A great victory over his numerous and powerful enemies at home was now in store for Charles Napier. Suddenly, while they were in the midst of their cabals and intrigues--pulling the thousand strings of mendacity which gold has ever at its disposal--the crash of disaster to our arms in India struck panic into the Directors and the Government. The Khalsa leader, Sheere Singh, had declared war in the northern Punjaub, and the Dhurum-Kha-Klosa, or religious war-drum of the Sikhs, was beating from Peshawur to the Chenaub. The Indian Government affected to treat this new Punjaub war as a trifling revolt. The price paid in life and treasure for the war that had ended not three years earlier had been so heavy, and the rewards given to the victors were so great, that this striking proof of incompleteness had to be minimised as much as possible. It was really nothing. Nobody need be alarmed. The Commander-in-Chief in India, Lord Gough, had ample force at his command to crush this partial uprising of the remnant of the Khalsa army. So said and wrote the Directors, and so said and wrote the many echoing speakers and scribes who enjoyed their patronage. All this went on during the early winter of 1848. Lord Gough, a brave and distinguished veteran of that type of soldier whose straight and simple code of honour made him unfitted to deal with the inherent mendacity of the Directorate, felt himself obliged to act up to the picture so plausibly painted by his civil superiors. They said he had sufficient force, and that the enemy was to be despised. In honour bound he must prove these statements to be true. The old fire-eater forgot that he was risking his army and his reputation for men who would be false to him at the slightest breath of adversity, and would unhesitatingly cast him overboard if by doing so they could prolong for even an hour their own truculent power. Gough advanced from an ill-stored base upon the enemy. After a most unfortunate encounter between our advanced troops and the Sikhs at Ramnugger, the English general crossed the Chenaub, and engaged the whole Khalsa army at Chillianwallah, on January 13th, 1849. In this memorable encounter disaster followed upon error, until night stopped the fighting. Infantry were moved up in close formation to masked batteries, no reconnaissance had been carried out, the positions of the Sikh army had to be found by the lines advancing to storm them, and the troops were formed up to fight their enemy after a long and fatiguing day's march when they should have been lying asleep in camp. When daylight dawned upon this scene of the confused fight of the previous evening, it was found that the Sikhs had fallen back, but we had lost above two thousand men, half of whom were Europeans; four guns and six standards had also been taken from us. British soldiers will fight their leaders through many scrapes and mistakes, but Chillianwallah had been too prolific in error to be saved even by heroism.