Nevertheless it had shown that there was disaffection among the Indian population, and a few years later this came to a head. In 1839 it was found that a certain Mahomedan chief, the Nawab of Karnul, had collected in secret a large quantity of military stores, including some “hundreds” of guns, and that he had in his employ a considerable number of sturdy fighting men, Arabs, Rohillas, and Pathans from the North-West of India--the turbulent mercenaries who had for generations made India a vast battlefield. The matter was considered so serious that a force of 6000 men, of which two squadrons of the Thirteenth formed part, was sent to Karnul. Action had been taken in time, and the fighting on the part of the enemy at Karnul and the neighbouring village of Zorapur, though brave enough, was soon over. A few British officers and men were killed and wounded. The Thirteenth lost more than thirty men, chiefly from cholera, on this expedition, but none by the sword. It was one of the countless forgotten skirmishes upon which the Indian Empire has been built up.[3] Early in 1840, after twenty-one years spent in the country, the Thirteenth sailed for home. They had seen little fighting, but those were days when India claimed a terrible toll from British troops, and during the short march from Bangalore to the coast at Madras the Regiment lost from cholera forty more men, as well as many women and children. Cholera is no longer the scourge that it was to our countrymen, but the thousands of graves that one finds scattered over the face of the land, often in the loneliest places, are a sad reminder of the price Great Britain has paid for her Eastern dominion. On return to England the Regiment was very weak, for in addition to its losses from disease, it had left behind many men who had volunteered for other Regiments in India; but it was soon in good order again. It was to be replaced in India by the Fourteenth, and in 1841 the two Regiments, “The Ragged Brigade” of the Peninsular War, met again in Canterbury. There can have been few officers in either who had served together in that war, but the old traditions were still alive, and in remembrance of them the Fourteenth presented to the sister Regiment their mess-table, which had been originally captured by the Thirteenth at Vittoria with King Joseph’s household.