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History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c72: Chapter XLIX. A Survey of the Last Eighteen Years.

History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c72

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Contents

Chapter XLIX. A Survey of the Last Eighteen Years.

§ 1. The tragedy of Aurangzib's life, how developed.

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The life of Aurangzib was one long tragedy,—a story of man battling in vain against an invisible but inexorable Fate, a tale of how the strongest human endeavour was baffled by the forces of the age. A strenuous reign of fifty years ends in colossal failure. And yet this king was one of the greatest rulers of Asia in intelligence, character, and enterprise. He was, in an extraordinary degree, hardworking, active, moral, and inspired by the sense of duty. He denied himself pleasure and repose, steeled his heart against the seductions of the senses and the appeals of pity and human weakness, and governed his people according to the best ideals of his age and creed. And yet the result of fifty years of strong and good administration by this Puritan in the purple was the hopeless breaking up of his empire. This tragedy in history was developed with all the regularity of a perfect drama.

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The first forty years of his life were spent in steady and arduous self-training and preparation for the supreme office in the realm. This seed-time was followed by a year of sharp contest for the throne, which put all his powers to the test and rewarded his energy, courage and sagacity with the golden crown of Delhi. Then came twenty-three years of peaceful and prosperous reign and settled residence in the great capitals of Northern India. With every enemy removed from his path, the whole empire of India obeying his command, and wealth and culture increasing from the peace and order that his firm and vigilant rule had ensured to the country,—Aurangzib seemed now to have attained to the summit of human happiness and glory. This was the third Act of his life, and after it began his decline. A pitiless Nemesis, like that of the Greek tragedy, raised against him an enemy in the very bosom of his family. The rebel son of Shah Jahan cannot long enjoy his triumph because he is confronted by the rebellion of his own son Muhammad Akbar (1681.)

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The flight of the defeated rebel to the Maratha king drew Aurangzib to Southern India, where he was destined to spend the last 26 years of his life in tents and wear out the empire's revenue, army, and organised administration as well as his own health in an unending and fruitless struggle. But the irony of Fate at first veiled from him and his contemporaries the futility of his efforts and the tragic close of his career. In the fourth Act of his life, which is comprehended in the fourth volume of this History, all seemed to go well with him;— Bijapur and Golkonda were annexed, the Berad chieftain of Sagar was forced to submit, and the troublesome Maratha king was brought to the block and his capital and entire family captured (1689). In this result nothing seemed to be wanting to complete the triumph of Aurangzib. But a few thoughtful observers could already discern ominous signs of the coming doom, peeping out here and there, while others were still blinded as to the future by the brilliancy of the empire. The seeds that had been sown in the third stage of his life, unnoticed and in ignorance of their fruits, began to sprout up in the fourth and he had to gather their baneful harvest in the fifth and closing period of his life.

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Therefore, the tragedy of Aurangzib is concentrated in the last eighteen years of his life (1689-1707), which form the theme of the present volume. Not that any one could at its outset forecast the exact course of the future, nor that events moved steadily in one direction only. Slowly but pitilessly his Fate works itself out, finally defeating all his efforts, though the invisible cause of his failure lay in his character and past deeds. Slowly but with increasing clearness does the tragic plot unfold itself, till Aurangzib realises the true nature of the forces arrayed against him and the real trend of affairs. But he does not abandon the struggle; even when the hopelessness of the contest forces itself on him and his Court, his endeavour is as strenuous as before. He tries new remedies; he changes his tactics with changes in the political situation and in the distribution of the enemy forces. At first he sends out his generals, while himself occupying a central position for their control and guidance. His generals fail to achieve a decision; very well, then this old man of eighty-two must go out to conduct the war in person for six years (1699-1705); and he retires to Ahmadnagar only when the first summons of death reaches him. Then, and then only does he mournfully recognise Ahmadnagar as destined to be his "journey's end" (khatam-us-safar.)*

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In this chapter I propose to take a general survey of Aurangzib's movements and policy during these last eighteen years,—how the situation developed at different times and in different theatres,—what steps he took to meet each of these new developments and with what results,—what leading actors arose at different stages of the contest and how they influenced the scene,—and how slowly but surely the moral decline of the empire passed into the actual dissolution of government and of social order at his death.

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§2. Aurangzib's movements during his last 20 years.

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When Golkonda fell to him (on 21st September 1687), a year after the conquest of Bijapur, Aurangzib's work in the Deccan seemed to have been completed. The long dream of the Mughal Emperors ever since the days of Akbar seemed at last to have been fully realised. No rival Muslim Power was left in the Deccan, and all India now bowed beneath the sceptre of Delhi. True, there was a Hindu king still unsubdued; but he was an upstart of limited means and his soldiers no better than brigands; their suppression, so it seemed, was only a question of time, now that the Mughal army was set free and the Marathas had no ally left to them anywhere in India.

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∗ Hamid-ud-din's Ahkam, § 56. K. K. (540) has Ikhtitam-i-safar.

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After the capture of Golkonda, Aurangzib lay encamped near that fort till 25th January 1688, in order to settle the administration of the conquered country, and then he returned to Bijapur (on 15th March) by way of Bidar and Kulbarga. At Bijapur he lived for the next nine months, till driven out (on 14th December) by a terrible outbreak of the plague. By way of Akluj and Bahadur-garh (on the Bhima) he reached Koregaon in the Puna district, where he encamped from 3rd March to 18th December 1689, and then returned to Bijapur (on 11th Jan. 1690), this being his third visit to the Adil Shahi capital. But he soon left it, and after spending February, March and April at different places south of that city, near the bank of the Krishna, he finally encamped at Galgala, on the southern side of that river and 34 miles south-west of Bijapur, about 21st May 1690. The rest of this year and the first two months of the next year were passed by him here; and then he went back to the environs of Bijapur for fourteen months (March 1691—May 1692). Thereafter, Galgala was again his residence, for nearly three years (May 1692—March 1695). Here the Venetian doctor Gemelli Careri visited him (21st March 1695) and has left a graphic account of his Court and personal habits.

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Finally, after a fifth and last visit to Bijapur for five weeks (April-May 1695), he settled at Brahmapuri on the southern bank of the Bhima, (some 20 miles south-east of Pandharpur), which his pious zeal renamed Islampuri. Here he lived for four years and a half (21 May 1695—19 Oct. 1699), travelling to Sholapur every year in Ramzan in order to spend the holy month there in prayer, fasting and meditation. At Islampuri his encampment was walled round, and here he left his family in charge of his wazir when he set out on 19th October, 1699, on that endless campaign against the Maratha forts which was to wear out the last years of his life, and from which he returned to Ahmadnagar (20 Jan. 1706), only to die a year later (20 Feb. 1707).

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Such briefly were Aurangzib's movements during the last twenty years of his reign. We shall now survey the changes in the military situation during this time.

§3. The Maratha recovery, 1690-91.

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The years 1688 and 1689 were a period of unbroken triumph to the Emperor. His armies marched east and south to take possession of the forts and provinces of the annexed kingdoms of Bijapur and Golkonda. Thus, Sagar (the Berad capital), Raichur and Adoni (in the east), Sera and Bangalore (in Mysore), Wandiwash and Conjeveram (in the Madras Karnatak), Bankapur and Belgaon (in the extreme south-west), were occupied; and to crown all, Shambhuji was captured and his capital with his entire family seized. As the Maratha chronicle says of 1689, "This year the Mughals took all the forts." In Northern India, too, signal success attended his arms: the Jat rising under Rajaram was put down and that leader was slain (on 4th July, 1688).

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But at the end of 1689 the new Maratha king Rajaram was known to have reached the fort of Jinji in safety, and the Emperor's forces had henceforth to be directed south-eastwards into the Mysore plateau and the Madras Karnatak if he was to preserve his rightful gains from Bijapur and Golkonda in those quarters and to check Maratha activity there. Thus, the brilliant success of Mughal arms since 1687 received a sharp set-back in 1690. Jinji became a centre of Maratha enterprise in the East Coast, while their ministers left at home organised resistance to the Mughals in the west. The difficulties of Aurangzib were only multiplied by the disappearance of a common head and a central Government among the Marathas, as every Maratha captain with his own retainers fought and raided in a different quarter and on his own account. It now became a people's war, and Aurangzib could not end it, because there was no Maratha Government or State-army for him to attack and destroy. The imperial forces could not be present everywhere in full strength; hence, they suffered reverses here and there. The enemy forts which the Mughals had captured or bought during the first panic following Shambhuji's downfall, now began to be recovered by the Marathas. The tide first turned against Aurangzib in May 1690, when his general Rustam Khan was captured and his whole camp looted by the Marathas.

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Throughout 1690 and 1691 the Emperor's chief concern still was to take possession of the almost boundless expanse of fertile territory in the south and the east, which had legally fallen to him as the heir-at-law of Adil Shah and Qutb Shah. At this stage, he evidently underrated the Maratha danger, as he hoped that with their capital and royal family in his hands and their new king invested in Jinji by the same general who had captured Sahu and Raigarh, the State of the Marathas had been practically annihilated. He had yet to take a proper measure of the Maratha people.

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§4. The fighting during 1692 and 1693.

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In the autumn of 1691 the Mughal position before Jinji became so dangerous that the Emperor had to divert large forces to that quarter. In 1692 nothing was achieved by the imperialists in the western theatre, while in the east coast the year ended with crushing disasters to their arms,—the capture of two high Mughal generals, the abandonment of the siege lines before Jinji, and the arrest of Prince Kam Bakhsh by his colleagues (Dec. 1692—Jan. 1693). So, the first thing to be done in 1693 was to save the situation by pouring reinforcements and supplies into the Eastern Karnatak. In the western theatre, Prince Muizz-ud-din, who had laid siege to Panhala in October 1692, toiled unsuccessfully throughout the next year, and was finally expelled by the Marathas in March 1694. In addition to this, there were the incessant raids of the Maratha partisan leaders,—Santa Ghorparé, Dhana Jadav, Nima Sindhia, Hanumant Rao and others,—diversified by occasional successes of the Mughal pursuing columns which had not the least decisive effect, but merely lightened the Maratha rovers of a part of their booty and some mares and arms, and sometimes cost them the lives of their rear-guard.

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Meantime, nearer the imperial head-quarters, over the broad and strategically important tract from Bidar to Bijapur and from Raichur to Malkhed, the activities of the hardy aboriginal tribe of Berads led by the genius of their chief Pidia Nayak, had become so serious that a large army under a first-rate general had to be posted at Sagar (72 miles east of Bijapur) from June 1691 to December 1692.

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Then the Berad chieftain made his submission, but he renewed his hostility three years later, when another large army had to be sent against him (1696).

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During 1694 the war in Western Deccan continued to be of the same indecisive and straggling character. Only in the Madras Karnatak the reinforced Mughal general made many conquests and levied contribution from Tanjore, but without thereby hastening the capture of the new Maratha capital at Jinji.

§5. Aurangzib realises his hopeless position, 1695.

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At last, by April 1695 Aurangzib came to realise that he had really gained nothing by the conquest of the Adil Shahi and Qutb Shahi capitals and the extinction of their royal lines. He had formally annexed their dominions and his officers had taken legal possession of their chief forts and administrative centres; but these gains had not been secured, they had not been made into "settled" provinces like the old subas of the empire. For Aurangzib, then, there was no going back to Delhi; his work in the Deccan was still unfinished; indeed, it was only just beginning.

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He now perceived that the Maratha problem was no longer what it had been in Shivaji's time, or even in Shambhuji's. They were no longer a tribe of banditti or local rebels, but the one dominating factor of Deccan politics, the only enemy left to the empire, and yet an enemy all-pervasive from Bombay to Madras across the Indian Peninsula, elusive as the wind, without any headman or stronghold whose capture would naturally result in the extinction of their power. They had now assumed the alarming character of being the ally and rallying point of all the enemies of the empire and all disturbers of public peace and regular administration throughout the Deccan and even in Malwa, the Central Provinces and Bundelkhand. A nation was now up in arms, or more correctly all the various tribes residing in Southern and Central India were up in arms with Maratha aid and concert, against the officers of the Emperor and the cause of law and order in general. Aurangzib realised that he was a frail man buffeting a raging ocean with his bare arms.

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His hope of returning to Delhi and ruling peacefully from that centre of the empire had at last to be given up as an empty dream. He must stay on the spot till death, if necessary.

§ 6. The Emperor's stay at Islampuri, 1695-1699.

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Therefore, in May 1695 he sent his eldest son to govern the north-western portion of the empire (the Panjab, Sindh, and afterwards Afghanistan) and to guard the western gateway of India, while he himself settled at Islampuri in as much permanence of residence as the military situation and his age (now verging on eighty) allowed. This place was his last abode, because though he actually lived here for the next 4½ years only, it remained ever after as his home and stronghold, the base (*bungah*) at the back of his campaigns.

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During the Islampuri period (1695-1699), the Maratha danger came nearer home and drove the Mughals into the defensive in the Marathi and Kanarese districts of the present Bombay Presidency. The movements of the roving bands under Santa Ghorpare, Dhana Jadav and their imitators were bewilderingly rapid and unexpected. The Mughals could not defend every place; their pursuing columns panted helplessly behind the "robbers" and wore themselves out in vain. Local representatives of the Emperor, who had learnt by bitter experience that aid could not be expected from their master in time,—and sometimes ever at all,—made unauthorised terms with the Marathas by promising them an annual blackmail of one-fourth of the revenue (*chauth.*) They were still more urged to do it by the fact that if the Marathas looted a district the Emperor ordered his local governor to make the loss good to the victims! If a Mughal officer resisted the Marathas and was defeated and captured by them, he had to provide his own ransom, and the Emperor would often dismiss such unfortunate sufferers on the suspicion of cowardice. Hence, it was safer for a Mughal commander to bribe the Marathas than to fight them; certainly, it was cheaper. Worse than these, many imperialists made a concert with the enemy and enriched themselves by robbing the Emperor's own subjects a innocent traders, as these officers had been starving at getting no rent from their devastated fiefs. The Mughal administration had really dissolved, and only the presence of the Emperor with all his troops in the country held it together, but it was now a delusive phantom. Santa and Dhana were the heroes of this period; the initiative lay entirely with them, and they upset every plan and calculation formed by the imperialists.

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The chief incidents of this Islampuri period were Santa's destruction of two great Mughal generals, Qasim Khan (Nov. 1695) and Himmat Khan (Jan. 1696), the murder of Santa in a domestic feud (June 1697), the Mughal capture of Jinji (7 Jan. 1698), and the return of Rajaram to Maharashtra.

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§ 7. Aurangzib's last campaigns, 1699-1705.

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This last event forced a change on Aurangzib's policy. Safe in the undisputed possession of the east coast, he could now concentrate all his resources in the western theatre of war. Such a change of objective had become necessary too, as the head and centre of the Maratha power had once more shifted to the west and he could destroy it only by seizing their king's forts and family in Maharashtra and thus repeating once again, but in a more decisive and final form, the success that had followed his capture of Shambhuji and his capital in 1689.

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Now, therefore, began the last stage of Aurangzib's career,—the sieges of successive Maratha forts by the Emperor in person. The rest of his life (1699-1707) is a repetition of the same sickening tale : a hill-fort captured by him after a vast expenditure of time men and money, the fort recovered by the Marathas from the weak Mughal garrison after a few months, and its siege begun again by the Mughals a year or two later! His soldiers and camp-followers suffered unspeakable hardships in marching over flooded rivers, muddy roads, and broken hilly tracks ; porters disappeared ; transport beasts died of hunger and overwork ; scarcity of grain was ever present in his camp. His officers wearied of this labour of Sisyphus ; but Aurangzib would burst into wrath at any suggestion of return to Northern India and taunt the unlucky counsellor with cowardice and love of ease [Ahkam §46.] One by one the old able and independent officers and courtiers of his earlier years had passed away, and he was now surrounded only by timid sycophants and upstart nobles of his own creation, who could never venture to contradict him in his errors, nor give him honest counsel. The mutual jealousies of his generals—Nusrat Jang against Firuz Jang, Shujaet Khan against Muhammad Murad, Tarbiyat Khan against Fathullah Khan,—ruined his affairs as completely as the French cause in the Peninsular War was ruined by the jealousies of Napoleon's marshals. Therefore, the Emperor must conduct every operation in person, or nothing would be done.

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A bare list of his sieges is given below :— Basant-garh (siege, 22nd—25th Nov. 1699). Satara (siege, 8 Dec. 1699—21 April 1700). Parli-garh (siege, 30 April—9 June). Halt at Khawaspur for the rainy season of 1700 (from 30 Aug.) Panhala (siege, 9 March—28 May, 1701). Pavan-garh (do.) Halt at Khatau for the rainy season of 1701 (29 May—7 Nov.) Capture of Wardhan-garh (6 June) Nandgir, Chandan and Wandan (6 Oct.) by Fathullah Khan. Khelna (siege, 26 Dec. 1701—4 June 1702). Halt at Bahadur-garh for the rainy season of 1702. Kondana (siege, 27 Dec. 1702—8 April 1703). Halt at Puna for the rainy season of 1703 (1 May—10 Nov.) Rajgarh (siege, 2 Dec. 1703—16 Feb. 1704). Torna (siege, 23 Feb.—10 March). Halt at Khed for the rainy season of 1704 (17 April—22 Oct.) Wagingera (siege, 8 Feb.—27 April 1705). Halt at Devapur for the rainy season of 1705 (May—23 Oct.)

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This was the last campaign of the old campaigner of eighty-eight, for here he received a warning of what was to come. At Devapur a severe illness seized him, which was aggravated by his insistence on transacting business as usual. The whole camp was thrown into despair and confusion. At length Aurangzib yielded to their entreaty and the warning of approaching death, and retreated to Ahmadnagar (20 January 1706), to die there a year afterwards.

§ 8. Sorrow and misery of his last years.

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The last few years of his life were inexpressibly sad. On its public side there was the consciousness that his long reign of half a century had been a colossal failure. The endless war in the Deccan exhausted his treasury; the Government turned bankrupt; the soldiers starving from arrears of pay (usually three years overdue) mutinied; and during the closing years of his reign the revenue of Bengal, regularly sent by the honest and able *diwan* Murshid Quli Khan, was the sole support of the Emperor's household and army, and its arrival was eagerly looked forward to. While in the Deccan the Marathas remained supreme to the end, lawlessness reigned in many places of Northern and Central India also. The old Emperor in the far South lost control over his officers in Hindustan, and the administration grew slack and corrupt; chiefs and zamindars defied the local authorities and asserted themselves, filling the country with tumult, and the great anarchy began in the empire of Delhi even before Aurangzib had closed his eyes.

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In the Deccan, the Maratha captains, each acting on his own account, incessantly raided Mughal territory and did the greatest possible injury to the imperialists by their guerilla warfare. They seemed to be ubiquitous and elusive like the wind. The movable columns frequently sent out from the imperial head-quarters to "chastise the robbers", only marched and counter-marched, without being able to crush the enemy. When the Mughal forces had gone back, the scattered Marathas, like water parted by the oar, closed again and resumed their attack as before. There was an exultant and menacing Maratha army always hanging three or four miles behind the Emperor's camp wherever it marched or halted.

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The wastage of the Deccan war, which raged intensely for nearly 20 years, was one hundred thousand soldiers and followers and three times that number of horses, elephants, camels and oxen on the Mughal side every year (*Storia*, iv. 96). In the imperial camp pestilence was always present and the daily mortality was heavy from the immense numbers of men crowded together, the accumulation of filth and flies, and the unbearable stench. (*Ibid*, 116.) The economic exhaustion of the Deccan was complete; "the fields were left devoid of trees and bare of crops, their places being taken by the bones of men and beasts. The country was so entirely desolated and depopulated that neither fire nor light could be found in the course of a three or four days' journey." (*Ibid*, 252.) Trade and revenue collection had long ceased, and incessant brigandage by both sides had at last left nothing to be looted.

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§ 9. The end of Aurangzib.

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In addition to the failure of his rule, Aurangzib's domestic life was loveless and dreary, and wanting in the benign peace and cheerfulness and the kindred warmth which throw a halo round old age. He was ever haunted by the fear that his sons would treat him as he had treated Shah Jahan. Lastly, there was the certainty of a deluge of blood when he would close his eyes and his three surviving sons, each supported by a provincial army and treasury, would fight for the throne to the bitter end. Death was busy at work within his family circle for some years before his own end. In the midst of the darkness closing around him, he used to hum the pathetic verses :—

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By the time you have reached your 80th or 90th year,
You will have received many a hard blow from the
hand of Time ;
And when from that point you reach the stage of a
hundred years,
Death will put on the form of your life.

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His last illness overtook him at Ahmadnagar, late in January 1707; then he rallied for five or six days, sent away his two sons Azam and Kam Bakhsh from his camp to their provincial governments, and resumed his daily prayers and official work. But that worn-out frame of 90 years had now been taxed beyond human endurance. A severe fever set in, and in the morning of Friday, 20th February, 1707, he sank into eternal rest.