THE TUTELAGE UNDER BAIRAM KHAN
First, as to his outward appearance. 'Akbar,' wrote his son, the
Emperor Jahangir,[1] 'was of middling stature, but with a tendency to
be tall; he had a wheat-colour complexion, rather inclining to be
dark than fair, black eyes and eyebrows, stout body, open forehead
and chest, long arms and hands. There was a fleshy wart, about the
size of a small pea, on the left side of his nose, which appeared
exceedingly beautiful, and which was considered very auspicious by
physiognomists, who said that it was a sign of immense riches and
increasing prosperity. He had a very loud voice, and a very elegant
and pleasant way of speech. His manners and habits were quite
different from those of other persons, and his visage was full of
godly dignity.' Other accounts confirm, in its essentials, this
description. Elphinstone writes of him as 'a strongly built and
handsome man, with an agreeable expression of countenance, and very
captivating manners,' and as having been endowed with great personal
strength. He was capable of enduring great fatigue; was fond of
riding, of walking, of shooting, of {82} hunting, and of all
exercises requiring strength and skill. His courage was that calm,
cool courage which is never thrown off its balance, but rather shines
with its greatest lustre under difficulty and danger. Though ready to
carry on war, especially for objects which he deemed essential to the
welfare of the empire or for the common weal, he did not rejoice in
it. Indeed, he infinitely preferred applying himself to the
development of those administrative measures which he regarded as the
true foundation of his authority. War, then, to him was nothing more
than a necessary evil. We shall find throughout his career that he
did not wage a single war which he did not consider to be necessary
to the completion and safety of his civil system. He had an
affectionate disposition, was true to his friends, very capable of
inspiring affection in others, disliked bloodshed, was always anxious
to temper justice with mercy, preferred forgiveness to revenge,
though, if the necessities of the case required it, he could be stern
and could steel his heart against its generous promptings. Like all
large-hearted men he was fond of contributing to the pleasures of
others. Generosity was thus a part of his nature, and, even when the
recipient of his bounties proved unworthy, he was more anxious to
reform him than regretful of his liberality. For civil administration
he had a natural inclination, much preferring the planning of a
system which might render the edifice his arms were erecting suitable
to the yearnings of the people to the planning of a {83} campaign. On
all the questions which have affected mankind in all ages, and which
affect them still, the questions of religion, of civil polity, of the
administration of justice, he had an open mind, absolutely free from
prejudice, eager to receive impressions. Born and bred a Muhammadan,
he nevertheless consorted freely and on equal terms with the
followers of Buddha, of Brahma, of Zoroaster, and of Jesus. It has
been charged against him that in his later years he disliked learned
men, and even drove them from his court. It would be more correct to
say that he disliked the prejudice, the superstition, and the
obstinate adherence to the beliefs in which they had been educated,
of the professors who frequented his court. He disliked, that is, the
weaknesses and the foibles of the learned, and when these were
carried to excess, he dispensed with their attendance at his court.
What he was in other respects will be discovered by the reader for
himself in the last chapter of this book. Sufficient, I hope, has
been stated to give him some idea of the characteristics of the
latent capacity of the young prince, who, fourteen years old, had
under the tutelage of Bairam Khan won the battle of Panipat, and had
marched from the field directly, without a halt, upon Delhi. Few, if
any, of those about him knew then the strength of his character or
the resources of his intellect. Certainly, his Atalik, Bairam, did
not understand him, or he would neither have assassinated Tardi Beg
in his tent at Sirhind, nor have suggested to the young prince to
{84} plunge his sword into the body of the captured Hemu. But both
Bairam and the other nobles of the court and army were not long kept
in ignorance of the fact that in the son of Humayun they had, not a
boy who might be managed, but a master who would be obeyed.
[Footnote 1: Sir Henry Elliot's _History of India, as told by its own
Historians_, vol. vi. p. 290.]
Akbar remained one month at Delhi. He sent thence a force into Mewat
to pursue the broken army of Hemu and to gain the large amount of
treasure it was conveying. In this short campaign his general, Pir
Muhammad Khan of Sherwan, at the time a follower of Bairam but
afterwards persecuted by him,[2] was eminently successful. Akbar then
marched upon and recovered Agra.
[Footnote 2: _Ain-i-Akbari_ (Blochmann's Edition), pp. 324-5.]
But his conquests south of the Sutlej were not safe so long as the
Punjab was not secure. And, as we have seen, he had been forced to
leave at Mankot, driven back but not overcome, a determined enemy of
his House in the person of Sikandar Sur. In March of the following
year (1557) he received information that the advanced guard of the
troops he had left in the Punjab had been defeated by that prince
some forty miles from Lahore. Noblemen who came from the Punjab told
him that the business was very serious, as Sikandar had made sure of
a very strong base at Mankot, whence he might emerge to annoy even
though he were defeated in the field, and that his victory had
encouraged his partisans. Akbar recognised all the force of the
argument, and resolved to put in force a maxim which constituted the
great {85} strength of his reign, that if a thing were to be done at
all, it should be done thoroughly. He accordingly marched straight on
Lahore, and, finding Lahore safe, from that capital into Jalandhar,
where his enemy was maintaining his ground. On the approach of Akbar,
Sikandar retreated towards the Siwaliks, and threw himself into
Mankot. There Akbar besieged him.
The siege lasted six months. Then, pressed by famine and weakened by
desertions, Sikandar sent some of his nobles to ask for terms. Akbar
acceded to his request that his enemy might be allowed to retire to
Bengal, leaving his son as a hostage that he would not again war
against the Emperor. The fort then surrendered, and Akbar returned to
Lahore; spent four months and fourteen days there to arrange the
province, and then marched on Delhi. As he halted at Jalandhar, there
took place the marriage of Bairam Khan with a cousin of the late
emperor, Humayun. This marriage had been arranged by Humayun, and to
the young prince his father's wishes on such subjects were a law.
Akbar reentered Delhi on the 15th of March, 1558. Bairam Khan was
still, in actual management of affairs, the Atalik, the tutor, of the
sovereign, and he continued to be so during the two years that
followed, 1558 and 1559. It is not easy for a young boy to shake off
all at once the influence of a great general under whom he had been
placed to learn his trade, and possibly Akbar, though he did not
approve many of the acts {86} authorised in his name by his Atalik,
did not feel himself strong enough to throw off the yoke. But the
removal by the strong hand of men whom Akbar liked, but who had
incurred without reason the enmity of Bairam, gradually estranged the
heart of the sovereign from his too autocratic minister. The
estrangement, once begun, rapidly increased. Bairam did not recognise
the fact that every year was developing the strong points in the
character of his master; that he was adding experience and knowledge
of affairs to the great natural gifts with which he had been endowed.
He still continued to see in him the boy of whom he had been the
tutor, whose armies he had led to victory, and whose dominions he was
administering. The exercise of power without a check had made the
exercise of such power necessary to him, and he continued to wield it
with all the self-sufficiency of a singularly determined nature.
Round every young ruler there will be men who will never fail to
regard the exercise by another of authority rightly pertaining to him
as a grievous wrong to the ruler and to themselves. It is not
necessary to inquire into the motives of such men. For one reason or
another, often doubtless of a selfish, rarely of a pure and
disinterested nature, they desire the young and rightful master of
the State to be the dispenser of power and patronage. That there was
a cluster of such men about Akbar, of men who disliked Bairam, who
had been injured by him, who expected from the prince favours which
they could not hope to {87} obtain from the minister, is certain.
Female influence was also brought to bear on the mind of the
sovereign. His nurse, who had attended on him from his cradle until
after his accession, and who subsequently became the chief of his
harem, urged upon him that the time had arrived when he should take
the administration into his own hands. Akbar was not unwilling. He
was in his eighteenth year. The four years he had lived since Panipat
had restored to him part of the inheritance of his father, had been
utilised by him in a manner calculated to develop and strengthen his
natural qualities. But, though he saw and disliked the tendency to
cruelty and arbitrary conduct often displayed by his chief minister,
he had that regard for Bairam which a generous heart instinctively
feels for the man who has been his tutor from his childhood.
Experience, too, had given him so thorough an insight into the
character of Bairam that he could not but be sensible that any breach
with him must be a complete breach; that he must rid himself of him
in a manner which would render it impossible for him to aspire to the
exercise of any power whatever. Bairam, he knew, would have the whole
authority, or it would be unsafe to entrust him with any.
Various circumstances occurred in the beginning of 1560 which
determined Akbar to take into his own hands the reins of government.
He went therefore from Agra to Delhi resolved to announce this
determination to his minister. Bairam himself had more than {88} once
given an example of the mode in which he rid himself of a rival or a
noble whom he hated. His methods were the dagger or the sword. But
such a remedy was abhorrent to the pure mind of the young Emperor.
Nor--so far as can be gathered from the records of the period--had
anyone dared to whisper to him a proposal of that character. The
course which his mother and his nurse had alike suggested was to
propose to the minister in a manner which would make the proposition
have all the effect of a command, an honourable exile to Mekka.
Bairam had often publicly declared that he was longing for the
opportunity when he could safely resign his political burden into the
hands of others and make the pilgrimage which would ensure salvation.
Akbar then, anxious to prevent any armed resistance, on arriving at
Delhi, issued a proclamation in which he declared that he had assumed
the administration of affairs, and forbade obedience to any orders
but to those issued by himself. He sent a message to this effect to
his minister, and suggested in it the desirability of his making a
pilgrimage to Mekka.[3] Bairam had heard of Akbar's determination
before the message reached him, and had quitted Agra on his way {89}
to the western coast. He was evidently very angry, and bent on
mischief, for, on reaching Biana, he set free some turbulent nobles
who had been there confined. He received there Akbar's message, and
continued thence his journey to Nagaur in Rajputana, accompanied only
by nobles who were related to him, and by their respective escorts.
From Nagaur, by the hand of one of these, he despatched to the
Emperor, as a token of submission to his will, his banner, his
kettle-drums, and all other marks of nobility. Akbar, who had been
assured that Bairam would most certainly attempt to rouse the Punjab
against him, had marched with an army towards that province, and was
at Jhajhar, in the Rohtak district, when the insignia reached him. He
conferred them upon a former adherent of Bairam's, but who in more
recent times had lived under the displeasure of that nobleman, and
commissioned him to follow his late master and see that he embarked
for Mekka. Bairam was greatly irritated at this proceeding, and
turning short to Bikaner, placed his family under the care of his
adopted son and broke out into rebellion. But he had to learn the
wide difference of the situation of a rebel against the Mughal, and
the trusted chief officer of the Mughal. On reaching Dipalpur, the
news overtook him that his adopted son had proved false to his trust
and had turned against him. Resolved, however, to rouse the Jalandhar
Duab, he pushed on for that well-known locality, only to encounter on
its borders the army of the Governor of {90} the Punjab, Atjah Khan.
In the battle that followed Bairam was defeated, and fled to Tilwara
on the Sutlej, thirty miles to the west of Ludhiana. Akbar, who had
been on his track when his lieutenant encountered and defeated him,
followed his late Atalik, and reduced him to such straits that Bairam
threw himself on his mercy. Then Akbar, remembering the great
services he had rendered, pardoned him, and, furnishing him with a
large sum of money, despatched him on the road to Mekka. Bairam
reached Gujarat in safety, was well received there by the Governor,
and was engaged in making his preparations to quit India, when he was
assassinated[4] by a Lohani Afghan whose father had been killed at
the battle of Machciwara. Akbar, meanwhile, had returned to Delhi
(November 9, 1560). He rested there a few days and then pushed on to
Agra, there to execute the projects he had formed for the conquest,
the union, the consolidation of the provinces he was resolved to weld
into an empire. His reign, indeed, in the sense of ruling alone
without a minister who assumed the airs of a master, commenced really
from this date. The Atalik, who had monopolised the power of the
State, was gone, and the future of the country depended now entirely
upon the genius of the sovereign.
[Footnote 3: The message ran: 'As I was fully assured of your honesty
and fidelity I left all important affairs of State to your charge,
and thought only of my own pleasures. I have now determined to take
the reins of government into my own hands, and it is desirable that
you should now make the pilgrimage to Mekka, upon which you have been
so long intent. A suitable jagir out of the parganas of Hindustan
shall be assigned to your maintenance, the revenues of which shall be
transmitted to you by your agents.' Elliot, vol. v. p. 264.]
[Footnote 4: The motive attributed to the assassin was simply
revenge. Bairam was stabbed in the back so that the point of the long
dagger came out at his breast. 'With an Allahu Akbar' (God is great)
'on his lips he died,' writes Blochmann in his _Ain-i-Akbari_. His
son was provided for by Akbar.]
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