1 HISTORY OF THE SIKHS, 49
2 cipated, that the Khulsa troops would be suffered
3 to recross the Sutlej] without a desperate struggle,
4 and yet this opinion was cherished by many.
5 The Maharajah devoted the greatest attention to Great atten-
6 his ordnance department, and constructed an im- hy Ronen ce
7 mense number of guns in his arsenal at Lahore, mie Arlen
8 under the superintendence of Monsieur Court, a
9 scientific French officer, many years in his employ;
10 but he never intrusted any command in the artil- 4 4 i504 never
11 lery to Europeans, and it is said that Scindia had terantrush the
12 advised him to keep this powerful arm in the pos- to Europeans.
13 session: of his own people. Many Sikh Sirdars,
14 generals and commandants had numerous guns ;
15 but the chief artillery officer was a Mussulman, the
16 well-known Sultan Mahmood, a brother of Dost
17 Mohummud. The attachment of our native artil- Attachment of
18 lery-men to their guns is well known, and on the wet cae
19 occasion of two guns being taken from Captain
20 Johnson’s troop, for the purpose of being presented
21 to the Maharajah by Lord William Bentinck at
22 Roopur in 1831, the Native officers were so much
23 affected, that they actually shed tears, and said “ it
24 was unlucky to give away guns to which they had
25 been so long attached, and which they loved as
26 their own brothers.” An estimate might have been
27 formed of the number of guns possessed by Runjeet
28 Singh, from the circumstance of his usually having
29 one hundred pieces of ordnance at the celebration of ada ee
30 is em-
31 of the Dusserah festival, and which kept up an in- ployed by. ‘
32 . a : unjeet Sing!
33 cessant fire with blank cartridges, while twenty at the eelebra-
34 ion of the
35 thousand muskets responded with continued and Dusserab.
36 TOT oT 7