Page:The Sikhs (Gordon).djvu/256

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214
THE SIKHS.

and infantry were rapidly formed from the old Khalsa warriors and sent to the seat of war. A corps of Muzhabi Sikhs, 1200 strong, was raised from the workmen on the canals to serve as sappers before Delhi, and old Sikh artillerymen, who a few years before had fought against us, were sent down to work the guns in the trenches, where one of their officers astonished the captain of his battery by remarking that the rebels would not have made such fools of themselves if like him they had lived for a "month in Mere Street, Oxford Street"! He had been to London in the train of the Maharaja Duleep Singh, and had seen Britain's strength and resources, the object-lesson so epigrammatically expressed by Jung Bahadur, the great minister and ruler of Nepal, who had visited England, and who, when urged at that time to join in the effort to drive out the British, replied, "I have stood on London Bridge."

The army before Delhi having been reinforced by Nicholson's arrival, the assault