shot_; our ammunition
was gone. Frustrating his manoeuvres, what else remained to do was
done with the hard steel of the bayonet, and hand to hand with the good
sword. And thus were earned the laurels of Ferozeshah.

Over the carnage of such battle-fields, we would glance hastily. At
Moodkee, of the British, fell two hundred and fifteen; at Ferozeshah,
six hundred and ninety-four, gallant men and faithful soldiers. The long
lists, also, of the wounded, which catalogue six hundred and fifty-seven
sufferers at Moodkee, and swell to one thousand seven hundred and
twenty-one at Ferozeshah, painfully attest the severity of the struggle,
and the deadly precision of the foe. But the foe! who has numbered his
dead? None; nor ever will. The pall of a decent oblivion has been
tacitly cast upon the incalculable amount of his loss, which has
exceeded the utmost extent of British loss, as much as his hordes of
living warriors outnumbered by tens of thousands the British force at
the dawn of the eventful day which looked on Moodkee--the Agincourt of
India. "Is it not lawful," asks honest Fluellen, "to tell how many is
killed?" "Yes," is the answer of our Fifth Harry--"Yes, captain; but
with this acknowledgment, that God fought for us."

The route of the Sikhs at Ferozeshah was succeeded by nearly a month
employed, as we are now aware, by both sides in making preparations,
offensive and defensive, for further serious exertions. The Sikh army,
upon its overthrow, retired, not in confusion and haste, but steadily
and easily, towards the Sutlej, which they crossed about the 27th of
December. They recrossed, however, soon after, and worked indefatigably
in rearing those magnificent and powerful fortifications at Sobraon,
with which we are yet destined in the course of our narrative to come
into rude collision. The Governor-General, on the other hand, was busy
in collecting and amassing the munitions of war of every description,
for the purpose of forcing, if opposed, the passage of the Sutlej, and
carrying his victorious standard into the heart of the Punjaub. But
fortune was now about to shower her smiles upon a peculiar favourite.
Pressed for supplies on their own bank, the Sikhs were endeavouring to
draw them from the British side of the Upper Sutlej. In the fort and
town of Dhurrumkote, which were filled with grain, they maintained a
small garrison. Against this place, Major-General Sir Harry Smith was
ordered, on the 18th of Januar