pressed, soon became a perfect
flight--all arms dispersing over the country, rapidly pursued by our
troops for a distance of twelve miles, their track strewn with the
wounded, their arms, and military equipments, which they threw away to
conceal that they were soldiers."

At dawn next day Major-general Sir Walter Gilbert took the command of
a corps of the army, principally consisting of cavalry, in pursuit. The
retreat of the Sikhs, or rather their flight, was covered by fifteen
hundred Affghan horse, who had arrived just before the battle. These,
however brave, constituted a very irregular force, and soon became mixed
with the mass of the fugitives. The flight of the Khalsa army was in the
direction of the Khoree Pass. At the entrance General Gilbert halted,
with the Bombay division, and sent General Mountain through the gorge to
Pooran. It was necessary to secure this pass, as, if the enemy had been
able to hold it, considerable difficulties might have been thrown in the
way of the pursuers, especially as torrents gushed from the mountains,
and the weather was wet and tempestuous.

On the 24th the pursuers resumed their march, but by that time the Sikhs
had crossed the river, and the British did not succeed in getting sight
of them until reaching Noorangabad. During this march, Major Lawrence
joined the camp of Sir Walter Gilbert; Chuttur Singh, whose prisoner
he was, permitting him on parole to proceed to the camp of the
commander-in-chief with proposals from Shere Singh. Akram Khan, with
part of the Affghan auxiliaries to the Khalsa army, retreated upon
Attock.

On the 27th and 28th, Sir Walter Gilbert brought his forces over the
Jhelum, compelling Shere Singh, with the relics of his army, to retire
with precipitation. Gilbert was obliged to leave a portion of his forces
behind in consequence of the high waters in the river, but by the 5th of
March these followed. Before these detachments effected their passage,
the armies of pursuers and pursued were nearly equal in number; but the
Sikh chief wisely concluded that if he could not, with nearly four times
the number of the British, prevent the latter from storming his strong
position near the Chenab, he was not likely to hinder them, when their
numbers were superior, from crossing the Jhelum. Gilbert was speedily
reinforced, and at the head of an army of about twenty thousand men,
with nearly fifty pieces of cannon, he so menaced the Sikh general, that
the latter