1 HISTORY OF THE SIKHS. 153
2 the British, who would thus enter the works
3 with themselves, before they had time to organize
4 any resistance, They wisely abstained, therefore,
5 from any nocturnal sortie, and concentrated all
6 their resources within the entrenchment. No
7 Sikhs were ever to be seen on the face of the
8 country lying between Feerozpore and Akhberwala.
9 Immense supplies of grain and other articles of
10 food, were therefore brought daily from the one
11 place to the other, without any other guard than
12 a few irregular horse, who could have offered no
13 resistance to a large body of Sikh cavalry.
14 As already stated, the British troops longed for
15 an engagement, but they most assuredly did not
16 anticipate the kind of encounter which awaited
17 them at Sobraon. Few could conceive a more
18 desperate opposition than that experienced at the attack on
19 Feerozshuhur; but circumstances which could Mapes
20 not be foreseen, rendered the battle of Sobraon one
21 of those, in which the assailants suffer for some
22 time very severely, without having it in their rhe reason of
23 power to make any effectual return. Walls, only "*
24 to be surmounted by scaling ladders, afforded a
25 secure protection for triple lines of musketry pour-
26 ing their murderous fire on their assailants, while
27 the latter could not risk a shot with the slightest
28 chance of its doing any execution.