1 198 A Short History of the Sikhs.
2 aged to dispatch an urgent message for assistance to
3 Lieutenant Edwardes, the officer in charge of Derajat,
4 the district between the Indus and the Sulaiman
5 Mountains forming the western frontier of the
6 Punjab. Edwardes, with the 400 men who com-
7 posed his escort, at once set out for Multan. But
8 it was not until he was joined by General Cortland
9 from Bannu, and the loyal Pathan troops of the
10 Nawab of Bahawalpur, that he was able to com-
11 mence active hostilities against the 4,000 men whom
12 Mulraj brought out to meet him. When thus rein-
13 forced, he succeeded, though his little army was still
14 many times outnumbered by that of the rebel leader,
15 in winning two pitched battles, one on June 18, at
16 Kineri, sixty miles from Multan, and the other on
17 July 1, at Saddosam, almost within sight of the
18 city. After his second defeat, Mulraj shut himself
19 up in his fortress, while Edwardes sent an urgent
20 appeal to the Resident at Lahore for siege guns and
21 additional troops.
22 At Lahore the Multan outbreak was regarded as
23 an act of hostility, not against the British, but against
24 the Sikh government, and the only assistance that
25 had, so far, been sent to Edwardes consisted of Sikh
26 troops under the command of Sirdar Sher Singh.
27 The new demand for a European force and a siege-
28 train Lord Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, was
29 against complying with, partly because he deemed
30 the season unfavourable for the movement of troops,
31 and partly because he wished to avoid a step likely
32 to precipitate a general rising, to meet which his
33 preparations were not yet complete. It was not