History of India, From the Reign of Akbar the Great to the Fall of the Moghul Empire E-Book

Stanley Lane Poole

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 310

Beschreibung

Pyrrhus Press specializes in bringing books long out of date back to life, allowing today’s readers access to yesterday’s treasures.

Das E-Book History of India, From the Reign of Akbar the Great to the Fall of the Moghul Empire wird angeboten von Charles River Editors und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
islam; medieval; middle ages; british; colony

Leseprobe

History of India, From the Reign of Akbar the Great to the Fall of the Moghul Empire

Stanley Lane-Poole

About Pyrrhus Press

Pyrrhus Press specializes in bringing books long out of date back to life, allowing today’s readers access to yesterday’s treasures.

Stanley Lane-Poole’s History of India, From the Reign of Akbar the Great to the Fall of the Moghul Empire is yet another book of the great historian’s about India during the Middle Ages in the wake of the Muslim conquests. The editor’s introduction explains:

“When Akbar the Great, the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth, ascended the throne of India, it was with a heart inspired by the highest ideals ever held by a ruler of Islamitic blood, and the manner in which he lived up to these ideals made him the noblest monarch, after Asoka, that ever reigned over the land beyond the river Indus.

Akbar was followed by his son Jahangir, the Great Moghul, and he by Shah Jahan, the Magnificent, who was succeeded in turn by Aurangzib, the Puritan Emperor and last of the line of great Moghuls. Mohammedan India reached the culmination of its glory in the fortunes of this dynasty. The subsequent rise of the Marathas heralded a new era, and signs of the beginnings of European power in India were now at hand.

The interesting story of these events, as told by Professor Lane-Poole, has been supplemented by including in this volume two selections from native Mohammedan chroniclers found in that inexhaustible mine of material, Elliot’s “History of India as Told by Its Own Historians” in Professor Dowson’s edition, the indebtedness to which is acknowledged.”

Introduction by the Editor

When Akbar the Great, the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth, ascended the throne of India, it was with a heart inspired by the highest ideals ever held by a ruler of Islamitic blood, and the manner in which he lived up to these ideals made him the noblest monarch, after Asoka, that ever reigned over the land beyond the river Indus.

Akbar was followed by his son Jahangir, the Great Moghul, and he by Shah Jahan, the Magnificent, who was succeeded in turn by Aurangzib, the Puritan Emperor and last of the line of great Moghuls. Mohammedan India reached the culmination of its glory in the fortunes of this dynasty. The subsequent rise of the Marathas heralded a new era, and signs of the beginnings of European power in India were now at hand.

The interesting story of these events, as told by Professor Lane-Poole, has been supplemented by including in this volume two selections from native Mohammedan chroniclers found in that inexhaustible mine of material, Elliot’s “History of India as Told by Its Own Historians” in Professor Dowson’s edition, the indebtedness to which is acknowledged.

With reference to the preparation of the text of the present volume editorially and with regard to the illustrations, I have been guided in general by the principles laid down in the preceding volumes of the series. Besides the assistance previously acknowledged in respect to illustrative material and other matter, I desire to unite with the publishers in thanking Mr. Frederick J. Agate, of New York, who was with me in my travels through India, for the use of certain photographs in his collection, and also to thank Dr. Edward S. Holden, Librarian of the United States Military Academy at West Point, for the pictures of two Mohammedan heroines, Nur Jahan and Mumtaz-i-Mahal, reproduced from miniatures in the British Museum, through the courtesy of Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons, of New York.

A. V. Williams Jackson.

Chapter 1 - The United Empire - Akbar the Great - 1556-1605 A.D.

The long reign of Akbar, which lasted from 1556 to 1605, has been represented as the golden age of the Moghul empire. It was in reality but the beginning of the period of splendour which ended with the disastrous wars of Aurangzib. Akbar was the true founder and organizer of the empire, but it is too often forgotten that it took him twenty years of hard fighting to bring Hindustan under subjection, and that even at his death the process was incomplete. There was no sudden and miraculous submission to the boy of thirteen who found himself called to an as yet unconquered throne by the accident that ended his father’s ineffectual life in the beginning of 1556. A hard struggle was before him ere he could call himself king even of Delhi. He was fortunate, no doubt, in the divisions of his adversaries, and after the crushing defeat of Himu at Panipat he was never called upon to meet a general muster of Indian troops; but the process of reducing usurper after usurper, and suppressing one rebellion after another, was tedious and harassing, and in spite of a wise statesmanship matured by experience, and a clemency and toleration which grew with advancing years, to the day of his death Akbar seldom knew what it was to enjoy a year’s freedom from war.

At the time of his accession the only parts of India that he possessed were the Panjab and Delhi in the north, which were the fruits of the victory at Sirhind in 1555. The Afghan dynasty still held Bengal and the Ganges valley; the Rajputs were independent in Western Hindustan, and there were innumerable chiefs in possession of separate principalities all over the country. It was not till the third year of his reign that Akbar was able to occupy Ajmir. Gwalior fell in 1558, and by 1561 he had driven the Afghans back from Lucknow and Jaunpur. The Moghul empire so far was almost restricted to the Panjab and the Northwest Provinces, though Malwa was partly overrun in 1561, and Burhanpur in Khandesh was captured a year later.

The storming of Chitor in 1567 was a conspicuous landmark in history, but it was not till 1572 that the Raj-puts were finally brought into the empire. Bengal was not conquered before 1575, and Gujarat, though occupied in 1572, had to be retaken in 1584 and gave trouble for several years more. Kabul, under Akbar’s brother Hakim, was almost a separate kingdom and frequently aggressive. Among the outlying provinces, Orissa became part of the empire as late as 1590, Kashmir in 1587, Sind in 1592, Kandahar in 1594, and only a small portion of the Deccan was annexed in Akbar’s life.

The reign was thus a perpetual series of efforts toward the expansion of a territory originally small. So doubtful indeed seemed Akbar’s prospects of Indian sovereignty at the moment when his father’s unexpected death placed him in command, that in the first council of war the generals strongly urged an immediate retreat upon Kabul, and their advice was overruled only by the firm decision of the regent Bairam, an old Turkman officer who had followed Babar and Humayun, and realized better than the others the divided and leaderless state of the enemy. Matters were certainly in an alarming position. Sikandar of Delhi had been driven to the mountains, where he held Mankot against all attacks, but a far more formidable army was marching to take vengeance. Himu, the general of the Bengal kingdom, a Hindu who had rapidly advanced from a mere shopkeeper to practically supreme power, entered Agra unopposed, defeated Tardi Beg at Delhi, occupied the capital, assumed the historic title of Raja Vikramajit, and then advanced to crush the Moghul forces.

When the dispirited remnant of the garrison of Delhi reached Akbar’s headquarters at Sirhind, news had just arrived of another blow, the revolt of Kabul. Fortunately the young emperor had a great soldier at his side to meet the crisis. Bairam, the atalik, or regent, was a consummate general and a man of iron resolution. He instantly made an example of Tardi Beg, for the loss of Delhi, and placed the other disgraced officers under arrest. Then he sent on the advance-guard, which was lucky enough to intercept the entire park of Ottoman artillery which Himu had incautiously set adrift; and on Friday the 5th of November, 1556, the two armies confronted each other on the field of Panipat, where thirty years before Babar had overthrown the Afghan power, and where two centuries later another battle swept away the Maratha hordes and prepared the way for England.

In spite of the loss of his guns, Himu commanded a force sufficient to dismay the Moghul leaders. He had three divisions, the centre of which was composed of twenty thousand horse (Afghans and Rajputs) supported by five hundred elephants, and the whole force of elephantry numbered at least 1500. Himu led the advance, “scowling on his elephant Hawa, ‘the Wind.’ ” His charge upon the Moghul left was successful; he then turned to crush their centre. But here the archers stood firm, the enemy were harassed by showers of arrows, and one fortunate shaft pierced the eye of the Hindu leader. There was no one in authority to take up the command, and the masterless crowd broke up like a herd of stampeded horses. Himu on his elephant was driven straight into the presence of Akbar, and Bairam bade the boy flesh his sword on the dying “infidel.” The honourable chivalry which distinguished Akbar above all his line at once burst forth: “How can I strike a man who is as good as dead?” he cried. Bairam had no such fine scruples, and immediately dispatched the wounded man.

The crisis had been bravely met, and Akbar had never again to confront so dangerous an enemy. Henceforward, though constantly fighting, he had the advantage – incalculable in Oriental warfare – of being in the position of the attacker, not the attacked. Delhi again opened its gates and received him with effusive loyalty. Agra followed the example of the capital, and after an eight months’ siege Sikandar surrendered Mankot and retired to Bengal. The young prince was now king at least in the northwest corner of India. The process of settling this comparatively small territory and dealing with the revenues and the status of the military vassals occupied the next few years, and, except for the reduction of the great fortress of Gwalior and the conquest of the Ganges valley as far as Jaunpur and Benares, the limits of the kingdom were not greatly extended.

In 1560 Akbar took the reins into his own hands. He had chafed under the masterful management of Bairam, whose severity and jealousy had been shown in several high-handed executions and had roused general discontent. Palace intrigue set Akbar’s mind against his old tutor, who was doubtless slow to realize that his pupil was no longer a child to be held by a leading-string.

In an Eastern harem there are powerful influences against which few ministers can prevail, and Akbar’s foster-mother, Maham Anaga, ruled the palace in those early years. She used her power to undermine the emperor’s esteem for Bairam. Taking advantage of a visit to Delhi, where he was free from the regent’s domination, she worked upon his natural impatience of the regent’s arrogance, and induced him to break his bonds. Akbar publicly announced that he had taken the government into his own hands, and sent orders to the deposed minister to go on pilgrimage to Mekka – a courteous form of temporary banishment. The young emperor might, perhaps, have dealt more gently with the honoured servant of his father and grandfather – one, too, who had so strenuously served him in his hour of peril – but the change had to be made, and it could not be easy in any way. Bairam left for Gujarat to take a boat for Arabia, but on his way he fell among evil counsellors who tempted him to revolt. He was defeated and made humble submission, when Akbar instantly pardoned him with all his old kindness. But there could now be no place for Bairam in the government, and he set forth sadly on his pilgrimage, once the chief desire of the staunch Moslem, but now a mark of his downfall. Before he could embark he was assassinated by an Afghan in quittance of a blood-feud.

The nurse’s triumph was brief. For a time she acted almost as a prime minister, and her quick intelligence, as well as her devotion to her foster-son, made her invaluable to him. Unhappily, her hopes were wrapped up in her own son, Adham Khan. She pushed him forward to high command, which he filled with more arrogance than loyalty; he fell into disgrace, and when finally out of envy and chagrin he murdered Akbar’s foster-father, the prime minister Shams-ad-din, in 1563, and then stood at the door of the harem as if in sanctuary, his cup was full. The emperor rushed out, sword in hand, felled the assassin with a blow of his fist, and, foster-brother though he was, Adham was instantly thrown over the battlements of the palace. It broke his mother’s heart, and she survived him but forty days.

It was time that Akbar freed himself from this harem influence. Adham had already tarnished the emperor’s name in Malwa, where, after expelling the pleasure-loving and cultured Afghan governor, Baz Bahadur, he behaved grossly toward the vanquished. “Baz Bahadur,” writes Elphinstone, “had a Hindu mistress who is said to have been one of the most beautiful women ever seen in India. She was as accomplished as she was fair, and was celebrated for her verses in the Hindi language. She fell into the hands of Adham Khan on the flight of Baz Bahadur, and, finding herself unable to resist his importunities and threatened violence, she appointed an hour to receive him, put on her most splendid dress, on which she sprinkled the richest perfumes, and lay down on a couch with her mantle drawn over her face. Her attendants thought that she had fallen asleep, but on endeavouring to awake her on the approach of the khan, they found she had taken poison and was already dead.” Nor was this all. Other ladies of Baz Bahadur’s harem were in Adham’s possession, and when Akbar himself rode to Malwa in hot haste and bitter shame to stop his lieutenant’s atrocities, Maham Anaga had these innocent women killed, lest they should tell tales to the emperor. Akbar was well quit of both mother and son.

Although the young emperor was still immature, and it was many years before he entered upon that stage of philosophic enlightenment which has made his name a household word for wisdom and toleration, he had already shown something of his character and self-reliance.

His refusal to strike the dying Himu, his firm and yet not unkind treatment of his revolted regent, his honest indignation at Adham’s iniquities, show that Akbar possessed the right spirit. Physically he is described by his son Jahangir, in later life, as of middle stature, long in the arms and sturdy of figure, rather sallow in face, with black eyes and eyebrows and an open forehead. A wart on the left side of his nose was regarded as not only auspicious but exceedingly beautiful. His voice was ringing, and, in spite of scant culture, his conversation had a charm of its own. “His manners and habits,” adds his son, “were quite different from those of other people, and his countenance was full of godlike dignity.” His mode of life was regular and abstemious. His time was carefully filled, and he slept little; “his sleep looked more like waking.” He ate but one meal a day, and that in moderation, never approaching satiety. Ganges water, “cooled with saltpetre,” was his drink, and it was kept sealed for fear of poison. He took meat but twice a week, and even then with repugnance, for he disliked making his body a “tomb for beasts “; but some meat he found necessary to support his fatigues. He was a man of great energy and constant occupation, capable of immense and prolonged effort, and fond of all manly exercises. He was a fine polo player and so devoted to the game that he used to play it even by night, using fireballs. The chase was his keenest delight, and he would break the tedium of the long marches of his many campaigns by hunting elephants or tigers on the way. We read of 350 elephants taken in a single day; at another time he stalked wild asses for thirty-five miles, and shot sixteen. He had names for his guns, and kept records of their performances. There were vast battues, when thousands of deer, nilgau, or Indian blue antelope, jackals, and foxes were driven by the beaters in a circle of forty miles, and the lines drawn closer and closer, till Akbar could enjoy at his ease several days’ shooting and hawking with plenty of sport, and still leave a few thousand head for his followers to practise on. These battues sometimes took place by night, and there is a curious painting of the period, showing one of these nocturnal hunts with the emperor on horseback, and the game, startled by the bright flashing of a lantern, leaping as the chief shikar, or huntsman, draws his bow. Akbar had also mechanical genius. He devised a new method of making gun-barrels of spirally rolled iron, which could not burst; he invented a machine which cleaned sixteen barrels at once, another by which seventeen guns could be fired simultaneously with one match, and there were many more things that he improved by his talent for invention.

Nothing seemed to fatigue Akbar. He is said to have ridden from Ajmir to Agra, a distance of 240 miles, in a day and a night, and even if (with some authorities) we double the time, it is still wonderful travelling, and one is not surprised to read that he often exhausted his horses when pushing on night and day at breakneck speed. He liked to see a good fight, too, and one day at Thanesar he chanced upon a curious spectacle. It was the annual festival, and there was a vast crowd beside the sacred lake; the holy men were gathering a rich harvest in charity, when the customary struggle arose between two sects of fanatics for the possession of the bathing-place. They came to the emperor and begged to be allowed to fight it out according to their habit. He consented, and allowed some of his soldiers to smear their bodies with ashes and go in to support the weaker side. There was a splendid fight; many were killed, we are told; and “the emperor greatly enjoyed the sight.”

On a campaign Akbar was indefatigable. In one of his pursuits of Ali Kuli Khan-zaman, an Uzbeg officer who repeatedly revolted in the name of Akbar’s jealous brother, Hakim, and was as often pardoned by his too forgiving sovereign, he pushed on so rapidly that of his army only five hundred men and elephants succeeded in being in at the finish. In spite of his reduced force, Akbar rode straight for the enemy, and took his own share of the fighting. “As the battle grew hot, the emperor alighted from his elephant, Balsundar, and mounted a horse. Then he gave orders for the elephants to be driven against the lines of Ali Kuli Khan Among them there was an elephant named Hiranand, and when he approached the ranks of the enemy, they let loose against him an elephant called Diyana; but Hiranand gave him such a butt that he fell upon the spot. Ali Kuli received a wound from an arrow, and while he was drawing it out another struck his horse. The animal became restive, and Ali Kuli was thrown. An elephant named Narsing now came up and was about to crush him, when Ali Kuli cried out to the driver, ‘ I am a great man; if you take me alive to the emperor he will reward you.’ The driver paid no heed to his words, but drove the animal over him and crushed him under foot.” Many prisoners were cast to the elephants to be trampled to death, a common mode of execution in India, in which Akbar showed no scruple. After refusing, in his chivalrous way, to attack an unprepared enemy till the trumpets had announced his approach, he had no qualms about making a pyramid of two thousand rebels’ heads after the fashion of his ancestor Timur. He could be terribly stern and was subject to paroxysms of rage, in one of which he threw a servant from the battlements for falling asleep in the palace, but his natural inclination was ever towards mercy, and his forgiveness often cost him dear.

As an example of personal courage his attack on his rebellious cousins, the Mirzas, at Surat in 1572 may be instanced. Pressing on at his usual speed, he found himself on the bank of the Mahindri River in face of the enemy, with only forty men at his back. Sixty more soon joined him, and with this handful he forthwith swam the river, stormed the town, and, rushing through, discovered the enemy in a plain on the other side. The emperor’s force was outmatched by ten to one, and the fighting was desperate. “The royal forces were in a narrow place, hedged in with thorns, where three horsemen could not pass abreast. The emperor with much courage was at the front, with Raja Bhagvan Das beside him. Three of the enemy’s horsemen now charged them. One attacked the raja, who hurled his spear at him and wounded him as he was entangled in the thorns, so that he fled; the other two attacked his Majesty, who received them so stoutly that they were forced to make off.” Two officers now joined Akbar, who, refusing their escort, sent them after his assailants; and the little force, roused by their emperor’s danger, utterly routed the enemy. The courage of Akbar had put every man on his mettle, and the victors returned to Baroda the heroes of the hour. In the campaign of 1572–3 Akbar not only retook Ahmadabad and entered Cambay and Baroda, but captured the strong fort of Surat, which had been built with extraordinary care and skill to keep out the Portuguese, and contained mortars bearing the name of Sulaiman the Great of Turkey. When Akbar took the fort of Junagarh in Kathiawar in 1591, he found there a gun of the same Sultan, whose fleet had vainly attacked the coast castles and had been forced to abandon the guns.

The presence of the Raja Bhagvan Das at Akbar’s side in the skirmish just described is significant. If he had not been altogether successful in managing his Mohammedan followers, a turbulent body of adventurers, the emperor more than redeemed his overindulgence to rebellious Moslems by his wise conciliation of Hindus. It may be that the very truculence and insubordination which he found so hard to check among his Turkish officers threw him perforce into the arms of the Rajputs; for we can hardly believe that a mere lad, brought up in an atmosphere of despotic rule, could as yet, have imagined the ideal of a government resting upon the loyalty of the native population. As early as 1562 Bhagvan’s father, Raja Bihari Mal, the lord of Amber and ancestor of the present maharajas of Jaipur, had come to pay his homage to the new sovereign. “He was received with great honour and consideration, and his daughter, an honourable lady, was accepted by his Majesty, and took her place among the ladies of the court.” Akbar had already married his cousins Rukayya and Salima, but this union with a Rajput princess marked a new policy. Her father was decorated with the highest rank of the official aristocracy, as a mansabdar, or general of five thousand horse, and the bride, freely exercising the rites of her own faith and performing the usual Hindu sacrifices, encouraged her husband’s tendency towards religious toleration. Later on he took other women, Hindu, Persian, Moghul, and even an Armenian, until his harem formed a parliament of religions, though no rumour of their probable debates ever reached the outside world. Abu-l-Fazl says there were more than five thousand inmates of the harem, in various capacities, and sagely remarks that “the large number of women – a vexatious question even for great statesmen – furnished his Majesty with an opportunity to display his wisdom.”

An almost immediate result of this alliance with the Rajput princess was the abolition in 1562 of the jizya, or poll-tax, which Mohammedan conquerors levied upon unbelievers in accordance with the law of Islam. His next act was to discontinue the tax upon Hindu pilgrims, on the ground that, however superstitious the rites of pilgrimage might be, it was wrong to place any obstacle in the way of man’s service to God. No more popular measures could have been enacted. The jizya was an insult as well as a burden, and both taxes bore heavily on the poor and were bitterly resented.

It was the re-imposition of the tax on religion in the time of Aurangzib that, more than anything else, uprooted the wise system established by his ancestor. But while conciliating the Hindus by just and equal government, Akbar did not hesitate to interfere with some of their most cherished practices when they offended his sense of, humanity. He forbade child-marriage, trial by ordeal, and animal sacrifice; he permitted widows to marry again, and set his face resolutely against the burning of widows on their husband’s pyres: wholly to abolish suttee was beyond his power, but he ordained that the sacrifice must be voluntary, and he took personal pains to see that no compulsion should be used. He also insisted that “the consent of the bride and bridegroom and the permission of the parents are absolutely necessary in marriage contracts” – a new idea in a country where girls were married without regard for their own wishes or desires.

Akbar was too shrewd a man to suppose that the hereditary pride of the Rajputs was to be conquered merely by kind words and mild. measures. He knew that often the best way to make friends with a man is to knock him down. Udai Singh, the great rana of Mewar (son of Sanga, Babar’s adversary), left him in no doubt as to his hostility. He sheltered Baz Bahadur when driven from Malwa by the imperial army, and when other rajas came and tendered their allegiance to the Moghul, Udai Singh stood aloof, apparently secure in his rocky fortresses and numerous array of troops and elephants. Akbar, he thought, could never take his strong castle of Chitor, standing on an isolated crag, four hundred feet high, and with almost perpendicular sides towards the top. The summit was occupied by an immense fortress, well supplied with provisions, wells, and water-tanks, and garrisoned by eight thousand veterans of the Rajput race under a famous leader, Jai Mal, the rana himself having prudently retreated to the Aravali hills on Akbar’s approach in 1567.

The citadel in Akbar’s time is thus described by Mulla Ahmad: “The castle is situated in the midst of a level plain which has no other hills. The mountain is twelve miles round at the base, and nearly six at the summit. On the east and north it is faced with hard stone, and the garrison had no fears on those sides, nor could guns, swivels, stone-slings, or mangonels do much damage on the other sides, if they managed to reach them. Travellers do not mention any fortress like this in all the world. The whole summit was crowded with buildings, some several stories high, and the battlements were strongly guarded and the magazines full.” The garrison laughed at the slender force of three or four thousand which the emperor had brought against a fortress twelve miles in girth, and well they might.

They had to deal with a skilful engineer, however, and Akbar made his dispositions with great care. Batteries were set up all around the fort, and a strict blockade was established. Meanwhile generals were sent to seize Rampur and Udaipur, and to lay the surrounding country waste. “From day to day,” says Mulla Ahmad, “the gallant assailants brought their attacks closer to the fort on every side, though many fell under the resolute fire of the defenders. Orders were given for digging trenches and making sabats, and nearly five thousand builders, carpenters, masons, smiths, and sappers were mustered from all parts.

Sabats, or broad covered ways, under the shelter of which the besiegers approach a fortress protected from gun and musket fire, are contrivances peculiar to Hindustan, for the strong forts of that land are full of guns, muskets, and defensive machines, and can be taken only by this means. Two sabats were accordingly begun; one, opposite the royal quarters, was so broad and high that two elephants and two horses could easily pass abreast, with raised spears. The sabats were begun from the brow of the hill (i. e. half-way up, below the perpendicular scarp), which is a fortress upon a fortress.” Seven or eight thousand horsemen and gunners strove to stop the work, and in spite of the bull-hide roofs over the labourers, a hundred or so were killed every day, and their corpses were used as building materials. There was no forced labour, by Akbar’s order, but the volunteers were stimulated by showers of money. Soon one of the sabats overtopped the wall of the castle, and on the roof of it a gallery was made whence the emperor could watch the fight.

Meanwhile the sappers had not been idle. Two bastions were mined with gunpowder, and a storming party was drawn up. The first mine blew a bastion into the air, and the stormers rushed into the breach, shouting their war-cry, and were at once at hand-grip with the garrison. At that moment the second mine. owing to a miscalculation, exploded and hurled in fragments into the air the crowd struggling in the breach. The charge was so heavy that stones and corpses were hurled “miles” away, according to the historian, and the royal army was half blinded by the dust and smoke and by the hail of stones and bodies that descended upon them.

The first approach had failed, and Akbar now ordered the other sabat to be pushed forward. He was more resolved than ever to take the fort by storm “so that in future no other fortress should dare to withstand him.” He took up his position in the gallery on the top of the sabat, as before, armed with his musket, “deadly as the darts of fate, with which he killed every moving thing that caught his eye.” At last the walls were breached, and the assault was ordered. Jai Mal, the commandant, “an infidel, yet valiant,” struggled bravely in every part and all day long, encouraging his men to beat off the enemy. At the hour of evening prayer he came in front of the royal battery, where Akbar sat discharging his gun “Sangram” as often as light flashed forth in the bastion. Jai Mal happened to be standing in the tower encouraging his men just when a blaze of light revealed his face to Akbar, who fired and killed him on the spot. Then the garrison gave up hope, and after burning the body of their leader, they performed their dismal rite of jauhar, burning all their families and goods in huge bonfires, and then rushing on to death. The besiegers saw the flare of the pyres, and poured through the breaches, while Akbar looked on from the top of the sabat. Three elephants he sent into the castle to aid in the general massacre of the devoted garrison. The Rajputs fought every step; each lane and street and bazar was sternly disputed; they fought up to the very temple. Two thousand were killed by midday; the total death-roll of the Hindus was at least eight thousand men, besides their families; the rest were made prisoners, as we know from the accounts of those who were present at the storming. The heroism of the defence was long commemorated in popular tradition by the two statues, supposed to represent Jai Mal and his brother, mounted on stone elephants, which flanked the gate of the fortress at Delhi. “These two elephants,” says Bernier, “mounted by the two heroes, have an air of grandeur and inspire me with an awe and respect which I cannot describe.”

The fall of Chitor, followed by two other famous fortresses, Rantambhor and Kalinjar, a few months later, secured the allegiance of the Rajputs. The rajas agreed to acclaim a power which they found as irresistible as it was just and tolerant. Akbar cemented the good feeling by marrying another princess, daughter of the raja of Bikanir, and henceforward he could rely on the loyalty of the most splendid soldiery in India. In his future campaigns, as in those of his son and grandson, there were always brave Hindus to the fore, and the names of Bhagvan Das, Man Singh, and Todar Mal are famous in the annals of Moghul warfare and administration. Bhagvan Das and Man Singh not only distinguished themselves in the wearisome and reiterated campaigns which the unsettled state of Gujarat compelled Akbar to undertake for a space of twenty years, but were even trusted by him in 1578 to wage war upon the ever hostile rana of Udaipur, Rajput against Rajput. They justified his confidence, drove the rana to the Indus, and captured his strongholds of Goganda and Kunbhalmir.

Chapter 2 - Akbar's Reforms - The Divine Faith - 1566-1605 A.D.

This assimilation of the Hindu chiefs was the most conspicuous feature of Akbar’s reign. His wars were like other Indian wars, only mitigated by his sovereign quality of mercy to those who submitted, and by his scrupulous care that the peasants should not suffer by the passage of his troops. The empire was gradually extended till it stretched from Kandahar to the Bay of Bengal, and included the whole of Hindustan down to the Narbada. But the remarkable points about this expansion to the old limits of Ala-ad-din’s realm were, first, that it was done with the willing help of the Hindu princes, and, secondly, that expansion went hand in hand with orderly administration. This was a new thing in Indian government, for hitherto the local officials had done pretty much as it pleased them, and the central authority had seldom interfered so long as the revenue did not suffer. Akbar allowed no oppression by his lieutenants, and not a few of his campaigns were undertaken mainly for the purpose of punishing governors who had been guilty of self-seeking and peculation. Much of the improvement was due to his employment of Hindus, who at that time were better men of business than the uneducated and mercenary adventurers who formed a large proportion of the Mohammedan invaders.

No Moslem served Akbar more zealously or with more far-reaching results than the great financier, Raja Todar Mal, a Khatri Rajput, who had served in his youth under the able administration, of Sher Shah, and had thus gained priceless experience in the management of lands and revenues. He assisted Akbar’s first chancellor of the exchequer, Muzaffar Khan, in settling the newly acquired kingdom, and in 1566 took a leading part in suppressing the revolt of Ali Kull. It was the first time, in Moghul rule, that a Hindu had been sent against a Moslem enemy, and his employment was doubtless due to Akbar’s suspicion that the Mohammedan generals might act in collusion with their old comrade, the rebel. After this he was employed in settling the revenue system of Gujarat, and then again took military command in the conquest of Bengal in 1574–7 and its reduction in 1581, when he distinguished himself by his firm courage. He was rewarded soon afterwards with the office of vizir, and in 1582 became chief finance minister, introducing the famous reforms and the new assessment known as Todar Mal’s rent-roll, the Domesday Book of the Moghul empire. He died in 1589. “Careful to keep himself from selfish ambition,” writes Abu-l-Fazl, “he devoted himself to the service of the state, and earned an everlasting fame.”