the night had to abandon them. The loss of life on our side was enormous, and Lord Gough, though he fought like a hero in the thickest of the _mêlée_, was not to be found at a critical moment to give orders. The news of this disaster was received with universal indignation. The Government attempted to allay public feeling by appointing Sir William Gomm to succeed Lord Gough; but as Sir William was believed to be equally incompetent, a demand for Sir Charles Napier’s appointment became clamant. “We dined,” writes Lord Malmesbury, in his Diary on the 4th of March, “with the Colchesters, and were introduced to Sir Charles Napier. He is a little [Illustration: SIR HARRY SMITH.] man, with grey hair brushed back from his face, with an immense hooked, pointed nose, small eyes, and wears spectacles, very like the conventional face of a Jew. He is appointed to retrieve our affairs in India, and when the Duke of Wellington named him to the post he at first hesitated, until the Duke told him if he did not go he would go himself.”[3] Why did Napier hesitate? Because, it seems, the Directors of the East India Company not only objected to his appointment, but threatened to prevent him from having a seat on the Council, an insult which Napier could hardly brook. “You have no idea of the difficulties I have had in dealing with these men,” said Sir John Cam Hobhouse, then President of the Indian Board of Control, to Mr. Greville. “I have brought the Government, the Duke of Wellington, _and the Queen_ all to bear upon them, and all in vain.” Mr. Greville advised Hobhouse to bring another power--that of the House of Commons--to bear on the Company. In other words, he advised the Government to go down boldly and inform Parliament that they had appointed Napier, and if the Directors of the Company refused to pay his salary as a Member of Council, to ask the House to vote it. The Cabinet appointed Napier, and the Directors acquiesced, fearing to face the responsibility of thwarting the Government in doing what the Queen and the country desired. But before Gough could be recalled, he redeemed the disaster of Chillianwalla at Gujerat. The news of this successful battle, which was fought on the 21st of February, reached the Queen on the 1st of April. It meant that the crisis in India was over, and it lifted from her mind the burden of a supreme anxiety. Multan, too, had fallen, and finally the East India Company, admitting at last that it was impossible to protect their frontier from attack, annexed the Punjab on the 29th of March, 1849, thus closing the history of the Sikhs as an independent nation. England had found in them the most fearless and formidable of enemies. Since the annexation of their country, they have been the staunchest and the most loyal of the Queen’s Indian subjects.