A History of the Mahrattas v1.c17.173

v1.c17.173

Aurungzebe possessed great military strength and pecuniary resource; he also had considerable local knowledge, and in the first instance the same power of confirming or withholding hereditary rights as his predecessors in conquest. Titles, Munsubs, and Jagheers were frequently bestowed and still more frequently promised, with a liberality greater than any former conqueror had shown; but presumption, jealousy, and bigotry soon deprived him of many of those advantages. He was not fully aware of the strength or the nature of predatory power, and instead of crushing it by the aid of the established governments, he pulled down those constituted authorities without replacing them; he involved himself with enemies on every side; he discharged the soldiery, whom, in addition to his own troops, he could not maintain, and thus sent armies into the field against himself. He supposed that he was not only acquainted with the details of arrangements necessary in a newly conquered country, but capable of superintending them; he placed little confidence in his agents, whilst he at the same time employed Mahomedans in all situations, to fill which, in many instances, policy and humanity alike dictated the selection of Hindoos. The confusion and disorder which ensued could not be tranquillized by the Emperor's fancied wisdom or the flattery and praises of his court and countrymen. The Mahrattas, more especially the Bramins, are not a people so easily dazzled as the Mahomedans, and in the course of a very short time they began to discover the weakness of the Moghuls.