1 The Second Sikh War. 205
2 surrender and giving up all their arms. He says
3 that Sher Singh treats him like a brick; he has
4 twenty men to guard him all day and night, and
5 such is their idea of us, a bottle of brandy is placed
6 on his breakfast-table every morning. They boast
7 that they are not at all afraid of us, and if it were
8 not for those madmen of Europeans, they would
9 thrash our sepoys hollow." * Our British subaltern
10 was right. Bowie was instructed to inform Sher
11 Singh that the Government of Her Majesty the
12 Queen was not in the habit of making terms with
13 a rebel in arms.
14 The news of the capitulation of Multan had taken
15 four days to reach the British camp. The Bombay
16 column had joined General Whish on December 26,
17 and on the following day the siege of the fortress
18 had begun. Even with a force of 30,000 men
19 and 60 siege-guns, a whole month elapsed before
20 Mulraj was driven to surrender. The city was
21 captured on January 2, a British shell having ex-
22 ploded the powder magazine of the besieged ; but
23 the citadel still held out, and it was not until the
24 22nd, "after forty thousand shot and shell had been
25 poured into Multan," that the defence was abandoned,
26 and Mulraj delivered himself up to the British. He
27 had put up a gallant defence, and great must have
28 been the eagerness of the British soldiers to set
29 eyes on the man who had so long held them at bay.
30 We can well imagine how "his spare figure and
31 dignified air excited their comment and admiration as
32 he rode down the long files of British troops from
33 1 Leaves from the Journal of a Subaltern, p. 124-5.