Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c24: Chapter XVI
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c24
- Language
- English
Contents
- v2.c24.s1 § 3. Abdali marches against the Jat country south of Delhi — 8 parts
- v2.c24.s2 § 6. Afghans sack and massacre at Mathura — 5 parts
- v2.c24.s3 § 7. Abdali's attack on Gokul — 4 parts
- v2.c24.s4 § 9. Atrocities of Abdali's troops — 27 parts
Chapter XVI
v2.c24.1
ABDALI'S CAMPAIGN SOUTH OF DELHI, AND EVENTS UP TO JUNE 1757.
v2.c24.2
§ 1. Antaji Manakeshwar's doings near Delhi in January 1757.
v2.c24.3
Abdali had marched from Attock to Delhi without a sword being bared against him, such was the degradation of the empire. The first opposition that he met with came from Antaji Manakeshwar. This Maratha retainer of the wazir, on being summoned to the defence of the capital, had arrived near Shāhdara (opposite Delhi) on 30th December 1756 and been employed by the wazir to prevent the flight of the citizens from Delhi.[*] On 7th January he had been presented to the Emperor with his two sons and some of his captains, and he now crossed over to the Delhi side and encamped on the sandbank below the fort. On 15th January, during the panic raging in the city at the news of the Abdali troops' arrival near Bādli, he had pursued the congenial game of robbing the helpless people running about in confusion. He was next sent
v2.c24.4
[*] Antaji in Delhi —*SPD*. xxi. 55 ; Raj. vi. p. 437 : *DC*. His fights with the Afghans and rovings, —*SPD*. xxi, 95 (29 Jan.), 96 (30 Jan.), 99 (*c*. 10 Feb.), 105. Raj. i. 63. Imad in *Ind. Ant*. pp. 48-49 (crushing defeat.) *DC*.
v2.c24.5
with a light force to the north of the capital to scout for news of the invaders' exact position and strength. Najib's Ruhelas, nominally in the Emperor's service, were posted at Wazirabad, 6 miles north of Delhi, but their loyalty was more than doubtful. On the 16th Antaji advanced 12 miles north of the Kashmir gate and had his first brush with the front skirmishers of the Afghan wazir's contingent; after losing a hundred men and horses, Antaji fell back four miles and halted. The retreating Marathas were attacked by Najib's men, supposed to be their comrades; but Imād rode up to the place in the afternoon and restored peace for the time.
v2.c24.6
The position of the small Maratha squadron, unfurnished with artillery or stores and wedged in between the Durrānis and the treacherous Indian Ruhelas, was absolutely untenable. So, when in the morning of 19th January it was learnt that a few hours earlier the imperial wazir himself had gone out to submit to the invader and "half the population had fled away from Delhi to the Jats," Antaji had no help but to fall back on his base in Delhi city. His retreat was severely harassed by the Durrānis and Ruhelas from two sides; but after a great sacrifice of men and horses, the Marathas cut their way out, reached their camp on the sandbank below Delhi palace, collected all their families baggage and elephants in a few hours, placed these in front, and constantly fighting rearguard actions with the pursuing Afghans, reached Faridabad, 16 miles south of the city that night. The contest was severe, but Antāji firmly kept his force together without allowing its order to be broken, and thus saved it from annihilation. The baffled pursuers turned back from Khwājah Sarāi.
v2.c24.7
Clearly foreseeing the fate of Delhi, Antāji sent off his camp, baggage and accumulated booty under escort of 2,000 horse to Mathura (20 Jan.), while he himself turned back with a light force from Faridabad to Sarāi Badarpur, 10 miles south of Delhi. Here next day (21 Jan.) he encountered Sarwar Khan, a general of Abdali's wazir, who had been sent with 4,000 horse to establish a block house (nāka) at Faridabad. The Afghans had no artillery, and the Marathas being unencumbered with baggage could pursue their Parthian tactics with success. After three hours of fighting, Sarwar Khan was completely defeated, 400 of his Durrāni soldiers and the same number of horses fell on the field, and 400 more horses were captured along with his standard and kettle-drums. The broken survivors fled back to Bārāpulā. Then for nine days no Afghan force advanced against Antāji.
v2.c24.8
§ 2. Antaji Manakeshwar crushed by the Afghans, 1 Feb. 1757.
v2.c24.9
In that interval, Ahmad Shah had come to Delhi, established his control over the city and the empire, thrown a bridge of boats across the Jamunā, and sent Jahan Khan's army corps from the Doab to Khizirabad on the west bank, some 8 miles south of the capital. Thus, a force of 20,000 men threatened Antāji immediately in his front. Since his victory of 21st January, Antāji had been swiftly roving in the south, west and north-west sides of Delhi, "practising raids (qazzāqi)," because everywhere government had broken down and anarchy was raging, and every strong man, native or alien, had taken to plundering the panic-stricken defenceless population. At last, on 1st February a crushing blow was delivered on Antāji. A picked Afghan force,—which Antāji put at 20,000—guided by Najib's Ruhelas with their local knowledge, marched on Faridabad in three columns. Two of these by a wide detour turned Antāji's flanks unperceived and closed upon his rear, while the third delivered an attack on his front at noon. The Maratha force, less than 3,000 strong, was completely encircled and outnumbered; all its paths of escape were closed; Antāji's camp was encumbered with the many men wounded in his earlier battles, but he fought desperately for four hours, facing the enemy on all sides, and giving up to slaughter a thousand of his soldiers (of whom 200 were men above the common rank) and 800 horses. "No one had the time to remove the corpses." At last towards sunset he cut his way out. He boasted of having killed 750 men and 350 horses of the enemy. But they pursued him for eight miles till darkness compelled them to retire, and in this running fight Antāji lost 250 more horses. The victors sacked and burnt the small town of Faridabad and next day returned to Delhi with 600 severed heads of poor people, representing them to be Marathas and Jats. The Shah rewarded them at the rate of Rs. 8 per head brought in.
v2.c24.10
The defeat was decisive; Antāji's little army was annihilated; there was nothing left for him but to flee to his camp at Mathurā (arrival on 4 Feb.) where Trimbak Mukund subahdar was holding an entrenched village near the holy city. Henceforth, though Antāji Mānakeshwar lingered for two months more in that southern region, (chiefly at Palwal), he used to maintain a safe distance of 40 or 50 miles from Delhi and never stood a battle again. Thus, at the beginning of February, the Maratha opposition to the invasion ceased even in appearance.
§ 3. Abdali marches against the Jat country south of Delhi
v2.c24.s1.1
Three weeks after this last battle, having settled all his business in Delhi and given Alamgir II his throne again, Ahmad Shah Durrāni, on 22nd February began his southward march for exacting tribute from the Jat Rajah. On the invader's first arrival near Delhi, Suraj Mal had sent envoys to him professing submission and he had also joined Najib Intizām and other enemies of Imād in petitioning Abdali that if he removed Imād from the wazirship as the sworn brother of their common enemy the Marathas and kept him in prison in Qandahar, then these Indian chiefs would raise 50 lakhs as tribute for him. When on 4th February the vanquished Antāji reached Mathura, Suraj Mal visited him, but positively refused to unite with him in a war against the Afghans, saying, "The Irān Pādishāh at the head of 50,000 troops has captured the Pādishāh of Hind, and no one has fired a shot at him, no one has died in resisting him. What then can I do?" [SPD. xxi. 96, 99, 100.]
v2.c24.s1.2
A little later, Abdāli wrote to Suraj Mal calling upon him to (a) surrender his recently usurped territories, (b) pay a tribute, (c) present himself at the Abdāli Court, and (d) serve under his banner. It was impossible for Suraj Mal to fight against such overwhelming odds, and yet he durst not place himself within Ahmad Shah’s reach lest he should share the fate of Imād. So, he pursued the policy of gaining time by sending an envoy to the invader’s camp to discuss terms and bribe the Afghan minister with two lakhs. If a Maratha army arrived for the defence of the north in a few weeks, he would (as he told Antāji) join it with his men and money and fight Abdāli; otherwise he would make his submission. From Mathurā, he went for refuge to his strong fort of Kumbher, while his gallant son Jawāhir Singh stayed behind for the defence of that holy city.
v2.c24.s1.3
§ 4. Abdali captures Ballabhgarh.
v2.c24.s1.4
Leaving Delhi in the afternoon of 22nd February, Ahmad Shah marched down the west bank of the Jamuna, by way of Khizirabad (two days' halt) and Badarpur (25th Feb.), to a place about 6 miles south of Ballabhgarh. His objectives were Suraj Mal's strongholds of Kumbher and Dig, and at first he left Ballabhgarh untaken in his rear, as a negligible fortalice. But as his foragers, spread over a vast area, approached this place, the Jat garrison attacked them, slaying and wounding many [TALS. 103b, DC.] The reduction of Ballabhgarh was immediately decided upon. The head of the Durrāni artillery came to Delhi for taking away four guns of heavy calibre from the palace defences (27 Feb.); draught bullocks, ropes and beams were seized from private houses in order to transport the guns and munitions to the Shāh's camp. But, after all, these heavy guns were not needed. Ahmad Shah personally directed the siege, and his five mortars, firing with a high muzzle elevation a kind of shell (consisting of two iron hemispheres welded together, which broke and spread on impact with the ground) and constantly shifting their angle, inflicted such a destructive bombardment on Ballabhgarh and so completely overpowered the swivel-pieces and muskets which formed the only fire of the defence, that the place became untenable in a few hours. In the silence of the night the garrison (including Jawāhir Singh) slipped out and escaped by the Jamunā side (3 March.) The Afghans broke the gates open, and put all the inmates to the sword. The spoils taken included Rs. 12,000 in cash, pots of silver and copper, gilt idols, 14 horses, 11 camels and a great store of grain and clothing.*
v2.c24.s1.5
§ 5. *Jahan Khan fights the Jats, battle of Chaumuha.*
v2.c24.s1.6
Here the Shah halted for two days more. Meantime, as early as the night of 26-27 Feb., he had detached Jahān Khan and Najib with 20,000 men, telling them, “Move into the boundaries of the accursed Jāt, and in every town and district held by him slay and plunder. The city of Mathurā is a holy place of the Hindus ;... let it be put entirely to the edge of the sword. Up to Agra leave not a single place standing.” The Shah also conveyed a general order to the army to plunder and slay at every place they reached. Any booty they acquired was made a free gift to them. Any person cutting off and bringing in heads of infidels should throw them down before the tent of the chief minister, wherewith to build a high tower. Five Rupees for each enemy head would be paid from the Government funds. [Sāmin, in *Ind. Ant.*, 51.]
v2.c24.s1.7
The alien generalissimo and the Ruhela soldier of fortune carried out their dread master's command to the letter. They first swooped down upon Mathurā. But the fabled birth-place of the Divine Preserver was not to fall without a struggle. True, the Marathas, after sucking the Delhi-Agra region and the Doab on the other bank dry for three years, had fled away. Not a single Maratha bled in defence of the holiest of Vaishnav shrines; their pan-Indian suzerainty (*Hindupad Padshahi*) did not involve the duty to protect. But the Jāt peasantry were determined that it was only over their corpses that the ravager should enter the sacred capital of Braja. Outside the village of Chaumuhā, eight miles north of Mathurā, Jawāhir Singh barred the invader’s path with less than 10,000 men and offered a desperate resistance (28th February.) From sunrise the battle raged for nine hours, and at the end of it “ten to twelve thousand infantry lay dead on the two sides taken together; the wounded were beyond count,” and the broken remnant of the Jāt army took the road to their homes. *
v2.c24.s1.8
∗ Capture of Ballabhgarh,--Samin in *Ind. Antiquary*, 58-59, *TALS.* 103b-105a (no detail.) *DC.* (dates only.)
§ 6. Afghans sack and massacre at Mathura
v2.c24.s2.1
The Hindu Bethlehem now lay utterly prostrate before the invaders. Early at dawn on 1st March the Afghan cavalry burst into the unwalled and unsuspecting city of Mathurā, and neither by their master's orders nor from the severe handling they had received in yesterday's fight, were they in a mood to show mercy. For four hours there was an indiscriminate massacre and rape of the unresisting Hindu population,—all of them non-combatants and many of them priests. Even the few Muslim residents could not always save themselves by taking their trousers off and showing that they were really followers of the Prophet. "Idols were broken and kicked about like polo-balls by the Islamic heroes." [Husain Shahi, 39.] Houses were demolished in search of plunder and then wantonly set on fire. Glutted with the blood of 3,000 men, Jahān Khan laid a contribution of one lakh on what remained of the population and marched away from the smoking ruins the same night.
v2.c24.s2.2
∗ TALS. 106a. Raj. i. 63 quotes a report from Delhi *via* Aurangabad, “A Jat force of 5,000 came out of Mathura and fought Abdali’s army stoutly, but was defeated by superior numbers. Three thousand Jats fell and 2,000 fled away.” *DC.* oes not record this battle.
v2.c24.s2.3
After the tiger came the jackal. "When after the massacre Ahmad Shah's troops marched onward from Mathurā, Najib and his army remained there for three days, plundered much money and buried treasure, and carried off many beautiful females as captives." [Nur-ud-din Hasan, 15b.] The blue waves of the Jamunā gave eternal repose to such of her daughters as could flee to her outstretched arms; some other happy women found a nearer refuge from dishonour in the dark depths of their household wells. But for those of their sisters who survived there was no escape from a fate worse than death. A Muslim eye-witness thus describes the scene in the ruined city a fortnight later: "Everywhere in lane and bazar lay the headless trunks of the slain, and the whole city was burning. Many buildings had been knocked down. The water of the Jamunā flowing past was of a yellowish colour, as if polluted by blood. The man [a Muslim jeweller of the city, robbed of his all and fasting for several days] said that for seven days following the general slaughter the water flowed of a blood-red colour and then the water had turned yellow. At the edge of the stream I saw a number of huts of Vairāgis and Sannyāsis (i.e., Hindu ascetics), in each of which lay a severed head with the head of a dead cow applied to its mouth and tied to it with a rope round its neck."*
v2.c24.s2.4
Issuing from the ruins of Mathurā, Jahān Khan roamed the country round, slaying and plundering everywhere as directed. Vrindāvan, seven miles north of Mathura, could not escape, as its wealth was indicated by its many temples. Here another general massacre was practised upon the inoffensive monks of the most pacific order of Vishnu’s worshippers, (c. 6 March.) As the same Muhammadan diarist records after a visit to Vrindāvan, "Wherever you gazed you beheld heaps of slain; you could only pick your way with difficulty, owing to the quantity of bodies lying about and the amount of blood spilt. At one place that we reached we saw about 200 dead children lying in a heap. Not one of the dead bodies had a head . . . The stench and effluvium in the air were such that it was painful to open your mouth or even to draw breath."
v2.c24.s2.5
∗ Massacre and sack of Mathura,—Samin in *Ind. Antiquary*, 60-62. *Husain Shahi* 38-39, *TALS.* 106a and 109b. *DC.* Nur-ud-din. *SPD.* xxi. 107; xxvii. 152. *Raj.* i. 63.
§ 7. Abdali's attack on Gokul
v2.c24.s3.1
Moving a fortnight behind his vanguard, Abdali himself came upon the scene. He had stormed Ballabhgarh on 3rd March and halted there for two days. On the 15th he arrived near Mathura, and wisely avoiding that reeking human shambles crossed over to the eastern bank of the Jamuna and encamped at Mahāvan, * six miles south-east of the city. Two miles to his west lay Gokul, the seat of the pontiff of the rich Vallabhāchārya sect. Abdali's policy of frightfulness had defeated his cupidity ; dead men could not be held to ransom. The invader's unsatisfied need of money was pressing him ; he sought the help of Imad's local knowledge as to the most promising sources of booty. A detachment from his camp was sent to plunder Gokul. But here the monks were martial Nāgā sannyāsis of Upper India and Rajputana. Four thousand of these naked ash-smeared warriors stood outside Gokul and fought the Afghans, till half of their own number was killed after slaying an equal force of the enemy. Then, at the entreaty of the Bengal subahdar’s envoy (Jugalkishor) and his assurance that a hermitage of faqirs could not contain any money, Abdali recalled the detachment. “All the Vairāgis perished, but Gokulnāth (the deity of the city) was saved,” as a Marathi newsletter puts it. [Raj. i. 63.]
v2.c24.s3.2
∗ According to Samin in *Ind. Antiq.*, p. 61. *TALS.* 109*a* says that on 20th March his camp was at Sarāi Kola, 3 *kos* from Mathura. *Koila* is 6 miles south of Mathura and opposite Mahavan. *DC.* records that on 18th March the news reached Delhi that Abdali had marched from Mathura to Vrindāvan. Raj. i. 63 says that from Mathura he detached a force to sack Gokul-Vrindāvan. I believe that in both the above works Vrindāvan is an error for Gokul, which stands 12 m. south of it and on the opposite bank of the Jamuna.
v2.c24.s3.3
§ 8 Jahan Khan plunders and fines Agra.
v2.c24.s3.4
Jahan Khan and Najib were now recalled to Abdali’s camp from their roving commission of raid and slaughter, and sent to levy contribution on Agra, thronged with the richest fugitives from the capital. The Afghan king’s plan was to advance from Agra as a base and capture the Jat forts or compel Suraj Mal to pay a large tribute. Jahān Khan at the head of 15,000 horse made a raid on Agra in the morning of 21st March. A deputation of bankers met him outside the gates and promised to ransom the city for five lakhs; but it was impossible to collect the money promptly, and the Pathan losing patience entered the city and plundered four wards of it, up to the Blue Cupola. Some massacre took place here also, the victims being estimated at 2,000. But his progress was stopped by the walls of Akbar's fort from which Mirza Saifullah (the son of the imperial qiladar) opened fire, thus preventing the invaders from showing their heads near it. Jahān Khan therefore halted for some days to exact the money from the bankers of the city. Only one lakh, out of the promised five lakhs, was raised by the local imperial officials (the qiladar, subahdar and city kotwal) from Sāmaldās the agent of Jagat Seth of Bengal, and paid, when Jahān Khan received a peremptory order to return to his master (23 March.) He set off at sunset and rejoined Abdali near Mathura on the 24th, and finally on the 28th the retreat to Afghanistan began. [TALS. 109a; Muz. 121; Samin in Ind. Antiq. 65; SPD. xxi. 111, xxvii. 146, 152. Raj. i. 63.]
§ 9. Atrocities of Abdali's troops
v2.c24.s4.1
This sudden change of plan needs explanation. We have seen how Ahmad Shah had reached Mahāvan (opposite Mathura) about 15th March. His track had been marked by the same desolation and havoc.* "From Agra to Delhi not a man was left in any hamlet . . . Along the route by which Abdali has come and gone back not two seers of grain and fodder can be had." [SPD. xxi. 99, 111.] The Muslim eye-witness thus describes the Afghan atrocities :—
v2.c24.s4.2
∗ Father X. Wendel wrote ten years afterwards, "Suraj Mal looked from a distance at this catastrophe to his Braja, which was totally set on fire and bloodshed by the barbarity of the Durranis, joined to the Ruhelas, who gave quarter to none. It was on this occasion that the environs of Agra, and that city itself were desolated more than ever. We see, even at this hour, the sad marks of it." [P. 75.]
v2.c24.s4.3
"The Shah [c. 3 March] issued an order for slaying and plundering. His soldiers were assured that everyone would be allowed to keep whatever plunder he took and would be paid Rs. 5 for every enemy head [brought in.] It was midnight when the camp-followers went out to the attack. One horseman mounted a horse and took ten to twenty others, each attached to the tail of the horse preceding it, and drove them just like a string of camels. When it was one watch (3 hours) after sunrise I saw them come back. Every horseman had loaded up all his horses with the plundered property, and atop of it rode the girl-captives and the slaves. The severed heads were tied up in rugs like bundles of grain and placed on the heads of the captives . . . Then the heads were stuck upon lances and taken to the gate of the chief minister for payment. It was an extraordinary display! Daily did this manner of slaughter and plundering proceed. And at night the shrieks of the women captives who were being ravished, deafened the ears of people. . . . All those heads that had been cut off were built into pillars, and the [captive] men upon whose heads those bloody bundles had been brought in, were made to grind corn, and then their heads too were cut off. These things went on all the way to the city of Agra, nor was any part of the country spared. In addition to all this, five thousand Ruhela foot-soldiers joined the army. Each man procured some thirty to forty buffaloes. The plundered goods, such as jewels and clothes, they loaded upon these buffaloes, and established a market of their own within the camp, where they sold all these things at low prices . . . . Copper and other vessels that had been broken up were strewed along the route of the army and no one stooped to pick them up. Excepting gold and silver nothing was carried away.”
v2.c24.s4.4
§ 10. *Cholera epidemic in Abdali’s camp at Mahavan.*
v2.c24.s4.5
Such were the unspeakable sufferings of the harmless peasants and traders, whose only crime was their supposed wealth. Then outraged Nature rose up in wrath. Abdali had encamped at Mahāvan 13 miles downstream of Vrindāvan. The river, its level now very low at the height of the dry season, was choked with the half-burnt and unburnt bodies of suicides and slaughtered persons ; and in three weeks’ time the Indian sun did its work. The water reached Abdali’s camp after washing Vrindāvan Mathurā and other places, all upstream, which had been turned into slaughter-houses by his order. A cholera epidemic broke out at Mahāvan and daily 150 of his soldiers began to die of it. There was no remedy, no medicine available ; “it cost Rs. 100 to buy a seer of tamarind, a drink made of tamarind being prescribed with benefit." The loss of horse-flesh was equally heavy in the Afghan army. His surviving soldiers clamoured for returning home. Abdali's hands were forced. He wrote to the Emperor (on 26th March) that he was about to turn back, and he sent off fast riders to recall Jahān Khan and Najib from Agra.* These two rejoined him on the 24th. A second domiciliary visit was paid to Vrindāvan to realize the contribution laid on that city after the raid of the 6th. And in these four days a last despairing effort was made to get something out of Suraj Mal. He had promised a tribute of five lakhs to the Shah and a gift of two lakhs to his ministers, but, thanks to the unlooked for epidemic, he evaded "paying even a kauri." As Abdali's real intentions were not finally known for some time, Suraj Mal's envoys accompanied his camp parleying up to the north-western suburb of Delhi, and when from that place the Afghan army unmistakably set out for their home, fast camel-riders brought the happy news to Suraj Mal, and he unceremoniously turned out of his fort the two negotiators of tribute (Jugalkishor, and an Afghan officer) whom Abdali had left there.
v2.c24.s4.6
§ 11. Abdali retires from India, April 1757.
v2.c24.s4.7
In his return march Ahmad Shah reached Faridabad on 30th March, Najib Khan moving parallel to him along the east bank of the Jamunā and crossing over at Rājghāt to the Delhi side. From Faridabad the Afghan king and his army proceeded rapidly to the northern suburbs of Delhi,—the plain beyond Sarāi Basant and Sarāi Suhail, avoiding the city and marching along the river bank between the fort and the Jamunā. At this place he halted for three days (31 March—2 April) in order to secure his virgin tribute from the imperial family, and here he received a farewell visit from Alamgir II. Then by way of Sonepat (10 April) he reached Tirauri (13th), and after taking 20 lakhs from Ināyet Khan the zamindar of Kunjpurā, pursued his way to Lahor and Afghanistan. Jahān Khan who had been detached (end of March) to demand tribute from the Baluch zamindars of the Rohtak district (near the Najafgarh jhil) and had returned unsuccessful, now led his vanguard. [SPD. ii. 71.]
v2.c24.s4.8
∗ TALS. 114b, 109b. Samin in Ind. Antiq. 64-65. Wendel, p. 76. SPD. xxi. 111, xxvii. 147, 155, ii. 71,72.
v2.c24.s4.9
§ 12. *Abdali's booty and prisoners from India.*
v2.c24.s4.10
The plunder that Abdali carried away from India was valued by contemporary reporters differently, at 3, 4, 9 and even 12 krores of Rupees. The human booty of war included Hazrat Begam (the maiden daughter of Emperor Muhammad Shah.) This princess, on reaching her 16th year, in February 1756, had excited the passion of Alamgir II, who had shamelessly demanded her hand in marriage, but the girl had replied, “I prefer death to [such a] marriage.” And now this tender lamb was to be pounced upon by a fierce Afghan of grandfatherly age, whose two ears had been docked and nose was rotting from a leprous carbuncle. At Abdāli’s demand for her hand, there was wailing and alarm in the imperial harem. The two Dowager-empresses cried out, “We shall slay her and then kill ourselves, but we will not give her to an Afghan.” Fruitless efforts were then made to save her, by bribing Mughlāni Begam to report to Abdāli that the girl was really not handsome enough for him, and later by Alamgir II falsely swearing that she had been betrothed to a Delhi prince.
v2.c24.s4.11
But there was no escape for her. On 5th April she was taken, decked as a bride, to Ahmad Shah’s tents; Mālika-i-zamāni and Sāhiba Mahal (widows of Muhammad Shah) and Muhtaram-un-nisā (a daughter of the late Emperor Ahmad and a nursling of Mālika-i-zamāni from her infancy) accompanied the weeping bride in exile out of India. Other Delhi princesses present in the retreating Afghan camp were Alamgir II’s daughter Gauhar-un-nisā the wife of Timur Shah, and Aiffat-un-nisā the daughter of Dāwar Bakhsh and great-grand-daughter of Aurangzib whom Nādir Shah had married to his son Nasrullah in 1739 and whom Ahmad Abdali had taken to his bed after the murder of Nādir. With this party went 16 other ladies of the Delhi harem, but 400 maidservants who were being dragged away with their mistresses escaped from the way and dispersed to their homes. A Marathi letter reports, "The Pathan has taken away the handsome wives of the amirs and of [other] people, and sent them off to Lahor." [*TALS.* 109*b*—111*b*, 113*a*, 112*a*, 114*b*. *DC.* *SPD.* xxi. 118, 98, xxvii. 152. *Raj.* i. 63.]
v2.c24.s4.12
The humbler captives fared better. At his farewell interview with the conqueror at Sarā Suhail (2nd April), Alamgir II entreated the Shah to release the poor men and women whom his soldiers had taken into slavery during their Indian campaign. The prayer was granted and thus several thousands of Indians, male and female, were sought out in the Afghan camp and sent back to Delhi with the returning Emperor. Next morning (3rd April) all whose relatives could be found were handed over to their care, the friendless were set free to go wherever they liked. "Among these captives there was no man or woman of any respectable family; they were all villagers." [*TALS.* 112*b*.]
v2.c24.s4.13
The imperial capital did not escape a second plunder during the retreat of the Afghans. On 31st March, we read, "In spite of the Shah's prohibition and his appointment of Najib Khan to protect the city, the vast concourse of his *kalaposhes* could not be prevented from looting and exacting money on some new pretext every day. The people were oppressed." Again, on 8-10 April while Sāhiba Mahal was on a final visit to Delhi to remove her belongings, the 2,000 Durrāni musketeers who formed her escort took to plundering the Delhi bazars. [*TALS.* 111*a*, 115*a*.]
v2.c24.s4.14
The immensity of the booty taken away from India can be understood from the enormous size of the transport required for it. "Abdali’s own goods were loaded on 28,000 camels, elephants, mules, bullocks and carts, while 200 camel-loads of property were taken by Muhammad Shah’s widows who accompanied him, and these too belonged to him. Eighty thousand horse and foot followed him, each man carrying away spoils. His cavalry returned on foot, loading their booty on their chargers. For securing transport, the Afghan king left no horse or camel in any one’s house, not even a donkey. The guns he had brought for taking the Jāt forts, he abandoned because their draught-cattle had to be loaded with his plunder, and the Jāt Rajah took these guns away into his fort. In Delhi not a sword was left with anybody." [*SPD.* ii. 71.]
v2.c24.s4.15
By Abdālī’s direction, the Emperor conferred on Imād-ul-mulk the full powers of wazir, *vice* Shah Alam (3rd April), while Najib Khan was appointed his supreme agent in India and the real master of the Delhi Government. [*TALS.* 115*b*, *DC.*]
v2.c24.s4.16
§ 13. Abdali sends two Delhi princes to recover the Doab and Oudh.
v2.c24.s4.17
Ahmad Shah Abdali was throughout life determined not to make India his home, nor to personally conduct the government of Delhi. He therefore sincerely desired to restore the Mughal Emperor to real power and wealth by winning his provinces back from the refractory governors and placing them in charge of loyal officers who would support their sovereign with the provincial revenue and troops. Shujā-ud-daulah, who held the rich *subahs* of Oudh and Allahabad, was the hereditary enemy of the Emperor, his wazir Imād and Abdali's agent Najib Khan alike, and the hereditary ally of the hated Marathas and the ever-rebellious Jāt Rajah. He had kept aloof from Abdali during this invasion of 1757. His dominions also barred the way to the still richer lost provinces, Bihar and Bengal. Abdali's first scheme of wresting Shujā's provinces by means of Ahmad Bangash was dropped on account of Ahmad's manifest incapacity and military impotence. Then, by the advice of Imād, it was decided to transfer these eastern provinces to two of the Emperor's sons* and send them with a small Afghan force to occupy the country, because it was hoped that the prestige of the blood imperial would deter rebellious chiefs from opposing them by arms.
v2.c24.s4.18
The Emperor was requested to send to Ahmad Shah's camp near Mathurā two of his sons, after formally appointing them subahdars of Oudh (cum Allahabad) and Bengal (cum Bihar.) On 14th March he gave leave of departure to his son Hedāyet Bakhsh and his nephew and son-in-law Mirzā Bābā with letters-patent for the governorships of Bengal and Oudh respectively, but nothing else. They reached Abdali's camp on the 19th with a poorer retinue and escort than even the lowest nobles of former times. They had no money for raising an army, and Abdali could not spare any large detachment of his own troops to support this adventure. He therefore planned that the princes should first go to the Doab (the Bulandshahar district), join Ahmad Bangash the Nawab of Farrukhabad, drive out the Maratha posts there, establish their own revenue collection, and with the resources thus gained enlist more men, advance further east, oust Shujā from his provinces, and then proceed to the golden land of Bengal. To them Imād-ul-mulk was attached as guardian and diplomat, and Jangbāz Khān as commander of the escort with a miscellaneous force of 3,000 men stiffened by 600 Durrāni soldiers, and Najib's brother Sultān Khan and son Zābita Khan.
v2.c24.s4.19
∗ Expedition of the two Shahzadas with Imād into the Doab :—Samın in *Ind. Antiq.* 1907, 64-69 (unreliable), *TALS.* 106b, 109a, 117b-118b, 121a-124a, 127b. *DC.* *SPD.* xxvii. 146, 160-190. xxi. 111-138. *Gul-i-R.*, 52-54.
v2.c24.s4.20
This party arrived at Agra on 23rd March; Jahān Khan left that city for his master's camp that very night, and the princes, after being welcomed by the imperial officers of the locality, crossed the Jamunā on the 25th, and by way of Firuzabad (28th) reached Mainpuri on the 31st. Here Ahmad Bangash respectfully waited on them (4th April) and took Mirzā Bābā with himself to Qādirganj in the north-west, while Hedāyet Bakhsh moved south-eastwards to Etāwa, from which the Maratha collector fled away. “The Durrāni contingent merely plundered the ryots of the place instead of establishing a settled administration there, because Ahmad Shah’s soldiers knew nothing but looting. The prince gained no revenue there. Mirzā Bābā remained at Qādirganj till the 20th, Ahmad Bangash supplying his shameful want of tents dress and other materials. Then came the news that Shujā-ud-daulah had sent a force under Anupgir Gosāin against the two princes and that this force was coming to loot Farrukhabad. So, Ahmad Bangash hastened back to his own city and Mirzā Bābā arrived there soon afterwards and Hedāyet from Etāwa on 6th May. The trans-Ganges Ruhelas too came in a large body under Hāfiz Rahmat Khan and encamped on the other side of the river, opposite Qādirganj... The wazir Imād tried hard to win Hāfiz over and gain his armed support. He crossed the river and visited Hāfiz on the 30th, and the two princes did the same next day and enjoyed Hāfiz’s hospitality for four days.”
v2.c24.s4.21
§ 14. Failure of the princes’ expedition. Marathas reappear.
v2.c24.s4.22
But the negotiations for an offensive alliance dragged on for a long time and promised no agreement, because the Ruhelas shrank from provoking another attack of Shujā and the dreaded Marathas for the sake of a master who was impotent to help them. Sadullah Khan, the successor of Ali Muhammad Ruhela, was a personal friend of Shujā and worked at cross purposes with Hāfiz. Imād returned to the princes' camp after a visit to the Ruhela headquarters for talking their leaders over.
v2.c24.s4.23
Meantime Shujā-ud-daulah himself had arrived on the scene "with a numerous army and countless guns"; he declared that he was a loyal servant of the princes, and would only attack his enemies Imād-ul-mulk and Ahmad Bangash if they did not leave the Shāhzādas' side. The princes marched towards him on 8th June and Shujā too crossed the river Garrā near the village of Sāndi and formed an entrenched camp 14 miles from the position of the princes. While negotiations for a tribute went on between the princes and Shujā, and Jangbāz Khan fought two skirmishes with the Oudh vanguard, the situation was suddenly changed by the arrival of a new Maratha army under Sakhārām Bāpu at Kāsganj, only two marches from Farrukhabad, on 17th June. Immediately the nascent coalition collapsed; a settlement was speedily made with Shujā: "the matter was settled at 15 lakhs, five of which were to be paid down and the balance after a year; half of these five lakhs was to be paid to Jangbāz Khan for his expenses, and the other moiety was to be divided into five equal shares of Rs 50,000 each, for the two princes, the wazir, the Bangash Nawab, and Yahiya Khan (the Paymaster of Mirzā Bābā’s force.) *
v2.c24.s4.24
Ahmad Bangash, taking Mirzā Bābā with him, hastened back to his capital (24th June) ; the wazir and Hedāyet Bakhsh followed the next day. Shujā and the Ruhela chiefs went back to their homes. At Farrukhabad the two princes had to dismiss all the soldiers they had recently enlisted for the purpose of controlling the subahs assigned to them. Their adventure ended in utter failure and great loss of money, without gaining an inch of territory or a Rupee of revenue. Even the war-indemnity promised by Shujā was not paid beyond the first lakh. Jangbāz Khan, exasperated at not getting the means for meeting his soldiers’ dues during these three months of campaigning, ravaged the country,† and going to Barily extorted the balance of the indemnity from Rajah Mān Rāi, the diwan of Sadullah Khan, who had been Shujā’s intermediary in the late peace talks.
v2.c24.s4.25
∗ *TALS.* 122b-123b. The Maratha envoy with Shujā estimates the Oudh army at 15-16 thousand men and 3-4 hundred guns (9 June), and again at 25,000 men and 7-800 guns (19 June.) We learn from a Marathi despatch that the Peshwa’s envoy with the wazir forced peace on the two sides by leaving the settlement to the Peshwa’s arbitration (25 June.) *SPD.* xxi. 127, 130, 132.
v2.c24.s4.26
† “Jangbāz Kh. after settling the tribute of Shujā, took a bond for 2½ lakhs from Hafiz and other Ruhelas, and remained on the further side of the Ganges [for realizing the money.]” Report received in Delhi about 21 July. *TALS.* 127b. *Ind. Ant.* p. 69.
v2.c24.s4.27
On 4th July the princes started from Farrukhabad on return to Delhi, in the same humble guise and abject poverty in which they had set out from the capital on 15th March. By way of Aligarh (15 July) and Sikandrabad (21 July) they arrived within eight miles of Delhi on the 23rd, but by that time so great was the Maratha predominance along the Jamunā that Najib had to issue from the capital and make a demonstration of force on the west bank to ensure the safe crossing over of the princes! They had absolutely nothing to show as their achievement. Within a few weeks of their starting from Agra they had lost even that imperial city. When Abdali set out on his return, Suraj Mal finding the field clear, re-established all his outposts by sending back his men, who had fled away before the Afghan advance, to occupy them. The Jat detachments even re-entered their old posts on the eastern bank of the Jamunā, along the edge of the Doab. And the Marathas, secure in the friendship of the Jats in their rear, asserted their predominance in the Doab once again. This second expansion of Maratha power will be treated in the next chapter.