The first Afghan War, in 1841-42, had cost us five thousand men, sixty thousand camels, twelve millions sterling, and the spectacle of a British Army doomed to death, by the incapacity of its leaders, amid the snows of Afghánistán. The Sind War, which followed as one of the consequences of Lord Auckland's Afghan invasion, had, in 1843, added the Lower Indus Valley to the British dominions, at the expense of British justice and good faith. The first Sikh War, in 1845-46, annexed the eastern districts of the Punjab to the British possessions, and placed the upper plains of the Indus and Five Rivers under a British Protectorate.
Lord Hardinge, on assuming the government of the Sikh territories during the minority of the infant Sikh Sovereign, Dhulip Singh, had partially disbanded the Sikh troops, and materially strengthened our own army. The Sikh troops were cut down from 85,000 men and 350 guns concentrated in a commanding position, to 24,000 men and 50 guns, dispersed over the whole Punjab, Our own army, even after a recent reduction of 50,000 men, was still 70,000 stronger than at the last Indian peace[1].
The permanent strength which Lord Hardinge believed that he had given to the British Army of India was not, however, the strength of additional
- ↑ These and the foregoing figures I take from Sir Edwin Arnold's Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration, vol. i, pp. 54-57, ed. 1862.
