By the end of September, 1848, the local outbreak was fast swelling into a national revolt. The flame of rebellion was spreading over the Land of the Five Rivers, and by the end of October only a few brave English officers were still holding together the last shreds of British influence in the Punjaub outside of Lahore and the camp of General Whish. Moolraj was the reverse of cordial to Shere Singh, who on October 9th quitted Mooltan and marched northward towards Lahore, his original force of five thousand men strengthened at every step by the warriors of the old Khalsa army who flocked eagerly to his standard. After threatening Lahore he moved westward to meet the Bunnoo insurgents, who had mutinied and murdered their officers, and he finally took up a position _à cheval_ of the Chenab at Ramnuggur, his main body on the right bank of the river.
During the summer and autumn Colin Campbell passed an uneasy and anxious time. It was not until the beginning of November that he had the full assurance of being employed in the manifestly impending campaign. By this time Cureton's cavalry brigade and Godby's infantry brigade were in the Doab between the Ravee and the Chenab, and on November 12th Colin Campbell joined Cureton there with two native infantry regiments, taking command of the advanced force with the temporary rank of brigadier-general. At length Lord Gough himself took the field, and on the 19th he crossed the Ravee at the head of an army of respectable strength. Apart from the division before Mooltan and the garrison required for Lahore, he had available for field service four British and eleven native infantry regiments. He was strong in cavalry, with three fine British regiments, five of native light cavalry, and five corps of irregular horse; and his powerful artillery consisted of sixty horse and field-guns, eight howitzers, and ten 18-pounders. On the early morning of the 22nd his lordship, with Colin Campbell's infantry division and a cavalry force under Cureton with horse and field artillery, marched from Saharun towards Ramnuggur with the object of driving across the Chenab some Sikh infantry reported to be still on the left bank. Some small detachments hurrying towards the river were pursued somewhat recklessly by horse-artillery, which had to retire under the heavy fire opened from the Sikh batteries on the commanding right bank. A gun and two waggons stuck fast in the deep sand and could not be extricated. Colin Campbell suggested to Lord Gough the measure of protecting the gun until it could be withdrawn at night, by placing infantry to cover it in a ravine immediately in its rear; but the Commander-in-Chief disapproved of this measure. The enemy lost no time in sending the whole of his cavalry across the river to take possession of the gun under cover of his overwhelming artillery fire. Our cavalry was foolishly sent forward to charge the superior hostile horse,--a folly which was committed, according to Colin Campbell, under the personal direction of the Commander-in-Chief. Ouvry's squadron of the Third Light Dragoons made a brilliant and useful charge which materially aided the withdrawal of the artillery. In the face of a heavy fire Colonel William Havelock, a noble soldier who had fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, led on the Fourteenth Light Dragoons to a desperate combat with the Sikh horse. The horses of the dragoons were exhausted by the long gallop through the heavy sand and the casualties were heavy. Among the slain was Havelock himself, after a hand-to-hand combat; and while riding forward to stay Havelock's last advance Brigadier-General Cureton, who had raised himself to distinction from the ranks in which he had enlisted as a runaway lad, was killed by a Sikh bullet.
