The Sikh fire became more feeble, their best battalions unsteady, and the British pressed boldly on. Wavering troops rarely withstand a struggle when the bayonet comes into play, and the Khalsas broke entirely, and hurried from the field to the river and bridge. But the hour of retributive vengeance had arrived, and the waters of the Sutlej offered small protection to the fugitives. The stream had risen, the fords were unsafe, and flying from the fire of the horse-artillery, which had opened on the mobbed fugitives with grape shot, hundreds fell under this murderous cannonade, while thousands found a grave in the no longer friendly waters of their native rivers, until it almost excited the compassion of an irritated enemy. At every point the intrenchments were carried. The horse artillery galloped through, and both they and the batteries opened such a fire upon the broken enemy as swept them away by ranks. “The fire of the Sikhs,” says the commander-in-chief, “first slackened, and then nearly ceased; and the victors then pressing them on every side, precipitated them over the bridge into the Sutlej, which a sudden rise of seven inches had rendered hardly fordable. The awful slaughter, confusion, and dismay were such as would have excited compassion in the hearts of their conquerors, if the Khalsa troops had not, in the early part of the action, sullied their gallantry by slaughtering and barbarously mangling every wounded soldier whom, in the vicissitudes of attack, the fortune of war left at their mercy. At Sobraon, the final blow which extinguished the military power of the Sikhs, was delivered. Sixty-seven pieces of artillery, two hundred camel-guns, standards, tumbrils, ammunition, camp equipage--in a word, all that forms the _matériel_ of an army in the field, fell into the hands of the victors. In native armies, no regular returns of the killed and wounded are made out, but the Sikh losses were computed at 8000 men, and the amount was not exaggerated. On the bloody height of Sobraon the Sikh war virtually terminated, for, on that evening, the Anglo-Indian army commenced their march upon Lahore. Frightfully defeated, and humbled to the dust, the once haughty chiefs sent vakeels to implore mercy from the conqueror. The ambassadors, however, were refused an audience, and it was intimated that the British generals would condescend to treat with none except the Maharajah in person. Trembling for his capital, which nothing but abject submission now could save, the youthful monarch, attended by Rajah Goolab Singh, repaired to the British camp. Stringent terms were most justly exacted, and while the rich district between the Sutlej and the Beeas, and what were termed “the Protected States,” were ceded for ever to Britain, a million and a half sterling was agreed to by the Sikh durbar, as compensation for the expenditure of the war, while the Punjaub should remain in military occupation until the full amount should be discharged.