Part 2 (1/2)
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 Viceroys.h.i.+p of Audh; leaving the wretched remains of an Empire to ferment and crumble in its own way.
The cabinet of the Empress was now, in regard to Ghazi-ud-din and the Mahrattas, in the position of a necromancer who has to furnish his familiars with employment on pain of their destroying him. But an escape seemed to be afforded them by the projects of Ghazi-ud-din, who agreed to draw off the dangerous auxiliaries to aid him in wresting the Lieutenancy of the Deccan from his third brother Salabat Jang who had possessed himself of the administration on the death of Nasir Jang, the second son and first successor of Chin Kulich, the old Nizam. He was to be represented at Dehli by a nephew.
Gladly did the Persian party behold their rival thus depart; little dreaming of the dangerous abilities of the boy he had left behind. This youth, best known by the family affix of Ghazi-ud-din (2nd), but whose name was Shahabuddin, and who is known in native histories by his official t.i.tle of Aamad-ul-Mulk, was son of Firoz Jang, the old Nizam's fourth son. He at once a.s.sumed the head of the army, and may be properly described, henceforth, as ”Captain-General.” He was but sixteen when the news of his uncle's sudden death at Aurangabad was brought to Dehli. Safdar Jang, returning from Lucknow, removed the Emperor's chief favourite, Jawid, by a.s.sa.s.sination (28th August, 1752) and doubtless thought himself at length arrived at the goal of his ambition. But the young Ghazi, secretly instigated by the weak and anxious monarch, renewed against the Persian the same war of Turan and Iran, of Sunni and s.h.i.+a, which in the last reign had been waged between the uncle of the one and the grandfather of the other. The only difference was that both parties being now fully warned, the mask of friends.h.i.+p that had been maintained during the old struggle was now completely dropped; and the streets of the metropolis became the scene of daily fights between the two factions. Many splendid remains of the old cities are believed to have been destroyed during these struggles. The Jats from Bhurtpore came up under Suraj Mal, their celebrated leader, and plundered the environs right and left. The Vazir's people, the Persian partly, breached a bastion of the city wall, and their victory seemed near at hand. But Mir Mannu, the famous Viceroy of the Punjab - who was Ghazi's near kinsman - sent a body of veterans to aid the Moghul cause; the account is confused, but this seems to have turned the tide. The Moghuls, or Turks, for the time won; and Ghazi a.s.sumed the command of the army. The Vazirs.h.i.+p was conferred on Intizam-ud-daulah the Khan Khanan (a son of the deceased Kamr-ul-din, and young Ghazi's cousin), while Safdar Jang falling into open rebellion, called the Jats under Surajmal to his a.s.sistance. The Moghuls were thus led to have recourse to the Mahrattas; and Holkar was even engaged as a nominal partizan of the Empire, against his co-religionists the Jats, and his former patron the Viceroy of Audh. The latter, who was always more remarkable for sagacity than for personal courage, soon retired to his own country, and the hands of the conqueror Ghazi fell heavily upon the unfortunate Jats.
The Khan Khanan and the Emperor now began to think that things had gone far enough; and the former, who was acquainted with his kinsman's unscrupulous mind and ruthless pa.s.sions, persistently withheld from him a siege-train which was required for the reduction of Bhartpur, the Jat capital. The Emperor was thus in a situation from which the utmost judgment in the selection of a line of conduct was necessary for success, indeed for safety. The gallant Mir Mannu, son of his father's old friend and servant Kamar-uddin, was absent in the Panjab, engaged on the arduous duty of keeping the Afghans in check. But his brother-in-law, the Khan Khanan, was ready with alternative projects, of which each was courageous and sensible. To call back Safdar Jung, and openly acknowledge the cause of the Jats, would probably cost only one campaign, well conceived and vigorously executed. On the other hand, to support the Captain-General Ghazi honestly and without reserve, would have secured immediate repose, whilst it crushed a formidable Hindu power.
The irresolute voluptuary before whom these plans were laid could decide manfully upon neither. He marched from Dehli with the avowed intention of supporting the Captain-General, to whom he addressed messages of encouragement. He at the same time wrote to Surajmal, to whom he promised that he would fall upon the rear of the army (his own !), upon the Jats making a sally from the fortress in which they were besieged.
Safdar Jang not being applied to, remained sullenly aloof: the Emperor's letter to the Jats fell into the hands of Ghazi-ud-din, the Captain-General, who returned it to him with violent menaces.
The alarmed monarch began to fall back upon his capital, pursued at a distance by his rebellious general. Holkar meanwhile executed a sudden and independent attack upon the Imperial camp, which he took and plundered at Sikundrabad, near Bolandshahr. The ladies of the Emperor's family were robbed of everything, and sent to Dehli in country carts. The Emperor and his minister lost all heart, and fled precipitately into Dehli, where they had but just time to take refuge in the palace, when they found themselves rigorously invested.
Knowing the man with whom they had to deal, their last hope was obviously in a spirited resistance, combined with an earnest appeal to the Audh Viceroy and to the ruler of the Jats. And it is on record in a trustworthy native history that such was the tenor of the Vazir's advice to the Emperor. But the latter, perhaps too sensible of the difficulties of this course from the known hostility of Safdar Jang, and the great influence of Ghazi-ud-din over the Moghul soldiery, rejected the bold counsel.
Upon this the Vazir retired to his own residence, which he fortified, and the remaining adherents of the Emperor opened the gates and made terms with the Captain-General. The latter then invested himself with the official robes of the Vazirate (5th June, 1754) and convened the Moghul Darbar, from which, with his usual address, he contrived to obtain as a vote of the cabinet what was doubtless the suggestion of his own unprincipled ambition. ”This Emperor,” said the a.s.sembled n.o.bles, ”has shown his unfitness for rule. He is unable to cope with the Mahrattas: he is false and fickle towards his friends. Let him be deposed, and a worthier son of Timur raised to the throne.” This resolution was immediately acted upon; the unfortunate monarch was blinded and consigned to the State prison of Salim Garh, adjoining the palace; and a son of Jahandar Shah, the compet.i.tor of Farokhsiar, proclaimed Emperor under the sounding t.i.tle of Alamgir II., July, 1754 A.D. The new Emperor (whose t.i.tle was due to the fact that his predecessor - the great Aurangzeb - had been the first to bear it) was in the fifty-fourth year of his age. He was a quiet old devotee, whose only pleasures were reading religious books and attending divine service. His predecessor was not further molested, and lived on in his captivity to his death in 1775, from natural causes, at the age of fifty. Ghazi-ud-din was at the same time acknowledged as Vazir in the room of the Khan Khanan. That officer was murdered about five years later, according to Beale (Orl. Bl. Dicty in voc.) So also the Siyar-ul-mutikharin.
One name, afterwards to become very famous, is heard of for the first time during these transactions; and, since the history of the Empire consists now of little more than a series of biographies, the present seems the proper place to consider the outset of his career. Najib Khan was an Afghan soldier of fortune, who had attained the hand of the daughter of Dundi Khan, one of the chieftains of the Rohilkand Pathans. Rewarded by this ruler with the charge of a district, now Bijnaur, in the north-west corner of Rohilkand, he had joined the cause of Safdar Jang, when that minister occupied the country; but on the latter's disgrace had borne a part in the campaigns of Ghazi-ud-din. When the Vazir first conceived the project of attacking the government, he sent Najib in the command of a Moghul detachment to occupy the country, about Saharanpur, then known as the Bawani mahal, which had formed the jagir of the Ex-Vazir Khan Khanan. This territory thus became in its turn separated from the Empire, and continued for two generations in the family of Najib. Though possessing the unscrupulous nature of his cla.s.s, he was not without the virtues that are found in its best specimens. He was active, painstaking, and faithful to engagements; when he had surmounted his early difficulties he proved a good administrator. He ruled the dwindled Empire for nine years, and died a peaceful death, leaving his charge in an improved and strengthened condition, ready for its lawful monarch. He was highly esteemed by the British in India.- (v. inf 89 )
The dominions of Akbar and Aurangzeb had now indeed fallen into a pitiable state. Although the whole of the peninsula still nominally owned the sway of the Moghul, no provinces remained in the occupation of the Government besides part of the upper Doab, and a few districts south of the Satlaj. Gujarat was overrun by the Mahrattas; Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa were occupied by the successor of Aliverdi Khan, Audh and Allahabad by Safdar Jang, the central Doab by the Afghan tribe of Bangash, the province now called Rohilkand by the Rohillas. The Panjab had been virtually abandoned; the rest of India had been recovered by the Hindus, with the exception of such portions of the Deccan as still formed the arena for the family wars of the sons of the old Nizam. Small encroachments continued to be made by the English traders.
CHAPTER V
A.D. 1754-60.
Progress of Ghazi ud-din - Ahmad Khan enters Dehli - Escape of the Prince Ali Gauhar - Murder of the Emperor - Ahmad the Abdali advances on Dehli - End of Ghazi's career.
No sooner was the revolution accomplished than the young kingmaker took effective measures to secure his position. He first seized and imprisoned his relation the Khan Khanan, whose office he had usurped, as above stated. The opportune death of Safdar Jang (17th October, 1754) removed another danger, while the intrepidity and merciless severity with which (a.s.sisted by Najib Khan) he quelled a military mutiny provoked by his own arbitrary conduct, served at once as a punishment to the miserable offenders and a warning to all who might be meditating future attacks.
Of such there were not a few, and those too in high places. The imbecile Emperor became the willing centre of a cabal bent upon the destruction of the daring young minister; and, though the precautions of the latter prevented things from going that length, yet the constant plotting that went on served to neutralize all his efforts at administration, and to increase in his mind that sense of misanthropic solitude which is probably the starting-point of the greatest crimes.
As soon as he judged that he could prudently leave the Court, the Minister organized an expedition to the Panjab, where the gallant Mir Mannu had been lately killed by falling from his horse. Such had been the respect excited in men's minds towards this excellent public servant, that the provinces of Lahor and Multan, when ceded to the Afghans in the late reign, had been ultimately left in his charge by the new rulers. Ahmad the Abdali even carried on this policy after the Mir's death, and confirmed the Government in the person of his infant son. The actual administrators during the minority were to be the widow of Mannu and a statesman of great local experience, whose name was Adina Beg. This man was a Hindu by origin, a, self-made man, bold and intelligent.
It was upon this opportunity that the Vazir resolved to strike.
Hastily raising, such a force as the poor remnant of the imperial treasury could furnish, he marched on Lahor, taking with him the heir apparent, Mirza Ali Gauhar. Seizing the town by a coup de main, he possessed himself of the Lady Regent and her daughter, and returned to Dehli, a.s.serting that he had extorted a treaty from the Afghan monarch, and appointed Adina Beg sole Commissioner of the provinces.
However this may have been, the Court was not satisfied; and the less so that the success of the Minister only served to render him more violent and cruel than ever. Nor is it to be supposed that Ahmad the Abdali would overlook, for any period longer than his own convenience might require, any unauthorized interference with arrangements made by himself for territory that he might justly regard as his own. Accordingly the Afghan chief soon lent a ready ear to the representations of the Emperor's party, and swiftly presented himself at the head of an army within twenty miles of Dehli. Accompanied by Najib Khan, (who was in secret correspondence with the invader,) the Minister marched out to give battle; and so complete was the isolation into which his conduct had thrown him, that he learned for the first time what was the true state of affairs when he saw the chief part of the army follow Najib into the ranks of the enemy, where they were received as expected guests.
In this strait the Minister's personal qualities saved him.
Having in the meantime made Mannu's daughter his wife, he had the address to obtain the intercession of his mother-in-law; and not only obtained the pardon of the invader, but in no long time so completely ingratiated himself with that simple soldier as to be in higher power than even before the invasion.
Ahmad Khan now took upon himself the functions of government, and deputed the Minister to collect tribute in the Doab, while Sardar Jahan Khan, one of his princ.i.p.al lieutenants, proceeded to levy contributions from the Jats, and Ahmad himself undertook the spoliation of the capital.
From the first expedition Ghazi returned with considerable booty.
The attack upon the Jats was not so successful; throwing themselves into the numerous strongholds with which their country was dotted, they defied the Afghan armies and cut off their foraging parties in sudden sallies. Agra too made an obstinate defence under a Moghul governor; but the invaders indemnified themselves both in blood and plunder at the expense of the unfortunate inhabitants of the neighbouring city of Mathra, whom they surprised at a religious festival, and ma.s.sacred without distinction of age or s.e.x.
As for the citizens of Dehli, their sufferings were grievous, even compared with those inflicted twenty years before by the Persians of Nadir Shah, in proportion as the conquerors were less civilized, and the means of satisfying them less plentiful. All conceivable forms of misery prevailed during the two months which followed the entry of the Abdali, 11th September, 1757, exactly one hundred years before the last capture of the same city by the avenging force of the British Government during the Great Mutiny.