Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c24.s1: § 3. Abdali marches against the Jat country south of Delhi
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c24.s1
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§ 3. Abdali marches against the Jat country south of Delhi
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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.]
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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.
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§ 4. Abdali captures Ballabhgarh.
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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.*
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§ 5. *Jahan Khan fights the Jats, battle of Chaumuha.*
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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.]
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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. *
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∗ Capture of Ballabhgarh,--Samin in *Ind. Antiquary*, 58-59, *TALS.* 103b-105a (no detail.) *DC.* (dates only.)