Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III GWALIOR AND THE PUNJAB In the shower of promotions which descended copiously on the army whose return from Afghanistan Lord Ellenborough greeted with so great effusion, Havelock did not participate. He went forth toward Afghanistan a captain in 1838; a captain he came out in the end of 1842. The only souvenir given him of his service beyond the Indus was what he called "a bit of red ribbon"; he was made a C.B. for his prominent share in the defeat of Akbar Khan outside Jellalabad on April 7th, 1842. When the Ferozepore ceremonials were finished he reverted to regimental duty, and for three months concerned himself with " the oversight of the shirts and stockings of No. 4 Company of H.M.'s Thirteenth Light Infantry." From April to October 1843, he was on leave at Simla with Mrs. Havelock. Near the end of his stay there he got his majority without purchase, and never subsequently did a stroke of regimental duty. Immediately on his promotion he was made Persian interpreter on the staff of the new Commander-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Gough, whose camp he joined at Cawnpore in the end of October, in time to participate in the short Gwalior campaign. The Afghan disasters had sensibly altered the tone of the native states in their relations with the British raj. The Mahratta state of Gwalior had a mercenary army of a strength quite disproportioned to its requirements, its revenue, and its population. It consisted of thirty thousand regular infantry, ten thousand cavalry, and two hundred guns, and was commanded and disciplined by officers of European descent. The troops, conscious of their strength, had the mastery in the state, resisted the reduction of their numbers, and constituted a standing menace on our frontier. A conspiracy, resulting in the expulsion of the Reg...