1 HISTORY OF THE SIKHS. 77
2 Having thus entered a little more minutely into
3 the action at Moodkee and supplied our readers
4 with the details of it, we must now return to the
5 position of the contending forces at Feerozshuhur,
6 where a much more fierce encounter was awaiting
7 the British than they had met with even at Mood- Moodkee,
8 kee, though that battle will be recorded as one of ba*d-cantest-
9 the most hard contested which had hitherto oc-
10 curred in India, and that with a people who ex-
11 celled in numbers, and in the possession of the
12 implements of war, the brave troops hitherto van-
13 quished by the British under a Clive, a Wellesley,
14 a Wellington, a Combermere, or the chief who
15 had led the army of the Sutlej to a victory through
16 a fiercer struggle than he had encountered with his
17 brave army on the field of Maharajpoor ; where the Moodkee and
18 indomitable bravery of troops capturing the guns nai
19 at the point of the bayonet proved the obstinacy
20 and determination of the Mahrattas. These people
21 though brave soldiers, had encountered the British
22 before, and though detérmined to try their strength,
23 yet they must have been sensible that they might
24 be vanquished; but not so with the Sikhs, whose rhe arrogance
25 confidence in their own strength and resources *74c°ucen
26 induced them to look upon the. British as hardly
27 their equals, and determined to bring the test of
28 their superiority to a fierce trial. They might be
29 beaten, nay, exterminated ; but to fight and try the
30 issue of the battle they firmly resolved upon, in
31 spite of every advice offered to them by their great
32 leader, Runject Singh, while alive, and that of the