History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c41.s11: §19. The losses and gains of the expedition.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c41.s11
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§19. The losses and gains of the expedition.
v3.c41.s11.1
The Mughal *thanas* were safely withdrawn from the country restored to the Ahoms, and the retreat of the army and navy alike was effected skilfully and cautiously, without any loss.
v3.c41.s11.2
Judged as a military exploit, Mir Jumla's invasion of Assam was a success. He overran the country almost to its farthest limits, kept hold of the capital, forced the Rajah to make a humiliating treaty, realized a large indemnity, and secured the promise of a large cession of territory and further payments. If its political consequences were not permanent, if the ceded districts were lost and even Gauhati wrested from the Mughal grasp only four years after his death, the fault was not his. No race can maintain an empire unless its sons are willing to garrison their conquests, and Mughal soldiers were heartily sick of this land of flood and earthquake, pestilence and witchcraft. It is surprising that Aurangzib did not lay to heart his own experiences in Balkh in his father's reign.
v3.c41.s11.3
The one dark spot in the campaign was the isolation of the Mughal troops during the six months of rain. But this in itself would have mattered little if Garhgaon could have been provisioned with the accustomed food and comforts of the warriors of Upper India and their horses. The beleaguered army suffered many privations, but they were not once defeated by the Ahoms; their losses were not from the enemy's sword but from the stroke of pestilence which the general could not have foreseen or averted. At the end of the rainy season he was once more ready to assert his power, and the Ahoms found themselves utterly helpless. The shock of Mughal invasion impaired the fabric of the Ahom State, the feudatories became refractory, the population was woefully thinned by war famine and plague, the king died a broken down man only eight months after Mir Jumla's return, and so miserably crushed was the country by the Muslim attack that the gods had to be propitiated with special rites to bring national prosperity back.*