History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c72.s5: § 8. Sorrow and misery of his last years.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c72.s5
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§ 8. Sorrow and misery of his last years.
v5.c72.s5.1
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.
v5.c72.s5.2
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.
v5.c72.s5.3
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.
v5.c72.s5.4
§ 9. The end of Aurangzib.
v5.c72.s5.5
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 :—
v5.c72.s5.6
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.
v5.c72.s5.7
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.