Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c14.s2.17

v1.c14.s2.17

At last his musters fully made up, Safdar Jang resumed his march on 10th September, amidst the hardly suppressed curses of the people of Mārhara, and sighted the enemy, three days afterwards, near Rām Chatāuni, some 22 miles east of Mārhara and 18 miles north of Eta.* With him was a vast host of 70 to 80 thousand men, of the most miscellaneous description, mostly raw levies and under no sort of discipline. Nor were the different divisions of this army closely knit together by the watchful activity of one supreme master and the ready co-operation of the sub-commanders. Safdar Jang had not the royal gift of choosing able agents nor of knowing sound advice when given to him. He merely tried to bind his soldiery to himself by lavish gifts of money at his caprice and winking at their plunder of the population, and not by sharing their toils like a comrade and frequently exercising them under his eyes, as Aurangzib used to do. Arrived now at the height of power, his overweening pride and excessive devotion to pleasure repelled honest and capable counsellors, and he became a mere puppet moved by one or two favourites, especially Ismail Khan, a former slave and now in effect his prime minister and chief manager of affairs. A few high-born nobles followed him loyally out of personal affection or because he was the supreme man of their faith (Shia-ism) in the imperial Government; but they had no effective forces under them and were not allowed to organise his military movements or regulate his administration. This disorderly rabble,—without any concerted plan of action, without any real head to control the tide of battle as it changed from hour to hour,—now flung itself on the smaller but more compact Afghan tribal levy, rightly self-confident from an unbroken series of victories and seasoned in manoeuvre and ambuscade in that terrain.