1 180 A Short History of the Sikhs.
2 been carried : — " The battle raged with uncontrollable
3 fury from right to left. The Sikhs, even when at
4 particular points their entrenchments were mastered
5 with the bayonet, strove to regain them by the fiercest
6 conflict, sword in hand. Nor was it until the cavalry
7 of the left, under Major-General Sir Joseph Thack-
8 well, had moved forward and ridden through the
9 opening in the entrenchments made by our sappers,
10 in single file, and re-formed as they passed them ;
11 and the 3rd Dragoons — whom no obstacle usually
12 held formidable by horse appears to check — had on
13 this day, as at Firozshahr, galloped over and cut
14 down the obstinate defenders of batteries and forced
15 works, and until the full weight of three divisions of
16 infantry, with every field artillery gun that could be
17 sent to their aid, had been cast into the scale, that
18 victory finally declared for the British. The fire of
19 the Sikhs first slackened and then nearly ceased, and
20 the victors then pressing them on every side, pre-
21 cipitated them in masses over their bridge and into
22 the Sutlej, which a sudden rise of seven inches had
23 rendered hardly fordable." 1
24 On the British side the killed and wounded num-
25 bered nearly 2,500 ; while the Sikh losses amounted
26 to over 8,000 men, of whom a large number perished
27 in their efforts to cross the swollen river. On the
28 evening of the 10th the British force began to move
29 across the Sutlej, and by the 13th it had encamped
30 at Kasiir, thirty-six miles from Lahore, without
31 another shot having been fired against it.
32 1 Dispatch of Lord Gough to the Governor-General of India, dated
33 February 13, 1846.