Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/128

Rh the Punjab, on July 23, to furnish men for the war, the result was that no levies of real Sikhs under their own leaders ever seem to have joined at all, though a body of gunners and sappers was organized, and a large number of Muzhabís — low-caste Sikhs — were raised from among the canal workmen by the irrigation engineers, and converted into sappers and pioneers for employment at Delhi; while, in contrast to them, leaders and chiefs of the Muhammadan Múltán and frontier tribes under the influence of Edwardes and the frontier officers raised regiment after regiment of their Múltání, Pathán, and other followers (not Sikhs at all), who marched down to the seat of war, and aided in the conflict at Delhi. One often reads loosely worded allusions to John Lawrence having sent down large bodies of newly-raised Sikhs to Delhi. In point of fact, he sent none but the few mentioned above. Those who aided us at Delhi were the Cis-Sutlej Sikhs and the Múltán and frontier Muhammadans, besides the Kashmír contingent of 2,000 men, who arrived shortly before Delhi was stormed.

After the capture of Delhi, when the storm had been weathered and the tide had turned — but not till then — the Trans-Sutlej Sikhs came forward and enlisted in thousands, raising the strength of the Punjab troops, it is said, up to some 70,000 men.

Though this matter, then, of an influential upper class in the Punjab, whatever its merits or its demerits, was not to be encouraged, a question closely