no holding there, it was for us a truly discreditable enterprise to foist
him on a recalcitrant people at the point of the bayonet.

One result of the tidings from Herat was to reduce by a division the
strength of the expeditionary force. Fane, who had never taken kindly to
the project, declined to associate himself with the diminished array that
remained. The command of the Bengal column fell to Sir Willoughby Cotton,
with whom as his aide-de-camp rode that Henry Havelock whose name twenty
years later was to ring through India and England. Duncan's division was
to stand fast at Ferozepore as a support, by which disposition the
strength of the Bengal marching force was cut down to about 9500 fighting
men. After its junction with the Bombay column, the army would be 14,500
strong, without reckoning the Shah's contingent. There was an interlude
at Ferozepore of reviews and high jinks with the shrewd, debauched old
Runjeet Singh; of which proceedings Havelock in his narrative of the
expedition gives a detailed account, dwelling with extreme disapprobation
on Runjeet's addiction to a 'pet tipple' strong enough to lay out the
hardest drinker in the British camp, but which the old reprobate quaffed
freely without turning a hair.

At length, on December 10th, 1838, Cotton began the long march which was
not to terminate at Cabul until August 6th of the following year. The
most direct route was across the Punjaub, and up the passes from
Peshawur, but the Governor-General had shrunk from proposing to Runjeet
Singh that the force should march through his territories, thinking it
enough that the Maharaja had permitted Shah Soojah's heir, Prince Timour,
to go by Peshawur to Cabul, had engaged to support him with a Sikh force,
and had agreed to maintain an army of reserve at Peshawur. The chosen
route was by the left bank of the Sutlej to its junction with the Indus,
down the left bank of the Indus to the crossing point at Roree, and from