Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/108

104 the outline and framework of information, which up to the present period has for many reasons been kept in the background and not seen the light.

The news of the battles of Múdkí and Firozsháh aroused the greatest excitement in England, not unmixed with anxiety. The despatches arrived on February 7th, 1846, having been conveyed by an Austrian steamer to Trieste, on the breakdown of the mail steamer at Malta. The Tower guns were fired in celebration of the victory; but it was felt that serious conflicts were yet imminent, and that no one could foretell what might be the result. All that was known was that the Sikhs had been driven from two positions with the loss of their guns; and that the largest British force which had ever been mustered on the plains of India was still facing the enemy on the banks of the Sutlej. The general uneasiness in the public mind was shared by the Government, which resolved that certain contingencies must be provided for.

Lord Ripon, who, as President of the Board of Control, was the mouthpiece of communication between the Cabinet and the Governor-General, wrote to the latter in the following terms on February 24th: — 'The Cabinet have decided that it is indispensably necessary that some means should be taken whereby the command of all the operations in the field should be under you. It has a very strange and somewhat unseemly appearance that the Governor-General should be acting as second in command to the Commander-in-Chief in the field; and as these Punjab affairs are,