Meanwhile the Resident had taken the strange course of empowering the Lahore Durbar to despatch to Mooltan a Sikh force of some five thousand men under Shere Singh. It was notorious that both commander and troops were thoroughly disaffected; and so anxious was the Resident to prevent the force from approaching Moolraj that Shere Singh had orders to halt fifty miles short of Mooltan, and was only allowed to join Edwardes after his victory of July 1st. In tardy answer to that young officer's appeal for reinforcements, in the end of July a force of seven thousand men with a siege-train was ordered to converge on Mooltan from Lahore and Ferozepore under the divisional command of General Whish. It had been chiefly at Colin Campbell's dissuasion that the Resident had relinquished his intention of sending a force to Mooltan in April. Campbell's argument in that month had been the unfavourable season for marching; and now in a season not less unfavourable he was scarcely justified in considering himself the victim of a job in not obtaining the command of the Lahore brigade ordered on Mooltan. The disappointment proved fortunate, since a few months later he found himself in command of a division in the field with the rank of brigadier-general. By August 24th the whole of Whish's field-force was before Mooltan, but it was not until September 7th that the siege-guns were in position. Moolraj, confident in the increased strength which our delay had afforded him, spurned a summons to surrender. Active and bloody approaches were carried on for a week, when Shere Singh with his contingent suddenly passed over to the enemy. After this defection Whish held it impossible to continue the siege, and he retired to a position in the vicinity pending the arrival of reinforcements from Bombay. The siege was reopened late in December: the city was stormed after a hard fight; and finally on January 22nd, 1849, Moolraj surrendered at discretion. It must be said of him that he had made a heroic defence. By the end of September, 1848, the local outbreak was fast swelling into a national revolt. The flame of rebellion was spreading over the Land of the Five Rivers, and by the end of October only a few brave English officers were still holding together the last shreds of British influence in the Punjaub outside of Lahore and the camp of General Whish. Moolraj was the reverse of cordial to Shere Singh, who on October 9th quitted Mooltan and marched northward towards Lahore, his original force of five thousand men strengthened at every step by the warriors of the old Khalsa army who flocked eagerly to his standard. After threatening Lahore he moved westward to meet the Bunnoo insurgents, who had mutinied and murdered their officers, and he finally took up a position _à cheval_ of the Chenab at Ramnuggur, his main body on the right bank of the river.