The Daily Spy

From India. The news from British India, brought by the overland mail, and received in London by express from Marseilles, in anticipation of the mail itself, is of considerable importance. The British forces before Mooltan have received a check, and been obliged to make a retrograde movement, in consequence of the defection of a large body of their allies. We copy the following summary statement from the London Times:

The intelligence is unsatisfactory alike respecting the operations before Mooltan and the general state of the Punjaub. Our forces in that direction have suffered a check in consequence of the defection of the auxiliary Sikh troops. Just as the operations of General Whish's Brigade had commenced in the most brilliant manner, Shere Singh, with the force of nearly 5000 men under his command, went over to the Dewan, evidently upon a pre-arranged plot—an event which compelled General Whish instantly to change his tactics, to raise the siege, and having made a retrograde movement, to unite his forces in an entrenched camp at some 15 miles from the citadel, there to await in a more favorable position the junction of the reinforcements from Ferozepore and Scinde. Two engineer officers had since, it appears, fallen into the hands of the enemy. Moolraj, by Shere Singh's defection, had augmented his adherents to about 20,000 men, with the probability of a further accession of nearly as many more. Chutter Singh, the rebel leader in the Hazareh, was marching with about 10,000 men to join the Dewan; and although Gholab Singh had not more positively than heretofore gone over to the conspiracy, two of his regiments, with stores and baggage, had left to join the Hazareh Sikhs. At Lahore the features of this frontier rebellion were not less pronounced, although happily from our excellent measures of defence there the circumstance occasions no ground for ultimate apprehension as to our hold upon the capital. We find, however, that several other Sirdars of the Durbar had been found to be implicated, and that in consequence of this fact the Resident, on receipt of the intelligence from Mooltan, had at once secured under a guard the person of Dhuleep Singh, as a hostage, to influence those who wavered, as well as to frustrate attempts made by the Sikhs in arms to get possession of the Maharajah's person. The Resident had also, we are told, laid hands on the famous Koh-i-noor diamond, as a measure of similar precaution.

Troops were being poured into Scinde by sea from Bombay, to occupy the line of the middle Indus, and to march, should their services be required, upon the Punjaub. The Bombay force when united, would amount to about 10,000 men. Some of the Madras regiments would reinforce the Bombay stations, at the same time that a general advance was preparing from the Bengal frontier. From the latter direction a well-apportioned force, amounting to about 20,000 men, would march upon Mooltan, under Gen. Gilbert. The position of the British force in the field, strongly entrenched with a park of artillery of seventy guns, and their flank on the river, at some fifteen miles from Mooltan, may be regarded as secure under any contingency.

On the whole, happily, there appears every ground for belief that the preparations announced from all sides of India to retrieve the check we have described are on a scale of magnitude probably commensurate rather with the extent of past supineness in its exaggerated reaction than the actual degree of danger.