Yelling fiercely, with lance and sword the Guides clove their way through the huddling mass of the enemy.  Then clearing, they wheeled about, and with unabated fury fell again upon the benumbed and paralysed foe.  Not yet content, the heroic Khuttuk again called on his men for another effort, and, rallying and wheeling about, the weary troopers and still wearier horses once more rode down into the stricken mass.  But “God preserve us from these fiends,” muttered the demoralised Sikhs, and, assisting their deity to answer the pious prayer, the whole mass broke and fled, pursued up to the very walls of Mooltan by “that thrice accursed son of perdition, Fatteh Khan, Khuttuk,” and the remnants of his seventy Guides.

Through the intense heat of the summer of 1848 the little cluster of English officers who stood for British dominion kept heart and energy in the siege of Mooltan.  As Edwardes described the position, it was only a terrier watching a tiger; but it was at any rate a good stout-hearted English terrier, and the tiger was afraid to face it.  Yet even this stout terrier had to give way a little, when no reinforcements arrived, and when, in September, Sher Sing, with three thousand four hundred cavalry and nine hundred infantry, deserted and went over to the enemy.

The siege, however, was only temporarily raised, and was at once resumed on the arrival of a column of Bombay troops.  This reinforcement consisted of two British infantry regiments, five Native infantry regiments, and three regiments of Native cavalry.  With his force thus strengthened General Whish immediately resumed the offensive, and not only renewed the siege, but determined to take the place by assault.  In the furtherance of this project he first stormed and captured the city, many of the buildings in which completely dominated the fort at short effective ranges.  From the coigns of vantage thus gained the British artillery and infantry poured a hail of shot and shell into the doomed defences, while the cavalry hovered outside ready to pounce on those who broke cover.  Placed in these desperate straits, and without hope of succour, Diwan Mulraj and the whole of his force surrendered unconditionally on the 22nd of January, 1849, after a siege which had lasted nearly seven months.

This timely success released at a critical moment, for service elsewhere, the British forces engaged in the siege.  For meanwhile great events had been happening in the upper Punjab, and great were yet to come.  On January 13th had been fought the bloody battle of Chillianwalla, where the casualties on both sides were very severe, and where the gallant 24th Foot had thirteen officers and the sergeant-major laid out dead on their mess-table.  Lord Gough required nearly three thousand men to fill the gaps in his ranks before again closing with the redoubtable Sikhs.  On every count, therefore, the news of the fall of Mooltan was received with considerable satisfaction, and the troops recently engaged in it with keen alacrity turned their faces northwards to Lord Gough’s assistance, in the hope of arriving in time to throw their weight into the balance in the closing scenes of a campaign destined to add a kingdom to the British Empire.