Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c16.s7: § 7. Aqibat Mahmud enters Delhi and terrorises Emperor
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c16.s7
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§ 7. Aqibat Mahmud enters Delhi and terrorises Emperor
v1.c16.s7.1
From Kumbher Imād sent repeated requests to the Emperor for the loan of big guns for the siege of that fort, but the Emperor, as advised by the wazir, evaded a reply. At last Aqibat was sent with a strong Maratha force to visit the Emperor and personally press the request for the guns. The Emperor feared that Aqibat was coming in such strength to insult and oppress him. So, he at first thought of offering armed opposition to his entry; he inspected the muster-rolls of the troops available and ordered the city of Delhi to be guarded in force at vital points, as during the war with Safdar Jang. But his officers shrank from the idea of facing Aqibat's superior forces* and nothing was done. And yet the foolish Emperor would not make peace by giving up the guns!
v1.c16.s7.2
∗ "16th March 1754. The Emperor was alarmed, but nothing was done to prevent Aqibat from entering the city." "24th March, 1754. Aqibat's agent came to the fort gate and invited the officers of the imperial artillery to join the mutineers
v1.c16.s7.3
Aqibat Mahmud entered Delhi on 16th March. The city had then been for several weeks past in the hands of the mutinous soldiery demanding their pay, now 26 months in arrears; law and order had disappeared; the Emperor and the wazir lived besieged in their palaces. The Badakhshi soldiers with Aqibat began to oppress the Hindu jewellers for money (20 March.) On the 24th these troops roved in the suburbs, throwing the city into alarm and driving the Emperor to order his fort artillery men to stand to arms ready for repelling any possible attack. "Aqibat continued to send his servants to seize all men who were reported to be wealthy and extort money from them on the false charge of their being depositories of the wealth of Safdar Jang. In concert with Antāji Mānkeshwar, he used to send men to levy rent and contributions from the Emperor's Crownland and privy purse villages east of the Jamunā. The
v1.c16.s7.4
as they had come to secure the due salaries of the latter as well. But the appeal failed and the fort artillery remained loyal. In the evening, the imperial artillery captains (so long on guard) went back to their places. The Emperor was alarmed, but sent no order to any one [against Aqibat] as he knew that none would obey him." [TAh. 115b, 119b.]
v1.c16.s7.5
Emperor and the wazir considered it a great gain that they could remain confined in their own houses! To their protests, Aqibat gave a defiant answer, pointing out the huge arrears of the soldiers’ salary and the wazir’s refusal to supply the cannon needed at the siege of Kumbher.” [TAh. 118a—120a.]
v1.c16.s7.6
§ 8. Street fighting in Delhi, 8-9 April, 1754.
v1.c16.s7.7
At last on 8th April, Aqibat got up a demonstration by his rowdy Badakhshi troops to terrorise the Emperor into yielding the guns. At his instigation the full strength (5,000) of these foreign mercenaries went to all sides of the fort and closed all its entrances and exits. One body of 500 of them appeared below the jharoka window of the palace with loaded muskets and lighted matches and replied to the challenge of the guard above, “We are the Emperor’s soldiers of the Sin-dāgh regiment and have been unpaid for a year. Give us our salary!” Groups of them gathered at every custom-barrier of the city and in the plain outside the fort, stopping traffic and plundering whoever came within their reach. “The Emperor ordered his men not to fight unless attacked. During that day and night none of the men of the imperial artillery and stores who were within the fort could come out for eating any meal, but remained prisoners without food till the noon of next day. The Emperor quaked in extreme alarm.
v1.c16.s7.8
After sunset, the Emperor’s palace superintendent Khwājah Bakhtāwar Khan went from the fort to the wazir’s house to arrange for some means of paying these soldiers. When returning, he borrowed five light guns from the wazir by way of defence and carried them in front of his party. When he arrived near the Jama Masjid the Badakhshis by a rush seized these guns, and his handful of guards was borne down by the superior number of the mutineers, many of them being slain in offering resistance. The wazir sent up reinforcements under his artillery officer Mir Barkhurdār Khān, who fired on the rioters, but finding the street blocked cut his way with his Mughalia followers through the crowd and entered the Jama Masjid for safety. The Badakhshis, finding that he had escaped, stood in force in the Faiz Bazār nearby. But they were subjected to a double fire, by Bakhtawar and Barkhurdār, from the houses on the two sides, as they lay unprotected in the street below. The thatches of the shops in the Khās Bazār before the gate of the Jama Masjid caught fire from the discharge of muskets and guns, and at last the Badakhshis fled away losing many men and abandoning the wazir’s *rahkala* they had seized. Bakhtāwar then re-entered the fort, and coming out in full force bombarded the Barādāri house where Aqibat had taken post. The thatched roofs projecting below that building were burnt down by artillery fire and the wall of the Barādāri was breached. Aqibat left it and went to his men on the river bank. Here the Badakhshis attacked a party of imperialists under the eunuch Basant Khan standing below the *jharoka* window, but fire was opened on them from the fort walls and they fled away. At last Aqibat admitted defeat, evacuated the city two hours before dawn, and retreated to Jaisinghpura, after sending a letter protesting his loyalty to the Emperor and pleading the excuse that the rising was due solely to the Badakhshi troops who were starving at not getting their pay. Then the Emperor ordered his men to cease fighting.
v1.c16.s7.9
A host of men, including soldiers, sightseers, and bazār people, were slain or had their houses burnt down and their property looted both in the Khās Bazār and also in the Khāri Bāoli quarter,—where another body of Badakhshis had looted, killed and burnt during the course of this night’s street fighting, before they were defeated and driven out by the Lahor Gate. Next morning Delhi looked like a city taken by storm and sacked.*
v1.c16.s7.10
Even after his expulsion from Delhi, Aqibat did not cease to give trouble. In the environs of the capital he continued to plunder traders and extort money from well-to-do men wherever heard of,—at Ghāziud-din-nagar on 16th April, Sikandrabad on 27th and 28th April, and so on,—pretending all the time that he was helpless as his unpaid Turkish troops (Badakhshis) had taken the reins out of his hands. [*TAh. 125a, 127a.*] Thus, all things were steadily working up to an open clash between the Emperor and Imād, or the total dissolution of government; but it was a polar difference of State policy between them that actually precipitated the catastrophe.