History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c72.s5.1

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.