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10 all understood by the colder nature of the Englishman. Notwithstanding the triumphs of Nott and Pollock in the last phases of the war, the sipáhí recognised that for the first time the enterprise of his English master against a native power had failed. There was no disguising the fact that the English troops had suffered greatly, and had finally retreated; that the soldiers of the Punjab, a territory which they had traversed on sufferance, had scoffed and jeered at them whenever they came in contact with them. They realised that a heavy blow had been dealt to British prestige. Possibly, with that tendency to exaggeration which characterises imaginative natures, they thought the blow greater than it actually had been.

But the retreat from Afghánistán was but the beginning of many evils. Within two years of the return of the army Lord Ellenborough annexed the province of Sind. The annexation was absolutely necessary, and had the Government of India been ruled by men of Indian experience, that is, by men possessing experience of the natives of India north-west of Bengal, the annexation might have been made a source of strength, instead of for a time weakening the relations of the Government with its native army, and in the end impairing its efficiency.

The first step taken by the Government shook the confidence of the sipáhís in its promises. Up to that time certain extra allowances for food had been granted to all sipáhí regiments serving beyond the then British frontier. Now, service in the hot and arid regions of Sind had always been distasteful to the sipáhí of the Bengal Presidency, but he was reconciled to the discomforts by the promise that, whilst employed in that province, he should receive a considerable addition to his pay. But the Government of India argued that the incorporation of Sind within the British territories had cancelled the pre-