A.D. 1771-76.
Agency of Restoration Madhoji Sindhia - Zabita attacked Mirza
Najaf Khan Flight of Zabita Treaty with Rohillas Zabita
regains office Mahrattas attack Dehli Desperation of Mirza
Najaf Mahrattas attack Rohilkand Opposed by British Advance
of Audh Troops Re-employment of Mirza Abdul Ahid Khan
Suspicious conduct of Hafiz Rahmat and Rohillas Tribute
withheld by Hafiz Rahmat - Battle of Kattra Death of
Shujaa-ud-daulah Campaign against Jats Najaf Kuli Khan
Successes of the Imperial Army Zabita and Sikhs Death of Mir
Kasim.
IT would be interesting to know the exact terms upon which the
Mahrattas engaged to restore the Emperor to his throne in the
palace of Shahjahan. But, since they have even escaped the
research of Captain Grant Duff, who had access to the archives of
Punah, it is hopeless for any one else to think of recovering
them. The emissary employed appears to have been the person of
indifferent character who, like the Brounker and Chiffinch of the
English restoration of 1660, had been usually employed in less
dignified agencies. Unacquainted with this man's name, we must be
content to take note of him by his title of Hissam, or Hashim Ud
Daula. The Mahrattas were, amongst other rewards, to receive a
present fee of ten lakhs of rupees (nominally expressible at
£100,000 sterling, but in those days representing as much,
perhaps, as ten times that amount of our present money), nor
would they stir in the matter until they received the sum in hard
cash. It is also probable that the cession of the provinces of
Allahabad and Korah formed part of the recompense they hoped to
receive hereafter.
Though the Emperor, if he guaranteed this latter gift, was
parting from a substance in order to obtain a shadow, yet the
very receipt of that substance by the others depended upon
circumstances over which they had (as the phrase is) no control.
Early in the year 1771 the Emperor had sent to the authorities in
Calcutta, to consult them on his proposed movements; and they had
strongly expressed their disapprobation. But Shujaa-ud-daula, for
reasons of his own, earnestly, though secretly, encouraged the
enterprise. The Emperor set out in the month of May, at the head
of a small but well-appointed army, amongst whom was a body of
sepoys drilled after the European fashion, and commanded by a
Frenchman named Medoc, an illiterate man, but a good soldier. The
command-in-chief was held by Mirza Najaf Khan. A British
detachment, under Major-General Sir Robert Barker, attended him
to the Korah frontier, where the General repeated, for the last
time, the unwelcome dissuasions of his Government. The Emperor
unheedingly moved on, as a ship drives on towards a lee shore;
and the British power closed behind his wake, so that no trace of
him or his Government ever reappeared in the provinces that he
had so inconsiderately left.
From this date two great parties in the Empire are clearly
defined; the Musalmans, anxious to retain (and quarrel over) the
leavings of the great Afghan leader, Ahmad Abdali; and the
Mahrattas, anxious to revenge and repair the losses of Panipat.
The Audh Viceroy acts henceforth for his own hand ready to
benefit by the weakness of whichever party may be worsted; and
the British, with more both of vigour and of moderation, follow a
like course of conduct.
Arrived at Farrukhabad, the Imperial adventurer confirmed the
succession of that petty state to the Bangash chief, whose father
was lately dead, and received at the investiture a fine
(peshkash) of five lakhs of rupees. He then cantoned his army in
the neighbourhood, and awaited the cessation of the periodical
rains. The Mahratta army, some 30,000 strong, was still encamped
at Dehli, but Madhoji Sindhia, the Patel, waited upon the Emperor
in his cantonments, and there concluded whatever was wanting of
the negotiations. The Emperor then proceeded, and entered his
capital on Christmas Day.
At that time of year Dehli enjoys a climate of great loveliness;
and it may be supposed that the unhappy citizens, for their
parts, would put on their most cheerful looks and the best
remnants of their often plundered finery, to greet the return of
their lawful monarch. The spirit of loyalty to persons and to
families is very strong in the East, and we can imagine that, as
the long procession marched from Shahdara and crossed the shrunk
and sandy Jamna, Shah Alam, from the back of his chosen elephant,
looked down upon a scene of hope and gaiety enough to make him
for the moment forget both the cares of the past and the
anxieties of the future, and feel himself at last every inch a
king.
1772. Whatever may have been his mood, his new allies did not
leave him to enjoy it long. Within three weeks of his return to
the palace of his forefathers, he was induced to take the field;
and he set out northward at the head of 90,000 men, the greater
number of whom were Mahratta horsemen. It has already been shown
that Zabita Khan had escaped to his own estates a year before.
The Bawani Mahal (comprising fifty-two pergunnahs, now included
in the districts of Saharanpur and Muzaffarnaggar) contained
three strongholds: Pathargarh on the left, Sukhartal on the right
of the Ganges, and Ghausgarh, near Muzaffarnagar. The first two
had been built by the late minister, Najib-ud-daulah, to protect
the ford which led to his fief in the north-western corner of
Rohilkand, for the Ganges is almost always fordable here, except
in the high floods. The last was the work of Zabita Khan himself,
and its site is still marked by a mosque of large size and fine
proportions. Upon these points the first attacks of the
Imperialists were directed. Ghausgarh was hurriedly evacuated at
their approach to be completely plundered; and Zabita was soon
driven to take refuge in his eastern fort of Pathargarh, nearest
to any aid that the Rohilkand Pathans might be able and willing
to afford. The open country, and minor strongholds and towns were
left to the mercy of the invaders.
Although this campaign was dictated by a Mahratta policy, yet the
small Moghul nucleus bore a certain part, being ably commanded by
the Persian, Mirza Najaf Khan, who has been already mentioned as
Governor of Korah, and of whom we shall hear frequently during
the account of the next ten years.
This nobleman, who bore the title "Mirza" in token of belonging
to the late royal family of Persia, evinced the same superiority
over the natives of India which usually characterized the
original immigrants. He had married his sister to a brother of
the former Viceroy, Safdar Jang, and attached himself to the late
unfortunate Governor of Allahabad, Mohammad Kuli Khan, a son of
his brother-in-law (though whether his own nephew or by another
mother does not appear). On the murder of the Governor by his
unscrupulous cousin Shujaa, Najaf Khan succeeded to his place in
the favour of the Emperor, and commanded, as we have seen, the
force which accompanied the Emperor on his restoration.
To the combined armies Zabita opposed a spirited resistance; but
the aid of the Rohilla Afghans (or Pathans, as they are called in
India) was delayed by the menacing attitude of Shujaa; and the
Mahratta and Moghul armies having crossed the Ganges by a mixture
of boldness and stratagem, Zabita Khan fled to the Jat country,
leaving his family and the greater part of the treasures amassed
by his father to fall into the hands of the enemy.
This occasion is especially memorable, because among the children
of Zabita was his eldest son, a beautiful youth, named Gholam
Kadir Khan, whom the Emperor is said, by tradition, to have
transmuted into a haram page, and who lived to exact a fearful
vengeance for any ill-treatment that he may have received.
At the approach of the monsoon the Emperor, dissatisfied at not
receiving the whole of the share of the spoils promised him by
his covetous allies, returned to the metropolis. The Mahrattas
(who even during his presence in the camp had paid him but scanty
respect) now threw off the last shreds of disguise, and
appropriated all the profits of the campaign. They at the same
time restored to Zabita Khan whom they hoped hereafter to make
into a serviceable tool the members of his family taken at
Pathargarh; receiving in exchange a ransom of a lakh and a half
of rupees, which was advanced to them on Zabita's account, by the
Viceroy Shujaa-ud-daulah.
The rainy season of 1772 was spent by the Emperor at Dehli; by
the Mahrattas at Agra and in the neighbourhood. They would
willingly have proceeded to complete the reduction of all
Rohilkand, but that Mirza Najaf flatly refused to join or
sanction such a course; seeing clearly that it must involve a
collision with Shujaa-ud-daulah, who was supported by the British
alliance, and of whose traditional policy the annexation of the
province formed an essential part. The Rohillas, on their part,
occupied themselves in negotiations with the Audh Viceroy, in the
hope of reconstructing the Mohamadan League, which had once been
so successful.
The result of which was a treaty, drawn up under the good offices
of the British general, Sir R. Barker, by which the protector,
Hafiz Rahmat Khan, bound himself to join Shujaa in any steps he
might take for the assistance of Zabita Khan, and pay him forty
lakhs of rupees, in four annual instalments upon condition of the
Mahrattas being expelled from Rohilkand. This treaty, which
proved the ruin of the Rohillas, was executed on the 11th of
July, 1772.
The next step in the destruction of these brave but impolitic
Pathans was the outbreak of several violent quarrels, in which
brother fought against brother and father against son. Zabita
Khan, meanwhile, being secretly urged by the faithless Shujaa,
had made terms for himself with the Mahrattas, who engaged to
procure not only his pardon but his investiture with the office
of Premier Noble, formerly held by his father, Najib-ud-daulah.
Their barefaced boldness in restoring Zabita Khan's family and
appropriating the ransom paid to the Emperor's account for them
has been already mentioned.
With the view of paving the way for the removal from power of
Mirza Najaf, they next addressed themselves to creating
disturbances in the country around Dehli. For they knew that this
would at once alarm the Emperor and involve the Mirza in
difficulty and danger; and they foresaw in the result of such
intrigues an easy method of ruining one whom they justly regarded
as an obstacle to the recall to office of their protege Zabita.
They accordingly instigated Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the
Bhartpur Jats, to prefer a claim to the fief of Balamgarh, held
by a petty chieftain of his own nation. This chief solicited aid
from the Emperor against his powerful rival; and in the end of
the year 1772 Mirza Najaf Khan, who henceforth figures in the
native histories by his newly-acquired title of
Zulfikar-ud-daulah, sent a force under a Biloch leader to the aid
of the Balamgarh man. The Mahrattas, on the other hand, sent a
force from Agra, which joining with the Bhartpur Jats, forced the
Imperialists to retreat towards the capital; but the Patel,
disapproving of the Rohilla element contributed to this
confederacy by the presence of Zabita Khan, retired towards
Jaipur, where he occupied himself in plundering the Rajputs.
Takuji Holkar and the other Mahratta chiefs, feeling strong
enough to dispense with his aid, and anxious, for reasons of
their own, to fulfil their promise to Zabita, advanced towards
Dehli, but were met at a place called Baddarpur, ten miles south
of the city, by a force under the minister himself. In the action
which ensued, the Moghul force which, though well disciplined and
well led by Mirza Najaf, seconded by M. Medoc and some efficient
native officers, was numerically weak, fell back upon Humayun's
tomb, within four miles of the palace of New Dehli. Here ensued a
series of skirmishes, which lasted four days; till the Mirza
having had a nephew slain, retreated to the new town by way of
Daryaoganj, followed by a strong detachment of the enemy. He
still obstinately defended the palace and its environs; but
Hissam-ud-daulah (whose backstair influence has been already
mentioned) went in person to the Mahratta camp the following day,
and informed them, as from his master, that the brave minister
would be sacrificed by his weak and ungrateful master. Holkar and
his train of black and unkempt pygmies swarmed insolently into
the palace, where they dictated their own terms. The Mahrattas,
who were anxious to return to the Deccan, were not disposed to
make difficulties; their main terms were the restoration to the
office of premier noble of Zabita Khan, and the cession of those
provinces in the Lower Doab which had been under the direct sway
of the Emperor, while he enjoyed British protection. These terms
being granted, they picked a quarrel with Mirza Najaf Khan, about
a payment which he was alleged to have guaranteed them during the
Sukhartal campaign, and obtained an order from the Emperor
banishing him the court. These events occurred at the end of
December, just a twelvemonth after the unfortunate monarch's
restoration.
1773 Finding Zabita Khan in office, and the pander Hisam in
high favour, the heroic ax-minister, having still with him a
strong and faithful escort of Moghul horse, together with the
remains of the trained infantry, and having sent to Saharanpur
for his adopted son, Afrasyab Khan, who had some squadrons with
him for the protection of that district, threw himself into a
fortified house outside the Kabul Gate of the city. The forces of
the new Minister surrounded him, while the Mahrattas looked on
with curiosity, which seems to have been tempered by admiration
for his heroism; and the next day he formed one of those
desperate resolutions which have so often been known to influence
the course of Asiatic politics. Putting on all his armour, and
wearing over it a sort of shroud of green, in the fashion used
for the grave-clothes of a descendant of the Prophet, Najaf Khan
rode out at the head of his personal guards. As the small band
approached the Mahratta camp, shouting their religious war-cries
of "Allah Ho Akbar," and "Ya Hossain," they were met by a
peaceful deputation of the unbelievers who courteously saluted
them, and conducted them to camp in friendly guise.
It can only be supposed that the news of the Peshwa's death,
which had recently arrived from Punah, and the unsettled state of
the Rohilla quarrel combined to render the Mahrattas indisposed
to push matters to extremity against a man of Najaf Khan's
character and influence, and thus gave rise to this extraordinary
scene. The result was that the ex-minister's excitement was
calmed, and he agreed to Join the Mahrattas in an attack on
Rohilkand. One cannot but remark the tortuous policy of these
restless rievers. First they move the Emperor upon the Rohillas;
then they move the Rohilla, Zabita Khan, upon the Emperor; and
then, having united these enemies, they make use of a fresh
instrument to renew the original attack. With this new ally they
marched upon Rohilkand by way of Ramghat, below Anupshahar, where
the Ganges is fordable during the winter months; and at the same
time parties of their troops devastated the Doab.
Meanwhile the British, finding that the Emperor was unable to
protect the provinces about Allahabad, which they had put into
his charge, made them over to the Viceroy of Audh, to whose
management they had been attached previous to the negotiations
that followed the battle of Buxar, and between whose dominions
and those of the British they formed the connecting link. They
had been abandoned by the Emperor when he proceeded to Dehli,
contrary to the remonstrance of the Bengal Council, and though
his own lieutenant had reported, and with perfect accuracy, that
he could not regard the order to give them up to the Mahrattas as
a free act of his master's. It would, indeed, have been an easy
step towards the ruin of the British to have allowed the
Mahrattas to take possession of this tract, and so form a
permanent lodgement upon the borders of the possessions in Bihar
and the Eastern Subahs which the British held by the indefeasible
and twofold tenure of conquest, and of an Imperial grant. And it
so happened that the necessary transfer could not be carried out
without an armed demonstration for the expulsion or coercion of
the usurping Mahrattas. The expenses of this expedition were
naturally met by the Viceroy. Judged even by modern standards,
this cannot but be regarded as a perfectly legitimate act of
self-defence. It is, however, thus characterized by Macaulay:
"The provinces which had been torn from the Mogul were made over
to the government of Audh for about half a million sterling.''
The British having joined their forces to those of the
Vazir-Viceroy Shujaa, accordingly marched to meet the invaders.
Hafiz Rahmat, whom we have lately seen treating with those
powers, now became anxious about the money-payments for which he
had engaged, in the usual reckless Oriental way, and entered into
negotiations with the Mahrattas. In this scheme, the sudden
arrival of the British and Audh armies surprised him and he was
forced to abandon it for the present and join the allies in an
advance against the Mahrattas, who precipitately retired on
Etawa, and thence to their own country in May, 1773.
It has been already seen that Mirza Najaf Khan was a family
connection of Shujaa-ud-daulah, and an old friend of the British
general; and, on the retreat of his Mahratta supporters, he came
over to the allied camp, where he met the reception due to his
merits.
The allied armies moved on to Anupshahar, accompanied by the
ex-minister, who was attended by his faithful Moghuls. This town,
which had, as we have seen, been a cantonment of Ahmad the
Abdali, was particularly well situated for the advanced post of a
power like the British, seeking to hold the balance among the
native states of Hindustan. To the north were the fords of
Sukhartal, by which the Najibabad Rohillas passed from one part
of their dominions to another; to the south was the ford of
Ramghat, leading from Aligarh to Bareilly. It remained a British
cantonment from this time until some time subsequent to the
occupation of the country in general, in 1806; after which the
town of Meerut was found more central, and Anupshahar ceased to
be a station for troops. It is a thriving commercial entrepot in
our days, though much menaced by the Ganges, on whose right bank
it stands. The only memorial of the long-continued presence of a
British force is now to be found in two cemeteries, containing
numbers of tombs from which the inscriptions have disappeared.
At this station Najaf Khan took leave of his patrons, having
received from Shujaa-ud-daulah the portfolio (or, to use the
Eastern phrase, the pencase), of Deputy Vazir, and from the
British General a warm letter of recommendation to the Emperor.
It was especially magnanimous on the part of the Vazir to let
bygones be bygones, since they included the murder, by himself,
of his new Deputy's kinsman and former patron Mohammad Kuli Khan,
the former Governor of Allahabad; and it was not an impolitic,
though probably unintentional, stroke on the part of Sir R.
Barker to lend his assistance towards introducing into the
direction of the Imperial councils a chief who was as strongly
opposed to the Rohillas as to the Mahrattas.
Armed with these credentials, and accompanied by a small but
compact and faithful force, the Mirza proceeded to Court to
assume his post. The newly-created premier noble, Zabita Khan,
took refuge with the Jats; but Hisam-ud-daulah, who had been for
some time in charge of the local revenue (Diwan-i-Khalsa) was
dismissed, put under arrest, and made to surrender some of his
ill-gotten wealth. An inadequate idea may be formed of the want
of supervision which characterized Shah Alam's reign, by
observing that this man, who had not been more than two years in
charge of the collections of a small and impoverished district,
disgorged, in all, no less than fifteen lakhs of rupees. He was
succeeded in his appointment by Abdul Ahid Khan (who bears
henceforth the title of Majad-ud-daulah), while Manzur Ali Khan,
another nominee of the minister's, became Vazir, or Controller of
the Household. Of these two officers it is only necessary here to
observe, that after events showed the former who was a Musalman
native of Kashmir as a character marked by the faithlessness
and want of manly spirit for which the people of that country are
proverbial in India. The latter was to turn out either a very
blundering politician, or a very black-hearted traitor.
Title and lucrative office were now conferred upon the
Kashmirian, Abdul Ahid, whose pliant manners soon enabled him to
secure a complete influence over his indolent master. Najaf Khan
seems to have been equally deceived at the time; but after-events
showed the difference between the undeceiving of a worn-out
voluptuary, and that of a nature unsuspicious from its own
goodness.
Such were the first fruits of Najaf's alliance with the Viceroy
of Audh; the price was to be paid in the bestowal of the Imperial
sanction upon the final destruction of the Rohilla Pathans. It
has been already seen how this province, which ran up between the
personal domains of the crown and the fief of the Viceroy of
Audh, had been seized, first by Ali Mohammad, and latterly by his
son's guardian, the Protector Rahmat Khan. But ever since Ali
Mohammad's wars with the late Vazir, Safdar Jang, the rulers of
Audh had probably coveted the province, and the retreat of the
Mahrattas and their occupation in domestic pursuits in the Deccan
afforded just the occasion for which Shujaa-ud-daula was waiting.
Much eloquent indignation has been vented by Macaulay and Mill on
the subject of the accession to this campaign of the British
Governor, Mr. Hastings. As I am not writing a history of British
administration, I shall only observe that the Emperor, whose
servants the British professed themselves, had conferred the
authority usurped by Rahmat Khan upon the Vazir, with whom they
had been for some years in alliance. As allies of both parties
they were clearly at liberty to throw in their help against the
common enemies of both, especially when these chanced to be their
own enemies also. The Mahrattas were the foes of all rulers on
that side of India; and the Rohillas were either in collusion
with the Mahrattas or unable to oppose them. It was essential, if
not to the safety of the possessions of the Vazir-Viceroy, at
least to British interests in Bengal, that a band of faithless
usurpers should not be allowed to hold a country which they could
not, or would not, prevent from affording a high road for the
Mahrattas at all seasons of the year. That view, perhaps,
commended itself to the House of Lords when they finally
acquitted Mr. Hastings, after a protracted trial, in which some
of the ablest of the Whig orators had been engaged against the
accused. It is easy for historians, writing long after the
passions, the temptations, the necessities of the moment have
ceased to press, to criticize the acts of the past by the "dry
light" of pure reason and abstract morality. But the claims of
necessity should not be ignored in delivering what is intended to
form a sort of judicial award.
It is perhaps a mark of the good sense and justice of the English
nation that, when they had considered the matter calmly, they
should have come to the conclusion that to condemn Hastings would
be to condemn their own existence in India. Such a conclusion
would logically require their retirement from the country _ a
step they did not feel at all called upon to take. This appears
the moral of the acquittal. Even Macaulay, who objects to the
decision of the Peers acquitting Hastings as inadmissible at the
bar of history nevertheless confesses that it was generally
approved by the nation. At all events, this particular affair was
dropped out of the charges even before the impeachment began.
But, however important to the existence of the British in India
might be the possession of this frontier territory by the
strongest ally they could secure, the conduct of the Emperor (or
rather of Mirza Najaf, in whose hands he was not quite a free
agent) remains the special subject of inquiry in this place. I
think, however, that both the minister and his master were quite
justified in wishing to transfer the province of Rohilkand from
the hands of Rahmat to those of the Vazir. It has been already
seen that the Pathan usurpers of that province had always been
foes of the Moghul power, since the first rebellion of Ali
Mohammad, with the solitary exception of the campaign of 1761,
when they joined their Abdali kinsman at Panipat. It has also
been seen that the fords by which the Ganges could be crossed in
the cold weather were in their country, but that they could never
hold them; and that, lastly, they were known to have been lately
in treaty with the Mahrattas, without reference to the interests
of the Empire. Eastern politicians are not usually or especially
scrupulous; but, when it is remembered that the Rohillas were
feudatories who had neither the will nor the power to be
faithful, it must follow that here were substantial
considerations of vital importance to the Dehli Government,
sufficient to give them a fair inducement to sanction the
enterprise of one who was their chief minister and most powerful
supporter.
Of Shujaa's own motives there is not so much palliation to offer.
He had often received aid from the Rohillas, and was under
personal obligations to them, which ought to have obliterated all
earlier memories of a hostile character; and, whatever grounds
the Emperor may have had for consenting to an attack upon the
Pathans, or the British for aiding the same, none such are likely
to have seriously actuated the Vazir in his individual character.
If he thought the Rohillas were inclined to negotiate with the
Mahrattas, he must have seen how those negotiations had been
broken off the instant he came to their assistance; and if he
wished to command the movements of the Mahrattas, he might first
have endeavoured to strengthen the hands of the Imperial
Government, and to cordially carry out his share of the treaty of
1772.
It must, however, be added although the Vazir's character was
not such as to render him altogether entitled to such
justifications that the latter of those engagements had been
better fulfilled by himself than by the Pathans. For while, on
the one hand, he had driven the Mahrattas out of the country, the
Protector Rahmat Khan, on his part, had neither collected the
wage of that service from the other chiefs, nor paid it himself.
Moreover, the Vazir's proceedings were only directed against the
usurping Protector and his actual adherents; and he was joined by
Zabita and some Rohilla chiefs, while others, among whom were the
sons of the late Dundi Khan, held aloof altogether, and Faizula
Khan, the son of the first founder of the Rohilla power, Ali
Mohammad, and in every way the most respectable of the clan,
though he would not desert an old friend in his hour of need, yet
strongly disapproved of his proceedings, and urged him to fulfil
his compact and pay the Vazir's claim. The bribe by which Zabita
had been detached from the confederacy, was an assignment of the
district in the neighbourhood of Meerut, which had cleared itself
of Mahratta occupation under the late Vazir's rule.
1774. In October, 1773, the fort of Etawa fell, and the last
Mahratta forces were driven from the Doab. The next two or three
months were occupied in vain negotiations on the part of the
Vazir with the Rohillas; and in more serious combinations with
the Imperial Government, and with the British. And in January,
1774, the allied armies moved forward. On the 12th of April the
British entered Rohilkand; the Protector, when finally summoned
to pay what he owed, having replied by a levee en masse of all
who would obey his summons. At the same time, the Emperor ordered
out a column which he accompanied for a few marches; and issued
patents confirming the Vazir Shujaa-ud-daula in his Doab
conquests, as also in the grant already made by the British of
Korah and Allahabad. This latter circumstance removes all ground
for calling in question the cession of those provinces by their
temporary masters, and shows that the Emperor was conscious of
his own inability to hold them, or to grant them to enemies of
Audh and of England.
On the 23rd of the same month (April) the British army completely
surprised the camp of the Protector, who was defeated and slain,
after a brave but brief resistance at Kattra. Faizula was
pardoned and maintained in his own patrimonial fief of Rampur
(still held by his descendants), while the rest of the province
was occupied, with but little further trouble, by the Vazir, in
strict conformity to an Imperial firman to that effect.
The army of the Empire, under Mirza Najaf Khan, the Deputy Vazir,
had not arrived in time to participate actively in this brief
campaign; but the Vazir acknowledged the importance of the moral
support that he had received from the Empire by remitting to
court a handsome fine, on his investiture with the administration
of the conquered territory. He also gave the Mirza some
reinforcement, to aid him in his pending operations against the
Jats of Bhartpur. Zabita Khan was at the same time expelled from
his lately acquired fief at Meerut, but was again put in charge
next year; a proof, were proof required, of the weakness of the
Home administration of Majad-ud-daulah, who (it need hardly be
said) received a bribe on the occasion.
Anticipating a little, we may notice that the Viceroy of Audh, at
the very climax of his good fortune, met the only enemy whom
neither force can subdue nor policy deceive. Shujaa-ud-daulah
died in January, 1775; and as it was not possible for so
conspicuous a public character to pass away without exciting
popular notice, the following explanation of the affair was
circulated at the time; which, whether a fact or a fiction,
deserves to be mentioned as the sort of ending which was
considered in his case probable and appropriate. It was believed
that, the family of Rahmat Khan having fallen into his hands,
Shujaa-ud-daulah sent for one of the fallen chief's daughters,
and that the young lady, in the course of the interview, avenged
the death of her father by stabbing his conqueror with a poisoned
knife. "Although," says the author of the Siar-ul-Mutakharin, who
is the authority for the story, "there may be no foundation of
truth in this account, yet it was at the time as universally
believed as that God is our Refuge."
The editor of the Calcutta translation of 1789 asserts that he
had satisfactory proof of the truth of this story. The Viceroy
died of a cancer in the groin; and the women of his Zanana, who
were let out on the occasion, and with one of whom he (the
translator) was acquainted, had made a song upon the subject.
They gave full particulars of the affair, and stated that the
young lady she was only seventeen had been put to death on
the day the Viceroy received the wound. (S. U. M., III. 268.)
The death of the Viceroy-Vazir, however occasioned, was a serious
blow to the reduced Empire of Dehli, which was just then
beginning to enjoy a gleam of sunshine such as had not visited it
since the day when Mir Mannu and the eldest son of Mohammad Shah
defeated the Abdali, in 1743. Had the career of Shujaa-ud-daulah
been prolonged a few years, it is possible that his ambitious
energy, supported by British skill and valour, and kept within
bounds by Mirza Najaf Khan's loyal and upright character, would
have effectually strengthened the Empire against the Mahrattas,
and altered the whole subsequent course of Indian history.
But Shujaa's son and successor was a weak voluptuary, who never
left his own provinces; and although the Mirza, his deputy in the
Vazirship and real locum tenens, received for his lifetime the
reward of his merits, yet he was unable of himself to give a
permanent consolidation to the tottering fabric.
It has been seen that he was meditating a campaign against the
Jats, whom Zabita's recent fall had again thrown into discontent,
when summoned to Rohilkand, in 1774. In fact, he had already
wrested from them the fort of Agra, and occupied it with a
garrison of his own, under a Moghul officer, Mohammad Beg, of
Hamadan. Not daunted by this reverse, Ranjit Singh, the then
ruler of that bold tribe the Jats, advanced upon the capital, and
occupied Sikandrabad with 10,000 horse. The forces left in Dehli
consisted of but 5,000 horse and two battalions of sepoys; but
they sufficed to expel the intruder. He shortly afterwards,
however, returned, reinforced by the regulars and guns under
Sumroo; but by this time the Mirza was returned from Rohilkand,
and after the rains of 1774, marched against them, aided by a
chief from Hariana, named after himself Najaf Kuli Khan, who
brought into the field some 10,000 troops. This man, who was a
good soldier and a faithful follower of the minister, was a
converted Hindu, of the Rathur tribe; a native of the Bikanir
country bordering on Rajputana Proper to the south, and to the
north on Hariana and other states immediately surrounding the
metropolis. Having been in service at Allahabad, under the father
of Mohammad Kuli, the connection and early patron of the Mirza,
he became a Mohammadan under the sponsorship of the latter, and
ever after continued a member of his household. At the time of
which I write, he had been appointed to the charge of districts
returning twenty lakhs a year, with the title of Saif-ud-daulah.
The departure of the Mirza for this campaign was extremely
agreeable to the Diwan, Majad-ud-daulah, for he never lost an
opportunity of prejudicing the Emperor's mind against this
powerful rival, in whose recent appointment to the office of Naib
Vazir, moreover, he had found a special disappointment. Indeed,
Shah Alam, between these two ministers, was like the hero of
mediΎval legend between his good and evil angels; only differing
in this, that in his case the good influence was also, to a great
extent, the most powerful. What the wily Kashmirian might have
done in the way of supplanting the Mirza, if the latter had been
signally worsted, and he himself had been otherwise fortunate,
cannot now be certainly conjectured, for a fresh revolt of
Zabita's summoned the Diwan to the northward, whilst his rival
was successfully engaged with the Jats. In this expedition
Majad-ud-daulah displayed a great want of spirit and of skill, so
that Zabita became once more extremely formidable. Fortunately at
this crisis Dehli was visited by an envoy, soliciting investiture
for the new Viceroy of Audh, Asaf-ud-daulah. Accompanying the
embassy was a force of 5,000 good troops, with a train of
artillery, the whole under command of the deceased Shujaa's
favourite general, Latafat Khan. This timely reinforcement saved
the metropolis, and allowed of a settlement being made with the
incorrigible Zabita, which preserved, to some extent at least,
the dignity of the Government (Vide next chapter).
Meanwhile the Imperialists had found the Jats, under their
chieftain, intrenched near Hodal, a town sixty miles from Dehli,
on the Mathra road. Dislodged from this, they fell back a few
miles, and again took up a position in a fortified village called
Kotban, where the Mirza endeavoured to blockade them. After
amusing him with skirmishes for about a fortnight, they again
fell back on Dig, a stronghold, to become the scene of still more
important events a few years later. Dig the name is perhaps a
corruption of some such word as Dirajgarh is a strong fort,
with a beautiful palace and pleasure-grounds adjoining, on the
shores of an artificial lake, fed by the drainage of part of the
Alwar Highlands. Observing that the sallies of the Jats had
ceased, the Mirza left their camp at Dig in his rear, and marched
to Barsana, where a pitched battle was fought.
1775. The van of the Imperialists was commanded by Najaf Kuli.
In the centre of the main line was the Mirza himself, with
battalions of sepoys and artillery, under officers trained by the
English in Bengal, on the two wings. In the rear was the Moghul
cavalry. The enemy's regular infantry 5,000 strong, and led by
Sumroo advanced to the attack, covered by clouds of Jat
skirmishers, and supported by a heavy cannonade, to which the
Mirza's artillery briskly replied, but from which he lost several
of his best officers and himself received a wound. A momentary
confusion ensued; but the Mirza, fervently invoking the God of
Islam, presently charged the Jats at the head of the Moghul
horse, who were, it will be remembered, his personal followers.
Najaf Kuli, accompanied by the regular infantry, following at the
double, the Jats were broken; and the resistance of Sumroo's
battalions only sufficed to cover the rout of the rest of the
army, and preserve some appearance of order as he too retreated,
though in somewhat better order, towards Dig. An immense quantity
of plunder fell into the hands of the victors, who soon reduced
the open country, and closely invested the beaten army. Such,
however, was the store of grain in the Fort of Dig, that the
strictest blockade proved fruitless for a twelvemonth; nor was
the Fort finally reduced till the end of March, 1776, when the
garrison found means not improbably by connivance to escape
to the neighbouring castle of Kumbhair with portable property on
elephants. The rest of the Thakur's wealth was seized by the
victors his silver plate, his stately equipages and
paraphernalia, and his military chest, containing six lakhs of
rupees which may perhaps be regarded as not very inferior, in
relative value, to a quarter of a million sterling of our modern
money.
In the midst of these successes, and whilst he was occupied in
settling the conquered country, the Mirza received intelligence
from Court that Zabita Khan, emboldened by his easy triumph over
the Diwan, Majad-ud-daulah (Abdul Ahid Khan), had taken into his
pay a large body of Sikhs, with whom he was about to march upon
the metropolis.
The enterprising minister returned at once to Dehli, where he was
received with high outward honour. He was, on this occasion,
attended by the condottiere Sumroo, who, in his usual fashion,
had transferred his battalions to the strongest side soon after
the battle of Barsana. Sumroo's original patron, Mir Kasim, died
about the same time, in the neighbourhood of Dehli, where he had
settled, after years of skulking and misery, in the vain hope of
obtaining employment in the Imperial service. The date of his
death is given by Broome (Hist. of Beng. Army, p. 467) as 6th
dune, 1777: it is added that his last shawl was sold to pay for a
winding-sheet, and that his family were plundered of the last
wreck of their possessions. But the detail of this year's events
and their consequences requires a fresh chapter.
NOTEThe following is the text of the supplemental treaty of
1772, as given by Captain Hamilton. (The former portion having
provided in general terms for an alliance, offensive and
defensive.) "The Vuzeer of the Empire shall establish the
Rohillas, obliging the Mahrattas to retire, either by peace or
war. If at any time they shall enter the country, their expulsion
is the business of the Vuzeer. The Rohilla Sirdars, in
consequence of the above to agree to pay to the Vuzeer forty
lakhs of rupees, in manner following viz., ten lakhs, in
specie, and the remaining thirty lakhs in three years from the
beginning of the year 1180 Fussulee." Only redundant or
unimportant phrases have been omitted: there is not a word of
payment to the Mahrattas. The contention that the Vazir of Oudh
was only surety for the payment to the Mahrattas is not very
pertinent. For the Mahrattas did not quit Rohilcand till the
Vazir expelled them, and the money was not paid. But, as we have
seen, the gloss is unsupported. Besides Hamilton,
Tarikh-i-Mozafari and Francklin's "Shah Alum" have been the chief
authorities for this chapter.