History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v2.c29.47

v2.c29.47

Shuja had a hopeless inferiority of troops. He had brought back about 10,000 men from Khajwah. Of these some had been lost by desertion, and many others had been intercepted by the Mughal capture of Rajmahal.[*] On land he could not have made an hour's stand against the Imperialists. But he had an artillery of big pieces admirably served by European and half-caste gunners. He was also strong in an arm peculiarly suited to the theatre of the war, an arm in which Bengal, of all the provinces of the empire, enjoyed a notable superiority, and the lack of which paralysed his enemy's efforts. Bengal is the land of water-ways, and its subahdar (viceroy) used to get a large assignment on the revenue (tankhah) and extensive jagirs (fiefs) for maintaining a flotilla (nawwara)* to patrol the rivers, convey officers and troops, and resist the pirates of Sondip and Chatgaon. The Mughals were proverbially bad seamen. Expert cavaliers, they were powerless on board a ship. The deep had unknown terrors for them, and even a voyage down a river was a penance to be gone through with set teeth and breathless expectation of its end, when they would tread on solid land again!