Soon after this the Khans of Lalpura and Pandiali came into Peshawar in person and made their submission to the Commissioner. For three years there was peace on the border, the Mohmands desisting from troubling until the Ambela expedition in 1863, described in Chapter IV., when the emissaries of the Akhund of Swat were sent all over the hills bordering the Peshawar Valley, but were successful in exciting disturbances among the Mohmands only. Sultan Muhammad Khan, another son of Saadat Khan, Chief of Lalpura, owned the Akhund’s religious supremacy, and was, moreover, ill-disposed towards the British. Collecting a body of Mohmands, joined by a miscellaneous rabble of Safis, Bajauris and the like, he came down to our frontier on the 5th December, 1863, at the head of some 500 men. The officer commanding Fort Shabkadar at once turned out with fifty-five sabres and ninety-six bayonets, and drove the enemy back beyond our frontier, inflicting some loss. The Shabkadar garrison was reinforced from Peshawar, and the Mohmands again advancing on the 7th from the shelter of the hills, were again forced to retire. Nauroz Khan now, however, joined his brother, and, supported by the priesthood, the two managed, by the beginning of the new year, to collect a miscellaneous assemblage of close upon 6000 armed men—mostly Mohmands and mainly represented by men from the Halimzai and Khwaezai clans—and with these it was now proposed to meet the British troops stationed at Shabkadar. This force had recently been very considerably strengthened, and now numbered some 1800 of all ranks, with three Horse Artillery guns, under Colonel Macdonnell, C.B. On the morning of the 2nd January, 1864, the enemy made their appearance, debouching from a gorge north-west of Shabkadar, and formed up in something of the appearance of a crescent. The action which resulted was on our side almost entirely confined to the cavalry and guns. The British commander succeeded to some extent in drawing the enemy into the plain, where they were repeatedly charged by the cavalry and finally driven beyond the border, having sustained about eighty casualties. The effects of this check were felt throughout the Mohmand country, at least 1000 men departing next morning to their homes, while in a few days the gathering completely dispersed. The Amir Sher Ali Khan now took the Mohmands in hand, ejecting and imprisoning Saadat Khan and his son, Nauroz Khan, and replacing the former in the chieftainship by a son of his ancient rival, Turabaz Khan. Eventually, however, Nauroz Khan came to his own again, returning from Afghanistan in 1870 and assuming the Khan-ship.