 1813, the possessor of the famous diamond Koh-i-nur, which signifies "the mountain of light." The murder of Fatteh Khan, and the consequent breaking up of the Afghan monarchy, opened the way for the further aggrandisement of the king of Lahore, who crossed the Indus, and thus possessed himself of Peshawar; about the same time he became master of the beautiful valley of Kashmir [1819].

THE SUCCESSORS OF RANJIT SINGH

[1845 A.D.]

The death of Ranjit Singh, in June, 1839, deprived the English of a powerful ally, and the eastern nations of one of their greatest rulers. This illustrious prince, the founder of a vast empire, which was destined to fall with him to whom it owed its rise, was succeeded by his son, Kharrak Singh, who survived him but a few months. The funeral obsequies of the latter were celebrated with the sacrifice of one of his wives, and on the same day his son and successor, Nihal, was accidentally killed by the falling of a beam, as he was passing under a gateway on his elephant. This event gave rise to much confusion in the state, as there was no direct heir to the crown; and one party supported Dhian Singh, who had been Ranjit's chief minister; while the opposite faction proclaimed Shir Singh, another prince of the family. Such was the state of affairs in the Punjab during the early part of the Afghan War, and consequently the Sikhs were too much occupied with their own troubles to afford that efficient aid which had been expected from the friendly alliance that had subsisted between the British government and the late monarch, Ranjit Singh.

The British government took no part in the dissensions that followed the death of Kharrak Singh, but maintained a friendly intercourse with Shir Singh in order to secure for the troops in Afghanistan a free passage through the Punjab, from Kabul to British India. The condition of the country was at this time extremely wretched. The great Sikh army-which had been organised by Ranjit Singh on the European system, and which in his time had been a powerful force, commanded by European officers-was now disbanded; the roads were infested with banditti, who plundered the villages with impunity, and in many instances set them on fire; so that the miserable peasants were wandering about everywhere, without the means of procuring food or shelter, while the government was too weak to afford them protection, and the king was regarded in the light of a usurper by many of the greatest nobles of the kingdom.

Shir Singh, however, maintained his seat on the throne until the month of September, 1843, when he was assassinated by some of the chiefs in his gardens, during the celebration of a public festival; his son shared the same fate. The citadel of Lahore was then seized by the conspirators; Dhian Singh, the minister, was shot, and the wives and children of the murdered princes were barbarously massacred. But the success of the insurgents was of short duration, for they were defeated before the close of the same day by the opposite faction, who captured their leader, and placed on the throne Dhuleep (Dhalip) Singh, a boy only seven years of age, said to be a son of the great Ranjit. The government was conducted by the minister Heera Singh, but the country remained in a very unsettled and miserable condition.

The rani, or queen-mother, who acted as regent for her son, disliked the minister, Heera Singh. He was murdered in a rebellion of the soldiers, of which she was believed to be the instigator, in the beginning of 1845; after which her own brother Jewahir, who had headed the insurrection, was made prime minister, and remained in power till the end of the year, when another revolution took place, and he met with a fate similar to that of his predecessor. The confusion and misrule that prevailed at Lahore, and certain indications of a hostile disposition towards the British government, induced the governor-general to send several regiments to the frontiers, to protect the British possessions in case of invasion, but with a full determination not to go to war unless the safety of the empire was endangered. The troops

[1845 A.D.]

were stationed on the banks of the Sutlej, which is the largest of the streams that flow into the Indus, and forms the eastern boundary of the Punjab, separating that country from the British territories.

While the governor-general was thus preparing for a war in the north of India, Sir Charles Napier was earning fresh laurels in Sind, where the British authority was still resisted by some of the mountain tribes, whose depredations in the districts around the locality prevented the establishment of good order, and acted as a check upon the industry of the peaceful inhabitants. [In January, 1845, Sir Charles succeeded in reducing them to submission.]

FIRST SIKH WAR (1845-1846 A.D.)

In the mean time, the signs of a war with the Sikhs were growing more manifest, till at length little doubt could be entertained that they were contemplating an attack

on the British territories. Although the rani and her ministers pretended to the British authorities that the hostile movements of the troops were not sanctioned by them, it is well known they encouraged the invasion as a means of ridding themselves of a turbulent soldiery, of whom they were in perpetual fear. In short, the war was determined upon at Lahore, and the Sikh army, consisting of not less than fifty thousand warlike men furnished with one hundred and eight pieces of artillery, and well trained in the European system of warfare, advanced toward the Sutlej, in hostile array. It appears to have been an unprovoked aggression

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on the part of the Sikhs; and as they sought the war without a reasonable pretext of quarrel or complaint, they are not entitled to that degree of compassion which the result would otherwise have called forth. The greatest cause of regret is that many valuable lives were sacrificed in the contest.

The Sikhs began to cross the river on the 11th of December, and took up a position at Ferozshaw, a village about ten miles from the populous town of Firozpur, and an equal distance from the village of Mudki, the British headquarters. Orders had been sent to the troops at Ambala to join the

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