History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c81.s2: § 2. Thirty years of war in Marwar.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c81.s2
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§ 2. Thirty years of war in Marwar.
v5.c81.s2.1
The history of these 27 years (1681-1707) in Marwar falls into three well-defined periods. From 1681 to 1687 it was a people's war, because their king was a child and their national leader Durgadas was absent in the Deccan. The Rathor people fought under different captains, group by group, with no central authority and no common plan of action except to attack the Mughals wherever they could. This desultory warfare afforded many examples of Rathor bravery and devotion, but its military effect was nothing more than to keep the Mughal garrisons in constant alarm and to make their occupation of Marwar financially ruinous. The patriots might capture a post, but it would be immediately re-established by a fresh Mughal force, while the thinned Rathor bands had to flee to the hills and starve there. They, however, kept up the struggle, repeating their raids year after year.
v5.c81.s2.2
It was rather an advantage to the Rathors that at this stage they had no common leader, because a pitched battle of all the forces of the tribe with the better armed and better organised imperialists would have led to their decisive defeat and prevented them from raising their heads for a generation to come, whereas by adopting guerilla tactics they wore out the Mughals and minimised the disadvantage of their own inferior numbers and equipment. The numerous eponymous septs into which the Rathor clan was sub-divided, each supplied a ready-made battalion of soldiers, self-contained and organised from birth.
v5.c81.s2.3
The second stage of the war began in 1687 when Durgadas returned from the Deccan, and Ajit Singh came out of the concealment in which his infancy had been protected and nurtured. The success of the Rathors was at first brilliant.
v5.c81.s2.4
Reinforced by the Hadas of Bundi, they cleared the plains of Marwar and, sweeping onwards beyond the limits of their own country, raided Malpura and Pur-Mandal (1687), and even defeated the subahdar of Ajmir (1690), and carried their ravages into Mewat and the west of Delhi. But they could not recover their country. The Emperor had, by the year 1687, conquered the last of the independent kingdoms of the Deccan, and two years later slew the Maratha king and took his capital. During 1689, 1690 and 1691 the Marathas could not recover from these blows, and the Emperor had a free hand. Moreover, in the very year 1687 in which Ajit Singh and Durgadas appeared together at the head of the national forces, an exceptionally able and enterprising officer named Shujaet Khan became governor of Jodhpur on behalf of the Emperor, and held that office for 14 years, during which he succeeded in maintaining the Mughal hold on Marwar though Aurangzib's increasing entanglement in the Deccan made it "impossible for him to send a single soldier to reinforce"* his agent in Jodhpur.