Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c36.s6.6

v3.c36.s6.6

We have seen (Ch. 24 §§ 4-5) how at the end of 1763 the great conqueror Ahmad Shah Durrānī had practically to admit defeat at the hands of the Sikhs, and their national rising reached its crowning success in the capture of Sarhind (Dec. 1763) and Lahor (April 1764.) The fall of Sarhind, which was the capital of the Cis-Satlaj country in the geography of the Mughal empire, was followed by a rapid and complete transformation of the political map of this tract. Mughal administration disappeared and Sikh rule set in, though it took the Khālsa nebulæ some years to solidify into regular States and baronies in this region. As soon as Zain Khan, the last Muslim governor of Sarhind, had fallen in battle and his city had been sacked, the victorious Sikh confederates seized the country round. "Tradition still describes (as Cunningham wrote in 1849) how the Sikhs dispersed as soon as the battle was won ; and how, riding night and day, each horseman hurled his belt, his scabbard, his articles of dress, his accoutrements, till he was almost naked, into successive villages to mark them as his."