Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/62

Rh should have no grounds for charging the English with any provocation, and, in accordance with this sentiment, though he continued to bring up troops from all quarters, so as to have a large array ready to advance from Meerut and similar positions, he kept the actual frontier much too weak, and the supports too much in the rear, to meet, with fair approach to equality of strength, the attack that the Sikh army might make at any moment in full force on our frontier garrisons. He thus subordinated the military necessities of the case to political expediency, and placed Sir Hugh Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, at a grave disadvantage. Only the Ambála and the frontier troops were held ready for war. The Meerut force was not allowed to move and strengthen the front till the Sikhs should have taken the initiative; even when Ghuláb Singh, the Rájá of Jammu, had sent intelligence to the British of the absolute certainty of the impending advance across the frontier, and had proposed to cast in his lot with the English definitely. Then at length, as the Rájá had said, the Sikh army took the aggressive. The Sikh Sardárs disapproved and objected; but they were patriotic, and joined the Khálsa, though the command was assigned to two men of no national weight or position, the one being Tej Singh, the nephew of Jemadar Khushal Singh, and the other Lál Singh, the favourite of the Raní Jindan.

Hitherto, it must be borne in mind, no one except Henry Lawrence had been in a position to gauge by