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Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c15.s9: § 10. Why the contest turned against Safdar Jang

Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c15.s9

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§ 10. Why the contest turned against Safdar Jang

v1.c15.s9.1

In the first stage of inaction and waiting on events, every day that passed told against Safdar Jang and in favour of his enemies. At the outset, the force under him was over-whelming, his enemies unorganised divided and friendless. But that disadvantage was rapidly remedied by Imād’s tireless industry, power of knitting men together, and genius for grasping at every opportunity as it came up; and this six weeks’ respite enabled his hired Maratha and Ruhela allies to reach Delhi, while it ate up Safdar Jang’s treasures in inaction. Safdar Jang did not at first realise the value of the advantage which the possession of the Emperor and the capital gave his enemies. After the dismissal of Safdar Jang from the wazir-ship (13th May), no order in the Emperor's name could be issued by him; he was manifestly a rebel and a traitor to his master. The fountain of honour and the source of legality had been left behind him in Delhi, in the hands of Intizām, the new wazir. So, every Rājput chief who hankered for a high title or elevation above his peers, every captain of mercenaries who wished to be promoted to the rank of a landed baron, every Marātha general eager to secure the legal surrender of imperial territory or the grant of *chauth* in return for his sword, looked up solely to the Emperor cooped up within the walls of Delhi. And within those walls were also the hostages unwittingly given by Safdar Jang to his rivals. For, thanks to the Jāt depredations and Marātha raids of the last few years, no man of wealth, no man who valued the honour of his women, ventured to live in the country; they all lodged within the city of Delhi. And most of Safdar Jang's chief partisans and officers naturally took houses in the capital when he was wazir. In addition even the common soldiers of the Turkish race (popularly called *Mughlia*) who were the backbone of Safdar's army, had left their families and household goods in the quarter of Delhi called Mughal-pura, which had been colonised by their race ever since the days of the Khilji Sultans at the end of the 13th century. After Safdar Jang had once gone into open rebellion, he could not protect them from pillage and outrage by the Emperor's party unless he made himself master of the capital, which was an impossible feat for him. This fact made his ultimate defeat so complete and so ruinous to his partisans.

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§ 11. Interval of hesitation; Emperor's defence organised.

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Safdar Jang had issued from Delhi on 26th March, but was in no haste to go to his own province. He lingered in the environs, pleading lack of transport, but really in the expectation that the Emperor would come down on his knees, as he had done so often before, and recall him to the Court armed with supreme authority. He could not at first imagine,—and hardly anybody else imagined—that armed opposition to him was possible. So, from his camp in the suburbs he held daily parleys with the Emperor and sent challenges to his rivals who lay safely sheltered within the walls of the capital. Safdar Jang was unwilling to raise his hand against his royal master; the fate of the Sayyid brothers was before him. [Bayān, 277; TAh. 50b-51a; Ch. Gul. 408b; Muz. 69; Siyar, iii. 46.]

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After the *coup d'etat* of 17th March, by which the Emperor recovered control of his palace-fort, though Safdar Jang continued as wazir, his agents Khwājah Tamkin and Rajah Lachhmi Narayan were no longer admitted to the presence for reporting his proposals and taking the Emperor's orders as before, but they were detained outside and all business between the Emperor and the wazir was conducted through Hakim Alavi Khan II, who was physician to both. Ahmad Shah pressed Safdar Jang to go to his *subah* immediately, but the wazir begged for time on the plea that he required a vast number of porters and carts to remove his entire family and property from Delhi. The Emperor sent fifty covered waggons (*raths*) from his stores for Safdar Jang's women, but still the latter delayed. Then he began to increase his army and called up his fighting lieutenant Rājendra-giri from Saharanpur to his side.

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But he lost Imād-ul-mulk. This youngman had hitherto professed to be a *protege* and follower of Safdar Jang and had been sent by the wazir on the day of the first alarm (17th March) as his envoy to Intizām's house to negotiate for a compromise with that chief. Imād spent a day and a night there as Intizām's guest, outwardly discussing terms but secretly making a pact with him for concerted action in the coming war against the wazir. [*TAh.* 48*b*, *Muz.* 66, *Imad.* 63.] Three weeks after Safdar Jang’s issuing from Delhi, Imād threw off the mask, and began to actively organise the forces of the Court party. The Queen-mother gave him two *krores* from her own treasury, which was supplemented by 70 *lakhs* from his father’s hoards, for levying troops. He summoned the Maratha envoy Bāpu Mahādev Hingané and told him to concentrate the Maratha soldiers from different places at Delhi, so that there was soon a force of 4,000 there under Antaji Mankeshwar. His agent, Mahbub Rām, was sent to call Malhar Holkar from Aurangabad, but this man was intercepted by Suraj Mal on the way. The two sides began to bid against each other for Maratha support. In return for Bāpu Rāo’s promise to bring 5,000 Deccani horse and place them under the Emperor’s orders, he was given two *farmāns* granting the *subahdāri* of Allahabad and Oudh to the Peshwa on condition of his defeating the wazir. Against this, Safdar Jang offered *jāgirs* yielding ten *lakhs* of Rupees a year and appealed to his old association with Malhar Holkar in the Doab campaigns, but in vain. With unerring instinct Bāpu Rāo backed the Emperor, because the one constant aim of the Peshwa was to secure as *subahdar* of Mughal Deccan a noble who would be subservient to him, so that the Marāthas would be *de facto* rulers of the South. For his active exertions in assembling Maratha troops in Delhi and posting them in force to guard the gates of the city, against a surprise by Safdar Jang, Hingané was created a 6-*hazāri* (11th April.)* Intizām attended the Court on 14th April, for the first time after the murder of Jāvid Khan.

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