had led five thousand men safely over
burning deserts and through most difficult mountain country, had by
careful strategy driven the marauders into a corner, forcing them to
surrender with trifling loss, and had made an impression on the hill
chieftains which lasted for many a year. This work, though slighted by
the directors of the Company, received enthusiastic praise from such
good judges of war as Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. The
second emergency arose when the first Sikh war broke out in the Punjab.
Napier felt so confident in the loyalty of his newly-pacified province
that within six weeks he drew together an army of 15,000 men, and took
post at Rohri, ready to co-operate against the Sikhs from the south,
while Lord Hardinge advanced from the east. Before he could arrive, the
decisive battle had been fought, and all he was asked to do was to
assist in a council of war at Lahore. The mistakes made in the campaign
had been numerous. No one saw them more clearly than Napier, and no one
foretold more accurately the troubles which were to follow. For all
that, he wrote in generous admiration of Lord Hardinge the Viceroy and
Lord Gough the Commander-in-Chief at a time when criticism and personal
bitterness were prevalent in many quarters.

After this he returned to Sind with health shattered and a longing for
rest. He continued to work with vigour, but his mind was set on
resignation; and the bad relations which had for years existed between
him and the directors embittered his last months. No doubt he was
impatient and self-willed, inclined to take short cuts through the
system of dual control[14] and to justify them by his own single-hearted
zeal for the good of the country. But the directors had eyes for all the
slight irregularities, which are inevitable in the work of an original
man, and failed entirely to estimate the priceless services that he
rendered to British rule. In July 1847 he resigned and returned to
Europe; but even now the end was not come. 'The tragedy must be re-acted
a year or two hence,' he had written in March 1846, seeing clearly that
the Sikhs had not been reconciled to British rule. In February 1849 the
directors were forced by the national voice to send him out to take
supreme military command and to retrieve the disasters with which the
second Sikh war began. They were very reluctant to do so, and Napier
himself had little wish for further exertions in so thankless a service.