from 1762 ...In the twilight of dawn, Durrani and his allies surprised the Sikhs, who numbered about 50,000, most of them noncombatants. Under these circumstances, the Sikhs could not engage in their favored hit-and-run tactics. Neither was a pitched battle advisable. It was decided that the Sikh fighters would form a cordon around the slow-moving baggage train consisting of women, children and old men. They would then make their way to the desert in the south-west by the town of Barnala, where they expected their ally Alha Singh of Patiala to come to their rescue.
An eye witness account describes the Sikhs. “Fighting while moving and moving while fighting, they kept the baggage train marching, covering it as a hen covers its chicks under its wings.” More than once, the troops of the invader broke the cordon and mercilessly butchered the women, children and elderly inside, but each time the Sikh warriors regrouped and managed to push back the attackers
