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414 culture. At the Lahore court intrigue and jealousies prevailed; and in the outlying districts there was more than one focus of discontent.

The assassination of two British officers at Multan in April, 1848, was the signal for an insurrection that led to a general rising of the military classes, a reassemblage of the old Khālsa Sikh army, and a second trial of strength with the British troops. In January, 1849, the English general, who displayed very little tactical skill, lost twenty-four hundred men and officers before he won the day at Chilianwala; but in the following month the Sikh army, after a stubborn combat, was at last overthrown by so shattering a defeat at Gujarat that the English were left undisputed masters of the whole country.

These transactions followed the natural course of events and consequences. Contact had produced collision, and collision had terminated in the overthrow of an unstable and distracted government. The English had thus been compelled to break down with their own hands the very serviceable barrier against inroads from Central Asia that had been set up for them by the Sikhs fifty years earlier in North India. It was impossible for the British to leave the country vacant and exposed to an influx of foreign Mohammedans; and it had become a matter of growing importance that England should have the gates of India in her own custody; for the line of Russian advance toward the Oxus, though distant, was declared; and in the last war the Afghans had joined the Sikhs as auxiliaries.