Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c42.s2: § 5. Causes of Shah Alam’s downfall analysed: his character, his domestic enemies and faithless advisers

Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c42.s2

Language: English

§ 5. Causes of Shah Alam’s downfall analysed: his character, his domestic enemies and faithless advisers

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But it was not to be. No man can rise above destiny, as the wise of ancient days have truly said. Destiny is only another name for character, and Shah Alam’s character alone was responsible for the fate that now overwhelmed him and his house.

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The Pādishāh was extremely weak and inconstant, but not treacherous nor incapable of right thinking. He only lacked firmness of purpose and the capacity for action. The bleak penury of the first fifty years of his life and then the habitual use of opium (as an aphrodisiac sedative) had paralysed his will power, while leaving his intellect unclouded. Hence, with all his intelligence, his daily study of scripture and history, and his life of piety and abstinence (except in making additions to his harem), he only proved another example of how cowards die many times before their death.

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His clear brain recognised that among all the competitors for power at Delhi, Mahadji Sindhia was the only man capable of managing the Regency and enabling him to realise his heart's wish which was, in the homely phrase that he used to the Maratha envoy, "to eat his bread for a few days in peace." Every one, including the British Residents, perceived this preference of the Emperor. Shah Alam had cherished an unshaken faith in Mahadji's loyalty and capacity ever since the march from Allahabad in 1771, and he knew that the great Maratha's rivals for the Regency were fools or knaves. As for the English, though Shah Alam in days of extreme fear to his life or throne used to appeal to the Governor-General for armed aid or an asylum in British territory, it was his consistent resolve never to make himself a puppet in their hands as the Nawab of Oudh was. Nor did he wish to be daily insulted by an English keeper as he had been during his years of sojourn in Allahabad. But in spite of his spineless character, Shah Alam could have been saved if only he had a more honest servant than Manzur Ali the eunuch as his keeper and a worthier counsellor than Ram Ratan the grocer at his side during the eclipse of Mahadji's power at Delhi.

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Over the fortunes of Delhi royalty at this time lay the blight of Shah Alam's character. To make things still worse, he had the bitterest enemies under his own roof. A dynastic feud helped to bring about his ruin, though that ruin ultimately overwhelmed the rivals of his blood no less than his own sons and grandsons. The line of Alamgir II had gained the throne of Delhi by ousting the branch of Muhammad Shah reigning before, had blinded and killed the last legitimate sovereign of that branch and kept that hapless Emperor's descendants in grinding poverty within the cells of the royal prison in Delhi fort (called the Salātin quarters.) This had gone on for thirty-four years without any relief.*

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Shah Alam's miserliness had grown with age and the increase of his treasure hoards. Though he had made large accumulations from the Bengal tribute after his treaty of 1765 with Lord Clive, and from the spoils of Pathargarh and Ghausgarh, he refused to give his captive kinsmen anything beyond the coarsest daily bread. Even that bread did not always reach them, and the famished grandsons and nephews of former Emperors used to make a deafening clamour which penetrated beyond their prison-walls to the ears of the foreign visitors to the royal audience, such as Comte de Modave (in 1775) and Captain John Pester (in 1804), like the howls of ravenous beasts in a neglected zoo. These princelings were driven to desperation by their monotonous sufferings and the utter vacuity of their lives. They were ever ready to join any usurper of the Regency who would raise them to the throne and give them a few days' relish of the joys of kingship, even though they knew that deposition and murder would most probably close their brief reigns.

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∗ *Ibr.* iii. 140. When prince Akbar appealed to his friend the newly crowned Bidār Bakht to relieve the sufferings of his hungry and thirsty children, Bidar replied, "The Empire of Hindustan belongs to my forefathers. During the thirty years that your father has been Emperor, what hardships and sorrows did we not endure? For thirty years we have borne it patiently. Now the turn of kingship has come to me." Row by starving prisoner-princes : *Modave's Journal du Voyage* tr. by me in *Islamic Culture*, 1935. Pester, *War and Sport in India*.

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And the females of the species nursed even greater malignity. Mālika-i-Zamāni, the honoured chief widow of the Emperor Muhammad Shah, who lived in her own mansion outside the fort walls, had nursed her step-son Ahmad Shah, the Emperor, and could not forget that Shah Alam’s father had seized the crown by robbing Ahmad Shah of his heritage and eyesight. So, she now offered Ghulām Qādir twelve lakhs of Rupees as the price of replacing Shah Alam by Bidar Bakht, the captive son of Ahmad Shah, and she was known to have amassed much wealth of her own. Sāhiba Mahal, another widow of Muhammad Shah and the mother of the great Durrāni conqueror’s wife Hazrat Mahal, joined her in this project. [DY. i. 309. But Ibr. iii. 137 gives ten lakhs.]

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§ 6. Ghulam Qadir's vindictiveness towards Delhi royalty.

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A second vendetta mingled with that of the princes of Timurid blood, to make the ruin of Shah Alam II complete and accentuate its agony and shame. Najib-ud-daula had been regent of the empire for ten years, but his son had roused Shah Alam’s wrath and had been defeated and his two seats at Pathargarh and Ghausgarh had been sacked with every cruelty and their treasures plundered by the victors. Now was the turn of Zābita’s son. Ghulām Qādir saw visions of his father and grandfather chiding him for not avenging the wrongs of their house on the effete Timurids of Delhi. He believed himself to be the divinely appointed instrument for purging the royal house of Hindustan; with his manly Afghan clansmen at his back he claimed to be “the Scourge of God,” (*Qahar-i-Khudā.*) He must abase into the dust the cowards and lechers who soiled the throne of the Empire of India. The Afghan spirit of revenge* would not be satisfied unless he recovered by force every article taken away from his father by the imperialists and exacted compound interest on it. This explains the brutality, the long drawn out torments and the dishonour of royal ladies which marked out his sack of Delhi from every other atrocity of the kind known in the blood-red annals of Islam.

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The torture and dishonour inflicted by Ghulām Qādir Khan on the Delhi royal family, on its tender babes and aged women, on its servant-girls, eunuchs, petty store-keepers and humble valets as well as the highest princes,— form a long chapter, which fills, in my manuscript of Khairuddin’s Persian history, 33 foolscap folio pages, with 20 lines to the page and drags on from day to day for two months. But a modern historian cannot conduct his reader through all the agonised circles of this Inferno of the living; he must pass over the horrid details and give only a brief general sketch of the kinds of suffering borne by the Timurid royal house, not a hundredth part of which was endured by the house of Capet, whose misery too found a mercifully speedy end on the guillotine.

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∗ Ghulām Qādir’s revenge.—Ibr. iii. 154 (*Qahar-i-Khudā*), 141, 143 (guns of Najib-ud-daulah taken back.)

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§ 7. Ghulām Qādir deposes Shah Alam and crowns Bidār Bakht, 31 July 1788.

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After Ghulām Qādir and Ismail Beg had been admitted into the palace by the nāzir who forbade any resistance by the Red Battalion guarding the gates (15th July 1788), they occupied Delhi city (18th.) Then they began to press the Emperor for money to furnish forth their army for a holy war against the infidels from Maharashtra. Shah Alam had to yield to every demand they made, and sent his son Sulaiman Shukoh (24th) as a hostage for his good faith to their camp, to accompany them in the projected jihad. Meantime, the Dowager Empress Mālika-i-Zamāni had made a pact with Ghulām Qādir to give the throne to her grandson Bidār Bakht in return for twelve lakhs of Rupees; and this agreement was now to be implemented.

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On 30th July the two Khans came to the fort and swore on the Qurān to be true to Shah Alam. The loyal commandant of the Red Battalion offered to resist their entry, but the trustful Emperor forbade any opposition. Thus, two thousand Afghans took over control of the palace and drove out the king's own guards, without a blow. Then Ghulām Qādir abused and threatened the Emperor and kept him and his sons confined in the chapel,* while he with Ismail occupied the Diwān-i-khās and the Haiyāt Bakhsh garden all night, amidst the loud weeping of the harem ladies.

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Early next morning, the rebel chiefs enthroned Bidār Bakht,—the son of the ex-Emperor Ahmad Shah,—in the Diwān-i-khās, under the title of Nāsir-ud-din Muhammad Jahan Shah, and sent Shah Alam and his 19 sons into the prison-quarters called the Salātin. The plunder of the palace by the Ruhelas had begun the evening before and it continued till the last day of Ghulām Qādir's stay in Delhi.*

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∗ Deposition of Shah Alam II.—DC. PRC. i. 228. Ibr. iii. 137—139. (Alacuna in my ms. of ML. G. Ali gives only a few verses.) DY. i. 310, 311.

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∗ DC and a Persian news-letter to W. Palmer state that Ghulam Qadir deposed Shah Alam on discovering that Emperor's letter of appeal to Sindhia. But Khair-ud-din among his minute details mentions no such breach of faith on the old sovereign's part. Moreover, after 15th July, Shah Alam was a mere cypher and the nāzir all in all within the fort.

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§ 8. Shah Alam blinded. Imperial family and palace servants put to torture, Oct.-Nov. 1788.

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The deposed monarch was pressed to divulge his treasure hoards. When he replied that had nothing more beyond what had been already found in the treasury and stores, he was threatened and insulted. Ghulām Qādir sat down by his side, passed his arm familiarly round his neck and blew his tobacco smoke into his sovereign's face! Then the unhappy king was kept seated in the sun, without food or drink.

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On being urged again and again to disclose the hiding place of his wealth, Shah Alam at last replied in bitterness, "What I possessed, you have already found in the store-rooms. Have I kept anything hidden in my belly?" The Ruhela's retort was, "May be your belly will have to be ripped open". On 10th October, in a frenzy of vindictiveness and avarice, Ghulām Qādir had needles driven through the eyes of Shah Alam. Next day, in unimaginable brutality, he called for the Court-painter and bade him draw a picture of himself as he knelt on his half-dead master's bosom and carved out one eye-ball with his dagger, while the other eye was extracted by Qandahāri Khan. The wounded old man was left for days together without a drop of water; three valets were killed and two water-carriers were wounded by Ghulām Qādir with his sword, in order to deter others from relieving the royal distress in secret.*

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The maid-servants of the palace were subjected to inhuman and disgusting tortures, and the eunuchs were beaten to death to make them confess where the fort treasure lay buried. The screw was next put on the princes and princesses; all members of the royal family were kept without food or drink for three or four days, till many of the children and old ladies sank into death and one wife of the new Emperor died from utter terror. Two ex-Empresses died of privation, and one of them was by the Ruhela's order left unburied for three days until the stench became unbearable. Maniyār Singh reported that in two days 21 princes and princesses had died and others were in a dying condition.

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Revenge is sweet, but it may be bought at a price which turns it into gall and worm-wood, as Mālika-i-Zamāni now found to her cost. She had secured her grandson's accession by forming a league with the Ruhela and had used her brief days of power to plunder the houses of the wives of Shah Alam and send them away to Salimgarh

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* G. Q. went up to Shah Alam, whose eyes were still running blood, and pulling him by the beard cried out, "Served you right. This is the return for your action at Ghausgarh." [Ibr. 147.] Afghan vengeance may sleep for decades, it never dies.

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G. Qadir's atrocities.—Ibr. iii. 136-174 (fullest.) DC. PRC. i. 227—235. DY. i. 309—314, 344, 327. HP. 530, 537, 538. Sat. i 150.

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prison without a change of clothing, and beat their servant-girls for their mistresses’ wealth. But when she asked Ghulām Qādir to hand the palace over to her now that he had collected more than the promised twelve lakhs from it, he replied that the contents of the palace treasury were the former spoils of his father’s capitals, and that her debt to him must be satisfied out of her private property. He began to beat the princes and even a sister of Shah Alam for extorting their wealth, and on 22nd August, had Mālika-i-Zamāni and Sāhiba Mahal brought away from their mansions in the city with only the clothes they were wearing and ordered them to be placed on the terrace of the Octagonal Tower, exposed to the gaze of the public on the river bank, and subjected to unslaked thirst for hours together. Their mansions were dug up and swept clear of everything found there above or below the ground by the Ruhela’s agents.

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One almost feels a grim satisfaction that divine justice did not sleep over the prime cause of these princely sufferings, the arch-traitor nāzir Manzur Ali. His turn came next. When he could produce no more money from the palace, his Afghan foster-child turned sharply on him and asked, “Even maid-servants have been revealing the hiding places of gems and gold. How is it that you, who have long been superintendent of the Emperor’s household, do not know them?” A fine of seven lakhs was laid on him and he himself was beaten, dragged into a latrine and threatened with having his mouth stuffed with excrement unless he paid it. His house was sacked and yielded Rs. 40,000, besides 5000 gold coins, gold and silver ware, jewellery and costly clothing (23rd Sept.).

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§ 9. Ghulām Qādir’s brutality of speech,—dishonours queens and princesses.

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The young Ruhelā Chief’s avarice and vengefulness were accompanied by a brutality of speech and manners which is surprising, because in a habitual drunkard like him one often finds a certain bonhomie and intervals of frankness and liberality. But Ghulām Qadir was without pity, as he was without shame or truthfulness. When his Court-patron Manzur Ali appealed to him to spare him torture by recounting how he had saved the child Ghulām Qādir’s life at Ghausgarh, the Ruhela’s reply was, “Do you not know the old proverb, ‘To kill a serpent and spare its young, is not wise’?” He forced Prince Akbar Shah, the heir to Shah Alam’s throne, to get drunk and dance, though dancing by a male is considered a most despicable act in Indian opinion. At the sight of the poor terrified youth’s tottering steps, the Ruhela laughed and cynically remarked, “If you and your family had not been singers and dancers, I should not have come to this position.” One day he cried out, “I shall order my Ruhelas to drag away the Mughal princesses to their houses without wedlock, so that from their seed a manlier race may spring.” Many more examples of such taunting are given by Khair-ud-din.

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Murder for the throne and torturing for treasure are familiar things in palace revolutions in the East and were not unknown in mediæval Europe. But the worst offence of Ghulām Qādir in the eyes of Indian society was his dishonouring of the women of the imperial family. Some of them were beaten, many starved to death, and the two most honoured widows of Emperor Muhammad Shah and the queens of Shah Alam were exposed to public view without any screen around the place or over-all (*burqa*) on their persons. He went even further. Hearing of the beauty of the youthful daughters of two Shāhzādas, he called them up before him at night in the Moti Mahal, stripped them of their veil and wimple, showed them to his boon companions, asked indelicate questions about them and hugged their persons.*

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The unhappy princesses were at last rescued and restored to their families by Maniyār Singh commandant. So greatly was the Delhi royal house still honoured by all clauses, amidst its decline poverty and defeat, that even the rudest rustics and most ferocious brigands would refuse to insult a Mughal princess by look or act. Only

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*This is my mild translation of *Az har eke insāf-i-bemāli-e-ānhā mikhwāst; wa tā bahar eke ikhtilat-i-nashaista dar miān dāsht*. [Ibr. 153.]

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six years after this, a very clever English civil servant named Thomas Twining made a private journey to Delhi. On his way back, near Bulandshahar, his slender escort of 20 sepoys was threatened by a band of 150 to 200 strongly armed Gujars, the most fierce and dreaded class of habitual robbers. He quickly had his own *palki* screened round and bade his guards cry out *Padishahka haremki Bibi Sahib* ("A lady of the imperial seraglio"), and at once this large robber horde withdrew after making him a cold salam! (*Travels in India*, 269.) Even savage Gujars and hardened robbers shrank from a deed which the son of one imperial Regent, the grandson of another and himself a Regent by office did not blush to commit.*

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The merit of efficacy cannot be denied to the Ruhela's methods of torture. However inhuman their character, they bore speedy fruit. Maid-servants through fear of torture or greed of reward or spite, divulged the secret chambers where coins, gems, gold and silver plate and costly clothing were kept concealed. Some of these, from having been buried underground or kept in cellars (*sard-āba*) for generations, had become utterly discoloured. Some of the cloth of gold and diamonds and pearls now dug out were so rare and precious that when Ghulām Qādir asked the Delhi jewellers to value them, they confessed that they had never before seen anything of such high value and could make no guess at their prices, nor could a single purchaser for them be found nowadays. The total spoils of Delhi, in cash and kind, were estimated by his own wife at twenty-five krors* of Rupees [Ibr. iii. 175], and some more coins and jewels were found by Rana Khan and the palace servants among the debris left behind by his excavations. The champion of crescentade against the Kafirs from the South, removed the gold coating of one cupola of the Jāmi' Masjid and sold it, but was prevented from similarly stripping the remainder by Maniyār Singh who warned him that such an outrage on the holy edifice would rouse the entire city population in arms against him. [Ibr. 158.]

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∗ From *HP.* 530 we learn that a selection of choice beauties from the imperial harem was taken away to his palace at Ghausgarh. *Ibr.* is silent on the point, but speaks of the handsomest dancing girls in the palace being ordered to be transferred to his harem.

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§ 10. Ismail Beg's policy and conduct: condition of Delhi city, Aug.-Sept., 1788.

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What was Ismail Beg Hamadāni doing while the drunken Ruhela was thus rioting in the palace? Their contract was that the spoils should be shared between them, one-third going to the Mughalia leader and two-thirds to the Ruhela Chieftain. When Shah Alam was deposed on 31st July and ill-treated, Ismail Beg remonstrated with his colleague, but in vain. When nothing was paid to him out of the plunder of Delhi palace which had now begun, Hamadāni left Ghulām Qādir in anger and encamped in a distant quarter of the city. His ally’s attempts to conciliate him failed, as Ghulām Qādir would not give him his full share, but offered small sums only. Henceforth there was an armed neutrality between the two new lords of Delhi, the wards and gates of the city being divided between them, while Ghulām Qādir alone occupied the fort. At one visit paid by the Ruhela to Ismail, the Mughalia officers tried to seize him and hold him to ransom for their master’s dues, but Ghulām Qādir was saved by his sepoy commandant Maniyār Singh who formed a square round the Afghan’s person. [Ibr. 163.] At last on 25th September, he sent to Ismail Beg Rs. 40,000 out of the spoliation of the nāzir, a ridiculously small sum when compared with his gains from the palace hoards.*

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∗ A more sober estimate is fifteen lakhs in cash, besides rich clothing and furniture for which there was no market.

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For nearly two months the city of Delhi lay a divided realm at the mercy of the Afghans and Mughalias, who often came to blows in the streets in the act of plunder. In these encounters, the Ruhelas were worsted, because the Mughalias had many friends and fellow-clansmen among the resident population and traders of Delhi, where the Afghans were always unpopular. But utter want of money and scarcity of provisions made Ismail Beg's position very unsafe; his starving soldiers at last began to leave him and go over to the Marathas. Finally, when near the end of September the Marathas began a new offensive against Delhi, Ismail Beg made a pact with Sindhia and joined the forces of Rānā Khān openly (28th Sept.) in attacking the Ruhelas then holding the city and fort. On the 7th of October he was sent away by Sindhia's orders to attack Najaf Quli in Rewāri.

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∗ Rupture with Ismail Beg.—DC. Ibr. iii. 141-143, 163—167. DY. i. 313. At the end of September Sindhia agreed to give Ismail Beg 1½ lakhs of Rs. in cash and the fief of Rewāri which was to be wrested from Najaf Quli, DY. i. 342; 339 (or Ghausgarh.)

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§ 11. Rānā Khān reconquers Delhi city and fort, 2—11 October, 1788.

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This brings us to the Maratha reconquest of Delhi. We have already seen that the small body of Maratha horse sent by Mahadji on 8th July from Mathurā to Delhi had failed to stem Ghulām Qādir's entrance into the capital and had therefore fallen back to Faridabad along with Himmat Bahadur who was now a servant of the Emperor (14th July.) Two months passed away before Sindhia was in a position to strengthen this detachment. But during this interval Deccani horsemen crossed over to the eastern side of the Jamunā and by plundering the grain caravans seriously affected the food supply of Delhi, [19th Aug. DC.]

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At last, on 14th September Sindhia sent off a large force under his best general, Rānā Khān, to Delhi,* who was followed about twelve days later by another division under Jivā Dādā Bakhshi. His failure to clear the arrears of his men’s pay delayed their start and progress. But they were “persuaded” by their generals, and at last arrived at Faridabad, and after confirming their pact with Ismail Beg began their attack on the Ruhelas. On 28th September they occupied Old Delhi, immediately south of Shah Jahan’s city. Thence they advanced into the capital and occupied it on 2nd October. After some skirmishing, all the Ruhela troops were driven into the palace-fort, against which the Marathas with Ismail Beg and Begam Samru on their side opened fire from their trenches. [DY. i. 344.]

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Ghūlām Qādir could no longer maintain himself in the fort, especially as his troops there were starving from the effective Maratha raids in the Doab. So, he began to cross his booty, baggage and army over the river by way of Salimgarh, en route to Ghausgarh, but still kept a garrison of his own in the palace. His treasure convoy on the way to his home was looted by the Sikhs and Gujars in concert with the Marathas who had now entered the upper Doab in large numbers and helped to “make the country from Ghausgarh to the northern hills a lampless desolation”. He was now compelled to hasten to the eastern bank in defence of his own estates. The Maratha horse, who were without any artillery or disciplined musketeers, were easily driven back whenever they met him in the open. For some days Ghulām Qādir continued to revisit the fort of Delhi and make a parting extortion by beating Bidār Bakht, Prince Akbar, and even the half-dead Shah Alam, and carrying away some sons of Shah Alam as well as Bidar Bakht as his prisoners.

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∗ Maratha reconquest of Delhi.—Ibr. iii. 170-172. DC. PRC. i, 234—236, 243. Sat. i. 156. Aiti Patravyav. 266. DY. i. 320, 324, 325, 338. 342, 344, 315. HP. 538.

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Meantime the exchange of fire between the depleted starving Ruhela garrison within the fort and the Marathas in their trenches outside continued. On 10th October, on the eve of the martyrdom of Imām Husain at Karbāla, while Ghulām Qādir was still in the fort, a powder-magazine there blew up through the negligence of some Ruhela soldiers who were issuing munitions from it. The effect was like that of a volcanic eruption and the ruins were flung down to the middle of the city. Ghulām Qādir read the omen and said, “Now the fort itself refuses to keep me”. Taking his remaining property and latest booty with him, he vacated the fort with all his men, by means of boats. That morning grain had sold at two seers for a Rupee within the palace, and next day absolutely no food-stuff could be had there for love or money.

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On the following morning (11th October), while Rānā Khan was issuing his orders for the day's fight, the fort ramparts looked silent and deserted. Some of the captive princes whose rooms had been locked from the outside by Ghulām Qādir, cried out to the Maratha scouts under the walls that the fort had been vacated. Then Himmat Bahadur entered it after sending a man up to the battlement by means of a rope-ladder to open the gate from the inside. The Marathas entered later under Ravloji Sindhia. The most pressing needs of the half-dead Shah Alam were food and water, and these were at once supplied. The numerous princes and princesses and their servants were equally starving, and Rānā Khan sent them huge quantities of cooked meals. Barbers were sent in to pare nails and trim beards which had been left unattended to for two months and a half.

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There was some days' delay in Rānā Khan himself waiting on the Emperor. As Sindhia's representative, he had to come to a clear understanding with Shah Alam, and he had also to take full control of that large lawless and utterly convulsed capital and establish Sindhia's authority over it, as a measure of safety. The traitor's followers and secret partisans had to be hunted down, and every piece of spoil taken from the royal family and still kept in the city had to be traced and restored. This respite helped the Emperor to revive.

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On the 16th of October, Rānā Khan with his leading officers, interviewed the sightless Sovereign and gave him what consolation was possible in his unfathomable misery. Next day, which was a Friday, he had the *khutba* read in the name of Shah Alam II again from the pulpit of the Jāmi Masjid. The flag of Sindhia again floated over Delhi city and was to continue there without a break till thirteen years later, when the banner of St. George took its place.

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§ 12. The hunting down of Ghulām Qādir, Nov.—Dec. 1788.

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After the monotonous tale of warfare in diverse theatres for the preceding sixteen months, it is not necessary to narrate the story of the hunting down of Ghulām Qādir in detail. This campaign had nothing of interest or importance in its course. It will be enough to give it in outline. From the beginning of October, Mahadji Sindhia had been sending all available boats from Agra to Delhi to enable his troops to cross over into the Doab on the heels of Ghulām Qādir. Rāyāji Pātil had already moved up the Doab from the south, crossed the Hindan and cut off provisions from the Ruhela Chief's army. With him was Devji Gāvlé. But their Deccani light horse could not stand up to Ghulām Qādir's artillery and French-led musketeers in pitched battle; they were outclassed in arms and severely beaten, Devji himself being wounded, [12th Oct.

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Ibr. iii. 173.] Their appeal for help reached Sindhia, who sent Jīvā Dādā and Totā Firingi across from Delhi with more troops.*

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On 3rd November Rānā Khān himself followed them and was joined by Begam Samru’s full contingent, his own delay being again due to the clamours of his unpaid soldiery. Rāyāji Pātil and other Deccani sardars had about 8,000 men under them. In addition, 22 guns and 8,000 more men of the Jat Rajah crossed the Jamuna near Shergarh and moved up the Doab to join Rāyāji. Rānā Khan now arrived with 20,000 men and took the lead in the chase. In a few weeks a further addition was made to the hunt. Ali Bahadur, at the head of the contingent furnished by the Peshwa’s Government, had at long last arrived at Mahadji’s side at Mathurā (6th November.) On the 17th of the month he was detached against Ghulām Qādir.

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Ghulām Qādir, after abandoning Delhi fort (10th October), at first closed the ferries over the Jamunā for twenty miles on the opposite bank to which he had removed his army. But the vast number of the Marathas enabled them to cross over below and above the guarded points in successive bodies and to rove round the Ruhela camp at a distance, cutting off its supplies so effectively that scarcity of food was as acute in it as during their occupation of Delhi. On the 20th of the month a stunning blow fell on him: his great fortress and storehouse of Aligarh opened its gates to the Marathas. The Ruhela in despair turned southwards and moved from place to place without any plan and fighting the Marathas without any decisive result except suffering the loss of men and horses which he could ill afford to bear. At last about the 4th of November he took refuge in Mirat fort, which the Marathas invested. Their strength was further increased by the coming of Ali Bahadur (11th Dec.) and the blockade was made very stringent. Utter want of food and close confinement worked havoc among the crowded multitude of the besieged. Men and beasts died in hundreds and their corpses poisoned the air. Ghulām Qādir now offered to release the captive princes in return for a free pardon and the guarantee of his patrimony, but the negotiations failed. Then he tried to massacre the helpless Delhi royal family still in his hands, but was prevented from this last infamy by Maniyār Singh at the risk of his life from the drawn sword of his infuriated master.

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∗ The hunting down of G. Q.—Ibr. iii. 173, 183-193. DC. PRC. i. 238-244. DY. i. 324, 343, 344, 354, 359, 362-368. HP. 539-540, 549-556. Sat. i. 161-166. Aiti Pat. Vyav. 267, 273-275. Death, DY. 372, 378. MD. ii. 173. Ibr. 191-193.

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At last, the position within beleaguered fort became utterly intolerable. On 17th December, after leaving a strong force under Maniyār Singh in the Suraj Kund suburb to keep the Marathas engaged, Ghulām Qādir slipped out of the fort with a party of 500 horsemen at night and sought to gain the road to Ghausgarh. A short distance outside he fell in with a Maratha patrol under Jivā Dādā, which fought and pursued him up to midnight, destroying half his escort. When the pursuers halted, Ghulām Qādir, who had concealed himself in a hollow, resumed his flight. In the darkness the fugitives separated; Ghulām Qādir missed his path and his comrades and rode on alone. At last his horse stumbled into a hole and broke its leg. The Ruhela chief continued the journey limping on foot. The dawn revealed a village in front of him; it was Bamnauli,* three miles south-west of Shāmli. He had covered some forty miles in his flight, but in the north-western direction instead of turning to the east for his home. In this village he took shelter in the house of a Brahman,—"probably a sufferer from his former raids," as Khair-ud-din suggests, —and offered the man rewards for supplying him with a pony and a guide to Ghausgarh. The Brahman conveyed the intelligence to Ali Bahadur whose camp lay in the way, and a party of Marathas arrived and took the Ruhela chief prisoner (19th December.)

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∗ DY. i. 359 names it Zādigāon, but PRC. i. 241 calls it Bamnauli (which is my correction for Ramnauti, a copyist's error.) All the authorities agree that it was a few miles short of Shamli (HP. 555.) This rules out the more famous and much larger Bamnauli, 24 m. n.w. of Mirat. Shamli is 22 m. due east of Panipat, & 22 m. n. of the latter Bamnauli.

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Meantime, in the night of the 17th, as soon as the flight of Ghulām Qādir became known, most of his followers fled away from Mirat abandoning everything. Next morning Rānā Khan entered the city, released the captive princes, took charge of all the property found there on behalf of the Emperor, and arrested nāzir Manzur Ali and his Hindu satellites, as well as Maniyār Singh who had continued fighting from a house. Three thousand Ruhelas, found in the fort, were stripped of their arms and clothing and driven out with blows. Ghulām Qādir and the other prisoners were sent to Mahadji at Mathura, where they arrived on the last day of the year 1788. At first they were plied with choice food and clothing in order to induce them to reveal the hiding places of the recent spoils of Delhi. But their answer was evasive. On 28th February Mahadji received a letter from Shah Alam threatening to abdicate and go away to Mecca rather than see his tormentor spared for the sake of money. So, the Ruhela monster and his patron, the arch-traitor Manzur Ali, were done to death (2nd-4th March 1789) by tortures which were a faint echo of what they had done at Delhi. Ghulām Qādir’s eye-balls were, by command, sent to the imperial master whom he had wronged so grievously. His body also was to have been sent to Delhi for public exposure, but according to popular belief his infernal lord took it away. Khair-ud-din tells a gruesome tale of how, when his headless trunk was hung upside down from a tree, a black dog with white rings round its eyes sat below it and lapped up the blood dripping from the neck, returning to its horrid meal again and again though driven away with stones, and that after two days both corpse and dog disappeared, never to be seen again by any human eye!

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With this weird and ghastly scene the most tragic drama in the history of the Timurid sovereigns of India closes.

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Published by S. N. SARKAR, 169, Southern Avenue, and Printed by P. C. RAY at Sri Gouranga Press, 5 Chintamani Das Lane, Calcutta.

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the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea* of Jacobus de Voragine, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction and edification of the faithful.

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But the Church did not merely provide books; it also provided the means of their dissemination. The monastic scriptoria, where monks labored in silence to copy the sacred texts, were the precursors of the printing press. And when the press finally arrived, it was the Church that first harnessed its power, using it to spread the word of God to the corners of the earth. The Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed in Europe, was a testament to the Church's commitment to the written word.

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Yet, even as the Church championed the spread of knowledge, it also sought to control it. The *Index Librorum Prohibitorum*, or List of Prohibited Books, was a tool used by the Church to suppress ideas it deemed dangerous or heretical. This tension between the desire to educate and the need to control would define the Church's relationship with literature for centuries to come.

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It is a complex history, one that is marked by both enlightenment and suppression. But it is a history that cannot be ignored, for it is the history of the very foundation of Western civilization. The Church, in its role as the guardian of knowledge, has shaped the way we think, the way we write, and the way we understand the world around us.