GIFT OF
THE FALL OF
THE MOGUL EMPIRE
THE FALL OF
THE MOGUL EMPIRE
BY SIDNEY J. OWEN, M.A.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1912
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PREFACE
THIS book is not a regular history of the period
over which it extends, but the substance of a
course of lectures intended to trace the operation
of the causes which, in the course of a century,
reduced the mighty and far-famed Empire of
the Great Mogul to a political shadow. Accord-
ingly, events of minor importance, or not materi-
ally affecting the main issue, are not noticed.
And others which are cognate to, and virtually
repetitions of, what has been already related,
are either omitted, or glanced at very summarily.
And throughout an attempt has been made not
to tax the memory with too many bald facts,
but to bring out the salient features of the story,
so as to enlist the imagination by suggesting a
series of historical pictures.
A common impression is, that, as is so often
the case in the East, the decline and fall of the
Mogul Empire were due to the degeneracy of its
Sovereigns. But it is the object of this book
to show that it was irretrievably ruined in the
reign of Aurungzib, a monarch of great ability,
energy, and determination, but lacking in political
insight, and a bigoted Mussulman.
42C50
vi PREFACE
He struck the first mortal blow by reversing
Akbar's wise and generous policy of ignoring
distinctions of race and religion, and reimposing
the jizya, or poll-tax, on his Hindoo subjects ;
whereby he estranged them, and turned the
noblest and most warlike of them the Rajputs,
hitherto the staunchest supporters of the throne
into deadly and persistent enemies.
And Sivaji and his followers not only vindi-
cated their independence, but struck a second
mortal blow at the integrity of the Empire.
They destroyed its military reputation. They
exhausted its accumulated treasure. They spread
disorder and devastation over the Dekkan and
beyond it. They loosened the ties of allegiance,
and led multitudes of the doubly oppressed
people to join them. They asserted a claim, by
way of blackmail, to a quarter of the Imperial
revenue, and exacted it by planting their own
chief officers, collectors, and troops in the Imperial
Provinces, and levying this tribute at the point
of the lance, and thus establishing an imperium
in imperio. Thus the Empire, though not dis-
solved, was hopelessly debilitated. How desper-
ate was this situation may be inferred from the
fact that Aurungzib's son and successor, Bahadur
Shah, in vain sought to arrest the further progress
of the Mahrattas by sanctioning this masterful
pretension to divided sovereignty in the Dekkan
Provinces.
The effective authority of the central govern-
PREFACE vii
ment was thenceforth in abeyance. And, as
usual in the East, the provincial rulers, without
repudiating the technical supremacy of the Em-
peror, became independent, and the Mahrattas
more aggressive and dominant in Hindostan as
well as in the Dekkan.
Lastly, Nadir Shah, after inflicting the ex-
tremity of humiliation on the Emperor and his
capital, annexed the Imperial territory west of
the Indus. The dissolution of the Empire was
complete. But the lack-land Sovereign retained
his imposing title and pretensions, which still
impressed the native mind, and were turned to
practical account by Clive in the grant to the
East India Company of the perpetual Dewani of
the Bengal Provinces.
The following narrative is derived almost
entirely from contemporary authorities.
For the nefarious process by which Aurungzib
cleared his way to the throne I have followed
Manucci, a Venetian in Dara's service, whose
Storia do Mogor has been lately translated and
edited by Mr. William Irvine.
The account of the reigns of Aurungzib and
his successors, to the final settlement of Nizam-
ul-Mulk in the Dekkan, has been taken from the
standard history of Khafi Khan, translated by
Professor Dowson, and inserted in the 7th volume
of The History of India from its own Historians.
This author served under Aurungzib in the
Dekkan.
viii PREFACE
For the later history I am most indebted to
Grant Duff's History of the Mahrattas.
But the sketch of Aliverdi Khan's career is
taken from the Seir Mutaquerin, a contemporary
work, translated by a Frenchman under the
auspices of Warren Hastings. This work has
also supplied information on matters outside
Bengal.
The Paniput Campaign has been fully and
lucidly described by Casi Pundit, a Mahratta
in the service of the Nawab of Oude, who was
much concerned in the negotiations preceding the
battle, and was an eye-witness of it. The narra-
tive was translated and published anonymously
in the third volume of the Asiatic Researches.
In spelling Indian names I have endeavoured
to steer an even course between uncouth archa-
isms and the latest fashion of unfamiliar and
accentuated rendering, which perplexes and
troubles the general reader. But I have not felt
at liberty to alter the spelling in passages which
I have quoted.
For the Index I am indebted to my daughter,
Mrs. F. Boas, who kindly offered to compile it.
S. J. O.
OXFORD, January 1912.
CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF
CHIEF EVENTS
1657. Shah Jehan falls seriously ill.
Shuja defeated by Solaiman Shukoh.
1658. Dara defeated by Aurungzib and Morad.
Shah Jehan deposed and imprisoned.
Morad arrested ; and Aurungzib becomes Emperor.
Solaiman flies to Sirinagar.
1659. Aurungzib defeats Shuja.
Aurungzib defeats and puts Dara to death.
Sivaji murders Afzal Khan.
1660. Shuja retires to Arakan.
Solaiman betrayed to Aurungzib.
1661. Morad murdered.
1662. Sivaji surprises Shaista Khan at Poona.
1664. Sivaji raids Surat, assumes title of Raja, and coins money.
1665. Sivaji submits, and goes to Delhi.
1666. Shah Jehan dies.
Sivaji returns to Rajgurh.
Is crowned as Raja with Mogul forms.
1677. Aurungzib reimposes the /
1679. The Rajputs revolt.
Prince Akbar joins them.
1680. Sivaji dies.
1681. Prince Akbar joins Sambaji.
1682. Sambaji raids near Burhampur.
1683. Aurungzib undertakes the Dekkan war.
1686. Aurungzib takes Bijapur.
1687. Aurungzib takes Golconda.
1689. Sambaji put to death.
1690. Ram Raja becomes Regent.
1694. Gingee besieged.
1698. Gingee surrendered.
Santaji Ghorepuray murdered.
1699. Aurungzib changes his plan of war.
1700. Ram Raja dies.
1707. Aurungzib dies.
Shao released, and established as Raja, at Satara.
1709. Bahadur Shah marches against the Sikhs.
1712. Bahadur Shah dies.
Farokhsir defeats Jahandar Shah.
x CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF CHIEF EVENTS
1713. Husain Ali goes to the Dekkan.
1716. Baud Khan defeated and killed.
1717. Husain makes peace with Raja Shao.
1718. Farokhsir deposed and put to death.
1720. Nizam-ul-Mulk becomes strong in the Dekkan.
Defeats the Seiads' armies.
Husain assassinated.
Abdullah defeated and captured.
Baji Rao becomes Peishwa.
1722. Nizam-ul-Mulk made Vizier.
1723. Nizam-ul-Mulk resigns, and retires to the Dekkan.
1724. Mubariz defeated and slain.
1729. Nizam-ul-Mulk coerced by Baji Rao.
1731. Baji Rao defeats and kills Trimbuk.
Nizam-ul-Mulk and Baji Rao make peace.
1732-6. Baji Rao's success in Malwa, etc.
1737. Baji Rao threatens Delhi.
Blockades, and extorts concessions from, Nizam-ul-Mulk.
1738. Nadir Shah invades India.
1739. His extortions and massacre at Delhi.
Aliverdi becomes Viceroy of the Bengal Provinces.
The Mahrattas take Bassein.
1740. Baji Rao foiled by Nazir Jung.
Baji Rao dies.
1742. Balaji extorts the cession of Malwa.
First Mahratta invasion under Bhaskir Pundit.
1743. Aliverdi defeats and expels Rugoji from Bengal.
Second Mahratta invasion under Rugoji.
1744. Third Mahratta invasion under Bhaskir.
Aliverdi murders him and his officers.
1745. Mustapha defeated and slain.
Fourth Mahratta invasion by Rugoji.
1748. Mohammad Shah and Nizam-ul-Mulk die.
Rebellion of Sirdar Khan and Shumsur Khan.
Fifth Mahratta invasion.
Ahmed Shah Abdali's first invasion of India.
1749. Raja Shao dies.
1751. Balaji entraps the Guikwar.
Salabat Jung marches on Poona.
Aliverdi makes peace with the Bonsla.
Ahmed Shah's second invasion.
1754. Ghazi-u-din deposes and blinds the Emperor Ahmed Shah.
1756. The Abdali's third invasion.
1758. Rugonath Rao takes Delhi and Lahore.
1759. The Abdali's fourth invasion.
1760. The Bhow conquers the Nizam.
Marches to Hindostan, and takes Delhi.
1761. The battle of Paniput.
The Peishwa, Balaji, dies.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH . . 1
II. AURUNGZIB MAKES* HlMSELF EMPEROR . .17
III. RESULTS OF AURUNGZIB'S USURPATION . . 44
IV. AURUNGZIB'S NEW POLICY . . . .48
V. SIVAJI'S CAREER . . . . .55
VI. THE REIMPOSITION OF THE JIZYA, AND THE RAJPUT
REVOLT . . . . . .74
VII. AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE DEKKAN . . 86
VIII. THE MAHRATTA WAR OF INDEPENDENCE . . 102
IX. AURUNGZIB UNDERTAKES TO MASTER THE MAHRATTA
BASE. THE MAHRATTAS RETALIATE BY SETTLING
IN THE DEKKAN IMPERIAL PROVINCES . .112
X. THE EMPEROR BAHADUR SHAH . . .127
XI. THE INTERREGNUM ..... 133
XII. THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR . . . .135
XIII. THE EMPEROR MOHAMMAD SHAH. PROGRESS OF
THE ANTI-MOGUL REACTION . . .155
XIV. MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION . . . l6l
XV. NlZAM-UL-MuLK's POLICY . . . .183
XVI. GROWTH OF THE MAHRATTA CONFEDERACY, AND OF
THE PEISHWA'S ASCENDANCY IN IT . .191
xii CONTENTS
PAGE
XVII. PEACE BETWEEN THE NIZAM AND THE PEISHWA,
AND CONSEQUENT MAHRATTA PROGRESS IN
HINDOSTAN . . . . 194 1
XVIII. NADIR SHAH'S INVASION .... 200
XIX. CULMINATING PERIOD OF MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY
IN NATIVE INDIA .... 208
XX. ALIVERDI KHAN ..... 224
XXI. EPILOGUE . . . . . .234-
XXII. THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN .... 236
INDEX 267
THE FALL OF THE
MOGUL EMPIRE
i
THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
IN the middle of the seventeenth century, the
Empire of the " Great Mogul " was highly
renowned both in Asia and in Europe. It is
notable that Bernier, who lived many years in
India, and was very familiar with the Court of
the Emperor, thinks it worth while to institute
a comparison between the Mogul Empire and
that of le Grand Monarque at the height of
his power ; though, of course, he concludes in
favour of the latter. Nor was the reputation of
the Asiatic Monarchy undeserved. Whatever
its defects, it was, on the whole, a grandly
conceived, well-adjusted, and beneficent structure
of dominion.
The illustrious origin of its founder, Baber,
who was descended from the two mightiest
Asiatic conquerors, Ghenzis Khan and Timour,
gave to the dynasty high prestige, which its
2 "THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
matrimonial alliances with Rajput princesses
tended to enhance among its Hindoo subjects.
And the vigorous vitality of the royal house
had been attested by the personal rule of five
successive emperors in lineal descent. After
its apparent extinction under Humayun, Akbar's
genius and indefatigable warfare had restored,
pacified, and extended the limits of Baber's
acquisition. And Shah Jehan was now the
undisputed sovereign of a vast territory, not
indeed, as is often assumed, conterminous with
India on the south, but, on the other hand,
extending beyond it into the Afghan mountains.
That a Mussulman emperor should thus quietly
command the allegiance of a great and warlike
population, the far larger number of which was
Hindoo, was remarkable, and an eloquent testi-
mony to the merits of the regime. And this
favourable impression was confirmed by a closer
inspection of the Mogul Government, and its
general results.
The habitual and ready submission of the
Hindoos to a sovereign alien to themselves in
race and religion was due to his lenient and
sympathetic treatment of them. Instead of
carrying out the harsher precepts of the Koran ;
maintaining an invidious distinction between the
followers of the Prophet and the unbelievers,
and narrowing the moral basis of his authority
by excluding the latter from office on the ground
of religious disqualification ; the Great Mogul
THE EMPIRE BASED ON TOLERANCE 3
winked at and condoned the misbelief of the
bulk of his subjects, and their strange practices ;
showed special favour to their more eminent
men ; admitted them freely to high posts,
both civil and military, and thus, figuring in
the capacity of the Father of all his people,
made it their interest and their pride to serve
and sustain a regime so liberal, comprehensive,
and considerate.
Thus, while the Empire rooted itself more and
more in the hearts of the natives, its material
strength was proportionally increased. For,
though its regular armies were constantly re-
cruited by soldiers drawn from its Afghan
territory, and by mercenaries from Upper Asia,
who were Mahometans, as well as by men of
the same faith, though inhabitants of India,
the vast force which was at the disposal of the
Emperor, according to the Ayeen Akbery, may
be described rather as a quasi-national army,
if not as a militia, which must have been very
largely composed of Hindoos.
The naval weakness of the Empire was as
notable as its military strength. Practically,
it never had a fleet of its own, though the
Abyssinian " Seedys " were patronised and sub-
sidised for its occasional objects. And this is
the more remarkable, as the annual pilgrimage
by sea to Mecca required protection, and was
apt to be seriously interrupted by enemies or
marauders.
4 THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
Sivaji, as we shall see, took advantage of this
circumstance.
Though the Government was despotic, and
particular acts of great severity are recorded,
its general tone was mild and humane. Taxa-
tion was light ; and its most productive source,
the land revenue, was moderately assessed, and
equitably adjusted. Foreign commerce was pro-
tected and favoured ; and the English East
India Company throve, and multiplied its
factories, under the shadow of the Imperial
authority. The judicial system, though what
we should consider crude and capricious, as
well as too often corruptly exercised, was not
liable like our own to the tedious delays which
have been its reproach, and which have so much
tended to obstruct, and even defeat, the course
of justice. And the right of appealing to the
Emperor, from inferior tribunals, though too
generally a futile privilege, was sometimes really
remedial, and probably was, to a certain extent,
a standing check on judicial iniquity. Much
the same may be said as to the Provincial
Governors. Though their delegated authority
was, like their master's, arbitrary, its exercise
was open to the criticism and unfavourable
reports to Court of other officials, and of
unofficial but influential Jaghiredars ; as well
as to the periodical inquisitions of Imperial
Commissioners, like Charlemagne's Missi
Dominici ; on whose adverse judgment the
LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, & ART FLOURISH 5
Governor was liable to removal and punish-
ment.
The comparative internal tranquillity of the
Empire in later years had favoured the pursuits
of peace, augmented the Imperial revenue,
and culminated in what may be called the
quasi- Augustan Age of the dynasty ; when the
pomp and magnificence of the Court were most
elaborately organised and profusely displayed ;
literature and philosophy were esteemed, and
cultivated in high quarters ; and the fine arts
flourished to an extent that may be fairly
appreciated by the noble and graceful monu-
ments that, as in the case of the Taj Mahal,
still appeal so forcibly to the aesthetic sense even
of Europeans at the present day.
Paradoxical as it may sound, it is not the
less true, that the greatness and prosperity of
the Empire were due to the Gallic disposition
of its sovereigns. Though professed votaries of
Islam, they were none of them animated by its
exclusive and fierce spirit ; and their instincts
as statesmen constrained them to ignore differ-
ences which they could not hope to remove ;
and to strengthen their power by conciliation,
rather than undermine and fritter it away in a
Quixotic tilt against the strongholds of Hindoo
superstition. Baber himself was not only too
sagacious and experienced, but too generous
a man to be a religious persecutor. And his
grandson Akbar not only inherited his large-
6 THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
hearted disposition, but was too independent a
religious thinker to feel bound to act on the
precepts of the Koran in their political applica-
tion. Thus his latitudinarian views found expres-
sion in his liberal and comprehensive policy.
Though, like our own Government, he set his
face against some of the worst social evils of
Hindooism, forbidding suttee, and sanctioning the
remarriage of widow r s, he was more than tolerant
to his Hindoo subjects for he not only, by
abolishing the jizya, or poll-tax on infidels,
removed a most invidious distinction between
his co-religionists and the majority of his people,
but he gave the strongest practical proof of his
resolution to ignore distinctions of race and
religion by employing both classes impartially in
his service, and by cementing domestic relations
between his family and the most typical and
venerable representatives of Hindoo nationality,
the Rajput Principalities. And he was person-
ally attached, and gave his fullest confidence, to
members of this noble race. They held high
commands in his armies, were Governors of
important provinces, and sat in his Council.
Their gallant troops distinguished themselves
in his w r ars ; and from them were selected a corps
of what may be called Guards, who were char-
acteristically stationed outside the palace.
His example was followed by his descendants ;
and the intermarriage of the Mogul princes with
the Rajput princesses tended much to promote
HINDOO DEVOTION TO THE DYNASTY 7
sympathy between the races, to abate religious
prejudice on both sides, and in the end to half-
Hindooise the dynasty, and thereby to strengthen
its hold over the Hindoo community generally.
For it thus lost much of the aspect of an alien
and invidious Power, established by conquest,
and was more generally regarded as (so to speak)
a naturalised, normal, and congenial Paramount
Authority, rightfully entitled, by its beneficent
sway, to the allegiance and zealous support of
its native subjects.
This result was of course due not simply to
the introduction of Hindoo blood into the royal
family, but to the persistence in Akbar's line of
conduct. Jehangir and Shah Jehan, without
pledging themselves to his theological eclecti-
cism, steadily adhered to his liberal and compre-
hensive policy, which thus came to be recognised
as the fixed and inevitable order of things ;
though there was, of course, a back-water of
rigidly orthodox and fanatical Mahometan sen-
timent, very hostile to the system in favour
at Court. But the authority of the Emperor
counteracted, without entirely suppressing, its
indignant protest. On lower grounds also
than religious principle attempts seem to have
been made to reintroduce oppressive and
degrading inflictions on the Hindoos. One
audacious speculator, as the Emperor Jehangir
tells the story in his Memoirs, ventured to sug-
gest that he should " spoil the Egyptians " by
8 THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
reinstituting the jizya, and allowing the proposer
to hold the farm of it. But Jehangir, proud of
his great father's memory, and determined to
walk in his steps, and not blind to the self-
interested motive of the proposer, was not
content simply to repudiate the suggestion, and
rebuke the rash and selfish proposer of it, but
punished him after a fashion characteristically
Oriental.
More mindful of Akbar's policy than of Ma-
homet's precepts, he closed with the proposi-
tion, consented to farm out the impost to the
projector, exacted the money in advance, and
then cut off the unlucky fellow's head for having
had the temerity to seek his own profit at the
expense of his sovereign's reputation, the welfare
of the community, and the good-ordering of the
State.
This strange incident at least shows how
thoroughly Akbar had indoctrinated his son in
the principles of religious freedom and social
equality, though Jehangir 's peculiar dealing with
the impugner of them certainly leaves something
to be desired in the matter of equity and
humanity.
Again, the process of assimilation which had
approximated the Imperial family to the
Hindoo race had long been in operation in
various degrees, and from more than one cause,
among the Indian-born Mussulmans. As in
Ireland, immigrants after a time were proverb-
DANGER OF REVERSING AKBAR'S POLICY 9
ially said to become Hibernis Hiberniores, so
local influences and associations, including inter-
marriage, and more irregular connexions, con-
tributed to soften the asperities of religious
antagonism, and to create common interests and
a common jealousy of foreigners of a different
type, though of their own faith. This feeling
was liable to be much intensified by the circum-
stance that there was a constant stream of
Mahometan adventurers from the North, seeking
their fortunes in the Imperial service ; and that
they were apt to be more highly esteemed, and
more liberally paid, than their Indian co-re-
ligionists. Moreover, it must be remembered
that the latter were often the descendants of
converted Hindoos ; and, as in the case of the
Moriscos of Spain, heredity might assert itself
in the shape of stronger sympathy with their
old stock than with their new and superficial
faith. And this was the more probable from the
remoteness and comparative isolation of India
from the capital of the Mussulman world, and
the influence of the Sultan of Roum.
Thus not only were the Emperor's native
Mahometan subjects only a fraction of the popu-
lation ; but it was very doubtful how far he
could count on their sympathy and co-operation
in an attempt to reverse Akbar's policy, and
depress and persecute the Hindoo majority.
The arduousness of such an enterprise will
be more evident if we consider the characteristics
10 THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
of the several peoples that were destined to
become the subjects of this rash experiment.
Foremost and most obviously formidable were
the inhabitants of Rajputana. Their alleged
origin, on which they prided themselves, their
authentic history, their institutions and estab-
lished character, and the prominent and
effective part which they had hitherto played
in the Imperial service, all betokened the serious
consequences that might be anticipated from
their estrangement and hostility.
They claimed descent from the original
warrior caste ; and their stereotyped character-
istics gave much plausibility to the pretension.
Their ancestors had undoubtedly fought obstin-
ately and valiantly against the early Mahometan
invaders, and had eventually preserved their
independence by retiring into the remote and
sequestered region which they had since occupied,
and where they retained their military char-
acter in all its vigour, sustained by institutions
which curiously combined the tribal peculi-
arities of the Scotch Highlanders, the feudal
relations of the more settled communities of
mediaeval Europe, and a chivalrous spirit,, akin
to that which was so closely associated with
feudalism in the West. The personal devotion
of the Highland clan to the patriarchal Chief
had a counterpart in the passionate fidelity of
the Rajput tribe to its Prince. Under him, as
in feudal Europe, the thakoors, or nobles, held
FORMIDABLE CHARACTER OF THE RAJPUTS 11
their lands by military tenure, and were bound
to support their Prince in his wars. And while,
as in feudal Europe, their independent spirit,
their pride, and their readiness to take offence,
made their relations with him by no means
uniformly harmonious, their proficiency in war
was more habitually maintained by the jealousies,
quarrels, and consequent contests of the rival
tribes. And these were the more frequent and
obstinate, because the Rajput was, so to speak,
a true sportsman in the great game of war.
To distinguish himself in battle was his point
of honour ; he fought for fame, not like the
lower races for plunder ; and his great delight,
in his hours of relaxation, was to listen to the
spirit-stirring strains of his bhats or minstrel
bards, commemorative of the martial achieve-
ments of his Princes and their followers. But
as Akbar's policy was developed, the Rajputs
found ample occupation for their favourite
pursuit in the Imperial armies ; in which,
however, they still retained their separate
organisation, and thus preserved their peculiar
character and corporate spirit.
Akbar's remembrance of his grandfather's
experience of Rajput hostility must have strongly
impressed on him the importance of conciliat-
ing this remarkable people, and securing their
alliance rather than their subjection. For, after
his easy victory over Sultan Ibrahim, Baber
had been confronted by a great Rajput Con-
12 THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
federacy, headed by a typical hero, Rana Sanga ;
and though in the desperate battle which ensued
the invader conquered at last by employing a
Tartar manoeuvre, he bears full testimony to
the fighting power and gallantry of his oppon-
ents, whose undisciplined valour yielded only
to his superior tactics. And such as he found
them, they continued to be in the days of his
successors.
It must be remembered also that, besides
the Rajput communities established under their
half-independent Princes in the country which
bears their name, numbers of the same race
were widely dispersed elsewhere, and abounded
especially in their old home, Oude, and in
Behar, whose descendants so largely constituted
the Company's sepoy army in later times.
Many Rajas and Poligars throughout the country
claimed to be of Rajput descent ; and their
sympathies, and those of their followers, would
naturally be enlisted on behalf of their real or
alleged kinsmen and co-religionists.
And much to the point for our present
purpose, Sivaji himself claimed Rajput descent
on the mother's side.
On the whole, as the Empire had thriven
so much by its connexion with this noble and
powerful people, their estrangement would be
a very serious blow to its strength and integrity,
both directly and, from the example of so pre-
eminent a people, indirectly.
CHARACTERS OF THE JATS AND SIKHS 13
The Jats were a very different type. Their
early history is obscure. But they were a
comparatively more indigenous race, and may
be classed among the sudras in caste. They
had none of the chivalrous spirit of the Rajputs.
But though a ruder and more ordinary people,
they were hardy, daring, pertinacious, and war-
like ; and in later times they approved their
military capacity by holding their capital Bhurt-
pore against Lake, and repulsing four assaults.
They also had a pronounced taste for plunder,
which if, as seems probable, the Gypsies are
their kinsmen, might be safely assumed. But
I mention it because, as with the Mahrattas,
if they were inclined to resent religious intoler-
ance, this filibustering appetency would be an
additional stimulus to resistance and lawless-
ness.
Again, though the Sikhs, originally Hindoos,
and probably Jats, had repudiated caste, and
their peculiar religious system had little in
common with popular Hindooism, they were
fanatically devoted to the Khalsa, or what I
may call their own Church; and circumstances,
which I need not now relate, transformed them
from a body of mild and mystical religionists
into stern and grim warriors, jealous for the
honour, and sanguine of the extension, of their
faith and polity ; and burning with hatred of
Islam and its rival pretensions and domineering
principles. Any attempts to enforce these would
14 THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
inevitably encounter most resolute resistance
from such a people.
That exclusively of any external assault, the
Empire could have survived the debilitating
and disintegrating consequences of reversing
the policy which had developed, cemented, and
consolidated it, is highly improbable.
The alienation of the Rajputs, even if it had
not amounted to active hostility, would alone
have availed to sap both its material and moral
strength. It would have been further weakened
by the indisposition of the native Mussulmans
to identify themselves with, and support heartily,
a regime which in a land where custom is an
all-powerful consideration did such violence to
their old associations and fixed habits, and, in
many cases, to their latent sympathies ; and
which was too likely to produce internecine war
with the majority of their compatriots.
Thus the Government would be compelled to
place its chief reliance on the foreign and more
bigoted Mahometans ; while the inevitable fail-
ure of the revenue, from the disturbed state of
the country, would make the payment of such
extraneous mercenaries, in adequate force, the
more difficult. Moreover, as I have already said,
the marked preference for these strangers habitu-
ally shown by the Government tended to divide
the Mussulman interest, by exciting jealousy
and antipathy to them among the native Mahom-
etans. And such feelings would now acquire a
A RUINOUS EXPERIMENT IN ANY CASE 15
new and powerful stimulus. Hence, again, a new
danger to the dynasty. It was by no means
improbable, as I hope to show from what actu-
ally occurred later, that some distinguished
and influential native Mussulman might make
common cause with the Hindoo interest, and
attempt to re-establish the old order. Thus the
Seiads of Barha, long settled in India, had always
been distinguished for military prowess. They
were now a very numerous and powerful com-
munity, and, as appeared later, quite capable
of engaging in an anti-Mogul and quasi-nationalist
revolution, in concert with the Hindoos.
Thus, on the whole, had the critical experi-
ment been made in a time of profound peace,
and had not its inherent difficulties been aggra-
vated by external danger, and heavy demands
on the Imperial resources to meet the exigencies
of foreign warfare, it could hardly have failed
eventually to ruin the dynasty, and, unless the
counter-revolution had succeeded, and the new
ruler had possessed great governing qualities
the Empire also.
But the catastrophe came about in another
way ; though the experiment was made, and the
first fatal breach in the integrity of the Imperial
structure the alienation of the Rajputs rapidly
ensued. But before this had occurred, Aurung-
zib, the rash innovator, had already engaged
in another enterprise, which committed him, in
a new field, to a contest with militant Hindooism
16 THE MOGUL EMPIRE AT ITS ZENITH
of an exceptionally formidable and insidious
character, which proved more than a match for
his utmost and prolonged efforts to suppress it,
and in the end a chief cause of the collapse which
his proceedings in Hindostan had threatened
to bring about.
II
AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
WHEN the Emperor, Shah Jehan, was attacked
by a sudden and dangerous illness at Delhi, Dara
Shukoh, his eldest son, was at the capital ; Shah
Shuja, his second son, was Governor of Bengal ;
Morad Buksh, the youngest, was Governor of
Guzerat ; and Alamgirh, styled later Aurungzib,
the third son, was in the Dekkan engaged in
the siege of Bijapur, the capital of one of the
two surviving Afghan monarchies there. The
Emperor's illness, and disappearance from public
view, produced general consternation, and threat-
ened serious disturbance at the capital and in the
Provinces.
Shah Jehan himself fully appreciated the
danger of the crisis. Disabled as he was, he seems
to have feared that the coup de grace might be
given him by the partisans of one or other of his
ambitious sons, rivals for the succession of their
moribund parent. And it is notable that, in
this extremity, he showed more confidence in
the Rajputs than in his Mogul subjects. Manucci,
who was in Dara's service, says : " He ordered
all the gates of the fortress to be closed, leaving
18 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
only two wickets open. Placing no reliance on
the Mahometan commanders, he ordered Jeswunt
Sing to post himself at one gate with his men,
and the other he made over to Raja Ram Sing.
These officers guarded the fortress on all sides
with thirty thousand soldiers, all of them Raj-
puts." Dara himself was only allowed to " enter
the fortress twice a day, with a retinue of ten
persons, but not to sleep within it. And those
within were sworn on the Koran to be faithful
to him, he was afraid of being given poison."
Reports were circulated and sent to the
Provinces that the Emperor was dead ; and
a war of succession was imminent.
Dara assumed the conduct of affairs at
Delhi, and levied additional troops there. Shah
Shuja marched with a large army from Bengal.
Morad prepared for action, and took Surat in
the hope of finding much treasure there. Aur-
ungzib proceeded more deliberately and artfully.
He raised the siege of Bijapur, and, according
to Manucci, secured the neutrality of Sivaji
by a very remarkable concession no less, in
fact, than the grant of a fourth part of the
Imperial revenue in the Dekkan Provinces,
which, he asserts, was recorded on a golden
tablet, and was to be perpetual. If this state-
ment is true, the Mahratta claim to chout in
the Dekkan was thus early and formally sanc-
tioned by Aurungzib himself. And Manucci
taxes him with perfidy for ignoring it later.
SHUJA DEFEATED BY SOLAIMAN SHUKOH 19
The Emperor, partially recovered, announced
his convalescence to his absent sons, and ordered
them to keep their stations, and renounce their
ambitious schemes. But suspecting or assuming
that his disease was mortal, and that he was
not a free agent, and jealous of Dara's ascendancy
at the capital, they evaded compliance, on the
plausible ground of the necessity of restoring
their father to independence.
The approach of Shuja compelled the Em-
peror to send an army against him. This was
composed of the best troops, under the command
of Solaiman Shukoh, Dara's eldest son, accom-
panied by Jei Sing, Raja of Ambir or Jeipur,
and Dilir Khan, an eminent Mogul noble. Jei
Sing was well affected to the Emperor, but
inimical to Dara, who had highly offended his
dignity by flippantly remarking that he looked
like a musician or, as we might say a fiddler.
This circumstance may partly explain the
contrast between Jei Sing's conduct and that
of the Rajputs, who were 'generally strongly
devoted to the cause of Dara.
Hence Jei Sing was not anxious that Solaiman
should confirm his father's ascendancy by a
decisive victory over Shuja. Moreover, he was
instructed by the Emperor to prevent, if
possible, a collision, and to induce Shuja to
return to his government. But his remon-
strances were ineffectual ; and both Princes
were eager for the fray. Shuja was defeated ;
20 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
but Jei Sing contrived that the pursuit should
be slack ; and Shuja, with little loss, retreated,
and returned to Bengal.
Morad's demonstration was lightly regarded
at Delhi. Though he was brave and obstinate,
his weak character was known ; and it was
hoped that he might still be reclaimed to
allegiance on hearing of his father's recovery.
But Aurungzib's ability and declared intention
of subverting Dara's overweening influence were
considered far more serious. And the event
soon justified these apprehensions.
Aurungzib, secretly resolved to win the great
prize, went darkly to work. Hitherto, though
employed by his father in the field, he had
studiously disclaimed all ambitious views, and
had professed to be a religious devotee a
fakir in spirit intent only on his soul's salva-
tion. He now saw that, to gain his object,
his first step should be to make a cat's-paw
of his simple brother, Morad, and that this
would be best effected by posing still in his old
attitude. He accordingly wrote to him, repeat-
ing the report that Dara had poisoned Shah
Jehan, seized the government, and intended to
make himself Emperor, and that Shuja w r as
marching against him with the same object,
But, denouncing Dara as an infidel and idolater,
and Shuja as a heretic, and asserting his own
zeal for the orthodox faith, and desire to re-
nounce the world and devote himself to
AURUNGZIB BEGUILES MORAD 21
religion ; he offered to do his utmost to secure
Morad's succession, if he would swear on the
Koran to protect and provide competently for
him and his family. The offer was, of course,
guaranteed by the same solemn sanction ; and,
as a further pledge of his sincerity, Aurungzib
sent a large sum of money, and urged his brother
to join him promptly. Morad, fired with am-
bition and blind to Aurungzib's real character
and designs, eagerly welcomed the overture,
employed the money in increasing his army,
and set no store by the warning of a faithful
officer, Shahbaz, who mistrusted the good faith
of the piously self-abnegating auxiliary.
Meanwhile, Aurungzib had induced the
Dekkan army to follow his fortune ; and the
junction of the two forces was shortly effected.
On this occasion Aurungzib ostentatiously
treated his brother in public with the greatest
deference, as his future sovereign ; and in
private redoubled his hypocritical assurances
to him.
The Emperor sent repeated orders to them
to return to their governments, promising to
pardon their rebellion. But Aurungzib per-
suaded Morad that these were forgeries, and
that, should they find their father alive, the
necessity of delivering him from Dara's control
would justify their persistence, and merit and
obtain their forgiveness.
Manucci says that at this time Shah Jehan
22 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
was not secluded, and that he saw him seated
at a window for more than half an hour in the
presence of a vast concourse. But Aurungzib's
partisans at Delhi still maintained that the
Emperor's disease was a mortal one, and that
his end was near at hand.
Weak as he was, Shah Jehan was very
anxious to accompany the army which the
continued advance of the combined Princes
compelled him to send against them. He hoped
by his personal presence to overawe and reclaim
them. But Dara was opposed to this ; and
the direction of the campaign was confided to
him. He summoned his son, Solaiman Shukoh,
to hasten to his assistance, and meanwhile
Jeswunt Sing, the Raja of Joudpur, and Kasim
Khan, were sent to obstruct the advance of
the rebel Princes through a difficult country.
This, according to Manucci, was Shah Jehan's
own arrangement. Jeswunt was " the king's
loyal subject," but Kasim Khan's disposition
was more ambiguous, and " he was not well
affected to Dara." Aurungzib's impetuosity
baffled these tactics : the Nerbudda and the
defiles beyond it were traversed without opposi-
tion ; and the armies joined battle near Oojein,
where the Imperialists were completely defeated,
Manucci says, through the treachery and in-
activity of Kasim Khan ; while the Rajputs
fought with their usual bravery, and fell in
such numbers that Jeswunt, having lost ten
DARA MARCHES AGAINST HIS BROTHERS 23
thousand men, retreated with only five hundred,
and regained his capital with a slender escort.
His wife characteristically reviled him for sur-
viving defeat ; and domestic harmony was with
difficulty restored later through Aurungzib's
mediation, when Jeswunt had conformed to the
new regime.
Aurungzib's partisans at Delhi strongly recom-
mended his immediate advance on the capital,
and, confident of the success of his intrigues
there, he reassured Morad and the army by
intimating that the Mogul troops of the Emperor
would desert Dara at the critical moment.
Manucci confidently asserts that Shah Jehan
had been hitherto a free agent, and in the full
exercise of his authority ; but that, on the
announcement of Jeswunt's defeat and retire-
ment, " finding himself in bodily weakness,
and desirous of pleasing Dara, he transferred
to him all his powers and dignities, and ordered
every one to yield him obedience."
Dara rapidly assembled an army of above
100,000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry, with 100
field-pieces, and above 200 European gunners,
among whom was Manucci, and a corps of
500 camels, armed with swivel-guns.
The Venetian was much impressed by the
brilliant spectacle of this vast array on the march.
" It moved over the heights and through the
vales like the waves of a stormy sea." On a
magnificent elephant, Prince Dara appeared like
24 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
a crystal tower, resplendent as a sun shining over
all the land. Around him rode many squadrons
of Rajput cavalry, whose armour glittered from
afar, and their lances' heads, with a tremulous
motion, sent forth rays of light and so on.
But the imposing spectacle inspired him with
little confidence. The flower of the Imperial
army had been confided to Prince Solaiman,
and had not rejoined. And Manucci misdoubted
the quality of the new levies. Most of them, he
says, " were not very warlike they were butchers,
barbers, blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, and
such like." He also mistrusted the disposition
of the Mogul nobles, among many of whom Dara
was not popular. And, he adds : " What dis-
concerted me was that no one would say that
Dara was sure of gaining the battle with all that
grand array."
Dara took up a position on the bank of the
Chumbul, securing all the passages across the
river. But Aurungzib discovered one more
remote and unguarded ; and, leaving his tents
standing, with part of his army, led the rest
rapidly through a broken and jungly country,
and across the river, and appeared suddenly
on Dara's flank.
Manucci thinks that had Dara at once
attacked his wayworn division, he would cer-
tainly have prevailed over it. But the oppor-
tunity was lost, and the enemy was reinforced
by the junction|of the rest of his army.
DARA ATTACKS AURUNGZIB AND MORAD 25
Before the battle began, Manucci, from a hill
overlooking the scene of action, observed an
ominous symptom of treachery. Many horse-
men rode out of Dara's camp to that of the
enemy, and did not return.
In front of each army were ranged the guns,
and behind them the infantry, armed with
muskets, and the camel corps. The cavalry
were in the rear. The Princes were all con-
spicuous on elephants, Dara and Aurungzib in
the centre of their respective hosts, and Morad
on Aurungzib 's left.
Dara was the assailant. He opened the
battle by a general discharge of his artillery.
But the distance was too great, and the fire
ineffective. And Manucci says : "I was much
amazed at their making us work thus for nothing."
And this great tactical mistake revealed another
ominous circumstance. When Dara immediately
followed up this idle demonstration by a vehe-
ment order for a general advance, and the
cavalry rushed to the front, " the barbers,
butchers, and the rest turned right about face,
abandoning the artillerymen and the guns."
The enemy, more prudently, had reserved
his fire, replying only with a few shells. But
when Dara's cavalry arrived well within range,
a general discharge of cannon, swivel-guns, and
musketry arrested the charge, and threw the
assailants into disorder. But, well seconded
by Rustam Khan, one of his ablest officers, and
26 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
Chhatar Sal, a Rajput chieftain, he rallied them,
and the onslaught was resumed with such vigour
that they " broke through the guns and pene-
trated to their opponents' camp, putting to the
rout camels and infantry."
Aurungzib sent the greater part of his troops
to stem the impetuous tide of war, keeping only
a slight body around him, but heartening his
men by a notable display of courage and resolu-
tion. He ordered his elephant to be chained,
to indicate his fixed purpose to conquer or die.
But again Dara's impetuous valour prevailed.
After a stubborn contest, the reinforcement
was worsted, and Dara still advanced. Had he
dashed on at once, Aurungzib's fate, Manucci
thinks, must have been sealed. But, wearied
by their severe exertions, and impeded by the
ground, he halted, and gave his men a short
breathing-time. And in this position he received
tidings which diverted his efforts elsewhere.
Chhatar Sal and Rustam Khan had both fallen,
but their troops, though wavering, were still
resisting. He hastened to their support, and
once more prevailed, and put their opponents to
the rout.
Meanwhile a desperate contest had been
waged between Ram Sing and Prince Morad.
Ram Sing and his fiery Rajputs had at last
forced their way close up to the Prince's elephant ;
and some of them had dismounted and leaped
on the beast, and were in the act of cutting the
DARA'S ARMY SUDDENLY DISPERSES 27
girths of the howda, when Morad drew a bow,
and shot their bold leader in the breast ; who
fell to the ground, and was trampled to death by
the enraged animal. But the Rajputs, so far
from being intimidated, were exasperated at the
death of their chief, and " battled more violently
than ever."
Dara, informed of this, was on the point of
joining them, when, according to Khafi Khan,
" a rocket struck the howda of his elephant.
This alarmed and discouraged him so much
that he dismounted in haste from his elephant
and mounted a horse." This may be the true
explanation of this precipitate and ill-judged
act ; though it is not quite reconcilable with
Dara's undoubted courage. But Manucci gives
a very different reason. Khalilullah Khan, who
commanded one of Dara's divisions, but had
hitherto hung back, and was in heart a traitor,
and who certainly joined Aurungzib immediately
after the battle, suggested to Dara that, as the
latter was very slenderly guarded, a sudden
dash at him would be certain of success, and
even more decisive than the capture or death of
Morad ; and that it was for this purpose that
Dara took horse. Whatever the cause, the
result was fatal. The disappearance of the
leader habitually involves the dispersion and
flight of a native army. And there were, in this
case, special circumstances which aggravated
this tendency. The personal unpopularity of
28 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
Dara among many of his officers, the death of
those most devoted to him, Aurungzib's in-
trigues and denunciation of him as an infidel,
the rawness, inexperience, and indiscipline of
his new levies, combined to impair the stability
of his vast but ill-assorted host. Hence his
abrupt disappearance was the signal for an
equally abrupt disintegration and flight. Hitherto
successful, and on the eve of victory, Dara saw
his army melt suddenly away, like a cloud
driven before a strong wind. It was not, pro-
perly speaking, a defeat. It was rather a general
stampede, the result of surprise, perplexity, in-
discipline, and deliberate treachery. But the
event proved that it was an irretrievable
catastrophe ; on which account I have described
the battle in more detail that I should otherwise
have done.
Dara reached Agra in the evening in a state
of the deepest dejection. Partly from shame,
partly for fear of being there besieged and
captured, he did not enter the city. Shah Jehan,
who had betaken himself to Agra, sent a con-
solatory message to him, with hopes that
Solaiman's army might still enable him to regain
his ground. He also furnished him with an
order to the Governor of Delhi, to admit him,
and consign to him the great treasure there
deposited. But Aurungzib had secured the
Governor in his interest ; and he refused to
open the gates. And Dara pushed on to Lahore,
SOLAIMAN FLIES TO RAJA OF SIRINAGAR 29
where he proposed to assemble a new army,
and to renew the contest.
But his hopes of success were soon dashed
by the loss of the support on which he had
mainly counted. His son Solaiman was a brave
and vigorous man, thoroughly devoted to his
father's cause. He had already defeated his
uncle, Shuja ; and his army was the flower of
the Imperial forces. But, as I have mentioned,
Jei Sing, one of his chief officers, was secretly
hostile to Dara, and Dilir Khan, probably not
too friendly to him, and under Jei Sing's in-
fluence. Hence Aurungzib's overtures to them,
backed by his recent victory, shook their fidelity
to their commander, and from their timid
counsels, recommending a retreat, and intimating
that their soldiers were not to be trusted, he
saw clearly that they at least were prepared to
play him false, and perhaps to deliver him up
to the conqueror. He therefore quitted the
army, and with a small force escaped to the
Raja of Sirinagar, who received him hospitably,
and pledged himself to protect him. And his
army and his faithless chief officers entered
Aurungzib's service.
When the victorious brothers had taken
possession of Dara's camp, Aurungzib main-
tained his previous attitude ; congratulated
Morad on the result, which he ascribed mainly
to Morad's valour ; treated him with the greatest
deference as his future sovereign, and intro-
30 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
duced to him the traitor Khalilullah as a loyal
subject, devoted to his interest, of which he
had given such recent and substantial evidence.
Four days after the battle, the victorious
Princes arrived before Agra.
Manucci was already there ; and he describes
minutely the gradual and artful process by
which the Emperor was dethroned, and forcibly
secluded in one quarter of his vast fortress-
palace. The united army was posted, in the
first instance, about two miles from the city.
Aurungzib made profuse professions of affec-
tion and fidelity to his father, and justified his
action on the ground of Dara's usurpation of
authority and criminal ambition. The Emperor
gave him fair words, but, according to Manucci,
tried to entrap him into a personal interview
with no lenient intentions. But Aurungzib was
too wary, and excused himself. Meanwhile he
was actively engaged in winning over the
chief nobles, and disposing them to acquiesce in
his masterful proceedings. Many indeed were
already his decided partisans ; Dara's sym-
pathisers who had not fallen or fled were dis-
heartened and cowed, and self-interest attracted
the undecided to the winning side.
Thus Aurungzib was emboldened to deal
strongly and decisively with his father. He
made his son, Sultan Mahmood, Governor of
the city ; and he was authorised to invest the
AURUNGZIB DEPOSES THE EMPEROR 31
fort, and allow no one to enter it. Aurungzib's
troops were moved into the city, and closed
upon the fort. The Emperor, for three days,
tried to repel them by firing on them, but they
took shelter in the adjacent houses. Then the
artillerymen, who had been tampered with by
Aurungzib's agents, showed symptoms of de-
sertion, some letting themselves down from
the walls by ropes. Whereupon the garrison,
in despair, prepared to follow their example.
Aurungzib still maintained his hypocritical
attitude ; pleaded illness, which had prevented
him from waiting on the Emperor, and that,
while he was laid up, his impatient soldiers had
acted without orders ; and he proposed that his
son, Sultan Mahmood, should visit the Emperor,
and arrange matters a Vaimable. To this Shah
Jehan consented. The Prince had instructions
to secure the gate, introduce his troops, and make
himself master of the fort. In this he succeeded,
and the Emperor was restricted to the palace.
Then, master of the position, Aurungzib threw
off one mask, and plainly announced to his
father that he was no longer fit to rule, but must
take his ease in retirement, and leave the burden
of government to be sustained by more capable
hands in other words, that he was dethroned
and a prisoner. And, suiting the action to the
implied significance of this declaration, he
demanded, through his son, the keys of the
palace. And, as the inmates were very numerous
32 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
and a close blockade was established, and no
provisions were allowed to enter, the forlorn
monarch was constrained to comply with the
demand. Then the palace itself was occupied,
many gates were closed, and guards were placed
at the entrance of the zenana, to which Shah
Jehan was thenceforth closely restricted.
Thus his reign came to an end, though the
succession was still undecided, and the ex-fakir
still professed to be acting only on behalf of
Morad's candidature.
The easy and complete success of this auda-
cious, unfilial, and treasonable proceeding en-
couraged its deviser to remove his second mask,
and disclose his real features as the avowed
pretender to the vacant throne. Morad's friends
recommended him to leave the pursuit of Dara
to his brother, and with his own army to secure
Agra and reduce Delhi. But he preferred to
accompany Aurungzib. The two armies marched
separately, at a mile's distance from each other,
and halted at six miles south of Mathura.
The ostensible reason for this halt was the
proposed formal elevation of Morad to the
throne. Elaborate preparations for the cere-
mony were made : Aurungzib was all smiles,
congratulation, and flattery ; and to inaugurate
the august function, invited his brother to a great
banquet. But he arranged that his chief officers
should entertain Morad's at their own quarters.
AURUNGZIB ARRESTS MORAD 33
The eunuch Shahbaz and other faithful
followers of the infatuated Prince suspected
foul play, and strongly dissuaded him from
putting himself in his brother's power. And
Manucci, who was out of employment, but had
disguised himself as a holy mendicant, and as
such had the free run of the armies, gathered
from the ambiguous gossip in Aurungzib's camp
that mischief was brewing. But Morad was
in high spirits, and, imperturbably relying on
his brother's sworn fidelity, went to the feast.
Aurungzib, discarding on this great occasion
his religious scruples, took care that Morad
should be well plied with wine, and allowed to
retire to sleep off its effects, while the banquet
still proceeded. In this helpless condition Morad
was disarmed, fettered, placed in a covered
howda on an elephant, and sent off at speed
during the night to Delhi, escorted by four
thousand cavalry. Another similar cortege was
dispatched to Agra to baffle pursuit, should
an attempt be made to rescue the prisoner.
But the darkness of the night, the continuance
of the feast, and the dispersion of Morad' s
officers, prevented this, and in the morning
Aurungzib's agents saluted him as Emperor,
and Morad' s officers were invited to enter the
usurper's service, with a promise of double pay,
which, after some hesitation, in their desperate
circumstances, they did.
On arriving at Delhi the unhappy Prince
3
34 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
was publicly paraded as a prisoner, previous to
his being consigned to the fortress of Selimgurh.
" It was," says Manucci, " very pitiful to see
poor Morad Buksh make this miserable entry
into Delhi, visible to all, his face dejected,
wearing a blue turban, ill put on ; behind him
an executioner with a naked sword in his hand,
ready upon any attempt at rescue to cut off
his head. It seemed as if some criminal were
being borne to the scaffold."
Aurungzib, on the other hand, lost no time
in revealing the object, and reaping the fruit,
of his hypocrisy and treachery.
" Hardly," says Manucci, " had Morad
Buksh fallen into his hands, Dara and Solaiman
Shukoh been defeated, and his father imprisoned,
than he proclaimed himself Emperor. He con-
ferred many distinctions and gifts on the men
of Shah Jehan, Dara, Morad Buksh, and
Solaiman Shukoh, who came over to his side,
thereby the more easily to gain their adherence."
Manucci, who had joined in the flight to
Agra, was eager to re-enter the service of Dara ;
and, after an adventurous and dangerous journey,
rejoined him at Lahore. The unhappy Prince
received him most graciously, contrasted his
fidelity with the desertion of so many on whom
he had long lavished his bounty, presented
him with a horse and five hundred rupees, and
raised his pay from eighty to one hundred and
DARA RAISES A NEW ARMY 35
fifty rupees a month. He had already raised
a new army of thirty thousand men, mostly
Moguls, Seiads, and Pathans. He had also
strong hope of assistance from a certain Raja
Surup Sing, and gave him a large sum of
money to secure his fidelity to his sworn engage-
ment. But the Raja went off with the money ;
shirked his engagement, and paid no heed to
Dara's urgent remonstrances.
Daud Khan was Dara's ablest and staunchest
partisan. But Aurungzib, by the usual trick
of a letter, purposely intercepted, and implying
a treacherous understanding between himself
and Daud Khan, shook Dara's confidence in
the latter. And though Daud denounced the
letter as a forgery, and made every effort to
reassure Dara, persisting in following his fortune
on the resumption of Dara's flight, he was at
last formally dismissed, and joined Aurungzib,
though with an understanding that he was not
to serve against his old master.
Dara next attempted to reach Cabul, en
route for Persia. But the Governor, Mahabat
Khan, discouraged this plan ; and Dara's mind
seems to have been divided between a resolution
to fight out the quarrel in India, and a project
of reaching Persia by sea. He marched, with
a very reduced force, to Multan, closely pursued
by Aurungzib, and thence to Bakkar, which
Dara determined to occupy in force, as a strong
place d'armes and rally ing-point, if, as he hoped,
36 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
he could raise a new army in Guzerat. He
gave the command of this to a valiant eunuch,
Khwajah Basant, or, as Manucci calls him, as
a European equivalent, Primivera, i.e. " Spring-
time." The garrison consisted of two thousand
select men and twenty-two Europeans, with
abundance of food, guns, ammunition, and
other supplies. Bahadur Khan, sent on in
pursuit by Aurungzib, was close on his track ;
and Dara, with a small and an ever- dwindling
force, pushed on for Tattah. Manucci was
very anxious to accompany him. But Dara
insisted that he would be more useful as an
artillerist in the defence of the fort. He made
him Captain of the Europeans, doubled his
pay, and gave him five thousand rupees to
divide among his men, recommending him
earnestly to the eunuch commandant.
Aurungzib, detaching a force to pursue Dara,
had left Multan, and gone off towards Agra, to
confront Shah Shuja, who was marching thither
with a large army from Bengal. On his way
he was met by Raja Jei Sing, who, on Solaiman's
flight, had gone over to Aurungzib and was
confirmed in his new allegiance by profuse
promises of favour. He was appointed Governor
of Delhi, and the province of Sambha was
conferred on him. Though at enmity with
Dara, Jei Sing was much attached to Shah
Jehan, a cause of no little anxiety to his new
master.
DARA IN GUZERAT SHUJA DEFEATED 37
Dara, with six thousand horsemen, proceeded
through Cutch to Guzerat, where the Governor
of Ahmedabad, the provincial capital, though
his daughter was married to Aurungzib, sur-
rendered the city, on the alleged ground that
"it was not correct that he, a vassal, should
oppose a royal prince, heir to the Empire."
Thus Aurungzib's moral victory over his eldest
brother was by no means complete. And Shah
Nawaz Khan joined Dara, was present in the
final battle, and was murdered in cold blood
by Aurungzib's general, after it was over.
The fort of Bakkar meanwhile was closely
invested by Khalilullah Khan. But the defence
was obstinate and prolonged. How it fell at
last I shall explain later. " Dara's plan," says
Manucci, who was engaged in the operations,
' was that if he did not succeed in the province
of Gujarat, and suffered defeat, this fortress of
Bakhar would serve as a base to help him
again."
Aurungzib found Shuja strongly entrenched
in a position near the village of Bajwah in the
Fathpur district. His assaults were repulsed.
And in the night, Raja Jeswunt Sing suddenly
changed sides and attacked Aurungzib's camp
in the rear, while Shuja assailed the army in
front. A desperate contest followed ; Aurungzib
displayed great presence of mind and constancy,
rallied his disordered forces, and in the end
gained a complete victory. Jeswunt Sing, on
38 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
Shuja's defeat, retired to his own country.
Aurungzib committed the prosecution of the
war against Shuja to Mir Jumla, one of the
ablest generals of the time, sending with him
his eldest son, Sultan Mahmood, " but without
a command." Shah Shuja was compelled to
retreat successively to Allahabad, Benares,
Mongir, and Rajmahal. Thence he was dis-
lodged from an entrenched position by Jumla' s
artillery ; and took up another strongly fortified
near Dacca, while Mir Jumla halted, during
the monsoon in that city. Sultan Mahmood,
resenting bitterly his insignificant position, act-
ually went over to Shah Shuja, and married
his daughter. But Shuja seems to have con-
ceived suspicion of his fidelity ; his position
became awkward, and he returned to his father's
army, was ordered to Court, and consigned to
Gwalior. The campaign was prolonged. But
at last Shuja, despairing of success, and too
well aware of what awaited him if he fell into
his brother's hands, retired to Arakan, where
he was at first well received by the King, but
later maltreated, and impeded in his desire to
make his way by sea to Persia. And in a dis-
turbance that followed, he was killed, thus
removing another obstacle to Aurungzib's
ambition.
But while the contest with Shah Shuja was
being waged, Dara had mustered in Guzerat an
army of thirty thousand horsemen, and marched
AURUNGZIB DEFEATS DARA NEAR AJMIR 39
northwards, relying on Jeswunt Sing's promised
co-operation. But Aurungzib contrived, through
Jei Sing's influence, and lavish promises of
forgiveness for his recent treachery, and high
favour in his own service, to neutralise him ;
and he remained quiescent. This defection
reduced Dara to a most embarrassing and
almost desperate condition. He had arrived in
the neighbourhood of Ajmir. His army was
unequal to cope with Aurungzib's forces. To
retreat would be difficult, and would discourage
his men, and be the signal for desertion. His
only alternative was to entrench himself in a
strong position among the hills, which he did.
For three days he successfully resisted Aurung-
zib's assaults, and by daring sallies did much
execution on the enemy. But on the fourth
day, according to Khafi Khan, a hill in the
rear of his position was occupied, and an effective
attack thence delivered. According to Manucci,
Aurungzib induced Dilir Khan, one of his chief
officers, to make an overture to Dara, promising
to desert to him, and thus Dilir obtained an
entrance within the lines, and in the crisis of
the battle turned his force against Dara's with
fatal effect. " Dara's army fell into the greatest
confusion, and, without making any stand or
resistance, the whole of them took to flight."
6 The fallen Prince had only time to carry off
his family and the chief valuables lying in his
tents."
40 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
Jei Sing and Bahadur Khan were sent to
pursue him " their orders were to seize him,
dead or alive."
On his way to Ahmedabad he was rejoined
by many of the fugitives. But the governor of
the city had been gained over by Aurungzib,
and refused to admit him. And several of his
most intimate adherents now deserted him.
With two thousand men he resumed his flight
for Sind, suffering much by the way, intending
to rally again at Bakkar. But, finding it closely
invested by Khalilullah Khan, he once more
resolved to make his way to Persia.
Though personally inimical to Dara, Jei
Sing was not anxious to capture him, but to
drive him from India. Hence he contrived to
delay the pursuit so as to enable the fugitive
to effect his escape.
On the frontier was a Pathan chieftain,
Jiwan Khan, who was under special obligations
to Dara, who had thrice saved his life when
Shah Jehan had condemned him to death.
To him he applied for protection. Jiwan Khan
gave him fair words. But, anxious to curry
favour with Aurungzib, he treacherously sur-
rounded Dara and his family, and strictly
secluded them. Dara's favourite wife, in de-
spair, poisoned herself. And when Jei Sing and
Bahadur Khan arrived in pursuit, Dara was
made over to them ; " chains were put upon
his legs and manacles upon his wrists, and four
DARA JUDICIALLY MURDERED 41
elephants conveyed him and his family and
suite, closely guarded."
At Bakkar, which was still holding out, the
force escorting the unhappy Prince and his
family, appeared suddenly, and were fired upon.
But the eunuch in command was promptly
informed of the fact of Dara's capture, and
summoned to surrender. This he refused to
do without Dara's sanction. This was obtained,
and the fort was evacuated.
At Delhi the pitiful spectacle presented by
Morad Buksh was repeated. Dara, with his son,
Sipihr Shukoh, was paraded on an elephant
in an uncovered howda, behind them a man
with a drawn sword, and round him horsemen
also with drawn swords. For two hours he was
thus exhibited in front of the palace, and thence
transferred to a garden.
Aurungzib, affecting indecision as to his fate,
consulted his council, who, well knowing his
mind, and the line he had taken against his
brother at the outset, with one dissentient
voice decreed his death, not only for the public
security, but " by reason of his being an idolater,
without any religion, and an enemy of the
Mahomedan faith." So says Manucci. Khafi
Khan's statement is :
" The order was given for Dara Shukoh to be
put to death under a legal opinion of the lawyers,
because he had apostatised from the law, had
vilified religion, and had allied himself with
42 AURUNGZIB MAKES HIMSELF EMPEROR
heresy and infidelity." He adds : " After he
was slain, his body was placed on a howda and
carried round the city. So once alive and once
dead he was exposed to the eyes of all men, and
many wept over his fate. He was buried in the
tomb of Humayun. Sipihr Shukoh was ordered
to be imprisoned in the fortress of Gwalior."
Manucci tells a ghastly story that Aurungzib
sent Dara's head to be served up to the captive
Emperor in a box, at his dinner ; and that the
miserable parent was overwhelmed at the sight
with grief and horror. This may be true, but
it is to be hoped, for the honour of humanity, that
it was a bazaar rumour.
Dara's son, Solaiman Shukoh, as I have
mentioned, had taken refuge with the Raja
of Sirinagar.
Jei Sing was employed to induce the Raja
to give him up. But, faithful to the obligation
of hospitality, and relying on his secluded and
strong country, he scouted the allurements and
threats of the usurping and insidious Emperor.
But his son was more amenable to them. Solai-
man, aware of this, endeavoured to escape into
Tibet, but was pursued by the Raja's son,
captured, manacled, and handed over to Aurung-
zib's agents, sent to Gwalior, and there poisoned.
The old Raja of Sirinagar, Manucci says, " felt
greatly the vileness of the deed carried out by
his only son," and in a short space he ended
his days under the disgrace.
MORAD JUDICIALLY MURDERED 43
Thus by force and fraud the ex-fakir had
removed one obstacle after another to his un-
disputed attainment of the object of his secret
ambition. But one crowning act of villainy
was still requisite before he could feel himself
secure. Morad Buksh might still give him
trouble. For, as Manucci says, " many nobles
had friendship and affection for him, and wanted
him for king, owing to his renown as good
soldier and liberal master." And he had at-
tempted to escape.
As in Dara's case, the Emperor endeavoured
to throw the responsibility for his death on
others. Morad had put to death a secretary,
when Governor of Guzerat. The relatives were
secretly incited to prosecute the blood feud
judicially. But they declined. But a poor
cousin was bribed to bring a capital charge before
a kazi duly tutored for the purpose, and the
Prince was condemned to death, and murdered
in his prison. Khafi Khan says that " His
gracious Majesty rewarded the eldest son for
not enforcing his claim of blood."
Such a refinement of hypocrisy is quite
characteristic of Aurungzib, and winds up
appropriately his conduct in relation to his
deluded victim.
Ill
RESULTS OF AURUNGZIB'S USURPATION
IN tracing the causes of the decline of the Mogul
Empire under Aurungzib, his conduct previous
to his accession must be taken into account.
For, though he removed all obstacles to his
ambition, his triumph was dearly bought. He
had given a great shock to the Imperial author-
ity ; impaired its moral influence ; abjured its
character as the impartial and, so to speak,
undenominational sway of a paternal sovereign
over all his subjects ; and set an example of
what I may call political parricide, which was
only too likely to be imitated in due time by
his posterity. Thus, however successful at the
moment, he had sown a plentiful crop of troubles,
disaffection, and consequent weakness for the
future.
The deposition and close imprisonment of
his father was an audacious innovation - - a
breach of allegiance, and an act of high treason
perpetrated against an eminent and able monarch ;
and an act of cruelty to an indulgent father,
in violation of the primary instincts and obli-
gations of humanity. As such, it must have
AURUNGZIB SHOCKS HIS SUBJECTS 45
sent a thrill of indignation and horror through
the heart of the Empire, and effectually arrested
the flow of the old sentiments of reverence
and devotion to the Head of the State, which
Akbar and his successors had inspired. This
revolting impression was deepened by the fate
to which he had consigned his eldest and young-
est brothers, and by the hypocritical expedients
which he had employed for their destruction.
Like Pilate, he had washed his hands, and
affected to be guiltless of their blood. But, like
Henry vin., he had poisoned the fountains of
justice by murdering them judicially. And the
simple Morad had been led, like a lamb to
the slaughter, by an elaborate tissue of sancti-
monious treachery. Genuine loyalty, personal
devotion to such a man, were out of the question :
he could neither be loved, respected, nor trusted ;
and must rely, for obedience, on fear, force,
cunning, and self-interested compliance.
While these remarks apply to his subjects
generally, the Hindoos had special and more
personal reasons of estrangement from the new
Emperor. The attitude he had assumed, and
the pretence which had been alleged for the
execution of Dara, obviously indicated a new
and to them unfriendly departure in Imperial
policy. Whether Aurungzib was, or was not,
sincere in hoisting the banner of the Crescent
against his eldest brother, and justifying his
exclusion from the succession, and his execution,
46 RESULTS OF AURUNGZIB'S USURPATION
on the ground of his sympathy with the Hindoo
religion (as one historian distinctly states) the
Hindoos must have felt that such a war-cry,
followed by a capital condemnation in the same
sense, was an appeal to the hitherto discoun-
tenanced but lurking spirit of Mussulman fanati-
cism and political exclusiveness, and boded no
good to them, under the dominion of him who
had, on the strength of it, won his way to the
throne.
Such a conviction must have made them
rebels in their hearts from the first, though the
smouldering fire of disaffection was for the time
suppressed.
While such were the impressions produced
by Aurungzib's conduct on the minds and hearts
of his subjects, Nemesis was at work in his own
bosom. The stings of conscience he might ig-
nore, or alleviate them by his strong delusion
that he was the fated and favoured instrument
of Heaven. But he could not shut his eyes to
the danger of his sons availing themselves of his
unpopularity to retaliate upon him his treatment
of Shah Jehan. And in his lonely eminence,
conscious of his own falseness, and judging others
by himself, he was infinitely suspicious of ail
men.
Hence he adopted a system of minute super-
vision, secret espionage, checks and counter-
checks on officials, limitation of the discretion
and means of his employes, double appointments
HIS SIN FINDS HIM OUT AS A RULER 47
of military commanders, resulting in mutual
jealousies, disputes, and counteraction, and cap-
ricious supersession, which, besides betokening
want of confidence, and so chilling zeal for the
service, clogged the machine of civil govern-
ment, and compromised the continuity and
systematic prosecution of military operations ;
and thus greatly contributed to make his admini-
stration ineffective and his arms unprosperous.
Thus his ambition in the end over-leaped
itself ; and his exaltation involved a humiliating
decadence of his power, and of the Empire, of
which he was the evil genius.
IV
AURUNGZIB'S NEW POLICY
How Aurungzib came to adopt a course so
different from that of his predecessors, so obvi-
ously inexpedient from a political point of view,
and so fatal in its result, might seem strange,
did not history present many analogous phen-
omena. His conduct is usually accounted for
by his intense bigotry, if not fanaticism, which
blinded him to the inevitable consequences
of his rash proceedings, like his contemporary
James n.,
"The Ass
Who lost three Kingdoms for a Mass."
There is no doubt truth in this view, but I
, believe that it is not the whole truth, and that
though he was a Mahometan devot, he had also
a political object in his persecution of the Hindoos
which was congenial to his natural character,
and confirmed by the circumstances of his
rivalry with his brother Dara. Even of James n.
Hallam says that it seems difficult to determine
whether love of Popery or love of despotism
was the stronger incentive to his mad course.
And, considering how unscrupulously and hypo-
BIGOTRY NOT HIS ONLY INCENTIVE 49
critically Aurungzib made political capital of
his orthodoxy to enlist Morad, his youngest
brother, in the campaign against the alleged
infidel claimant of the throne, and to rid himself
of Dara in the end by a capital sentence on the
same ground, it might be even surmised that
his zeal for the faith was a mere cloak to cover
his ambitious design of making himself Emperor ;
which he retained as a justification of his violence
and cruelty. But this is inconsistent with a
more intimate knowledge of the man and his
later conduct. There can, I think, be no doubt
that he was a real zealot and stickler for the
Koran and its injunctions on their own account.
But it does not therefore follow that religious
zeal alone actuated him.
That he should have been attached to his
traditional faith was natural ; for, being a man
of narrow intellect, with no speculative tendency,
he was not tempted to depart from it ; while it
suited his morose temper, it encouraged his
ambition by its promises of divine aid to the
champion of the faith ; and in its fatalism it
enabled him to lay a flattering unction to his
soul, that though his means might be crooked,
his end the ascendancy of Islam would cover
a multitude of sins, and that, even in their
commission, he was but acting out a predestined
career. This strong delusion seems to have
sustained him through his long and arduous life,
but to have failed at the last, and left him
4
50 AURUNGZIB'S NEW POLICY
miserably uncertain, and seriously apprehensive
of his fate in the after-world. His last utterance
in substance amounts to a palinode of his life-
long confidence in the divine condonation of
Jehu-like faith without works of mercy and
genuine morality.
To appreciate the political object, which in
practice coincided with Aurungzib's religious
bigotry, we must consider his personal char-
acter, and his position when he entered the
lists against Dara Shukoh. Austere in morals,
self-centred, and reserved, he was neither subject
to zenana influences nor swayed by favourites.
Indeed, he seems to have had no intimate
personal friends. His strength of will amounted
to obstinacy, and made him impervious alike
to the counsels of ministers, to prudential con-
siderations, and to the lessons of experience.
Indefatigable in the pursuit of his own objects,
he was equally ready to face difficulty, danger,
and suffering himself, and regardless of the
feelings, the sentiments, and the interests of
others. Proud, imperious, suspicious, and vigil-
ant, he was a proficient in cunning statecraft,
in inspiring awe, guarding against conspiracies,
and maintaining his personal authority ; but
deficient in real statesmanship and comprehen-
sive insight into the fundamental conditions
of his power, and the impolicy of abusing it.
Cold - hearted, exacting, unsympathetic, and
censorious on slight or inadequate grounds
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL OBJECTS 51
to his ablest and most trusty Mahometan ser-
vants, towards his Hindoo subjects he was
haughty, supercilious, and contemptuous : too
indifferent to them to appreciate their better
qualities, but keenly alive and antipathetic to
their strange, and, in his eyes, barbarous peculi-
arities, to the grossness of their vulgar super-
stitions, and the licentiousness of many of their
popular rites.
Moreover, he despised and vilipended the
Hindoos as an inferior and conquered race,
who, by Akbar's innovating policy had been
allowed to usurp a position of political and
social equality with their natural masters,
which was equally inappropriate and undesir-
able.
Thus, apart from his religious bigotry, to
such a man as Aurungzib, who was, moreover,
the son of a Tartar mother, it would seem as
anomalous and improper that the Hindoos
should be placed on a level with the northern
races, as in the Middle Ages it would have
appeared to the Anglo-Irish of the pale that
the Celtic population the " wild Irish," as
they were called should be incorporated with
them on equal terms ; and to the jealous main-
tainers of Protestant ascendancy in Ireland,
in the eighteenth century, that the Roman
Catholics should be placed on a political and
social level with themselves. That his pre-
decessors had so treated them would, to so
52 AURUNGZIB'S NEW POLICY
proud, self-opinionated, and self-willed a man,
be no convincing argument for his continuing
to do so ; and all the less so, when he considered
that the most serious obstacle to his ambition
had been the result of this treatment, the
political prominence and military power of the
Rajputs, and their enthusiastic devotion to
Dara, from his extreme liberalism, and alleged
sympathy with their religion.
Hence he was inclined to reverse the policy
of his ancestors ; and not only to regard, but
to treat the Hindoos as an inferior race ; to
brand them with the old stamp of subjection
the jizya which Akbar had abolished ; and
thus prepare the way for their depression in the
social scale, the sapping of their political influ-
ence, and their eventual reduction to the status
of a subject population, dominated by the
privileged class, on whose rightful ascendancy
they had been allowed to encroach.
The time when the jizya was reimposed,
in 1677, tends to confirm the view that I have
taken of the mixed motives that suggested the
measure. For many years the precept of the
Koran, that the conquered infidel should be
taxed as such, had been ignored, and allowed
to remain a dead letter. But in the interval
events had occurred which, while they must
have mitigated the Emperor's contempt for
the Hindoos, had greatly inflamed his animosity
against them, and inclined him to avenge himself
SIVAJI'S SUCCESS MAKES HIM VINDICTIVE 53
upon them for the successful uprising of the
despised race in the South, and the challenge
of his authority, as the representative of foreign
and Mahometan sway, by the foundation of a
Hindoo anti-polity. The crushed worm had
turned, and had been transformed into a mor-
dant viper. Sivaji had successfully resisted his
generals in the field ; had outwitted him, when
he had tried to entrap him at Delhi ; had
afterwards consolidated his independent power,
ravaged the Imperial provinces with impunity,
and assumed the position of a Hindoo sovereign.
Such outrageous presumption was calculated
to exasperate the Emperor to the utmost, and
to rouse his vindictive spirit against the whole
detested race ; to induce him to adopt a policy
of depression in his dealings with his Hindoo
subjects, and, by the assumption of this dis-
paraging attitude, under the sanction of the
Koran, to enlist the sympathies and stimulate
the zeal of his Mahometan subjects and his
foreign Mahometan immigrants for the pro-
secution of what Khafi Khan calls the " holy
war " against the Mahrattas. Thus his tardy
conformity to the precept of the Koran seems
to have been occasioned by his exasperation,
and his resolve to lower the Hindoo crest at
home, on the eve of a great personal effort to
bring the defiant natives of the South within
the scope of his tyrannical and degrading
sway.
54 AURUNGZIB'S NEW POLICY
Lastly, it is a significant circumstance, that
Khafi Khan states that the jizya was imposed
with the object of not only " distinguishing the
land of the faithful from an infidel land," but
also of " curbing the infidels."
V
SIVAJI'S CAREER
THE Mogul Empire had gradually pushed its
way into the Dekkan, and had destroyed some,
threatened, weakened, and rendered tributary
others, of the older Mahometan kingdoms which
existed there. Under Shah Jehan Ahmednuggur
had been finally incorporated as a province
of the Empire. But farther south Bijapur
and Golconda, or Hyderabad, still remained
separate and almost independent, though over-
awed and assailed by Prince Aurungzib.
On the conquest of Ahmednuggur, one of
its sturdiest defenders, Sahu (otherwise Shahji),
a Mahratta officer, had transferred his allegiance
to the King of Bijapur, who had bestowed on
him some jaghires, or benefices, in the outlying
districts of the Western Ghats not far from
Bombay. Shahji was non-resident. He was
said to be, on his mother's side, of Rajput
descent. And he had a son, Sivaji, who com-
bined the Rajput gallantry and love of warlike
adventure with the extremely astute and wily
disposition characteristic of the Mahrattas. The
youth grew up in a region, and at a season,
55
56 SIVAJI'S CAREER
well calculated to develop and crown with
success his daring project of achieving for him-
self and his tribesmen political independence.
He was the manager of his father's districts.
The country around was wild, broken, and
dense with jungles and forests. The steep hill-
tops, which studded it in profusion, were
crowned with rudely constructed but, from
their situation, often formidable forts. Deep
ravines and gloomy defiles favoured partisan
warfare, and made the approaches of regular
troops difficult and dangerous. The humid
climate was ill suited to the inhabitants of the
lower country, and the frequent and heavy
rains and violent tempests were a serious
obstacle to military operations, and involved
great hardship and danger to an invader, un-
familiar with the country and inexperienced
in warfare on such a scene.
This strong country was peopled partly by
Mahrattas, partly by more primitive tribes ;
but both classes were distinguished for hardi-
hood, enterprise, cunning, and love of inde-
pendence and plunder.
The central authority at Bijapur was weak,
distracted by internal dissensions during a
minority, and by the threatening attitude and
aggressive movements of Shah Jehan's repre-
sentative Prince Aurungzib. The young Sivaji
saw his opportunity, and, several years before
the Prince became the Emperor, entered on
OPENING OF SIVAJI'S CAREER 57
an ingenious, daring, and systematic course of
self-aggrandisement and ambition. But never
was a great revolution begun more quietly
and unostentatiously. A movement which was
to pervade and convulse all India took its rise,
like one of the Dekkan rivers (so to speak), in
a corner, and in the bosom of the hills.
Sivaji, by good management and popular
arts, secured the devotion of his dependents,
and attracted daily new followers. He strength-
ened the defences of his father's districts ;
summarily annexed others, in the absence of
their holders, who had gone to pay court to
the rising Mogul sun. " This," says the Mogul
historian, Khafi Khan, " was the beginning
of that system of violence which he and his
descendants have spread over the rest of the
Kokan and all the territory of the Dakhin.
Whenever he heard of a prosperous town, or
of a district inhabited by thriving cultivators,
he plundered it and took possession of it. Before
the jagirdars in those troublous times could
appeal to Bijapur, he had sent in his own
account of the matter, with presents and offer-
ings, charging the jagirdars, or proprietors, with
some offence which he had felt called upon to
punish, and offering to pay some advanced
amount for the lands on their being attached
to his own jagir, or to pay their revenues direct
to the Government. He communicated these
matters to the officials at Bijapur, who in
58 SIVAJI'S CAREER
those disturbed times took little heed of what
any one did. So, when the jagirdar's complaint
arrived, he obtained no redress, because no one
took any notice of it " (Elliot, vii. 257).
This he explains by the negligence, corrup-
tion, and selfish preoccupation of the officials,
and the diversion of government to more
serious menaces elsewhere. Hence he continues :
" The reins of authority over that country fell
into his hands, and he at length became the
most notorious of all the rebels. He assembled
a large force of Mahratta robbers and plunderers,
a,nd set about reducing fortresses. The first
fort he reduced was that of Chandan (Grant
Duff says Torna was his first capture). After
that he got possession of some other fortresses
which were short of supplies, or were in charge
of weak or inexperienced commandants. Evil
days fell upon the kingdom of Bijapur. The
operations of Aurungzib against that country
when he was a prince in the reign of his father
brought great evil upon the country, and other
troubles also arose. Sivaji day by day in-
creased in strength, and reduced all the forts
of the country, so that in course of time he
became a man of power and means. He had
drawn together a large force, and, protected
by mountains and jungles full of trees, he
ravaged and plundered in all directions, far
and wide. The inaccessible forts of Rajgarh
and Chakna were his abodes, and he had secured
AURUNGZIB FOSTERS SIVAJTS GROWTH 59
several islands in the sea by means of a fleet
which he had formed. He built several forts
also in those parts, so that altogether he had
forty forts, all of which were well supplied with
provisions and munitions of war " (Elliot, vii. 258).
Such is the account of the rise of the heroic
leader of the Hindoo reaction given by a historian
who was engaged in Aurungzib's service, and
who, while he hated Sivaji as an infidel dog,
and denounced him as an arch-rebel and past-
master in the art of plundering, was not in-
sensible to his military skill and formidable
capacity as the creator and organiser of an
anti-Imperial polity. I have, therefore, quoted
it at length. But I must continue more
summarily.
This sudden and portentous growth of pre-
datory power was doubly owing to Aurungzib.
The above account ascribes the neglect of the
growing danger to the distracted attention of
the Bijapur Government caused by that Prince's
operations against it. And when he quitted
the Dekkan in quest of the Imperial throne,
he left the scene open to Sivaji's enterprise,
unchecked by the presence of the Mogul army.
Thus the establishment of Sivaji's power,
which might otherwise have been crushed in its
early stage, was indirectly at least not a little
due to Aurungzib himself.
A complete account of the reign of Aurungzib
would include a narrative of his so-called conquest
60 SIVAJTS CAREER
of Assam. But this is not necessary for our
purpose.
It is, however, desirable to observe that the
conquest was incomplete and ephemeral ; that
the sufferings of the troops employed, and the
loss of life, were great ; that Mir Jumla, one
of the Emperor's most distinguished generals,
was worn out, and died at the close of the cam-
paign ; and that this ambitious and ill-advised
scheme of annexation exhibited abundant pre-
monitory symptoms of the dangerous and ex-
hausting tendency of such a policy of remote
aggression, where the country and the climate
fought on the side of the enemy. But the
warning was lost on the Emperor.
The Bijapur Government undertook to sup-
press the formidable rebel. Afzal Khan, an
eminent officer, was sent against him. Sivaji
was a many-sided man. He could fight well
on occasion. But, like Mahrattas in general,
he preferred to prevail by stratagem. He now
professed a desire of reconciliation with his
sovereign, and, affecting timidity, obtained a
private interview with the unwary general, and
assassinated him. Rejoining his followers, he
incited them to fresh efforts, and became more
formidable than before. He defeated another
Bijapur general, who had been sent to avenge
Afzal ; increased the number of his forts ;
organised the government of his territory ;
ravaged vigorously that of Bijapur ; plundered
AURUNGZIB RESOLVES TO SUPPRESS SIVAJI 61
caravans, and rendered the open country every-
where insecure.
Though he respected mosques, copies of the
Koran (which he gave to his Mahometan fol-
lowers, for he had such in his service), and free
women, this conduct was a direct and bold
challenge to the Emperor's authority in the
Dekkan ; and he now prepared to assert it,
and accomplish what Bijapur had failed to do.
But little did the proud and powerful Sovereign
anticipate that he was thus pledging himself
to a lifelong and fruitless enterprise, and sign-
ing, in effect, the death-warrant of the Empire !
Shaista Khan was deputed to conduct the
war, assisted by Jeswunt Sing. In January
1666 he began his operations. Supa, Poona,
and Sivapur were occupied without opposition.
Sivaji, Parthian-like, retired ; but only to harass
the Imperial army on its march, and seize every
opportunity of annoying and plundering it.
In vain a special force was detached to prevent
this. The Mahrattas were too nimble to be
effectually guarded against, or chastised. Chakan
was then besieged. But the defence was long
and desperate. Sivaji, from without, co-operated
with the garrison. The besiegers suffered severely,
both in the operations and from the heavy
rains. The native historian says plaintively :
6 The muskets were rendered useless, the powder
spoilt, the bows deprived of their strings " ;
and the troops were disgusted and disheartened.
62 SIVAJTS CAREER
At last the place was taken by capitulation.
But such an opening of the war was inauspi-
cious, and too significant of its destined course.
The next incident was still more disconcerting.
Shaista Khan had taken up his quarters in
Sivaji's own house at Poona, and strict in-
junctions were issued that no Mahratta was to be
allowed to enter the town. But Sivaji's audacity,
ingenuity, and humour made him an unrivalled
partisan leader, and helped him now to achieve
one of his most notable feats. On the pretence
of escorting a bridal procession, a number of
his men gained admittance. Others had the
impudence to effect their entrance in the guise
of triumphant captors of a party of Mahrattas,
whom they dragged along through the streets.
At night, Sivaji, at the head of the united body,
fell suddenly on Shaista Khan's quarters. His
son, and an officer who resembled him, were
killed. Shaista Khan himself lost a thumb
in the scuffle, and owed his life to two slave
girls, who hid him in a corner. The assailants
caused the commandant's drums to be beaten,
and in the noise and confusion effected their
escape without loss. Shaista Khan evidently
suspected Jeswunt Sing's lukewarmness, if not
complicity, in this affair. He met his condolence
with the significant remark : "I thought the
Maharaja was in his Majesty's service when
such an evil befel me." And the Emperor
" passed censure both upon the Khan (i.e.
JEI SING SENT TO MAKE SIVAJI SUBMIT 63
Shaista) and Raja Jeswunt." He recalled
Shaista, and replaced him by Prince Moazzam.
But Jeswunt was still employed under him.
The prospect darkened under the new regime.
Sivaji grew still, bolder, constantly assailed
the Imperial territory and convoys, seized
two forts on the shore near Surat, and thence
intercepted naval traffic ; and even fell on the
pilgrim ships, bound for Mecca, a grave profanity
in the eyes of the devout Aurungzib. This
assault on his religion was followed up by a
daring insult to his political pride. Sivaji began
to give himself royal airs, and coined money
of his own. Prince Moazzam was apparently
not equal to the emergency. He too was there-
fore recalled, and a new plan was adopted.
Sivaji was said to have Rajput blood in his
veins, and his military capacity was now well
established. But a pure-blooded Rajput Prince,
who was also an eminent and zealous imperial
general, might be well adapted both to cope
with him in the field, and to overawe and
negotiate with him, and by force and moral
influence combined induce him to submit to
the Imperial authority. The result seemed,
for the time, to justify the experiment. Jei
Sing [the Raja of Jeipur] promptly captured
Poorundhur, one of Sivaji's strongest fortresses ;
and for five months carried fire and sword into
his territory, reducing much of it to a desert.
Not, however, without retaliation. " The sudden
64 SIVAJI'S CAREER
attacks by the enemy," says Khafi Khan, " their
brilliant success, their assaults in dark nights,
their seizure of the roads and difficult passes, and
the firing of the jungles full of trees, severely
tried the Imperial forces, and men and beasts
in great numbers perished " (vii. 273). Still
Jei Sing persevered ; and was fortunate enough
to blockade closely Rajgarh, in which were
Sivaji's wife and maternal relatives. For their
sake, and probably finding himself overmatched
for the time, and hoping to profit by the racial
and religious sympathies of the Rajput, Sivaji
opened negotiations ; and, being well received,
and led to expect not only pardon, but favour
and office from the Emperor, he came to terms ;
agreed to surrender his principal forts (retain-
ing twelve small ones), to enter the Imperial
service, and to send his young son, as a hostage
for his own fidelity, to Delhi. Aurungzib readily
ratified the agreement, and Sivaji marched with
Jei Sing against Bijapur, and much distinguished
himself in the campaign, especially in fort-
taking. At its close, he and his son Sambaji
were sent to Delhi, at his own request ; had an
audience of the Emperor ; and were graciously
received.
Thus the Mahratta troubles seemed to be
ended, and Aurungzib' s kingcraft to have
attained its object. But the end was not yet.
The recorded account of the reconciliation
and renewed breach between these two remark-
AURUNGZIB'S VIEW ON SIVAJI'S SUBMISSION 65
able men suggests questions which it is difficult
to answer at all confidently. But I will en-
deavour, as they occur, to state what the
character of each, and the circumstances of the
case, seem to indicate as the most probable
conclusions. The first question arises out of
what I have already related.
How far was the formal reconciliation, ab
initio, concluded in good faith, on either side ?
That Aurungzib, informed of Sivaji's wholesale
surrender of the keys of his position his strong
forts, assumed that he had drawn the viper's
fangs, and that it had therefore ceased to be
dangerous, seems not improbable. And Sivaji's
putting himself and his son into the Emperor's
power at Delhi, was a strong additional reason
for inferring that he really meant to mend his
manners, and look to Aurungzib as his patron.
The Emperor also probably relied much on Jei
Sing's assurances of Sivaji's political conversion.
Thus he might be inclined not only at the
moment to hail with satisfaction the convenient
pacification, but to try the experiment of per-
manently reclaiming the formidable filibuster,
by condoning his offences and admitting him
to favour. Yet, I suspect, not without serious
repugnance and misgivings, and a resolution to
keep a tight hand over him, to trust him as
little as was compatible with professed friend-
liness, and to deal summarily with him on the
first symptoms of a relapse.
5
66 SIVAJI'S CAREER
On the other hand, Sivaji, I believe, was
only acting a part, which he meant to make
subservient to a very different one, when it
should suit him to throw off the mask. He had
conceived high hopes of promotion in the Imperial
service, from Jei Sing's representations. To in-
gratiate himself with Aurungzib ; to distinguish
himself, as he had done at Bijapur, in active
service, in a command for which he had proved
his competence ; to acquire influence, and wield
resources, which he might insidiously and ab-
ruptly divert to his own purposes, and employ
against his employer : would be quite in accord-
ance with his profound subtlety, his unscrupu-
lousness, his personal ambition, and his national
aspirations in short, with the whole bent of his
peculiar genius. And such, I believe, was his
calculation.
But at Delhi his sanguine hopes were
promptly dashed. He had counted without his
host, or rather, as so often happens when match-
makers and peace-makers interpose their well-
intentioned offices, the extent of the Emperor's
placability and readiness to employ him had
been exaggerated. At the opening of the
negotiations, Jei Sing had assured him that he
would receive a high munsub or honorary
military command. And in subsequent private
conferences he had gone much further, and
induced Sivaji to assume that he would be
placed in a position favourable for the further-
WHY WAS SIVAJI SO DEEPLY MORTIFIED ? 67
ance of his ulterior, though carefully concealed,
purpose. But when Jei Sing reported the
progress of the negotiation to the Emperor,
he was less explicit ; for he did not venture to
prescribe any specific mode of treatment for
completing the cure of the convalescent political
patient. Or, as Khafi Khan puts it : " Raja
Jei Sing had flattered Sivaji with promises ;
but as the Raja knew the Emperor to have a
strong feeling against Sivaji, he artfully re-
frained from making known the promises he
had held out." Hinc illce lachrymce ! Sivaji's
annoyance, disappointment, and complaints,
which are recorded by the historian, and the
consequences of which were so eventful in the
sequel, were the natural results of this double-
dealing, though neither Ram Sing, Jei Sing's
son, to whom they were confided, nor the
historian himself, seems to have understood
their deepest ground. Khafi Khan implies that
Sivaji took offence at the mere circumstance
that the munsub granted to him was not high
enough, but only the same as was bestowed
on his young son and on one of his relatives,
who had done good service in the late campaign
against Bijapur, namely, that of a panj-hazari,
or nominal commander of five thousand men,
instead of a haft-hazari, or commander of seven
thousand. This was no doubt a grievance,
capable of being avowed as a breach of a specific
assurance at the opening of the negotiations,
68 SIVAJI'S CAREER
and as placing Sivaji on the same level as his
boy and his follower. But this was not the
root of the bitterness of spirit which he ex-
hibited. He was not a man to resent wrathfully
the mere fact that, so to speak, he had been
made a C.B. instead of a K.C.B. Manucci
says that he took offence at being ranged at
Court in a low station, and openly expressed
his disgust and resentment. Hence a second
question occurs to which what I have already
said will supply what I believe to be the most
probable answer. Why was he so seriously
perturbed and so bitterly disappointed ? Was
it not because he realised that he was checked,
if not checkmated, in his deep, secret game ?
Because he had too good reason to suspect that
Aurungzib was resolved to give him no oppor-
tunity of playing it, and, whether the arch-
dissembler saw through him or not, judged
that he himself had done enough by putting
him off with a second-rate honorary decoration,
and had no intention of employing him in such
a position as was indispensable for his ulterior
purpose ?
To Ram Sing he complained that he had
not been properly treated, instancing, in par-
ticular, the minor honorary distinction. The
Emperor was informed of what is called " his
disrespectful bearing " ; whereupon " he was
dismissed with little ceremony, forbidden to
reappear at Court, relegated to a house in
AURUNGZIB'S AMBIGUOUS ATTITUDE 69
the suburbs, and orders were given to the
kotwal (i.e. the chief of the police) to place
guards round it."
A third question here presents itself : What
were the Emperor's real intentions with regard
to him at this moment ?
There can be no doubt that he was much
scandalised and very indignant at Sivaji's pre-
sumption, and testified his high displeasure by
banishing him from the Court, and secluding
him in his house. But was this all ?
The placing of a guard round his quarters
looks equivocal and sinister.
Had not the so-called " disrespectful bearing "
of Sivaji struck Aurungzib as symptomatic of
the spirit of self-assertion and latent disaffection
which he had never ceased to fear, might still
lurk in the breast of the wily though hitherto
obsequious suppliant for his favour ? And if
so, might he not be considering the expediency
of ridding himself of all danger from such a
quarter by putting Sivaji to death, or immuring
him, as he did so many other dangerous political
personages, in Gwalior ? This seems to me by
no means improbable.
If I have been rather lengthy in endeavouring
to thread the maze of this encounter of wit
between these consummately artful rivals, my
apology must be that the fate of the Empire
hung on the issue.
Bold as he was, Sivaji realised the imminence
70 SIVAJI'S CAREER
of his peril, and with his characteristic ingenuity
extricated himself from it. Affecting severe
illness, he presently announced his recovery,
and in gratitude for it distributed copious alms
to Brahmins, fakirs, and others ; especially
of sweetmeats, which were sent out in large
covered baskets. He also sent, as presents to
Brahmins, some horses, which were stationed at
an appointed place some miles towards Muttra.
A devoted follower took his place on his couch,
with a veil over his face, and Sivaji's ring
prominently displayed on his hand, and affected
sleep when visited. Sivaji and his son passed
out of the city, concealed in the baskets,
reached the horses, and with a large body of
attendants galloped hard to Muttra. Three
alarms meanwhile of his suspected escape had
been given ; but not until the third did an
exact inspection detect the false convalescent.
Then active pursuit began, but was baffled
by Sivaji's arts and rapid movement. He and
his friends disguised themselves as mendicants,
and hurried forward on foot, until they were
apprehended on suspicion by an officer at an
unnamed place. But Sivaji, taking the bull
by the horns, avowed his identity, but by a
bribe of two valuable jewels procured his own
liberation and that of his companions. Their
headlong flight after escaping this danger proved
too much for the boy Sambaji ; and he was
left at Benares in the charge of a Brahmin,
SIVAJI RECOVERS HIS GROUND 71
who, after his accession to the Rajaship, became
his Sejanus, and his associate in death.
The fugitives hastened through Behar by
Patna and Chanda, and, traversing a thickly
wooded country, diverged southwards, and
gained the Court of the King of Golconda.
Proscribed anew by the Emperor, Sivaji had
nothing to hope from his original sovereign,
the King of Bijapur. But his fame, and his
solemn promises to help his present host, the
Golconda King, to recover territory that had
been wrested from him by his and Sivaji's
common enemies, procured him the aid of a
military force, the nucleus of a new army,
which was rapidly increased by the contingents
of his own people.
His progress thenceforth was startlingly
rapid. The hostile but candid Mussulman his-
torian says : " By fraud and stratagem, and by
his marvellous skill in the conduct of sieges,
every fort that he approached fell into his
hands." He contrived, by ingenious excuses,
to evade the delivery of most of these places
to the King of Golconda's officers, and retained
possession of them. Not less vigorous and
successful were his operations in his own Western
country. Satara, Parnala, Rajgarh, and at last
almost all that he had surrendered were re-
covered.
And he recommenced his defiant campaign
in the lower country by a rapid and most
72 SIVAJFS CAREER
lucrative raid on Surat, where, however, the
English factory stoutly and successfully re-
sisted him. He captured also some ten thousand
horses, and organised a cavalry force of bargeers,
that is, soldiers more immediately dependent
on him, as opposed to what we should call
irregular horse, who provided their own steeds
and equipments. Moreover, he rebuilt the forts
on the shore near Surat, which had been destroyed,
constructed a fleet, and preyed upon the shipping
of that flourishing port.
At Rajgarh he constructed a stronger fortress
than any of those hitherto in his dominions,
and took every precaution to make it impreg-
nable. There he fixed his abode, formally
assumed the throne, devised wise regulations
for the conduct of his civil government, and
the organisation of his increasing and powerful
army. There he defied his Imperial adversary ;
and thence, from time to time, he emerged,
to plunder the country from Guzerat to the
Coromandel coast ; to levy chout, a commuta-
tion of 25 per cent, of the land revenue, in lieu
of plunder ; to baffle, and at times defeat, the
Imperial armies ; and to approve himself an
irrepressible antagonist of the Great Mogul, an
heroic champion of Mahratta independence, and
an unrivalled master of guerilla and predatory
warfare.
I need not relate his after-career. For I
hope I have sufficiently illustrated the nature
SIVAJI CHECKMATES AURUNGZIB 73
of the man and of his power, and the
formidableness of the problem which he had
propounded for solution to the haughty,
tyrannical, and aggressive Emperor. He died
in 1680.
VI
THE REIMPOSITION OF THE JIZYA,
AND THE RAJPUT REVOLT
THE sudden death of Sivaji suspended for a
short time the contest in the Dekkan. But
Aurungzib's policy had meanwhile produced a
dangerous crisis in Hindostan. I need not
particularise his earlier measures, which were
calculated to annoy, depress, and estrange his
Hindoo subjects, but were endured without
positive resistance. But the reimposition of
the jizya was felt to be at once an intolerable
grievance, and a gross insult to the higher and
more influential classes, and it no doubt pre-
disposed the Rajputs to engage in the rising
which the Emperor immediately provoked by
his arbitrary and suspicious treatment of the
family of one of their deceased Princes.
The odiousness, the injustice, and the im-
policy of the jizya are forcibly urged in the re-
markable letter, of uncertain authorship, said
to have been addressed to Aurungzib, and
translated in Orme's Fragments of the Mogul
Empire. To its account of the disastrous results
of the measure I shall refer later. But I will
RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE JIZYA 75
quote now what are evidently the genuine
impressions of a thoughtful Hindoo on the
injustice of this invidious mark of distinction,
urged on comprehensive religious grounds, thus
(so to speak) turning the tables on the bigoted
Emperor, and pointing out to him a more
excellent way than he had adopted, of pleasing
and conforming to the will of the Deity.
" If your majesty," he says, " places any
faith in those books, by distinction called divine,
you will there be instructed that God is the
God of all mankind, not the God of Mahomedans
alone. The Pagan and the Mussulman are
equally in his presence. Distinctions of colour
are of his ordination. It is he who gives
existence. In your temples, to his name the
voice is raised in prayer ; in a house of images,
where the bell is shaken, still he is the object
of adoration." This would, perhaps, be news
to Aurungzib, who, in his abhorrence of the
popular polytheism, would fail to discern, and
be equally unwilling to acknowledge, that the
more enlightened spirits then, as now, through
the veil of image-worship, recognised and adored
TO Oewv practically the Supreme Being in
the unity of His primordial essence, whence
subordinate deities are (in Gnostic phrase) emana-
tions. " To vilify the religion or customs of
other men, is to set at naught the pleasure of
the Almighty. When we deface a picture we
naturally incur the resentment of the painter ;
76 THE REIMPOSITION OF THE JIZYA
and justly has the poet said, c Presume not to
arraign or scrutinise the various works of power
divine.' : Having thus combated the bigot on
his own ground religious obligation, the writer
sums up shortly and tellingly the case against
the imposition :
" In fine," he says, " the tribute you demand
from the Hindoo is repugnant to justice : it is
equally foreign from good policy, as it must
impoverish the country : moreover, it is an
innovation, and an infringement of the laws of
Hindostan " (pp. 254-255).
The passionate animosity excited by the tax
was displayed in various ways, and on very
different scenes. At Delhi itself a great mul-
titude assembled in front of the palace, and
petitioned the Emperor to recall the obnoxious
edict. "But," says the historian, "he would
not listen to their complaints." On his way to
pay his devotions in the mosque he was
obstructed by a still vaster assemblage of im-
portunate petitioners, and was unable to proceed.
In vain he gave orders to force a way through.
" At length," continues Khafi Khan, " an order
was given to bring out the elephants and direct
them against the mob. Many fell trodden to
death under the feet of the elephants and horses.
For some days the Hindus continued to assemble
in great numbers and complain, but at length
they submitted to pay the jizya " (p. 296).
Elsewhere the protest took a more violent
RESISTANCE TO THE LEVYING OF JIZYA 77
and menacing form. Burhanpur was one of
the most important cities in the Dekkan, the
capital of the Mogul Province of Khandeish.
And there resistance showed itself in a doubly
ominous manner. First, in Khafi Khan's words :
" The infidel inhabitants of the city and the
country round made great opposition to the
payment of the jizya. There was not a district
where the people, with the help of the faujdars
and mukaddams, did not make disturbances and
resistance " (p. 310). That the Imperial officials
should connive at and abet the rebellious move-
ment was the strongest token of the inex-
pediency of the measure, and of the danger of
overstraining the administrative machinery, lest
it should, in the end, break down altogether.
Another fact, mentioned by Khafi Khan, is of
similar import. Kakar Khan, as I shall notice
immediately, was the first Collector of the jizya.
He was succeeded by a zealous officer, Mir Abdul
Karim. But on Aurungzib's arrival he requested
to be allowed to resign his office, " and that the
collection of the jizya might be deputed to
some one else." This plainly indicates that even
the Emperor's higher and most active Mahometan
ministers misliked the invidious task, and dis-
charged it reluctantly. But another equally
dangerous circumstance occurred on this oc-
casion. The two streams of disaffection and
resistance to Aurungzib's authority now began
to mingle. Sivaji was dead, and had been
78 THE REIMPOSITION OF THE JIZYA
succeeded by his son Sambaji. His earliest
exploit was, at the head of twenty thousand men,
to co-operate with the malcontents by a sudden
dash at Kakar Khan, the collector of the jizya,
who fled before him into Bahadapur, a town in
the immediate vicinity of Burhanpur, and there
held out against his assailants, and repulsed
several attempts to carry the fort by assault.
Baffled in this, the Mahrattas raided severely
the town and its district around, and returned
home with an immense booty.
After what I have previously said, I need
not describe the feelings of the Rajputs, and
especially of their Princes, on the imposition
of the jizya. But it is worth while to mention
that the Rana of Oudipur, even while preparing
to resort to arms, and casting dust in the interval
in the Emperor's eyes by negotiation, scorned
even to affect literal compliance, but proposed
to commute the tax by a territorial cession.
Thus Aurungzib had abundant warning that
he was playing a dangerous game, and that any
new provocation to the proud Rajput temper
would be extremely likely to bring matters to
extremities, and to produce the explosion that
had been long pending. Yet he chose this
peculiarly inopportune time to act in a manner
specially calculated to exasperate the Rajputs,
and arouse the martial spirit of that gallant
people against him.
The Rajput Principalities were not regularly
AURUNGZIB'S RELATIONS WITH JESWUNT 79
incorporated with the Empire. Their chieftains
paid tribute, and supplied their contingents to
the Imperial armies ; but otherwise home rule
prevailed in their dominions. Jeswunt Sing
was the Raja of Joudpur, and had long played
a prominent and versatile part in Imperial
politics. He had been a staunch partisan of
Dara against Aurungzib. But on Dara's, or
rather his own, defeat, he had, apparently in
despair, and worked upon by Aurungzib's arts,
acquiesced in his success, and joined him. But
in the renewed contest with Shuja he seems
to have discerned another chance of averting
what threatened to be a very unwelcome and
uncongenial regime ; and in the crisis of the war
he suddenly changed sides once more, and made
a treacherous night attack on Aurungzib's camp,
which, but for the presence of mind and en-
ergetic exertions of Aurungzib himself, might
have proved fatal to him. Nevertheless, he and
Jeswunt were afterwards reconciled ; and though
no doubt mutually distrustful, remained osten-
sibly on good terms throughout Jeswunt's life.
But the Emperor suspected the Raja of remiss-
ness in the Mahratta war, if not of actual collusion
with Sivaji ; and had also a standing grievance
against him respecting his tribute, the particulars
of which are not explained. Still he did not
find it convenient to break with him. He was
too powerful, and had too much influence with
other important persons. Hence he continued
80 THE REIMPOSITION OF THE JIZYA
to be employed in military commands, though
the Emperor's distrust and want of cordiality
to him seem to have been no secret among the
Rajputs.
Aurungzib had unwisely provoked a contest
with the unsubdued Afghans, and Jeswunt Sing
had been sent against them. While engaged
on this service he died ; and his family returned
home, without awaiting regular Imperial passes
from Delhi. They were stopped at the Indus,
but forced their way onwards ; and the Emperor,
apparently availing himself of this irregularity,
made an insidious attempt to arrest them, and
get them into his own custody. The circum-
stances are not fully explained ; but the case
seems pretty clear, when the past relations of
the parties and the character of the Emperor
are taken into consideration. Aurungzib prob-
ably intended to dictate his own terms about
the tribute before releasing them, rather than to
visit upon them his ill-feeling towards Jeswunt.
But he was suspected of darker designs, and
Rajput pride was offended, and indignation
excited, by the travellers' camp being surrounded
and closely invested by an Imperial force. The
Ranis, that is, the widows of Jeswunt, and his
two young sons were escorted by a large com-
pany of their warlike attendants, commanded
by a gallant officer, Durga Das. By his con-
trivance the whole family made their escape,
and were conveyed to Joudpur. It had been
OUTBREAK OF THE RAJPUT REVOLT 81
necessary to substitute other ladies and boys
in the place of the fugitives. These were
arrested ; and the Emperor sought to make
the best of the situation by recognising and
treating the captive youths as Jeswunt's actual
sons. But the truth could not be long con-
cealed ; and Ajit Sing, the elder son, lived to
become a formidable thorn in the side of the
Empire.
Thus what I called the smouldering fire of
disaffection, which Aurungzib's attitude arid con-
duct had kindled at the opening of his reign,
and which his many acts of intolerance had
tended to intensify, and his recent imposition
of the jizya to fan into a flame, burst out at last
in determined rebellion and desperate war.
Of the three chief Rajput States, Jeipur
was too near to Delhi, and too closely connected
with the Imperial family, to take part in the
insurrection. Jeswunt's principality, Joudpur,
was more remote, on the west of the Aravulli
range of mountains ; and there a large army
soon assembled, under Durga Das, who had
rescued the young Princes. Aurungzib in person
advanced against it, and called upon the Rana
of Oudipur, whose territories lay along the
south-eastern slopes of the Aravulli, to submit
to ihejizya, and to seize and bring to the presence
the runaway boys. This was perhaps to test
his disposition. The Rana disclaimed all com-
plicity with the rising, and, as I have men-
6
82 THE REIMPOSITION OF THE JIZYA
tioned, proposed to cede territory in lieu of
paying the invidious tax. This seems to have
reassured the Emperor, and he returned to
Delhi, leaving the conduct of the war, and the
completion of the negotiation with the Rana
of Oudipur, to a lieutenant.
But it soon appeared that the Rana had
thrown in his lot with the insurgents. And the
Emperor, now realising the seriousness of the
crisis, made great and comprehensive prepara-
tions for meeting it. He marched in person to
Ajmir, as a central position in the theatre of
the coming war ; summoned in haste his sons,
Moazzam from the Dekkan, and Azam from
Bengal, at the head of their respective armies ;
and ordered the Subahdar of Guzerat to station
himself between Rajputana and Ahmedabad,
to cut off communication between the rebels and
the Mahrattas, while Prince Akbar was detached
to attack Oudipur. " When," says the native
historian, " the Rana heard of these preparations,
he laid Udipur, his capital, waste, and, with the
treasure and family and followers of himself and
Jeswunt Sing, he fled to the mountains and
difficult passes " (p. 299). The Prince was ordered
to pursue him with an expeditious mountain
corps, and on the prompt arrival of his brothers,
they were similarly employed ; and explicit in-
structions were issued to wage the war in the
most merciless and destructive manner. They
complied readily, and besides slaughtering the
RAJPUT WAR OMINOUS OF LATER FAILURE 83
men wholesale, as per orders, "employed them-
selves in laying waste the country, destroying
temples and buildings, cutting down fruit trees,
and making prisoners of the women and children
of the infidels who had taken refuge in holes and
ruined places." The Rajputs retaliated in true
Highland style. More than twenty-five thousand
assailed the Imperial troops, and cut off their
supplies. " They allured several thousand of
the royal forces into the heart of the Rana's
fastnesses. There they attacked them, and
killed many, both horse and foot."
" The Rajputs held all the roads through the
hills, and came down occasionally from the hills,
and attacked the Prince's forces by surprise."
I have quoted these passages not only as
giving local colour to the course of the contest,
but because they prefigure clearly the character
of the previous and later Mahratta warfare in
the Ghat region, and in combination with
Sivaji's fort system and Mahratta " slimness "
illustrate the geographical causes of Aurungzib's
final collapse.
Thus the savage struggle went on. But it
assumed a new character when the skeleton in
Aurungzib's closet stepped forth, and the political
parricide, and murderer of his philo-Rajput
brother, was threatened with retribution in kind.
With professed desire of a reconciliation, the
Rajputs made overtures to Prince Moazzam,
requesting him to intercede for them with the
84 THE REIMPOSITION OF THE JIZYA
Emperor. But this was only a veil for a deeper
design to win him over to their cause by the
promise of assisting him to supplant his father,
who was notoriously suspicious and jealous of
him. The Prince, under his mother's influence,
turned a deaf ear to the proposal. But the
tempters found a more pliant instrument in
Prince Akbar, the youngest son, who was dazzled
by the prospect, and joined the rebels. Moazzam
sent a timely warning to his father, but was not
believed, and was sternly admonished to look
to his own steps. Suddenly it was announced
that Akbar had assumed the throne, appointed
his chief officers to high places, and was march-
ing, at the head of seventy thousand men, against
his father. Aurungzib had detached almost all
his army, and had only a few hundreds of men
with him. He sent instantly for Moazzam, who
joined him, by a forced march, with ten thousand
soldiers. But the Emperor's confidence was
thoroughly shaken, and he was in a great strait
of misgivings on all sides. He feared Moazzam
as much as Akbar ; and actually turned his
guns against the reinforcement. Moazzam, how-
ever, obeyed the paternal injunction to leave his
army, and to come to him in all speed with his
two sons ; and the Emperor's suspicion was
thus dispelled for the time.
Meanwhile, Akbar showed himself quite un-
equal to the great game he had aspired to play.
He did not advance promptly. And Aurungzib
AKBAR'S DEFECTION A FIASCO 85
had time, by his skilful emissaries, to detach
some of the rebellious Prince's Mogul supporters,
and to sow dissension and mutual distrust
among the insurgents. Whether he employed
the common device of an intercepted letter to
Akbar, assuming that father and son under-
stood each other, and that Akbar was to betray
his allies, is not certain, though it was currently
reported, and is quite in accordance with the
Emperor's style. But from what happened later
at the Court of Samba ji I am inclined to think
that the young and foolish Prince gave himself
airs intolerable to his proud confederates ; and
that, as his Imperial contingent melted away,
they became less and less inclined to back his
pretensions. At last, without a battle, he left
them, made his way into the Dekkan, was well
received by Sambaji ; but proved too over-
bearing, and lost heart. He escaped to Persia,
was sheltered by the Shah, and lived and died
there, having frequently, but vainly, solicited the
help of a military force to prosecute a renewed
attempt on the throne of the Great Mogul.
Thus the Emperor was delivered from his
great immediate peril ; but the Rajput war
continued, and though he ceased to take part
in it, tormented and weakened him to the end
of his reign. And in the long course of warfare
upon which he was about to engage in the
Dekkan, the names of Rajput commanders are
conspicuous by tlit'i absence.
VII
AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE
DEKKAN
SEVERAL considerations now determined the
Emperor to undertake the personal conduct of
the war in the Dekkan.
The objects of the war were two : to extend
the limits of the Empire by the subversion of
the two remaining Afghan monarchies, Bijapur
and Golconda, and the annexation of their
dominions ; and to suppress the Mahratta polity,
and predatory power.
To pursue simultaneously both these objects
was characteristic of Aurungzib's want of
political insight and military judgment. He
had already experienced the difficulty of effecting
the second object. And the conquest of the
Afghan monarchies, however practicable, and
in accordance with the previous forward policy
of the Empire, would be untimely and mis-
chievous, while the Mahrattas continued un-
subdued. For it would entail new and serious
administrative obligations, and a severe strain
on a system which was already exhibiting signs
of weakness and inefficiency. And it would,
86
AURUNGZIB'S MISTAKEN MILITARY POLICY 87
moreover, tend to disorganise society in the
newly conquered territories ; to throw out of
employment numbers who had clustered around
the Court, or served in the armies of the con-
quered sovereigns; and tempt them and others
who were indisposed to acquiesce in Aurungzib's
regime to escape it, and continue their resist-
ance to it by joining the Mahrattas. Thus the
achievement of the one object would but increase
the difficulties, otherwise great enough and to
spare, of accomplishing the other. But, in
this, as in other cases, Aurungzib, obstinate
by nature, unteachable by experience, and
blinded by the passions, on the one hand, of
ambition, on the other of vindictiveness, ad-
dressed himself to this double enterprise as
unwisely as Charles the Bold went to war with
the Swiss, and with not dissimilar results.
From his own point of view, however, cir-
cumstances seemed to promise success to his
twofold aim, and to make his presence on the
scene, and his personal conduct of the war,
desirable. The kingdoms of Bijapur and Gol-
conda appeared quite incapable of withstanding
the great army which he intended to lead
against them. Their comparative weakness was
indicated by the fact that they had already
virtually acknowledged the supremacy of the
Empire. According to a practice, not infrequent
in India, when hard pressed, they had, from
time to time, paid tribute to it. The <case
88 AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE DEKKAN
appears to have been somewhat analogous to
the relations of England to the Papacy, after
John's ignominious stipulation with Innocent m.
The thousand marks which, according to that
arrangement, were due annually to the Holy
See, were paid intermittently until Edward m.
repudiated the humiliating compact. And the
Mogul arms had long seriously threatened, and
gained occasional advantages over these isolated
and mutually jealous, and therefore still weaker,
monarchies. And if the Emperor's denunciat-
ing declaration of war against Golconda was
sincere, he believed that its luxurious and
corrupt condition would make it an easy prey
an assumption belied by its stout and pro-
longed defence. But, moreover, it was not
to his arms alone that he looked for victory.
He relied much on his insidious practices of
intrigue and corruption, and on the dazzling
prospect which he could hold out to traitors
of favour and exaltation in his own service.
Thus he thought that to complete the work
which he had begun as Prince would be both
appropriate and easy.
Moreover, he had special gravamina against
the King of Golconda. While he was intent on
depressing the Hindoos in the Empire, and
stamping out the Mahratta uprising in the
Dekkan, the King of Golconda was said to
give the chief place in his favour and counsels
to two Hindoos. This was, of course, Nehushtan
WHY AFGHAN KINGS FIRST ATTACKED 89
to Aurungzib. And the re-establishment and
consolidation of Sivaji's power had been effected
through the aid of the same Sovereign, though
the upstart adventurer had been placed under
the ban of the Empire. Such facts alone would
amply account for Aurungzib's resolve to conquer
such an offensive potentate, and to annex his
dominions.
The Emperor was, I believe, the more in-
clined to wage war against the Afghan kings
for the very reasons that would have made a
more far-sighted statesman hesitate to engage
in it. The Rajput revolt showed that he could
no longer command the combined forces of
the hitherto united Empire, and this example
of armed resistance might be followed else-
where, and both diminish and divert to the
new scenes of disturbance the military strength
of his distracted dominions. But he had been
not only endangered, but humiliated in Raj-
putana ; his prestige as a great general had
suffered eclipse, and his Imperial dignity had
been grossly affronted and impaired. And I
believe that he was anxious to recover his
ground, and to restore his reputation, by a
striking military triumph, and the extension
of the Empire by the annexation of two new
provinces.
As to the Mahrattas, he not only affected,
but, I believe, really felt, in spite of Sivaji's
exploits, supreme contempt for them. In his
90 AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE DEKKAN
eyes they were merely a barbarous community
of active, adroit, and greedy brigands, who had
been formidable to society so long as they were
animated and managed by a man of such
exceptional ability as Sivaji ; but who, having
lost their leader, would, if they did not disperse,
probably fall out among themselves, betray
each other, and be easily circumvented by his
combined arms, subtle intrigues, and appeals to
their cupidity. But he was totally unable to
appreciate their higher moral characteristics ;
the resolute passion for national independence
which their leader had kindled in their bosoms ;
their abhorrence of his new version of the ob-
ligations of a Mahometan sovereign towards
men of their own religion ; their intense devotion
to the memory, the example, and the institu-
tions of their heroic and indomitable chief ;
and the confidence which he had imparted to
them that the Imperial power, so far from
being irresistible, was extremely vulnerable, and
if persistently assailed, on his method, might be
brought low in the end.
Thus grievously underestimating the moral
strength of this bandit confederacy, Aurungzib
prepared to confront it, with an undiscerning
arrogance, and fixed idea of subduing and
tyrannising over it, similar to those of Philip n.
towards the Dutch " sea-beggars " ; and, as I said
of Charles the Bold, with not dissimilar results.
Khafi Khan attributes the Emperor's under-
STRENGTH OF THE MAHRATTA BASE 91
taking the personal superintendence of the war
to the insolence of Sambaji in venturing to raid
almost up to the gates of Burhanpur. There
is a germ of truth in this statement. But I
think it would be more exact to say that
Aurungzib's mistrust of the fidelity of his deputy,
Khan Jehan, as well as of his son, Prince
Moazzam, besides the other reasons that I have
mentioned, weighed with him in this decision.
And as Burhanpur and its vicinity had been
the focus of the anti-jizya movement, and this
had been fomented and assisted by Sambaji' s
incursion, to make Burhanpur his headquarters
was an obviously expedient plan. There, accord-
ingly, he assembled a mighty host, and estab-
lished a splendid and imposing Court (1683).
The first operations against the Mahrattas
were confided to Prince Moazzam. He was to
invade the rugged, intricate, and wooded region
of the Concan, the western declivities of the
mighty Ghats ; to " capture the forts, and
punish the infidels." Such was his commission.
But to execute it was not so easy as the Emperor
chose to assume. The difficulties of Mahratta
warfare, and the geographical advantages of the
Mahratta base, at once became evident, and
the collapse of this expedition foreshadowed
the fate of Aurungzib's general undertaking.
Some passages of the hostile but truthful
historian's narrative will best describe the result
(pp. 314-315).
92 AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE DEKKAN
" On the march through the narrow passes
there were many sharp fights with the enemy, in
which numbers of the royal soldiers fell. . . . The
air of the place did not suit the invaders. The
enemy swarmed around on every side, and cut
off the supplies. . . . The enemy cut down the
grass, which was a cause of great distress to
man and beast, and they had no food but cocoa-
nuts, and the grain called kudun, which acted
like poison upon them. Great numbers of men
and horses died. Grain was scarce and dear.
. . . Those men who escaped death dragged on
a half -existence, and with crying and groaning
felt as if every breath they drew was their last.
There was not a noble who had a horse in his
stable fit for use."
He then explains that the Emperor, to relieve
the army from starvation, ordered his officials
at Surat to send ample supplies of grain to it by
sea. But he continues : "As the ships had to
pass by their newly erected fortresses, [the enemy]
stopped them on their way, and took most of
them." And he concludes this lugubrious ac-
count thus : " The order at length came for
the retreat of the army, and it fell back fighting
all the way to Ahmadnagar, where Aurungzib
then was."
Such was the significant prelude to the great
tragedy that was to follow ! Yet the Emperor's
calculation, that the death of Sivaji had removed
the chief obstacle to his success, would have
.
DEGENERACY OF SAMBAJI 93
been still more confident had he understood
better than he appears to have done, the char-
acter of his successor. For Sambaji, the new
Raja, was a complete contrast to his father.
Sivaji's versatile genius, amazing energy, sleep-
less vigilance, and lively sympathy with his
followers had given him a commanding ascend-
ancy over them ; had enabled him to maintain
strict discipline in his army, an admirable
organisation of his fort system, and appropriate
regulations for the conduct of his civil govern-
ment in short, to transmute a band of brigands
into an effective and formidable antagonist of
the Imperial power. But Sambaji was utterly
destitute of his great qualities, insensible to the
requirements of his position ; reckless, self-
indulgent, and disposed to be tyrannical ; and
shamelessly and perilously subservient to the
influence of an evil - minded favourite, the
Brahmin Kaloosha, who had taken charge of
him when his father was obliged to leave the
boy behind in the course of his precipitate
flight from Delhi. Such a regime threatened
the speedy undoing of Sivaji's work, and the
renewed triumph of the Crescent over militant
Hindooism. Sed dis aliter visum, as will soon
appear.
I will, however, first dispose of the Emperor's
transactions with the Afghan monarchies. He
first assailed that of Golconda. The immediate
conduct of the operations was entrusted to
94 AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE DEKKAN
Prince Moazzam and Khan Jehan. They gained
victories ; but, as the Emperor thought, neglected
to push their advantage, and he sharply repri-
manded them. Still the Prince showed no great
alacrity to fight a general battle, but sent a
chivalrous challenge to engage with two or three
on each side, which came to nothing. At last
the desertion of one of his chief generals so
much alarmed the King, that he fled into the
strong fortress of Golconda, leaving his capital,
the adjacent city of Hyderabad, in a state of
wild panic, which was quickly justified by a
rising of the lawless classes, and a horrible
scene of indiscriminate cruelty and looting. But
matters became still worse when the Imperial
army attacked and forced its way into the city,
and the soldiers, in spite of the efforts of the
Prince to restrain them, emulated the worst
actions of the insurgent budmashes.
Meanwhile Prince Moazzam made a con-
vention with the Sovereign, which saved his
kingdom for the time, and was grudgingly
acquiesced in by the Emperor. War was then
resumed with Bijapur, and, after a tedious
siege, in which the assailants suffered much, the
capital was surrendered ; the Sovereign was
sent to Dowlatabad, pensioned, and imprisoned ;
and his dominions were reduced to a Mogul
province (1686). In the course of the siege
the Emperor had conceived new suspicions of
the fidelity of Prince Moazzam now called
ou~u
AURUNGZIB ATTACKS GOLCONDA 95
Shah Alam, and had instituted a strict inquiry,
without ascertaining any material facts against
him. But his distrust remained, and his son
experienced the effects of it later. Nor was
Aurungzib's uneasy mind better satisfied with
his other general, Khan Jehan. " He was,"
says Khafi Khan, " annoyed with him for not
having pursued and secured Prince Akbar when
that Prince was near his territory." He seems,
in fact, to have been constantly haunted by the
fear of a conspiracy to retaliate upon him his
unfilial conduct.
The attack on Golconda was now resumed ;
but Aurungzib made his approach in a character-
istically insidious manner. On the pretext of a
pilgrimage, he massed his army in the neighbour-
hood. He then formally demanded payment
of the tribute, affecting a friendly tone. But
he sent private instructions to his envoy to
extort as much money as he could his diplomacy
being reinforced by the proximity of the Imperial
forces.
When a large sum had been safely received,
the Emperor threw off the mask, denounced
the King's conduct in a fierce reply to a humble
petition for forgiveness, and marched upon
Golconda. Some of the counts of this indict-
ment are significant of Aurungzib's policy, and
its tendency to unite Mussulmans and Hindoos
against him, e.g. the King is accused of " placing
the reins of authority and government in the
96 AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE DEKKAN
hands of vile tyrannical infidels " (this refers to
the two Hindoo ministers, Madana and Akana) ;
" making no distinction between infidelity
and Islam," and " waging obstinate war in
defence of infidels" (this refers to the aid given
to Sivaji) ; and a new grievance of the same kind
is now added : "It has lately become known
that a lac of pagodas has been sent to the
wicked Sambha."
The final defence of the royal fortress was
heroic. The place was amply supplied with
arms, ammunition, and food. The garrison
fought most gallantly and perseveringly ; they
poured upon the assailants an unceasing fire of
artillery and small arms ; made bold and fre-
quent sallies, repulsing the besiegers, destroying
their works, and disputing every step of their
advance. The assailants mined ; the assailed
countermined, and secretly withdrew or damped
the enemies' powder, so that it produced little
effect. In other cases the explosion took a
wrong direction and overwhelmed the besiegers.
" Then," we are told, " great wailing and com-
plaints arose from the troops engaged in the
siege." The efforts of the defenders were
vigorously seconded by their allies the Mah-
rattas :
" The forces of the hell-dog Sambha had come
to the assistance of Haidarabad, and, hovering
round the Imperial forces, they cut off the
supplies of grain." Famine was the result, and
THE SIEGE OF GOLCONDA 97
its natural consequence, pestilence. An escalade
was attempted, but was repulsed. The be-
siegers and their works suffered much from a
heavy rain; and in their disorder were cut up
by another sally, and many were made prisoners.
Abul Hasan again tried to negotiate. But the
Emperor insisted on his surrendering at dis-
cretion, and the struggle was renewed. The
long delay kindled the anger of Aurungzib.
He called together his officers and chiefs, and,
placing himself at about a gun-shot distance
from the walls, ordered an assault to be made
under his eyes. Prodigies of valour are said
to have been exhibited by his army. But a
storm of wind and rain arose, and obstructed
the progress of the assailants ; and they were
forced to fall back, drenched with the torrent.
The garrison made another sally, took posses-
sion of the trenches, spiked the heavy guns,
on the mounting of which immense sums of
money and infinite labour had been expended ;
and carried away all that was portable. They
pulled out of the moat the logs of wood and
the many thousands of bags, which had been
used to fill it up, and with them repaired the
breaches made by the mines. Still the be-
siegers persevered. " They cast into the ditches
thousands of bags filled with dirt and rubbish,
and thousands of carcases of animals and men
who had perished during the operations. Several
times the valour of the assailants carried them
7
98 AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE DEKKAN
to the top of the walls ; but the watchfulness
of the besieged frustrated their efforts, so they
threw away their lives in vain, and the fortress
remained untaken."
I have given this rather detailed account
of the siege of Golconda because it shows, what
the Emperor would not have acknowledged,
that if in the comparative integrity of his
military power he was so long and completely
baffled in his attempts to master a single fortress,
the prospect of reducing the long line of fast-
nesses that studded the crests of a region most
unfavourable to his operations, and exhausting
to his soldiers, was not a hopeful one.
Already, in the lower country, the troops
began to murmur, and many, we are told,
actually deserted. But, as I have already said,
the Emperor did not rely on arms alone. While
his inflexible determination told upon the de-
fenders, he was busily engaged in playing upon
their fears and their hopes, and thus seducing
them from their allegiance to a falling cause.
Thus, by degrees, he won over many, whom
he received gladly into his service. But there
was one notable contrast to these traitors.
Abdur Razzak, when the place was at last
betrayed, and the gates opened, is said to have
received more than seventy wounds in a last
desperate attempt to oppose the entrance of
the enemy. The Emperor, whether from genuine
admiration, or desirous to attach to himself so
SAMBAJI, SON, AND MINISTER CAPTURED 99
valiant and steadfast a man, sent two surgeons,
a European and a Hindoo, to attend him, and
said that " if Abul Hasan had possessed one
more servant devoted like Abdur Razzak, it
would have taken much longer to subdue the
fortress." The hero did recover, and after an
interval did enter the Imperial service. The
conquered King behaved with great dignity.
He was courteously received, and pensioned ;
but consigned, like his Bijapur compeer, to
the strong fortress of Dowlatabad. And his
dominions became, as in the other case, an
Imperial province (1687) ; destined, however,
to be soon again virtually detached, and
appropriated by Nizam-ul-Mulk.
As I intimated above, pestilence had already
assailed the Imperial army. This, owing, no
doubt, to the disturbed state of the country
and the consequent scarcity, now spread over
the Dekkan, where it seems to have been closely
conterminous with the theatre of war ; and it
lasted eight years (1683-1691). The Imperial
army suffered severely from it ; the mortality
was enormous, and numberless victims lay
uncared for and unburied.
The Emperor, now free to devote his whole
attention to the Mahrattas, conceived new hopes
of success from a remarkable achievement, the
kidnapping of their new Raja. His best policy
would probably have been to leave Sambaji,
for the time, severely alone, as an objective;
100 AURUNGZIB'S CONQUESTS IN THE DEKKAN
to repel Mahratta raids ; but to trust to the
internal dissensions of his enemies, provoked
by Sambaji's character and the ascendancy of
Kaloosha, whom he had made his minister ;
and to have fomented the strife by his intrigues
and bribery. But an enterprising officer pro-
posed a coup de main, which was approved, and
was successful in its immediate object.
The Raja and his favourite, instead of
attending to the business of government, had
retired to a secluded glen, and, in fancied security,
devoted themselves to untimely and questionable
enjoyments. Mukarrab Khan, an old servant
of the Golconda King, made a sudden dash into
the mountain region, and surprised and captured
the Raja, his young son, and his minister,
and conveyed them all to the Emperor's head-
quarters. When they were brought into his
presence, Aurungzib descended from his throne,
and thrice made solemn obeisance to Heaven,
in thankful recognition of the favour vouchsafed
him. This the fettered minister flippantly inter-
preted to his master as an involuntary homage
to the majesty of the Raja. And, desperate of
obtaining mercy, both vied in scurrilous abuse
of the Emperor and his religon. He was urged
to spare them, not in clemency, but from policy,
that is, on condition of Sambaji's surrendering
his forts. But Aurungzib preferred to inflict
signal and exceptional vengeance upon them
for their personal outrage on himself, and their
SAMBA JI PUT TO DEATH WlTti TORTURE l*6r
blasphemies against his religion. But in putting
them to death he also had a politic object, in
which, as so often, he quite miscalculated. " The
Emperor," says Khafi Khan, " was in favour
of seizing the opportunity of getting rid of these
prime movers of the strife, and hoped that with
a little exertion their fortresses would be reduced "
(1689). Accordingly, " their tongues were cut
out, their eyes torn out, and they were put to
death with a variety of tortures." " Such,"
concludes the historian, " is the retribution for
rebellious, violent, oppressive evil-doers" (p. 341).
The one-sided naivete of this sententious moral
is rather amusing. But another observation
of the same writer is more to the point. " It
was," he says, " the will of God that the stock
of this turbulent family should not be rooted
out of the Dakhin, and that King Aurungzeb
should spend the rest of his life in the work of
repressing them and taking their fortresses."
Whether, degenerate as he was, Sambaji
would have consented to save his life on the
proposed condition, had the Emperor been per-
suaded to forego his cruel vengeance, and simply
imprison him, may be doubted. But that Aur- "*
ungzib thus deliberately preferred a brutal
revenge to a possible chance of mastering the
Mahratta base, is clear.
VIII
THE MAHRATTA WAR OF
INDEPENDENCE
THE Emperor counted the more on the effect
of Sambaji's removal, inasmuch as he had in his
hands his victim's young son and titular suc-
cessor in the Rajaship, who might prove a useful
hostage, and facilitate the submission of the
acephalous bandits. But once more his state-
craft was at fault, from his inability to realise
the situation, the disposition and sentiments,
the inflexible resolution, the versatile military
ability, of his despised enemies, and the im-
mense advantage which nature and art had
together conferred upon them in their mountain
base.
Moreover, the circumstances of Sambaji's
death intensified the spirit of resistance. In his
last hours he had in Mahratta estimation done
much to redeem his personal vices and his
political imbecility. He had died in the asser-
tion of his religion and the denunciation of
the False Prophet, and might be regarded
as a martyr to Hindooism ; and his blood, as
usual, was the seed of what I may venture to
RAM RAJA ASSUMES THE REGENCY 103
call, by analogy, his Church. Thus love of
plunder and warlike enterprise, a sense of
growing influence and power in the lowlands,
attachment to their familiar and well-guarded
mountain haunts, a passionate spirit of inde-
pendence, and last, but not least, zeal for their
own religion and profound animosity to Aurung-
zib's cold-blooded and cruel persecution of its
professors, combined to sustain their resistance,
and completely baffle the Emperor's calculations.
Aurungzib now advanced to the vicinity of
Bijapur, and there encamped, to be at hand
for the contemplated attack on the Mahratta
country. But there he learned that, so far from
yielding, the enemy were preparing to take the
offensive. Sambaji's brother, Ram Raja, had
assumed the regency, pending his nephew's
captivity. Large forces were mustering in the
hills, and were to be employed in invading the
lowlands and assailing such mountain fast-
nesses as had been reduced by the Moguls.
Parnala was thus retaken, with much less
difficulty than had been experienced in master-
ing it. Indeed, already Imperial officers began
to quail before the Mahratta onslaught. Thus
Rajgurh was now tamely surrendered on capitu-
lation by its Mogul commandant, though a
force was hastening to its relief. And, in
breach of the terms, he was despoiled, and
sneaked into headquarters at night in a pitiable
condition. Elsewhere also, the Hindoo reaction
104 THE MAHRATTA WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
was in progress. The Rajputs were not recon-
ciled. And now, between them and the
Mahrattas, another Hindoo people, destined to
play a considerable part in the final drama of
Imperial dissolution the Jats, were stirring,
and had already, near Agra, attacked an Im-
perial convoy en route, and slain the officer in
command of it. The Emperor was so indignant
at the failure of his Viceroy to keep this people
in order, that he removed him, and replaced
him by Bidar Bakht, his grandson.
His increasing animosity to the Hindoos
was signified by a new edict of social intolerance.
No Hindoo was to ride in a palki, or on a horse,
without special permission. This restriction
may, however, have been partly intended to
check seditious gatherings.
Meanwhile, the energy and assurance of the
new Regent were shown in his marching com-
pletely across the peninsula to the relief of
Gingee, in the Carnatic Plain (where Sivaji had
acquired territory in his later years), which
was now besieged by Zulfikar Khan, one of
the ablest Imperial generals. Ram Raja was
well served in his absence, and the campaign
proved most disastrous and dispiriting to the
Imperialists. Two gallant and skilful officers,
trained by Sivaji, Santaji Ghorepuray and
Dhunaji Jadu, distinguished themselves by their
activity and boldness, repeatedly defeated the
Imperial commanders, thoroughly cowed their
SUCCESS OF THE MAHRATTA TACTICS 105
spirits, frequently captured them, and charac-
teristically released them on the payment of
heavy ransom. The candid Mahometan historian
makes the fullest admissions on this subject.
Thus he says of Santaji :
tc Every one who encountered him was either
killed or wounded and made prisoner ; or if
any one did escape it was with his mere life,
with the loss of his army and baggage. Nothing
could be done, for wherever the accursed dog
went, and threatened an attack, there was no
Imperial amir bold enough to resist him, and
every loss inflicted on their forces made the
boldest warriors quake " (p. 347). And he pro-
ceeds to exemplify this remarkable testimony
by citing the successive overthrow and capture
of three officers ; the first of whom, he says,
" was accounted one of the bravest and most
skilful warriors of the Dakhin " ; and the second,
;t the Rustam of the time, and as brave as a lion."
To these exploits in the Dekkan, the same
heroic partisan soon added another decisive
defeat of the Imperial generals on the distant
border of the Carnatic.
Aurungzib's reception of these repeated evil
tidings was characteristic. " He was," says
Khafi Khan, " greatly distressed, but in public
he said that the creature could do nothing, for
everything was in the hands of God." Fatalism
is a poor consolation to a would-be conqueror,
unless he is sure that Providence is on the side
106 THE MAHRATTA WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
of the strong battalions, and that those battalions
are his own !
For a time the stress of the war centred in
the siege of Gingee. This was the place, the
capture of which, in the course of one night,
established Bussy's reputation in Dupleix's time.
But the Imperialists now blockaded it unsuccess-
fully for several years. They seem to have
had no heart or confidence to attempt the
Frenchman's bold operation. They did not even
completely invest the place. After a while,
the blockaders were themselves blockaded ; the
neighbouring population was hostile to them,
and joined the Mahrattas, who (we are told)
" surrounded the royal army on all sides, and
showed great audacity in cutting off supplies.
Sometimes they burst unexpectedly into an
entrenchment, doing great damage to the works,
and causing great confusion in the besieging
force." The garrisons also stoutly defended
themselves, being well armed and provisioned ;
and co-operated zealously with their friends
without. But this was not the worst. Internal
dissensions sprung up among the besiegers,
and reached a very dangerous. climax. Zulfikar
Khan was the working head of the army, and
acted independently of the Emperor's son,
Prince Kam Bakhsh, who was also present,
and wished his authority to be recognised.
Mortified at his subordinate position, he entered
into communications with the enemy, and,
GINGEE SURRENDERED BY COLLUSION 10T
according to Khafi Khan, was actually " on the
point of going over to them"! Zulfikar Khan
and his supporters, availing themselves of the
pretext that they could not take the Emperor's
orders, as the Mahrattas had intercepted all com-
munication with him, and that the Prince was
meditating treason, took the strong step of
placing him in arrest. At this crisis, the redoubt-
able Santaji arrived on the scene. Whereupon
the Imperialists hastily broke up the siege, and
retired, skirmishing, into the neighbouring hills.
At length a show was made of resuming
the blockade. But this seems to have been a
mere feint to cover the fact that a bargain had
been struck, and Gingee, like other places later,
fell by bribery (1698). This is suavely intimated
by Khafi Khan : " According to report, a sum
of money reached the enemy, and they evacuated
the fortress and retired."
The Emperor's perplexity and mortification
on this occasion were extreme. The long dura-
tion of the blockade, the frequent reverses of
his arms in the prosecution of it, the unsatis-
factory mode of its eventual acquisition, the
high-handed action of his generals, and the
ambiguous conduct and public arraignment and
disgrace of his son, affected him greatly. He
coldly commended the generals ; but he released
the Prince, to whom he was much attached,
and bore a grudge against his accusers.
Santaji meanwhile was pursuing his brilliant
108 THE MAHRATTA WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
and terror- striking career in the Dekkan. His
destruction of an Imperial army under Kasim
Khan, one of Aurungzib's best generals, was
not only so serious a blow, but affords so char-
acteristic an example of Mahratta tactics, that
I would fain describe it in detail. But the
closing scene will suffice. After being sur-
rounded, and having tried in vain to cut
through the swarming and resolute host, the
Moguls fought their way to a fort Danderi.
"There," says Khafi Khan, "for a month they
were besieged within the four walls, and every
day affairs grew worse with them. They were
compelled to kill and eat their baggage [horses]
and riding horses, which were themselves nearly
starved. . . . The stores of grain were exhausted.
. . . To escape from starvation many men threw
themselves from the walls, and trusted to the
enemy's mercy. . . . Reverses, disease, deficiency
of water, and want of grain reduced the garrison
to the verge of death. Kasim Khan, according
to report, in despair poisoned himself " (p. 356).
After his death, the other officers were
similarly affected, and ransomed themselves for
the large sum of seven lacs of rupees, equivalent
to 70,000. Then they were allowed to steal
away, each with his horse and the clothes he
wore, but not without giving good security for
the payment of the ransom. The historian
adds : " The Government and personal property
lost during this war [i.e. Santaji's struggle with
SANTAJI GHOREPURAY MURDERED 109
Kasim] and siege exceeded fifty or sixty lacs of
rupees." Hence we may appreciate the ruinous
drain on the public and private resources of the
Empire caused by the incessant wear and tear
of the protracted War of Mahratta Independence.
Himmut Khan and another Imperial general
had marched to relieve the blockaded force.
But they were lured into an ambush, and cut off
by the same gallant and wily leader.
This, however, was Santaji's last achieve-
ment. He was unpopular on account of his
strict discipline and severe punishments. And
he was basely assassinated by some of his own
people, apparently with the connivance, if not
at the instigation, of his rival, Dhunaji Jadu,
who is said to have been actuated by jealousy.
Santaji's family long continued estranged from
the Mahratta Confederacy, though they con-
tinued to harass the Moguls. I may mention
incidentally that the Morari Rao, who joined Clive
in the defence of Arcot, was a descendant of the
murdered Champion of Mahratta Independence.
The Imperialists were overjoyed at the tid-
ings of Santaji's death. But there was no lack
of men to take his place and carry on his work.
A Sindia now appears on the scene, and a
transaction in which he was concerned further
illustrates the tendency of the war to impoverish
the Empire, enrich the Mahrattas, and establish
corrupt relations with them among the Emperor's
own generals.
110 THE MAHRATTA WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
The Mahratta officer, with eight thousand
horse, was raiding in the neighbourhood of
Nundarbar, and demanded chout from the city.
But the inhabitants refused to pay it, and closed
their gates, which, we are told " greatly annoyed
the Mahrattas." Already they began to consider
it a right, and expected compliance. Husain
Ali Khan, an Imperial general, ventured to
encounter them with an inferior force, and, as
usual, was surrounded and worsted. He was
wounded and made prisoner, together with all
his men and equipage. As usual also, he was
held to ransom. But, unable to make up the
whole sum, he asked the bankers and merchants
to lend him the balance, which they declined
to do. Thus he and his captors had each a
grievance against the place, and accordingly
came to an agreement to avenge themselves,
to their common profit. Husain surrendered
the city to the Mahrattas, who extorted a vast
contribution from the rich men, and, besides
foregoing the balance of the ransom, handed
over a sum much exceeding it to Husain himself.
When Mogul officers, instead of defending, thus
took to betraying, their charge, and sharing
the spoils of the enemy, the decay of trade, the
neglect of industry, and the reinforcement of the
Mahrattas by those who objected to be not only
unprotected but doubly fleeced, are intelligible.
While thus defeat and humiliation attended
the Imperial armies, the open country was
THE FLOODS FIGHT AGAINST THE MOGULS 111
ravaged, agriculture discouraged, famine and
pestilence propagated, the towns insecurely
defended, and their inhabitants exposed to
arbitrary exactions the very elements seemed
to combine against the Moguls. The royal
camp was pitched near the Bhima River. A
terrible flood suddenly submerged it, and created
a general panic ; and the wear and tear, and
consequent increasing aversion to the war in
the Imperial army, may be understood from what
happened on this occasion, which is given only
as a sample of a series of similar catastrophes.
" The waters," says the historian, " began to
overflow at midnight, when all the world was
asleep. The floods carried off about ten thousand
or twelve thousand men, with the establish-
ments of the King, and the Princes' and the
amirs' horses, bullocks, and cattle in countless
numbers, tents and furniture beyond all count.
Great fear fell on all the army."
The Emperor, in spite of his fatalism,
appealed to Heaven for deliverance. " The
King," continues Khafi Khan, " wrote out
prayers with his own hand, and ordered them to
be thrown into the water, for the purpose of
causing it to subside." But his suppliant charms
were as ineffectual to arrest the course of
nature as his arms to stem the human tide of
war which he had provoked, and which Provi-
dence had decreed was to undermine and sub-
merge his Empire.
IX
AURUNGZIB UNDERTAKES TO MASTER
THE MAHRATTA BASE. THE MAH-
RATTAS RETALIATE BY SETTLING IN
THE DEKKAN IMPERIAL PROVINCES
NEARLY forty years had now elapsed since
Sivaji had first come into collision with the
Moguls, and nearly twenty since, after his
death, Aurungzib had undertaken the super-
intendence of the war in the Dekkan. He had
conquered Bijapur and Golconda; he had
put Sambaji to death, and still detained his
son and heir in mild durance at his military
Court. He had, from time to time, gained
advantages over the Mahrattas in the field ;
and by assault, treachery, or bribery, had ob-
tained possession of some of their strongholds.
He had, moreover, pushed his operations into
the Carnatic Plain, and Gingee, a most important
cluster of fortresses (for there were three, on
as many contiguous hills) in the centre of the
province, was in his hands. The most formidable
champion of Mahratta Independence since Sivaji,
the redoubted Santaji Ghorepuray, was no
more ; and the aged Emperor's determination
AURUNGZIB'S NEW PLAN OF THE WAR 113
to subdue the obstinate rabble of infidels was
as inflexible as ever.
Yet he could not but realise that his fixed
purpose had hitherto been signally foiled ; that
matters were growing worse daily ; that cam-
paigning in the open country had proved a
miserable failure ; that there his regular armies
were no match for the agile and indefatigable
swarms of light horsemen, thoroughly acquainted
with the country, and aided by the sympathy
and co-operation of its Hindoo inhabitants, as
well as of more primitive tribes from the wilder
districts on its confines. If the plague was
to be stayed, a more drastic remedy must be
applied. If the devastating torrent was to
be arrested, it must be cut off or dammed up
at its source. In plain terms, the plan of the
war must be changed. A comprehensive and
resolute effort must be made, by concentrating
the bulk of the Imperial force in a systematic
attack on the enemy's base the strong and
almost impregnable region of the Ghats, to
reduce the whole chain of forts in that quarter,
and to overpower the Mahrattas in their mountain
home. That the experiment, even if feasible,
was a desperate one, will appear even from the
simile I have used. Most of the Dekkan rivers
rise in the Ghats. And were it possible to
arrest their flow thence, the Dekkan would be
reduced to a desert. But very different was
the case with the tide of insurrection that now
8
114 AURUNGZIB AND THE MAHRATTA BASE
overspread it. That tide was swollen by the
forces of local anarchy, which had their source
in the heart of the Dekkan itself ; and which
the reduction of Bijapur and Golconda had
liberated and multiplied. A large part of the
population, doubly oppressed and suffering from
the recently established tyranny of the Mogul
Government, and the ravages and claim to
chout of the Mahrattas, preferred to abandon
their homes and join the invaders. Civil society
was, in fact, breaking up, and a state of things
supervening, analogous to that of Central India,
when the studiously non-intervention policy
pursued by Wellesley's successors stimulated
the mushroom growth of the Pindari bands.
Thus, even had the Mahratta base been
effectually mastered, the Dekkan would still
have remained unsubdued and unpacified. But,
as we shall see, it was not mastered, though
many forts fell, more with the aid of the golden
key than by force of arms.
However, the Emperor set to work in earnest
(1698). He rapidly and strongly entrenched
his headquarters, and there deposited his family
of ladies and their attendants ; issued strict
orders that his officers should follow his example,
and forbade his soldiers to take their wives
or children with them. But his orders were
very imperfectly obeyed.
Ram Raja, the Mahratta Regent, on the
approach of the Imperial army, attempted to
OBSTINATE DEFENCE OF SATARA 115
divert it by making a raid into Berar, in concert
with the Raja of Deogarh. This chief had
joined the Emperor, and had professed to
become a Mussulman ; but he now deserted
him and fled, renounced Islam, and turned
filibuster a good illustration of the temper of
the time among the Hindoos, which was sweeping
high and low into the vortex of anarchy. But
Aurungzib was not to be diverted from his
purpose, and Satara was promptly invested.
It made a desperate resistance, and four months
were spent in vain efforts to reduce it. " The
garrison," says the historian, " rolled down
great stones, which . . . crushed many men and
animals. The rain obstructed the arrival of
corn ; the enemy were very daring in attacking
the convoys, and the country for twenty kos
round the fortress had been burnt, so that
grain and hay became very scarce and dear."
The Moguls, like natives in general, were never
expert in siege operations. Akbar himself lay
before Chitore, the old capital of Oudipur, for
years ; and even Hyder Ali was no exception
to the statement, though he took many places
by treachery and corruption of the commandants.
On this occasion the besiegers exploded one
mine with good effect, but suffered severely from
a second operation of the same kind. Khafi
Khan says : "A portion of the rock above was
blown up, but ... it came down on the heads
of the besiegers like a mountain of destruction,
116 AURUNGZIB AND THE MAHRATTA BASE
and several thousands were buried under it. ...
The garrison then set about repairing the walls,
and they again opened fire, and rolled down
the life-destroying stones. When Aurungzib
was informed of the disaster, and of the despond-
ency of his men, he ... mounted his horse, and
went to the scene of action, as if in search
of death" Such are the significant words of
the historian, whose sympathies were strongly
against the Mahrattas. And he goes on to de-
scribe the passionate but utterly futile attempts
of the Emperor to reanimate his drooping
soldiers, and induce them to renew the assault.
And he concludes : " When he perceived that
his words made no impression on the men, he
was desirous to lead the way himself, but the
nobles objected to this rash proposition." So
despondent and disgusted were the soldiers,
that they actually set fire to the besieging
works, which (we are told) " had been con-
structed at great trouble and expense," and
which are said to have burned brightly for a
week !
But a sudden and unexpected event seemed
to have changed the whole situation. Ram
Raja, like his father, on his return from his
raid in the north, had abruptly expired, leaving
only infant sons. His widow, Tara Bai, in
turn, assumed the Regency. On these tidings,
says Khafi Khan, " the Emperor ordered the
drums of rejoicing to be beaten, and the
TARA BAI ASSUMES THE REGENCY 117
soldiers congratulated each other, saying that
another prime mover in the strife was removed,
and that it would not be difficult to overcome
two young children and a helpless woman."
But never did men miscalculate more. Tara
Bai was a woman of remarkable ability, energy,
and determination, and in the end proved
herself quite equal to the emergency.
But, for the moment, the death of her
husband undoubtedly much depressed the
Mahrattas, while it reanimated the Moguls.
And how much this was the case may be esti-
mated by the extraordinary fact that, after so
long and stoutly holding his own, the panic-
stricken commandant of Satara not only sur-
rendered the fortress, but actually entered the
Imperial service.
But the adjacent fort of Parli held out for
six weeks longer, the garrison displaying great
valour, and inflicting much loss on the besiegers,
who also suffered severely from the weather
and the cutting off of their supplies. At last,
however, they reduced the place ; and this
arduous campaign came to an end. Half a
year had been spent in achieving a Pyrrhus
victory. A few more such, and Aurungzib
would be undone.
The circumstances just related will sufficiently
illustrate the arduous, tardy, and indecisive
character of the Emperor's attempt to conquer
the Mahratta base. A detailed narrative of his
118 AURUNGZIB AND THE MAHRATTA BASE
persistent operations during the next four years
would be tedious and unprofitable, and would
involve the repetition of obstacles, misadventures,
and military grievances similar to those already
given. I shall, therefore, only notice summarily
the general features and abortive result of this
last experiment of subjugation.
It was not without difficulty and much
suffering that, in the face of the active enemy,
and while the monsoon was still raging, the
army accomplished its retreat to the Dekkan.
The difficulty of transport, which afterwards
so sorely hampered the English in their early
wars in India, and which was never well over-
come until the future Duke of Wellington
devised and applied an effectual remedy, beset
the Moguls at every stage. The crossing of the
flooded rivers was always a serious difficulty,
and generally attended by great casualties.
Numbers were drowned, numbers were cut off
by the vigilant and daring pursuers : " thou-
sands," says Khafi Khan, " remained behind
and died." On one occasion it took seventeen
days to pass the Kistna. Even when the
monsoon was over, and the army was recruiting,
in fancied security, on the banks of the Man,
an untimely deluge of rain in the hills flooded
the river ; and the waters, pouring into the
camp, " caused confusion and distress which
defy description." The army, under the accu-
mulated hardships and dangers of the situation,
FAILURE OF AURUNGZIB'S NEW PLAN 119
lost all power of expeditious marching, and
dragged itself painfully along, only to find
itself too late for its immediate object. Thus
on one occasion it took twelve days to reach
what ought to have been gained in two. On
another it took seven weeks to march twenty-
eight miles i.e. little more, on an average, than
half a mile a day ! And this, while the Mahrattas
were incredibly active and expeditious in all
directions.
From time to time forts were reduced. But
it was almost always after a prolonged invest-
ment, and not by siege or storm, but by system-
atic and lavish bribery. Many instances are
given ; but, as if weary of details, the historian
at last makes the following naif and remarkable
statement, putting, you will observe, the best,
but that a very sorry face, on the transaction.
His eulogistic apology, indeed, reads like sly
satire. " The clemency and long-suffering and
care of the Emperor were such, that when he
ascertained that several fortresses had been
long and vigorously besieged and that the
garrisons were in difficulty, he paid sums of
money to the commandants, and so got the
forts into his possession. It often happened
also that he gave the same sum of money,
neither more nor less, to the officer conducting
the siege." This was certainly a peculiar pro-
ceeding, and not calculated to economise his
fast-vanishing resources ! And the same writer
120 THE MAHRATTAS SETTLE IN THE DEKKAN
mentions, as a notable exception, that Torna
was actually taken by assault ; " not," he adds,
" like the other forts by negotiations with the
commandants, and promises of material advance-
ment." Meanwhile the antipathy to the irk-
some and humiliating service grew more pro-
nounced in the army, especially among the
officers.
The Emperor was perplexed and embarrassed
by " the irresolution of his amirs, who pined for
ease, and complained of the dearness of grain,
and the insalubrity of the climate, and by the
grumbling of the . . . hard-tried soldiers." On
the whole, it was too evident that this last
plan also had failed, and that the end was near.
That end, the complete collapse of Aurung-
zib's design of conquering the Mahrattas, is
vividly illustrated in a remarkable passage of
the historian to whom I am so much indebted
for the materials of my narrative. For it dis-
closes unmistakably the irresistible progress of
the insidious and mighty tide of Hindoo reaction,
the practical subversion of the Imperial auth-
ority, and the establishment, within the territory
of the Empire, of a Mahratta dominion, crude,
barbarous, and grasping, but the natural conse-
quence, and in logical language the inseparable
accident, of the struggle which had initiated it,
and which was destined to exhibit a terrible
vitality and expansive power in the near future.
Long as it is, this passage is well worth quoting
KHAFI KHAN'S EVIDENCE OF FAILURE 121
with little abridgment, as a luminous picture of
a great historical catastrophe, and as indisput-
able evidence that that catastrophe was the out-
come of Aurungzib's impolicy, encountered and
baffled by the creative and stimulating genius
of his originally despised antagonist " the
mountain rat," as Aurungzib had contemptuously
called him.
" When Ram Raja died, leaving only widows
and infants, men thought that the power of the
Mahrattas over the Dakhin was at an end. But
Tara Bai, the elder wife, made her son of three
years old successor to his father, and took the
reins of government into her own hands. She
took vigorous measures for ravaging the Imperial
territory, and sent armies to plunder the six
subas of the Dakhin as far as Sironj, Mandisor,
and the suba of Malwa. She won the hearts of
her officers, and for all the struggles and schemes,
the campaigns and sieges of Aurungzeb up to
the end of his reign, the power of the Mahrattas
increased day by day. By hard fighting, by
the expenditure of the vast treasures accumu-
lated by Shah Jehan, and by the sacrifice of
many thousands of men, he had penetrated
into their wretched country, had subdued their
lofty forts, and had driven them from house and
home ; still the daring of the Mahrattas in-
creased, and they penetrated into the old terri-
tories of the Imperial throne, plundering and
destroying wherever they went."
122 THE MAHRATTAS SETTLE IN THE DEKKAN
Thus far he has shown how the Mahrattas
retaliated the attack on their base by an offensive
war on the Imperial territory in the Dekkan.
But he next proceeds to show that so far from
being mere plunderers and destroyers, they had
also a constructive policy, still more fatal to the
integrity of the Empire : how they deliberately
and systematically instituted and maintained
an authoritative fiscal establishment of their
own in the Imperial territory ; and so, like the
fabled vampire, sucked the blood out of the
body of their victim, and reduced it to inani-
tion, while they converted what had been, in the
first instance, black-mail, or a composition against
simple plunder by violence, into an established
and regularly enforced plan of political taxation,
as it was familiarly regarded in later days. The
peculiar interest and importance of the succeed-
ing passage is that it well illustrates this transition
period in the history of chout the older pro-
miscuous demand of it being now generalised,
and occasional raids being now superseded by
a comprehensive political organisation for the
extension of Mahratta authority over the whole
country, and securing the permanence of the
fiscal extortion the germ and essence of sover-
eignty in the East.
I must observe that the following account
of the Mahratta proceedings, though it may
anticipate in some respects their mature plan
of operations, does not include the elaborate
THE MAHRATTAS SETTLE IN THE EMPIRE 123
scheme of confederacy, and partition of the
profits of exaction, devised by the first notable
Peishwa, Balaji Wishwanath. I now conclude
Khafi Khan's summary of the result of the War
of Mahratta Independence under Aurungzib :
" In imitation of the Emperor, who, with his
army and enterprising amirs, was staying in
those distant mountains, the commanders of
Tara Bai cast the anchor of permanence wherever
they penetrated, and, having appointed revenue
collectors, they passed the years and months
to their satisfaction, with their wives and children,
tents and elephants." [That is, in plain English,
they effected a solid lodgment in the Dekkan,
instead of simply making occasional incursions
into it.] " Their daring went beyond all bounds.
They divided all the districts among themselves,
and, following the practice of the Imperial rule,
they appointed their provincial governors,
revenue-collectors, and toll-collectors."
Here the narrator passes from the origin to
the consummation of this plan of establishing
an imperium in imperio in the Mogul territory ;
or, in other words, from the past to the present,
as it existed when he wrote.
" Their principal subadar [i.e. provincial
governor] is commander of the army. Whenever
he hears of a large caravan, he takes six or seven
thousand horse, and goes to plunder it [i.e. exact
transit duties]. He appoints kamaish-dars [i.e.
revenue-collectors] everywhere to collect the
124 THE MAHRATTAS SETTLE IN THE DEKKAN
chauth, and whenever, from the resistance of
the zamindars and faujdars [i.e. the Imperial
civil or military officials] the revenue-collector
is unable to levy the chauth, he hastens to support
him, and besieges and destroys his towns. And
the tax-collectors of these evil-doers take from
small parties of merchants, who are anxious to
obtain security from plunder, a toll upon every
cart and bullock, three or four times greater
than the amount imposed by the faujdars of
the Government. This excess he shares with
the corrupt jagirdars and faujdars, and then
leaves the road open. In every province he
builds one or two forts, which he makes his
strongholds, and ravages the country round.
The mukaddams, or head men of the villages, with
the countenance and co-operation of the infidel
[i.e. the Mahratta] subadars, . . . have built forts,
and with the aid and assistance of the Mahrattas
they make terms with the royal officers as to the
payment of their revenues [i.e. instead of paying
the Imperial revenue as a matter of course, they
higgle over it, and bargain for as little as possible
as natives, in such circumstances, know too
well how to do]."
He then returns to the extensive range of
the Mahratta incursions :
" They attack and destroy the country as
far as the borders of Ahmadabad and the districts
of Malwa, and spread their devastations through
the provinces of the Dakhin to the environs of
AURUNGZIB'S FAILURE DOUBLY ATTESTED 125
Ujjain. They fall upon and plunder large cara-
vans within ten or twelve kos of the Imperial
camp, and have even had the hardihood to attack
the royal treasure."
And he concludes his account of the result
of Aurungzib's last plan of subjugation, the
reduction of the fortresses in the Ghats, thus
significantly : " The sieges, after all, had no
effect in suppressing the daring of the Mahrattas "
(pp. 373-375).
With such evidence, tendered by a servant
of Aurungzib, before us, was I wrong in saying
that in resolving to engage in this unequal
contest, he virtually signed the death-warrant
of his Empire ?
A similar inference, as to the fatal effect of
the Emperor's cardinal act of impolicy in his
internal administration the reimposition of
the jizya, may be drawn from a passage in the
protest against it which, when I quoted the
writer's general argument, I said I should cite
later. After describing in glowing terms the
complete political toleration of Akbar, Jehangir,
and Shah Jehan, and its happy consequences,
he thus proceeds :
" Such were the benevolent inclinations of
your ancestors. Whilst they pursued these
great and generous principles, wheresoever they
directed their steps, conquest and prosperity
went before them ; and there they reduced
many countries and fortresses to their obedience.
126 THE MAHRATTAS SETTLE IN THE DEKKAN
During your majesty's reign, many have been
alienated from the empire, and further loss of
territory must necessarily follow, since devasta-
tion and rapine now universally prevail without
rstraint." This evidently refers to the later
period of the reign, and proves that Jeswunt
Sing could not have been, as Orme thought,
the author of this remarkable document. It
continues :
" Your subjects are trampled under foot,
and every province of your empire is impover-
ished ; depopulation spreads, and difficulties
accumulate. When indigence has reached the
habitation of the Sovereign, and his princes,
what can be the condition of the nobles ? As
to the soldiery, they are in murmurs ; the
merchants complaining, the Mahomedans dis-
contented, the Hindoos destitute, and multitudes
of people, wretched even to the want of their
nightly meal, are beating their heads throughout
the day in rage and desperation " (pp. 253-254).
This respectable dual testimony, from such
opposite quarters, can leave little doubt that
^Aurungzib was the evil genius, and he and
Sivaji the joint -underminers of the Mogul
Empire. Aurungzib died in 1707.
THE EMPEROR BAHADUR SHAH
ANOTHER war of succession was inevitable on
the death of Aurungzib. The character and
positions of his sons, and his treatment of them,
combined to ensure it.
The late Emperor had always been very
jealous and suspicious of the eldest, successively
called Mohammed Moazzam, Shah Alum, and
Bahadur Shah ; had degraded, and for several
years imprisoned him ; but had afterwards
restored him to favour, and sent him to command
in the Punjab. The second surviving son, Azam
Shah, had counted upon permanently supplant-
ing his elder brother ; and having been, while
Bahadur Shah was under a cloud, treated as
heir to the throne, took it very ill that his elder
brother should recover his prospect of the
succession. But towards the end of his reign
the Emperor showed a marked affection and
partiality for the child of his old age, Kam
Bakhsh, and so encouraged him to expect to
rule over at least a part of the Empire. Whether
Aurungzib really, as was asserted, made a will,
dividing his dominions between his three sons,
127
128 THE EMPEROR BAHADUR SHAH
seems very doubtful. But though the eldest
professed, sincerely or not, to believe and be
ready to acquiesce in such an arrangement,
while he was not at all disposed to forego his
claim to the Imperial throne, or to shirk the
enforcement of it, if necessary by the sword,
neither of the other Princes would hear of a
peaceful settlement ; thus a contest ensued in
which they both perished, and Shah Alum, or
Bahadur Shah, became sole and undisputed
Emperor.
His character presents a complete contrast
to that of his predecessor, and seems to have
much resembled that of Dara Shukoh, Aurung-
zib's unfortunate eldest brother. It is thus
sketched by Khafi Khan :
" For generosity, munificence, boundless
good-nature, extenuation of faults, and forgive-
ness of offences, very few monarchs have been
found equal to Bahadur Shah and especially
in the race of Timour. But though he had no
vice in his character, such complacency and
such negligence were exhibited in the protection
of the State, and in the government and manage-
ment of the country, that sarcastic people
found the date of his accession in the words
Shah-i-be-khabr' Heedless King.' "
There is probably here a good deal of exag-
geration, and possibly of misconception. For,
accustomed to his father's strict and meddle-
some policy, public opinion was probably too
.
AHADUR'S CHARACTER AND POLICY 129
exacting, and hardly made allowance not only
for his acquired distaste for such a regime,
from which he had suffered much, but for a
deliberate and benevolent attempt to heal the
wounds of the lacerated Empire by a forbearing
and tolerant policy. Aurungzib had been a
sunni zealot. But Bahadur, like Dara, was not
orthodox, though he did not go so far in hetero-
doxy as his uncle. He made a shia innovation
in the ritual, and thereby occasioned serious
disturbance ; but, after much petitioning and
discussion, the Emperor gave way, and restored
the old formula. His chief supporter and
favourite minister, Munim Khan, was addicted
to the Sufi mysticism, and wrote a book which
was held to be unsound. Another indication of
Bahadur's liberal tendencies in religious matters
is his invitation to Govind, the Sikh guru,
and his admission of him into his service.
Banda's revolt compelled him to authorise
strong measures against the Sikhs ; for their
ferocities were manifest, and their renewed and
unprovoked rebellion was a real and serious
political danger. Bahadur, again, accepted the
submission of the Rajputs ; and, had he lived
longer, they would probably have been sincerely
reconciled, for a time at least, to the Imperial
authority. I cannot find that the edict for the
imposition of the jizya was formally rescinded.
But from its re-enactment in a later reign, as
well as from the nature of the case, there can,
9
130 THE EMPEROR BAHADUR SHAH
I think, be no doubt that it remained a dead
letter under Bahadur. In Oudipur it was
formally abolished, as appears from a treaty
between the Emperor and the Rana, the text
of which is given by Colonel Tod, and one article
of which is to the above effect. But his most
remarkable and considerable measures of con-
ciliation were his concessions to the Mahrattas.
To these I shall revert later, in tracing the
development of the power of that people. But
I may at once say now, that these, however
well meant, were too characteristic of the
designation of him as " Heedless King." For
they were quite inconsistent, not only with the
authority of the Emperor, as supreme in the
Dekkan Provinces, but with the practical in-
tegrity of the Empire in that quarter, and a
powerful stimulus to Mahratta ambition in
Hindostan. The latter point, however, at least,
he possibly failed to appreciate.
Zulfikar Khan, whom I have already men-
tioned, was one of Aurungzib's most distin-
guished and influential generals. He was, when
that Emperor died, with Azarn Shah. And
Khafi Khan says that he " was very intimate
with Sahu, or Shao, the grandson and right heir
of Sivaji, and had long been interested in his
affairs." Shao was in the custody of Azam
Shah, and Zulfikar persuaded Azam to release
him, probably hoping that Shao's influence with
the Mahrattas might be exerted in Azam's
BAHADUR'S CONCESSIONS TO MAHRATTAS 131
favour in his forthcoming contest for the
throne. Shao lost no time in mustering sup-
porters among his tribesmen, and was soon
re-established as Raja, and at the head of a
considerable army. Zulfikar, now in the service
of the victor, Bahadur Shah, and Subadar of
the Dekkan, still favoured him, and backed his
application to the easy-going Emperor for "a
firman conferring on Sahu the sur-deshmuki l
and the chout of the six subas of the Dakhin," on
condition of " restoring prosperity to the ruined
land." But, while Sahu had been secluded in
the Imperial Court, Tara Bai, as I have related,
had vigorously maintained the Mahratta War
of Independence after the death of her husband,
Ram Raja, and on behalf of her young son,
the Raja of Kolapore. She now also, favoured
by Munim Khan, the Khan Khanan and Zul-
fikar 's rival, petitioned for a firman, in the
name of her son, granting the sur-deshmuki
over the same subas, and on the same pledge
to abandon war and restore order in the country.
"The King," says Khafi Khan, "in his extreme
good-nature, had resolved in his heart that he
would not reject the petition of any one." He
was sorely perplexed by the counter-applica-
tions, but decided to grant both petitions.
But Shao, supported by Zulfikar, and his better
title, prevailed in the end, as the importance
1 This new impost was one-tenth of the revenue, levied from
theory ots directly.
132 THE EMPEROR BAHADUR SHAH
of Kolapore rapidly declined, and Munim Khan
soon after died.
Such was the legalised ground of the per-
sistent pretension of the Mahrattas to levy
both chout and sur-deshmuki in the Dekkan,
which at a later period was extended to the
other provinces of the Empire by an extorted
grant from Mohammad Shah.
On the whole, I cannot but think that
Bahadur's character and policy have been mis-
understood ; and that, however inferior to his
father in attention to business, firmness of
purpose, and awe-inspiring majesty, and though
unquestionably lavish to a vicious and dangerous
extent, he was yet a Prince of no mean capacity,
who had a definite and benevolent design of
treading back his way to the earlier and better
path of Mogul rule ; and who, had he lived to
carry it out, might, even under the difficult
and disastrous circumstances of the time, have
accomplished much improvement, and given a
new lease of life to the moribund Empire. But
he was an elderly man when he came to the
throne. And in 1712, in his seventieth (lunar)
year, he died rather suddenly. He was the
last Emperor of whom anything favourable
can be said. Henceforth, the rapid and complete
abasement and practical dissolution of the
Empire are typified in the incapacity and
political insignificance of its Sovereigns.
XI
THE INTERREGNUM
THE war of succession which had ended in
Bahadur's favour had a counterpart on his
death. He left four sons, who aspired to the
throne; and all raised forces to support their
respective pretensions. The eldest, Azimu-sh
Shan, was attacked by a confederacy of the three
younger, Jahandar Shah, Jahan Shah, and
Kafi'u Shan, and disappeared in the melee ; how
he met his death is uncertain. The victors
soon fell out among themselves ; Jahan Shah
and Kafi'u Shan successively were killed in
battle, and Jahandar Shah remained Emperor.
But on his death, after eleven months, " an
order," says Khafi Khan, " was made that the
reign of Jahandar Shah should be considered
an adverse possession," and that his successor's
accession should be antedated so as to ignore
the reputed interregnum. It deserved to be
reprobated and consigned to political oblivion.
For Jahandar Shah was an utterly degenerate
representative of the house of Timour, Baber, and
Akbar. Frivolous, profligate, cruel, and cowardly,
servilely devoted to a favourite lady, Lai Kun-
war, whose relatives he promoted wholesale to
133
134 THE INTERREGNUM
high honours, to the disgust of the old nobles
and able and experienced servants of the State ;
he soon became generally odious and despicable.
Thus he could count on little support in case
of a rebellion. And with this he was at once
threatened by Farokhsir, a son of Azimu-sh Shan,
the vanished brother whom he had supplanted.
Assisted by two remarkable and valiant
brothers, Husain Ali, his father's deputy in the
Subadari of Patna, and Abdullah Khan, Subadar
of Allahabad, Farokhsir claimed to succeed his
father, whom he had proclaimed Emperor on
Bahadur's death. As the armies of the rivals
approached each other, some magnates deserted
openly to the pretender. Others, notably Kilich
Khan (the future Nizam-ul-Mulk), are said to
have come to a private understanding with
Farokhsir; and so general was the disaffection
that Khafi Khan goes so far as to say that
" the victory of Farrukh Siyar became the hope
of every man in the army, great and small."
Thus, though the latter 's force was less than
a third of the Emperor's, the conclusion was
almost a foregone one from the first. But
the unworthy successor of a line of heroes
sealed his fate by fleeing ignominiously in the
heat of the battle on Lai Kunwar's elephant.
He betook himself to Zulfikar Khan's father, who
gave him up to the tender mercies of the victor ;
and he was strangled in the fort of Delhi by the
recently introduced Turkish bow-string.
XII
THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
FAROKHSIR'S reign is throughout an agitated
and perplexing one, ending in another Imperial
tragedy. Its external aspect is that of frequent
attempts of the Emperor to assert his inde-
pendence, and, on the other hand, of the resolute
determination of the two Seiad brothers, to
whom he owed his exaltation, to retain the
effective management of his affairs.
Hence a series of violent crises, which at last
result in Farokhsir's deposition, followed by his
murder.
But, in view of later events, and of some
significant circumstances during this reign, it is
not easy to determine what were the actual
aims of the Seiads. Whether they were sincerely
loyal to their master at first, and estranged
from him in consequence of undeserved sus-
picions and treachery on his part, and rightfully
jealous of attempts to shake his confidence in
them, and to remove and ruin them, from fear
that they might prove not only intolerably
overbearing, but disloyal ; or whether, from the
first, they sought to reduce the Emperor to a
135
136 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
mere figure-head, and monopolise power in his
name, as Mahadaji Sindia did in later days ;
or whether, again, they contemplated as they
were after his death suspected of doing the
actual subversion of the Imperial house, and
the erection of a new monarchy on a non-Mogul
and quasi-nationalist basis, seems to me by no
means clear. But whatever their original de-
signs, as the contest proceeded they certainly
formed associations which tended in the second,
if not even the third, direction ; though this
may have been in the first instance involuntary,
and adopted simply in order to strengthen their
hands, and confirm their grasp of power, as
chief ministers of the Great Mogul.
Hence, in order to appreciate their later
position, and the deeper and more than personal
aspects of the revolution in which they and
their schemes perished, it is necessary to
sketch the vicissitudes of their uneasy relations
with the Emperor, and the anti-Mogul and
quasi-nationalist, if not Hindooising, policy to
which, by choice or in self-defence, they were
gradually committed.
Many circumstances combined to promote
the prominence and commanding influence of
Abdullah and Husain Ali at the opening of the
new reign. They had been Farokhsir's earliest
and staunchest supporters in his contest for
the throne. It was an impetuous charge of
Husain's troops which had intimidated Jahandar,
SOURCES OF THE SEIADS' POWER 137
and driven him to ignominious and fatal flight.
And the gratitude of the new Emperor had
been testified by his bestowing on Abdullah
the office of Vizier, or Chief Minister, and that
of Bukhshi, or virtually Commander-in-Chief, on
Husain. Thus they held the combined civil
and military authority under the Emperor.
But these official sources of strength were rein-
forced by personal qualities, and a distinguished
and trusty military clientele. They were both
men of great ability, resolution, and approved
valour. And their tribal kinsmen had so high
a traditional reputation for warlike gallantry,
that they had acquired a conventional claim
to lead the van in battle. Though reputed
Seiads, or descendants of the Prophet, they
had, for centuries, been established in India,
and swarmed in the Doab, in the district of
Muzaffarnagar (from the twelve villages which
they held there their name Barha is by some
authorities said to have been derived). Akbar
had gladly received one of their leading warriors
into his service, and employed him and his
kinsmen in his campaigns. And members of
the tribe or clan (as I may venture to call it)
had later figured in the Imperial service. But,
on the other hand, it must be remembered,
with reference to the later conduct and probable
designs of Abdullah and Husain, that the Seiads
of Barha, though of alleged exotic origin, were
old inhabitants of India, and prided themselves
138 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
on being Hindostanees. As such, their sym-
pathies would naturally be with the natives,
rather than with the Mogul conquering class
of foreigners. And although they were Mussul-
mans, they were also Shias, another cause of
estrangement between them and the Moguls,
who were mostly Soonees, and a strong ground
for aversion to Aurungzib's reactionary and
persecuting policy, and for rallying what I may
call nationalist sentiment to their side under
the banner of toleration and political equality,
as established by Akbar.
The significance and importance of these
last circumstances will be more evident when
I reach the reign of Mohammad Shah. And I
will next sketch the course of the misunder-
standing and simultates between the King and
the king-makers down to its tragic close.
According to Khafi Khan, the fons et origo
mali was attributable to the personal defici-
encies of the Emperor himself. His relation
to the Seiad brothers much resembled that of
Akbar, on his accession, to Bairam and other
chief officers engaged in the reconquest of the
Empire. How Akbar, the young but sagacious
hero, gradually emancipated himself, and vin-
dicated his right to personal and independent
rule, I have shown in a former course of lectures.
But Farokhsir was in character the reverse of
Akbar. He was not only, like his illustrious pre-
decessor, young at his accession, but, according
CHARACTER OF FAROKHSIR 139
to Khafi Khan, "he was inexperienced in busi-
ness and inattentive to affairs of State: . . .
entirely dependent on the opinions of others,
for he had no resolution or discretion. The
timidity of his character contrasted with the
vigour of the race of Timour, and he was not
cautious in listening to the words of artful men.
From the beginning of his reign he brought his
troubles on himself."
The truthfulness of this general character
will be too evident as I proceed. But the
last remark requires qualification. His initial
mistake, the author goes on to say, was his
appointment of Abdullah as Wazir. But it
may be doubted how far he could have safely
done otherwise, without producing, if not an
open rupture, a dangerous slackening of zeal
on his behalf on the part of the Seiad brothers.
It is obvious, however, that the appointment
was regarded with great jealousy by the leading
Moguls ; and that the Emperor was plied with
assiduous attempts to shake his confidence in
his Chief Minister, and to induce him to remove
and disgrace him.
In these Kilich Khan, now created Nizam-
ul-Mulk, took no part. He was sent as Subadar
of the Dekkan, and I shall have later to notice
his dealings with the Mahrattas on this first
occasion of his Viceroyalty there.
The most active agent in this anti-ministerial
intrigue was a favourite and confidant of the
140 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
Emperor Mir Jumla ; and, not content with
insinuations, he matched his influence in an
irregular way against Abdullah's ministerial
responsibility, and so inflamed the Emperor's
jealousy of those who objected to this irregular
interference. The Seiads " desired that no
mansabs or promotions or appointments to office
should be made without consulting them."
This desire, in the case of the Prime Minister
at least, seems to have been not unreasonable.
But the Emperor heedlessly sanctioned his
favourite's use of his name in the exercise of
patronage. " This practice," says Khan Khan,
" was contrary to all the rules of the Wazir's
office ; it weakened the authority of the Seiads,
and was the cause of great annoyance to the two
brothers."
On the other hand, Abdullah had made
Ratan Chand, a Hindoo grain dealer, his dewan,
procured him the title of Raja, and " reposed
in him authority in all government and minis-
terial matters." Thus on both sides there was
provocation ; and a serious quarrel if not a
coup de main for the arrest of the Minister
was only averted by the intervention of the
Emperor's mother.
Mutual suspicion and animosity were in-
creased by Husain's request to assume the
Subadari of the Dekkan, but to exercise the
office through a deputy. He feared to leave his
brother exposed to enmity at Court, and especi-
HUSAIN'S WARNING TO FAROKHSIR 141
ally to Mir Jumla's insidious influence. But,
at his instigation, the Emperor flatly refused
to appoint Husain to this important charge,
unless he would undertake it in person. " Husain
Ali," says Khafi Khan, " refused to go to the
Dakhin, and leave his brother [alone at Court],
A strong altercation arose, and matters went so
far that both brothers refrained from going to
Court and waiting upon the Emperor ; they
even meditated the levying of soldiers and
throwing up lines of defence round their resid-
ence." This implies that their ascendancy was
not due to superior force alone, and that they
had real reason to fear, rather than to initiate,
resort to violence.
The Emperor was sorely perplexed, and his
well-affected advisers were much divided in
opinion as to the solution of the dilemma.
But at last his mother brought about a recon-
ciliation. The Seiads were allowed to ensure
their safety by planting their followers in the
fort. And there they formally apologised to
the Emperor, earnestly assured him of their
loyalty, and deprecated his listening to their
calumniators. Husain agreed to proceed in
person to take up his government in the Dekkan,
and Mir Jumla was to be sent, in a similar
capacity, to Patna. But, before Husain de-
parted, he significantly forewarned his Sovereign :
"If in my absence you recall Mir Jumla -
or if my brother again receives similar treatment,
142 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
you may rely upon my being here in the course
of twenty days." The brothers also exacted
the power of appointing commandants of forts
and other officers independently of the royal
nomination. Thus the crisis had greatly in-
creased their power, at the expense of the Im-
perial prerogative.
But from his ignominious position the weak
and rash monarch hoped to emancipate himself
by an act of political treachery. Baud Khan
was Subadar of Ahmedabad, or Guzerat.
Farokhsir transferred him to Kandeish ; secretly
stimulating him to resist Husain, and promis-
ing him, if successful, the reversion of Husain's
viceroyalty of the whole Dekkan. Baud acted
on his private instructions. But Husain was
not to be trifled with. He discovered the
secret ; brought Baud Khan to action ; and
the treacherous Sub-Viceroy was slain. The
Emperor hypocritically lamented his fate to
Abdullah : "It was a pity such a renowned
and noble chief had been killed." The Minister,
with grim suggestiveness, replied : "If my
brother had been slain, it would have given
your Majesty satisfaction."
Another dangerous crisis was occasioned by
the return of Mir Jumla to the capital. His
pretext was a financial embarrassment and in-
ability to pay his troops. But as they swarmed
after him and threatened serious disturbance
at Belhi, Mir Jumla's proceeding was suspected
CONTEST MORE THAN A PERSONAL ONE 143
to be a ruse, preliminary to another attempt to
arrest Abdullah. Again he prepared to defend
himself against the covert scheme of violence.
"The officers," says Khafi Khan, "of Seiad
Abdullah, with suitable forces, ready accoutred
and mounted on elephants and horses, held
themselves ready for a conflict." This, how-
ever, was averted by Mir Jumla's being formally
censured for quitting his government without
leave, and being translated to the Punjab. But
a strong suspicion prevailed that the Emperor
was still playing false, and would presently
recall the Seiad's enemy for his own sinister
purpose. Abdullah, on his side, strengthened
himself by a new contingent of his Barha
clansmen.
Hitherto though involving an extremely
important political question, how far the Em-
peror, incapable as he was, was to be a free
agent ? the aspect of the growing quarrel has
been simply personal. The Emperor has been
instigated to mistrust the fidelity of his powerful
ministers, has favoured their adversaries, and
committed himself to sinister plotting against
one at least of the brothers. And though they
continue to serve him, they utterly mistrust
him ; and the Vizier thinks it necessary to raise
recruits for the maintenance of his authority,
and even, as he assumes, for his personal security.
But the next moves in this intricate game imply
that issues deeper, more general, and more
144 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
vital to the character, if not the existence, of the
Mogul Empire were impending, if not already
involved, in the personal rivalries and dissensions.
I mentioned that Abdullah had appointed
as his dewan Ratan Chand, a Hindoo grain
dealer, and, besides making him a titular Raja,
had, in Khafi Khan's words, " reposed in him
authority in all government and ministerial
matters." This included patronage ; and under
Ratan Chand's auspices Aurungzib's reaction-
ary policy had been extensively reversed, and
Hindoos and other natives had been largely
promoted and beneficed. Whether from the
jealous desire to restore Mogul ascendancy, or
to discredit and impugn Abdullah's conduct of
affairs, and to weaken his influence over the
community, two measures were now adopted,
which tended to complicate the personal an-
tagonism, and incline the Seiads to become the
opponents of Mogul ascendancy, and the ad-
herents with whatever ulterior views of Ak-
bar's comprehensive policy of enlisting native
support in all quarters.
The jizya was ordered to be reimposed or re-
inforced, and the mansubs, jaghires, and other
recent acquisitions of Hindoos and other proteges
of the Hindoo dewan to be reduced or confiscated.
I need not dwell on the significance and dangerous
tendency of the former step. As to the latter,
Khafi Khan (who, as a bigoted Mussulman,
though a candid historian, seems to approve
SEIADS' SYMPATHY WITH HINDOOS 145
it yet says : " This was very distasteful to
Ratan Chand and other revenue officials. They
addressed themselves to ... Abdullah, and he
was opposed to the issue of the order. All the
Hindus were greatly enraged because of the
order for collecting the jizya, and of the advice
about the cutting down of the mansubs"
These measures would thus naturally tend
to promote a combination between the Seiads
and the natives against the Mogul domina-
tion ; and the more so as, though Mussulmans,
the Seiads were not only Hindostanees, but
prided themselves on being so ; and would be
the less inclined to acquiesce in the view that an
Empire re-established by Akbar with the aid
of Indian allies, entitled the descendants of the
original conquerors of Baber's time, or the Soonee
immigrants from Higher Asia, to treat the
natives as a conquered, inferior, and non-
privileged race.
While such was the tendency of the policy
sanctioned by Farokhsir in Hindostan, his treat-
ment of his Viceroy in the Dekkan produced
the same effect. Husain Ali at first made a
vigorous effort to establish the Imperial authority
there, to coerce the Mahrattas, and settle the
country. But he experienced unexpectedly for-
midable resistance, and his arms sustained
several reverses ; and he presently ascertained
that the enemy were emboldened by the secret
incitement of the Emperor himself. Farokhsir
10
146 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
was, in fact, playing the same treacherous game
to which he had resorted in the case of Baud
Khan. Khafi Khan says: " The fact of the
disagreement between the Emperor and the
Saiyids was well known from the firmans and
orders which had been sent secretly to Raja
Sahu, the dewans and the chief zamindars of the
Karnatik [i.e. Bala Ghat], desiring them not
to obey Husain Ali Khan. They had accordingly
showed resistance, and no settlement of Bija-
pur and Haidarabad had been effected." But
again, as I said in Baud's case, Husain was not
a man to be trifled with, and thus thwarted,
with impunity. He now changed his tactics ;
negotiated with the Mahrattas, and concluded
with them a most important compromise, which
practically recognised them as co-partners in
the revenue of the Imperial provinces, and, as a
corollary, in political power there. As before,
when Bahadur Shah had made such important
concessions to the Mahrattas, the arrangement
was made ostensibly as a treaty of peace, with
an enemy too powerful, as experience had
shown, to be conquered. Raja Shao was to
receive one quarter of the land revenue col-
lections, and the Government lands. More-
over, 10 per cent, from the ryots as sur-deshmuki.
But besides this he was to share the abwabs,
or additional cesses. These altogether would
amount to nearly half the total Government
revenue. Transit dues, or road duties, as they
HUSAIN'S TREATY WITH SHAO 147
were called, were not to be levied. But this
prohibition was futile, as the Mahratta col-
lectors were too active and too strong to be
resisted.
And the sting and humiliating circumstance
of the arrangement was that the dues were not
to be paid to the Raja by the Mahometan
Government, but levied actively and haughtily
by a body of Mahratta officials, while Balaji
Washwanath and Jamnaji (the Raja's repre-
sentatives), " with a suitable escort," were form-
ally installed at Aurungabad, the Imperial
capital of the Dekkan, as deputies of the Raja,
" so that all civil and revenue matters might
be settled through them." Thus the Mahratta
plan of establishing virtually an anti-polity
within the limits of the Mogul Empire was
realised, and exhibited in a most glaring and
provoking form. But this was not all. This
so-called pacification amounted actually to an
alliance between the Seiad and the essentially
anti-Mogul community. Husain then, in Khan
Khan's words, " made no delay in writing for
a royal firman confirmatory of this document
[i.e. of the sanad containing the conditions of
peace, which he had sent to Sahu, the Raja of
Satara]. Several well-wishers of the State urged
that it was not well to admit the vile enemy to
be overbearing partners in matters of revenue
and government" This was, in itself, true
enough. But it was the outcome of the
148 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
Emperor's intrigue, suicidal equally in a personal
and political sense. But ignoring this fact, and
the danger of confirming his formidable lieutenant
in his new friendship with the aspiring Hindoos,
he " rejected the treaty."
Thus his Viceroy and the Mahratta Raja
had a common grievance against him ; and
*Husain Ali, like his brother at Delhi, was the
more inclined to sympathise and combine with
the Hindoos against Mogul ascendancy. The
Emperor, on the other hand, was not unconscious
of his perilous position. And this was impressed
upon him by a new favourite, a Kashmirian
of low origin and " disreputable character."
Jealous of the Seiads, he instigated his Sovereign
to compass their overthrow with the aid of three
powerful men Nizam-ul-Mulk, Surbuland Khan,
Governor of Patna, and Raja Ajit Sing, the
Rajput Viceroy of Ahmedabad. But Abdullah
vigilant and well-informed won over the
Raja to his interest. " Nizam-ul-Mulk and
Surbuland Khan," says Khan Khan, " were at
first led to expect the appointments of wazir
and mirbakhshi," i.e. the former was to succeed
Abdullah as Prime Minister, and the latter
Husain, as Commander - in - Chief . But they
found that the fatuous Emperor was bent on
appointing his miserable favourite to the former
office. Whereupon, in great indignation and
despair of such a Sovereign, they renounced
the commission, and left him to his fate. Khan
NIZAM-UL-MULK PASSIVE 149
Khan says : " They were heart-broken, but
they were not disposed to obey and submit to
Itikad Khan " i.e. the favourite. In other
words, they were ripe for desertion, if not for
active rebellion.
Nizam - ul - Mulk was the more indignant,
because not only had he lost his Government
of Muradabad, and as yet received no other,
but the despised and hated favourite had been
appointed his (I presume non-resident) successor
there, and Nizam-ul-Mulk's jagir there had been
conferred on him. This was adding insult to
injury. So, like Achilles, when Agamemnon
deprived him of Briseis, he chewed the cud of
bitter resentment, and passively awaited the
gathering of the impending storm.
The Emperor, meanwhile, on occasion of a
great festival, collected nearly 70,000 soldiers
at the capital. While Abdullah, fearing a coup
de main against himself, issued an order for
enlisting 20,000 men, of all tribes. Hitherto
he had relied almost entirely on his Barha
clientele. But this looks as if he was extending
his connexion among the natives generally ;
in other words, throwing himself more on Indian
support, as opposed to the Mogul party and
their countrymen from Central Asia.
Once more, however, though a violent crisis
was generally anticipated, a hollow reconcilia-
tion was patched up. The vacillating and timid
Emperor visited the Minister, disclaimed all
150 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
hostile intentions, and sent Ikhlas Khan, " an
old and devoted friend of the two brothers,"
to reassure Husain Ali. Husain was much
perplexed at the contradictory accounts trans-
mitted to him successively of the relations of
his brother with the Emperor. But receiving
pressing and repeated letters from Abdullah,
urging him to return to Delhi at once, he
mobilised a strong army, including 16,000
Mahrattas, under one of the Raja's best generals,
who was also, under the late arrangement,
Mahratta Subadar of Kandeish, and marched
northward. Ikhlas Khan delivered his con-
ciliatory message en route, and Husain was
otherwise informed officially that it was peace.
Thereupon he publicly professed loyal intentions,
if the Emperor " will deal with us kindly and
without malice." But this qualified intimation
of fidelity to the throne was quickly exchanged
for a very different attitude on receipt of infor-
mation from " trustworthy and confidential
correspondents," who assured him that the
general impression was that " the Emperor's
proceedings were merely devices and snares that
he was weaving to catch fools." Whatever
had been Husain' s real designs hitherto, he
seems now to have made up his mind to dethrone
the Emperor, or reduce him to a puppet. For
he learned that Abdullah had gained over the
very men whom the Emperor had hoped to
employ as his champions. Surbuland had been
HUSAIN OPENLY REBELLIOUS 151
appointed Subadar of Cabul through the
Minister's influence, who had also " furnished
him with money, elephants, and horses " ; and
Nizam-ul-Mulk had received from Abdullah the
promise of the Subadari of Malwa; and other
" waiters on providence " had also been won
over to the Seiad's interest. Ajit Sing, Rana
of Oudipur, on whom the Emperor had relied
to take part against them, and whose daughter
Farokhsir had married, had now, in spite of
this connexion, " become a firm ally of the
Minister." So much so, indeed, that the
Emperor resolved to arrest him, but was
foiled by Ajit's betaking himself to Abdullah's
quarters.
Thus on approaching Delhi, Husain assumed
an openly rebellious attitude, " by ordering his
drums to be beaten loudly in defiance ; for it
is contrary to all rule for [a subject's] drums to
be beaten near the residence of the Emperor."
These are Khafi Khan's words ; and he adds
that Husain repeatedly said that he no longer
reckoned himself among the servants of the
monarch : "I will maintain the honour of my
race''' This rather ambiguous expression seems
to me to imply more than simple rebellion against
the actual Sovereign. Representative and leader
of a race of Indian warriors, traditionally famed
for valour, he repudiates allegiance to the de-
generate and faithless representative of foreign
domination and Mogul ascendancy.
152 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
And this interpretation seems to agree with
the view taken of Husain's attitude by the
Emperor's advisers. They urged him to open
war, " particularly," says Khafi Khan, " the
Mughals, who knew all about the matter." This
also ambiguous phrase probably means that
they plainly saw that more than a personal
quarrel was on the tapis, and that what I may
venture to call a quasi-nationalist movement
against the foreign dynasty, and the ascendancy
of its foreign supporters, was threatened.
Farokhsir, however, remained passive, until
Abdullah in a public audience vented his own
and his brother's grievances, and as a con-
dition of peace and reconciliation demanded
the removal of obnoxious persons, the appoint-
ment of officials generally, and the custody of
the fortress by men of his and his brother's
choice. Unable to resist, the Emperor granted
these abject terms. Another bitter and mutually
provocative interview followed, which ended in
the Emperor's abruptly retiring to the zenana.
Outside the palace there was much commotion.
And eventually a party, supported by a brother
of the Seiads, invaded the palace, discovered,
seized, and blinded the unfortunate Sovereign,
and consigned him to the same small, close
chamber in which his predecessor, Jahandar
Shah, had been strangled. And soon after, on
his attempting to escape, he suffered the same
fate.
THE SEIADS PREDOMINANT 153
The power of the Seiad brothers was now
completely predominant at Delhi. The palace
was occupied by their agents, and guarded by
their soldiers. Their troops, and those of their
confederates, Ajit Sing, the Rajput Rana of
Oudipur, the Mahratta contingent contributed
by the Raja of Satara, and other native forces
co-operated with their stout Barha clansmen.
Nizam-ul-Mulk, the most powerful of the Mogul
party, and other influential men of the same
class, who had been alienated by Farokhsir's
devotion to his disreputable favourite, and had
been courted by Abdullah, at least passively
supported them ; other would-be adherents of
the fallen Emperor had been paralysed by his
timidity and surrender of himself and his strong-
hold to the plausible demands of the Seiads,
that they meant to obey him when assured of
their own safety ; and no organised resistance
to them was, for the time, feasible. Thus,
without opposition, they selected a grandson of
Bahadur Shah, and proclaimed him Emperor.
Whatever their ulterior designs, it was evident
from their treatment of him, and of those who
quickly succeeded him, that for the present
their intention was to rule through the medium
of an Imperial puppet. Thus Khafi Khan says
of Kafi'u-din, the one now chosen : " This
monarch had not the slightest control in matters
of government." And when he shortly died,
from consumption, and they replaced him by his
154 THE EMPEROR FAROKHSIR
elder brother, Kafia-u-Doula, the latter also
soon died from dysentery ; and the king-
makers replaced him by Mohammad Shah, son
of Jahan Shah, and grandson of Aumngzib a
young prince of eighteen years of age. Feeble
health might have afforded a pretext for secluding
the two moribund Princes. But the plan was
pursued in this case without any such excuse.
Khafi Khan thus describes the treatment of
Mohammad Shah : " All the officers and servants
around the Emperor were, as before, the servants
of Saiyid Abdullah. When the young Em-
peror went out for a ride, he was surrounded,
as with a halo, by numbers of the Saiyid's ad-
herents ; and when occasionally he went out
hunting, or for an excursion into the country,
they went with him, and brought him back."
XIII
THE EMPEROR MOHAMMAD SHAH.
PROGRESS OF THE ANTI- MOGUL
REACTION
WHILE the Barha prcetorians thus sequestered
the Emperor from free intercourse with his
subjects, the civil administration evinced the
ascendancy of the Hindooising Seiad in a manner
equally obnoxious to the Mogul temper. " Ratan
Chand," continues Khafi Khan, " held firm his
position. His authority extended over all civil,
revenue, and legal matters, even to the appoint-
ment of kazis in the cities and other judicial
offices. All the other Government officials were
put in the background, and no one would under-
take any business but under a document with
his seal."
Imperialist sentiment and the pride of the
Mogul race were further outraged by other
circumstances. The magnificence of the Great
Mogul's Court had been proverbial ; and its
hoarded treasures and works of art were of
world-wide celebrity, and had increased its
prestige. But it was now reported that the
rude and uncourtly Seiad Chieftains had taken
155
156 THE EMPEROR MOHAMMAD SHAH
" possession of, and selected for themselves,
whatever they pleased of the royal treasure,
jewels, works of art, elephants, and horses." And,
worse and more insulting still, Abdullah was
said to have appropriated to himself some of the
late Emperor's most beautiful inmates of the
zenana.
The same greedy and reckless disposition
to strip majesty of its externals, and to despoil,
with military license, instead of treating with
decent reverence, the Sovereign whom they had
themselves placed on the throne, was again
exhibited by Husain Ali at Agra. There the
soldiers had, in defiance of the Seiad's choice,
extracted from a long imprisonment Prince
Neku Siyar, a son of Prince Akbar, Aurungzib's
rebellious son, and proclaimed him Emperor.
But Husain besieged and reduced Agra by
famine, and imprisoned the Pretender. And he
treated as spoil of war, and, says Khafi Khan,
" took possession of the treasure, jewels, and
valuables which had accumulated there in the
course of three or four hundred years, from the
days of Sikander Lodi and Babar Badshah."
Some of these he specifies, and estimates the
value of the whole at two or three krors of
rupees, i.e. the same number of millions sterling.
And so completely had the filibustering spirit
superseded that of the politic statesman, that
he fell out with his brother by monopolising
the spoil ; and only through the mediation of
BOLDNESS OF THE RAJPUT REACTION 157
Ratan Chand at last " grudgingly surrendered
to him twenty-one lacs of rupees."
Another insult to the Imperial majesty
and to the religious susceptibilities of the Moguls
was offered by Ajit Sing, the close ally and
active coadjutor of the Seiads. I mentioned
that his daughter had been married to Farokh-
sir. He now sent her home with her jewels
and paraphernalia, and was reported to have
made her " throw off her Mussulman dress,
and dismiss her Muhammadan attendants."
Whereupon Khafi Khan remarks :
" In the reign of no former Emperor had
any Raja been so presumptuous as to take
his daughter after she had been married to a
King and admitted to the honour of Islam."
A little later Ajit ventured on another piece
of outrecuidance, similarly obnoxious to Mussul-
man sentiment, and indicative of the increasing
boldness of the Hindoo reaction. As Subadar of
Ahmedabad, he forbade the slaughter of cows.
But what Khafi Khan calls a " sharp warn-
ing " from Nizam-ul-Mulk constrained him to
draw in his horns, and cancel the offensive
order.
His rival Rajput Prince, Jei Sing, of Amber,
or Jeipur as it was called later, had hitherto
been an anti-Seiad. But he now submitted
to them, and was appointed faujdar, or military
commandant of Surat. " Under this arrange-
ment," says Khafi Khan, " the two Rajas held
158 THE EMPEROR MOHAMMAD SHAH
all the country from thirty cos of Delhi to
the shores of the sea at Surat." Thus the
Seiads were extending and confirming their
Indian connexion in various directions. And
their anti-Mogul policy was comprehensively
indicated by the formal abolition once more
of thejizya. This had been effected immediately
on the fall of Farokhsir. Khafi Khan's record
of the fact is significant of the influence at
work, and of his antipathy to that influence.
He says : "In the council of the first day, in
accordance with the desire of Raja Ajit Sing,
and of the bigoted Raja Ratan Chand, an
order was passed for the abolition of the jizya,
and assurances of security and protection [i.e.
of the Hindoos] were circulated all over the
country."
The general impression of the state of affairs
at this period, and the profound indignation it
engendered in the breasts of the old nobles and
adherents of the Mogul interest, are forcibly
conveyed in the following passage of the sym-
pathetic author whom I have used so freely :
" The Emperor had no power in the govern-
ment of the State, and . . . everything was directed
by Ratan Sing and other vile infidels. The
two Saiyids, the real rulers, thought themselves
masters of the pen and masters of the sword in
Hindostan, and as opposed to their judgment
and the swords of the Barhas, the Mughals of
Iran and of Turan were as nobodies. They did
MOGUL VIEW OF THE SITUATION 159
not remember that these Mughals had come
1000 or 2000 miles from their native countries,
and that by their courage and sound judgment
the wide realm of Hindostan, with its great
kings and famous rajas, had by hard fighting
been won for the Emperor Babar. For two
hundred years they had lived in the favour
of the house of Timur, and they now felt the
ignominy of seeing their Emperor without any
power in his own State. Pride, courage, and
honour continually spurred this lion-hearted
noble [i.e. Haidar Kuli Khan, of whom more
hereafter] to make an end of this state of things,
and to take revenge."
While such sentiments would at any period
have been strongly operative among the Mogul
magnates, they had been naturally intensified
by the policy of Aurungzib, and his exclusive
reliance, in his later years, on their co-operation
in its execution. He had alienated the Rajputs,,
and they figure no more in his anti-Mahratta
campaigns after Sivaji's final revolt.
The Mahratta War of Independence after
Sivaji's death had both exasperated and humi-
liated the Mogul partisans of the Emperor's
obstinate but vain attempt to restore his military
prestige, and realise his programme of proving
and treating the Hindoos as a twice-conquered
people. And that not only this should fail, but
that the crushed worm should have turned,
and, under the auspices of Indian Shia leader-
160 THE EMPEROR MOHAMMAD SHAH
ship, should turn the tables on their former
masters, reduce the Great Mogul to a puppet,
and the proud nobles of his race to political
inanity, and monopolise power, patronage, and
wealth, was an unspeakable degradation and
cause of offence to those trained in the school of
Aurungzib. Hence another revolution, and a
desperate attempt to subvert the Seiads and
reverse the position, was inevitable. Nor was
the initial agent of such a policy far to seek.
XIV
MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
CHIN KILICH KHAN, or as he was now entitled
and is best known to history as Nizam-ul-
Mulk, was both an able and experienced soldier
and a wily and far-sighted politician. Though
born in India, he was a Mogul to the core, a
strong Imperialist, a bigoted Mussulman, and
an inveterate opponent of native predominance
and Mahratta independence. His father had
been a distinguished general under Aurungzib ;
and both he and his son had served long and
well in the Dekkan wars. Nizam-ul-Mulk's
military reputation and political consideration
were well established, as might be inferred from
Farokhsir's attempt to employ him for his
liberation from the yoke of the Seiads, and
from Abdullah's courting and conciliating him
on the eve of the Imperial tragedy. In that
tragedy he took no active part, though he
remained passive on its occurrence. But he
was biding his time, and preparing resources
for a contre-coup. And though, for the present,
a good understanding seemed to prevail between
him and the Seiads, each party had good reason
ii
162 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
to distrust the other. The Seiads were well
aware that Nizam-ul-Mulk had been selected,
and had been quite willing, to compass their
overthrow. And he well knew that both on this
account, and from his prominence and his
notorious character, reputation, and political
views, they could not but regard him as a
formidable danger to their usurped authority
and hybrid political connexion. For the time
they propitiated and got rid of him at Delhi,
by appointing him Subadar of Malwa. But,
as I shall show presently, they calculated on
hemming him in between, and coercing if not
destroying him by the instrumentality of, their
own adherents.
Nizam-ul-Mulk, on the other hand, was not
only personally clear - sighted, cautious, and
vigilant, but was put on his guard from head-
quarters, and stimulated by an appeal to his
loyalty, to exert himself in his own defence,
and for the emancipation of the Emperor.
Mohammad Shah's mother was, says Khafi
Khan, " well acquainted with State business,
and was a woman of much intelligence and tact."
And in frequent letters she informed him " that
the constraint used by the Saiyids was so strict
that the Emperor had only liberty to go to
service on the Sabbath, and that he had no
power of giving any orders ; and that the
Saiyids . . . proposed ... to get rid of Nizam-ul-
Mulk, and then to do as they pleased ; that the
NIZAM-UL-MULK HOSTILE TO THE SEIADS 163
Emperor and his mother had full reliance on
Nizam-ul-Mulk, that he would not fail in the
loyalty which his ancestors had ever exhibited."
Such an intimation, and such an appeal, were
quite in accordance with the views and resolves
of the able and ambitious man to whom they
were addressed.
"Nizam-ul-Mulk," says Khafi Khan, "per-
ceived that the brothers had the fixed intention
of overthrowing the royal house and removing
the Khalifa of the world." Though hitherto
the conduct of the Seiads seemed to imply a
design to reduce the Emperor permanently to a
mere roi faineant, and to wield independent power
in his name, as the Peishwas did later in the
name of the imprisoned Raja of Satara, and
Mahadaji Sindia in the name of the later Em-
peror, Shah Alam ; these words indicate rather
his suspicion that they aimed ultimately at
founding a new dynasty of their own, a nation-
alist power, subversive of the foreign Mogul
element, and based upon native Indian support,
Hindoo, and probably the earlier Afghan element,
which had dominated India for centuries before
Baber's incursion, and had been overthrown by
him, and in its later phase by Akbar. But in either
case he foresaw the ruin not only of the Imperial
house, but of the ascendancy of the race which
it represented, and which was identified with
Nizam-ul-Mulk' s antecedents, associations, and
personal interests. Hence to overthrow the
164 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
Seiads, and restore the Emperor to his old
position of an independent Sovereign, and con-
spicuous and dignified Head of the conquering
race, in fact, as the Great Mogul, was his im-
mediate and urgent aim. But " the longest
way round is the shortest way home." And as
a coup d'etat at Delhi was not at once feasible, he
preferred to take up his appointment in Malwa,
and there accumulate and organise at his leisure
the means for striking a decisive blow later. His
preparations for this were systematic and elabo-
rate. Thus Khafi Khan tells : " There accom-
panied him more than a thousand companions,
mansubdars and jagirdars, who were poor and
sick at heart with the unkindness shown by the
Saiyids, and through pay being in arrear. Nizam-
ul-Mulk busied himself in collecting soldiers and
artillery, which [observes the writer signifi-
cantly] are necessary for governing the world
and keeping it in order." [In other words
for effecting a counter-revolution, as " revolu-
tions are not made with rose-water."] " He gave
five hundred horses with accoutrements and
arms to Muhammad Ghiyas Khan for his Mughal
fraternity, and turned them into horsemen.
He lent large sums of money to others, binding
them to himself by the bonds of debt and kind-
ness." With characteristic adroitness he secured
another partisan, while literally conforming to
the orders of Husain, as Commander-in-Chief.
Murhamat Khan, the commandant of a fortress
SEIADS' SCHEME AGAINST NIZAM-UL-MULK 165
at Mandu, had held back, on pretence of ill-
ness, when summoned to join Husain on his late
march to Delhi, and had been in consequence
superseded. But he had resisted the mandate,
and Husain instructed Nizam-ul-Mulk to remove
him. This he did by diplomacy, but only to
attach him to his own service. And he had
at this time " collected," says Khafi Khan,
" 7000 or 8000 horse and materials of war."
On the other hand, the Seiads were on their
guard, and preparing to circumvent him. They
had appointed him to Malwa, not only to get
rid of him, for the time, from the capital, but
because they relied, if necessary, on concentrating
against him forces adequate to overpower him.
" Malwa," says Khafi Khan, " was half-way
between Delhi and the Dakhin." Husain's
forces were in possession of the capital. And
Alam Ali, Husain's adopted son, " with a
sufficient army," had been left as Deputy Suba-
dar in the Dekkan. And a third force, under
a Rajput Bhim Sing, had been commissioned to
march against the zamindar of Bundi. But on
the promise of promotion to the dignity of
Maharaja, Bhim Sing was secretly engaged to
hold himself in readiness to act against Nizam-
ul-Mulk in the projected triple combination.
Then Husain, throwing aside the veil, " began
to pick a quarrel " with his formidable rival.
His charges were conclusively answered. But,
probably as a test of his doubtful obedience to
166 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
the usurped authority of the Seiad brothers, or
as a plausible ground for attacking him if he
refused to obey the order, Husain announced
that he wished himself to assume the Govern-
ment of Malwa, and Nizam-ul-Mulk was sum-
moned to return to Court, with the promise of
an appointment to a Subadary elsewhere.
This capricious supersession might well ex-
asperate him. And he was too acute not to see
that, in one way or another, his ruin was in-
tended. And private information combined to
impress upon him the conviction that the time
was come for him also to throw off the mask,
and begin his campaign against his personal
enemies, and the obnoxious regime which they
had established and were consolidating. Khafi
Khan says : " He had received letters from the
Emperor and from private friends, telling him
there was no time to be lost, and that what he
had to do he must do quickly." This writer
asserts that " he had formed the design of con-
quering the Dakhin, and of setting free that land
of treasure and of soldiers." In other words,
he realised that the military command of the
Dekkan would be the most effectual means of
neutralising the league between the Seiads and
the Mahrattas, and would be a most serious
blow to their Hindooising policy. He could also
rely on Mogul sympathy in that quarter, as
proved the case speedily. On crossing the
Nerbudda, he at once received an overture for
NIZAM-UL-MULK IN THE DEKKAN 167
the surrender of the great fort of Asseergurh,
which was executed; and the day after, the
capital of Kandeish, Burhanpur, was similarly
given up without a blow, by the officer specially
deputed by Alam Ali Khan to defend it. There
he was also joined by Iwaz Khan, another offi-
cial in Berar, and by " troop after troop of
adherents." Thus his position grew rapidly
stronger. The surrender of Asseergurh was well
calculated to excite the alarm of the Seiads.
For, besides its great strength, it showed that
the military superiority on which they relied
was being sapped by their astute adversary.
An emissary of Nizam-ul-Mulk had tampered
with the garrison, and his own soldiers had com-
pelled the Seiad's commandant to open his
gates. The Nizam was moreover joined by
Minbulkar, "a famous Mahratta chieftain, with
his followers." " And," adds Khan Khan, " all
the officials of Burhanpur, and many of the
zamindars of the neighbourhood, had taken the
same course."
The Seiads were now seriously alarmed, and
much perplexed and divided in their counsels.
Husain was inclined to go in person to the
Dekkan. Ratan Chand " advised a peace and
the surrender of the subas of the Dakhin to
Nizam-ul-Mulk." But to this Husain would not
consent. And it was hoped that the previously
conceived plan of exposing Nizam-ul-Mulk to a
combined attack by Bhim Sing and his col-
168 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
leagues, Dilawar Khan and Alam Khan, would
suffice to overpower him. Dilawar was Hus-
ain's bakshi or chief military officer in Malwa, and
in obedience to pressing orders he increased his
forces, and crossed the Nerbudda, while Alam
Ali was engaged in " enlisting as many Mah-
rattas as he could," and gathering together the
great faujdars at Aurungabad, "intending to
place the enemy between two armies." But while
he tarried for intelligence of Dilawar's approach,
Nizam-ul-Mulk marched promptly against Dila-
war and his Rajput confederates, engaged them
in a bloody and obstinate battle, and utterly
defeated them. Dilawar, Raja Bhim, and
another Rajput Raja, Gaj Sing, and 4000 or
5000 soldiers were killed. The writer notices that
when, at last, the army of the Barhas fled, the
Rajputs, true to their traditional character,
" disdained to escape," and fell upon the
field.
The tidings of this event further distracted
the councils of the Seiad brothers. So serious
was the prospect in the south, that they were
half inclined to march thither together, taking
the Emperor with them. But they were averse
to risk their hold over the capital, and, on
tidings of another catastrophe, they decided to
separate.
Alam Khan, Husain's Deputy Subadar in
the Dekkan, was a young man, twenty-two
years of age, " distinguished," says our author,
ALAM ALI DEFEATED AND SLAIN 169
" by all the determination and bravery of the
Barha Saiyids." But he was rash, self-willed,
and no general. The Mahratta sirdars and his
own officers advised him to await, behind the
walls of Aurungabad or Ahmednuggur, the
arrival of Husain Ali, while the Mahrattas might
hang upon and harass Nizam-ul-Mulk's army,
and " carry on that Cossack warfare for which
the people of the Dakhin are so famous." But
this he disdained to do. His able and wily
adversary, though seriously impeded by the
monsoon, skilfully accomplished the crossing of
a flooded river, to the surprise of Alam Ali Khan ;
repulsed the daring onslaughts of the Mahratta
skirmishers, and brought on an action on ground
chosen by himself. Again he gained a decisive
victory. Alam, fighting bravely to the last, was
slain, together with many other leading officers,
" men of renown," as the author calls them.
Nizam-ul-Mulk's loss was small ; and the moral
effect of his success was attested by the defection
to him of the Subadar of Hyderabad, with six
or seven thousand horse.
But more notable and momentous was this
moral effect in Hindostan.
The Seiad brothers prepared to make an
extraordinary effort to meet the crisis. They
resolved to raise an army of 100,000 men, from
among their clansmen, and a significant fact
from among the (Indian) Afghans. With this
army Husain was to march against Nizam-
170 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
ul-Mulk, taking the Emperor in his train, as
Henry vi. was taken, for the same purpose, in
the Wars of the Roses, while Abdullah was to
maintain order in the capital.
But " the jamadars" or, as we might call
them, the recruiting officers, " far and near had
noticed the declining fortunes of the two Saiyids,
and they were unwilling to go to the Dakhin, so
the desired army was not raised." With difficulty
about half the proposed force was eventually
collected and sent forward, while Husain tarried
at Tira, " thirty cos from Fathpur," in company
with the Emperor.
Besides the chronic hostility of the decided
Mogul party, even the previous adherents and
beneficiaries of the Seiads were now inclined to
desert them. This was probably, in a great
degree, from a strong disposition to be found on
the winning side. But Khafi Khan ascribes it
to more respectable motives. He says : ' The
infamous murder of the martyr Emperor
(Farokhsir), the sight of the indignities which
the Emperor, the representative of the house
of Timur, had to endure, and the fact of the
administration being under the direction of a
base-born shopkeeper (Ratan Chand) had, under
the guidance of the Converter of Hearts,
changed their feelings." In other words, the
general sentiment among the proteges as well
as the foes of the brothers was hostile to them
as Ratan Chand' s patrons, and favourable to
HUSAIN ALI ASSASSINATED 171
the emancipation of the Emperor the warcry
of the counter-revolutionists.
In these circumstances, a plot was concerted,
in the deepest privacy, for assassinating Seiad
Husain Ali. The arch-conspirator was a Mogul
noble, Itimadu-d Daula, or Mohammed Amin
Khan, with two confederates, his " close and
trusted friend," Sadut Khan, of Persian origin,
and the founder of the later Oude dynasty, and
Haider Khan, a Chaghati Turk, of illustrious
descent, though Elphinstone describes him as
" a savage Calmuc."
Only the Emperor's mother and a protege*
of Seiad Abdullah were privy to the plot, which
was not disclosed either to the Emperor him-
self or to Itimadu-d Daula's own son. At least
so says Khafi Khan ; though I suspect that
Haidar Kuli Khan (of whom more presently) was
apprised of it just before it was carried into
execution. The third conspirator, Haider Khan,
undertook the deed, and, while Husain read a
petition which he had presented to him, accom-
plished his fatal object at a single stroke of a
dagger. The assassin was cut down promptly,
and a fierce contest ensued between Husain' s
partisans and the Moguls, who, says the his-
torian, " assembled from every side." Itimad
had in the meantime betaken himself to the
tent of Haidar Kuli Khan. I have already
quoted an account of his strong sympathy with
the cause of the Mogul Imperialists. Husain
172 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
had just made him commandant of the
artillery. But Itimad now probably informed
him of the intended coup de main. And
after it was delivered he at once ranged himself
on the side of the conspirators. " He stepped
boldly forward, ready to show his loyalty and
devotion in vigorous action." Itimad and he
directed Sadut Khan to visit the Emperor in
his private quarters, and induce him to show
himself. This was done ; and Itimad then
" mounted him on his own elephant, and sat
behind him as his attendant." In the con-
fusion only a very slender escort could be mus-
tered, and this was exposed to a fierce onslaught,
headed by " that raging lion of the Barhas,
Izzut Khan," a nephew of the Seiad brothers.
" On one side," says Khafi Khan, " the braves
of Barha rushed boldly into the fray ; on the
other, the valiant men of Iran and Turan came
from every side eager for the fight." But Izzut
was killed ; and the victory remained with
the Imperialists.
The Emperor signalised his recovered freedom
by appointing Itimad Vizier, and bestowing
various distinctions on Haidar Kuli Khan, Sadut
Khan, and other active promoters of the counter-
revolution.
Though thus, both in the Dekkan and in
Hindostan, the toils were closing around Ab-
dullah, he made strenuous exertions to recover
his ascendancy. His brother and his valiant
ABDULLAH RAISES A NEW ARMY 173
nephew Izzut, as well as his other nephew in
the Dekkan, were no more. His Minister, Ratan
Chand, had been maltreated by the Mogul mob
and the budmashes of the camp, carried to the
Emperor's quarters, and confined in chains
by Itimad. Another of his favoured Hindoo
officials had fled. And Husain's army had
become the Emperor's, though there was
treachery in the camp, and some officers and
their troops were meditating desertion. Ab-
dullah's first step was to set up an anti-Emperor,
as another puppet. In this he experienced
much difficulty. More than one Prince posi-
tively refused his overtures. But he succeeded
at last in raising to the throne a brother of the
roi faineant who had died of consumption, as
Muhammad Ibrahim.
He then made strenuous efforts to secure
partisans, and to raise a new and large army,
to confront that which had now passed over
to the real Emperor. He was constrained to
fall back upon many who had been unemployed,
disgraced, even imprisoned, under his previous
regime. Among these were Itikad Khan, Far-
okhsir's old favourite, who had plotted his
destruction under that Emperor, and Hamid
Khan, Nizam-ul-Mulk's uncle, whom he had
deprived of his jaghire when the nephew had
declared against the rule of the Seiads, and
proceeded to hostilities. Such officers were little
to be trusted, and their appointment showed
174 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
that Abdullah's game was a desperate one.
He was also much embarrassed for money, in
consequence of the exorbitant demands of the
soldiers, who were the more inclined to insist
upon high terms for their services, because
they were in bad case from previous arrears
of pay, or in the instance of the Barha recruits,
because they rated themselves by no means
modestly. Thus a brother of Abdullah brought
with him, says Khafi Khan, from the Doab,
" ten or twelve thousand horse, also one hundred
and fifty carts full of Barha Saiyids, each of
whom thought himself equal to twenty well-
accoutred horsemen, and had come in the
expectation of making himself an amir, an
elephant rider, and a general." Their gallantry
in the battle that followed, as on other occasions,
went some way to justify the soaring ambition of
these soldiers of fortune. Indian Afghans also
flocked to the quasi-nationalist standard in great
numbers. And from the now Imperial army
numbers of Husain's old troops deserted and
joined Abdullah, as did Churaman, the Chief of
the Jats, after an unsuccessful attempt to fire
the Emperor's magazine, in which he was
foiled by Haidar Kuli Khan's vigilance. Thus
Abdullah contrived to muster an enormous
but heterogeneous army. It is said to have
amounted to nearly 100,000 men, and to have
been twice as numerous as that of the Emperor.
But it was a disorderly and ill-disciplined host.
RATAN CHAND BEHEADED 175
Thus Khafi Khan says : " There were such
contentions among the officers, who were un-
willing to serve under the orders of each other,
that a proper disposition could not be made.
Each chief raised his standard where he
chose, and would not consent to obey any
other."
Before the battle began, the character of the
contest was illustrated by the execution of
the captive Hindoo Minister, who had lately
given its tone to the administration of the
Seiads. Khafi Khan's sympathies are vigorously
intimated in his record of this retributive act.
" The Emperor . . . ordered that the head
of the vile Ratan Chand, who had been the
chief cause of the unpopularity of the Saiyids,
should be struck from his filthy body, so that
the world might be gladdened by being cleansed
from his polluting existence. So his head was
cut off and thrown as a propitious omen before
the feet of the Emperor's elephant."
The battle that followed was long and
well contested. But it was decisive, not only
as an Imperialist victory, but of the great
political issues which were involved in the
contest. The desperate gallantry of the Barha
chiefs and their followers was pitted against
the skilful and terribly effective fire of the
Imperial artillery, directed by Haidar Kuli
Khan ; and the fortune of war, at the close of
the day, still trembled in the balance. Haidar
176 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
Kuli's guns " shook the new levies in the enemy's
army," and a flight began among them, in
which older soldiers joined. But Najm-ud-din
Ali, another of Abdullah's many brothers, and
on this occasion, according to our author, " the
leading spirit of the Barha army," planted a
battery on a hill commanding the battlefield,
and followed up this manoeuvre by a bold
charge with 14,000 or 15,000 horse upon the
royal artillery. A fierce contest followed ; and
Khafi Khan says that the Seiads " nearly won
the battle." But the Imperialists attacked and
captured the battery on the hill ; and night
closed on an undecided strife. But Haidar
Kuli gave the enemy no respite. In the darkness,
" he pushed forward his guns, and opened a
heavy fire " on the hostile army, which was
constrained to fall back, and many made off in
the obscurity and confusion.
" Out of the 100,000 horsemen of the enemy's
army," says Khafi Khan, " only 17,000 or 18,000
held their ground through the terrible cannon-
ade of that night." Whether these alone took
part in the final struggle is not clear ; but it
seems to be implied in these words, as well as
by what follows :
" In the morning the Imperial army advanced,
and was met by Najm-ud-din Khan with some
other brave and devoted Barha chiefs, and a
hard fight ensued." Abdullah, seeing " the
desperate position of his brother, . . . brought
ABDULLAH DEFEATED AND TAKEN 177
up a party of the Barha braves to his rescue."
Thereupon Najm-ud-din and his followers " re-
covered their powers, and fought so fiercely
that . . . the royal army began to waver." But
again Haidar Kuli interposed, and with decisive
effect. He led a charge on Abdullah's flank,
which Khafi Khan describes as " overwhelm-
ing." Abdullah, following a practice which re-
sembled that of knights in the Middle Ages, as
Hallam notices, " dismounted from his elephant
in the hope that the Barha braves would dis-
mount from their horses and join him [in a
charge]." But his action was misunderstood,
and interpreted as a commencement of flight.
And thereupon, except 2000 or 3000 horse in
his immediate neighbourhood, the whole army
broke and fled. Haidar Kuli himself captured
Abdullah, and led him on an elephant, and
wounded, into the presence of the Emperor,
who " spared his life, and gave him in charge
to his captor." His gallant brother had been
mortally wounded. And Hamid Khan, Nizam-
ul-Mulk's uncle, gave himself up, and was
pardoned ; as was also the pseudo-Emperor,
Sultan Ibrahim, who was taken prisoner, but
released as having been an involuntary tool
in the Seiad's hands.
It would not be easy to exaggerate the im-
portant consequences of this counter-revolution
on the future fortunes of India. Had not the
12
178 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
main knot been cut by the assassination of
Husain, the Seiads might have prevailed. And
they might have established and maintained a
strong government on a tolerant basis, with the
support of the Indian Mussulmans and the
Hindoo Princes.
The encroaching and predatory character
of the Mahratta polity would undoubtedly
have been a difficulty. But the compromise
suggested by Ratan Chand, to cede the Dekkan
Provinces to Nizam-ul-Mulk, might have been
adopted, by making them over unreservedly to
the Raja of Satara or in fact, to the Peishwa
and his subordinate Chieftains. Whether this
would have prevented them from pushing on into
Hindostan and trying conclusions with the new
monarchy of the Seiads, acting in the name of a
puppet Emperor, or in their own name, if they
preferred to establish a new dynasty, is doubt-
ful. But the Mahrattas might have seen that
their safest course was to keep on friendly terms
with the rulers at Delhi, for fear of another
counter-revolution in the Mogul interest, especi-
ally when the Europeans began to enter the list,
and threatened to break up the whole political
system of native India.
And meanwhile the Seiads would have
avoided the fatal carelessness and lethargy which
opened India to the incursion of Nadir Shah,
and the consequent utter prostration of the
Imperial majesty and authority.
THE RESULT OF THE VICTORY ABORTIVE 179
On the other hand, the counter-revolution,
though successful at the moment, failed, through
the personal defects of the Emperor, to retrieve
the failing fortunes of the Empire. It restored
the Emperor to personal freedom, and to the
exercise of his personal sovereignty, according
to the traditional practice of the Mogul monarchy.
And had Mohammad Shah, like his illustrious
predecessors, been a Prince of mature age,
versed in affairs, and from experience capable
of discerning, and from disposition inclined to
pursue, his true interests, and steadily supporting
a sagacious and loyal Minister ; though he could
not have succeeded in restoring the Empire to
its pristine vigour, or re-extending it to its old
limits, he might probably have retarded the
day of its dissolution ; ruled respectably ; and
avoided the fatal concessions which we shall
see he was constrained to make to the
Mahrattas, and the crushing overthrow and
abject humiliation which he suffered from Nadir
Shah.
The most singular and, at first sight, para-
doxical circumstance connected with the counter-
revolution is the attitude and conduct of Nizam-
ul-Mulk, contrasted with his subsequent assump-
tion of virtual independence of the Emperor
in the Dekkan. Though absent from the scene
of the contest, and though there is no reason to
suspect that he was privy to the assassination
plot, he was unquestionably the master-spirit
180 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
of the Mogul party's movement against the
regime of the Seiads. And the professed objects
of that movement were to restore the power of
the Emperor, and to re-establish Mogul domina-
tion. Yet, when these objects had been attained,
he practically repudiates the Emperor's author-
ity, and becomes himself a dismemberer of
the Empire. This inconsistency may be readily
accounted for by assuming that he was actuated
simply by personal feelings. And, to a certain
extent, this is no doubt true. It is true also that
he was a wily politician, who was given to alter-
ing his course according to the circumstances
of the time in fact, that he was an opportunist.
But I shall show later that he was not so incon-
sistent as he seems ; and that his later line was
an alternative adopted on the conviction that
the Emperor was a bruised reed, and the restora-
tion of his effective power impracticable ; and
that (if I may use a strong metaphor) when the
vessel of State was hopelessly doomed, it was
time to take to a boat, and save himself and some
of the crew from shipwreck.
Nizam-ul-Mulk had been, in the first in-
stance, appointed Subadar of the Dekkan by the
Seiads, in acknowledgment of his at least passive
co-operation with them in the deposition of
Jehandar Shah (whom he had previously served)
and in the exaltation of Farokhsir.
But when they recalled him, and Husain Ali
took his place, although no open quarrel followed,
SADUT KHAN FOUNDS THE OUDE DYNASTY 181
the seeds of hostility were sown ; and though
Nizam-ul-Mulk did not oppose the new revolution,
which displaced Farokhsir and raised Mohammad
Shah to the throne, he was much scandalised
at the murder of the unfortunate Emperor ;
was by no means reconciled to the new regime
by his appointment to the Viceroyalty of Malwa ;
and (as we have seen) both in self-defence against
those whom he now considered enemies both of
himself and of his class, and incited by the new
Emperor and his mother, he marched again into
the Dekkan ; struck down the lieutenants of the
Seiads there ; made himself master of the Mogul
Provinces south of the Nerbudda ; and thus
facilitated the counter-revolution in Hindostan
which emancipated Mohammad Shah, and re-
sulted in the death of Husain and the defeat and
captivity of Abdullah.
Of the three conspirators, the actual murderer
of Husain had perished. But the Emperor,
now free to choose his ministers, made Itam-
u-dowla, the contriver of the plot, his Vizier ;
and his friend, the third conspirator, Sadut Khan,
became Viceroy of Oude, and the founder of the
dynasty which came to an end on the eve of
the great Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. And Sadut's
previous service, together with his vigorous
character and conduct, enabled him to root
himself so tenaciously in Oude, that it virtually
became an independent Principality, like the
Dekkan under Nizam-ul-Mulk in the period on
182 MOGUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
which we are entering. Thus, in both cases, the
revolution that was to restore the vitality of
the moribund Empire resulted in its further
dismemberment, and reduced it to a shrivelled
and attenuated carcass !
XV
NIZAM-UL-MULK'S POLICY
THE new Vizier did not long survive his eleva-
tion. And, on his death, Nizam-ul-Mulk was
appointed to succeed him, and returned to the
capital, without, however, resigning his Vice-
royalty, or giving up the control of the strong
places which he had entrusted to his supporters,
and which gave him the effective command of
the country. At Delhi he did his utmost to
act the part of a loyal and efficient Prime
Minister. But the youthful, weak, and pleasure-
loving Sovereign was under the influence of
volatile and vicious companions of his own
age, and of a female favourite, who distracted
him from all serious application to business,
contrived to misappropriate and squander in
profligacy the slender resources of the restricted
and impoverished Empire, and poisoned the
Sovereign's mind against the faithful and saga-
cious, but severe, free-spoken, and, according
to the temper of the Court, ludicrously old-
fashioned and exacting Minister. His position
not a little resembled that of Clarendon at the
Court of Charles u. In vain he tried to rouse
184 NIZAM-UL-MULK'S POLICY
Mohammad Shah to a sense of his duties, and
the personal supervision of public affairs. His
remonstrances were irksome, and only provoked
dislike and jealousy, and, in the end, fear and
enmity.
The Vizier showed no disposition to imitate
the unconstitutional and dangerous practice of
his predecessors, and, depriving the Emperor
of power, to rule arbitrarily in his name. But
he saw too clearly that the experiment of re-
storing him to the position of the older Sovereigns
had failed ; that Mohammad Shah was unfit
for personal rule ; and instead of persevering
in so uncongenial, mortifying, and hopeless an
attempt to galvanise the torpid Sovereign into
political vitality, or trying to find a fitter Prince,
and plunging anew into direct rebellion, he
preferred to resign his office, and, retiring into
the Dekkan, to consolidate his own power
there, and leave the ill-starred and crumbling
Empire to its inevitable fate.
Before he did this, however, he had for the
time broken the power of the Jats, and had
subdued a refractory Viceroy in Guzerat, and
added that province to his own charge, ad-
ministering it through his uncle, Hamid Khan.
However conscious of his own shortcomings,
and of the original fidelity of Nizam-ul-Mulk,
the Emperor might well be alarmed at such a
monopoly of power by a servant at once so
able and so discontented ; and he soon began
MAHRATTAS CONQUER GUZERAT & MALWA 185
to play the old game of intrigue against him.
He superseded him in Malwa and Guzerat ;
but thereby only left these provinces exposed
to the incursions of the Mahrattas, who soon
after overran, conquered, and annexed them.
Indeed, they were already swarming in Guzerat :
and Nizam-ul-Mulk, however strongly opposed
to the authority of Shao in the Dekkan, or
rather to the rising influence of Shao's great
Minister, the Peishwa, found his account in
leaguing himself with Trimbuk Rao, the Sena-
putti, or Commander-in-Chief of the Raja in
Guzerat, whom he played off successively against
the Imperial Viceroy and the Mahratta Peishwa ;
and thereby promoted the rise of Trimbuk' s
lieutenant, the ancestor of the Guikwar, who
still rules in the same region. I am anticipating
the course of my narrative. But I have done
so in order to show how, once more, the revolu-
tion that overthrew the Seiads, though directed
against their Hindooising policy, indirectly led
to the establishment of a Hindoo Principality
on the ruins of the Imperial power in Guzerat.
I mentioned formerly that Mubariz Khan,
the sub-Viceroy of Hyderabad, went over to
Nizam-ul-Mulk in his contest with Alam Khan.
Mubariz was now secretly stimulated by the
Emperor to play a similar part again, and
promised that if he succeeded in conquering
the too-powerful subject, he should be appointed
Subadar of the whole Mogul Dekkan. Mubariz
186 NIZAM-UL-MULK'S POLICY
threw for the splendid prize ; but Nizam-ul-
Mulk again triumphed, and, sending the spolia
opima to the foot of the throne, with bitter
irony congratulated Mohammad Shah on the
destruction of a rebel, who had, in reality, obeyed
his Sovereign not wisely but too well. The
hint was, however, taken, and no further attempt
was made from Delhi to molest the victor, who
was meanwhile otherwise amply occupied in
adjusting his relations with the Mahrattas.
However anti-Hindoo in his sentiments as
well as his antecedents, and obnoxious to that
people, Nizam-ul-Mulk was far too wise and
wily a statesman to neglect the signs of the
times ; and though steadfast in his general
aims, his policy varied greatly according to
circumstances. He had supported the Em-
peror, in the hope that he would deserve
that support, and act conformably with his
position and its obligations. But this not
proving to be the case, he had (so to speak)
dissolved partnership with him. Yet later, as
we shall see, he saw good reason for once more
throwing the weight of his influence into the
Imperial scale, though with no happier result
than before. So he had once fought stoutly
to suppress the Mahrattas ; and as Vizier at
Delhi had even advised the reimposition of the
jizya throughout the Empire.
But in his second Viceroyalty in the Dekkan
he had found that the Mahrattas were far too
BALAJI WISHWANATH'S REVENUE SYSTEM 187
strong to be suppressed, and after Husain All's
compact with them he had reluctantly ac-
quiesced in their claim to the chout and sur-
deshmuki, i.e. to the levy of twenty-five per cent,
on the land revenue and customs, and ten per
cent, on the ryots, or peasantry, in the Mogul
Dekkan. A very artful and complicated system
of collecting and distributing these dues had
been devised by Balaji Wishwanath, the first
prominent Peishwa, based on an old and now
purely ideal assessment, and subdivided among
many chiefs, so that, in the exhausted state of the
country, there were constant alleged deficiencies
and demands of arrears ; standing grounds
for vexatious and oppressive visitations, and
eager competition among the chiefs and their
followers, each equally bent on promoting the
common cause, and making the best bargain
for his separate share.
The Peishwa was a Brahmin, from the
Concan ; and, as the accountants were mostly
Brahmins, his influence in the community was
greatly enhanced by this subtle and com-
prehensive scheme for the national aggrandise-
ment.
He was also a soldier, and in that capacity
had commanded the Mahratta contingent which
accompanied Husain AH to Delhi, on his march
against Farokhsir. He was now dead, but
had been succeeded in his office by his son,
Baji Rao, a man of remarkable ability and
188 NIZAM-UL-MULK'S POLICY
gallantry, the greatest of the Peishwas, and a
worthy rival of Nizam-ul-Mulk.
But he had a competitor nearer home in
Sreeput Rao, the pirtinidi, or first minister of the
Raja, whereas the Peishwa was, as yet, entitled
formally only to the second place.
The Raja, Shao, had never recovered the
debilitating effect of his seclusion in the Imperial
zenana ; but he was still a free agent, and even
inclined to appear in the field. Sreeput urged
him to consolidate his internal government, and
content himself with his share of the revenues
of the Dekkan, which he already enjoyed to
so large an extent. But Baji Rao advocated
a forward policy, as better suited to the char-
acter and established practice of the adventurous
and predatory people, and recommended further
by the enfeebled and discordant condition of
Hindostan. The Raja approved of the Peishwa's
counsel, and the rather, as the anti-Raja at
Kolapore had ceased to be formidable, and was
sinking into insignificance.
Nizam - ul - Mulk had formerly, while not
denying the right of the Mahrattas to levy the
imposts, sought to evade them by professing in-
ability to determine the nice question, whether
Shao or his cousin at Kolapore was the true
Raja. Such a dilatory plea had now lost much
of its force. And he preferred to avail himself
of Baji Rao's absence on an expedition beyond
the Nerbudda, to conclude an arrangement with
BAJI RAO COERCES NIZAM-UL-MULK 189
Sreeput Rao, whereby the demands on his terri-
tory were to be estimated once for all, and com-
muted for a lump sum, to be paid annually by
himself, without the vexatious and harrying
interposition of the Mahratta tax-gatherers and
their armed bands. And he began to remove
these obnoxious officials ; and when Baji Rao,
on his return, condemned the arrangement, and
a quarrel ensued between him and Sreeput, the
Nizam (as we may henceforth call him) took a
higher tone : suspended the payment of the
stipulated sum, and again raised the question
whether it was properly due to Shao or to his
rival at Kolapore.
The Raja was furious, and was with difficulty
dissuaded from leading his own forces against
the Mogul. In the end, Baji Rao was deputed
to wage the war ; and his success in the cam-
paign gave him an ascendancy in the State
which soon reduced the Raja to a cipher, and
advanced the Peishwa far on the way to suprem-
acy in the Mahratta community.
Again, as in Aurungzib's days, the superior
numbers and extraordinary agility of the Mah-
rattas proved more than a match for the Mogul
army ; brought it to a stand ; and hemmed it
in on every side. The haughty and wily old
soldier was compelled to yield to his young
and dashing rival, and to admit the claims
which he had questioned. He pledged himself
to defray all arrears of what was, in fact, tribute,
190 NIZAM-UL-MULK'S POLICY
and to surrender several strong places as security
for the future payment of the chout and sur-
deshmuki (1729).
But the Nizam had not played his last card.
I have mentioned his alliance with Trimbuk, the
Senaputti, or Mahratta Commander-in-Chief in
Guzerat. Him he now instigated to march into
the Dekkan, and rescue the Raja from the
ascendancy of the Peishwa and the Brahmin
faction, which Baji Rao represented and favoured,
proposing to co-operate with him. But Baji Rao,
taking a leaf out of Nizam-ul-Mulk's own book,
anticipated the junction of his enemies by dash-
ing at and destroying Trimbuk on his march ;
and this victory, says Grant Duff, left him " all
but nominal control of the Mahratta sover-
eignty " (1731).
XVI
GROWTH OF THE MAHRATTA CONFED-
ERACY, AND OF THE PEISHWA'S
ASCENDANCY IN IT
THAT is to say, the Raja continues to reign, but
he does not rule ; the official hierarchy which
Sivaji had established, and which had become to
a great extent hereditary in certain families,
loses most of its consideration, though it is not
formally abolished ; the Peishwa becomes the
leading Minister in effective power sole Minister
at Satara, though (as we shall see) another deter-
mined effort is made to remove him, and to
subvert the Brahmin faction, which forms the
nucleus of his strength. His lieutenants in turn,
Sindia, Holkar, and Puar, disengage themselves
from the throng of generals and collectors ; be-
come localised in the newly conquered country
of Malwa, as minor potentates, actively sup-
porting their patron ; and the Guikwar, having
already obtained a footing in Guzerat, and
another Chief, of the name if not of the lineage
of Sivaji, the Bonsla, having been established
by the Raja in Berar, has a constant tendency
to push on eastward and northward.
192 GROWTH OF MAHRATTA CONFEDERACY
Thus gradually arises the great Mahratta
Confederacy, of which, after vindicating his
superiority over his older rivals, the Peishwa
becomes the acknowledged hegemonic leader,
though the utterly passive and imprisoned Raja
is still the nominal Sovereign.
In explaining the import of Grant Duff's
expression, I have anticipated the course of
events to which we must now revert.
Baji Rao's interference in Guzerat had been
jealously regarded by Trimbuk, who considered
that country his own hunting - ground. And
this was one chief cause of his hostility. The
Peishwa, however, now thought it politic to
heal the breach, and obtained for his enemy's
son the father's office of Senaputti. But the feud
smouldered ; and Trimbuk' s client, the future
Guikwar, who soon eclipsed and virtually super-
seded the titular Senaputti, re-enacted (as we
shall see) later his patron's part against Baji
Rao's son and successor in the Peishwaship.
Meanwhile, the concessions which the
Peishwa had extorted from the Imperial Viceroy
in Guzerat mark another distinct step in the
advance of the Mahratta dominion, and in the
dismemberment of the Empire. The chout and
sur-deshmuki were granted in perpetuity. And
this was enough to ensure the whole control of
the country's passing into the hands of the
ingenious and indefatigable armed tax-gatherers.
In vain attempts were made to limit the grant
THE MAHRATTAS ACQUIRE GUZERAT 198
to its exact terms, and to prevent abuse and
encroachment. In vain the Emperor at first
refused to ratify the concession, and superseded
the Viceroy who had made it. His successor
was equally unsuccessful in removing the wedge,
which was steadily splitting up the rotten fabric
of the Imperial organisation. Before long, Ah-
medabad alone remained to the Moguls ; and
Ahmedabad itself fell at last to the Mahrattas,
and, typifying their complex relations, was
occupied partly by the Peishwa's, partly by the
Guikwar's troops.
XVII
PEACE BETWEEN THE NIZAM AND THE
PEISHWA, AND CONSEQUENT MAH-
RATTA PROGRESS IN HINDOSTAN
RUT another and much more considerable result
of Raji Rao's enterprise and Mohammad Shah's
fatal feebleness was now to follow. The Nizam
and the Peishwa had hitherto been uncompro-
mising enemies, and twice the young Mahratta
Brahmin's tactics had foiled his able and veteran
adversary. But Baji Rao's position was still
critical ; he had reason to fear the arts, if not
the arms, of the wily political intriguer ; and he
could not prudently prosecute his great designs
in Hindostan while Nizam-ul-Mulk was threaten-
ing his base in the Dekkan. The Nizam, on the
other hand, had every inducement to seek an
accommodation with him. He was anxious to
consolidate his own power, and to nurse his
resources. He had renounced all hope of main-
taining, or rather of restoring, the integrity and
independence of the doomed Empire ; and he
would find his best security against molestation
if his still jealous Sovereign, instead of making
common cause, as Farokhsir had done under
PEACE BETWEEN NIZAM AND PEISHWA 195
similar circumstances, with the Mahrattas against
his own Viceroy, and secretly or openly sanction-
ing an attack by them upon him, were himself
to be exposed to the enterprising incursions of
the Peishwa. Thus a common interest drew the
two competitors together ; and they came to
an understanding that hostilities between them
should cease, and that Baji Rao should be free
to push his conquests in the north. The im-
mediate results of this compact were startling
and momentous. The Mahrattas poured, like
an irresistible torrent, into Malwa ; defeated
and killed the Imperial Viceroy ; and, bearing
down all opposition, took forcible possession of
the country. Thence they penetrated into
Bundelcand ; and though gallantly resisted by a
force of Rohilla Afghans, and unable to master
the warlike and stubborn Boondelas of Rajput
origin effected a lodgment in the Province,
which subsisted to the days of Wellesley.
The imbecile ministers meanwhile took no
effectual steps to arrest the course of conquest
and assert the majesty of the Empire. They
assembled large armies, and made loud profes-
sions of an intention to march and exterminate
the insolent invaders. But they cared not to
come to close quarters with them ; and their
timid and languid military parades were soon
exchanged for a brisk retreat to the capital.
They next stooped to negotiation, and were pre-
pared to make abject concessions. Whereupon
196 PEACE BETWEEN NIZAM AND PEISHWA
Baji Rao, trading on their fears, rose in his
terms, and made demands which even such
negotiators could not venture to entertain.
Then the Mahrattas pushed on to the neighbour-
hood of the capital. But Sadut AH, the sur-
viving conspirator against the Seiads, and now
Subadar of Oude, again struck a bold blow
for the honour of his Sovereign, and the defence
of the heart of the Mogul Empire against Hindoo
aggression. Leaving his own province, he
crossed the Ganges, engaged and repulsed the
Mahrattas, and drove them out of the Doab.
He was preparing to follow up his success, when
an imperious message from Delhi enjoined him
to await the junction of one of the very minis-
ters who had already so conspicuously failed to
check the Peishwa's growing audacity. While
Sadut Ali tarried reluctantly, in obedience to
this order, the nimble enemy, recovering courage
when they found themselves unpursued, re-
turned ; wheeled round his flank ; and, headed
by Baji Rao in person, suddenly appeared before
Delhi, and inspired there extreme terror. But
he did not attack the city, and even refrained
from plundering the suburbs. Whereupon a
body of Imperialists took heart, and sallied out
against him, but were soon repulsed by Holkar,
Sindia, and other lieutenants of the Peishwa.
Having extorted an ignoble promise from the
Emperor, or his Minister, that the government
of Malwa should be conferred on him, he retired,
EMPEROR SEEKS HELP FROM THE NIZAM 197
on the approach of Sadut Khan and the Imperial
army which had joined that Viceroy, and re-
turned for the time to the Dekkan (1736).
This brilliant campaign was followed by one
still more decisive. The Emperor, after all that
had occurred to estrange Nizam-ul-Mulk, con-
ceived the hope of re-enlisting him as his cham-
pion against the Mahrattas, and summoned him
to his aid.
The old soldier of Aurungzib in the Mahratta
War of Independence, the statesman who had
striven to liberate his Sovereign from the yoke
of Hindooising ministers, the standing rival of
Baji Rao in the Dekkan, could not be insensible
to the appeal. And he was probably seriously
alarmed, on personal grounds, at the rapid
success of the Mahratta arms, and the extrava-
gant pretensions of the Peishwa in the late
negotiation. He repaired to Delhi, and was
entrusted with the amplest authority for levying
forces. But though the Rajputs joined him in
considerable numbers, and he was very strong
in artillery, he could only muster half as many
men as the Peishwa. He was also enfeebled
by age ; and, knowing too well the wonderful
agility and terrible impetuosity of the Mahratta
cavalry, he resorted to the precaution of at
once entrenching his position ; which, as a sign
of fear and a confession of inferiority, greatly
elated his enemies, and made them more auda-
cious than ever. In short, the course of his
198 PEACE BETWEEN NIZAM AND PEISHWA
former contest with Baji Rao was repeated.
His movements were carefully watched and
anticipated. His convoys were cut off ; his
foragers intercepted ; provisions became scarce
in his camp ; his march was obstructed ; and
at last, near Bhopal, he was fairly blocked
up, and compelled to enter into a convention
equally ignominious to himself and his royal
master. He had been re-appointed Viceroy of
Malwa. But now, so far from being able to
take up that appointment, he was obliged to
promise " in his own hand- writing to grant to
Baji Rao the whole of Malwa, and the complete
sovereignty of the territory between the Ner-
buddha and the Chumbul ; to obtain a con-
firmation of this cession from the Emperor ; and
to use every endeavour to procure the payment
of fifty lacs of rupees, to defray the Peishwa's
expenses." *
Thus not only had the Dekkan previously
been cut off irretrievably from the Empire, but
the Mahratta power, already established de
facto, was now to be de jure also in Hindostan,
and at easy striking distance from Agra and
Delhi.
Such were the fruits of the Emperor's self-
indulgence, and the recklessness and incapacity
of his ministers, in the past. The whole South
was lost. But, as if infatuated, and foredoomed
to destroy what remained, they were at this
1 Grant Duff, i. 341.
THE EMPEROR'S AND MINISTERS' FATUITY 199
very time engaged in displaying the same quali-
ties in another direction, and thereby inviting
nay provoking attack from a still more
formidable and ruthless conqueror in the
north.
XVIII
NADIR SHAH'S INVASION
THE native author of the Siyar-ul-Mutakherin
traces very clearly, in much detail, and with
appropriate indignation and scorn, how the
corruption, short-sightedness, and obstinate dis-
regard of significant and successive warnings,
and of the most obvious precautions, led to the
awful catastrophe which placed the Emperor
at the mercy of a foreign invader ; deluged the
proud capital in the blood of its citizens ; de-
spoiled it of untold treasure ; rent away for
ever three northern provinces ; and, divesting
the central authority of such respect as it had
hitherto retained, precipitated the final and
complete dissolution of the Empire.
Nadir Shah was a Persian of low origin, a
soldier of fortune, whose early career was stained
with many dark deeds ; but a man of extra-
ordinary ability, both military and political,
of great ambition, indomitable energy, and
fiery valour, but cold-hearted, stern, pitiless,
and unscrupulous. In the year 1722, Persia
had been invaded and the capital and much
of the country conquered, by the Western
NADIR SHAH'S EXPLOITS IN PERSIA 201
Afghans, under a leader who captured the
Shah and assumed the throne. He was, how-
ever, too weak to complete his conquest; and
after his death, two years later, his relative
and successor, Ashraff, was threatened by a
combination of Peter the Great and the Turkish
Sultan, who proposed to treat Persia as Poland
was afterwards treated. But the Shah's son,
Prince Tamasp, had escaped ; and, taking
Nadir into his service, made successful head
against his various enemies. Peter the Great
died ; the Russians were checked, and a peace
was concluded with them. The Turks were
signally defeated ; the Afghans were routed
and expelled ; and the whole country was
gradually recovered. But the young Prince
was restored to the throne of his fathers only
to be promptly superseded by his perfidious
deliverer, who, after thoroughly organising the
national forces, and compelling the Persians to
adopt the Sunnee formula, such was his extra-
ordinary ascendancy over them, entered on a
career of foreign conquest ; retaliated on the
Western Afghans the evils they had inflicted
on Persia ; subdued and occupied the Mogul
Province of Cabul ; crossed the Attok, and
invaded the Punjab, bent upon marching to
Delhi, and exacting satisfaction for alleged
injuries which he exaggerated, but also for
insults and supercilious treatment on the part
of the imbecile Emperor and his reckless
202 NADIR SHAH'S INVASION
ministers, of which he had too good reason to
complain.
Nadir's severe handling of the Afghan in-
truders had scattered them in all directions. A
complete stampede took place ; and swarms of
them poured into the Cabul Province, and through
that into India.
I may mention incidentally that the most
notable of these were the Rohilla Afghans,
Macaulay's interesting clients, the alleged peace-
ful, industrious, and poetical victims of Warren
Hastings's unscrupulous policy; but who were
really in every respect much the reverse.
The Mogul Government, in its better days,
had adopted systematic precautions to secure
this critical frontier region : able Viceroys had
been employed in Cabul ; a strong force had
been stationed there ; the wild tribes in the
hills overhanging the defiles, through which
enemies or questionable immigrants might pene-
trate into India, had been regularly subsidised,
to give timely notice of their approach, and to
dispute their progress ; and a constant and
brisk communication of political intelligence
had been maintained between Cabul and the
Mogul capital.
But, of late years, all this had been neglected.
Jobbery, corruption, and carelessness, which
had already laid open Guzerat and Malwa to
the Mahrattas, now exposed Northern India
to Nadir's attack, as well as to its pretext, the
FADIR INVADES INDIA 203
harbouring of his enemies. Incapable Viceroys
were appointed by favouritism ; the garrisons,
says the author of the Seir Mutaquerin, were
" totally neglected " ; the tribal subsidies were
withheld, to swell the illicit gains of those in
power, or their dependants; and the frivolous
Sovereign and his like-minded ministers heard
little, and cared less, about what was going on
beyond the mountains.
Nadir sent message after message, complain-
ing, with growing urgency and imperiousness,
of the shelter afforded to his foes by the Indian
Government. But his power was underrated ;
his applications remained unanswered ; his
messengers were detained on futile grounds ;
and at last a party, escorting a fresh and more
imperative emissary, was attacked and cut off
at Jelalabad by the Emperor's subjects. Nadir,
who had already occupied Cabul for some
months, on learning this cruel deed from the
sole survivor, instantly marched on the place,
and massacred all its inhabitants. He thence
advanced to Peshawur, where the Viceroy of
Cabul, who had been characteristically out of
the way when the Persian overran his province,
made a feeble stand against him, but was cap-
tured ; and Nadir, says the native historian,
16 having put to the sword every one that
attempted to stand before him, whether Indian
or Afghan," swept on, in his irresistible course ;
crossed the Attok in boats, and routed with the
204 NADIR SHAH'S INVASION
greatest ease the Viceroy of Lahore, who im-
mediately afterwards tendered his submission,
and, like his colleague of Cabul, was graciously
treated, and led in the conqueror's train, on his
rapid march to Delhi.
The Emperor, with Khan Douran, the
Ameer-ul-Omra, or Head of the Peerage (who
together with the Vizier was responsible for
the maladministration), marched from the
capital, at the head of a considerable army,
to confront the invader. Nizam-ul-Mulk was
also in camp, and Sadut Khan joined soon
after, with his own forces. Vain attempts were
made to raise the Rajputs; and this failure
seems to have much disheartened the already
craven - hearted Imperialists ; and, advancing
very slowly, they came to a stand at four days'
march from Delhi. Many circumstances dis-
close the wretched state of military organisation
among them. Thus they had no exact know-
edge of the enemy's whereabouts until Nadir's
advanced guard fell upon Sadut Khan's baggage
train. And the discordant counsels and sepa-
rate action in the engagement that followed
show the utter want of a general plan and a
commanding and authoritative mind. Sadut
hastened to succour his own followers ; Nizam-
ul-Mulk insisted that the day was too far spent
for fighting ; Khan Douran, displaying un-
wonted spirit, inveighed against the ignominy of
leaving Sadut unsupported, and led a body of
NADIR ADVANCES TO DELHI 205
roops to his assistance. This body was quickly
routed ; and the Ameer-ul-Omra was mortally
wounded, and was rescued only to die. Sadut
Khan's men fought better, but shared the fate
of their comrades ; and Sadut himself was
taken prisoner, and, like the other captured
Viceroys, was well received by the victor. A
negotiation followed, set on foot by the Viceroy
of Oude, and concluded by Nizam-ul-Mulk ;
and Nadir agreed to retire, on payment of two
crores of rupees. The Emperor then visited
him, and received the highest honour. The
grim conqueror was all smiles and deference.
But the end was not yet !
It is not easy to account for the caprices of
such a man. But the native historian states
confidently that Sadut jealous of the Emperor's
having conferred the vacant office of Ameer-ul-
Omra, which he coveted, on Nizam-ul-Mulk
incited Nadir to persevere in marching to Delhi,
and rifling its ample wealth. It is more probable
that Nadir had been acting a part, and that
this had been all along his intention. However
that may have been, certain it is that the Per-
sian suddenly changed his tone ; insisted on
Mohammad Shah's again visiting his camp, with
his family and officials ; and that the helpless
monarch obeyed the summons, and was led in
a sort of triumph to his own capital (1739).
There, though Nadir's strict discipline main-
tained perfect order in his army of occupation,
206 NADIR SHAH'S INVASION
a course of systematic and cold-blooded spo-
liation took place. The Imperial Court was
stripped of its splendid appliances, including
the world-renowned Peacock Throne, which was
profusely decorated with magnificent jewels, the
value of the whole being estimated by Tavernier,
himself a jeweller, at six millions sterling ;
the nobles and other rich men were compelled
to disgorge their accumulated wealth ; the
citizens generally were laid under heavy con-
tribution ; and the Provinces did not escape
the rigorous application of the principle : Vce
Victis ! Terror, dejection, and shame sat on
every countenance, from Mohammad Shah in
his palace to the meanest subject in his hovel.
And Nadir's ascendancy was emphatically as-
serted by the kutba being read in his name in
the mosques, i.e. his being recognised as supreme
in the Moslem Bidding Prayer.
But a far darker and more tragic scene was
to succeed this spectacle of imperial and national
humiliation. The ardent wish being father to
the thought, a fatal report was spread in the
city that Nadir had suddenly died. A popular
rising, acquiesced in, if not excited, by the
higher classes, instantly took place. Seven
hundred of Nadir's soldiers were slaughtered
in the streets during the night. After vainly
trying, by showing himself, to quell the tumult,
the justly exasperated conqueror gave loose to his
fury, and ordered a general massacre, wherever
WHOLESALE MASSACRE AT DELHI 207
the body of a slain Afghan should be found. His
orders were obeyed with terrific alacrity. The
number of the victims was never accurately ascer-
tained ; but it was certainly enormous. Houses
were sacked in all directions; the horrors and
crimes worse than death usual on such occa-
sions were perpetrated ; fire added its terrors to
the scene ; and a great part of the city was
consumed. At midday Mohammad Shah inter-
ceded for mercy to his unhappy subjects ; Nadir
then relented, and such was his discipline the
avenging swords were instantly sheathed.
After this coup de grace to the majesty of the
Empire, the conqueror lingered a while in the
devastated and blood-stained capital ; married
his second son, who had accompanied him, to
one of the Imperial Princesses ; formally re-
instated Mohammad Shah in his degraded
sovereignty ; gave him much advice, and ex-
horted his subjects to obey him, with severe
threats if his injunctions should not be complied
with ; collected his vast spoil ; and, at the
head of his victorious army, conveyed it to
Persia. But he did not long survive his triumph.
Intoxicated with success, he gave loose to his
passions, became hideously cruel, and at last
mad, and not less hateful as a tyrant than he
had once been popular as the deliverer of his
country from the yoke of foreigners. And his
strange and wild career was cut short by assas-
sination (1747).
XIX
CULMINATING PERIOD OF MAHRATTA
ASCENDANCY IN NATIVE INDIA
THE political outlook in India was now most
gloomy and perplexing. The strong Govern-
ment that had formerly maintained order
throughout the greater part of the country was
no more. The actual dominions of the Emperor
had shrunk to the neighbourhood of the capital,
and even over these the feeble and utterly
discredited Mogul retained only a precarious
and relaxing grasp. The Hindoo reaction,
stimulated by Nadir's prostration of the Ma-
hometan authority, seemed destined to go on
absorbing revenue, and annexing territory, until
it should become the supreme disposer of the
fate of the country, in which Mussulman rule
had been predominant for so many centuries.
But, to say nothing of Sikh fanaticism and
Jat lawlessness, the prospect of Mahratta
ascendancy was by no means hopeful for the
welfare of India. In the work of political
destruction, marauding, and financial extortion
and assessment, Sivaji's people were unrivalled.
But it remained very questionable whether
208
NAZIR JUNG FOILS THE PEISHWA 209
they were capable of reconstructing a regular
and tolerable scheme of civil government. And
failing this, constant warfare, general anarchy,
and the extreme social misery that these in-
volve, seemed the inevitable alternative. And
the course of events soon after tended to confirm
such dismal forebodings. This I will illustrate
by glancing summarily at the progress of the
Mahratta power in the coming years, before
recounting events in more detail.
Sadut Khan, who had conspired to over-
throw the Seiads, remove the Hindoo influence
in the administration, liberate the Emperor,
and restore the political ascendancy of the
Mogul party ; who had recently defeated Holkar
in the Doab, and fought stoutly, though un-
successfully, against Nadir Shah, died before
that conqueror retired from Delhi. Nizam-ul-
Mulk, after his late failure against the Peishwa,
had cut a rather poor figure in the campaign
against the Persian, while Baji Rao's reputa-
tion was at its height, and his forces were intact.
Might it not be possible, while the Nizam still
lingered at Delhi, to give another signal triumph
to the Mahratta arms, by conquering his terri-
tory in the Dekkan ? Such was Baji Rao's
calculation. A pretext was readily found in
the withholding of the stipulated grant of the
government of Malwa. But the attempt mis-
carried through the unexpected energy of Nazir
Jung, the Nizam's eldest son. And Baji Rao
14
210 PERIOD OF MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY
died soon afterwards (1740). But before his
death he had organised a great expedition in a
new direction, and at the same time had familiar-
ised the community with the idea of the Peishwa's
general control over its operations. He had
concerted an invasion of the Carnatic, and
constituted his rival, Rugoji Bonsla, of Berar,
generalissimo of the invading army. (Tanjore,
in the same region, it must be remembered, was
already under Mahratta rule, its Raja being a
collateral descendant of Sivaji.) Distant Mysore
too, under its Hindoo Raja, was about this
time first laid under contribution by the
Mahrattas. Soon after Baji Rao's death, the
same people, under Rugoji, the Raja (as we
may now call him) of Berar, invaded the eastern
provinces of the Empire, Bengal, Behar, and
Orissa, or Cuttak, which had hitherto escaped
their incursions. And though they were bravely
encountered there, and worsted both by arms
and by perfidious stratagem, they returned
indefatigably, and in the end effected a com-
promise, which involved both a territorial cession
and the payment of tribute to the Bonsla.
The new Peishwa, Balaji Baji Rao, though
less distinguished than his father in war, gave
full indeed dangerous scope to the national
propensity. His brother, Rugonath Rao, levied
exactions in Rajputana, and even on the Jats ;
took part in another dynastic revolution at
Delhi ; and waging a rash war in the Punjab,
MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY BALEFUL 211
precipitated another Mussulman invasion of
India, destined to be as fatal to Mahratta pre-
ponderance as Nadir's had been to Mogul
ascendancy. Jeiapa Sindia meanwhile over-
ran the Rohilla country, and was involved in
hostilities with Sadut Khan's successor in Oude.
The Peishwa's uncle, Chimnaji, accomplished
the proud feat of taking Bassein from the
Portuguese, and threatened Goa itself. Again,
but for French help, the old dream of conquer-
ing the Nizam's territory would have been
accomplished by the Mahrattas ; and the Berar
Raja actually annexed a portion of it, and the
audacious freebooters made a raid across the
hills into the French jaghire on the Eastern
Coast.
Thus it might seem that the Mahrattas,
though frequently driven back for a time, were
destined to prevail everywhere in the end ; that,
obeying as it were a natural law, the great
flood of predatory power, which had been run-
ning for a century in ever-widening volume and
circuit, was appointed to rise still higher ; and,
overleaping all barriers, to submerge the whole
Indian Continent. In such a case, what but
general havoc and misery could be the result ?
It was a melancholy prospect, not only for
the fallen but still proud Mogul noble, but for
the peaceable and would-be industrious Hindoo
peasant, and the timid and thrifty tradesman
and native merchant. So utterly had the old
212 PERIOD OF MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY
political organisation broken down, that in many
parts of the country, but for the village com-
munities, society itself must have perished.
But the night is darkest before the dawning.
And already the dawn of a better day was
breaking, though in turbulence and the tempest
of warfare on the Coromandel Coast ; and Wel-
lesley's inscription on Fort William College
Esc Oriente Lux was to have a political
application.
I must now fill up the details of this summary
sketch of the expansion of the Mahratta power.
On the death of Baji Rao, and for some time
afterwards, it seemed not improbable that that
power might be dissolved, so violent were the
rivalries and internal dissensions among its
leading members. Rugoji ran an opposition
candidate to Balaji, Baji Rao's son, for the
Peishwaship. But the attempt failed ; and
the hereditary right to the office was thenceforth
undisputed. The Raja Shao, however, was
childless ; and this led to fresh troubles. He
was disposed to adopt his Kolapore cousin, the
anti-Raja, and so heal the schism; but his
cousin was also childless. Sukwar Bhye, Shao's
wife, wished him to adopt an heir from a more
remote branch of the family, hoping to become
Regent to a minor, and thus oust the Peishwa
from his growing ascendancy. But, to conceal
her ambitious design, she gave hints of her in-
tention to become suttee, on her husband's
MAHRATTA LEADERSHIP DISPUTED 213
death. Balaji, with characteristic Brahmin craft
and cold-blooded cruelty, taunted her w,ith this
alleged intention, and drove her unwillingly to
immolate herself, thus ridding himself of one
rival. But he had still a more formidable one
in Tara Bhye, the widow of Ram Raja, Sivaji's
second son, after whose death she had assumed
the Regency on behalf of Ram Raja's and her
young son, the second Sivaji, and had (as I
related) ably sustained the war of independence
against Aurungzib. And popular feeling was
strongly in favour of her present claim to occupy
the same position. Moreover, she enlisted the
sympathies of all who were averse to the Brahmin
ascendancy ; and this included both the party
of Trimbuk, who had perished in the same cause,
and whose son was now in the guardianship of
Dunnaji Guikwar, and Dunnaji himself, who
was fast overshadowing the titular authority of
the Senaputti.
Tara Bhye's pretensions were grounded not
only on her past services to the community,
but on the fact that she told a singular story,
which, however suspicious, may have been true,
and was accepted at the moment. She asserted
that Sivaji n. had had a son, whom she had
concealed, and brought up privately ; and she
identified him with a youth whom she now
produced, and who, in fact, became Shao's
successor. In the first instance, Balaji found it
convenient to acquiesce in this tale, as a counter-
214 PERIOD OF MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY
poise to Sukwar Bhye's plan of the adoption
of a stranger. But he thus laid himself open to
Tara's ambition of ruling in her alleged grand-
son's name. By his precautions against this
danger, he not only staved it off for the time,
but established the authority of the Peishwa on
a more regular and explicit basis than it had
hitherto occupied. By a strong display of force,
he overawed those who were ready to declare on
Tara's behalf on the death of Shao. He con-
ciliated Tara herself by promising to share the
government with her, though with no intention of
doing so. He bribed the other chiefs by caus-
ing the Raja to confirm and enlarge their terri-
torial possessions and fiscal rights. And he
procured from him a document which em-
powered him, says Grant Duff, " to manage the
whole government of the Mahratta Empire, on
condition of his perpetuating the Raja's name,
and keeping up the dignity of the house of
Sivajee, through the grandson of Tara Bhye and
his descendants" (ii. 35). Thus the Peishwa's
leadership received a constitutional sanction ;
the doubtful lineage, as well as the feeble
character, of the new Raja made him passive
in the hands of his Mayor of the Palace ; he
vegetated in strict seclusion at Satara ; while
Poona, the Peishwa's residence, became the
military and political capital of the State. By
the measures now adopted (1750), the Mahratta
power was in fact converted into a confederacy of
BALAJI ENTRAPS THE GUIKWAR 215
chiefs, permanently and avowedly presided over
by the Peishwa, as an almost sovereign Prince
loosely and grudgingly obeyed indeed, but far
more distinctly recognised as supreme on his
own account, than he had previously been;
while the Raja retired into unapproachable and
inactive isolation.
This political arrangement, however, was
not finally established without another desperate
attempt to frustrate it. When, in the following
year, Balaji marched against the new Nizam,
Salabat Jung, Tara Bhye invited the Guikwar
Dunnaji, as Nizam-ul-Mulk had invited Trimbuk
Rao to join her from Guzerat, and co-operate
in overthrowing the Brahmin Peishwa. He
complied, and joined her at Satara, where she
had vainly tried to rouse the young Raja
in the same cause. She there shut him up
closely, rated him soundly, and declared him
spurious, no doubt intending to adopt a more
compliant tool. But Balaji returned by forced
marches ; entrapped the Guikwar into his power
by a perfidious stratagem; and, shrinking from
a direct attack upon Tara, came to a com-
promise with her, allowing her to command in
the fort of Satara, and retain the custody of
her naughty boy, which as the Peishwa recom-
mended her to release him she took care
should be strict. The Guikwar was not liber-
ated until he had solemnly agreed " to accept
the Peishwa's lead, and to yield permanently
216 PERIOD OF MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY
the right to half the revenues of Guzerat, and
to fulfil other stringent stipulations." Thus
Balaji triumphed ; but his perfidy was not
forgotten. The Bonsla's jealousy of the
Peishwa' s power was aggravated by another
circumstance. Balaji, anxious to procure the
long-deferred Imperial sunnud for the govern-
ment of Malwa, secured it at last, on condition
of restraining the Mahrattas from attacking the
remaining provinces of the Empire. And, in
pursuance of this engagement, he actually co-
operated (as I shall describe later) against
Rugoji, when the latter invaded Bengal. But
not long afterwards, the Peishwa again followed
Nizam-ul-Mulk's example, and entered into a
secret compact with his rival, whereby Rugoji
was left free to prosecute his designs on the
Bengal Provinces, on condition of leaving the
Peishwa undisturbed. Thenceforth their re-
lations were peaceable, though not cordial.
And the Bonsla took no part in the Paniput
Campaign.
Moorar Rao also, the descendant of the
murdered Santaji Ghorepuray, the hero of the
War of Independence, was reconciled by Balaji
to the national association, and joined in the
Carnatic expedition already referred to. Sindia
and Holkar were settled in Malwa, under the
patronage of the Peishwa, and on excellent
terms with him. Thus, on the whole, the
imminent danger of the disruption of the
BALAJI SUBADAR OF MALWA 217
Mahratta power by internal dissension was
avoided ; the Confederacy waxed stronger by
the aggrandisement of its several members ;
and rapidly attained the culminating stage of
its progress on the eve of its experiencing a
terrific disaster, which, for the time, paralysed
it, and from which as a whole it never re-
covered.
Though the Peishwa's legati, Sindia and
Holkar, were cantoned in Malwa, where Oojein
and Indore became their respective capitals,
the Emperor had not formally ratified the
concession of its government to Baji Rao, as
Nizam-ul-Mulk had promised in his name. But
Mohammad Shah at length granted this, in con-
sideration of the assistance which, as I have
said, was to be afforded against Mahratta in-
vasions, and which was rendered to Aliverdi
Khan (1743). With a poor attempt to save
his dignity and evade the explicit recognition
of the rising Mahratta polity, the Emperor
professed to make Balaji the deputy of his
own heir apparent, Prince Ahmed, and imposed
conditions, which were not likely to be too
scrupulously observed, especially the one I have
mentioned, which was soon after ignored, when
the Peishwa and Rugoji came to the accommo-
dation I have specified. Moreover, as the levy
ing of chout and sur-deshmuki was invariably a
preliminary step to conquest and annexation,
we may almost say that Mohammad Shah dis-
218 PERIOD OF MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY
solved his empire with his own hand, when,
about the same time, he granted to the Mahrattas
the chout in all the remaining provinces. This
donation does not seem to have been reduced
to writing with due formality ; but those to
whom it was made took good care that it should
be known, and acted upon.
Dupleix's policy was now in the ascendant;
and the new Nizam, Salabat Jung, was sup-
ported by Bussy. Thus, when the Peishwa,
after disposing of his domestic rivals, resumed
his campaign against Salabat, he was hard
pressed, compelled to retreat, and to witness
the devastation of his own country, and to
tremble for his capital, Poona. But this reverse
only illustrated the policy of his late compact
with the Bonsla, and the potency of the Con-
federation which he had established among the
Mahratta Chiefs. While others were hastening
to his assistance from the north, Rugoji himself
created a formidable diversion in his favour.
" He surprised," says Grant Duff, " and took
Gawelgurh and Nurnallah, made himself master
of Manikdroog, occupied the districts dependent
on those forts, and . . . not only laid the whole
country between the Payn Gunga and the
Godavery under contribution, but drove out
the Mogul thannas, and established his own "
(ii. 55, 56). The Peishwa meanwhile cleverly
promoted by his intrigues internal dissension
among his enemies, and jealousy of the French;
ENTERPRISE OF SINDIA AND HOLKAR 219
and thus Salabat was fain to make peace, with
the loss of the territory occupied by the Bonsla
(1752).
Sindia and Holkar meanwhile had been giving
equally good proof of the ubiquitous activity
of their people, and of the consideration shown
to it by the Moguls. Safder Jung, Viceroy
of Oude, had called them in against the Afghan
Rohillas, whom they had defeated, and driven
into the Kumayoon mountains. This service was
acknowledged by a large grant of the conquered
territory ; and although, bent on other projects,
they evacuated the country soon after, it was not
without obtaining fifty lacs of rupees as the
price of their retirement. And they soon re-
turned to triumph on a wider field in Hindostan,
though that triumph was but the prelude to
the catastrophe which shortly overwhelmed them-
selves and their patron.
For the present, however, we must return
to the Dekkan, where the fortunes of the
Mahrattas are materially influenced by the
Seven Years' War in Europe, and the con-
sequent struggle between the English and the
French on the Coromandel Coast. Count Lally,
on his landing in India, lost no time in recall-
ing Bussy to the Carnatic, and dissolving the
French connexion with the Nizam. And the
victorious English, though they allied them-
selves with Salabat, evaded the obligation of
defending him. So formidable at this time was
220 PERIOD OF MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY
the Peishwa's power, that, to their disgust, he
levied chout from Mahomet Ali, their own Nawab
of the Carnatic. He also invaded the as yet
Hindoo State of Mysore, besieged its capital,
occupied several districts, and, on one occasion,
extorted from its ruler thirty-two lacs of rupees
or pagodas. But on the same occasion Hyder
Ali, who was rising into power in Mysore, dis-
tinguished himself by his brilliant services against
an enemy hitherto thought invincible.
On the opposite side of the peninsula Bed-
nore was invaded, and the Peishwa's forces
co-operated with the English, under Clive and
Watson, in reducing the pirate, Angria. He
also concluded a treaty with the Bombay
Government, and through that medium twice
transmitted letters to the King of England.
While thus exerting his energies, and direct-
ing his views, so variously and remotely, it will
be readily conceived that Balaji was not in-
clined to forego the opportunity of assailing
his old rival and immediate neighbour, the
Nizam, now no longer buttressed by European
aid. The Peishwa, as I have said, rarely
appeared personally in the field. But his
brother, Rugonath Rao, had been pursuing an
adventurous course in the north, which was not
approved by their cousin, Sedasheo or " the
Bhow," as he was commonly called. A quarrel
ensued, and ended in Rugonath' s scornfully
resigning the command of the army to the Bhow,
THE BHOW ADOPTS EUROPEAN ARMAMENT 221
who had hitherto conducted the civil administra-
tion, but was now fired with the ambition of
distinguishing himself in war. As this ambition
drove him to the fatal field of Paniput, it will be
necessary later to compare him with his great
adversary, Ahmed Shah Abdali, and to show how
his character and tactics contributed to his
overthrow. But it will be enough at present to
account more summarily for the immediate and
signal success of his campaign against a more
familiar and weaker antagonist. He was the
son of Chimnajee Appa, the able brother of the
late Peishwa, Baji Rao, who had prosecuted to a
successful issue the long siege of Bassein (1739).
This triumph over Europeans, and especially in
a branch of warfare in which Orientals are
generally so unskilful, was not only an occasion
of great elation to the Mahrattas, but seems to
have permanently prejudiced the conqueror's
son, the Bhow, in favour of a fundamental
change in the national armament and style of
warfare. Hitherto, the great Mahratta arm had
been cavalry. The Bhow was inclined to rely
henceforth much on regular infantry, and especi-
ally on artillery. And, fortunately for his im-
mediate object, he secured the services of a
clever and experienced artillerist, Ibrahim Khan
Gardee, who had been trained under Bussy in
the Nizam's army, but who now took service
with the Mahrattas.
The Nizam also was strong in guns, but
222 PERIOD OF MAHRATTA ASCENDANCY
they were old - fashioned lumbering cannon ;
while Ibrahim furnished a good train of the light
and mobile field-pieces which the French had
introduced, and which had been one of the most
important factors of their success, The Bhow
had also at his disposal the very numerous and
as yet unimpaired hosts of cavalry, so long accus-
tomed to triumph over the Moguls in the Dekkan.
Salabat, deserted by the French, and un-
supported by the English, had already fallen
under the influence of his brother, Nizam Ali,
who soon after supplanted him. The Bhow,
by intrigue, procured the surrender of Ahmed-
nuggur. The brothers marched to recover it.
But the vast force of Mahratta cavalry, as so
often before, surrounded their army, and brought
it to a stand. Their heavy guns of position
were no match for Ibrahim's easily manoeuvred
and swiftly discharged field-pieces. And, after
a vain struggle in the toils, they were summoned
to surrender at discretion. Though this was
refused in form, it may be said to have been
yielded in substance. For Salabat sent to the
Bhow his seal of state, thus leaving to the victor
the dictation of terms. They were not only
hard and humiliating, but virtually concluded
(for the present at least) the long rivalry between
the houses, by transferring to the Mahratta a
very large part of the dominions of his opponent.
The whole province of Bijapur, almost the
whole of that of Aurungabad, and part of
THE BHOW DELUDED BY SUCCESS 223
Beder, together with the famous and impreg-
nable fortress of Dowlutabad and others
destined to become famous in our later wars
with the victors on this occasion, were conceded
unreservedly (1760).
Sedasheo Bhow might well be proud of such
an opening of his warlike career. But there
can be no doubt that this easy and complete
success threw him off his guard, and led him to
underrate the difficulties of the war in Hindostan,
to which he had pledged himself, and which was
to be conducted against a very different foe.
XX
ALIVERDI KHAN
THE Bengal Provinces had been exempted from
the earlier incursions of the Mahrattas into
Hindostan, though their fertility and conse-
quent wealth were a strong inducement to
the inveterate spoilers. But when the Raja of
Berar, otherwise called the Bonsla, emulous of
his rival, the Peishwa, began to push his way
eastward, it was not long before he was attracted
by so promising a field for his enterprise ; though
there he found an antagonist very different from
the poor-spirited Emperor and his imbecile
favourites, and more determined and successful
in his resistance than Nizam-ul-Mulk himself.
The result was a long, obstinate, and desperate
struggle, which ended in a compromise, indicative
of the inability of the Mogul champion to throw
off the yoke of the Hindoo reactionist, and which
indicates the culminating period of Mahratta
ascendancy.
The three eastern provinces, Behar, Bengal
proper, and Orissa, had been massed into one
Viceroy alty under an able ruler, Shuja-u-Dowla,
who died in 1738. He was succeeded by his
224
THE RISE OF ALIVERDI KHAN 225
son, Serfiraz Khan, a very inferior man. Shuja
had been zealously served by two brothers,
soldiers of fortune, Mahummud AH and Haji
Hamud ; and the former became Sub- Viceroy
of Behar under Serfiraz. But on a rather com-
plicated quarrel, which I need not now stop to
disentangle, the brothers rose against the new
Viceroy, and destroyed him (1739). Mahum-
mud Ali then petitioned the Emperor to ratify
the decision of the sword, and to confer the
Viceroyalty of the three provinces on himself.
And as he backed the petition with a large part
of Serfiraz's treasures, and the Emperor, just
after Nadir Shah's departure, was in no con-
dition to disoblige so powerful a suppliant, the
request was granted. Henceforth, Mahummud
Ali figures as Aliverdi Khan. I may add that
he soon after quarrelled with his brother, who
retired into private life. But his two sons were
actively employed by their uncle, who had no
sons of his own, and Hybut, one of these
nephews, was married to a daughter of Aliverdi.
The other, Said Ahmed Khan, Aliverdi appointed
Governor of Cuttak. But an insurrection soon
broke out there ; Said Ahmed was made prisoner,
and handed over to Baukir Khan, a relative of
Serfiraz.
Aliverdi lost no time in marching to his
nephew's rescue ; routed Baukir ; delivered his
nephew ; appointed another Governor in the
disturbed district ; and was making his way
15
ALIVERDI KHAN
homewards, when he was called upon to do
battle with a new and more formidable enemy.
Bhaskir Pundit, a general of the Bonsla,
Rugoji, pursued him with 40,000 cavalry. After
some fighting, he offered to retire, on payment
of ten lacs. Aliverdi's army was not more
than 5000 effectives; he was encumbered with
a large number of helpless and obstruc
fugitives from the Mahratta inroad; and the
already very high reputation of the enemy
had been enhanced by their recent triumph
over Nizam-ul-Mulk. But Aliverdi scorned sub-
mission, and fought his way gallantly, though
with severe loss, to Cutwa, where his nephew
joined him with reinforcements. Then, under
Meer Hubeeb, a deserter from his own service,
a Mahratta party tried to capture his capital,
Moorshedabad. But he saved it by a forced
march. The enemy, however, overran the whole
country westward of the Ganges, during the
rains. But, taking them by surprise, he put
them to flight, and drove them into the difficult
country on the south. They turned up again
in Cuttak; again he routed them, and they
retreated homewards.
This spirited conduct excited great interest
at Delhi; and the Emperor recognised it by
honorary gifts.
But Rugoji himself now repeated the in-
vasion. And, on the Emperor's summons,
Balaji, the new Peishwa, co-operated with Ali-
BHASKIR AND HIS OFFICERS MURDERED 227
verdi in resisting it. Thus Mahratta met
Mahratta in the tug- of -war or rather, in a
pursuit too fleet for Aliverdi to keep up with
it. Rugoji was fain to evacuate Behar ; and
Balaji's service on this occasion was (as I have
mentioned) rendered in consideration of the
grant of the Viceroyalty of Malwa (1743).
Next year, however, Bhaskir reappeared,
and again offered to retire on payment of a
large sum. Aliverdi had no scruples in dealing
with such a social pest ; and the overture
enabled him to employ negotiation to entrap
his enemies. He arranged an interview with
Bhaskir and his principal officers, and murdered
them all. Then he fell upon and routed their
army, and thus foiled the third invasion.
The Mahrattas, great as was their intrin-
sic strength, and especially the extraordinary
marching power of their irregular and hardy
cavalry, had almost invariably been much
favoured by the division of counsels and dis-
sensions in the Empire. Aliverdi was not, like
Nizam-ul-Mulk and Husain Ali before him,
intrigued against and hampered by the Court
of Delhi. On the contrary, Mohammad Shah's
feeling towards him seems to have been friendly
throughout ; though he had some reason to
fear the designs of Safder Jung, Sadut's suc-
cessor in the Oude Viceroyalty. But, on the
other hand, his raw and forcibly established
authority was exposed to constant and extreme
228 ALIVERDI KHAN
danger from internal disturbances, arising from
the circumstances of his position as a military
adventurer, and the character of the instruments
whom he was constrained to employ. The
inhabitants of Bengal are notoriously most un-
warlike. But this was not the case with the
other parts of his dominions. And Northern
India at the time swarmed with the fierce
Afghan soldiery, whom Nadir had expelled from
Persia and their own country, and whose settle-
ment in India had been the original pretext
of his invasion. These men, arrogant, brutal,
treacherous, and insubordinate, could only
be kept in good temper by lavish indulgence
of their greedy disposition. They resented
Aliverdi's strict discipline. They had no
sympathy with his desire to husband the re-
sources of the country, and to improve its
civil administration. Bent upon this, and
cramped by constant military requirements,
Aliverdi was unable to gratify their insatiable
appetites, or even to fulfil the expectations
which he had led them to entertain as the
reward of their services in the field. Hence
they were ever ready to join in disturbances,
to break out into rebellion against him, and
to become tools of leaders as unprincipled
as themselves, and ambitious to repeat the
subversive part which Aliverdi had played
against Serfiraz. And what made the long and
stout resistance which he offered to the Mahratta
MUSTAPHA DEFEATED AND SLAIN 229
advance the more remarkable, was that it was
conducted in spite of this frequent and most
serious danger from within.
Thus, no sooner had Bhaskir Pundit and
his army been disposed of, than Mustapha Khan,
Aliverdi's right-hand man, availed himself of
this military discontent, and demanded to be
made Governor of Behar. This was in the
hands of Hybut, Aliverdi's nephew and son-
in-law, and the demand was rejected. Hence
a quarrel, which ended in the dismissal of
Mustapha, who marched oft with a large force
of his own veterans, and attempted to conquer
Behar on his own account. Twice Hybut rashly
encountered him with an inferior army ; twice
circumstances enabled him to avoid an actual
defeat ; and, on Aliverdi's advance, Mustapha
retreated. He was actively pursued by the
combined forces, and compelled to retire into
Oude. But when Aliverdi had departed to
meet once more his old enemies, the Mahrattas,
Mustapha again invaded Behar, fought another
battle with Hybut, and was defeated and slain.
Rugoji, indignant at the fate of Bhaskir
and his officers, and encouraged by Aliverdi's
preoccupation with the rebels, for a fourth time
renewed the incursion. Again he was arrested
for awhile by plausible negotiations ; when
hostilities were resumed, his rapidity at first
baffled his opponent. But he was presently
brought to bay, and sustained several defeats, in
230 ALIVERDI KHAN
one of which he was nearly taken prisoner.
Again, too, Moorshedabad was saved from his
attack ; he was defeated again at Cutwa ;
and he was forced to retreat (1745). Cuttak,
however, he still retained, through Meer Hubeeb,
who commanded a joint force of Mahrattas and
Afghans.
The last circumstance was ominous. And
the omen was soon fulfilled. Aliverdi in vain
tried to expel the enemy from Cuttak ; and in
the course of these operations was obliged to
cashier two officers who had shown symptoms
of treachery. One of them, Meer Jaffier, was
afterwards the English Nawab of the Bengal
Provinces. A third attempt to reach Moor-
shedabad was made by Janoji, Rugoji's eldest
son. But again, Aliverdi was too active, and
saved his capital.
But he now incurred the greatest danger
to which he was ever exposed. For suspected
complicity with Rugoji he had dismissed two
other chief officers, Afghans, Shumsur Khan and
Sirdar Khan, but had rashly allowed them to
settle with their numerous followers in Behar.
That province already teemed with the old
soldiers of the defunct rebel, Mustapha. And
the attraction of a common cause of disaffection
drew these forces together. The Afghan leaders
acted craftily, and, professing penitence, sought
to be readmitted into the Viceroy's service,
through Hybut, who was still Governor of
LOYALTY OF ALIVERDI'S ARMY 231
Behar. Whether he was simply credulous, or
secretly ambitious of engaging them in an attempt
on his own account to supplant his uncle, has
been doubted. But he solicited and gained a
reluctant consent to re-enlist Shumsur and
Sirdar Khan. The former like Afzul Khan
with Sivaji affected timidity in the negotiation,
and Hybut, like Afzul Khan, fell into the snare ;
appeared slightly attended, and was murdered
by Shumsur's own hand ; and Patna, where the
deed was done, became the prey of the licentious
and brutal soldiery. Ahmed, Hybut' s father,
was tortured to death, in the vain hope of forcing
him to reveal where he had secreted his wealth.
Hybut's wife, Aliverdi's daughter, was carried
off ; and the rebels, raising new forces with the
plunder of the city, prepared to invade Bengal
(1748).
In these desperate circumstances, the forti-
tude, prudence, and energy of the Viceroy were
equally conspicuous.
" He [made] an earnest and pathetic appeal
to his chief officers, acknowledging his great
obligations to them, and [promising ample] re-
wards to those who might enable him to retrieve
his affairs." But he gave to any who were
inclined to abandon a possibly hopeless cause
permission to depart. The result was a unani-
mous and enthusiastic declaration of a resolve
to support him. This was solemnly confirmed
by an oath on the Koran ; and all consented
232 ALIVERDI KHAN
to forego, until a more convenient season, their
claims to pay. Some, however, on second
thoughts, were not so sympathetic. But he
bore with them, and even restored to active
service the two officers who had been removed
in Cuttak, making one of them, Atta Oolla,
joint commander, along with his surviving
nephew, of his capital in his absence. This
he could not spare troops to guard effect-
ually from the Mahrattas ; and he there-
fore recommended the inhabitants to retire
behind the Ganges. With a large army he
marched against the rebels, who had now made
common cause with the Mahrattas, and offered
to enter the service of the Bonsla. But Shum-
sur overreached himself. He treacherously
arrested Meer Hubeeb, who had come to arrange
terms by way of hostage for the payment of the
subsidy. Hence, in the battle that followed,
the Mahrattas stood aloof ; and Aliverdi gained
a complete victory, killed Sirdar Khan, and
recovered his daughter. The Afghan confederacy
was entirely broken up, and the Mahrattas once
more retreated, except from Cuttak.
After a new disturbance, caused by the
rebellion of Aliverdi' s degenerate grandson,
Suraja Dowlah, the future captor of Calcutta,
which was soon subdued, though the rebel was
treated with undeserved lenity by his doting
grandsire ; and after again and again pursuing
and repelling for the time his Parthian foes ;
TERMS OF PEACE WITH RUGOJI 233
Aliverdi, as age advanced upon him, seems to
have grown weary of the interminable strife ;
and he at last came to a compromise : Cuttak,
which he had never recovered, he ceded outright
to the Bonsla ; and he agreed to pay twelve lacs
of rupees a year as a commutation of chout to
the same Chief. On the other hand, the Mahratta
incursions were to cease (1751).
During the short residue of his reign this
agreement was faithfully observed.
Thus he did, at last, become a tributary of
the Berar Raja, as Nizam-ul-Mulk had become
of the Peishwa. But his stout and prolonged
resistance, and the frequent defeats he had
inflicted on the invaders, had contrasted greatly
with the Nizam's repeated collapses, and at last
almost utter overthrow.
I may add that Aliverdi discerned the in-
capacity of his grandson, and the danger of
English encroachment. But his senile partiality
for Suraja Dowlah prevented his debarring him
from the succession ; and prudence and a sense
of justice seem to have combined against his
adopting the suggestion that he should expel
the formidable Europeans, before it should be
too late.
XXI
EPILOGUE
HERE I might conclude these lectures, for I
have traced summarily their proper subject :
the decline and dissolution of the Mogul Empire.
I have endeavoured to show how Aurungzib's
character, conduct, and policy fatally impaired
his military strength, his moral authority, and
his administrative system. I have shown how
the Mahrattas arrested his course of conquest,
vindicated their independence, and established
an anti-polity, and an imperium in imperio in
the Mogul Dekkan Provinces ; how Aurungzib's
son and immediate successor was fain to sanction
this fiscal imperium in imperio ; how they estab-
lished themselves and subverted the Imperial
authority in Guzerat ; and, after forcibly occupy-
ing Malwa, extorted from the degenerate Emperor
the right to govern it ; and later a right to levy
tribute in all the remaining provinces of the
Empire, which involved ubiquitous extortion,
spoliation, and disorder ; how Nizam-ul-Mulk
in the Dekkan, and Aliverdi Khan in the Bengal
Provinces, while on the one hand practically
emancipating themselves from the Imperial
authority, on the other were constrained to
234
COLLAPSE OF MAHRATTA POWER 235
become tributaries of the Mahrattas; how they
effected a lodgment in Bundelcand'; and, after
Nadir Shah had given the coup de grace to the
majesty of the Empire, and wrested from it its
North- West Provinces, they threatened universal
predominance in Native India, with the destruc-
tive consequences inevitably entailed by the
ascendancy of a community essentially predatory.
Such is the melancholy anticipation deducible
from the course of events which I have described.
But though European interposition is beyond
my present province, I do not think it would
be right to conclude without recounting how
this anticipation was rapidly falsified by the
advent of another great conqueror from the
same country whence Baber had marched to
the conquest of Upper India, and the establish-
ment of the Mogul Empire. In the course of
one memorable campaign, and by the issue of
one terrible battle, the Mahratta power was,
for the time, shattered to atoms ; and though
the hydra-headed monster was not killed, it
was so effectually scotched, that it remained
practically almost quiescent, until great British
statesmen were in a condition to cope with, and
ultimately to master and disintegrate it.
Hence I think that it is not only allowable, but
desirable, to supplement my proper subject with a
narrative of this remarkable and important con-
flict, by way of epilogue to the great political and
military tragedy which has occupied us so long.
XXII
THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
IF the decline and dissolution of the Mogul
Empire was a remarkable and tragic pheno-
menon, still more tragically startling was the
sudden collapse of the Mahratta power, when
it had attained a position which threatened to
make it the predominant tyrant of Native
India, and the subverter of every native govern-
ment, if not of the framework of civil society
in their dominions.
A short retrospect will explain how this
catastrophe came about.
Nadir Shah was assassinated in 1747. In
his army was a young Afghan officer of noble
lineage, the son of a man distinguished as a
diplomatist, and popular among his countrymen.
Young as he was, Ahmed, called the Abdali,
from the name of his ooloos, or tribe, had studied
war to good effect in the school, and under the
eye, of Nadir Shah. And when their master
fell he led his Afghan comrades back to their
native hills. There his high birth, his father's
reputation, and his own already established
character, with the interposition of an influ-
a 3 6
GHAZI-U-DIN'S WILD AMBITION 237
ential and saintly man, procured his election to
the throne ; and this was promptly justified by
a display of political ability very remarkable
in so youthful a sovereign, and which soon
made him undisputed master of the allegiance,
if not of the affections, of his wild subjects.
His military organisation was equally able ;
and he followed the example of his instructor
in the art of war, and invaded India (1748).
But on this occasion he was repulsed by his
namesake, Prince Ahmed, Mohammad Shah's
son, who on his return to Delhi found the old
Emperor dead, and succeeded him as Ahmed
Shah. His own reign, however, was short and
disastrous. On the murder of Nizam-ul-Mulk's
eldest surviving son, Ghazi-u-din, in the Dekkan,
his son and namesake at Delhi entered on a wild
career of ambition. As his father, anxious to
supplant Salabat Jung, had allied himself with
the Peishwa ; so now the younger Ghazi-u-din
formed a connexion with Jeiapa Sindia and
Mulhar Rao Holkar, and with their help made
himself master of Delhi ; assumed the office
of Vizier, which Safder Jung had hitherto held ;
deposed and blinded Ahmed Shah, and set up
another phantom sovereign as Alumgeer the
Second (1754). Safder Jung died soon after,
and was succeeded in Oude by Shuja-u-Dowla,
who plays a prominent part in Anglo-Indian as
well as in native history.
Meanwhile Ahmed Shah Abdali had repeated
238 THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
his incursion into India ; and, having conquered
the Punjab, had placed it under the government
of Meer Munnoo, a former Mogul Viceroy (1752).
After the death of Munnoo and his infant son,
Ghazi-u-din had overrun the province, carried
off Munnoo' s widow to Delhi, and appointed a
Governor of his own, Adina Beg. Ahmed Shah,
resenting this aggression, advanced once more
now to Delhi itself, " which," says Grant
Duff, " was plundered, and its unhappy people
again subjected to pillage, and its daughters to
pollution."
Ghazi-u-din bowed to the storm, and was
pardoned. But, after the victor retired, he
resumed his mischievous activity. Again he
called in the Mahrattas, now commanded by
Rugonath Rao. He recovered Delhi, and the
custody of his puppet, Alumgeer n. ; deprived
Nujeeb-u-Dowla, a leading chief of the Rohilla
Afghans, of a high Imperial office which Ahmed
Shah Abdali had procured him, and would have
put him to death, had not Holkar interposed
to save him. Moreover, Ghazi-u-din instigated
Adina Beg, his former Governor of the Punjab,
to revolt against Ahmed's son, Timour, who
had been left in charge of that province, and
the Sikhs joined in the rising.
Rugonath Rao was invited to co-operate ;
he invaded the Punjab, routed Ahmed Shah's
general, and entered Lahore in triumph (1758).
Soon after, another Sindia, Duttaji, was incited
AHMED'S LAST INVASION OF INDIA 239
by Ghazi-u-din to invade Rohilkund, which he
did ; and again the Rohillas countrymen of
Ahmed Shah fled to the Kumayoon mountains.
Duttaji also quarrelled with Shuja-u-Dowla,
whose predecessor had employed the Mahrattas
to conquer his troublesome Rohilla neighbours,
Ahmed Shah was not only a king and a con-
queror, but, as an Afghan, he sympathised with
the Rohillas ; and, as a devout Mussulman,
he resented Mahratta aggression on his co-
religionists in Hindostan. The cup of his fury
was full ; and he resolved to bring to a decisive
issue his quarrel with the Hindoo power which
had thus crossed his track of conquest, ill-
treated his allies, and made war on true believers.
Rugonath had returned to the Dekkan ;
and Ghazi-u-din had fled to the Jat Raja,
Suraj Mull, when Ahmed Shah advanced once
more into India ; drove the Mahrattas under
Holkar and Duttaji Sindia before him ; engaged
and killed Duttaji, and, hotly pursuing Holkar,
defeated him with heavy loss. This was before
the Bhow appeared on the scene.
I shall henceforth follow chiefly an excellent
narrative by Casi Raja Pundit, who was not
only an eye-witness of the battle of Paniput,
but was much engaged in the negotiations
which preceded it. And he was well circum-
stanced for forming an impartial estimate of
events and characters. For he was, on the
one hand, a Dekkanee Mahratta ; and, on the
240 THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
other, an employe of Shuja-u-Dowla, having
been for some time in the service of the Oude
Government. Shuja-u-Dowla's own sympathies
were divided, though in the end he joined
Ahmed Shah. And though Casi Raja has been
suspected of writing under Holkar's influence,
this does not seem to have impaired the veracity
of his account, which is very clear, compre-
hensive, and rational, except probably in one
case, most material in explanation of the sudden
collapse of the desperate Mahratta resistance.
He gives a very favourable estimate of the
Bhow's ability in civil administration, and of
his influence in the Peishwa's Cabinet ; and he
expressly states that Rugonath Rao's expedition
was designed and equipped for completing the
conquest of Hindostan ; but that, in spite of
the easy success of the military operations, the
Bhow, on inspecting the accounts, ascertained
that " a debt of eighty-eight lacs of rupees was
due to the army ; so much had the expenses
been allowed to exceed all the collections of
tribute, peshcush, etc." This, though not
difficult to explain (for as Rugonath, though a
beau sabreur, was an easy-going man, studious
of popularity, he had probably allowed his
subordinates to help themselves freely to the
fruit of their exertions), was certainly, from a
Mahratta point of view, a conclusive proof of
military incapacity. But other qualities than
those of a good Chancellor of the Exchequer
THE BHOW'S CONCEIT AND ARROGANCE 241
were required to retrieve Rugonath's financial
carelessness, and to meet the crisis which he had
provoked. And the Bhow was, as a strategist
and tactician, not less incompetent than Rugonath
as a reaper of the spoils of war.
But, elated by his recent success in the
Dekkan, he assumed the command of the army
of Hindostan " with a light heart " ; and set
out, accompanied by Wiswas Rao, the Peishwa's
eldest son, who, though a youth of seventeen,
was nominally the leader of the expedition.
In his new sphere the Bhow soon displayed
his defects, which boded serious mischief in the
campaign. " He began," says Casi Raja, " to
exercise his authority in a new and offensive
manner, and ... in all public business he
showed a capricious and self-conceited conduct.
He totally excluded from his council Mulhar Rao
and all the other chiefs, who were experienced
in the affairs of Hindostan, and who had credit
and influence with the principal people in the
country ; and carried on everything by his own
opinion alone." He made overtures in various
quarters, and especially to Shuja-u-Dowla. But
the young ruler of Oude preferred at present
to remain a neutral spectator of the inevitable
contest, and to choose his side later according
to the fortune of war. The Bhow also applied
to Suraj Mull, the Jat Raja, who insisted on
negotiating through his usual medium Holkar
and Sindia. After this preliminary rebuke to
16
242 THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
Sedasheo's self-sufficiency, Suraj Mull proceeded
to tender advice on the conduct of the war,
which was very judicious, but which the Bhow
received very flippantly, relishing it the less
because Holkar and the other chiefs, who well
knew the proposed theatre of war and the
character of the enemies they would have to
meet, cordially approved of it. The Jat Raja
urged that the Mahratta operations would be
much hampered by the multitude of women
and children the families of the officers and
soldiers who accompanied the army ; by the
profusion of baggage with which the growing
luxury of the Peishwa's Court had stored the
camp ; and by the long train of heavy artillery
which the Bhow specially affected. Let all
these, he urged, be deposited in Jansi or Gwalior,
or in his own forts of Bhurtpore, Deeg, or
Combeir. " Your troops," he observed, " are
more light and expeditious than those of Hin-
dostan, but the Douranies are still more expeditious
than you"
This statement was surprising if not incredible
to the Bhow. But it was based on experience.
And the following words show that Suraj Mull's
insight into the military situation was by no
means contemptible, and, if turned to account,
might have averted the ensuing catastrophe :
" In this arrangement you will have the
advantage of a free communication with a
friendly country behind you, and need be under
THE BHOW REJECTS WISE ADVICE 243
no apprehensions respecting supplies to your
army." In support of this advice, Mulhar Rao
added that " trains of artillery were suitable
to the royal armies, but that the Mahratta mode
of war was predatory, and their best way was
to follow the method to which they had been
accustomed."
They might thus drag out the campaign
without a general action till the rains set in,
and the enemy would then be driven to retreat.
But the Bhow's vanity was touched ; he was
jealous of Rugonath, and feared being invidiously
contrasted with his cousin, who had reached
Lahore in conquering guise. " It never should
be reproached to him, that he, who was the
superior, had gained nothing but the disgrace
of acting defensively." The wisest were shocked
at this arrogance ; and a general murmur pre-
vailed that "it is better that this Brahmin
should once meet with a defeat, or else what
weight and consideration shall we be allowed ? 5:
This was not a sentiment likely to second the
ambitious hopes of the self-opinionated general.
He now marched to Delhi, and besieged the
fort, which was still held for the Afghan King by
a nephew of his Vizier, who was soon obliged
to capitulate. Again the victor wantonly out-
raged the feelings of the Hindostanees, Hindoos
as well as Mussulmans, who from old associations
revered the Empire, even in its dotage. He
plundered such monuments of Mogul splendour
244 THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
as had been left by Nadir Shah and later devas-
tators. Thus he stripped the magnificent Hall
of Audience of its fine silver ceiling, which he
coined into seventeen lacs of rupees. And our
author mentions, on the authority of his master,
Shuja-u-Dowla, a project far more outrageous in
the eyes of Moguls, Rajputs, and, indeed, of all
Imperialists : the Bhow is said to have meditated,
when the campaign should be over, placing Wiswas
Rao, the Peishwa's son, on the throne of Delhi !
In striking contrast to this reckless course
were the wary precautions of the Abdali to
strengthen his interest in Hindostan. Nujeeb-
u-Dowla, the most powerful of the Rohilla
chiefs, was bound to him by the strongest ties,
not least by a bitter personal animosity between
himself and the Bhow and Sindia. The other
Rohilla leaders were also thoroughly engaged
on the same side. But Shuja-u-Dowla was
undecided, and the Shah saw the great import-
ance of securing him ; and he effected this
adroitly. Through Nujeeb-u-Dowla Shuja was
made to feel his own insecurity as a neutral,
and his danger in case victory should attend
the Bhow, whose hatred of all Mussulmans was
notorious. He was convinced, and marched
into the Afghan camp, where he was received
with much distinction, both by the Shah and by
his Vizier, who solemnly hailed him as their son.
The Shah, who had advanced to Anopsher
for the purpose of effecting his junction with
FUTILE NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE 245
the Rohillas, soon after took up a position on
the bank of the Jumna, opposite to Delhi ;
but the swollen state of the river arrested active
operations for the present. Native belligerents,
Mahrattas especially, have always had an odd
habit of continuing negotiations in the midst
of war, and of mutually sending and entertaining
vakeels, or agents, for this purpose. Wellesley
highly resented this practice ; and his brother
Arthur, in the Mahratta war, put a summary
stop to it. But it flourished luxuriantly in the
Paniput campaign ; and our author, who was
busily engaged in it, devotes much space to
describing it. An unwary reader, who did not
understand the character and manners of
Asiatics, might thus be led much astray, and
imagine that peace was constantly on the point
of being concluded on moderate terms. But
in reality this was not at all the case. The
Bhow was finessing in the hope of extricating
himself from a position which was becoming
more and more embarrassing.
The Abdali, calmly confident, did not care
to interrupt the hollow game, in which his
Indian allies took pleasure, and probably felt
much like the cat sporting with the mouse
before springing upon it. Hence I shall not
detain you by dwelling on these unreal over-
tures. But I must mention that the Bhow did
make not only repeated but earnest efforts first
to detach Shuja-u-Dowla from the Shah's adhe-
246 THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
sion, and lure him into his own camp ; next,
to induce him at least to stand neutral ; and,
lastly, as his prospects darkened, and the fortune
of war seemed disposed to declare against
himself, to persuade Shuja to exert his influence
towards securing him an opportunity of effect-
ing the inglorious retreat, the mere semblance
of which, when recommended to him by Suraj
Mull as a measure of strategic precaution, had,
before the opening of the campaign, so deeply
wounded his vanity. But all these attempts
failed. Shuja confided all these overtures to
the Shah, who took care neither to interrupt
the futile negotiations, nor to commit himself
to any inexpedient concession. He was thor-
oughly resolved to inflict a severe chastisement
on the Mahrattas. And he heartily sympa-
thised with the view of his chief adviser,
Nujeeb-u-Dowla, who urged : " At present we
may be said to have the whole Dekkan at our
mercy ; when can we hope for another juncture
so favourable ? By one effort we get this thorn
out of our sides for ever." Nor did the wily
Rohilla argue only in the interests of the Hindo-
stanees. He appealed to the ambition of the
Abdali King ; and, repeating his expressive
metaphor, he added : " The Mahrattas are the
thorn of Hindostan ; if they were out of the
way, the Empire might be your Majesty's
whenever you should please."
Shuja-u-Dowla, turning the Bhow's diplo-
SURAJ MULL DESERTS THE BHOW 247
matic arts against him, through his vakeels
strongly advised the Jat Raja to abandon the
Mahratta cause. It is stated that Mulhar Rao
and the other disaffected chiefs joined in this
advice, which was addressed to willing ears.
This admission that Casi Pundit's patron thus
deliberately weakened the Bhow's force, seems
to tell favourably as to his credibility ; while the
fact indicates forcibly the unpopularity, not to
say the hatred, of the Brahmin generalissimo, one
chief cause of the result of his ill-fated enterprise.
Distrusted, slighted, and snubbed by the
Bhow, Suraj Mull had little inducement to
remain. And he went off by forced marches ;
and thus, through the folly of its commander,
the Mahratta army was deprived of a most
important, nay, an indispensable ally.
During the monsoon the Shah, though im-
mediately opposite Delhi, at Shahdere, on the
bank of the Jumna, made no attempt to cross
the river. The Bhow, when the rains abated,
but before the Jumna was passable, marched
with a picked force against Kunjpoora, which
was held by the Rohillas, and captured it. It
lay nearly 100 miles north ; and his object
was to command the passage of the river, and
to be able to cross, and become the assailant.
But he returned to Delhi without making any
use of the opportunity. On the other hand,
the Abdali, in this as in other respects, showed
his superior generalship. He suddenly broke
248 THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
up his camp, and by a night march reached
Baugput, 36 miles above Delhi. There, while
the Bhow was out of the way, and his main
army at Delhi, he resolved to effect the passage.
And this he successfully accomplished without
interruption. But the operation was more
difficult and protracted than he had anticipated.
"He searched in vain," says Casi Pundit, "for
the ford, the river being still very high, and
several horsemen, attempting to pass, were
drowned. The Shah, having fasted, and per-
formed religious ceremonies for two days, on
the third a ford was discovered ; but it was very
narrow, and on each side the water was so deep
as to drown whoever went the least out of the
proper track. . . . The Shah passed as soon as half
of his army was on the other side. The whole
army was completely crossed in two days ; but
from their numbers, and the great expedition
used, many people lost their lives." Such is
Casi Raja's account of a proceeding which may
seem rash on Ahmed Shah's part. But what
are we to think of his antagonist, who neglected
to interrupt the crossing, and thereby forfeited
the enormous advantage which he would have
had in assailing his enemy in such a situation ?
The editor of the narrative answers the question.
He says : " This seems to have been the crisis
of the Bhow's fortune : had he boldly attacked
the Shah while he was passing the Jumna, he
would probably have totally defeated him."
THE BHOW ENCAMPS AT PANIPUT 249
On the very next day (26th October) the
two armies neared each other, and a partial
action took place between the advanced guards,
in which the Mahrattas were worsted, and lost
twice as many men as the Afghans. Similar
skirmishes followed, the Bhow constantly re-
tiring, till he reached the already memorable
field of Paniput, about 60 miles north of Delhi.
There he took up an elaborate position, enclosing
his camp and the town " with a trench 60 feet wide
and 12 deep, with a good rampart, on which
he mounted his cannon." This proceeding was
ominously like that previously adopted more
than once by Nizam-ul-Mulk in his wars with
the Mahrattas themselves, and in each case
with such disastrous results. And the Bhow's
people were very certain to take note of, and to
be much disheartened by, such a coincidence.
The Shah encamped to the eastward, and
surrounded his position with felled trees, as
Baber had done, on his last invasion of India.
His front is said to have extended seven miles,
so large was his force, of which more presently.
Though the Bhow had rejected Suraj Mull's
wise suggestion, which would have assured his
commissariat, he had attempted to starve out
the invaders. He had appointed Govind Pundit,
the Peishwa's Collector for the Doab and Bundel-
cand, to muster all the force he possibly could,
and to cut off the Shah's communication for
provision in his rear. Govind with two thousand
250 THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
men had reached Meerut, and obeyed his orders
so effectually " that the Shah's army was in the
greatest distress for provisions." But the Abdali
was not a man to endure this tamely. He de-
tached a body of chosen men, under his Vizier's
nephew, who was largely reinforced by Douranee
irregulars, acting on their own account. Accord-
ing to orders, they made a rapid march of 80
miles in a single night, and " at daybreak," says
Casi Pundit, " they fell like lightning upon the
camp of Govind Pundit " ; routed and cut up
his force ; and taking him prisoner, promptly
presented his head to the Shah, whose foraging
parties were not again molested ; and who, in
fact, rapidly turned the tables in this respect
upon the Mahrattas. Another serious mishap
soon after increased the difficulties of the rash
commander. He dispatched two thousand
horsemen to convoy a large amount of treasure
from Delhi, for the use of the army. Travelling
by by-roads, they gained the capital undis-
turbed ; but on their return they missed their
way, and rode into the enemy's quarters. They
were cut to pieces, and the money was, of course,
lost.
Remembering what the Mahrattas had hither-
to been ; how their terrible agility had baffled
Aurungzib, at the height of his power ; how
they had circumvented Nizam - ul - Mulk, and
reduced him to extremity ; how they had out-
marched Aliverdi Khan ; it does seem strange
THE MAHRATTA CAMP BLOCKADED 251
that they should have allowed themselves to
be cooped up in their camp by the Afghans ;
denuded of supplies, and gradually brought to a
state of positive starvation. Yet such was the
case.
The Bhow's want of enterprise and skill will
partially explain this. To send out small parties
would have been to ensure their destruction.
And he seems to have been reluctant to move
out in force, for fear of endangering his
cumbrous train of artillery. The effects of his
jealous, capricious, and overbearing temper, and
the consequent disaffection and at least passive
insubordination of several of his chiefs and their
followers, must also be taken into account.
But this was not all. There was a paralysing
spell upon the army. The Mahrattas, from an
early period of the campaign, seem to have felt
themselves to be doomed to destruction. And,
on the other side, Suraj Mull had not exaggerated
the superior agility of the Afghans, even when
compared with the veteran predatory hosts of
the Dekkan. And the Afghan Sovereign's watch-
fulness was unsleeping ; his beleaguering arrange-
ments were most systematic ; his discipline was
most strict; and his orders, says Casi Pundit,
;c were obeyed like destiny." Daily, at sunrise,
he says, Ahmed Shah " visited every post of
the army. . . . He also reconnoitred the camp of
the enemy, and . . . saw everything with his
own eyes, riding usually 40 or 50 coss every
252 THE PANIPUT CAMPAIGN
day. ... At night there was a body of 5000 horse,
advanced as near as conveniently might be,
towards the enemy's camp, where they remained
all night under arms ; other bodies went the
rounds of the whole encampment [i.e. of the
Mahrattas]."
Under such circumstances, unless they were
prepared for a general action, it was not easy for
the Bhow's troops to forage, nor indeed to
emerge safely from their quarters.
Yet there were several partial engagements,
and daily cannonading and skirmishing. On
one occasion twenty thousand camp-followers
made their way out to cut wood for fuel ; but the
night guard of five thousand men intercepted
them, and put them all to the sword. The
depressing effect of this wholesale butchery on
the Mahrattas was great ; and the Bhow, who
had hitherto affected cheerfulness, now betrayed
" fear and despondency." No convoys could
reach his camp, and provisions and forage were
almost exhausted.
The Shah's Indian advisers, meanwhile, seeing
the enemy so completely in the toils, were im-
patient, and eager to fall on them. Casi Raja
says : " The Hindostany chiefs were out of all
patience, and entreated the Shah to put an end
to their fatigues, by coming at once to a decisive
action ; but his constant answer was, c This is a
matter of war, with which you are not acquainted.
In other affairs do as you please [a sly cut at their
AHMED'S WISE DELAY OF BATTLE 253
fussy and futile negotiations], but leave this
to me. Military operations must not be pre-
cipitated. You will see how I will manage this
affair, and at a proper opportunity will bring
it to a successful conclusion.' '
However unlike the Bhow was to Massena,
the calm confidence in himself and his plan
exhibited by Ahmed Shah, and his accurate
foresight of its working, were much akin to
Wellington's attitude at the lines of Torres
Vedras. With his own communications open,
and those of his adversary closed, the Shah
knew well that every day that the decisive
contest was delayed must tell to his advantage.
And the course of diplomacy proved this. For
our author tells us that, at this crisis, " the
Bhow often wrote letters to me with his own
hand, desiring that I would urge the Nawab
[i.e. of Oude] to mediate a peace for him that
he was ready to submit to any conditions, if
he could but preserve himself and his army,
and would by every means manifest his gratitude
to the mediators." Shuja-u-Dowla and most of
the Indian chiefs professed willingness to come
to terms ; but Nujeeb-u-Dowla was inexorable,
and the Shah was, of course, like - minded.
After in vain plundering the grain in the town of
Paniput, hunger compelled the Mahratta chiefs
and soldiers to insist upon an immediate general
action. The Bhow consented ; and it was
resolved " to march out of the lines an hour
254 THE BATTLE OF PANIPUT
before daybreak, and, placing the artillery in
front, to proceed to the attack of the enemy.
They all swore to fight to the last extremity."
Just before the battle began, Casi Raja
received a pathetic note from the disillusioned
and desperate generalissimo. " The cup," he
said, "is now full to the brim, and cannot hold
another drop. If anything can be done, do it,
or else answer me plainly at once; hereafter
there will be no time for writing or speaking."
While this note was under consideration by
Shuja-u-Dowla, he learned that the Mahratta
army was already in motion. He at once aroused
the Shah, who " mounted one of the horses
which were always ready saddled at the tent
door," and rode forth to reconnoitre, " ordering
the troops under arms as he went along." He
was sitting on his horse, calmly smoking a
Persian pipe, when the Mahratta guns, in
advance of their line, opened a general fire. He
immediately arrayed his army in battle order ;
rode along the whole front, inspecting it care-
fully ; and then, posting himself at his tent,
between his camp and the army, gave the word
for opening the engagement.
Though seriously weakened by the retirement
of the Jats and the absence of the Bonsla's
forces, the Mahratta army was very numerous
and formidable. The Bhow's chief reliance was
upon the regular and experienced corps of
Ibrahim Khan, comprising " 2000 horse, and
ESTIMATE OF RESPECTIVE FORCES 255
9000 sepoys, with firelocks, disciplined after
the European manner, together with 40 pieces
of cannon." These were field-pieces. Except
some five or six thousand inferior infantry,
equipped in native fashion, the rest of the army
consisted of cavalry, 53,000 in number, under
various leaders, who each supplied his own
contingent. Thus Holkar contributed 5000 ;
Sindia, 10,000 ; Amaji Guikwar, 3000 ; Jeswunt
Rao Powar, 2000 ; etc.
The whole train of artillery included 200
cannon, though the bulk of these were heavy
" guns of position," which, in spite of all the
sacrifices made on their behalf, were soon left
behind by the horsemen in their furious charge,
and, after the initial fusillade, played, in fact,
no part in the battle.
This was also much the case on the other
side. But both parties used shuternals, or camel-
swivels, and rockets, in great profusion. The
Bhow had also in his service two Pindari leaders,
with 15,000 of their irregular and vagabond
cavalry. The number of the Afghan cavalry was
not so great, being a little short of 42,000.
But, including the Rohillas and Shuja-u-Dowla's
troops, they had 38,000 foot, with between
70 and 80 cannon. There were also, besides
the shuternals, " 2000 camels, on each of which
were mounted two musketeers, armed with
pieces of a very large bore."
Casi Raja took great pains to verify these
256 THE BATTLE OF PANIPUT
details. But, moreover, as to the Afghan army
he adds : " The number of irregulars which
accompanied these troops were four times that
number ; and the horses and arms were very
little inferior to those of the regular Douranies.
All the Douranies were men of great bodily
strength, and their horses of the Turkish breed ;
naturally very hardy, and rendered still more
so by continual exercise."
Thus, on the whole, whether we consider
the relative capacity of the commanders, the
numbers on each side, or the superior physique
of the Douranies, especially in the famished
state of the Mahrattas, the advantage seems
much in favour of the northerners, unless
Ibrahim Khan's disciplined battalions could
justify the expectation of the Bhow, and emulate
Bussy's and dive's triumphs with the same
instrument, though wielded by so inferior a pupil.
The same inference must be drawn from two
points of contrast in the conduct of the com-
manders on either side.
The Bhow brought all his forces at once into
action, and, personally leading a tremendous
and effective charge of cavalry, combated hotly
throughout the day in the centre of his line.
The Afghan King, on the contrary, taking his
station at the tent in front of his camp, which
had been his constant post of observation
during the blockade of the Mahratta lines, but
was now in the rear of his army, calmly directed
ARRAY OP RESPECTIVE FORCES 257
its operations ; and observed, and influenced
by new dispositions, the varying fortunes of
the day, without distracting himself from the
discharge of his duties as a general by personal
participation in the encounter. And again, be-
sides a large body of special armed attendants,
for miscellaneous duties, he retained a strong
reserve which (as we shall see) he launched at
the critical moment, thereby restoring the battle,
and securing his ultimate victory.
The Mahratta army was arrayed as follows :
Ibrahim Khan Gardee, with nine battalions of
sepoys, and his field-pieces, was on its extreme
left, and next to him the Guikwar. The Bhow,
with Wiswas Rao, was in the centre of the
line, with other Mahratta chiefs and their con-
tingents. Sindia and Holkar were on the right.
The Shah's right was composed of a mixed body
of Persian and other Moguls and of Rohilla
Afghans. The Shah's Grand Vizier commanded
the centre, opposite to the Bhow. Next him,
on his left, was Shuja-u-Dowla ; and on his
left, Nujeeb-u-Dowla, the Rohilla chief of most
note, and the inveterate enemy of Janoji
Sindia, who was immediately opposed to him ;
and on Nujeeb's left was Shah Pussand Khan,
described as a " brave and experienced officer."
His division formed the extreme left of the
Shah's army. The Abdali's artillery and the
Bhow's large park of heavy cannon were ranged
in front of their respective lines. But, under
258 THE BATTLE OF PANIPUT
the circumstances, neither of these armaments
rendered much service, nor contributed at all
to decide the fate of the day. The Bhow had
calculated greatly on the effect of his numerous
and powerful guns, and he began operations
by a general and heavy cannonade. But
whether, as is most probable, from the imperfect
training and the excitement of the gunners,
or, as Casi Pundit suggests, from a deficiency
of construction, which prevented the guns from
being sufficiently depressed to take the proper
range, the shot flew high over the heads of
the enemy, and fell (it is said) a mile beyond
the Douranee army, and did little execution.
Ibrahim Khan himself, realising this, presently
silenced all the guns, and resolved to come to
close quarters with the bayonet. Thus one of
the Bhow's best trump cards was thrown away
at once. But Ibrahim hastened to assure him
that he had no intention of proving false to
his salt, and to verify his assertion by bringing
into play the redoubtable force of his dis-
ciplined sepoys. The Mahratta army had
advanced obliquely, so that Ibrahim's corps
was nearing its opponents, while, on the other
wing, the distance between the armies was
considerable. Ibrahim, therefore, reserving two
battalions to keep the Moguls on the extreme
right of the Shah's army in check, with his
seven others fiercely assailed the Rohillas. They
received the charge with great resolution ; and
AHMED'S RIGHT AND CENTRE BROKEN 259
a desperate hand-to-hand contest ensued. But,
in the end, the Rohillas were broken, and lost
nearly eight thousand killed or wounded. But,
on the other hand, Casi Pundit says, in the
action, which lasted three hours, " six of Ibrahim
Khan's battalions were almost entirely ruined,
and he himself [was] wounded in several places."
And he adds, that " the same happened to
the Guikwar, who behaved very well in his
support."
Meanwhile, the Bhow in the centre, with the
household troops, the flower of his army, fell
like an avalanche upon the Grand Vizier's
division.
The impetuous onslaught of the Mahratta
cavalry had always been most formidable. And
both the Bhow and his troops, however conscious
of their old renown, were not less conscious
that they had, at last, met at least their match,
and that nothing but victory on this day could
save them, not only from disgrace, but from
certain and prompt destruction. Hence, attenu-
ated as they were from previous privations,
they charged in their desperation with the utmost
impetuosity and terrible effect. " The Mah-
rattas," says Casi Pundit, " broke through a
line of 10,000 horse, 7000 Persian musketeers,
and 1000 camels, with zamburaks [long guns]
upon them, killing and wounding about 3000
of them." The whole centre was thrown into
confusion, and a disorderly retreat began. The
260 THE BATTLE OF PANIPUT
Grand Vizier, with a small force, still stood firm,
and made a desperate effort to rally his scattered
soldiers.
Casi Raja had been sent by Shuja-u-Dowla,
who was yet unassailed, but could discern little
through the dense cloud of dust, to ascertain
the state of the case. And he found the Grand
Vizier " in an agony of rage and despair, reproach-
ing his men for quitting him, and exclaiming,
' Our country is far off whither do you fly ? '
But," adds the witness of this critical scene, " no
one regarded his orders or exhortations." Then,
suddenly recognising the narrator, he cried out :
" Ride to my son, Shuja-u-Dowla, and tell him
that if he does not support me immediately,
I must perish." But Shuja, on receiving this
pressing message, did not venture to move with
his small force of two thousand horse and one
thousand musketeers, lest he should open the
way to the enemy through the breach in the
line which his diversion would cause. And he
did stem the tide immediately opposed to him.
But thus, on the whole, both in the centre
and on the right, the Shah's army was in desperate
case, and defeat seemed inevitable. His left wing,
on the other hand, was not only unbroken,
but was holding in check, and steadily gaining
ground on, its opponents. There Nujeeb-u-Dowla
at the head of eight thousand Rohilla infantry
and six thousand horse, conscious of his vital
interest in the issue, animated by mortal hatred
THE ABDALI'S LEFT SUCCESSFUL 261
of Sindia, and cool and crafty as he was brave
and implacable, kept the Mahrattas at bay,
and baffled their characteristic attack by two
devices. Being well supplied with rockets, he
plied the enemy with incessant volleys " of two
thousand at a time," which not only terrified the
horses by their noise, but did so much execution
that the enemy could not effect a charge in
compact order. And, under cover of this dis-
tracting fire, he threw up successively breast-
works of sand, and advanced from one of these
to another, until he had gained a coss, " and
was within a long musket shot of the enemy."
And in this operation he was well supported by
Shah Pussand and his Moguls on his flank.
In this undecided state the conflict continued
from dawn to noon ; when, says Casi Pundit,
" though we suffered least in point of killed
and wounded, the Mahrattas seemed to have
the advantage."
A comprehensive survey of the state of
affairs at this period of the battle might well
have inclined an unprofessional spectator to
take a more decidedly unfavourable view of the
Shah's prospect of success, in spite of his superior
numbers, the stronger physique of his soldiers,
and the inefficiency of the Mahratta artillery,
on which the Bhow had so confidently relied.
Ahmed Shah's right, after a desperate and
prolonged hand-to-hand conflict, had not only
been thrown into utter confusion, but had
262 THE BATTLE OF PANIPUT
sustained a terrible slaughter ; while, though
six of Ibrahim Khan's battalions had been
similarly cut up, three were still compact and
efficient. The overwhelmingly impetuous charge
of the Show's cavalry in the centre had pierced
their opponents' ranks, routed them, and put
them to flight, though the Grand Vizier had
made despairing efforts to keep them up to the
mark, and with a small body of stalwarts still
maintained his ground. And though the Afghan
left had not only baffled the Mahratta cavalry
charge, but had advanced beyond the main
army, its actual position exposed it all the
more to the danger of a flank attack, which
Shuja-u-Dowla's small contingent would little
avail to resist, when the flight of the centre
left the Bhow free to divert his victorious cavalry
against the only corps that was still unbroken.
But the Abdali's eagle eye was scanning
each phase of the conflict, and his forecasting
mind had provided against such an emergency.
He saw that an immediate and a supreme effort
must be made to restore the battle, and for
this he had prudently held in hand his strong
reserve force. This he now promptly brought
into action. And he now commanded five
hundred of his special body of cavalry, retained
for emergent services, to " drive out by force
all armed people whom they should find in his
camp, that they might assist in the action."
And he appointed one thousand five hundred
AHMED RESTORES AND WINS THE BATTLE 263
more of the same special service troops " to
meet the fugitives from the battle, and to kill
every man who should refuse to return to the
charge." Thus, besides some who were found in
the camp, seven or eight thousand of the
fugitives were reclaimed, who with the reserve
constituted a formidable force.
Four thousand were sent to cover the right
flank ; and the Grand Vizier was reinforced
with ten thousand, and ordered " to charge
the enemy, sword in hand, in close order, and
at full gallop."
Shah Pussand Khan and Nujeeb-u-Dowla
were to co-operate by a flank charge on the
Mahratta right.
These combined movements were vigorously
executed, and, says Casi Pundit, " produced a
terrible effect."
The sequel I will give in my author's own
words, which, concise and simple as they are,
sufficiently attest the stubbornness and desper-
ate determination of the attenuated and half-
famished Mahrattas, until their sudden collapse
and precipitate flight :
" This close and violent attack lasted for
near an hour, during which time they fought
on both sides with spears, swords, battle-axes,
and even daggers. Between two and three
o'clock Wiswas Rao was wounded, and dis-
mounted from his horse. . . . The Bhow himself
continued the action near half an hour longer
264 THE BATTLE OF PANIPUT
on horseback, at the head of his men ; when,
all at once, as if by enchantment, the whole
Mahratta army at once turned their backs and
fled at full speed, leaving the field of battle
covered with heaps of dead. The instant they
gave way the victors pursued them with the
utmost fury ; and, as they gave no quarter,
the slaughter is scarcely to be conceived, the
pursuit continuing for ten or twelve coss in
every direction in which they fled."
The anonymous translator of the narrative
suggests that it was the fall of Wiswas Rao
that caused the abrupt flight of the Mahrattas.
But this is inconsistent with the statement
that the Bhow fought on for half an hour longer.
A more probable reason is, that Holkar, who
had throughout disapproved of the Bhow's
tactics, and bore no love to him, and who did
actually make his escape from this fatal field,
either lost heart or treacherously deserted his
uncongenial and despised leader, and set an
example which was quickly followed by the
exhausted and desponding Mahrattas, who may
have been the more panic-stricken from having,
in the interval, learned of the death of the
Peishwa's son.
Besides those who fell in the battle and in
the pursuit, numbers were put to death by the
zemindars of the country, who were naturally
glad to have an opportunity of avenging the
long-standing and grievous wrongs which they
THE MAHRATTA POWER PROSTRATED 265
and their people had suffered from the preda-
tory confederacy. Moreover, besides the actual
combatants, the Mahratta camp supplied the
materials for another wholesale massacre. Casi
Pundit estimates its inmates, men, women,
and children, at half a million. And of these,
forty thousand only survived ; the rest were
slaughtered in cold blood by the ferocious
Afghans.
Shuja-u-Dowla gave refuge to six or seven
thousand, and was obliged to employ his troops
to protect them from the eager pursuit of the
savage victors.
Ahmed Shah returned to his own country,
and never revisited India. The awful tidings
including the death of his son, and the mys-
terious disappearance of the Bhow were a
mortal blow to the Peishwa; and, like Eli
when the Ark of God was taken, he promptly
expired. And the imminent prospect of Mah-
ratta predominance in India was obliterated in
a day, and for ever.
INDEX
Abdullah Khan, 134, 136, 137,
139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145,
148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153,
156, 161, 170, 172, 174, 177.
Abdur Razzak, 98, 99.
Abul Hasan, 97, 99.
Achilles, 149.
Adina Beg, 238.
Afzal Khan, 60, 231.
Agamemnon, 149.
Agra, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 104,
156, 198.
Ahmadnagar, 92.
Ahmed, son of Mohammad Shah,
217, 237.
Ahmed, father of Hybut, 231.
Ahmed Shah Abdali, 236, 237,
238, 240, 245, 246, 247, 257,
262.
Ahmedabad, 37, 40, 82, 124, 142,
157. 193-
Ahmednuggur, 55, 169, 222.
Ajit Sing, 81, 151, 153, 157, 158.
Ajmir, 39, 82.
Akana, 96.
Akbar, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, n, 45, 51, 52,
82, 84, 85, 95, "5, 125, 133,
137, 138, 144, 145, 163.
Alam Ali, 165, 167, 168, 169, 185.
Alamgirh, 17. See Aurungzib.
Aliverdi Khan, or Mahummud
Ali, 217 ; his rise to power and
his policy, 225-233, 234, 250.
Allahabad, 38, 134.'
Alumgeer, n, 238.
Amaji Guikwar, 255.
Amber, 19, 157. See Jeipur.
Angria, 220.
Anopsher, 244.
Arakan, 38.
Aravulli, 81.
Arcot, 109.
Ashraff, 201.
Assam, 60.
Asseerguhr, 167.
Atta Oolla, 232.
Attok, 201, 203.
Aurungabad, 147, 148, 168, 169,
222.
Aurungzib, 15, 17, 18; beguiles
Morad, 20-21 ; first campaign
against Dara, 22-30 ; makes
himself emperor, 31-34 ; sec-
ond campaign against Dara,
35-42 ; causes Morad to be
murdered, 43 ; results of his
usurpation, 44-47 ; mixture of
religious and political motives,
48-54; campaign against
Sivaji, and treatment of him,
63-73 ; reimposes jizya, and
causes Rajput revolt, 74-85 ;
conquests in the Dekkan, 86-
101 ; war with Mahrattas,
102-118 ; failure and death,
118-126. 127, 128, 129, 130,
138, 144, 154, 160, 161, 189,
197, 213, 234.
Ayeen Akbery, 3.
Azam, 82, 127, 130.
Azimu-sh Shan, 133, 134.
Babar. See Baber.
Baber, i, 2, 5, n, 133, 145, 156,
159, 163, 235, 249.
Bahadapur, 78.
Bahadur Khan, 36, 40.
Bahadur Shah, 127, 128 129, 130,
131, 132, 134, 146, 153. See
also Mohammed Moazzam and
Shah Alum.
Bairam, 138.
Baji Rao, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192,
194, 195, 196, 198, 209, 210,
212, 217, 221.
Bajwah, 37.
Bakkar, 35, 37, 40, 41.
Balaji Baji Rao, 210, 212, 213,
215, 216, 217, 220, 226, 227, 265.
Balaji Washwanath, 123, 147,
187.
Banda, 129.
Barha, 137, 143, 149, 153, 155,
174, 176, 177.
268
INDEX
Bassein, 211, 221.
Baugput, 248.
Baukir Khan, 225.
Beder, 223.
Bednore, 220.
Behar, 12, 71, 210, 224, 225, 227,
229, 230, 231.
Benares, 38, 70.
Berar, 115, 167, 191, 192, 210, 233.
Bernier, I.
Bhaskir Pundit, 226, 227, 229.
Bhima, in.
Bhim Sing, 165, 167, 168.
Bhopal, 198.
Bhurtpore, 13, 242.
Bidar Bakht, 104.
Bijapur, 17, 18, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59,
60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 71, 86, 87,
94, 99, 103, 112, 114, 146, 222.
Boondelas, 195.
Briseis, 149.
Bundelcand, 195, 235, 249.
Bundi, 165.
Burhanpur, 77, 78, 91, 167.
Bussy, 106, 218, 219, 221, 256.
Cabul, 35, 151, 201, 202, 203, 204.
Calcutta, 232.
Carnatic, 104, 105, 112, 210, 216,
219, 220.
Casi Raja Pundit, 240, 241, 247,
248, 250, 251, 252, 254, 255,
258, 259, 260, 263, 265.
Chakan, 6l. .\ -,
Chakna, 58. ^y 1
Chanda, 71.
Chandan, 58.
Charles the Bold, 87, 90.
Charles n., 183.
Chhatar Sal, 26.
Chimnagee Appa, 211, 221.
Chitore, 115.
Chumbul, 24, 198.
Churamau, 174.
Clarendon, 183.
Clive, 109, 220, 256.
Combeir, 242.
Concan, 91, 187.
Coromandel, 72, 212, 219.
Cutch, 37.
Cuttak, 225, 226, 230, 232, 233.
Cutwa, 226, 230.
Dacca, 38.
Danderi, 108.
Dara Shukoh, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 ;
first campaign against Aurung-
zib, 22-30, 32, 34 ; second
campaign against Aurungzib,
35-40 ; his death, 41. 42, 43,
45, 48, 49, 50, 52, 79, 128, 129.*
Daud Khan, 33, 142, 146.
Deeg, 242.
Dekkan, 108, and passim.
Delhi, 17, and passim.
Deogarh, 115.
Dhunaji Jadu, 104, 109.
Dilawar Khan, 168.
Dilir Khan, 19, 29, 39.
Doab, 137, 174, 196, 209, 249.
Douranies, 242, 256.
Dowlatabad, 94, 99, 223.
Dunnaji Guikwar, 213, 215.
Dupleix, 106, 218.
Durga Das, 80, 81.
Duttaji Sindia, 238, 239.
East India Company, 4, 12.
Edward in., 88.
Elliot, 57, 58, 59.
Elphinstone, 171.
Farokhsir, opening of his reign,
134-138; character, 139; in-
trigues against Abdullah and
Husain, 142-144 ; alienates
Husain, 144 ; drives Husain
into alliance with Mahrattas,
145-148 ; dethroned and mur-
dered, 150-152. 153, 157, 161,
170, 173, 180, 187, 194.
Farrukh Siyar, 134.
Fathpur, 37, 170.
Fort William College, 212.
Gaj Sing, 168.
Ganges, 196, 232.
Gawelgurh, 218.
Ghats, 83, 91, 113, 125.
Ghazi-u-din, 237, 238, 239.
Ghenzis Khan, i.
Gingee, 104, 106, 107, 112.
Goa, 211.
Godavery, 218.
Golconda, 55, 71, 86, 87, 88, 93,
94, 95, 100, 112, 114.
Govind, Sikh guru, 129 ; Pundit,
249, 250.
Grant Duff, 58, 190, 192, 214, 218,
238.
Gujarat. See Guzerat.
Guzerat, 17, 36, 37, 38, 43, 72,
82, 142, 184, 185, 190, 192, 202,
216, 234.
Gwalior, 38, 42, 69.
Haidar Kuli Khan, 159, 171, 174,
175, 176, 177.
INDEX
260
Haider Khan, 171.
Haji Hamud, 225.
Hallam, 48, 177.
Hamid Khan, 173, 177, 184.
Henry vi., 170.
Henry vni., 45.
Himmut Khan, 109.
Holkar, 191, 196, 216, 217, 219,
238, 240, 241, 242, 255, 257,
264.
Humayun, 2, 42.
Husain All Khan, no, 134, 136,
137, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147,
148, 150, 151, 152, 165, 181,
187, 227.
Hybut, 225, 229, 230.
Hyder All, 115, 220.
Hyderabad, 55, 94, 96, 146.
Ibrahim, Sultan, u.
Ibrahim Khan Gardee, 221, 254,
256, 257, 258, 259, 262.
Ikhlas Khan, 150.
Indore, 217.
Indus, 80.
Innocent in., 88.
Ireland, 8, 51.
Islam, 5, 13, 49, 115, 157.
Itikad Khan, 149, 173.
Itimadu-d-Daula, 171, 181.
Iwaz Khan, 167.
Izzut Khan, 172.
Jahan Shah, 133, 154.
Jahandar Shah, 133, 136, 152,
153, 180.
ames u., 48.
amnaji, 147.
anoji, Rugoji's son, 230.
anoji Sindia, 257.
ansi, 242.
ats, 13, 104, 174, 184, 210, 254.
ehangir, 7, 8, 125.
eiapa Sindia, 211, 237.
eipur, 19, 81.
; ei Sing, 19, 20, 29, 36, 39, 40,
42, 63, 64, 66, 67, 157.
Jelalabad, 203.
Jeswunt Rao Powar, 255.
Jeswunt Sing, 18, 22, 23, 37, 39,
61, 62, 63, 79, 80, 81, 82, 126.
Jiwan Khan, 40.
John, King of England, 88.
Joudpur, 22, 79, 80, 81.
Jumna, 244, 247, 248.
Kafia-u-Doula, 154.
Kafi'u-din, 153.
Kafi'u Shan, 133.
Kakar Khan, 77, 78.
Kaloosha, 93, 100.
Kam Bakhsh, 106, 1271
Kandeish, 142, 150.
Karnatik, 146.
Kasim Khan, 22, 108, 109.
Khafi Khan, 27, 39, 41, 43, 53, 54,
57, and passim.
Khalilullah Khan, 27, 30, 37, 40.
Khalsa, 13.
Khandeish, 77.
Khan Douran, 204.
Khan Jehan, 91, 94, 95.
Khwajah Basant, 36.
Kilich Khan, 134, 139. See
Nizam-ul-Mulk.
Kistna, 118.
Kokan, 57.
Kolapore, 131, 132, 188, 189.
Koran, 2, 6, 18, 21, 49, 52 $53, 61,
231.
Kumayoon, 19, 239.
Kunjpoora, 247. /
Lahore, 28, 34, 204, 238, 243.
Lake, 13.
Lai Kunwar, 133, 134.
Lally, 219.
Macaulay, 202.
Madana, 96.
Mahabat Khan, 35.
Mahomet Ali, 220.
Mahmood, Sultan, 30, 31, 38.
Malwa. 121, 124, 151, 162, 164,
181, 185, 191, 195, 196, 198,
202, 209, 216, 227, 234.
Mandisor, 121.
Mandu, 165.
Manikdroog, 218.
Manucci, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24,
25, 26, 27, 30, 33, 34, 36, 37,
39, 41, 42, 43, 68.
Massena, 253.
Mathura, 32.
Mecca, 3, 63.
Meer Hubeeb, 226, 230, 232.
Meer Jaffier, 230.
Meer Munnoo, 238.
Meerut, 250.
Minbulkar, 167.
Mir Abdul Karim, 77.
Mir Jumla, 38, 60/140, 141, 142,
M3-
Moazzam, 63, 82, 83, 84, 91, 94,
127. See also Bahadur Shah.
Mohammad Shah, 132, 138, 179,
181, 184, 186, 194, 205, 206,
207, 217, 227.
270
INDEX
Mongir, 38.
Moorshedabad, 226, 230.
Morad Buksh, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23,
25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 41, 43,
45. 49-
Morari Rao, 109, 216.
Moriscos, 9.
Mubariz Khan, 185.
Muhammad Ghiyas Khan, 164.
Muhammad Ibrahim, 173, 177.
Mukarrab Khan, 100.
Mulhar Rao Holkar, 237, 241,
243. 247.
Multan, 35, 36.
Munim Khan, 129, 131, 132.
Muradabad, 149.
Murhamat Khan, 164.
Mustapha Khan, 229.
Muttra, 70.
Muzaffarnagar, 137.
Mysore, 210, 220.
Nadir Shah, 178, 179, 200, 209,
225, 235, 236, 244.
Najm-ud-din Ali, 176, 177.
Nazir Jung, 209.
Neku Siyar, 156.
Nerbudda, 22, 166, 168, 181, 188,
198.
Nizam Ali, 222.
Nizam-ul-Mulk, 99, 134, 139, 148,
149, 150, 151, 153, 181, 234,
249, 250.
Nujeeb-u-Dowla, 238, 246, 253,
257, 260, 263.
Nundarbar, no.
Nurnallah, 218.
Oojein, 22, 217.
Orissa, 210, 224. See Cuttak.
Orme, 74, 126.
Oude, 12, 181, 196, 205.
Oudipur, 78, 81, 82, 115, 130, 151.
Paniput, 216, 221, 244, 249, 253.
Parli, 117.
Parnala, 71, 103.
Patna, 71, 134, 141.
PaynGunga, 218.
Peshawur, 203.
Peter the Great, 201.
Pilate, 45.
Pindaris, 114.
Poland, 201.
Poona, 61, 62, 214, 218.
Poorundhur, 63.
Primavera, 36.
Puar, 191.
Punjab, 127, 143, 238.
Rajgarh, 58, 64, 71, 72, 103.
Rajmahal, 38.
Rajputana, 10, 82, 210.
Ram Raja, 103, 114, 116, 121,
131* 213.
Ram Sing, 18, 26, 67, 68.
Rana Sanga, 12.
Ratan Chand, 140, 144, 145, 155,
i57 158, 167, 170, 173, 175,
178.
Rohilla Afghans, 195, 202, 238,
247, 255, 257, 258, 259.
Rohilkund, 239.
Roum, Sultan of, 9.
Rugoji, 210, 212, 217, 218, 226,
227, 229.
Rugonath Rao, 210, 220, 238,
240, 241, 243.
Rustam Khan, 25, 26.
Sadut Khan, 171, 181, 196, 197,
204, 205, 209.
Safder Jung, 219, 227, 237.
Said Ahmed Khan, 225.
Saiyid Abdullah, 154.
Salabat Jung, 215, 218, 219, 222.
Sambaji, 64, 70, 78, 85, 89, 91,
94, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 112.
Santaji Ghorepuray, 104, 105,
107, 108, 109, 112, 216.
Satara, 71, 115, 117, 147, 153, 163,
177, 178, 191, 214, 215.
Sedasheo, 220, 221, 222, 223, 242.
Selimgurh, 34.
Serfiraz Khan, 225, 228.
Shah Alam, 95.
Shahbaz, 21, 33.
Shahdere, 247.
Shah Jehan, 2, 7, 17, 20, 21, 22,
23, 28, 31, 32, 34, 36, 40, 46,
55, 56, 121, 125.
Shahji, or Sahu, father of Sivaji,
Shah Nawaz Khan, 37.
Shah Pussand Khan, 257, 261,
263.
Shah Shuja, 17, 18, 19, 20, 29, 36,
37, 38, 79, 246.
Shaista Khan, 61, 62, 63.
Shao, or Sahu, Raja of Satara,
130, 131, 146, 147, 185, 188,
189, 212, 213, 214.
Shias, 138.
Shuja-u-Dowla, 224, 225, 237,
239, 240, 241, 244, 245, -246,
253. 255, 257, 260, 262, 265.
Shumsur Khan, 230, 231, 232.
Sikander Lodi, 156.
Sind, 40.
INDEX
271
Sindia, 109, 136, 163, igi, 196,
216, 217, 219, 241, 255, 257,
261.
Sipihr Shukoh, 41, 42.
Sirdar Khan, 230, 231, 232.
Sirinagar, 29, 42.
Sironj, 121.
Sivaji, 4 ; Rajput on his mother's
side, 12, 1 8, 53 ; early career,
56-59; campaigns against
Aurungzib, 60-70 ; successfully
defies Aurungzib, 70-72 ; death,
73- 74> 8 3, 90, 93> 94, 96, 104,
112, 126, 130, 159, 191, 208,
214, 231.
Sivapur, 61.
Siyar-ul-Mutakherin, 200, 203.
Solaiman Shukoh, 19, 22, 24, 28,
29, 34, 36, 42.
Soonees, 138, 145.
Sreeput Rao, 188, 189.
Sufi, 129.
Sukwar Bhye, 212, 214.
Supa, 61.
Suraj Mull, 239, 241, 242, 246,
247, 249, 251.
Suraja Dowlah, 232, 233.
Surat, 18, 63, 72, 92, 157, 158.
Surbuland Khan, 148, 150.
Surup Sing, 35.
Taj Mahal, 5.
Tamasp, 201.
Tara Bai, 116, 117, 121, 123, 131,
213, 214, 215.
Tattah, 36.
Tavernier, 206.
Tibet, 42.
Timour, Emperor, I, 128, 133,
.139-
Timour, son of the Abdali, 238.
Tira, 170.
Tod, Colonel, 130.
Torna, 58, 120.
Torres Vedras, 253.
Trimbuk Rao, 185, 190, 192, 213,
215-
Udipur, 82. See Oudipur.
Ujjain, 125.
Warren Hastings, 202.
Wars of the Roses, 170.
Watson, 220.
Wellesley, 114, 195, 212, 244.
Wellington, Duke of, 118,245, 2 53-
Wiswas Rao, 241, 244, 257, 263,
264, 265.
Zulfikar Khan, 104, 106, 107, 130,
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