Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c42.s2.9

v3.c42.s2.9

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.