The force was then in open ground in front of the village of Sadoolapore, which has given its name to the engagement. Campbell rode to the front to reconnoitre. In front of the centre were some hostile horse; to the right in wooded ground some detachments of cavalry and infantry were seen scattered about. Certain that the enemy was in force and near at hand, he returned to the force and as a measure of precaution occupied with an infantry company each of the three villages in his front,--Langwala, Khamookhan and Rutta. The force, in his own words, "was not in a state of formation for troops to be when liable to be attacked at any moment. However, my orders were imperative not to deploy." Two hours later the enemy opened fire with their artillery from the woodland behind the villages. At that moment Thackwell returned, and he ordered the companies holding the three villages to withdraw and rejoin their respective corps. The columns were immediately deployed. Between the British line and the Sikh troops, which had occupied the villages and were firing heavily from some twenty pieces of artillery while large bodies of their cavalry were threatening both flanks of the British force, was a smooth open space over which Thackwell desired to advance to the attack. Colin Campbell suggested that "as they were coming on so cockily, we should allow them to come out into the plain before we moved." He states in his journal that, since presently the enemy halted at the villages and there plied their artillery fire, he was convinced that they did not intend to come further forward; and that he twice begged of Thackwell to be allowed to attack with his infantry but was not permitted. The affair then resolved itself into a simple cannonade the result of which was to silence the Sikh fire. By this time Thackwell had received permission from the Commander-in-Chief to act as his judgment should dictate, whether his reinforcements had come up or not. It seemed the moment for an advance; the troops were full of eagerness, and a portion at least of the enemy's guns were in Thackwell's grasp. Thackwell, however, exercised caution for the time, hoping most likely for a decisive victory on the morrow. But during the night the enemy withdrew and marched away towards the Jhelum, probably without having sustained serious loss. That of the British amounted to some seventy men. Thackwell's turning movement had not been brilliant, and Sadoolapore was not an affair to be very proud of; but it had brought about the relinquishment by the Sikhs of their position on the right bank of the Chenab, and this enabled the main British force to cross the river. By the 5th the mass of the army was at Heylah, about midway between Ramnuggur and Chillianwallah; but the Commander-in-Chief and headquarters did not cross the Chenab until December 18th.