Then came a grand display of the military resources of the two nations. On one day the British force was manœuvred by Sir Henry Fane; and on another the Sikh troops were exercised by the Sirdars. The consummate skill with which the British chief attacked an imaginary enemy was equalled by the gallantry with which he defeated it. He fought, indeed, a great battle on the plain, and only wanted another army in his front to render his victory a complete one. The Sikh Sirdars were contented with less elaborate movements; but what their troops were ordered to do they did readily and well, and military critics in the British camp admitted that their allies made no contemptible show of the tactics which they had learnt from their French instructors.[276] Runjeet Singh returned to Lahore, and the Governor-General followed him, on a complimentary visit, to the Sikh capital; whilst the British troops prepared to cross the frontier in furtherance of the objects mapped out in the great Simlah manifesto. But there was no longer a Persian army to be encountered at Herat—no longer a Russian force in the background. The expedition had lost half its popularity with the army; and the force that was to take the field had been shorn of a portion of its original dimensions. On the 27th of November it had been publicly announced by the Commander-in-Chief, “that circumstances in the countries west of the Indus had so greatly changed since the assembly of the army for service, that the Governor-General had deemed that it was not requisite to send forward the whole force; but that a part only would be equal to effecting the future objects in view.” It had become the duty therefore of the Commander-in-Chief to determine what regiments should cross the Indus, and what should remain in Hindostan. Sir Henry Fane had selected for service the corps whose efficiency, on his recent tour of inspection, had been most clearly demonstrated; and now that it devolved upon him to dash the hopes of some of those regiments, unwilling to make an invidious choice, he had decided the difficult question by lot. Instead of two divisions, the Bengal army was now to consist of one, under the command of Sir Willoughby Cotton. The brigades of infantry commanded by Colonels Denniss and Paul were to be left behind;[277] the Irregular Cavalry, under that fine old veteran, Colonel Skinner, of the Local Horse, were to share the same fate; and the artillery force, greatly reduced in strength, now lost its Brigadier (Colonel Graham), and was ordered to go forward under Major Pew, who had organised the camel battery, and had joined the brigade in command of that experimental section of the ordnance corps. Nor were these the only changes which the intelligence of the defeat of Mahomed Shah had wrought upon the Bengal force. Sir Henry Fane, as Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army, had determined to take command in person of the forces assembled for the expedition across the frontier.