1 74 A Short History of the Sikhs.
2 flood, and he sent a message to Ranjit Singh prom-
3 ising him the grant of the city of Lahore if he
4 would recover the guns and convey them to Peshawar.
5 The request was readily complied with, and the Shah
6 was as good as his word, though the grant meant
7 little more to Ranjit Singh than the permission to
8 take possession of Lahore if he had the power, and
9 to keep it if he could. This, however, was all that
10 he wanted ; and armed with the Shah's authority,
11 and supported by Sada Kour and her troops, he
12 appeared before the city. As he had expected, the
13 gates were at once opened to him, the people welcomed
14 him as a deliverer, and the Bhangi sirdars fled with-
15 out offering a show of resistance.
16 This achievement aroused bitter jealousy amongst
17 the Sikh sirdars, and a coalition, headed by the
18 Bhangis and Ramgarhias, was formed to wrest
19 Lahore from Ranjit Singh, and to check his growing
20 power. But neither of these things was accomplished ;
21 in fact, the coalition defeated its own object. The
22 Maharaja — the title was assumed by Ranjit Singh
23 in 1801 — did not wait to be attacked. Placing
24 himself at the head of a large force, he fell upon and
25 subdued one Bhangi stronghold after another; and
26 at last, allying himself with the Ahluwalia misl,
27 marched against and captured the holy city of
28 Amritsar.1 The Bhangi confederacy never recovered
29 from this blow ; and in the course of a few years all
30 1 On this occasion the famous Zamzama gun, which had been
31 captured from Ahmad Shah in 1764, fell into the hands of Ranjit
32 Singh. It was afterwards mounted on the walls of Miiltan, and, on
33 the fall of that fortress in 1849, came into the possession of the
34 British. It now stands in front of the Lahore Museum.