1 CHAPTER IX.
2 DECLINE OF THE SIKH MONARCHY.
3 On the 28th July, Prince Kharak was installed as
4 ruler of the Punjab, his minister, Dhian Singh,
5 having taken every precaution to secure his peaceful
6 succession. For a time all went well; and Dhian
7 Singh found, as he had anticipated, that the new king
8 was a puppet in his hands. But this did not last
9 long. Another aspirant to power appeared in the
10 person of Cheyt Singh, a man of low birth and high
11 ambitions, who contrived to win the favour of Kharak
12 Singh, and whose influence over the half-witted
13 monarch began rapidly to eclipse that of the prime
14 minister. Feeling his position growing daily more
15 insecure, Dhian Singh prevailed upon Prince Nao
16 Nihal, Kharak's son, to join him in a plot for the
17 destruction of the obnoxious favourite and the
18 deposition of the Maharaja. Nao Nihal had no love
19 for the Jammu brothers ; but, dreading the results
20 of Cheyt Singh's intrigues, he lent himself to the
21 scheme; and, in the month of October, a party of
22 soldiers, headed by the prince and the minister,
23 entered by night into the royal palace, murdered
24 Cheyt Singh, and made the Maharaja a prisoner.