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 (assisted 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, asserting 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 principal 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 massacred without distinction of age or sex.
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.
Having concluded these operations, the invader retired into cantonments at Anupshahar, on the Ganges, and there proceeded to parcel out the Empire among such of the Indian chiefs as he delighted to honour. He then appointed Najib to the office of Amir-ul-umra, an office which involved the personal charge of the Palace and its inmates; and departed to his own country, from which he had lately received some unsatisfactory intelligence. The Emperor endeavoured to engage his influence to bring about a marriage which he desired to contract with a daughter of the penultimate Emperor, Muhammad Shah: but the Abdali, on his attention being drawn to the young lady, resolved upon espousing her himself. He at the same time married his son Timur Shah to the daughter of the heir apparent, and, having left that son in charge of the Panjab, retired with the bulk of his army to Kandahar.
Relieved for the present from his anxieties, the Minister gave sway to that morbid cruelty which detracted from the general sagacity of his character. He protected himself against his numerous enemies by subsidizing a vast body-guard of Mahratta mercenaries, to pay whom he was led to the most merciless exactions from the immediate subjects of the Empire. He easily expelled Najib (who since his elevation must be distinguished by his honorific name of Najib ud daula, "Hero of the State"): he destroyed or kept in close confinement the nobles who favoured the Emperor, and even sought to lay hands upon the heir apparent, Ali Gohar.
This prince was now in his seven-and-thirtieth year, and exhibited all those generous qualities which we find in the men of his race as long as they are not enervated by the voluptuous repose of the Palace. He had been for some time residing in a kind of open arrest in the house of Ali Mardan Khan, a fortified building on the banks of the river. Here he learned that the Minister contemplated transferring him to the close captivity of Salim Garh, the state prison which stood within the precincts of the Palace. Upon this he consulted with his companions, Rajah Ramnath and a Musalman gentleman, Saiyid Ali, who with four private troopers agreed to join in the hazardous enterprise of forcing their way through the bands which by this time invested the premises. Early the following morning they descended to the courtyard and mounted their horses in silence.
There was no time to spare. Already the bolder of the assailants had climbed upon the neighbouring roofs, from which they began to fire upon the little garrison, while their main forces guarded the gateway. But it so happened that there was a breach in the wall upon the river side, at the rear of the premises. By this the Prince and his friends galloped out, and without a moment's hesitation plunged their horses into the broad Jamna. One alone, Saiyid Ali, stayed behind, and single-handed held the pursuers at bay until the prince had made good his escape. The loyal follower paid for his loyalty with his life. The fugitives found their way to Sikandra, which was the centre of Najib's new fief; and the Prince, after staying some time under the protection of the Amir-ul-Umra, ultimately reached Lucknow, where, after a vain attempt to procure the co-operation of the new Viceroy in an attack upon the British, he was eventually obliged to seek the protection of that alien power.
Ahmad the Abdali being informed of these things by letters from Dehli, prepared a fresh incursion; the rather that Adina Beg, with the help of the Mahrattas had at the same time chased his son, Timur Shah, from Lahor; while with another force they had expelled Najib from his new territory, and forced him to seek safety in his forts in the Bawani Mahal. The new Viceroy of Audh raised the Rohillas and his own immediate followers in the Abdali's name; the Mahrattas were driven out of Rohilkand; and the Afghans, crossing the Jamna in Najib's territory to the north of Dehli, arrived once more at Anupshahar about September, 1759, whence they were enabled to hold uninterrupted communication with Audh.
The ruthless Ghazi was now almost at the end of his resources. He therefore resolved to play his last card, and either win all by the terror of his monstrous crime, or lose all, and retire from the game.
The harmless Emperor, amongst his numerous foibles, cherished the pardonable weakness of a respect for the religious mendicants, who form one of the chronic plagues of Asiatic society. Taking advantage of this, a Kashmirian in the interest of the Minister took occasion to mention to Alamgir that a hermit of peculiar sanctity had recently taken up his abode in the ruined fort of Firozabad, some two miles south of the city, and (in those days) upon the right bank of the Jamna, which river has now receded to a considerable distance. The helpless devotee resolved to consult with this holy man, and repaired to the ruins in his palanquin. Arrived at the door of the room, which was in the N.E. corner of the palace of Firoz Shah, he was relieved of his arms by the Kashmirian, who admitted him, and closed the entrance. A cry for aid being presently heard was gallantly responded to by Mirza Babar, the emperor's son-in-law, who attacked and wounded the sentry, but was overpowered and sent to Salim Garh in the Emperor's litter. The latter meanwhile was seized by a savage Uzbek, named Balabash, who had been stationed within, and who sawed off the defenceless monarch's head with a knife. Then stripping off the rich robe he cast the headless trunk out of the window, where it lay for some hours upon the sands until the Kashmirian ordered its removal. The date of this tragic event is between the 10th and 30th of November, 1759 (the latter being the day given by Dowson, vol. viii. p. 243). The late Minister, Intizam-ud-Daula, had been murdered by order of his successor three days earlier. A grandson of Kam Bakhsh (the unfortunate son of Aurangzeb) was then taken out of the Salim Garh and proclaimed Emperor by the sonorous title of "Shah Jahan II." But he is not recognised on the list of emperors, and his reign — such as it was — lasted but a moment. Ghazi - (or Shahab) ud-din attempted to reproduce the policy of the Sayyids by governing behind this puppet; but the son of the murdered emperor proclaimed himself in Bihar (v. inf.), and Ahmad the Abdali moved against Ghazi, as we shall see in the next chapter. Discretion was the only part of valour left, and the young and unscrupulous politician fled to Bhartpur, where he found a temporary asylum with Suraj Mal.
As this restless criminal here closes his public life, it may be once for all mentioned that he reluctantly and slowly retired to Farukhabad, where he remained till Shall Alam came there in 1771 (inf. p. 98); that being driven from thence at the Restoration he once more became a wanderer, and spent the next twenty years of his life in disguise and total obscurity; till being accidentally discovered by the British police at Surat, about 1791, he was, by the Governor-General's orders, allowed to depart with a small sum of money to Mecca, the refuge of many a Mohamadan malcontent. Returning thence he visited Kabul, where he joined one of the Dehli princes in an attempted invasion of India. The prince went mad at Multan, and Ghazi, leaving him there, went on to Bandelkhand, where he received a grant of land on which he chiefly passed the remainder of his days. He died in 1800, and was buried at Pakpatan in the Panjab (v. Journal of the As. Soc. of Bengal, No. CCXXVI. 1879, pp. 129, ff.)
The vengeance of the Abdali, therefore, fell upon the unoffending inhabitants of the capital — once more they were scourged with fire and sword. Leaving a garrison in the palace, the Abdali then quitted the almost depopulated city, and fell back on his old quarters at Anupshahar, where he entered into negotiations with the Rohillas, and with the Nawab of Audh, of which the result was a general combination of the Musalmans of Hindustan with a view of striking a decisive blow in defence of Islam. But these events will form the subject of a separate chapter.