Up to this time the primary object of the British Government had been the establishment of such an alliance with the rulers of the Punjab, as might ensure a strenuous conjoint opposition to an European army advancing from the West. But those were days when a constant succession of great changes in the European world necessarily induced a shifting policy on the part of our Indian statesmen. It was difficult to keep pace with the mutations which were passing over the political horizon—difficult to keep a distant mission supplied with instructions which were not likely to become totally useless before they could be brought into effective operation. With Mr. Metcalfe at Umritsur it was comparatively easy to communicate. He had been ordered to temporise—to do nothing in a hurry; and he had succeeded so well as to protract his negotiations until the spring of 1809. The delay was most advantageous to British interests. The “chapter of accidents” worked mightily in our favour. The war with Napoleon had now been carried into the Spanish peninsula, and it demanded all the energies of the Emperor to maintain his position in Europe. The necessity of anti-Gallican alliances in India became less and less urgent. The value of Sikh friendship dwindled rapidly down, and the pretensions of the Sikh ruler naturally descended with it. The sight of a formidable British force on the frontier—the intelligence of the European successes of the great “Sepoy General” who, a few years before, on the plains of Berar, had given the Mahrattas a foretaste of the quality of his military skill[53]—the declining influence of the French in Central Asia,—and more than all, perhaps, the wonderful firmness and courage of the young English diplomatist—suggested to the wily Sikh Rajah the expediency of ceasing to tamper with us, and of forming at once a friendly alliance with the British.[54] He was now in a temper to accede to the terms proposed to him by the British diplomatist; and accordingly, on the 25th of April, 1809, a treaty was executed by Runjeet Singh in person, and by Mr. Metcalfe on the part of the British Government, in which there was no more mention of the French than if the eagles of Napoleon had never threatened the eastern world. It was stipulated that the Rajah should retain possession of the territories to the north of the Sutlej, but should abstain from all encroachments on the possessions or rights of the chiefs on the left bank of the river. This limitation was merely a prospective one. It had been intended to deprive Runjeet of the tracts of country which he had previously occupied to the south of the Sutlej; and the rough draft of the treaty contained, as a part of the first article as it now stands, the words, “And on the other hand, the Rajah renounces all claim to sovereignty over the Sikh chiefs to the southward of that river, and all right of interference in their affairs;”[55] but this passage had been subsequently erased