A field-hospital had been established at a village on the ridge whence we first descended into the plain of Aliwal, before the action. Parties from each regiment, when the battle was over, took the wounded to this place.
At daylight, on the morning of the 29th, so industrious had been the plunderers accompanying the army, that scarcely a soldier's corpse remained unstripped, with the exception of those whose numerous and deep gashes had rendered any article they wore unserviceable.
The plunderers had the prudence to accomplish their desecrations under the cover of night; had they been detected in the daylight, a short shrift and an ounce of lead would have been their well-merited reward; and, for my own part, I would rather have bestowed the contents of my pistols on one of them, than on the most fanatic Alkali in the whole Sikh army.
It was not easy to determine whence the miscreants had come, for the Sikh villages were all deserted, and the camp-followers, who must have heard the firing until nightfall, were not the most likely people to venture forth ten miles on such an errand. Some of the natives in the field-hospital, doubtless, assisted in the undertaking, but the task was too laborious to be completed by them alone.
The amount of losses on our part were, in killed, wounded, and missing, five hundred and eighty-nine men, and three hundred and fifty-three horses. The enemy's loss, by their own statement, exceeded three thousand. Many went to their homes, after the defeat, disheartened, and laid aside the profession of arms against the British as an unprofitable business.
The ordnance captured amounted to sixty-seven guns, mortars, and howitzers, and forty swivel guns,[45] which were destroyed as an incumbrance.
During the 29th and 30th of January, cartloads of captured ammunition were taken to the enemy's forts in the neighbourhood, all of which were deserted, and continual explosions told far into the Punjaub the tale of their destruction. These forts belonged to the troublesome Ladwa Rajah, who had instigated the recent expedition across the Sutlej, mainly in order to carry off the most valuable portion of his moveable property in the protected Sikh states, which feat having been performed more easily than he expected, he was emboldened to act on the offensive.
The announcement of Buddewal having become a blackened heap of ruins, was generally received with a savage degree of satisfaction, and the very name of the place became a convenient resource and by-word for all stray articles. Our native servants made it answer their purpose as a receptacle for every valuable article afterwards missing, until the end of the campaign, or an inventory checked the useful excuse.
A deserter from the Bengal Horse Artillery (John Porter, by name) fell into our hands during the enemy's retreat, and was recognised by some of his former associates. He had been some time in the Sikh service, and had been instrumental in directing the fire of the light guns upon his countrymen, for which employment he would have been speedily consigned to the tender mercies of the kites and vultures, had not the soldiers who captured him been restrained from carrying their resentment to such lengths, and the political agent, hoping to make some use of the renegade, saved his life. Mr. John Porter had apparently imbibed a strong predilection for his adopted country, and maintained that it would be impossible to subdue the Sikhs with the present forces which the British Government had assembled on the north-western frontier; but his opinion on this and other matters was hardly of sufficient value to have saved his life.
This man was more fortunate than another Englishman in the Sikh ranks at Ferozeshuhur, who, during the storm of the works by the British infantry, fell amongst the assailants, crying aloud—"Spare me, lads! I am an Englishman, and belonged to the old 44th!" His appeal was answered by several bayonets and execrations.