After the fall of Sarhind, the Mahrátas, accompanied by Adína Bég Khán, advanced to Lahore, and soon expelled both the Sikhs and the Afgháns from the principal towns of the provinces of Sarhind and Lahore; of which they not only took possession, but sent a governor to the province of Multán; and Sáheb Pateil advanced to the Attock[62], where he remained for a few months. But the commotions of Hindústan and the Dek'hin soon obliged these foreigners to abandon the Penjáb; which they did the same year they had reduced it. They appointed Adína Bég Khán governor of Lahore. He died in the ensuing year; and, by his death, afforded an opportunity to the Sikhs, which they eagerly seized, to make themselves again masters of the province of Lahore. Their success was, however, soon checked by Ahmed Sháh Abdáli; who, irritated by their unsubdued turbulence, and obstinate intrepidity, made every effort (after he had gained the victory of Pánipat'h, which established his supremacy at Dehli) to destroy their power; and, with this view, he entered the Penjáb early in 1762, and overran the whole of that country with a numerous army, defeating and dispersing the Sikhs in every direction. That sect, unable to make any stand against the army of the Abdáli, pursued their old plan of retreating near the mountains; and collected a large force in the northern districts of Sarhind, a distance of above one hundred miles from Lahore, where the army of Ahmed Sháh was encamped. Here they conceived themselves to be in perfect safety: but that prince made one of those rapid movements for which he was so celebrated, and reaching the Sikh army on the second day, completely surprised, and defeated it with great slaughter. In this action, which was fought in February, 1762, the Sikhs are said to have lost upwards of twenty thousand men, and the remainder fled into the hills, abandoning all the lower countries to the Afgháns, who committed every ravage that a barbarous and savage enemy could devise. Amritsar was razed to the ground, and the sacred reservoir again choaked with its ruins. Pyramids[63] were erected, and covered with the heads of slaughtered Sikhs: and it is mentioned, that Ahmed Sháh caused the walls of those mosques, which the Sikhs had polluted, to be washed with their blood, that the contamination might be removed, and the insult offered to the religion of Muhammed expiated[64]. This species of savage retaliation appears to have animated, instead of depressing, the courage of the Sikhs; who, though they could not venture to meet Ahmed Sháh's army in action, harassed it with an incessant predatory warfare; and, when that sovereign was obliged, by the commotions of Afghánistan, to return to Cábul, they attacked and defeated the general he had left in Lahore, and made themselves masters of that city, in which they levelled with the ground those mosques which the Afgháns had, a few months before, purified with the blood of their brethren.