The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c24.25

c24.25

This device of having “six Richmonds in the field” was not unusual, it having been put in practice against us in our own early fighting in the Dakhin (R. O. Cambridge, “War”, Introd. xi). It was also resorted to earlier in the century by Saʿādat Khān, Burhān-ul-mulk, founder of the Audh family. The Khīchar zamīndārs of parganah Ghāzīpur in sirkār Korah, ṣūbah Allāhābad, had long given trouble to the imperial officers, although several ineffectual attempts had been made to reduce them to order. At length, the Sirkār was made over to Burhān-ul-mulk; and on the 10th Jamādī ii, 1148 H. (27th Oct. 1735) that noble while on his way from Audh to Dihlī, undertook to eject the then zamīndār, Bhagwant Singh, son of Udārū. When the contending parties came face to face, a servant, clad in rich robes belonging to the Nawāb, was placed upon the Nawāb’s elephant. Burhān-ul-mulk took his seat upon another. Several fierce attacks on the suppositious Nawāb were repelled successfully. Finally, the Rājput chief gathered together some seven hundred men, and fully resolved on death or victory, made his way to the centre of the Mahomedan army, which he reached at the head of only forty to fifty men. Then, with not more than seven or eight men left, he arrived close to the leader’s elephant. Bhagwant Singh knew the Nawāb’s attire, and thought he was in presence of Burhān-ul-mulk himself. Before the Mahomedans could attempt a rescue, he pulled the supposed leader out of his high-sided seat (*imārī*) and slew him, with rejoicings at having successfully carried out his enter-prize. But Burhān-ul-mulk, who had stood aloof, now ordered one of his officers to advance with five hundred men, and in a few moments Bhagwant Singh was slain. The body was skinned and the skin filled with straw: then, with its head and that of the rebel’s son, it was sent to Dihli; where in Sha‘bān of the same year Rustam ‘Alī, Shāhābādī, saw them hanging in the main street, near the chief police office (*Nādir-uz-zamānī*, B.M. Or. 1844, fol. 152*a*, 152*b*, and Rustam ‘Alī, fol. 268*b*).