The Express. — 1846-09-12 (London, England)

THE BATTLE-FIELDS ON 7 THE SIITLEJ. (From an article on "The Countries bet the Jumna," in the last number of the From the earliest times, going back to dition, these plains have been the battle is here and in the country immediately site banks of each river, that the tights o have been fought. Who shall venture ti rich valley of the Ganges has been loe plains ?—how often the conqueror from blished on the threshold of India, has irresistible master of the riches and resou beyond ? From the days of Alexander Singh, the tide of conquest has flowed ti bringing down a succession of the hardy of the west to colonise and deteriorate influence of the east—once, and once only ages, has the order of things been reverse has beheld the often-conquered Hindoo plaios in triumph a sufficient trophy fro: first, the most tenatical and still most hat medan conquerors. • • We now pass over, in a breath, a perio tunes; how many. dynasties may have r that period, if Indian dynasties were then vicissitudes to which they have since b have no landmark to direct us, no ray of 1 attention, between the days of the son of of Sebukhtegin. We may conclude that India, if not free from internal broil, was by foreign invaders. We give up that pe Live supporter of the Buddhistic and Bra This must have been the time structures were raised which still ae the Hindoo people were governed by I own rue and religion; it must ha when the temple was crowded with 1,11 shrine heaped with rich presents: these old days, to which the pious must still leo' when kine were not killed, and when Br shipped through the land ! But a bitter, at a fanatical enemy to the creed of Brahma, down to wood and stone, had sprung Mt deserts of Arabia. The fiery tenets of Mai citated the slumbering energy of the ram once great and powerful between the I Mediterranean, and sent forth hordes of to conquer and die in the name of the Al visible and the eternal. From the straits c west to the mountains which overhang th Oxus to the Nile—the sons of Islam o opposed them. • • .But the Sikh—the detested Sikh—no no royal cities mark the era of his supr lotion, ruin, sad destruction, have ever b of his creed, both religious and politics ing the cities and sacking the towns h delight, and the wide extent of ruins that many a former metropolis testify how we his destroying mission. A wretched r spot where the cruelty of the oppressor wa hind after the lapse of a century, and a h city was sacked and levelled to the gro fanatics. Even to this day the pious Siuf is performing a religious duty in convey' of the Ganges one brick from the ruins hand of whose impious rulers the wife an last of the Writs was inhumanly murdered As described in the foregoing pages con nection with the Sikh. With a part of tb tared into treaties of friendship; over a p. mantle of our protection and included t limits of our empire. It has been often n princes of India, with whom we have col have none of them boasted of dynasties ex ther than the commencement of the pi Many, such as Holkar, Scindia, and Hyder successful military adveturers ; others such the Dekhan and the Vizier of Oude, we empire of Delhi, who had taken advent" to assert their independence. But the] resemblance in the history of the Sikh peop own Indian empire. Both were created un fluences, and the crisis of their fates happ