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In 1804 a British force of 1,200 troops under Colonel Monson was lured away from its base of supplies by a feigned retreat and incurred a very serious reverse; scarcely a tenth of them, utterly broken, "straggled, a mere rabble, into Agra". This disaster was soon afterwards retrieved by other divisions of Lake's army, but three attempts to storm the strong fortress of Bhartpur were repulsed by the rájá, Ranjít Singh, an ally of Holkar.

I would note that the "Indian Prince" was no less a personage than Ranjit Singh, Rajah of the Punjab, that the burial of the Fakir was attested by his German surgeon-general, and that a friend and I followed Colonel Boileau's example in personally investigating the subject of vivi-sepulture.

Sindhia, justly regarding this as an open act of defection, instantly made terms with Ranjit Singh, the leader of the Jats, and pushed on all his forces to the pursuit, at the same time throwing a strong reinforcement into the fort of Agra, the garrison of which was placed under the command of Lakwa Dada, one of his best officers.

Ranjit Sing, Raja of Bhartpur at the commencement of the present century, who so gallantly defended that place against our arms, was a son of Suraj Mal, who was killed while reconnoitring the Mughal army. The Jats are the best agriculturists in India, and good soldiers in self defence; for since the spirit which Suraj Mal infused, evaporated, they have always preferred peace to war.

I knew him; Lieutenant Ranjit Singh, Captain Courtland's second-in-command. He was a Sikh. Instead of a steel helmet, he wore a striped turban, and he had a black beard that made Joe Kivelson's blond one look like Tom Kivelson's chin-fuzz. On his belt, along with his pistol, he wore the little kirpan, the dagger all Sikhs carry.

They accordingly instigated Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Bhartpur Jats, to prefer a claim to the fief of Balamgarh, held by a petty chieftain of his own nation.

In the center of the rotunda, upon a raised platform is carved a lotus flower, and around it are eleven similar platforms of smaller size. The guides tell you that upon these platforms the body of Ranjit Singh, the greatest of the maharajas, was burned in 1839, and his eleven wives were burned alive upon the platforms around him.

So it is no exaggeration to say that in my early childhood I hardly knew him. He would now and then come back home all of a sudden, and with him came foreign servants with whom I felt extremely eager to make friends. Once there came in this way a young Panjabi servant named Lenu. The cordiality of the reception he got from us would have been worthy of Ranjit Singh himself.

By Munshi Dhonkal Singh; originally written for the information of Ranjit Singh, Thakur of Bhartpur, about the end of the last century. Hal-i-Begam Sahiba. A little Persian memoir of Begam Sumroo, full of vagueness and error, written four years after her death, and from traditional sources.

None of this sonny-boy stuff; Ranjit Singh was a man of dignity, and he respected the dignity of others. "If I admit you to the spaceport, will you give these people the facts exactly as you learn them?" "That's what the Times always does, Lieutenant." Well, almost all the facts almost always. "Will you people accept what this Times reporter tells you he has learned?" "Yes, of course."