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by having been warned to move out as soon as the dust of the column should become visible, and to join it. But he was cautioned, as Sir Harry Smith had been, to avoid as much as possible all partial engagements; and both he and his immediate commander faithfully and skilfully attended to the admonition.

Smith's column was in full march right in front, when, at a place called Buddewal, the enemy were observed manoeuvring, in great force, to come between the leading regiment and the point on which it was moving. He was supported, as usual, by an enormous artillery, and occupied a line of villages, which ran at right angles with the head of the British column, and offered good cover both for guns and infantry. In a moment, and with the skill of a practised leader, Smith changed the order of his march. He obliqued so as to move for awhile parallel with the enemy; till the latter, far outflanking him, shewed a disposition to act on the offensive, and opened a heavy fire from forty or fifty pieces of heavy cannon. Upon this Smith formed his line, brought up his eleven guns, and, massing them, threw in such a storm of shot as to check the Sikhs in their advance. He then broke into eschellon of battalions and squadrons, so as to threaten a movement directly to the front all the while that he was taking ground rapidly to the right; and handled his troops so nicely, that without firing a musket - shot he carried them fairly round the enemy. His cavalry, meanwhile, observing a similar formation, covered the manœuvre. Several times they charged in squadrons, driving back the Sikh horse, and threatening the guns; so that they all passed, the artillery marching under their protection, and a large portion of the baggage being in like manner saved; but a portion of the latter fell into the enemy's hands. It could not possibly be saved. And when we consider that only thus, and by the loss of 300 men, so important a movement could be made, we cannot deny to the officer who accomplished it all the praise which the military world has heaped upon him.

In this manner the relieving force baffled the not unskilful exertions of

Meanwhile

the enemy to stop it. Colonel Godby, having seen the cloud of dust, moved from Loodiana; and marching parallel to the direction which it seemed to take, found himself, in due time, connected by his patrols with Smith's advanced guard. Both corps upon this placed them. selves with Loodiana on their rear, and the enemy before them; the latter being so circumstanced, that the British army lay, as it were, upon one of its flanks. But Smith, though he had thus relieved the town, was unwilling to strike a blow till he could make it decisive. He, therefore, encamped in an attitude of watchfulness, waiting till another brigade should arrive, which, under the command of Colonel Wheeler, was marching from head-quarters to reinforce him.

Colonel Wheeler's march seems to have been conducted with equal diligence and care. He heard of the encounter of the 21st, and of its results; whereupon he abandoned the direct road to Loodiana, and, following a circuitous route, went round the enemy's position, without once coming under fire. He reached Sir Harry Smith's camp in safety; and, on the 26th, Smith made his preparations to fight a great battle. But it was found, ere the columns were put in motion, that the enemy had abandoned their position at Buddewal, and were withdrawn to an entrenched camp nearer to the river, of which the village of Ulleewul was the key, covering the ford by which they had crossed, and on which they reckoned, in the event of a reverse, as a line of retreat. Operations were accordingly suspended, and such further arrangements set going as the altered state of affairs seemed to require.

While these important operations were proceeding in the field, the state of affairs at Lahore appears to have been confused and uncomfortable in the extreme. The Ranee, with her son and charge, occupied the citadel. Almost all the troops were on the Sutlej, when tidings came that Rajah Goolab Singh, who had for some time back kept aloof, and resided on his estate among the mountains, was descending towards Lahore at the head of 10,000 men. Now Rajah Goolab Singh was not in favour

either with the Ranee or the Sirdars. They equally feared and suspected him; and though he is probably as little to be depended upon as any other chief in the Punjaub, he had either felt or affected heretofore great love for the British alliance; and, as a necessary result, was entirely opposed to the policy which had induced the war. His approach towards the capital, therefore, occasioned much anxiety and dismay, while the government endeavoured to anticipate any peaceful movement on his part by despatching forthwith a vakeel, or agent, to the English head-quarters; but with this functionary the governor - general refused to communicate. He was told that the British government knew nothing, even by name, of the parties for whom he professed to act; and that they would not treat with any, except Rajah Goolab Singh or the Maha Rajah. Hereupon the Sikh troops became more furious than ever, and that movement took place which drew from the British camp the corresponding march of Sir Harry Smith's division towards Loodiana. Moreover, there came into the Sikh camp at Ulleewul a reinforcement of 4000 men, with guns, almost at the same time that Smith received the accession to his strength by the coming up of Colonel Wheeler's brigade; and the consequence was, that on the 28th, when the two armies came into collision, the English mustered somewhere about 12,000; the Sikhs over, rather than under, 24,000 excellent troops.

The battle of Ulleewul was, out and out, the most scientific affair that occurred in the course of this campaign. It was planned with skill, executed with coolness and precision, and fought by the troops with all the courage and gallantry for which British soldiers are renowned. The army advanced in columns of brigades, with artillery in the intervals; the cavalry in advance, the infantry in a second line. They had marched about six miles, when a spy reported that the enemy were also in motion; and by and by, from the tops of some houses in a village, their masses were seen pointing in the direction of Jugraon. They formed, however, immediately, having their right on a ridge of low

hills, of which Ulleewul is in the centre, and their left resting on the entrenched camp, which covered the ford of Tulwa. Fifty pieces of heavy cannon were in their line, and they presented altogether a very formidable appearance; but Smith never once checked his movement. The ground over which he passed was firm, and covered with short grass. It suited exactly the description of troops which he was handling; and, as he neared the enemy, he took full advantage of it, so as to display the order of his attack, and bring his whole strength to bear. The cavalry opening and filing off by divisions, took ground to the right and left; thus opening a way for the infantry, and covering each flank. The guns were massed so that their fire might produce the best effect; and all, both horse and foot, wheeled into line. And now on both sides the artillery opened; under the fire of which Smith observing that the enemy's left outflanked him, broke again into column, and took ground to his right. It is impossible to read these details without experiencing the most lively admiration of the admirable coup-d'œil of the chief who directed the movements, and the marvellous steadiness of the men who performed them. Troops so handled could not fail to surmount all opposition, and they effectually did so.

The firing began about ten in the morning; by one o'clock in the day the Sikh army was broken and routed, the ground covered with its wreck, and the Sutlej choked with the dead and the dying. The whole of the artillery fell into the hands of the victors, and the booty was immense; but the victors had neither time nor inclination to dwell upon their triumphs. There was no further danger to be apprehended here. Of the 24,000 men who, in the morning, threatened Loodiana, scarcely as many hundreds held together; and these, after a brief show of rally on the opposite bank, melted away and disappeared entirely. Having bivouacked that night, therefore, on the field which he had won, and sent in the wounded, with the captured guns, under sufficient escort, to Loodiana, Sir Harry Smith, with the bulk of his division, took the road to head

quarters; and, in the afternoon of the 8th of February, came into position on the right of the main army, which was his established post.

We have already described the respective positions of Sir Hugh Gough's force and of the Sikh army that faced it. The latter occupied a semicircle of formidable works, which commanded a ford in the Sutlej on the left bank, and covered, as with a tête-de-pont, the head of the bridge wherewith that river was spanned. Other entrenchments they had on the farther side, but as compared with these they were not very important; and they kept them both with about 35,000 men, the élite of the soldiers of the Punjaub, and seventy pieces of cannon, chiefly of large calibre. We must confess that we do not quite see why the attempt to manœuvre them out of this position was not made. They had shewn our people that it was possible to cross the Sutlej and threaten the communications of the British army; and now the ford of Tulwan was as open to us as it had previously been to them. We confess that we cannot quite satisfy our own minds in regard to the causes which may have prevented the commander-in-chief from making use of this ford, and sending Sir Harry Smith up the opposite bank of the river, so as to threaten the enemy in flank, while he himself advanced against them in front. It appears, moreover, that the British generals were possessed of boats enough wherewith to construct a bridge for themselves below the enemy's position, had they been so disposed. But neither does this scheme seem to have found favour in their eyes; and so both flanks, which might have been turned, were left in their integrity. Of course we express ourselves thus with extreme diffidence, as all critics ought to do who write about transactions that have occurred at a distance; and we are bound to add, that, let the amount of science exhibited in the arrangements for the battle be what it might, of the manner in which the fighting part of the business was conducted we cannot speak too highly. Before dawn on the 10th, certain posts, which the enemy used to occupy by day and abandon at night, were seized. The artillery, including a

part of the battering train which had come up, was placed in position opposite to the Sikh batteries; the infantry formed in lines of brigade, with cavalry on the flanks, and supports chequering them in column; and, as soon as a heavy mist which hung over the banks of the river cleared away, the cannonade began.

The details of the battle of Sobraon must be so fresh in the recollection of our readers, that we shall not stop to repeat them. However skilfully guns in the open field may be used, they are no match for pieces of equal weight, and not less skilfully worked, through embrasures; and so it was soon discovered, to use the expressive words of Sir Hugh Gough, "that the issue of this struggle must be brought to the arbitrement of musketry and the bayonet." At it the British troops accordingly wentthe 10th and 53d Queen's Regiments, nobly supported by the 43d and 59th Native infantry-forcing their way, through a murderous fire, over the entrenchments; and the gallant 3d Dragoons riding in single file through the apertures which the artillery had made, and forming again that they might cut down the Sikhs at their guns. But why go on with the description? At every point the entrenchments were carried. The horse artillery galloped through, and both they and the batteries opened such a fire upon the broken enemy as swept them away by ranks. "The fire of the Sikhs," says the commander-in-chief, "first slackened, and then nearly ceased; and the victors then pressing them on every side, precipitated them over the bridge into the Sutlej, which a sudden rise of seven inches had rendered hardly fordable." What a plight for a defeated army to be in! No wonder that the gallant old chief speaks wellnigh with reluctance of the carnage which it was both his duty and that of his followers to inflict. "The awful slaughter, confusion, and dismay, were such as would have excited compassion in the hearts of their conquerors, if the Khalsa troops had not, in the early part of the action, sullied their gallantry by slaughtering and barbarously mangling every wounded soldier whom, in the vicissitudes of attack, the fortune of war left at their mercy."

Thus ended the battle of Sobraon, and with it-for the present at least -the Sikh war. The same evening the British troops began to pass the Sutlej, and on the morrow they were in full march towards Lahore; when ambassadors from the defeated generals presented themselves in camp, but were not admitted into the governor-general's presence. The officers who saw them informed them, with little ceremony, that only with the Maha Rajah would Sir Henry Hardinge communicate; and in due time, the youthful sovereign, attended by Rajah Goolab Singh, came as a suppliant for mercy within the British lines. It was not refused him. The blame of the war was thrown, as it ought to have been, on the turbulent chiefs, though, to mark the governor-general's sense of the na tional offence, the sovereign was, at the outset, refused the honours that are given in the East to crowned heads; but peace was granted to him and to the Punjaub on terms which indicate as much of true wisdom as of moderation in him who assigned them.

The Sikhs have been punished by the privation of all that fertile district which lies between the Sutlej and the Hyphasis or Beass. The whole of the protected states, as they

used to be called, are absorbed and become an integral portion of the British empire. One million and a half sterling is demanded as compensation for the expenses of the war, and military occupation of the whole of the Punjaub is to be held till the full amount shall be paid. And a re-arrangement of the Sikh army is to take place, on such a plan as the governor-general shall judge best for the preservation of peace both at home and abroad. Finally, Sir Henry Hardinge has been created Viscount Hardinge; Sir Hugh Gough, Baron Gough; Sir Harry Smith has been rewarded with a baronetcy, which he has nobly earned; and on all the other officers and men engaged honours have been heaped, which may gratify the country which bestows them, but can add nothing to the high fame of the recipients. They have been thanked by both Houses of Parliament; they are thanked by every man, woman, and child throughout the empire; and even they who mourn over the fall of their nearest of kin find comfort in the thought that they died nobly and in a righteous cause.

"Thanks be to Almighty God for the great triumph which He has granted to our arms!"

ON A LATE FRENCH TRIAL.

AFTER going through a course of French novels (as too many idlers nowadays have done), and recreating one's self with a series of histories illustrating every possible infraction of every order of the decalogue, the amazed reader is often tempted to ask, Are these tales sup. posed to represent the real state of French manners at the present day? --Are these varieties of rascality, these pictures of crime, lust, knavery, murder, which Balzac, Sue, Dumas, and Soulie, are in the habit of exhibiting in the feuilletons of every daily journal, really copied from nature, or only the monstrous productions of those famous writers' discased imagination? Since crime was punished and history began, such a state of horrible social debauchery as that described by every one of these writers has scarcely been

known in any country:-such a ge neral perversion of morals, such a total irreligion, such a determined abrogation of the law which ordains that chastity is a virtue, and marriage a sacred obligation. And with all this flagrant activity in the commission of crime, there seems to be an entire blindness on the part of the criminal. He does not appear to be in the least aware that his life is disgraceful,—that there is any thing wrong in his career of brutal heathen pleasure; he flaunts his mistress in the face of the world without an idea of shame, and would talk to his sister about her if need were. And all the while he assumes that he is morally the superior of the inhabitant of every other country in the world. How many times has one read that France is the centre of çivilisation!-that for manners and

morals all the world is looking to Paris for example, that the mission of France is so and so, &c. You can't take up a French newspaper but a paragraph to that effect stares you in the face; and the sentiment is repeated by poets, politicians, and novelists, from Thiers, and Victor Hugo, and down to honest Paul de Kock.

One might be disposed to fancy the orgies narrated in the Peau de Chagrin or the Mémoires du Diable as fabulous; or poor Paul's descriptions of Parisian life as mere imaginations; but that every now and then a newspaper, or a police-court, issues a real authentic document, which is infinitely more startling than any of the novelists' fictions. The trial of Beauvallon for shooting Dujarrier (which occurred, and is reported at length in the Parisian newspapers at the end of last month) is one of these instances. Persons of M. Beauvallon's stamp may be found in plenty, no doubt, with us; and tipsy, gambling rows and disreputable parties, such as that which occasioned the unlucky Dujarrier's death, may take place at Greenwich or Richmond, as well as at the Trois Frères; but our rakes have at least the decency of hypocrisy, and go to the deuce in private. If such a case as that of Beauvallon - Dujarrier murder were to occur in England, the principal could never again hold up his head here, the male witnesses would be dismissed out of all decent society, the females (actresses for the most part) would run a strong risk of being assailed at their next appearance on the stage with something more substantially uncomplimentary than even hisses,-not a person concerned but would be irretrievably ruined by the exposure.

Fancy such a case as this occurring in England. Half-a-dozen literary men and editors of the first rank, accompanied by half-a-dozen young dandies of the high fashion, and a dozen celebrated actresses, each mistress of one or other of the male guests, dine, dance, and gamble together at a tavern. A dispute occurs at play between one literary gentleman, who has lost five hundred pounds, and another very dashing man of letters well known for having appropriated and pawned a friend's watch.

Nothing will satisfy the latter's nice sense of honour but demanding an apology for the former's dubious expression. "As I have said nothing wrong, and as my challenger cannot say what I have said wrong," replies the challenged party, "of course I cannot apologise.' My honour demands blood," then says the gentleman who pawned his friend's watch, and seconds are appointed, two on each side and these gentlemen, men of fashion, men of prudence, and men of the world, can find no better way out of this dilemma than to bring their men on to the field, and to let MURDER pass between them. All these virtuous men and women (with the exception of the poor slaughtered wretch who lies in Pèrela-Chaise, with a pistol-ball through his jaw) come before a court of justice, and give their testimony as to the transaction. There is not the least shame in confessing a share in the business. Each witness gives his or her testimony in a good-humoured off-hand way; most joke about it; some brag and are pompous. Every man and woman leaves the court, and returns to his or her occupations, to the modest private life of which they are ornaments, without a single stain on his or her honour, including the immaculate principal, the gentleman who appropriated the watch. Every one of the literary characters has, no doubt, written a score of times since, that France is the centre of civilisation, the arbiter of manners, the great social reformer, and exemplar of the world.

Let us follow the case, as it is exhibited in the French papers, beginning of course with the "Act of Accusation," a romantic narrative of proceedings which the crown prosecutor always makes, and in which it appears to be his duty or custom always to bear as hard as possible upon the prisoner whom he brings before the tribunals.

"On the 7th of March, 1845, a dinner at the Trois Frères Provençaux at Paris brought together sixteen or eighteen persons. Among these were the Sieur Dujarrier, at that time manager of the Presse newspaper; the Sieur Rosemond de Beauvallon, one of the editors of the Globe; the Sieur Roger de Beauvoir, the Count de Flers, the

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