qualities which ensure success. When he first, as a boy of twelve, stood in his father's place everything was against him. He was beset by enemies, by doubtful friends, false allies, and open foes. No care had been bestowed on his education; the little he had was that of the camp, as he often accompanied his father in his expeditions. A regency composed of his mother and his father's minister ruled the confederacy in his name, but the guiding spirit in his interest was a Sikh lady to whose daughter he was affianced. She was one of the most artful and ambitious of her sex who ever figured in Sikh history, and became the ladder by which Ranjit Singh ascended to power: a masterful woman, the widow of a sardar—heir to a rival misl—killed while fighting against Maha Singh, she aimed, by bringing about a marriage alliance between her daughter and Ranjit Singh, to secure his support to her claims to the sardarship of the misl to which her husband would have succeeded. This she
