Defection of Moghuls - Confederates obtain possession of Palace — Emperor deposed — Palace plundered — Gholam Kadir in the Palace — Emperor blinded — Approach of Mahrattas — Apprehensions of Spoiler — The Moharram — Explosion in Palace — Flight to Meerut - Probable Intentions — Capture of Gholam Kadir — His Punishment — Excuse for his Deeds — Sindhia's Measures — Future nature of Narrative — Poetical Lament — Col. Francklin.
ALARMED by these various portents, Gholam Kadir lost no time in summoning all his adherents from Ghausgarh, stimulating their zeal with the promise of plunder. At the same time he deputed Ismail Beg across the river to practice upon the fidelity of the garrison; and such was the Beg's influence that the Moghul portion of the Imperial troops joined him immediately, and left the unfortunate Emperor to be protected exclusively by unbelievers, under the general direction of the Gosain leader, Himmat Bahadur. This mercenary, not perhaps having his heart in the cause, terrified by the threats of the Pathan, and (it is possible) tampered with by traitors about the emperor's person, soon withdrew; and the confederate chiefs at once crossed the river, and took possession of the city.
The Emperor now became seriously anxious, and, after a consultation with his attendants, resolved on deputing Manzur Ali to seek a personal explanation with Gholam Kadir and Ismail Beg. It has always been customary to tax this official with the responsibility of this measure, and of the appalling results which followed; but it does not appear absolutely necessary to impute his conduct to complicity with the more criminal part of Gholam Kadir's designs; and his subsequent fate is perhaps some sort of argument in his favour. But, be this as it may, he went to the chiefs by order of the Emperor, and demanded, "What were their intentions?" In the usual style of Eastern manners they replied, "These slaves are merely in attendance for the purpose of presenting their duty in person to his Majesty." "Be it so," said the Controller; and his acquiescence seems to have been unavoidable. "But," he added, "you surely need not bring your army into the palace: come with a small retinue, lest the Governor should shut the gates in your faces." Upon this advice the two noblemen acted, and entered the Am Khas on the forenoon of the following day (18th of July) with some half hundred men-at-arms. Each received a khilat of seven pieces, together with a sword and other presents; Gholam Kadir also receiving a richly-jewelled shield. They then returned to their respective residences in the town, where Ismail Beg spent the rest of the day in making arrangements in order to preserve the safety and confidence of the inhabitants. Next day, he removed his quarters permanently to the house formerly occupied by Mohammad Shah's Vazir, Kammar-ud-din Khan; and his men were quartered a couple of miles south of the city, in and about the celebrated monumental tomb of the ancient Saint, Shah Nizam-ud-din. Gholam Kadir's men were nearer the palace, where the present Native Infantry cantonment is, in Dariaoganj; while his officers occupied the vast premises formerly belonging successively to the Ministers Ghazi-ud-din and Mirza Najaf, outside of the Cabul Gate. The ostensible state of Dehli politics was now this; Gholam Kadir was Premier (an office he swore upon the Koran faithfully to discharge), vice Madhoji Sindhia, dismissed; and the combined armies were the troops of the Empire, commanded by Ismail Beg.
Under these circumstances Gholam Kadir did not want a pretext, and at seven in the morning of Friday, the 29th July, he returned to the palace, where he had an interview with the Emperor in the Diwan Khas. Francklin is at fault again here; making his second interview one with that which occurred more than a week before. Citing the authority of Ismail Beg, who stood by, he represented that the army was prepared to march on Mathra, and to chase the Mahrattas from Hindustan; but that they first demanded a settlement of their arrears, for which the Imperial treasury was alone responsible, and alone sufficient.
This harangue, at its conclusion, was warmly echoed by the Controller, by his Deputy, and by Ramrattan Modi. On the other side. Lalla Sital Das, the Treasurer, who was at once summoned, declared that, whatever might be the responsibility of the Treasury for an army in whose raising it had had no share, and by whose service it had not hitherto at all profited, at least that its chests contained no means for meeting the claims. He boldly urged that the claims should be resisted at all hazards.
Gholam Kadir replied by an assumed fit of ungoverned anger, and producing an intercepted letter from Shah Alam, calling upon Sindhia for help, ordered the Emperor to be disarmed, together with his personal guard, and removed into close arrest; and then, taking from the privacy of the Salim Garh a poor secluded son of the late Emperor Ahmad Shah, set him on his throne, hailed him Emperor, under the title of Bedar Bakht, and made all the courtiers and officials do him homage. It is but just to record, in favour of one whose memory has been much blackened, that Manzur Ali, the Controller, appears on this occasion to have acted with sense, if not spirit. When Bedar Bakht was first brought forward, Shah Alam was still upon the throne, and, when ordered to descend, began to make some show of resistance. Gholam Kadir was drawing his sword to cut him down, when the Controller interposed; advising the Emperor to bow to compulsion, and retire peacefully to his apartments. For three days and nights the Emperor and his family remained in close confinement, without food or comfort of any sort; while Gholam Kadir persuaded Ismail Beg to return to his camp, and devoted himself to wholesale plunder during the absence of his associate. The latter's suspicions were at length aroused, and he soon after sent an agent to remind Gholam Kadir that he and his men had received nothing of what it had been agreed to pay them. But the faithless Pathan repudiated every kind of agreement, and proceeded to defend the palace and apply all that it contained to his own use.
Ismail Beg, now sensible of his folly, lost no time in sending for the heads of the civic community, whom he exhorted to provide for their own protection; at the same time strictly charging his own lieutenants to exert themselves to the very utmost should the Pathans attempt to plunder. For the present, Gholam Kadir's attention was too much taken up with the pillage of the Imperial family to allow of his doing much in the way of a systematic sack of the town. Dissatisfied with the jewellery realised from the new Emperor, to whom the duty of despoiling the Begams was at first confided, he conceived the notion that Shah Alam, as the head of the family, was probably, nay, certainly, the possessor of an exclusive knowledge regarding the place of a vast secret hoard. All the crimes and horrors that ensued are attributable to the action of this monomania. On the 29th, he made the new Titular, Bedar Bakht, inflict corporal chastisement upon his venerable predecessor. On the 30th, a similar outrage was committed upon several of the ladies of Shah Alam's family, who filled the beautiful buildings with their shrieks of alarm and lamentation. On the 31st, the ruffian thought he had secured enough to justify his attempting to reconcile Ismail Beg and his men by sending them a donative of five lakhs of rupees. The result of this seems to have been that a combined, though tolerably humane and orderly attempt was made to levy contributions from the Hindu bankers of the city.
On the 1st of August a fresh attempt was made to wrest the supposed secret from the Shah, who once more denied all knowledge of it, employing the strongest figure of denial. "If," said the helpless old man, "you think I have any concealed treasures, they must be within me. Rip open my bowels, and satisfy yourself." The tormentor then tried cajolery and promises, but they were equally futile. "God protect you, who has laid me aside," said the fallen Monarch. "I am contented with my fate."
The aged widows of former Emperors were next exposed to insult and suffering. These ladies were at first treated kindly, their services being thought necessary in the plunder of the female inhabitants of the Imtiaz Mahal, whose privacy was at first respected. But on the failure of this attempt, the poor old women themselves were plundered and driven out of the palace. When other resources had been exhausted, the Controller fell under the displeasure of his former protege, and was made to disburse seven lakhs. On the 3rd August, Gholam Kadir gave proof of the degraded barbarity of which Hindustani Pathans can be guilty, by lounging on the throne on the Diwan Khas, side by side with the nominal Emperor, whom he covered with abuse and ridicule, as he smoked the hookah in his face. On the 6th, he destroyed the same throne for the sake of the plating which still adhered to it, which he threw into the melting-pot; and passed the next three days in digging up the floors, and taking every other conceivable measure in pursuit of his besetting chimera — the hidden treasure. During this interval, however, he appears to have been at times undecided; for, on the 7th he visited the Emperor in his confinement, and offered to put on the throne Mirza Akbar, the Emperor's favourite son — who did in fact ultimately succeed. The only answer to these overtures was a request by Shah Alam that he might be left alone, "for he was weary," he said, "of such state as he had lately known, and did not wish to be disturbed with public business."
At length arrived the memorable 10th of August, which, perhaps, as far as any one date deserves the distinction, was the last day of the legal existence of the famous Empire of the Moghuls. Followed by the Deputy Controller, Yakub Ali, and by four or five of his own most reckless Pathans, Gholam Kadir entered the Diwan Khas, and ordered Shah Alam to be brought before him. Once more the hidden treasure was spoken of, and the secret of its deposit imperiously demanded; and once more the poor old Emperor — whom we not long ago saw melting his plate to keep together a few troops of horse — with perfect truth replied that if there was any such secret he for one was in total ignorance of it. "Then," said the Rohilla, "you are of no further use in the world, and should be blinded." "Alas!" replied the poor old man, with native dignity, "do not so: you may spare these old eyes, that for sixty years have grown dim with the daily study of God's word." The spoiler then ordered his followers to torture the sons and grandsons of the Emperor, who had followed, and now surrounded their parent. This last outrage broke down the old man's patience. "Take my sight," he cried, "rather than force upon it scenes like these." Gholam Kadir at once leaped from the throne, felled the old man to the ground, threw himself upon the prostrate monarch's breast, and, so some historians relate, struck out one of his eyes with his own dagger. Then rising, he ordered a byestander — apparently a member of the household, Yakub Ali himself — to complete the work. On his refusing, he slew him with his own hand. He then ordered that the Princes should share the fate of their father and be deprived of eyesight, but desisted from this part of his brutality on the pressing, remonstrance of the Treasurer, Lalla Sital Das. The Emperor was, however, completely blinded by the Pathans, and removed to Salimgarh, amid the shrill lamentations of women, and the calmer, but not less passionate curses of men, who were not scourged into silence without some difficulty and delay. Francklin, following his usual authority, the MS. narrative of Saiyid Raza Khan, says that, under these accumulated misfortunes, the aged Emperor evinced a firmness and resignation highly honourable to his character. It is pitiable to think how much fortitude may be thrown away by an Asiatic for want of a little active enterprise. There were probably not less than half-a-dozen points in Shah Alam's life when a due vigour would have raised him to safety, if not to splendour; but his vigour was never ready at the right moment. There is a striking instance in Khair-ud-din's Ibratnama. Gholam Kadir asking the blind Emperor in mockery "If he saw anything?" was answered, "Nothing but the Koran between thee and me."
The anxious citizens were not at once aware of the particulars of this tragedy; but ere long rumours crept out to them of what crimes and sufferings had been going on all day in the Red Castle, — behind those stern and silent walls that were not again to shield similar atrocities for nearly seventy years. Then another day of horror was to come, when one of the princes who were tortured on the 10th of August, 1788, was to see women and children brutally massacred in the same once splendid courts; and to find himself in the hands of adherents whose crimes would render him a puppet if they succeeded, and a felon if they failed.
But on the 12th more money was sent to Ismail Beg; and, as before, the citizens were offered as the victims of the reconciliation. They now began to leave the city in large numbers; but on the 14th flying parties of Mahrattas began to appear from the southward, and somewhat restored confidence. Ismail Beg, who had long ceased to have any real confidence in Gholam Kadir, and who (let us hope for the credit of human nature) felt nothing but disgust at his companion's later excesses, now opened negotiations with Rana Khan. On the 17th a convoy of provisions from Ghausgarh was cut off, and a number of the Pathans who escorted it put to the sword or drowned in attempting to cross the river. On the 18th the Mahrattas came up in considerable force on the left bank of the Jamna, where they blockaded the approach from all but the side of the Musalman camp. In the city the shops were shut, and supplies began totally to fail. Scarcity even began to prevail in the palace, and the troops within to murmur loudly for their share of the spoil. Next day the spoiler condescended to argue with some who remonstrated with him on his treatment of the Royal Family. Their condition was in truth becoming as bad as it could well be; many of the women dying daily of starvation. It is almost with relief that we find, that the increasing scarcity compelling fresh acts of spoliation, the Controller, who had so much helped in bringing about this deplorable state of affairs, became himself its victim, being deprived of everything that he possessed. Thus passed the month of August, 1788, in Dehli.
The courage of Gholam Kadir did not at once yield to his growing perils and difficulties. He appropriated an apartment in the palace — probably the Burj-i-Tilla or "Golden Bastion." Here he caroused with his officers, while the younger members of the royal family played and danced before them like the common performers of the streets. And they were rewarded by the assurance on the part of their tormentor that, however deficient they might be in princely virtues, their talents would preserve them from wanting bread. Khair-ud-din adds a strange account of Gholam Kadir going to sleep among them; and on waking, he is represented as reviling them for their lack of courage in not stabbing him while thus at their mercy! Many of the younger princesses were exposed to insult and outrage, according to this writer. Gholam Kadir at the same time partially suppressed the discontents of his men, though not without risk to his life. At length, on the 7th of September, finding the Mahrattas increasing in numbers and boldness, and fearing to be surrounded and cut off, Gholam Kadir moved his army back to its old encampment across the river, and despatched part of his plunder to Ghausgarh, conciliating his followers by the surrender of what was less portable, such as the rich tents and equipage which had been lately used by the Emperor on his expedition to Rewari. On the 14th he paid a further visit to his camp, being under apprehensions from Ismail Beg, but returned to the palace soon after, in order to make one more attempt to shake what he considered the obstinacy of Shah Alam about the hid treasure. Foiled in this, and hemmed in by difficulties, it may be hoped that he now began to perceive with horror the shadow of an advancing vengeance. His covering the retreat to the eastward of the palace and city favours the supposition.
Meanwhile the great ceremony of mourning for the sons of Ali drew on; the Moharram, celebrated in Hindustan alike by the Shias, who venerate their memory, and by the Sunnis, who uphold their murderers. The principal features of this celebration are processions of armed men, simulating the battle of Karbala; and the public funeral of the saints, represented, not by an effigy of their bodies, but by a model of their tombs. Loving spectacle and excitement, with the love of a rather idle and illiterate population whose daily life is dull and torpid, the people of India have very generally lost sight of the fasting and humiliation which are the real essence of the Moharram, and have turned it into a diversion and a show. But there was no show nor diversion for the citizens of Dehli that year, menaced by contending armies, and awed by the knowledge of a great crime. At length, on the 11th October, the last day of the fast, a sense of deliverance began to be vaguely felt. It began to be known that Ismail Beg was reconciled to Rana Khan, and that the latter was receiving reinforcements from the Deccan. Lestonneaux, with the formidable "Telinga" battalions of de Boigne, had already arrived; all was movement and din in the Pathan camp at Shahdara. Finally, as the short chill evening of the autumn day closed in, the high walls of the Red Castle blabbed part of their secret to those who had so long watched them. With a loud explosion, the powder magazine rose into the air, and flames presently spread above the crenellated parapets. The bystanders, running to the rampart of the town, facing the river, saw, by the lurid light, boats being rowed across; while a solitary elephant was moving down at his best pace over the heavy sands, bearing the rebel chief. Gholam Kadir had finally departed, leaving the Salimgarh by a sally-port, and sending before him the titular Emperor, the plundered controller of the household, and all the chief members of the royal family.
The exact events which had passed in the interior of the palace that day can never now be known. Whether, as is usually thought, Gholam Kadir tried to set fire to the palace, that his long crime might be consummated by the destruction of Shah Alam among the blazing ruins of his ancestral dwelling; or whether, as the author of the Mozafari supposes, he meant to hold out against the Mahrattas to the last, and was only put to flight by the explosion, which he attributed to a mine laid by them, can only be a matter for speculation. To myself, I confess, the popular story appears the more probable. If Gholam Kadir meant to stand a siege, why did he send his troops across the river? and why, when he was retiring at the appearance of a mine — which he must have known was likely to be one of the siege operations — did he remove the royal family, and only leave his chief victim? Lastly, why did he leave that victim alive? Possibly he was insane.
The Mahratta general immediately occupied the castle; and the exertions of his men succeeded in extinguishing the flames before much injury had occurred. Shah Alam and the remaining ladies of his family were set at liberty, provided with some present comforts, and consoled as to the future. Rana Khan then awaited further reinforcements from Sindhia, while the Pathans retired towards their own country.
The Court of Punah saw their advantage in strengthening the Patel, and sent him a strong body of troops, led by Takuji Holkar in person, on condition that both that chief and the Peshwa should participate in the fruits of the campaign. The arrival of these forces was welcomed alike by Rana Khan and by the long harassed citizens of Dehli; and after the safety of the palace had been secured, the rest of the army, commanded by Rana Khan, Appa Khandi Rao, and others, started in pursuit of Gholam Kadir, who found himself so hard pressed that he threw himself into the Fort of Meerut, three marches off, and about equi-distant from Dehli, from Ghausgarh, and from the frontiers of Rohilkand. Why he did not, on leaving Dehli, march due north to Ghausgarh cannot be now positively determined; but it is possible that, having his spoil collected in that fort, he preferred trying to divert the enemy by an expedition in a more easterly direction; and that he entertained some hopes of aid from his connection, Faizula Khan of Rampur, or from the Bangash of Farrukhabad.
Be this as it may, the fort of Meerut sheltered him for the time, but in that fort he was ere long surrounded. The investing army was large, and, as the chances of escape diminished, the Pathan's audacity at length began to fail, and he offered terms of the most entire and abject submission. These being sternly rejected, he prepared for the worst. On the 21st of December a general assault was delivered by the Mahratta army; against which Gholam Kadir and his men defended themselves with resolution throughout the short day. But his men in general were now weary, if not of his crimes at all events of his misfortunes, and he formed the resolution to separate from them without further delay. He accordingly stole out of the fort that night, mounted on a horse, into whose saddle-bags he had stuffed a large amount of the most valuable jewellery from the palace plunder, which he had ever since retained in his own keeping, in view of an emergency. He rode some twelve miles through the winter night, avoiding the haunts of men, and apparently hoping to cross the Jamna and find refuge with the Sikhs. At last, in the mists of the dawn, his weary horse, wandering over the fields, fell into a slope used for the descent of the oxen who draw up the bucket from the well, for the purposes of irrigation. The horse rose and galloped off by the incline made for the bullocks, but the rider was either stunned or disabled by his bruises, and remained where he fell. As the day dawned the Brahmin cultivator came to yoke his cattle and water the wheat, when he found the richly-dressed form of one whom he speedily recognized as having but lately refused him redress when plundered by the Pathan soldiery. "Salam, Nawab Sahib!" said the man, offering a mock obeisance, with clownish malice, to his late oppressor. The scared and famished caitiff sate up and looked about him. "Why do you call me Nawab?" he asked. "I am a poor soldier, wounded, and seeking my home. I have lost all I have, but put me in the road to Ghausgarh, and I will reward you hereafter." Necessarily, the mention of this fort would have put at rest any doubt in the Brahmin's mind; he at once shouted for assistance, and presently carried off his prize to Rana Khan's camp. Hence the prisoner was despatched to Sindhia, at Mathra, while the Pathans, left to themselves, abandoned the Fort of Meerut and dispersed to their respective homes. Bedar Bakht, the titular Emperor, was sent to Dehli, where he was confined and ultimately slain, and the unfortunate controller, Manzur Ali, who had played so prominent a part in the late events as to have incurred general suspicion of treacherous connivance, was tied to the foot of an elephant and thus dragged about the streets until he died.
For the Rohilla chief a still more horrible fate was prepared. On his arrival at Mathra, Sindhia inflicted upon him the punishment of Tashhir, sending him round the bazaar on a jackass, with his face to the tail, and a guard instructed to stop at every considerable shop and beg a cowree, in the name of the Nawab of the Bawani. The wretched man becoming abusive under the contemptuous treatment, his tongue was torn out of his mouth. Gradually he was mutilated further, being first blinded, as a retribution for his treatment of the Emperor, and subsequently deprived of his nose, ears, hands and feet, and sent to Dehli. Death came to his relief upon the road, it is believed by his being hanged upon a tree 3rd March, 1789, and the mangled trunk was sent to Dehli, where it was laid before the sightless monarch, the most ghastly Nazar that ever was presented in the Diwin Khas.
Perhaps, if we could hear Gholam Kadir's version of the revolution here described, we might find that public indignation had to some extent exaggerated his crimes. It is possible that the tradition which imputes his conduct to revenge for an alleged cruelty of Shah Alam may be a myth, founded upon a popular conception of probability, and only corroborated by the fact that he died childless. Perhaps he merely thought that he was performing a legitimate stroke of State, and imitating the vigorous policy of Ghazi-ud-din the younger; perhaps the plunder of the palace was necessary to conciliate his followers; perhaps the firing of the palace was an accident. But the result of the combination of untoward appearances has been to make his name a bye-word among the not over-sensitive inhabitants of Hindustan, familiar, by tradition and by personal experience, with almost every form of cruelty, and almost every degree of rebellion. It is said that during moments of reaction, after some of his debauches in the palace (v. p. 183), Gholam Kadir attempted to justify his conduct by representing himself as acting under supernatural inspiration. "As I was sleeping," he averred, "in a garden at Sikandra, an apparition stood over me and smote me on the face saying, Arise, go to Dehli, and possess thyself of the palace." It may be that at such times he experienced some feelings of remorse. At all events, his punishment was both immediate and terrible, and his crimes proved the ruin of his house. Ghausgarh was forthwith razed to the ground, so that — as already mentioned — no vestige but the mosque remains. The brother of the deceased fled to the Panjab.
The first care of the Patel, after these summary vindications of justice, was to make provision for the administration of Hindustan, to which he probably foresaw that he should not be able to give constant personal attention, and in which he resolved to run no further risks of a Musalman revival. The fallen Emperor was restored to his throne, in spite of his own reluctance, "in spite of his blindness," as the native historian says, who knew that no blind man could be a Sultan; and at the enthronement, to which all possible pomp was lent, the agency of the Peshwa, with Sindhia for his deputy, was solemnly renewed and firmly established. We also learn from Francklin that an annual allowance of nine lakes of rupees was assigned for the support of the Emperor's family and Court, an adequate civil list if it had been regularly paid. But Shah Nizam-ud-din, who had been restored to office, was an unfit man to be entrusted with the uncontrolled management of such a sum; and during the Patel's frequent and protracted absences, the royal family were often reduced to absolute indigence. Sayid Raza Khan, on whose authority this shocking statement rests, was the resident representative of the British Minister at Lucknow, and was the channel through which the aged Emperor received from the British Government a monthly allowance of 2,000 rupees. This, together with the fees paid by persons desirous of being presented, was all that Shah Alam could count on in his old age for the support of his thirty children and numerous kinsfolk and retainers. Captain Francklin was an eye-witness of the semblance of State latterly maintained in the Red Castle, where he paid his respects in 1794. He found the Emperor represented by a crimson velvet chair under an awning in the Diwan Khas, but the Shah was actually in one of the private rooms with three of his sons. The British officers presented their alms under the disguise of a tributary offering, and received some nightgowns, of sprigged calico, by way of honorific dresses.
The so-called Emperor being now incapable of ruling, even according to the very lax political code of the East, and all real power being in the hands of a Hindu headborough supported by mercenary troops, the native records, to which I have had access, either cease altogether, or cease to concern themselves with the special story of Hindustan. And, indeed, as far as showing the fall of the empire, my task is also done. I do not agree with those who think that the empire fell with the death of Aurangzeb, or even with the events that immediately preceded the campaign of Panipat, in 1761. I consider the empire to have endured as long as "the king's name was a tower of strength"; as long as Nawabs paid large fines on succession, and contending parties intrigued for investiture; as long as Shujaa-ud-daulah could need its sanction to his occupation of Kattahir, or Najaf Khan led its armies to the conquest of the Jats. We have seen how that state of affairs originated, and how it came to an end; there is nothing now left but to trace briefly the concluding career of those who have played their parts in the narrative, and to introduce their successors upon the vast and vacant theatre. In so doing it must be borne in mind that, although we, from our present standpoint, can see that the Moghul Empire was ended, it did not altogether so appear to contemporaries. Whether federation or disintegration be the best ideal destiny, for a number of Provinces whose controlling centre has given way, is a question which may admit of more than one answer. But it is, in any case, certain that in the year 1789 the Provinces of which the Empire had been composed, were not ripe for independent and organic existence. There was still, therefore, a craving for a paramount power; and that craving was to be finally met by the British. In the meanwhile the almost effete machinery of the Empire, directed and administered by Sindhia, made the best available substitute; General de Boigne — who had the most complete information on the subject — bears unequivocal testimony on this subject. His words will be found at the beginning of the next chapter.
NOTE. — It would be curious to know what became of Gholam Kadir's jewel-laden horse after the rider fell into the pit. In Skinner's life, it is conjectured that he came into the hands of M. Lestonneaux. It is certain that this officer abruptly abandoned Sindhia's service at this very time. Perhaps the crown jewels of the Great Mughal are now in France. The Emperor (who composed poetry with estimation under the name of "Aftab") solaced his temporary captivity by writing verses, which are still celebrated in Hindustan, and of which the following is a correct translation. The resemblance to the Psalms of David is noticeable: —
"The storms of affliction have destroyed the Majesty of my Government: and scattered my State to the winds.
I was even as the Sun shining in the firmament of the Empire: but the sun is setting in the sorrowful West.
It is well for me that I have become blind; for so I am hindered from seeing another on my throne.
Even as the saints were afflicted by Yazid; so is the ruin that has fallen upon me, through the appointment of Destiny.
The wealth of this world was my sickness; but now the Lord hath healed me.
I have received the just reward of mine iniquities; but now He hath forgiven me my sins.
I gave milk to the young adder; and he became the cause of my destruction.
The Steward who served me thirty years compassed my ruin; but a swift recompense hath overtaken him.
The lords of my council who had covenanted to serve me; even they deserted me, and took whatsoever in thirty years I had put by for my children.
Moghuls and Afghans alike failed me; and became confederates in my imprisonment.
Even the base-born man of Hamadan, and Gul Mohammad, full of wickedness; Allah Yar also, and Solaiman and Badal Beg all met together for my trouble.
And now that this young Afghan hath destroyed the dignity of my empire; I see none but thee, O Most Holy! to have compassion upon me.
Yet peradventure Timur Shah my kinsman may come to my aid; and Madhoji Sindhia, who is even as a son unto me he also will surely avenge my cause.
Asaf-ud-daula and the chief of the English; they also may come to my relief.
Shame were it if Princes and People gathered not together; to the end that they might bring me help.
Of all the fair women of my chambers none is left to me but Mubarik Mahal.
O Aftab! verily thou hast been this day overthrown by Destiny; yet God shall bless thee and restore thy fallen brightness."
Francklin's Shah Alum has been constantly referred to. He was an officer of great diligence, who had large local opportunities, having been in Dehli, the Doab, and Rohilkand, from 1793 to 1796, on a survey ordered by the British Government. He had access to many native sources of information; but unfortunately never cites any in the margin but Sayid Raza's MS. I have not hesitated to combat his views on several points; but there are few English writers on the subject to whom we are more indebted. Besides this work, and one to be hereafter noticed, he was the author of books on Ancient Palibothra and on snake-worship. He died a lieutenant-colonel in the Bengal army.