Page:Ranjit Singh (Griffin).djvu/204

198 who intrigued with both sides and gained possession of the fortress by pretending to be a relief sent by the Nipalese general, Amar Singh Thappa. Once inside, he laughed at both Rájputs and Gúrkhas, and held it for himself. The ruse was brilliant and worthy of such admiration as history gives to successful treachery.

It was not till many years afterwards that the Mahárájá Ranjít annexed the whole of the Kángra States and added it to his own dominions. The great Rájá Sansar Chand had died, and his son, Anrodh Chand, was the tributary chief in his room, when Rájá Dhyán Singh, the Mahárájá's evil genius, ever anxious to justify his claim to pose as the legitimate representative of the ancient house of Jammu, persuaded his master to demand the hand of one of Anrodh Chand's sisters for his son, Hira Singh, a handsome boy who had become a great favourite at court. The proud Rájput, who, from the heights of his Katoch ancestry, looked down upon the Dogra Rájás as upstarts, refused the alliance, and fled from Lahore with his family across the Sutlej to British protection. The Mahárájá, furious at the rebuff, forthwith confiscated all his estates, and the following year, 1829, desiring to humiliate the Rájput prince, he himself married two of the illegitimate half-sisters of Anrodh Chand, one of whom died before Ranjít Singh, and the other became Satí at his death.

The conquest by the Mahárájá of Pesháwar and the hill country of Hazára, which was a difficult and