Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c13.s3.8

v1.c13.s3.8

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.*