When the death of their great chief was approaching, the army was drawn up in a line, and the dying monarch was carried in a litter through the ranks. As the procession moved slowly along, his favourite minister, Dhean Singh, appeared, to receive orders from his expiring sovereign, and informed the army, that Runjeet Singh declared, that his son, Khurruk Singh, should succeed him, and that Dhean Singh should be the chief minister of the kingdom. The soldiers received this intimation in perfect silence. According to the custom of the Sikhs, the body of the Maharajah was burnt the next day, before the gates of his palace, in the presence of all the great persons of the kingdom, and of the assembled troops. Four of his wives, two of whom were only sixteen years of age, and endowed with great personal beauty, together with seven of his concubines, committed themselves to the flames with his body. Dhean Singh also made a semblance of profound grief, and appeared to be in the act of throwing himself upon the funeral pile, but was forcibly withheld by the family of the Maharajah.
The death of Runjeet Singh occasioned considerable difficulty in the management of the auxiliary Sikhs under Colonel Wade, the British agent at Lahore who was now with the British army, and had the command of the column that was to force the Khyber pass. This glorious achievement he accomplished from the 22nd to the 27th of June, when he made himself master of Ali Musjid. He was nobly sustained in this campaign by the troops of Runjeet Singh; and on the 6th of August, the army of the Indus entered Cabool and forced Dost Mahomed to fly to Bokhara.
Runjeet Singh was succeeded by his son Khurruk Singh, then thirty-seven years of age. He was a weak and luxurious prince, and was totally incompetent to the affairs of government. Soon after his accession he was seized with a severe illness, of which he died, in November, 1840. His son, Nou Nehal Singh, and the chief minister, Dhean were supposed to have been not altogether innocent of his death.
Nou Nehal Singh, who was nineteen years of age, inherited his grandfather's ambitious spirit, and could scarcely conceal his joy, even at his father's funeral pyre, on finding himself sovereign of Lahore. He hated the English, and dreaded the effect of their policy in procuring a clear passage for their troops through the Punjaub, and thus, by a chain of consecutive alliances, effecting a union between the southern provinces of India and the West of Europe. He was determined to give proof of this on the first favourable opportunity that might present itself; but the royal sceptre which had so long fired his youthful breast soon passed to another, for the same day that elevated him to the throne, saw him a corpse! On leaving the pile he thought to wash away his sins in the Rāvee, and as he was riding through the outer gateway of the palace, a large portion of the archway fell upon him, killed the friend who was riding at his side, and so severely wounded the young prince in the head, that he expired in three hours. For several days his death was kept a secret; by some, in order to give his mother time to come up, and by others, to secure the succession to Shere Singh, the reputed, and afterwards adopted, son of Runjeet Singh. After a fierce contest between the queen mother and Shere Singh, the latter ascended the throne.