numbers alone. It was the strength of improved strategic positions which, he believed, abundantly compensated for the numerical reductions that he ordered on the close of the first Sikh War, Lord Hardinge doubled the garrison of North-Western India. Fifty thousand men with sixty guns commanded the line of the Sutlej. A standing camp of 9000 men held the Punjab capital Lahore. Another great standing camp of equal strength, with infantry, cavalry, artillery complete, lay at Firozpur; ready to be hurled, at a day's notice against an enemy — everything in a state of perfect preparation down to its commissariat carts, transport bullocks, and litters for the wounded or sick.
Lord Hardinge might fairly claim that he had ended the long period of war entailed by the aggressions of Lord Auckland, and the vainglorious histrionics of Lord Ellenborough: that he had done what human prudence could accomplish to combine effective strength with military retrenchment; and to render the calm of the moment a permanent peace. He did emphatically claim to have done these things. Before sailing from India in January 1848, he assured Lord Dalhousie, his successor, that so far as human foresight could predict, 'it would not be necessary to fire a gun in India for seven years to come[1].'
- ↑ Life of Lord Lawrence, by Bosworth Smith, M.A., vol. i, p. 214, ed. 1885.
