Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/128

124 disbanded and reorganised. The numbers of the artillery must be limited. The Mahárájá must himself present the keys of Govindgarh and Lahore, where the terms must be dictated and signed.'

In the main this policy was carried through. The Lahore Darbár had hoped that the Governor-General would have proposed a Resident with a Subsidiary Force — a system against which he had constantly entered his protest, and which would have inevitably led to insurrection, only to be put down by British bayonets. The other alternative was annexation. The extension of the British Empire to the Indus, however captivating to a certain school of politicians, was at that time impossible on military grounds. The absolute necessity of waiting for ammunition for 100 siege-guns until the army could advance, and the equally strong necessity of a siege train such as would deter the Sikh Darbár from making the war a war of sieges, were paramount considerations in which Sir Charles Napier (who had now joined the army) entirely concurred. The intermediate course which the Governor-General proposed of re-establishing a Sikh government, balanced against the Muhammadan population and greatly weakened for hostile aggression, offered, in his eyes, the best solution of a very difficult problem.

On the 18th of February, when the Governor-General's camp had been pitched within a short distance of Lahore, there arrived a deputation of the Sikh Sardárs, headed by Ghuláb Singh, who nominally