Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c39.10

v3.c39.10

But Mahadji’s hands were forced by the pressure of events. There was no wazir, no commander-in-chief, no vicegerent in that moving capital and centre of an empire’s government. The Emperor was present, no doubt; but he was a man who had never led an army or transacted a single piece of business personally since his re-entry into Delhi thirteen years ago. Anarchy under a crowned shadow threatened total dissolution to the heritage of Akbar and Shah Jahan. The soldiers were grumbling for their long-standing arrears of pay and their utter failure to raise loans anywhere for their daily food; their future looked utterly gloomy; there was no lawfully constituted authority, no known commander for enforcing order in that vast assemblage of armed men, estimated at 30,000, even excluding Sindhia’s own troops. Disorder might break out any day; and one, attended by murder, did break out on the 15th, when Kush-hālī Rām Haldia, the Jaipur general (bakhshi)