The Story of the Guides | Page 6

needed lesson. It was now no longer an effete Sikh administration that
breakers of the law had to deal with, but the strong right arm and
warlike guile of the British officer, backed up by men who meant
fighting.
* * * * *
It was now the spring of 1848, and great events were brewing in the
Punjab. It was the lull between the two stormy gusts of the First and
Second Sikh Wars. To us at this date it does not seem to require the
omniscience of a prophet, prophesying after the event, to discover that
the settlement arrived at after the First Sikh War contained most of the
possible elements of an unpermanent nature. The Punjab was to remain
a Sikh province, with the infant son of the Lion of the Punjab as its
Sovereign; but the real ruler of the kingdom of the Sikhs was a British
officer, Henry Lawrence, at the head of a council of regency. To
support his authority British bayonets overawed the capital of the

Punjab, and assumed the mien of those who hold their place by right of
conquest. Attached to, but really at the head of, the minor centres of
administration, were men like Herbert Edwardes, Abbott, Taylor,
George Lawrence, Nicholson, and Agnew; the stamp of high-souled
pioneer who though alone, unguarded, and hundreds of miles from
succour, by sheer force of character makes felt the weight of British
influence in favour of just and cleanly government. And acting thus
honourably they were naturally detested by the lower class of venal
rulers, whose idea of government was, and is at all times and on all
occasions, by persuasion, force, or oppression, to squeeze dry the
people committed to their charge. Ready to the hand of a discontented
satrap, sighing for the illicit gains of a less austere rule, were the bands
of discharged soldiers, their occupation gone, who crowded every
village. It was easy to show, as was indeed the case, that these
discontented warriors owed their present plight to the hated English.
For while one of the conditions of peace, after the First Sikh War,
insisted on the disbandment of the greater portion of the formidable
Sikh army, the enlightened expedient of enlisting our late enemies into
our own army had not yet been acted upon to any great extent. To add
to the danger, every town and hamlet harboured the chiefs and people
of only a half-lost cause.
Thus the train of revolt was laid with an almost fatal precision
throughout the province, and only required the smallest spark to set it
alight. At the head of the incendiary movement was the Maharani, the
wife of the late and mother of the present infant king. Some inkling of
the plot, as could hardly fail, came to the British Resident's ears, the
primary step contemplated being to seduce from their allegiance the
Company's troops quartered at Lahore.
It was at this stage that a summons reached Lumsden to march with all
despatch to Lahore, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles. Here was
an opportunity of testing the value of a corps whose loyalty was above
question, and which from its composition could have no sympathy with
the movement. Consequently to Lumsden and his men was assigned the
difficult and unaccustomed duty of unravelling the plot and bringing
the conspirators to justice. Setting to work with his accustomed

readiness, and aided by one of his ressaldars,[2] Fatteh Khan, Khuttuk,
of whose prowess on many a bloody field the story will in due course
be told, Lumsden with characteristic alacrity undertook this intricate
and dangerous duty. His tracks covered, so to speak, by the
unsuspicious bearing of a blunt soldier in command of a corps of
rugged trans-border warriors, the unaccustomed rôle of a skilled
detective was carried out with promptness and success. In the course of
a very few days some of the Guides had obtained conclusive proof
regarding three matters: that the Maharani was at the head of the
movement, that her chief agent was the Sikh general Khan Singh, and
that the Company's troops had already been tampered with.
[2] Ressaldar, a native commissioned officer of cavalry.
As the plot thickened it was discovered that a meeting of the
conspirators, including fifty or sixty men of various regiments, was to
take place on a certain night at a certain place. Lumsden patiently
awaited the event, intending with the Guides to surround and capture
the conspirators red-handed. But, on the night fixed for the meeting, a
retainer of General Khan Singh came to visit one of the Guides, with
whom he was on friendly terms, and in the course of conversation made
it evident that his master was not easy in his mind, why not no one
could say,