By W..W. Ravenhill, Esq. 205 
battle raged with inconceivable fury from right to left. The Sikhs, 
even when at particular points their entrenchments were mastered 
with the bayonet, strove to regain them by the fiercest conflict 
sword in hand. Nor was it until the cavalry of the left, under 
Major-General Sir Joseph Thackwell, had moved forward and ridden 
through the openings in the entrenchments made by our sappers in 
single file, and re-formed as they passed them ; and the 3rd Dragoons 
—whom no obstacle usually held formidable by horse appears to 
eheck—had on this day, as at Ferozeshah, galloped over and cut 
_ down the obstinate defenders of batteries and field-works ; and until 
the full weight of three divisions of infantry, with every field artillery 
- gun which could be sent to their aid, had been cast into the scale, 
that victory finally declared for the British. The fire of the Sikhs 
first slackened, and then nearly ceased ; and the victors then pressing 
them in masses over their bridge, and into the Sutlej, which a 
sudden rise of seven inches had rendered hardly fordable. In their 
efforts to reach the right bank through the deepened water, they 
suffered from our horse artillery a terrible carnage. Hundreds fell 
under this cannonade; hundreds upon hundreds were drowned in 
_ attempting the perilous passage. Their awful slaughter, confusion 
_ and dismay were such as would have excited compassion in the 
hearts of their generous conquerors, if the Khalsa troops (the Sikhs) 
had not, in the earlier part of the action, sullied their gallantry by 
slaughtering and barbarously mangling every wounded soldier, 
whom, in the vicissitudes of attack, the fortune of war left at their 
mercy. I must pause in this narrative especially to notice the de- 
termined hardihood and bravery with which our two battalions of 
Ghoorkas, the Sirmoor and the Nussceree, met the Sikhs, wherever 
‘they were opposed to them. Soldiers of small stature but in- 
domitable spirit, they vied in ardent courage in the charge with the 
_ Grenadiers of our own nation, and armed with the short weapon of 
eir mountains were a terror to the Sikhs throughout this great 
eomba .” The battle was over by 11 in the morning, and the 
Khalsa bridge burnt. 
_ In mentioning the services of the various officers, Sir H. Gough 
82 ys, “* Brigadier the Hon. T, Ashburnham maneuvred with great: 
