History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c68.s8.12

v4.c68.s8.12

The morale of the imperial army was utterly gone. True, reinforcements soon arrived (10 July) under Prince Azam and Ruhullah Khan, the governors of Malwa and Bijapur respectively. True, Shaikh Minhaj, "the best servant of Abul Hasan" (M.A. 296), deserted to the Emperor's side (28th May), and Saf Shikan Khan, restored to liberty and the Mir Atish-ship (22nd June), began to do his utmost to erect a new gun-platform very quickly. But all these were of no avail. The famine grew worse than before, and pestilence appeared as its inseparable companion. "The scarcity of grain and fodder was so great that even rich men were reduced to beggary, while the condition of the poor baffled description." (K. K. ii. 336.) As the official history records it, "Wheat, pulse, and rice disappeared. The city of Haidarabad was utterly depopulated; houses, river, and plain were all filled with corpses. The same condition prevailed in the Mughal camp. At night piles of the dead used to accumulate, and next day the sweepers used to fling them, without funeral, on the bank of the river. This happened day after day. The survivors in the agony of hunger ate the carrion of men and beasts. For miles and miles around, the eye rested only on mounds of corpses. Happily, the ceaseless rain melted away the flesh and the skin, otherwise the rotting carcases would have poisoned the air and despatched even the men spared by the famine. After some months, when the rains ceased, the white piles of skeletons looked from a distance like hillocks of snow." (M.A. 292.)