Misr Diwán Chand, who had the year before taken Múltán, while Rám Dyál commanded the rear division. This last was prevented from marching by heavy rain, and had no share in the fighting. But little resistance was made. Zabar Khán, the locum tenens, took to flight, and the province of Kashmír was annexed by Ranjit Singh to his dominions; Moti Rám, the son of Diwán Mokham Chand and father of Rám Dyál, being the first governor.
The history of the province from this time until its grant by the English to Rájá Ghuláb Singh differs little from that of other Sikh districts except that, being far removed from Lahore, the governors were able to fleece the people with more than the usual impunity. Sometimes the oppression they exercised was so intolerable that insurrection, the popular reply to official tyranny, warned the Mahárájá that it was time to replace an obnoxious lieutenant by one less rapacious. The Diwáns Moti Rám and his youngest son Kirpa Rám were, on the whole, the best governors that the valley had in these hard days, and their rule, with two breaks, lasted till 1831. The former was an indolent man who did not trouble himself much about administration, but he was kind-hearted and liked by the people. When his eldest son Rám Dyál was killed in Hazára in 1820, he resigned the appointment and wished to retire to Benares, and the Mahárájá sent as his successor the fighting Sirdár Harí Singh Nalwa. But his ideas of government were so primitive that the Kashmírís revolted, and it was
