Lehal Library

214 Punjab Monarchy and Imperialism kill, Ranjit Singh's advent will be like a stroke of paralysis which will destroy us within a few hours.' 2 A delegation consisting of Bhag Singh ofJind, Lal Singh of Kaitbal, .Bhagwan Singh ofJagadhari, and the Vakils of Patiala and Nabha waited on the Resident at Delhi and presented a lengthy memorandum stating that since the English had replaced the Mughals and the Marathas, the Malwa chiefs now looked upon them as the sovereign power and expected to be protected against Ranjit Singh. The Resident forwarded the memorandum to the governor general without making any commitment. The Company's policy still being 'no farther tJ1an the Jumna,' the governor general decided that the representation should be officially ignored. The Maharajah summoned the Malwai chiefs to Amritsar. He gave them a solemn assurance that he did not intend to annex their states and invited them to be associated with the Durbar as equals. The chiefs agreed to th.row in their lot with their countrymen: 'Between the lion and wolf they had to come to terms with one of the lordlier beasts.'' At this stage Metcalfe appeared on the Punjab scene. Although Metcalfe's object was to get Ranjit Singh to line up on the side of the English in the event of a French invasion, there were many factors which led the Durbar to doubt his motives. France was a long way off and there was no real evidence of a French plan lo invade India:1 The French government had made no attempt to estabJish contact with the Durbar nor, to its knowledge, with the Sindhians or the Afghans. On the other 2 Umrlat-ttt-Tnwiirikh, Daft.or 11, 79. 3 E. Thompson, Th, Ufr of Char/.fs, Lord MetmffP. p. 75. 4 111e official Durbar historian Sohan Lal, who devotes many pages of his Umdat-ttl-Tawiirikh to Metcalfe's mission, does not once mention France in his narrative. V. G. Kiernan in his monograph Metcalfe's Missim1 to Lalu11"1'writes: 'The negotiations with Ranjic Singh were in fa1=t lo turn so little on French affairs, that it miglu be permissible LO suspecl Napoleon of being i11 this case a mere red ht>1Ting, and the mission of being sent 10 initia1e a 1wnetration of 1he Pu,tjab· (p. 5).