"My own impression remains unaltered. I do not expect that the troops will come as far as the banks of the Sutlej, or that any positive act of aggression will be committed; but it is evident that the Ranee and chiefs are, for their own preservation, endeavouring to raise a storm, which, when raised, they will be powerless either to direct or allay. "I shall, as I have before said, await the reply from Lahore to Major Broadfoot's last communication to the Vakeel. "If the reply from the ostensible government, acting under the control and at the discretion of the army, is hostile, I shall at once order up troops from Meerut, and other stations, to the support of our advanced positions, persevering up to the last moment in the sincere desire to avoid hostilities."[15] We cannot, with any honesty, suppress our conviction that forbearance was here pushed to the very verge of safety. The sullen silence of the Lahore government, as its only answer to our most legitimate demand for an explanation of its menacing attitude, it seems to us, would have been a complete justification of such a movement of our forces as might have concentrated them, by a march of one day, instead of six days, on the banks of the Sutlej, and in the face of the enemy. Had such a step hastened the rupture, who could righteously blame us for the result? But, as it happened, the trumpet of the Sikhs which summoned us to the dreadful appeal of battle could not have sounded sooner than it did, and we should have entered the mortal lists every way at less disadvantage, without the odds against us, which the disparity of numbers rendered formidable enough, being multiplied an hundred-fold by the physical exhaustion of each individual soldier in our ranks. The disbelief in the probability of any serious hostility still filled the mind of the Governor-General, when, upon the 6th of December, he moved from Umballah towards Loodianah, peaceably prosecuting his visitation of the Sikh protected states, according to the usual custom of his predecessors. "In common with the most experienced officers of the Indian government," he writes, "I was not of opinion that the Sikh army would cross the Sutlej with its infantry and artillery. "I considered it probable that some act of aggression would be committed by parties of plunderers, for the purpose of compelling the British government to interfere, to which course the Sikh chiefs knew I was most averse; but I concurred with the Commander-in-Chief, and the chief Secretary to the Government, as well as with my political agent, Major Broadfoot, that offensive operations, on a large scale, would not be resorted to.