fallen foe, or to record the acts of heroism displayed not only individually but almost collectively by the Sikh sardars and army; and I declare, were it not from a deep conviction that my country's good demanded the sacrifice, I could have wept to witness the fearful slaughter of so devoted a body of men."
The Sikh army—the weapon which Ranjit Singh had so well forged—turned against his best friends, the British, who met in it the hardest fighting enemy they had encountered in the East, and whose gallantry and steadiness in action excited the admiration of their opponents just as that of their remote ancestors the Getæ or Indo-Scythic warriors at Arbela, twenty-two centuries before, when fighting under Darius against the Macedonian phalanx, drew forth the praise of the great Alexander. The names of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, Aliwal, and Sobraon have rung in history. A great tradition connected with the rise of our Indian Empire hovers round them, immortalising
