The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c18.10

c18.10

*Scarcity and other sufferings.* An army supplied in the way indicated above was peculiarly liable to have its supplies cut off; then followed at once scarcity, high prices, and if the stoppage continued, death from starvation. Mention of these difficulties is seldom absent long from the pages of native historians. Great heat and want of water were also frequent grounds of complaint, and from one who went through the march of Āʿzam Shāh from Gwāliyar to Dholpur in June 1707, escapes the bitter cry, "May God Omnipotent never subject even my enemy to such a day as we then passed through" (*Aḥwāl-i-khawāqin*, fol. 11*a*). Again in Bahādur Shāh’s operations against the Sikh leader, Bandah, in December 1710, he was much hampered by the heavy rain and the intense cold, many of the transport animals being lost. A graphic picture of campaigning difficulties, even in the case of a force which was finally victorious, is given by Khāfī Khān, ii, 888. Nizām-ul-mulk on his way in July 1720 to attack ʿĀlim ʿAlī Khān, governor of Aurangābād, passed several days in extreme discomfort, exposed to incessant rain and in the middle of deep black mud. The constant rain and the swollen streams stopped all supplies, the Mahrattas plundered close round the camp, not an animal could be sent out or brought in. For many days the only food of the cattle was the pounded leaves and young shoots of trees; "the smell even of grass or corn did not reach the four-footed animals", and many of them, standing up to their shoulders in mud, starved to death. One rupee would only buy 2 to 4 lbs. of flour. Referring to a century earlier, Sir Thomas Roe, as quoted by Cambridge, "War", Introd.