History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c58.s3.5

v4.c58.s3.5

himself up entirely to wine, while rival nobles began to fight for the wazirship and the control over the capital and the *fainéant* king. Matters grew worse when the boy-king Sikandar succeeded in 1672, and the history of Bijapur became in effect the history of its regents. Great disorder prevailed in the administration, the country was eternally unsettled and impoverished, the State gradually became too weak to defend itself from foreign attack, or even to continue its sluggish normal course of existence. This was the opportunity which made Shivaji's rise to independent power possible, and once secure in the possession of a kingdom, a capital and an army, he was strong enough to defy all his enemies together.