Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/405

Rh and the preparations for invading Russia soon provided Napoleon with such ample occupation in Europe that he abandoned his schemes of Asiatic adventure. Russia was now England's ally in a grand coalition against France; she made peace with Persia, and our apprehensions of danger from that quarter subsided when the long war which ended with Napoleon's overthrow left us in undisturbed possession of India. The sea-roads were guarded by an irresistible navy; the total collapse of the French Empire, the exhaustion of all the great European states, the manifest decay and immobility that were spreading through Central Asia – all these circumstances united to secure us fourteen years of comparative freedom from movements or demonstrations affecting our immunity from molestation by land, and ending only in 1826, when Russia attacked Persia, thus inaugurating a long stride eastward in 1828, which revived British anxieties.

The sole result of all the missions sent from India was, indirectly, the ratification of a substantial frontier settlement, in 1809, with Ranjit Singh, who, under pressure, renounced his pretensions to sovereignty over certain Sikh chiefships south of the Sutlaj. From that time forward his friendly relations with the English on his southeastern frontier, combined with the civil strife within Afghanistan on the northwest, afforded him the means and opportunity of extending his territory across the Indus, of annexing Kashmir, and of building up the Sikh power with a solidity that kept it standing in alliance with the English for nearly forty years.