1 HISTORY OF THE SIKHS. 177
2 suers must be deadly beyond conception; and such a Suartes
3 it was at Sobraon. None were spared, for they had Recountea
4 spared none. All shared the same fate.
5 In the whole annals of warfare, no parallel can
6 be found to the carnage at Sobraon, even when a:
7 battle has been fought under circumstances which
8 gave every possible advantage to the victors. In
9 vain did the Sirdars, (among whom was the brave rie
10 old Sham Singh Attareewala, who died nobly) Attareewala.
11 endeavour to rally the flying Sikhs. Onwards
12 they rushed, death and destruction following them,
13 and the deep waters of the Sutlej ready to engulph
14 their dead bodies, or finish what the musket and
15 grape had half performed. Five days after the
16 action, and when the walls of the entrenchment
17 had been nearly levelled with the ground, the sand-
18 bank in the middle of the river was completely
19 covered with dead Sikhs; and the ground on the Great loss of
20 left bank, and within the entrenchment, thickly hearers
21 strewed with carcasses of men and horses. Then
22 all was quiet; the European soldiers had been
23 carefully covered with earth, and at one spot near
24 the dry bed of the nullah, no fewer than twenty-
25 seven soldiers of the 1st European light infantry,
26 lay interred in a single grave. The Sikhs had
27 returned for their dead, and the Commander-in-
28 chief generously allowed them to carry off the
29 body of Sirdar Sham Singh, and other persons of
30 note; but the task was found irksome, and hundreds hore of the
31 of Sikhs were left as food for the jackal, the dog,
32 and the vulture.
33 VOL. I. N