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Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c13.s5: § 7. Court conspiracies for overthrowing Safdar Jang

Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c13.s5

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§ 7. Court conspiracies for overthrowing Safdar Jang

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Safdar Jang had been appointed wazir, but his position was one more of weakness and danger than of power. Any attempt on his part to exert his legitimate control on the administration as the first servant of the State would antagonise Jāvid Khan, the real power behind the throne. But a more immediate and persistent danger sprang from the ill-concealed hostility of the sons of the late wazir Qamruddin. Their own resources were inadequate for ousting him from the chancellorship: Intizam was as yet only second Bakhshi, and Muin had his hands full in the Panjab with Abdali threatening him from outside and the Sikhs from within. So their only hope lay in their cousin Nāsir Jang, the heir of the Nizam.

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The fickle brainless Emperor was soon induced to take a dislike to Safdar Jang. At the instigation of Jāvid Khan he wrote a secret letter to Nāsir Jang, inviting him to come to Delhi with a strong force and expel Safdar Jang from his office. The favourite eunuch, who dreaded an able and spirited wazir as the only bar to his own supremacy, also sent a similar message of his own to the Nizam’s successor. But Nāsir Jang could not start immediately. Preparations for a trial of strength with the wazir of the empire required time and money. The defence and administration of his six Deccan provinces during his absence in the north involved deep planning and careful arrangement, and he had just cause to be anxious about his nephew Hedāyet Muhiuddin (Muzaffar Jang) who was cherishing designs for the succession to Asaf Jāh. It was, therefore, several months before Nāsir Jang could leave his charge, and by 25th May 1749 he had only reached the south bank of the Narmada at Akbarpur when he received a hurried letter from the Emperor, countermanding his march and ordering him back to the Deccan, of which he was in the same letter formally appointed *subahdār*. This sudden reversal of policy needs explanation. [*Hadiqatul-ālam*, ii. 190.]

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Safdar Jang had publicly assumed the wazir’s office on 20th June 1748. Within five months of it his enemies struck their first blow at him. On 20th November he was returning from the Idgah plain after the public prayer and had almost reached the entrance to the vaulted arcade leading to his own residence (once the mansion of Prince Dara Shukoh) close to the canal in the Nigambodh quarter of the city (north of the modern Calcutta Gate of Delhi Fort), and the holiday crowd in that narrow street had checked his movement, when a sudden discharge of light pieces (rahkala) rocket and carbine from a shop on the right hand side struck his cortege. His horse and two or three servants riding before him were fatally wounded; Safdar Jang himself fell down but escaped without injury. A search revealed that these fire-arms had been planted behind a screen on the projecting terrace of a shop, trained at the level of a rider going through the street below, and their fire had missed the wazir by inches. It was the work of a very skilled artilleryist, but he could not be detected in spite of all inquiries. The room was found deserted and closed from behind, evidently an instant after the discharge. The popular belief was that the miscreant had been set on by Intizām-ud-daulah and afterwards concealed by him. Safdar Jang ordered that the quarter of the city to be sacked. The sparks from the rocket had burnt the thatched roofs of the shops in that street, and now the wazir dismantled all the houses from the steps of the canal to his own mansion. Hindu monks had been living on the river bank in this Nigambodh quarter from time immemorial; they were now ejected and the wazir's men took up residence there. [TAh. 17b;

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Bayān 248; Shākir 71; Muz. 9; D. C. But Siyar, Imād and Chah. Gulz. silent.]

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The wazir, in fear of further attempts on his life, gave up attending Court and removed to tents outside the city (25th Nov.)

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Thus an open breach took place between the Emperor and his prime minister. It was during this period that the Court secretly invited Nāsir Jang to come and deliver them. That noble outwardly gave it out that he was going to Delhi merely to pay his respects to his new sovereign; but he wrote to his brother Ghāziuddin at Court that his real object was to put the administration of the Empire in order, oust the intruder Safdar Jang, and give the wazir-ship to Intizām-ud-daulah. At the same time he tried to humour Safdar Jang by writing to him, "I have only to chastise the Marathas here, and then I shall go to Court. Do you befriend me and secure my appointment to the subahdāri of the Deccan. I only want [in addition] the Chief Paymastership of the Empire which my father held and which Zulfiqār Jang has snatched away from me. You and I shall turn with one heart to the regulation of the State. Bālāji has seized the Empire, even up to Hindustan. If you rely on him, you will be disappointed. He is a great deceiver; he looks to money and nothing else. Give me a safeconduct and oaths of assurance from the Court and we two shall unite for punishing Bālāji. I am at your orders.''

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Safdar Jang showed this letter in the original to Hingané, the Maratha envoy at Delhi, who easily exposed Nāsir Jang’s double-dealing by revealing what he had written to his elder brother. He warned the wazir to be on his guard against the deep machinations of the Turāni party, as this letter was merely a device for estranging Safdar from the Peshwā and then crushing him in his isolation. [S. P. D. ii. 13.] Safdar Jang needed no such warning; he instinctively knew the Nizām’s family for his mortal enemies. On learning that Nāsir Jang had actually started for the north, the wazir took the defensive measure of posting his Maratha allies (Malhar Holkar and Jayāji Sindhia) in Kotā, to intercept Nāsir Jang and thus prevent the ravages of war from reaching his own subahs north of the Chambal. At the same time he sent the following appeal to the Peshwa through Hingané: ''This is the time for testing our alliance. If you are truly my friend, then your generals ought to oppose Nāsir Jang. I am supplying Hingané with funds for equipping an army [of Marathas] and making all arrangements for fighting Nāsir Jang. If the Marathas will not do so, I have 50,000 men under me and shall raise more from all sides." [*S. P. D.* ii. 12*e*, 13.]

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His bold speech and bolder preparations for striking the first blow, effectually cowed the craven Emperor and his eunuch. On 7th April 1749, Ahmad Shah taking his mother with him paid a visit to Safdar Jang in his tents and pacified him by this open sign of humility and promises of friendly support, and brought him with himself to the palace. As the price of the reconciliation, he signed a *farmān* ordering Nāsir Jang to turn back immediately on the receipt of the letter, wherever it might find him, while to soothe his feelings he was formally appointed subahdār of the Deccan with the title of Nizām-ud-daulah. [*Hadiqāt-ul-ālam*, ii. 191, *Bayān* 248; *TAh.* 18*b*, 35*b*.]

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§ 8. Downfall of Salābat Khan, Mir Bakhshi.

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A few months after this settlement of dispute, the wazir became deeply entangled in Rohilkhand which kept him busy from November 1749 to September 1750, and again from February 1751 to April 1752. During the second period of his absence from Delhi, he lost his chief supporter at Court. Salābat Khan, the Head Bakhshi, returned from his Rajput expedition at the beginning of November 1750, a ruined man. His huge army of 18,000 men besides a corps of artillery, kept together for a full year, cost him 60 *lakhs* of Rupees at the lowest estimate, and he had not been able to collect more than five *lakhs* in cash as contribution from Rajputana. As a financial speculation, this adventure had utterly failed. His subahdari of Agra and Ajmir yielded him no revenue, thanks to his fatuous policy of antagonising the Jats, who alone could have kept that region in order. His repeated applications to Government for assistance were shelved by the all-powerful eunuch. The imperial treasury had not the means and Jāvid Khan had not the wish to help him out of his difficulties, because he did not owe his appointment to Jāvid Khan’s favour, and, as a hereditary peer whose family had given two daughters and one grand-daughter in wedlock to the Emperors of Delhi, he scorned to pay court to that upstart slave.

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His starving soldiers daily dunned him for the arrears of their pay and made his life unbearable. So, in disgust he shut himself up in his mansion, dismissed his retainers and gave up visiting the Court or doing any official work. To his friends’ remonstrances he used to reply, “There is no Emperor here. Why should we go to the *darbār* of a eunuch to be insulted? To whom shall I state my case that I may be heard?”

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Jāvid Khan represented this speech to the young Emperor and his mother as proof of a plot to set up another prince on the throne. Grown desperate at last, Salābat one day went to the palace and tried to make a personal appeal to the Emperor. The porters, by Jāvid Khan’s previous orders, stopped him; and then grown wilder at this check he burst into abuse of the idiotic Emperor and his base favourite. This was the development that Jāvid Khan had been working up to. Salābat was at once deprived of all his offices, rank and titles (7th June 1751.) His personal estates were confiscated and guns were planted round his house, keeping him a prisoner within it. He sold everything he had and discharged the claims of his soldiery as far as possible, and thereafter lived in utter poverty and seclusion like a *darvish*. [TAh. 29a-30a; Siyar, iii. 40; Muz. 34.]

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Next, by a shrewd stroke of policy, Jāvid Khan caused the Chief Paymastership to be given to Ghāzi-ud-din Khan, with the title of Amir-ul-umara and the subahdari of Agra, while his brother-in-law Intizām-ud-daulah was appointed subahdār of Ajmir with the title of Khan-i-Khānān, (7th June 1751.) Thus the two heads of the Turāni party were promoted to the highest positions in the State next to the wazir’s, to serve as a check on Safdar Jang, at the same time that the wazir’s strongest ally was effectually crushed. Jāvid Khan had killed two birds with one shot. The news of the murder of Nāsir Jang (on 5th December, 1750) had reached Delhi on 16th January 1751, and five days later his eldest brother Ghāzi-ud-din Khan Firuz Jang had been nominated subahdār of the Deccan with the title of Nizām-ul-mulk. But when he began his southward march, at the first stage, Sarāi Qāzi, 6 miles outside Delhi, his soldiers in a body refused to follow him unless their long outstanding salaries were paid up to date. He paid them, and for the future offered them a reduction of salary to Rs. 30 a month for each trooper or dismissal. Most of his men, being inhabitants of Delhi, preferred to resign and stay at home. This so fully depleted his strength that he was forced to give up his march and stop there. [TAh. 29, 36b; Siyar ii. 43; D. C. But Imād 61 differs.]

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§ 9. Plan for a Maratha subsidiary alliance against Abdali.

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Ever since the beginning of Abdali’s attack on Lahor, the Emperor had been sending appeals to his wazir to patch up a treaty with the Ruhelas and hasten back to the defence of Delhi, lest the horrors of Nādir’s conquest should be repeated by the new invader from Afghanistan. But Safdar Jang after concluding the Ruhela campaign, dismissed his Maratha allies, and went to his own province of Oudh to restore its administration which had been completely upset by the death of its governor Naval Rai and the long absence of the subahdar himself in Rohilkhand. While the absentee first minister of the realm was thus neglecting his duty to the State and only looking after his private interests in the eastern provinces, Lahor fell to the Afghan on 6th March and the news of it reached Delhi on the 13th, causing the greatest consternation there. Most people sent their women outside the capital, chiefly to Mathura, which was then in the strong hands of the Jāt Rājah; and for some days no grain reached Delhi from the villages. The Emperor wrote a most peremptory order of recall to Safdar Jang, urging him to bring a strong Maratha force with him at any price. This letter reached Safdar Jang on the 17th, but he took a week's time to start, and sent off messengers for stopping the Maratha army which had by this time reached the bank of the Ganges on its return to Malwa. Overtaking it, he arranged for a defensive subsidiary treaty with the Peshwa on the following terms:—

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(1) The Emperor was to pay the Peshwa fifty lakhs of Rupees for his armed support, out of which thirty lakhs was the price of keeping the Abdali out. (2) One-fourth of the imperial revenue (*chauth*) in the subahs of the Panjab and Sindh and the four mahals (Siālkot, Pasrur, Aurangabad, and Gujrāt),—the revenue of which mahals had been ceded to Nādir Shah and after him to the Abdali, and the districts of Hisar, Sambal, Moradabad, and Budaun, was assigned to the Marathas for their military expenses. Half the revenue of these places was to be paid into the imperial exchequer for the support of the Emperor and the remaining quarter was to be devoted to paying the contingents of the wazir and Javid Khan.

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(3) The Peshwa was to be appointed *subahdār* of Ajmir (including the faujdāri of Nārnol) and of Agra (including the faujdari of Mathura and other subdivisions) and entitled to the sanctioned remuneration and customary perquisites of subahdars and faujdars.

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(4) The Peshwa, through his generals, was to suppress all enemies of the State, foreign invaders and domestic rebels alike, and wrest the lands usurped by local Rajahs and zamindars and restore them to the imperial officers.

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(5) The Peshwā was to govern these subahs exactly in conformity with the established rules of the Empire, respect the rights of all loyal jagirdars and officers, and never grasp any land or money not thus specifically granted to him. Nor should he interfere with the law-courts and forts directly under the imperial Government within the *subahs* thus assigned to him. Of the lands recovered from usurpers and revenue-defaulters, the Marathas were to get one-half to meet the expenses of conquest.

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(6) The Maratha generals were to attend at the imperial Court like other high mansabdars and to join in the campaigns of the imperial army.

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To save the face of the Emperor, a solemn undertaking on the above terms, calling upon all the Hindu gods to attest the fidelity of the signatories, was presented to the Emperor by Malhar Holkar and Jayāji Sindhia on behalf of the Peshwa, and thereupon the Emperor issued a gracious *farman* granting the prayer and recounting all the clauses of the undertaking in its preamble. [Rajwade, i. 1].

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For meeting the Afghan menace, Safdar Jang advocated the plan of placing the Marathas practically in possession of the north-western frontier province though under the Emperor's suzerainty, so that it would be their interest to resist Abdali, and the Emperor would be relieved of the task of defending it. This was an anticipation of the policy which Wellesley adopted when he made the English hold the ceded districts along the western border of Oudh, so as to face Sindhia's dominions and bar the path of Maratha advance into the Company's territory. Safdar Jang even talked of reconquering Kabul with Maratha help. For the defence of the southern frontier he proposed to send Bakht Singh with other Rajput princes to hold the line of the Narmada against any treacherous Maratha encroachment northwards across that river. But his whole scheme was strangled at its birth and the subsidiary treaty with the Peshwā was turned into a scrap of useless paper by the formal surrender of the Panjab and Sindh to Abdali by the craven Emperor during Safdar Jang's absence and the departure of the Afghan envoy Qalandar Beg Khan with an imperial rescript embodying the surrender only twelve days before Safdar Jang's return. The wazir's partisans threw the responsibility for this cowardly submission on Jāvid Khan, who was the Emperor's sole adviser at the time, but the blame must be shared in a still greater degree by Safdar Jang, who did not care to come to Delhi with the speed that the critical situation of the capital demanded, but most unreasonably delayed on the way, leaving the Emperor and the city of Delhi absolutely undefended and helpless in the event of a cavalry dash by the victorious Abdali from Lahor. [*TAh.* 33*b*; Shākir 65.]

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Safdar Jang had started from Oudh on 24th March, but he took 33 days to reach Delhi. In view of the imminence of the crisis at the capital this snail-slow movement over a road which fast couriers covered in four days only, had but one explanation. He rejoiced to see the late wazir’s viceroy son entirely crushed in the Panjab and thus to have one less head of the Turāni party to dread [*TAh.* 18*b*, 30*b*], and he deliberately prolonged the imperial Court’s agony of terror and suspense in order to enhance his own importance and power there on his return as its sole deliverer.

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§ 10. Quarrel between Safdar Jang and Javid Khan about paying subsidy to Marathas.

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Safdar Jang arrived with a Maratha army of 50,000 men, on the bank of the Jamunā opposite Delhi on 25th April. Next day Jāvid Khan paid him a visit there. The wazir wanted to push on to the Panjāb with his allies and expel the Afghans; but Jāvid told him that peace had been made already by the cession of that province to Abdāli. Safdar was surprised and angered. He had bound himself, by order of the Emperor, to pay the Marathas 50 lakhs of Rupees for the defence of the realm, and he naturally asked how he was to keep this promise. This controversy embittered their feelings, and the wazir indignantly refused to enter the city but kept to his tents on the other side of the river.

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The Marathas, not getting their promised subsidy, halted near Delhi. Their foraging parties daily spread over the villages for 40 miles round and brought back whatever provisions they could seize. "Thousands were ruined by their oppression and the surrounding country was desolated. On the west bank of the Jamunā, towards Bādli, Rewāri and other places, not a village remained unplundered." A great terror hung over the capital itself; so long as the Maratha claims remained unsatisfied, they might any day have broken into the city and helped themselves to its riches, with none to defend it while the exasperated wazir stood aloof. Therefore, Jāvid Khan himself opened negotiations with Malhar, who jumped at this chance of a mutual accommodation with the Delhi Government in consequence of an internal revolution in the Maratha State.

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This needs explanation. On the death of Nāsir Jang (5th December 1750), the Emperor had appointed his eldest brother Ghāzi-ud-din to the vacant subahdāri of the Deccan (21st January 1751.) This selection had been pressed on him by the Peshwā, who had been solicited by Ghaziuddin for his good word with the Emperor, and who now promised Maratha support to the imperial administration in the Deccan if he was made Nizām. Ghāzi-ud-din had been always friendly to the Peshwā and his military incapacity and easy unenterprising character promised to the Marathas the practical domination of Mughal Deccan with such a man as its nominal viceroy. The new Nizām, however, had no adequate force to enable him to take possession of his southern charge, and so he delayed starting. A few months later (7th June) he was appointed Mir Bakhshi and was obliged to stay at Court. He then appointed the Peshwā as his deputy subahdār. But Ghazi-ud-din’s younger brothers living in the Deccan refused to give the Hindu interloper possession of their patrimony, and by influencing Jāvid Khan secured a patent for the deputy subahdār-ship in the name of Salābat Jang, the third son of the late Asaf Jāh.

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Balaji resisted Salābat’s agents wherever his forces could reach and a war broke out between them. In this Salābat Jang found an unexpected ally. Shāhu had died on 15 December 1749 and Rāmrājā had succeeded him on the Maratha throne. This imbecile youth was soon overpowered and placed in confinement by the imperious ex-queen Tara Bai, who formed a league of the chiefs of the warrior-caste (Marathas), against the usurped domination of the priestly Peshwās. In the civil war that followed, while Balaji was fighting Dāmāji Gaikwād and his Gujrat army and Raghuji Bhonsle was menacing him from the Berar side, Salābat Jang invaded Maharashtra with his French contingent and forced his way to Punā (Nov. 1751—March 1752.) The Peshwā had to patch up a truce and induce the invader to return to Haidarabad.* While Balaji was being thus hard pressed and his partisans scattered, his devoted follower Malhar Holkar tried to secure relief for him from the side of Delhi. He agreed that if Ghāzi-ud-din himself went to the Deccan as subahdar, the Marāthas would totally absolve the imperial Government from its obligation to pay those 50 lakhs and would march away from Delhi with Ghaziuddin. Nay more, they would be satisfied with 30 lakhs only, which would be payable by the new Nizām.

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When first appointed subahdar of the Deccan in 1751, Ghaziuddin had been made to promise a huge peshkash of 2 krores and 80 lakhs of Rupees, but he could pay only 15 lakhs (one lakh of gold coins.) In April 1752 when it was settled that he should march to the Deccan escorted by Malhar, the peshkash was reduced to a mere promise of 60 lakhs, one half of which he undertook to pay to the Marathas engaged by the wazir in full satisfaction of their claims. To expedite the departure of these unwelcome guests, Jāvid Khan paid a few lakhs in cash to Malhar, and so they left the environs of Delhi on 4th May, nine days after their arrival. Peace returned to the capital and the fugitive citizens brought their families back to the city. All these arrangements were done by the eunuch overriding the wazir and even without the knowledge of the latter. Not a pice came to the impoverished imperial exchequer as the succession fee of the richest subahdari in the Mughal dominions. [TAh. 33b-37b. Siyar, iii. 44 incorrect. Had-al, ii. 235-236.]

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∗ Full details in *Hadiqat-ul-alam*, ii. 230-233.

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Thus Jāvid Khan was entrenched in permanent opposition to Safdar Jang, spoiling all the plans of the wazir unless heavily bribed to support him. A long series of unfriendly acts had marked the eunuch's attitude towards the wazir. He had secretly invited Nasir Jang to come and oust Safdar Jang (1748); he had prompted the Emperor to demand Safdar Jang's resignation as a disgraced man after his defeat by Ahmad Bangash (1750) and he had been induced to withdraw the order only for a present of several lakhs of Rupees; he had dismissed Safdar Jang's strongest friend Salābat Khan Mir Bakhshi and promoted his bitterest enemies, the heads of the Turāni party. Every attempt of Safdar to take the Emperor out on campaign and restore the imperial authority in the provinces had been foiled by Jāvid’s influence over that foolish youth. The wazir found that owing to his long absences from the Court on the Ruhela campaigns and administrative visits to Oudh, he had been completely effaced and the supreme executive authority in the State and the dominating influence over the Emperor had passed to the eunuch. In short, Safdar Jang felt that he could not function as imperial Chancellor, but had become a nullity and a public scorn because of the malign power behind the throne. And now the affair of Balu Jāt precipitated the storm which had been gathering all these years.

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