The Fall of the Moghul Empire E-Book

H. G. Keene

• Herausgeber: Jovian Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 390

Beschreibung

For nearly two centuries the throne of the Chaghtais continued to be filled by a succession of exceptionally able Princes. The brave and simple-hearted Babar, the wandering Humayun, the glorious Akbar, the easy but uncertain-tempered Jahangir, the magnificent Shahjahan, all these rulers combined some of the best elements of Turkish character and their administration was better than that of any other Oriental country of their date. Of Shahjahan's government and its patronage of the arts both decorative and useful we have trustworthy contemporary descriptions. His especial taste was for architecture; and the Mosque and Palace of Dehli, which he personally designed, even after the havoc of two centuries, still remain the climax of the Indo-Saracenic order, and admitted rivals to the choicest works of Cordova and Granada.

Leseprobe

THE FALL OF THE MOGHUL EMPIRE

H.G. Keene

JOVIAN PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by H.G. Keene

Published by Jovian Press

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ISBN: 9781537811086

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

APPENDIX A.

APPENDIX B.

APPENDIX C.

APPENDIX D.

APPENDIX E.

PART I.

~

CHAPTER I.

~

Preliminary Observations on Hindustan and the City of Dehli.

THE country to which the term Hindustan is strictly and properly applied may be roughly described as a rhomboid, bounded on the north-west by the rivers Indus and Satlej, on the south-west by the Indian Ocean, on the south-east by the Narbadda and the Son, and on the north-east by the Himalaya Mountains and the river Ghagra. In the times of the emperors, it comprised the provinces of Sirhind (or Lahore), Rajputana, Gujrat, Malwa, Audh (including Rohilkand, strictly Rohelkhand, the country of the Rohelas, or “Rohillas” of the Histories), Agra, Allahabad, and Dehli: and the political division was into subahs, or divisions, sarkars or districts; dasturs, or sub-divisions; and parganahs, or fiscal unions.

The Deccan, Panjab (Punjab), and Kabul, which also formed parts of the Empire in its widest extension at the end of the seventeenth century, are omitted, as far as possible, from notice, because they did not at the time of our narration form part of the territories of the Empire of Hindustan, though included in the territory ruled by the earlier and greater Emperors.

Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa also formed, at one time, an integral portion of the Empire, but fell away without playing an important part in the history we are considering, excepting for a very brief period. The division into Provinces will be understood by reference to the map. Most of these had assumed a practical independence during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, though acknowledging a weak feudatory subordination to the Crown of Dehli.

The highest point in the plains of Hindustan is probably the plateau on which stands the town of Ajmir, about 230 miles south of Dehli. It is situated on the eastern slope of the Aravalli Mountains, a range of primitive granite, of which Abu, the chief peak, is estimated to be near 5,000 feet above the level of the sea; the plateau of Ajmir itself is some 3,000 feet lower.

The country at large is, probably, the upheaved basin of an exhausted sea which once rendered the highlands of the Deccan an island like a larger Ceylon. The general quality of the soil is accordingly sandy and light, though not unproductive; yielding, perhaps, on an average about one thousand lbs. av. of wheat to the acre. The cereals are grown in the winter, which is at least as cold as in the corresponding parts of Africa. Snow never falls, but thin ice is often formed during the night. During the spring heavy dews fall, and strong winds set in from the west. These gradually become heated by the increasing radiation of the earth, as the sun becomes more vertical and the days longer.

Towards the end of May the monsoon blows up from the Indian Ocean and from the Bay of Bengal, when a rainfall averaging about twenty inches takes place and lasts during the ensuing quarter. This usually ceases about the end of September, when the weather is at its most sickly point. Constant exhalations of malaria take place till the return of the cold weather.

After the winter, cacurbitaceous crops are grown, followed by sowings of rice, sugar, and cotton. About the beginning of the rainy season the millets and other coarse grains are put in, and the harvesting takes place in October. The winter crops are reaped in March and April. Thus the agriculturists are never out of employ, unless it be during the extreme heats of May and June, when the soil becomes almost as hard from heat as the earth in England becomes in the opposite extreme of frost.

Of the hot season Mr. Elphinstone gives the following strong but just description: “The sun is scorching, even the wind is hot, the land is brown and parched, the dust flies in whirlwinds, all brooks become dry, small rivers scarcely keep up a stream, and the largest are reduced to comparative narrow channels in the midst of vast sandy beds.” It should, however, be added, that towards the end of this terrible season some relief is afforded to the river supply by the melting of the snow upon the higher Himalayas, which sends down some water into the almost exhausted stream-beds. But even so, the occasional prolongation of the dry weather leads to universal scarcity which amounts to famine for the mass of the population, which affects all classes, and which is sure to be followed by pestilence. Lastly, the malaria noticed above as following the monsoon gives rise to special disorders which become endemic in favouring localities, and travel thence to all parts of the country, borne upon the winds or propagated by pilgrimages and other forms of human intercourse. Such are the awful expedients by which Nature checks the redundancy of a non-emigrating population with simple wants. Hence the construction of drainage and irrigation-works has not merely a direct result in causing temporary prosperity, but an indirect result in a large increase of the responsibilities of the ruling power. Between 1848 and 1854 the population of the part of Hindustan now called the North-West Provinces, where all the above described physical features prevail, increased from a ratio of 280 to the square mile till it reached a ratio of 350. In the subsequent sixteen years there was a further increase. The latest rate appears to be from 378 to 468, and the rate of increase is believed to be about equal to that of the British Islands.

There were at the time of which we are to treat few field-labourers on daily wages, the Metayer system being everywhere prevalent where the soil was not actually owned by joint-stock associations of peasant proprietors, usually of the same tribe.

The wants of the cultivators were provided for by a class of hereditary brokers, who were often also chandlers, and advanced stock, seed, and money upon the security of the unreaped crops.

These, with a number of artisans and handicraftsmen, formed the chief population of the towns; some of the money-dealers were very rich, and 36 per cent. per annum was not perhaps an extreme rate of interest. There were no silver or gold mines, external commerce hardly existed, and the money-price of commodities was low.

The literary and polite language of Hindustan, called Urdu or Rekhta, was, and still is, so far common to the whole country, that it everywhere consists of a mixture of the same elements, though in varying proportions; and follows the same grammatical rules, though with different accents and idioms. The constituent parts are the Arabised Persian, and the Prakrit (in combination with a ruder basis, possibly of local origin), known as Hindi. Speaking loosely, the Persian speech has contributed nouns substantive of civilization, and adjectives of compliment or of science; while the verbs and ordinary vocables and particles pertaining to common life are derived from the earlier tongues. So, likewise, are the names of animals, excepting those of beasts of chase.

The name Urdu, by which this language is usually known, is said to be of Turkish origin, and means literally “camp.” But the Moghuls of India first introduced it in the precincts of the Imperial camp; so that as Urdu-i-muali (High or Supreme Camp) came to be a synonym for new Dehli after Shahjahan had made it his permanent capital, so Urdu-ki-zaban meant the lingua franca spoken at Dehli. It was the common method of communication between different classes, as English may have been in London under Edward III. The classical languages of Arabia and Persia were exclusively devoted to uses of law, learning, and religion; the Hindus cherished their Sanskrit and Hindi for their own purposes of business or worship, while the Emperor and his Moghul courtiers kept up their Turkish speech as a means of free intercourse in private life. The Chaghtai dialect resembled the Turkish still spoken in Kashgar.

Out of such elements was the rich and still growing language of Hindustan formed, and it is yearly becoming more widely spread over the most remote parts of the country, being largely taught in Government schools, and used as a medium of translation from European literature, both by the English and by the natives. For this purpose it is peculiarly suited, from still possessing the power of assimilating foreign roots, instead of simply inserting them cut and dried, as is the case with languages that have reached maturity. Its own words are also liable to a kind of chemical change when encountering foreign matter (e.g., jau, barley: when oats were introduced some years ago, they were at once called jaui “little barley").

The peninsula of India is to Asia what Italy is to Europe, and Hindustan may be roughly likened to Italy without the two Sicilies, only on a far larger scale. In this comparison the Himalayas represent the Alps, and the Tartars to the north are the Tedeschi of India; Persia is to her as France, Piedmont is represented by Kabul, and Lombardy by the Panjab. A recollection of this analogy may not be without use in familiarizing the narrative which is to follow.

Such was the country into which successive waves of invaders, some of them, perhaps, akin to the actual ancestors of the Goths, Huns, and Saxons of Europe, poured down from the plains of Central Asia. At the time of which our history treats, the aboriginal Indians had long been pushed out from Hindustan into the mountainous forests that border the Deccan; which country has been largely peopled, in its more accessible regions, by the Sudras, who were probably the first of the Scythian invaders. After them had come the Sanskrit-speaking race, a congener of the ancient Persians, who brought a form of fire-worshipping, perhaps once monotheistic, of which traces are still extant in the Vedas, their early Scriptures. This form of faith becoming weak and eclectic, was succeeded by a reaction, which, under the auspices of Gautama, obtained general currency, until in its turn displaced by the gross mythology of the Puranas, which has since been the popular creed of the Hindus.

This people in modern times has divided into three main denominations: the Sarawagis or Jains (who represent some sect allied to the Buddhists or followers of Gautama); the sect of Shiva, and the sect of Vishnu.

In addition to the Hindus, later waves of immigration have deposited a Musalman population somewhat increased by the conversions that occurred under Aurangzeb. The Mohamadans are now about one-seventh of the total population of Hindustan; and there is no reason to suppose that this ratio has greatly varied since the fall of the Moghuls.

The Mohamadans in India preserved their religion, though not without some taint from the circumjacent idolatry. Their celebration of the Moharram, with tasteless and extravagant ceremonies, and their forty days’ fast in Ramzan, were alike misplaced in a country where, from the movable nature of their dates, they sometimes fell in seasons when the rigour of the climate was such as could never have been contemplated by the Arabian Prophet. They continued the bewildering lunar year of the Hijra, with its thirteenth month every third year; but, to increase the confusion, the Moghul Emperors also reckoned by Turkish cycles while the Hindus tenaciously maintained in matters of business their national Sambat, or era of Raja Bikram Ajit.

The Emperor Akbar, in the course of his endeavours to fuse the peoples of India into a whole, endeavoured amongst other things to form a new religion. This, it was his intention, should be at once a vindication of his Tartar and Persian forefathers against Arab proselytism, and a bid for the suffrages of his Hindu subjects. Like most eclectic systems it failed. In and after his time also Christianity in its various forms has been feebly endeavouring to maintain a footing. This is a candid report, from a source that cannot but be trusted, of the result of three centuries of Missionary labour.

“There is nothing which can at all warrant the opinion that the heart of the people has been largely touched, or that the conscience of the people has been affected seriously. There is no advance in the direction of faith in Christ, like that which Pliny describes, or Tertullian proclaims as characteristic of former eras. In fact, looking at the work of Missions on the broadest scale, and especially upon that of our own Missions, we must confess that, in many cases, the condition is one rather of stagnation than of advance. There seems to be a want in them of the power to edify, and a consequent paralysis of the power to convert. The converts, too often, make such poor progress in the Christian life, that they fail to act as leaven in the lump of their countrymen. In particular, the Missions do not attract to Christ many men of education; not even among those who have been trained within their own schools. Educated natives, as a general rule, will stand apart from the truth; maintaining, at the best, a state of mental vacuity which hangs suspended, for a time, between an atheism, from which they shrink, and a Christianity, which fails to overcome their fears and constrain their allegiance.” Extract from Letter of the Anglican Bishops of India, addressed to the English Clergy, in May, 1874.

The capital cities of Northern India have always been Dehli and Agra; the first-named having been the seat of the earlier Musalman Empires, while the Moghuls, for more than a full century, preferred to hold their Court at Agra. This dynasty, however, re-transferred the metropolis to the older situation; but, instead of attempting to revive any of the pristine localities, fixed their palace and its environs upon a new—and a preferablepiece of ground.

If India be the Italy of Asia, still more properly may it be said that Dehli is its Rome. This ancient site stretches ruined for many miles round the present inhabited area, and its original foundation is lost in a mythical antiquity. A Hindu city called Indraprastha was certainly there on the bank of the Jamna near the site of the present city before the Christian era, and various Mohamadan conquerors occupied sites in the neighbourhood, of which numerous remains are still extant. There was also a city near the present Kutb Minar, built by a Hindu rajah, about 57 B.C. according to General Cunningham. This was the original (or old) Dilli or Dehli, a name of unascertained origin. It appears to have been deserted during the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni, but afterwards rebuilt about 1060 A.D. The last built of all the ancient towns was the Din Panah of Humayun, nearly on the site of the old Hindu town; but it had gone greatly to decay during the long absence of his son and grandson at Agra and elsewhere.

At length New Dehlithe present citywas founded by Shahjahan, the great-grandson of Humayun, and received the name, by which it is still known to Mohamudans, of Shahjahanabad. The city is seven miles round, with seven gates, the palace or citadel one-tenth of the area. Both are a sort of irregular semicircle on the right bank of the Jamna, which river forms their eastern arc. The plain is about 800 feet above the level of the sea, and is bordered at some distance by a low range of hills, and receiving the drainage of the Mewat Highlands. The greatest heat is in June, when the mean temperature in the shade is 92Ą F.; but it falls as low as 53Ą in January. The situationas will be seen by the mapis extremely well chosen as the administrative centre of Hindustan; it must always be a place of commercial importance, and the climate has no peculiar defect. The only local disorder is a very malignant sore, which may perhaps be due to the brackishness of the water. This would account for the numerous and expensive canals and aqueducts which have been constructed at different periods to bring water from remote and pure sources. Here Shahjahan founded, in 1645 A.D., a splendid fortified palace, which continued to be occupied by his descendants down to the Great Revolt of 1857.

The entrance to the palace was, and still is, defended by a lofty barbican, passing which the visitor finds himself in an immense arcaded vestibule, wide and lofty, formerly appropriated to the men and officers of the guard, but in later days tenanted by small shopkeepers. This opened into a courtyard, at the back of which was a gate surmounted by a gallery, where one used to hear the barbarous performances of the royal band. Passing under this, the visitor entered the ‘Am-Khas or courtyard, much fallen from its state, when the rare animals and the splendid military pageants of the earlier Emperors used to throng its area. Fronting you was the Diwan-i-Am (since converted into a canteen), and at the back (towards the east or river) the Diwan-i-Khas, since adequately restored. This latter pavilion is in echelon with the former, and was made to communicate on both sides with the private apartments.

On the east of the palace, and connected with it by a bridge crossing an arm of the river, is the ancient Pathan fort of Salimgarh, a rough and dismal structure, which the later Emperors used as a state prison. It is a remarkable contrast to the rest of the fortress, which is surrounded by crenellated walls of high finish. These walls being built of the red sandstone of the neighbourhood, and seventy feet in height, give to the exterior of the buildings a solemn air of passive and silent strength, so that, even after so many years of havoc, the outward appearance of the Imperial residence continues to testify of its former grandeur. How its internal and actual grandeur perished will be seen in the following pages. The Court was often held at Agra, where the remains of a similar palace are still to be seen. No detailed account of this has been met with at all rivalling the contemporary descriptions of the Red Palace of Dehli. But an attempt has been made to represent its high and palmy state in the General Introduction to the History of Hindustan by the present writer.

Of the character of the races who people the wide Empire of which Dehli was the metropolis, very varying estimates have been formed, in the most extreme opposites of which there is still some germ of truth. It cannot be denied that, in some of what are termed the unprogressive virtues, they exceeded, as their sons still exceed, most of the nations of Europe; being usually temperate, self-controlled, patient, dignified in misfortune, and affectionate and liberal to kinsfolk and dependents. Few things perhaps show better the good behaviour one may almost say the good breeding of the ordinary native than the sight of a crowd of villagers going to or returning from a fair in Upper India. The stalwart young farmers are accompanied by their wives; each woman in her coloured wimple, with her shapely arms covered nearly to the elbow with cheap glass armless. Every one is smiling, showing rows of well-kept teeth, talking kindly and gently; here a little boy leads a pony on which his white-bearded grandfather is smilingly seated; there a baby perches, with eyes of solemn satisfaction, on its father’s shoulder. Scenes of the immemorial East are reproduced before our modern eyes; now the “flight into Egypt,” now St. John and his lamb. In hundreds and in thousands, the orderly crowds stream on. Not a bough is broken off a way-side tree, not a rude remark addressed to the passenger as he threads his horse’s way carefully through the everywhere yielding ranks. So they go in the morning and so return at night.

But, on the other hand, it is not to be rashly assumed that, as India is the Italy, so are the Indian races the Italians of Asia. All Asiatics are unscrupulous and unforgiving. The natives of Hindustan are peculiarly so; but they are also unsympathetic and unobservant in a manner that is altogether their own. From the languor induced by the climate, and from the selfishness engendered by centuries of misgovernment, they have derived a weakness of will, an absence of resolute energy, and an occasional audacity of meanness, almost unintelligible in a people so free from the fear of death. Many persons have thought that moral weakness of this kind must be attributable to the system of caste by which men, placed by birth in certain grooves, are forbidden to even think of stepping out of them. But this is not the whole explanation. Nor, indeed, are the most candid foreign critics convinced that the system is one of unmixed evil. The subjoined moderate and sensible estimate of the effects of caste, upon the character and habits of the people is from the Bishops’ letter quoted above. “In India, Caste has been the bond of Society, defining the relations between man and man, and though essentially at variance with all that is best and noblest in human nature, has held vast communities together, and established a system of order and discipline under which Government has been administered, trade has prospered, the poor have been maintained, and some domestic virtues have flourished.”

Macaulay has not overstated Indian weaknesses in his Essay on Warren Hastings, where he has occasion to describe the character of Nand Komar, who, as a Bengali man-of-the-pen, appears to have been a marked type of all that is most unpleasing in the Hindoo character. The Bengalis, however, have many amiable characteristics to show on the other side of the shield, to which it did not suit the eloquent Essayist to draw attention. And in going farther North many other traits, of a far nobler kind, will be found more and more abundant. Of the Musalmans, it only remains to add that, although mostly descended from hardier immigrants, they have imbibed the Hindu character to an extent that goes far to corroborate the doctrine which traces the morals of men to the physical circumstances that surround them. The subject will be found more fully treated in the concluding chapter.

CHAPTER II.

~

A.D. 1707-19.

For nearly two centuries the throne of the Chaghtais continued to be filled by a succession of exceptionally able Princes. The brave and simple-hearted Babar, the wandering Humayun, the glorious Akbar, the easy but uncertain-tempered Jahangir, the magnificent Shahjahan, all these rulers combined some of the best elements of Turkish character and their administration was better than that of any other Oriental country of their date. Of Shahjahan’s government and its patronage of the arts both decorative and useful we have trustworthy contemporary descriptions. His especial taste was for architecture; and the Mosque and Palace of Dehli, which he personally designed, even after the havoc of two centuries, still remain the climax of the Indo-Saracenic order, and admitted rivals to the choicest works of Cordova and Granada.

The abilities of his son and successor ALAMGIR, known to Europeans by his private name, AURANGZEB, rendered him the most famous member of his famous house. Intrepid and enterprising as he was in war, his political sagacity and statecraft were equally unparalleled in Eastern annals. He abolished capital punishment, understood and encouraged agriculture, founded numberless colleges and schools, systematically constructed roads and bridges, kept continuous diaries of all public events from his earliest boyhood, administered justice publicly in person, and never condoned the slightest malversation of a provincial governor, however distant his province. Such were these emperors; great, if not exactly what we should call good, to a degree rare indeed amongst hereditary rulers.

The fact of this uncommon succession of high qualities in a race born to the purple may be ascribed to two main considerations. In the first place, the habit of contracting, marriages with Hindu princesses, which the policy and the latitudinarianism of the emperors established, was a constant source of fresh blood, whereby the increase of family predisposition was checked. Few if any races of men are free from some morbid taint: scrofula, phthisis, weak nerves, or a disordered brain, are all likely to be propagated if a person predisposed to any such ailment marries a woman of his own stock. From this danger the Moghul princes were long kept free. Khuram, the second son of Jahangir, who succeeded his father under the title of Shah Jahan, had a Hindu mother, and two Hindu grandmothers. All his sons, however, were by a Persian consort the lady of the Taj.

Secondly, the invariable fratricidal war which followed the demise of the Crown gave rise to a natural selection (to borrow a term from modern physical science), which eventually confirmed the strongest in possession of the prize. However humanity may revolt from the scenes of crime which such a system must perforce entail, yet it cannot be doubted that the qualities necessary to ensure success in a struggle of giants would certainly both declare and develop themselves in the person of the victor by the time that struggle was concluded.

It is, however, probable that both these causes aided ultimately in the dissolution of the monarchy.

The connections which resulted from the earlier emperors’ Hindu marriages led, as the Hindus became disaffected after the intolerant rule of Aurangzeb, to an assertion of partisanship which gradually swelled into independence; while the wars between the rival sons of each departing emperor gave more and more occasion for the Hindu chiefs to take sides in arms.

Then it was that each competitor, seeking to detach the greatest number of influential feudatories from the side of his rivals, and to propitiate such feudatories in his own favour, cast to each of these the prize that each most valued. And, since this was invariably the uncontrolled dominion of the territories confided to their charge, it was in this manner that the reckless disputants partitioned the territories that their forefathers had accumulated with such a vast expenditure of human happiness and human virtue. For, even from those who had received their titledeeds at the hands of claimants to the throne ultimately vanquished, the concession could rarely be wrested by the exhausted conqueror. Or, when it was, there was always at hand a partisan to be provided for, who took the gift on the same terms as those upon which it had been held by his predecessor.

Aurangzeb, when he had imprisoned his father and, conquered and slain his brothers, was, on his accession, A.D. 1658, the most powerful of all the Emperors of Hindustan, and, at the same time, the ablest administrator that the Empire had ever known. In his reign the house of Timur attained its zenith. The wild Pathans of Kabul were temporarily tamed; the Shah of Persia sought his friendship; the ancient Musalman powers of Golconda and Bijapur were subverted, and their territories rendered subordinate to the sway of the Empire; the hitherto indomitable Rajputs were subdued and made subject to taxation; and, if the strength of the Mahrattas lay gathered upon the Western Ghats like a cloud risen from the sea, yet it was not to be anticipated that a band of such marauders could long resist the might of the great Moghul.

Yet that might and that greatness were reduced to a mere show before his long reign terminated; and the Moghul Empire resembled to use a familiar image one of those Etruscan corpses which, though crowned and armed, are destined to crumble at the breath of heaven or at the touch of human hands. And still more did it resemble some splendid palace, whose gilded cupolas and towering minarets are built of materials collected from every quarter of the world, only to collapse in undistinguishable ruin when the Ficus religiosa has lodged its destructive roots in the foundation on which they rest. Thus does this great ruler furnish another instance of the familiar but everneeded lesson, that countries may be over-governed. Had he been less anxious to stamp his own image and superscription upon the palaces of princes and the temples of priests; upon the moneys of every market, and upon every human heart and conscience; he might have governed with as much success as his free thinking and pleasure-seeking predecessors. But he was the Louis Quatorze of the East; with less of pomp than his European contemporary, but not less of the lust of conquest, of centralization, and of religious conformity. Though each monarch identified the State with himself, yet it may be doubted if either, on his deathbed, knew that his monarchy was dying also. But so it was that to each succeeded that gradual but complete cataclysm which seems the inevitable consequence of the system which each pursued.

One point peculiar to the Indian emperor is that the persecuting spirit of his reign was entirely due to his own character. The jovial and clement Chaghtai Turks, from whom he was descended, were never bigoted Mohamadans. Indeed it may be fairly doubted whether Akbar and his son Jahangir were, to any considerable extent, believers in the system of the Arabian prophet. Far different, however, was the creed of Aurangzeb, and ruthlessly did he seek to force it upon his Hindu subjects. Thus there were now added to the usual dangers of a large empire the two peculiar perils of a jealous centralization of power, and a deep-seated disaffection of the vast majority of the subjects. Nor was this all. There had never been any fixed settlement of the succession; and not even the sagacity of this politic emperor was superior to the temptation of arbitrarily transferring the dignity of heir-apparent from one son to another during his long reign. True, this was no vice confined exclusively to Aurangzeb. His predecessors had done the like; but then their systems had been otherwise genial and fortunate. His successors, too, were destined to pursue the same infatuated course; and it was a defeated intrigue of this sort which probably first brought the puppet emperor of our own time into that fatal contact with the power of England which sent him to die in a remote and dishonoured exile.

When, therefore, the sceptre had fallen from the dead man’s hands, there were numerous evil influences ready to attend its assumption by any hands that were less experienced and strong. The prize was no less than the possession of the whole peninsula, estimated to have yielded a yearly revenue of the nominal value of thirty-four millions of pounds sterling, and guarded by a veteran army of five hundred thousand men.

The will of the late emperor had left the disposal of his inheritance entirely unsettled. “Whoever of my fortunate sons shall chance to rule my empire,” is the only reference to the subject that occurs in this brief and extraordinary document.

His eldest surviving son consequently found two competitors in the field, in the persons of his brothers. These, however, he defeated in succession, and assumed the monarchy under the title of BAHADUR SHAH. A wise and valiant prince, he did not reign long enough to show how far he could have succeeded in controlling or retarding the evils above referred to; but his brief occupation of the monarchy is marked by the appearance of all those powers and dynasties which afterwards participated, all in its dismemberment, and most in its spoil. Various enemies, both Hindu and Musalman, appeared, and the Empire of the Chaghtai Turks was sapped and battered by attempts which, though mostly founded on the most selfish motives, involved a more or less patriotic feeling. Sikhs, Mahrattas, and Rajputs, all aimed at independence; while the indigenous Mohamadans, instead of joining the Turks in showing a common front to the common enemy, weakened the defence irrecoverably by opposition and rivalry.

In the attempt to put down the Sikhs, Bahadur died at Lahor, just five years after the death of his father. The usual struggle ensued. Three of the princes were defeated and slain in detail; and the partisans of the eldest son, Mirza Moizudin, conferred upon him the succession (by the title of JAHANDAR SHAH), after a wholesale slaughter of such of his kindred as fell within their grasp. After a few months, the aid of the governors of Bihar and Allahabad, Saiyids of the tribe of Barha, enabled the last remaining claimant to overthrow and murder the incapable Emperor. The conqueror succeeded his uncle under the title of FAROKHSIAR.

The next step of the Saiyids, men of remarkable courage and ability was to attack the Rajputs; and to extort from their chief, the Maharajah Ajit Sing, the usual tribute, and the hand of his daughter for the Emperor, who, like some of his predecessors, was anxious to marry a Hindu princess. But the levity and irresolution of the Emperor soon led to his being, in his turn, dethroned and slaughtered. The race was now quite worn out.

A brief interregnum ensued, during which the all-powerful Saiyids sought to administer the powers of sovereignty behind the screen of any royal scion they could find of the requisite nonentity. But there was a Nothing still more absolute than any they could find; and after two of these shadow-kings had passed in about seven months, one after the other, into the grave, the usurpers were at length constrained to make a choice of a more efficient puppet. This was the son of Bahadur Shah’s youngest son, who had perished in the wars which followed that emperor’s demise. His private name was Sultan Roshan Akhtar ("Prince Fair Star"), but he assumed with the Imperial dignity the title of MOHAMMAD SHAH, and is memorable as the last Indian emperor that ever sat upon the peacock throne of Shah Jahan.

The events mentioned in the preceding brief summary, though they do not comprehend the whole disintegration of the Empire, are plainly indicative of what is to follow. In the final chapters of the First Part we shall behold somewhat more in detail the rapidly accelerating event. During the long reign of Mohammad foreign violence will be seen accomplishing what native vice and native weakness have commenced; and the successors to his dismantled throne will be seen passing like other decorations in a passive manner from one mayor of the palace to another, or making fitful efforts to be free, which only rivet their chains and hasten their destruction. One by one the provinces fall away from this distempered centre. At length we shall find the throne literally without an occupant, and the curtain will seem to descend while preparations are being made for the last act of this Imperial tragedy.

CHAPTER III.

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A.D. 1719-48

GUIDED by his mother, a person of sense and spirit, the young Emperor began his reign by forming a party of Moghul friends, who were hostile to the Saiyids on every conceivable account. The former were Sunnis, the latter Shias; and perhaps the animosities of sects are stronger than those of entirely different creeds. Moreover, the courtiers were proud of a foreign descent; and, while they despised the ministers as natives of India, they possessed in their mother tongue Turkish a means of communicating with the Emperor (a man of their own race) from which the ministers were excluded. The Saiyids were soon overthrown, their ruin being equally desired by Chin Kulich, the head of the Turkish party, and Saadat Ali, the newly-arrived adventurer from Persia. These noblemen now formed the rival parties of Turan and Iran; and became distinguished, the one as founder of the principality of Audh, abolished in 1856, the other as that of the dynasty of Haidarabad, which still subsists. Both, however, were for the time checked by the ambition and energy of the Mahrattas. Chin Kulich was especially brought to his knees in Bhopal, where the Mahrattas wrung from him the cession of Malwa, and a promise of tribute to be paid by the Imperial Government to these rebellious brigands.

This was a galling situation for an ancient nobleman, trained in the traditions of the mighty Aurangzeb. The old man was now between two fires. If he went on to his own capital, Haidarabad, he would be exposed to wear out the remainder of his days in the same beating of the air that had exhausted his master. If he returned to the capital of the Empire, he saw an interminable prospect of contempt and defeat at the hands of the Captain-General Khan Dauran, the chief of the courtiers who had been wont to break their jests upon the old-fashioned manners of the veteran.

Thus straitened, the Nizam, for by that title Chin Kulich was now beginning to be known, took counsel with Saadat, the Persian, who was still at Dehli. Nadir Shah, the then ruler of Persia, had been for some time urging on the Court of Dehli remonstrances arising out of boundary quarrels and similar grievances. The two nobles, who may be described as opposition leaders, are believed to have in 1738 addressed the Persian monarch in a joint letter which had the result of bringing him to India, with all the consequences which will be found related in the History of Hindustan by the present writer, and in the well-known work of Mountstuart Elphinstone.

It would be out of place in this introduction to dwell in detail upon the brief and insincere defence of the Empire by Saadat ‘Ali, in attempting to save whom the Khan Dauran lost his life, while the Nizam attempted vain negotiations. The Persians, as is well-known, advanced on Dehli, massacred some 100,000 of the inhabitants, held the survivors to ransom, and ultimately retired to their own country, with plunder that has been estimated at eighty millions sterling, and included the famous Peacock Throne.

The Nizam was undoubtedly the gainer by these tragic events. In addition to being Viceroy of the Deccan, he found himself all-powerful at Dehli, for Saadat ‘Ali had died soon after the Khan Dauran. Death continuing to favour him, his only remaining rival, the Mahratta Peshwa, Baji Rao, passed away in 1740, on the eve of a projected invasion of Hindustan. In 1745 the Province of Rohelkhand became independent, as did the Eastern Subahs of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. Leaving his son to represent him at Dehli, the Nizam settled at Haidarabad as an independent ruler, although he still professed subordination to the Empire, of which he called himself Vakil-i-Mutlak, or Regent.

Shortly after, a fresh invader from the north appeared in the person of Ahmad Khan Abdali, leader of the Daurani Afghans, who had obtained possession of the frontier provinces during the confusion in Persian politics that succeeded the assassination of Nadir. But a new generation of Moghul nobles was now rising, whose valour formed a short bright Indian summer in the fall of the Empire; and the invasion was rolled back by the spirit and intelligence of the heir apparent, the Vazir’s son Mir Mannu, his brother-in-law Ghazi-ud-din, and the nephew of the deceased Governor of Audh, Abul-Mansur Khan, better known to Europeans by his title Safdar Jang. The decisive action was fought near Sirhind, and began on the 3rd March, 1748. This is memorable as the last occasion on which Afghans were ever repulsed by people of India until the latter came to have European leaders. The death of the Vazir took place eight days later. This Vazir (Kamr-ul-din Khan), who had long been the head of the Turkish party in the State, was the nominal leader of the expedition, in conjunction with the heir-apparent, though the chief glory was acquired by his gallant son Mannu, or Moin-ul-din. The Vazir did not live to share the triumph of his son, who defeated the enemy, and forced him to retire. The Vazir Kamr-ul-din died on the 11th, just before the retreat of the Afghans. A round shot killed him as he was praying in his tent; and the news of the death of this old and constant servant, who had been Mohammad’s personal friend through all the pleasures and cares of his momentous reign, proved too much for the Emperor’s exhausted constitution. He was seized by a strong convulsion as he sate administering justice in his despoiled palace at Dehli, and expired almost immediately, about the 16th of April, A.D. 1748.

CHAPTER IV.

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A.D. 1748-54.

SELDOM has a reign begun under fairer auspices than did that of Ahmad Shah. The Emperor was in the flower of his age; his immediate associates were men distinguished for their courage and skill; the Nizam was a bar to the Mahrattas in the Deccan, and the tide of northern invasion had ebbed out of sight.

There is, however, a fatal element of uncertainty in all systems of government which depend for their success merely upon personal qualities. The first sign of this precarious tenure of greatness was afforded by the death of the aged Nizam Chin Kulich, Viceroy of the Deccan, which took place immediately after that of the late Emperor.

The eldest son of the old Nizam contended with the nephew of the deceased Saadat whose name was Mansur, but who is better known by his title of Safdar Jang for the Premiership, or office of Vazir, and his next brother Nasir Jang held the Lieutenancy of the Deccan. The command in Rajputan, just then much disturbed, devolved at first on a Persian nobleman who had been his Bakhshi, or Paymaster of the Forces, and also Amir-ul-Umra, or Premier Peer. His disaster and disgrace were not far off, as will be seen presently. The office of Plenipotentiary was for the time in abeyance. The Vazirship, which had been held by the deceased Kamr-ul-din was about the same time conferred upon Safdar Jang, who also succeeded his uncle as Viceroy or Nawab of Audh. Hence the title, afterwards so famous, of Nawab-Vazir.

Having made these dispositions, the Emperor followed the hereditary bent of his natural disposition, and left the provinces to fare as best they might, while he enjoyed the pleasures to which his opportunities invited him. The business of state fell very much into the hands of a eunuch named Jawid Khan, who had long been the favourite of the Emperor’s mother, a Hindu danseuse named Udham Bai, who is known in history as the Kudsiya Begam. The remains of her villa are to be seen in a garden still bearing her name, on the Jamna side a little beyond the Kashmir Gate of New Dehli. For a time these two had all at their command; and the lady at least appears to have made a beneficent use of her term of prosperity. Meanwhile, the two great dependencies of the Empire, Rohilkand and the Panjab, become the theatre of bloody contests.

The Rohillas routed the Imperial army commanded by the Vazir in person, and though Safdar Jung wiped off this stain, it was only by undergoing the still deeper disgrace of encouraging the Hindu powers to prey upon the growing weakness of the Empire.

Aided by the Mahrattas under Holkar and by the Jats under Suraj Mal, the Vazir defeated the Rohillas at the fords of the Ganges; and pushed them up into the malarious country at the foot of the Kumaon mountains, where famine and fever would soon have completed their subjugation, but for the sudden reappearance in the north-west of their Afghan kindred under Ahmad Khan the Abdali.

The Mahrattas were allowed to indemnify themselves for these services by seizing on part of the Rohilla country, and drawing chauth from the rest; consideration of which they promised their assistance to cope with the invading Afghans; but on arriving at Dehli they learned that the Emperor, in the Vazir’s absence, had surrendered to Ahmad the provinces of Lahor and Multan, and thus terminated the war.

An expedition was about this time sent to Ajmir, under the command of Saadat Khan, the Amir-ul-Umra, the noble of the Shiah or “Iranian” party already mentioned as commanding in Rajputan, and who was also the Imperialist Viceroy of Agra. He wasted his time and strength, however, in an attack upon the Jats, through whose country the way went. When at last he neared Ajmir he allowed himself to be entangled in the local intrigues which it was the object of his expedition to suppress. He returned after about fifteen months of fruitless campaigning, and was dismissed from his office by the all-powerful Jawid, Ghazi-ud-din succeeded as Amir-ul- Umra.

Almost every section of the History of Ahmad Shah abstracted by Professor Dowson (VIII.) ends with some sinister allusion to this favourite eunuch and his influence. The Emperor had nothing to say as to what went on, as his mother and Jawid were the real rulers. The Emperor considered it to be most suitable to him to spend his time in pleasure; and he made his Zanana extend a mile. For weeks he would remain without seeing the face of a male creature. There was probably no sincere friend to raise a warning; and the doom deepened and the hand wrote upon the wall unheeded. The country was overrun with wickedness and wasted with misery. The disgrace of the unsuccessful Saadat returning from Ajmir, was enhanced by his vainly attempting to strike a blow at the Empress and her favourite. They called in the Turkish element against him, and contrived to alienate his countryman, Safdar Jang, who departed towards his Viceroyship of Audh; leaving the wretched remains of an Empire to ferment and crumble in its own way.