154 THE HISTORY OF KASHMIR
military power which the Sikh nation had ex- hibited of bringing into the field 80,000 men and 800 pieces of field artillery, it appears to the Governor-General most politic to diminish the means of this warlike people to repeat a similar aggression.”
This was the reason we did not annex Kashmir. We had not yet annexed the Punjab. We did not finally conquer it till three years later, when the continued unruliness of the Sikhs and the murder of British officers had rendered a second campaign necessary. In 1846 the East India Company had no thoughts or inclinations whatever to extend their possessions. All they wished was to curb their powerful and aggressive neighbours, and they thought they would best do this, and at the same time reward a man who had shown his favourable disposition towards them, by depriving the Sikhs of the hilly country, and by handing it over to a ruler of a different race.
So Gulab Singh became nominal ruler of Kashmir. But he did not acquire actual possession of his new province without difficulty. The governor appointed under the Sikh Government showed no disposition to hand over the province,
