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Chapter IV: A.D. 1748-54

Ahmad Shah — The Rohillas — Ghazi-ud-din the younger — Perplexities of the Emperor — Alamgir II. placed on the throne.

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.

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 title of Aamad-ul-Mulk, was son of Firoz Jang, the old Nizam's fourth son. He at once assumed 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 assassination (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 Shia, 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 friendship 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 assumed the command of the army. The Vazirship 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 assistance. 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 passions, 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 assembled nobles, "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 competitor of Farokhsiar, proclaimed Emperor under the sounding title of Alamgir II., July, 1754 A.D. The new Emperor (whose title 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 class, 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.