retain their weapons. The rest of the Punjab was sternly disarmed, and no fewer than 120,000 matchlocks, swords, daggers, and murderous implements of ancient curious kinds, were delivered up through the village heads and the town police.
The Sikh army was disbanded and scattered. But the best of the soldiery were re-enlisted under the British colours or incorporated into the Punjab military police. The Khálsá, or central governing body of the Sikh confederacy, was completely broken up, and its chiefs and fief-holders were deprived of their military grants of land, and reduced to the position of private persons. In three years after the conquest, the Punjab Board were able to truly report that 'in no part of India had there been more perfect quiet than in the territories lately annexed.'
This great task had not been accomplished without several conflicts between Lord Dalhousie and his advisers and lieutenants. The Punjab with its native states, as now constituted, has an area of 142,499 square miles and a population of 22¾ millions. The territories which Lord Dalhousie annexed in 1849 made up about 73,000 square miles: nearly 1½ times the area of England and Wales. Dalhousie, although he rejected Sir Charles Napier's idea of a military government, was quite willing to accept any features of Sir Charles Napier's system in Sind which seemed
