1 HISTORY OF THE SIKHS. 159
2 aided by a rocket battery, it would have been auting en
3 visionary to expect that they could have silenced expected to
4 the fire of seventy pieces, behind well constructed Sikh batteries.
5 batteries of earth, planks, and fascines, or dislodge
6 troops covered either by redoubt or epaulments, or
7 within a treble line of trenches.”*
8 Tej Singh, by all accounts, maintained his confi- deeoa Te
9 dence in the strength of his position when thus Singh, sup-
10 attacked ; and his French officer, Monsieur Mouton, papers
11 is said to have assured him that it was utterly A oa
12 possible for the British to make good their entrance.
13 Compared with Feerozshuhur, the works at Sobraon
14 were fortifications, in the construction of which no
15 labour had been spared; the utmost ingenuity of
16 the Sikhs and their European advisers was exerted
17 to render this, their last stronghold, impregnable ;
18 and so the Frenchman believed it to be.
19 “ The effect of the British cannonade was, as The British
20 cannonade
21 has since been proved by an inspection of the camp, severely felt,
22 but the issue
23 ‘most severely felt by the enemy; but it soon be- must be de-
24 came evident that the issue of this struggle must snake ail
25 be brought to the arbitrament of musketry and the hay
26 bayonet."*
27 Thus, notwithstanding the large field of artillery British can-
28 now possessed by the British; the same arm which Beil by some
29 had gained the fields of Moodkee and Feerozshuhur shoctduratons
30 was to be again employed. It has been imagined *°""*?*
31 that the artillery practice might have been longer
32 continued, but there is reason to believe that the