THE FIRST SIKH WAR. 25 



the wild irregulars in all the fanciful WTi-uniformity 

 of their native costume : yet these last are the 

 men / fancy for service. Altogether, it was a 

 most interesting sight, either to the historian or 

 soldier, especially as one remembered that these 

 were no men of parade, but assembled here to 

 be poured across the Satlaj at a word." 



After the death of Ranjit Singh, the Lio7i of the 

 Punjab, in 1839, the kingdom he had founded by 

 force or fraud between the Sulaiman Hills and the 

 Satlaj speedily became a prey to all the evils that 

 spring from incapable rulers and a disciplined sol- 

 diery conscious of its own strength, and bound 

 together by the heritage of a common creed. The 

 Sikh army of the Khalsa, or " Chosen," combined 

 the religious fervour of Cromwell's Ironsides with 

 the military pride and restlessness of Roman prae- 

 torians or Turkish janissaries. This army had be- 

 come a terror to their nominal masters at Lahore, 

 who made a show of governing the Punjab on 

 behalf of its child sovereign, Dhulip Singh. 



Thousands of these soldiers were encamped round 

 Lahore, clamouring for the pay which a needy and 

 thriftless Government was quite unable to grant 

 them. If the whole Sikh army would only march 

 across the Satlaj, they might count on getting 

 all they wanted from the plundered cities of 

 Hindustan. 



Such was the bait held out to these sturdy 

 rioters by some of the leading spirits in the 

 Lahore Darbar, or Council of State, who hoped 

 thus to rid themselves of a formidable nuisance, 

 and at the same time to maintain a secret under- 

 standing with the Government of India. In due 



