South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c10.12

c10.12

An essential need of Alau-d-din’s reign to keep the Mughals out of India.—Having thus successfully paved his way to the throne with blood and gold, Alau-d-din naturally had to fear plots against him from those in positions similar to that which he occupied at his uncle’s court. There was further the probability of trouble in the subordinate governments of the kingdom of Delhi particularly as the succession was irregular. To add to these two, the Mughals who began to appear on the north-western frontier early in the century kept hanging like a cloud over the frontier and had to be kept out of it at all costs. He proceeded therefore to suppress revolts in the interior, and put the frontier in a footing to oppose possible incursions of the Mughals. Having done this preliminary he was able to defeat the Mughals. A ruler of ordinary ability in his position would have given himself up to ease and pleasure having so far succeeded in putting down disturbances, but Alau-d-din was not a man of ordinary ability. He knew that defeating the Mughals for once did not mean the suppression of the Moghul trouble, and his work therefore lay in providing efficiently for the permanent defence of the north-western frontier on the one side, and the maintenance of peace by suppressing rebellions and disturbances in the country as necessary thereto. To effect both these objects, the prime necessity was what would be called a standing army of sufficient strength in a high state of efficiency. Such a standing army, having regard to the numbers in which the Mughals invaded India, should of necessity have been large and we need not be surprised at the statement of Wassaf that he maintained in very efficient condition an army of 475,000 soldiers of all arms.¹