Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s4: § 12. Sindhia and Mahārānā subdue rebel noble of Chitor
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s4
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§ 12. Sindhia and Mahārānā subdue rebel noble of Chitor
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Zālim Singh visited Sindhia in his camp near Nāthdwārā, along with the Mahārānā’s envoys. After long discussions it was agreed that a tribute of 60 lakhs of rupees was to be paid by Mewār, from which 10 lakhs was deducted as compensation for the damage caused by the marching army. Zālim Singh undertook to collect this amount on condition that a part of Mahādji's army under Ambāji Inglé was to be permanently stationed in the country. A further sum of ten lakhs was laid on the chieftain of Devgarh and one lakh on the district of Banhedā. (*DY.* ii. 30 and 31, misprinted as *Barhad.*)
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∗ Ambaji’s letter DY. ii. 59. Mahādji at Devgarh, ibid. 21. On 20th July Mahādji was at Bhilwārā, 31 miles north of Chitor. (HP. 593-'4). In August he was near Nathdwara at a place printed as Newāl (probably a mistake for Moi, 12 m. n.e. of Nāthdwārā and south of lake Rāj-samudra). DY. ii 30-31. His wife Gangā Bāi died here on 11 Aug. and he had to make a long halt at or near that great Vaishnav city. The fullest details in Kālē Akhbārāt.
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Then Zālim Singh and Sindhia's minister Sadāshiv Malhār visited the Mahārānā at Udaipur to arrange for an interview between these two chiefs. Mahādji was very keen on such a meeting, as it would exalt him among the Rajahs of Rajasthan, exactly as his regency of Shah Alam had elevated him in the eyes of the princes and people of the Mughal Empire. No other Marātha chief except the Peshwā Bāji Rao I. had been honoured with an interview on terms of such intimacy by the highest Kshatriya sovereign, the eldest descendant of the Sun. As arranged, Mahādji advanced ten miles from his camp to welcome the Mahārānā. Their interview took place on 4th September, at Naharā Magrā, 16 miles north-east of Udaipur, where the Mahārānā had a hunting-lodge in the wooded hill. The Rānā's ministers assured Sindhia that the fifty lakhs would be easily collected if he encamped with his army in that kingdom for two months and coerced the rebel vassals. It was agreed that in future the civil and military administration of Mewār would be conducted by Zālim Singh Jhālā and Lālji Ballāl Lād (Sindhia's tribute-collector posted at Kotā) in the name of the Mahārānā, and that that sovereign must act according to their guidance. (*MD.* ii. 226-227. *DY.* ii. 33.)
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The foremost rebel vassal to be suppressed was Rāwat Bhim of Sālumbar, the Chundā-ot leader, holding the fort of Chitor. So, from Naharā Magrā Sindhia and the Mahārānā together marched to that historic fort and encamped near it, at Senthi and Olri, two and five miles respectively south of Chitor, (middle of September.) All the lands outside Chitor hill were occupied, and that fort itself was blockaded by Sindhia's troops. Mounting guns on the eminence from which Akbar had conducted his attack on Chitor in 1568, Mahādji subjected the fort to a continuous bombardment. He had to face internal troubles too; a severe famine was desolating the land, "grain could not be had even at seven seers to the rupee"! (DY. ii. 38, but MD. ii. 211 says four seers.) The Pathan mercenaries of the Rānā mutinied and had to be quelled.
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The Sālumbar Rāwat could not hold out longer; his antipathy to Zālim Singh delayed his surrender; but the old royal garrison in the fort offered to seize and deliver him along with Chitor to Sindhia, if their land-grants were continued and they were paid a bounty of half a lakh. On hearing of it the Rāwat expelled them from the fort. The Mahārānā was inexorable in his anger against this rebel; but Mahādji's hands were forced by the famine and his need of money to pay his starving soldiers. So, through the mediation of the practical and moderate Rānākhān Bhāi, terms were settled, and at last on 17th November Chitor was vacated; the Mahārānā's flag was again unfurled over his ancestors' capital and a garrison of five hundred Marātha soldiers put in under a civil officer of the Mahārānā. The Rāwat's rebellion had cost Sindhia an army expenditure of 10½ lakhs of rupees besides two lakhs in powder and shot. The rebel promised to pay an indemnity of 12 lakhs and was treated with kindness and honour; Sindhia personally presented him to the Mahārānā and secured pardon for his late rebellion. (DY. ii. 39, 41, 45, S. 50 M.D. ii. 229.)
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§ 13. Mahādji settles Mewār administration, 1792.
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After the recovery of Chitor Sindhia spent one month (December) at Gosundā, a city twelve miles west of it, where a Mewār queen had built a grand temple. Here his lifelong friend and wisest adviser Rānākhān Bhāi, died on the 22nd of that month. The future administration of Mewār and the collection of the Maratha dues from that country caused him the greatest anxiety. For a time he even thought of putting the Sālumbar chieftain Rāwat Bhim (i.e., the ex-rebel leader) in charge of the country in concert with his own general Ambāji Inglé. But the plan was wisely abandoned, as it would have revived the clan-feuds in Mewār as soon as Mahādji’s back was turned. At last, his mind was made up: Ambāji Inglé was left to govern the country in the name of the Mahārānā, but with full civil and military power as Sindhia’s representative,—exactly like an “Agent to the Governor-General” in British Indian history. Ten thousand Deccani cavalry and four battalions of trained infantry (of Begam Samru’s force) were posted under him to enforce his authority, and Zālim Singh was appointed as his local adviser. Rāwat Bhim’s fine was fixed at 12 lakhs of rupees, besides the military stores in Chitor. He gave banker’s bills for seven lakhs and promises for the balance. The Mahārānā paid five lakhs as the first instalment of his contribution of fifty lakhs, and Lālgir Gosāin (the Nāgā Bairāgi captain) one lakh as nazarāna. (DY. S. 81, 55. HP 600 and 608 ; Kālé Akh.)
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Mahādji now prepared to set out for Punā, to which city he had been repeatedly summoned by the Peshwā, but he could not start without taking formal leave of the Mahārānā and securing his consent to the final arrangement. So, the Mahārānā came to Gosundā and the two held a consultation for four hours, at which the above plan was mutually agreed upon.
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On 5th January 1792 the Mahārānā and the Chundāot Rāwat (both of whom bore the same name, Bhim Singh) visited Mahādji to bid him formal adieu. Sindhia greatly honoured the Mahārānā and placed Ambāji Inglé under his orders. Then he presented robes, jewels, elephants and horses to the Mahārānā, and shawls to his officers, and taking Rāwat Bhim’s hand placed it in the Mahārānā’s hand, in sign of his being henceforth under his liege-lord’s protection. Then robes were presented to all the petty chiefs and the envoys of other Rajput States present in his camp, and all were given congee. Next day, Sindhia paid a return visit to the Mahārānā, when he received the usual presents.
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That very day, the 6th of January 1792, Mahādji began his return march from Mewār, being accompanied by Ambāji Inglé and other troops up to Pratāpgarh (60 miles south of Chitor), which was reached in three days. Here he halted till the 13th, trying to collect tribute from the chiefs of Pratāpgarh and the neighbouring States. Then, dismissing Ambāji Inglé and his contingent for their post near Chitor, he resumed his march on the 13th and reached Ujjain (his northern capital) on 21st January. (DY. S. 83, 57.)
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§ 14. Reflections on Rajput decadence.
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The Rajputs represented the noblest elements of the Hindu character, and the saddest aspect of the fall of the Delhi empire was, to my mind, the utter degradation of this chivalrous race and the hopeless misery of this "Land of Rajas". The rot in their body politic started from its head. Each Rajput State was founded by the martial chieftain of a particular clan who entered the country at the head of his armed clansmen and seized some hill fort and made it the seat of his power. All around this centre the heads of the different branches of the same clan established their baronies by conquering as much land as they could with the help of their own family groups. Unlike the barons under the feudal system in Europe, the Rajput nobles did not owe their estates and rank to their Raja's will, but they obeyed him because they were his younger brothers or rather cousins by blood, and he was their patriarch. Thus a Rajput Raja could control his barons only when he was a born leader of men, a victor in battles and possessed of the power of bending others to his will. A weak or idiotic Rajput Raja was powerless against his nobles, and in his reign the unhappy country was ravaged and public order was overthrown by groups of related clan-branches in the same country fighting against each other and trying to usurp the control of the Government so as to be able to seize their neighbours’ lands or the Crown estate.[*]
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Unfortunately after the death of Ishwari Singh of Jaipur (1750) and Bakht Singh of Jodhpur (1752), the line of warrior Rajahs ended, and the rulers of all the Rajput States in the second half of the 18th century were sometimes helpless minors, sometimes imbeciles, and often worthless drunkards and sensualists.
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When the throne ceased to be filled by a warrior-king, quarrels for acting as his regent and controlling the Government broke out among factions in the royal family or the barons. Besides, there were many disputed successions to the throne among brothers or adopted sons, and sometimes pretenders rose up claiming to be the late king’s posthumous sons. Their civil wars invited foreign intervention. The faction that had seized power appealed for support to the Peshwā or to the Peshwā’s local agent Holkar. The opposite faction immediately sent an embassy to punā—or more often to Holkar’s local rival Sindhia, offering a higher subsidy to deprive their rival of Maratha aid. Each side made frantic bids of money, like desperate gamblers, though they knew well that it was impossible for them to pay even a hundredth part of the promised sum out of the revenue of that war-ravaged small stony or desert country. Thus, each Rajput State in the last quarter of the 18th century had piled up on paper a debt to the Marathas which sold them like insolvents to their creditors. The Maratha Government had hired out their troops and undergone heavy expenditure in Rajputana and naturally expected payment of what was legally subsidy and not tribute. But the country was soon drained dry, and no part of these promised subsidies could be realised unless a Maratha army visited the State to enforce the claim. It was exactly the same phenomenon which was seen in Oudh under the decadent Nawabs, when the land revenue of a district could not be collected unless a battalion of troops with a couple of guns accompanied the tax-gatherer. These Maratha troops lived on the country and their salary became an addition to the originally promised subsidy, thus deepening the insolvency of the Rajput State.
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∗ Each of these septs or branches was descended from a common ancestor, usually a younger son or grandson of the founder of the dynasty, and is known by the addition of the syllable ot to the name of this ancestor, such as Chundā-ot, Shaktā-ot, Khangār-ot,—like the Irish prefix O’,—for example O’Donnell, O’Brien or the sons of Donnel or Burn, and the Scottish prefix Mac.
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In such a world the state-craft of the Rajput ministers consisted in playing one Maratha general in Hindustan off against another, i.e., Holkar against Sindhia, so as to gain time and evade the payment of their just debts to the Peshwā. This was exactly the game played by Abdul Hamid the last ruling Sultan of Turkey who for many years staved off the overthrow of his rule by shrewdly manipulating the rivalry between England and Russia. In 1791 the diwān of Jaipur likened this Holkar-Sindhia rivalry to a combat between two wild elephants, which he was watching from a safe distance, and he frankly said that he would discharge his Raja's debt only after one of these two Maratha chiefs had asserted his superiority over the other beyond question.
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A proposal for handing over one Rajput State to Sindhia and anoher to Holkar exclusively, and banning the entry of each into the other's sphere of influence, did not work. On 21st July 1791, Kāshi Rao Holkar wrote to Ahalyā Bāi—“I sent to Sindhia's local agent to propose that when certain thānas in Jodhpur are ceded by their Raja, our officers should take up the administration there equally with Sindhia's. He declined and said,—“Jodhpur State is ours (as the result of the victory at Mertā and the consequent submission of its Raja); and here no thāna of yours can be allowed”. I retorted, “Jaipur State is our sphere of influence, why then have you posted your own thānas there?” His explanation was, “In Jaipur the Peshwa has a claim to the subsidy, and for that reason we have planted our *thānas*”. (*Chandrachur Daftar*, Vol. II, let. No. 80).
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In fact, the hoarded wealth of the Rajas of Rajputana was a myth and the Marathas took many years to realise this fact. The story had spread that Sawāi Jai Singh of Jaipur and Abhay Singh of Mārwār, during their viceroyalties of Mālwā and Gujrāt respectively in the reign of Emperor Muhammad Shah, had accumulated many krores of Rupees. The story was confirmed by the laudatory poems of the Rajput bards, each of whom exaggerated his patron’s riches in order to flatter him. The sober reality can be judged from the fact that while the standard income of the Jaipur State was a hundred lakhs in 1743, it had sunk to 16 lakhs in 1818 when the English undertook its protection. In 1786 the Jaipur diwān Khush-hāli Rām Bohrā told Mahādji Sindhiā,—“You demand the payment of 60 lakhs of Rupees as our debt. We have not even sixty lakhs of broken potsherds in our Treasury. How can we pay so many Rupees?” (*DY*. i. 163.)
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The march of time had now brought another infliction down on the Rajput race. War is the only profession of the Rajput gentry. Even when the poorer men of their clans lived by agriculture, they had the manual labour done by lower castes and kept themselves ready to follow their landlords to battle. But the old Indian method of warfare in which the Rajputs charged in a tumultuous body and engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand fight with their swords, had proved futile before fire arms. Sindhia’s general De Boigne by his two victories in 1790—the first at Patan in Jaipur territory (20 June) and the second at Mertā in Jodhpur (10 September), had proved beyond doubt that the bravest Rajput cavalry was powerless before quick-firing guns and disciplined musketeers. Under the sense of their own military inferiority, the Rajput Rajas made a pathetic attempt to hire some thing to match Sindhia’s European-trained brigades.
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The Rajas now began, for the first time, to hire foreign mercenaries, who were popularly called Sindhis, but lived exactly like the *condottieri* of Italy in the Middle Ages. "These hired bands were entirely composed of infantry, having a slight knowledge of European tactics. . . . These guards were composed either of Purbiā Rajputs (*i.e.*, Oudh and Buxar men), Sindhis, Arabs or Rohillas." (Tod, ii. Marwar, ch. xiii.) A little later, following the example of Sindhia and Holkar, even Jaipur and Kotā engaged French mercenary captains and ordered them to raise trained battalions, but with no real success. These men could not rival De Boigne's achievement, and their inefficient troops, by their heavy pay-bill, only increased their Raja's insolvency and disorder in his realm.
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The moral decay of Rajput society completed the ruin of their country. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the custom of domestic concubinage, though very ancient in its origin, now produced only the most degrading effect upon the Rajput character. These warriors had no superiority to the pampered princes and grandees of the Mughal Court in their relations with women. In the unhappy kingdom of Jodhpur, the administration was entirely dominated by a royal mistress of the Oswāl caste, while the king lived as a non entity. In Jaipur, Jagat Singh who reigned from 1803 to 1818, had "the disgraceful distinction of being the most dissolute prince of his race or of his age" (Tod. ii. Amber, ch. III). Their legitimate queens, though daughters of kings, were daily insulted by the domination of women of infamous character, and felt themselves powerless to relieve the misery of their subjects. We have now come far away from the age in which Rajput queens had fought on horseback to repel foreign invaders.*
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Land was the only source of wealth and of social status among the Rajputs. So long as the Mughal empire was expanding, the Rajas and barons of Rajasthan could carve out new estates for themselves and their younger sons by service under the banners of Delhi. But in the middle of the 18th century, the Emperor became a mere shadow, and the Rajputs came to be cooped up within their small sterile districts; they had no means of advancement left to them except by devouring each other.
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∗ It was a most painful surprise to me to learn from the Marathi despatches that many of the Rajput Rajas, nobles and ministers were infected by the filthy unmentionable disease which is Nature's punishment for gross licentiousness.
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Their education, or more correctly their lack of it, and rigid social usages made them unfit to face the changed world when European civilisation burst upon India. Their bards or *chārans*, whose poems used to throw Tod into ecstacy, only helped to ruin the Rajput kings and nobles by inflaming their pride of family or clan and antipathy to other races of Hindustan and even other Rajput clans than their own. These false bardic poems blinded their Rajas and common people alike to the true lessons of history. The universal habit of opium-eating made them incapable of sustained exertion and debased their brains permanently.
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The system of subsidiary alliances enforced by Wellesley, was condemned by Sir Thomas Munro in a letter to the Duke of Wellington on the ground that it robbed the oppressed subjects of a protected Indian prince of their natural remedy of rebellion. But the period immediately following the acceptance of British protection showed that the subsidiary alliances at least gave internal peace to Rajputana by preventing baronial turbulence, disputes about succession, and mutiny by disorderly mercenary troops. We can legitimately claim that during the short time that Mahadji Sindhia was present in or near Rajputana with his invincible army, he did give to that country the first faint beginning of *Pax Britannica*. When he left for the Deccan in January 1792, chaos was let loose again for a short time; Jaipur attacked its now independent former vassal, the Rao Raja of Alwar, with Holkar’s help. But the trouble was put down by Sindhia’s local agents, who also gave peace to Mewar for nearly eight years.
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The tragedy of Rajputana in the period embraced in this history, was only the result of the modern age bursting upon a sleepy inert mediæval society, that could make no attempt to adjust itself to the necessary change. This ancient people found that its virtues and vices alike led to its ruin in a strange new world. Bengal and Bihar lost their independence in 1757, but within twenty years a modern civilised system of administration was given to these provinces, and only sixty years after Plassey English education was being given to the grandsons of the vanquished in that battle. For Rajputana there was no such Renaissance, no modernisation for a century and a half after Plassey, though there was internal peace under British paramountcy. Hence the regeneration of the Rajputs has been extremely slow and imperfect.