Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c13.s3: § 4. New official appointments
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c13.s3
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§ 4. New official appointments
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There was a new distribution of offices at the accession of the new sovereign. The vacant wazirship was conferred upon Safdar Jang. When the news of the late Emperor's death reached Prince Ahmad's camp at Pānipat, Safdar Jang, then in command of his escort, had improvised a royal umbrella with cloth of gold taken out of robes and banners and held it over the prince's head, crying out "I congratulate your Majesty on becoming Emperor!" and Ahmad had responded with, "I congratulate you on your wazir-ship." But in fear of Nizām-ul-mulk Asaf Jāh, Safdar Jang's appointment was kept secret; he did not receive investiture in the official robes of a wazir till 19th June, when the news of the Nizām's death at Burhānpur (on 21st May) reached Delhi, and he first sat in his office and publicly signed papers, only on the 20th of June. His son Jalāluddin Haidar was given the Superintendentship of artillery hitherto held by him (6th July.) The Chief Paymastership, rendered vacant by the death of Asaf Jāh was conferred upon Sayyid Salābat Khan Zulfiqār Jang (29th June), who was originally known as Sādāt Khan, being a son of that Sādāt Khan whose daughter Gauhar-un-nisā had been married to Farrukh-siyar* and who had been Mir Atish under that Emperor. The First Bakhshi's post carried with it the title of Amir-ul-umarā. The Second Paymastership was bestowed on Intizām-ud-daulah Khān-i-Khānān, the eldest son of the late wazir Qamruddin and a brother of the Nizām's eldest son's wife. The *Diwāni* of Crown-lands was given to Ishaq Khan Najmuddaulah, and the *Sadr-ship* to Abdullah Khan, while S'aduddin Khan continued as Lord High Steward (*Khān-i-sāmān*.)
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Among the more important provinces Lāhor had been already bestowed upon Muin-ul-milk, the second son of the late wazir, during the last days of Muhammad Shah. The *subahs* of Allahabad and Agra had at first been given to Salābat Khan, and that of Ajmir added to Oudh which Safdar Jang held. But it was soon realised that defence required Ajmir to be held by the governor of Agra, while Allahabad was as naturally an adjunct of the province of Oudh, and an exchange of provinces between the two nobles on these lines was made. [Siyar, iii. 37.] Bengal had long been virtually independent under Alivardi Khan and he was wisely left undisturbed, as also was the Peshwā to whom Mālwa had been assigned in 1741. But a last desperate plan was formed for recovering Gujrāt from Maratha hands by nominating Bakht Singh Rāthor, the bravest Rajput prince then living, as its subahdār (29 June.) Nothing, however, came of the attempt; his secret agents sent beforehand to the province reported that the situation was hopeless, and he declined the barren honour. [Mirāt-i-Ahmadi, ii. 374—377.]
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∗ M.U. ii. 524-526. The daughter of Farrukh-siyar and Gauhar-un-nisā, named Mālika-uz-zamāni, was the chief wife of Muhammad Shah, while Zulfiqār Jang's own daughter, entitled Sāhiba Mahal, was married to the same Emperor and had a daughter by him named Begam Sāhiba. During the Sarhind campaign, Zulfiqār Jang, then Fourth *bakhshi*, acted as guardian to Prince Ahmad, and that prince after his coronation made him First *bakhshi* and used to address him as *Nānā Bābā* or maternal grandfather, because the childless Mālika-uz-zamāni had brought up the boy Ahmad as her own son. Jāvid Kh. grew jealous of Zulfiqār Jang and contrived to turn the Emperor against him.
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After keeping the subahdāri of the Deccan in abeyance for a year, the Court in April 1749, formally appointed Nāsir Jang, the second son of Asaf Jāh, to that post, with the title of Nizām-ud-daulah, in succession to his father, as he had already occupied this position on the strength of his presence in the Deccan at the head of an army, while his eldest brother Ghāzi-ud-din had been living at Delhi for the preceding eight years. [*Hadiqat-ul-Alam*, ii. 191.]
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§ 5. *How the imperial administration broke down.*
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The prospect after the death of Muhammad Shah became even more gloomy than before. That monarch's habitual indolence and neglect of the administration had inevitably brought about military impotence and financial bankruptcy. There being no longer any common master to be feared and no protector to be appealed to, each noble took what he could of the public revenue; each zamindar usurped lands in his neighbourhood or levied blackmail on the roads and villages outside his jurisdiction. The Marāthas possessed themselves of the frontier provinces in the south, while their annual raids into Bengal and Orissa cut off the revenue supply from these provinces after 1746. Thus, the treasury became empty and the most abject poverty and distress subjected the Emperor and his family to public humiliation.
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The mischief worked in a vicious circle. The paralysis of the central authority led to the loss by conquest or independence of the provinces, whose revenue had hitherto fed the Court and its army. The stoppage of the regular revenue made it impossible to pay the soldiers or replenish their equipment and munitions for fitting out any expedition. Therefore, no attempt could be made to subdue any of the revolted governors or usurping zamindars and exact the dues of Government from them. Time only intensified the bankruptcy of the Court. Then followed a mad scramble among the powerful ministers and favourite Begams to take for themselves the most fertile and easy to administer jāgirs and the best revenue-yielding markets and similar rich sources of taxation. That famous fiscal milch-cow of the 17th century, the customs of the royal port of Surat, had been long lost to the empire; but the grain-markets near the capital still yielded a sure and large income, while the Jamuna canals brought a clear gain of 25 lakhs a year to their superintendent. [Safdar Jang enjoyed this last. *Asiatic Annual Register* for 1800, Misc. Tracts, 37, Polier's letter.]
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Usually the best and quietest villages were set apart for the Crownlands (*Khālsa*) and the estates of the Emperor's privy purse (*sarf-i-khas.*) The very life and sustenance of the Emperor and his household depended upon this source. But in this reign all-powerful nobles like Jāvid Khan and Safdar Jang,—and in the last year Imād-ul-mulk,—began to misappropriate the revenue collected in these places, leaving only a pittance for the Emperor; they even sent their agents there to plunder the peasants and traders, so that even this last source of revenue was cut off, and the Emperor, his family and his personal servants and guards were faced with starvation. Each noble clung to his immediate gain without a thought for the country or his own future. The provincial governors, who were now sovereigns within their own limits, lived in opulence and independence. All but three of the nobles attached to the Court or living in the capital without employment found the regular income from their estates stopped, soon spent all their accumulated wealth and lived thereafter in poverty and impotence, dismissing all their soldiers and servants. The three fortunate exceptions were Jāvid Khan, Safdar Jang, and Zulfiqār Jang, whose political predominance ensured to them adequate incomes and strong contingents of troops. The last-named, however, reduced himself to beggary by his ruinous Rajput expedition of 1750. The result was that the armed strength of the empire was annihilated for all practical purposes by this wholesale disbandment in the case of most and hopeless arrears of salary in the case of the few that were retained to guard the palace and man the artillery at the capital.*
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∗ Shākir, 35. TAh. 14b, 20b, 21a.
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The insolvency of the imperial Government made it impossible for it to pay the soldiers, whose salary fell into arrears for 14, 18, and finally 36 months. The starving troops mutinied and made riotous disturbances in the streets of Delhi, attacking the military paymasters and blocking the gates of the palace or the ministers' mansions so as to prevent ingress and egress and reduce the inmates to starvation. After the death of Amir Khan, his contingent, whose pay was due for 14 months, assembled at his gate and prevented his burial for four days, until their claims were satisfied. The monotonous tale of such riots by one or other class of soldiers in almost every month, with its sickening details, runs through the entire history of the reign of Ahmad Khan written by a loyal courtier and the terse *Delhi Chronicle*. Shākir Khan of Pānipat, a devoted hereditary servant of the house of Bābur, thus describes the tragic situation :
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"After Ahmad Shah's accession, in the course of time matters came to such a pass that a descriptive list of all articles in the imperial stores,—the arms, carpets, cooking utensils and dinner plate, books and band-instruments, and of every other *kār-khānah*,—was prepared and these articles were sold to the shop-keepers and pedlars, and most of the money thus realised was spent in paying the troops. This opened the door to the most unseemly and unspeakable mockery and insult by the public. . . . Opulence was turned into distress. The Central Asian (*vilāyati*) soldiers and the Emperor's household troops forcibly carried off the valuable articles of all kinds from the houses of wazirs, *āmirs*, *sāhus*, traders and artisans, to the shops [and sold them], thus reducing the nobles to disgrace. The *āmirs* had no help but to wear only the clothes they stood in and to eat off earthen plate. . . . When the Emperor ordered an inquiry, it was found that the soldiers' salary was three years in arrear. What chance was there of a farthing remaining in the Treasury? It became a reign of petty tribal chiefs (*muluk-ut-tawāif.*) [Shākir, 34.]