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the field. Brigadiers Wheeler and Wilson assailed their right, storming
their lines and capturing their guns. The Khalsa army reeled back,
broken and despairing, and sought the river, in the vain hope that they
might manage to cross by fording or by boats. The rapid movements of the
British turned the retreat of the enemy into a disorderly and desperate
flight. The sirdar had, however, made some provision for defeat; he had
occupied strongly the village of Bhoardec, so as to cover the retreat
to the river, and if possible to cover also the passage. Here the 16th
Lancers behaved splendidly. The enemy had a strong force of infantry
drawn up on one flank of the village; the 16th charged them; the foe
stood the charge heroically; the 16th penetrated their square; the Sikh
square, notwithstanding the efficiency of the lance in such warfare,
closing behind the cavalry as they charged through. The lancers wheeled,
and this time used the sword more than the lance, disconcerting the
arrangement of the enemy, and breaking their square. The 3rd Light
Cavalry completed the work of destruction, bursting through the
formation of the infantry, and putting great numbers to the sword. The
fighting might be said, to be in some sense more desperate after
the battle was lost and won than during the operations upon which
stragetically its issue depended. While these brilliant, cavalry charges
were occurring on the right of the village, her majesty's 53rd carried
the village itself by storm, and the 30th native infantry, wheeling
round by the left of the houses, took the fugitives in rear. The same
masterly skill and heroic valour which was shown in taking Aliwal
conquered Bhoardee, the last hope of the defeated; for although about
1000 Khalsa infantry rallied under a high bank to check the destructive
advance of the English, there was no longer any hope of covering a
retreat across the river. Even this rally only added to the slaughter
and the ultimate confusion: a heavy fire of musketry from 1000 men,
closely directed, was galling to our soldiers, but the 30th native
infantry took them, at the point of the bayonet, and as they retreated,
twelve guns which were previously moved up to within three hundred
yards, opened a deadly fire of canister, mowing down the fugitives in
a manner which even those engaged in deadly strife thought it awful to
witness. To complete the horror of this flight, her majesty's 63rd,
who moved up to the support of