Lehal Library

212 Punjab Monarchy and Imperialism The only thing that remained was for the English on the other side of Malwa to recognize the situation that existed de facto. The weak point ln the Durbar's claim to sovereignty over the Cis..SUtlej chiefs was that, in 1805, when Lord Lake had chased Holkar across the plains of Malwa, Ranjit Singh, fearing that after defeating the Marathas the English commander might annex the whole of the Punjab, had suggested the river Sutlej as the boundary between the two states. Neither Lake nor the governor general had taken any notice of this suggestion. Their sole object was the annihilation of the Marathas; once that was achieved, the Board of Directors of the East India Company (which had been brought to the verge of bankruptcy by the Maratha campaigns) issued instrnctions to its officers not to involve the Company in any more wars and to consider the river Jumna as the western limit of English possessions in India. In the three years after the end of the Maratha campaign in 1805 both the Maharajah and the Company changed their attih1de to the Cis-Sutlej states. The Maharajah had resumed his claim to being the sovereign of all Sikhs and twice substantiated it with regard to the Malwa chiefs witl10U1 a word of protest from any one. In these three years the East India Company had been able to refill its coffe1-s and was ready for more adventures. The Durbar's action in taking over the territolies of Tara Singh Gheba in 1807 had caused great consternation among the Cis-Sutlej chiefs. After the attachment of Gheba's estates, Mohkam Chand crossed the Sutlej and, with more zeal than discretion, proceeded to take Anandpur and some other villages across the river. The Malwa chiefs were apprehensive and appealed to the English for protection. The situation took an tmexpected turn m their favour. The events that brought this about occurred neither on the banks of the Sutlej nor the Jumna but on the Thames and the Seine. Within a few years Napoleon Bonapane conquered one European country after another: Austria at Austr.rlitz, Prussia at Jena, Russia at Friedland. Tsar Alexander and Bonaparte signed a treaty at Tilsit with a not-toosecret understanding that if England continued hostilities against France, Russia would come in on the French side. Britain -was