Kabul), one of whom held Peshawar as a vassal of the Sikhs, while his brother, Amir Dost Mahomed, ruled Kabul—he who played such an important part against the British in the first Afghan war. He plotted to recover Peshawar. This decided Ranjit Singh in 1834 regularly to annex it. He met the Afghans under the Amir and forced them to retreat. When hotly pushing on to retrieve a check to his advanced troops, he boldly at much loss forded the Indus at the head of 15,000 cavalry, crossing his light guns on elephants, and swept through the valley. Another and last attempt was made in 1837 by the Afghans, led by the Amir, to recover Peshawar, when again they were defeated and retreated precipitately. Fierce and sanguinary were the struggles for the possession of the northern gate into the Punjab. There the Sikhs decisively overcame the Pathans in a deadly tug of war, and also stemmed the tide of Wahabi invasion so fraught with danger to India.
