1 192 A Short History of the Sikhs.
2 contemptuous replies, and eventually carried her
3 insolence to the extent of inducing the youthful
4 Maharaja to defy in open durbar the Resident and
5 his Council. This crowning insult destroyed any
6 remnants of patience lurking in the mind of
7 Colonel Lawrence, and the " Messalina of the Punjab "
8 was forthwith placed in a palanquin and conveyed
9 under a strong escort to the fortress of Sheikhpura.
10 Even here she did not cease her activities, and in
11 the end she was carried across the frontier, and
12 placed in confinement at Benares.
13 But despite the spirit of discontent which pervaded
14 practically every section of the Sikh community,
15 there reigned, at the close of 1847, such peace and
16 quietness in the Punjab as that country had not
17 known for years past. To the ordinary observer
18 the British protectorate appeared an unqualified
19 success, and as such it was regarded both in
20 England and India. Even Lord Hardinge, before
21 setting out for England in January 1848, "assured
22 Lord Dalhousie, his successor, that so far as human
23 foresight could predict, ' it would not be necessary
24 to fire a gun in India for seven years to come.' " *
25 Colonel Lawrence, who laid down his office at the same
26 time, looked forward, though with less confidence, to
27 the success of the scheme he had laboured so hard to
28 establish. " I can certify," he wrote, after six months
29 as Resident at Lahore, " to this people having settled
30 down in a manner that could never have been hoped
31 or believed of them." But, with a true insight into
32 the dangers of the situation, he added that " if every
33 i The Marquess of Dalhousie, by Sir W. W. Hunter, p. 62.