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158 on his elephant, and the driver turned and carried his master from the field. The leader absent, the Sukarchakia troops fled, and the siege was raised; while Mahán Singh retired to Gujránwála, where he died three days afterwards, in the year 1792, when only twenty-seven years of age. Although Ranjít Singh was only twelve years old when his father died, he had already accompanied him on expeditions. A Sikh in those days learned the art of war early.

In 1790, his father was besieging Manchar, the fort of Ghulám Muhammad, chief of the powerful Mussulman tribe of Chattahs, with whom Mahán Singh was always fighting. Hashmat Khán, the uncle of the chief, climbed on the elephant on which Ranjít was sitting, and was in the act of killing the child, in which case the history of India and England would have been materially changed, when he was struck down by an attendant. When his father died the prospects of Ranjít Singh would have been very unfavourable had it not been for his mother-in-law, Sada Kour, who was not only a woman of the greatest ability, but had succeeded, as the widow and heiress of Sirdár Gurbuksh Singh, to the head of the Kanheya misl. This lady resolved, so far as she was able, to retain the power in her own hands, and use the force of both confederacies, Kanheyas and Sukarchakias, to break the power of all rivals. First she determined to be avenged on the Rámgarhias, who had joined in the attack on Batála, in which her husband was killed; and, in 1796, uniting her own