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The relief of Ferozepore threatened, according to the first reports received by the Governor-General, by the Sikh army en masse had been his primary object in those rapid marches which brought him to Moodkee.
On the evening of the 20th, therefore, Sir John Littler had no difficulty in instantly obeying the orders from Moodkee, and in arriving next morning at headquarters in time to share the peril and the glory of one of the most dreadful contests in which we were ever engaged in Europe or in Asia.
On the 18th of December the British forces, having moved up by double marches on alternate days, reached, and, with the exception of two European and two native regiments, were concentrated at MOODKEE, twenty miles from Ferozepore. How easy it is for us to describe, in a single sentence, the results of the irrepressible spirit and indefatigable exertions of those gallant men!
When the fight at Moodkee was done, there was not, of the surviving victors, a Queen's soldier or a sepoy who had not already settled to his own satisfaction the whole campaign of the Sutlej, in the pithy but comprehensive conviction, that he should drub the Sikhs whenever he met them.
Four-and-twenty hours had elapsed since their parched lips were moistened by a single drop of water, when these exhausted but indomitable troops, a little after mid-day, took up their encamping ground in front of Moodkee. But their toil had not begun. Never, surely, were the harassing fatigues of so laborious a march alleviated by a more terrible refreshment.
Frustrating his manoeuvres, what else remained to do was done with the hard steel of the bayonet, and hand to hand with the good sword. And thus were earned the laurels of Ferozeshah. Over the carnage of such battle-fields, we would glance hastily. At Moodkee, of the British, fell two hundred and fifteen; at Ferozeshah, six hundred and ninety-four, gallant men and faithful soldiers.
At Moodkee, our army, for most needful repose, and fully to prepare for a more gigantic effort, rested two days. In this interval the Governor-General took a step which has not escaped comment, in offering to the Commander-in-Chief his services as second in command of the army. He did right.
The long lists, also, of the wounded, which catalogue six hundred and fifty-seven sufferers at Moodkee, and swell to one thousand seven hundred and twenty-one at Ferozeshah, painfully attest the severity of the struggle, and the deadly precision of the foe. But the foe! who has numbered his dead? None; nor ever will.
Brydon brought the news of the massacre of our men by the Afghans; and during the anxious time that followed he was able to render good service in the field and at the council table. He fought in the battles of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, and Sobraon. At the first-named he had two horses shot under him; and in all he distinguished himself by coolness and bravery.
"Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, an' Sobraon that was fought close next door here, against the very beggars he wants us to join. Inkerman, The Alma, Sebastopol! 'What are those little businesses compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy?
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