A history of the Sikhs, from the origin of the nation to the battles of the Sutlej.

CHAP. VIII SCHEMES OF NAU NIHAL SINGH 231

Nau Nihal Singh thus seemed to have overcome the 1840.
danger which threatened him on the side of England, and Death of
to be on the eve of reducing the overgrown power of his Maharaja
grandfather's favourites. At the same time the end of the Kharak
Singh, 5th
Maharaja's life was evidently approaching; and although Nov. 1840.
his decline was credibly declared to have been hastened by
drugs as well as by unfilial harshness, there were none who
cared for a ruler so feeble and unworthy. Kharak Singh
at last died on the 5th November 1840, prematurely old
and care-worn, at the age of thirty-eight, and Nau Nihal
Singh became a king in name as well as in power; but the
same day dazzled him with a crown and deprived him of
life. He had performed the last rites at the funeral pyre of Death of
his father, and he was passing under a covered gateway with the Prince
Nau NihMl
the eldest son of Gulab Singh by his side, when a portion of Singh, 5th
the structure fell, and killed the minister's nephew on the Nov. 1840.
spot, and so seriously injured the prince that he became
senseless at the time, and expired during the night. It is
not positively known that the Rajas of Jammu thus designed
to remove Nau Nihal Singh; but it is difficult to acquit them
of the crime, and it is certain that they were capable of
committing it. Self-defence is the only palliation, for it is
equally certain that the prince was compassing their degradation, and, perhaps, their destruction.1 Nau Nihal Singh
was killed in his twentieth year; he promised to be an able
and vigorous ruler; and had his life been spared, and had
not English policy partly forestalled him, he would have
found an ample field for his ambition in Sind, in Afghanistan, and beyond the Hindu Kush; and he might, perhaps,
at last have boasted that the inroads of Mahmud and of
1 Cf. Mr. Clerk to Government, 6th, 7th, and 10th Nov. 1840,
who, further, in his memorandum of 1842, drawn up for Lord Ellenborough, mentions Gen. Ventura's opinion that the fall of the gateway
was accidental. Lieut.-Col. Steinbach, Punjab (p. 24), and Major
Smith, Reigning Family of Lahore (p. 35, &c.), may be quoted as
giving some particulars, the latter on the authority of an eye-witness,
a European adventurer, known as Capt. Gardner, who was present
a part of the time, and whose testimony is unfavourable to Raja
Dhian Singh. [The scene of this tragedy was the gateway in the fort
at Lahore facing the Hazuri Bagh and the Badshahi Musjid. It is now
closed, but may be easily recognized by its prominent towers.-ED.]