But even in the provinces which owned the rule of the Muhammadan conqueror there was no cohesion. The king, sultan, or emperor, as he was variously called, was simply the lord of the nobles to whom the several provinces had been assigned. In his own court he ruled absolutely. He commanded the army in the field. But with the internal administration of the provinces he did not interfere. Each of these provinces was really, though not nominally, independent under its own viceroy.

According to all concurrent testimony the condition of the Hindu population, who constituted seven-eighths of the entire population of the provinces subject to Muhammadan rule, was one of contentment. They {75} were allowed the free exercise of their religion, though they were liable to the jizyia or capitation tax, imposed by Muhammadans on subject races of other faiths. But in all the departments of the Government the Hindu element was very strong. In most provinces the higher classes of this faith maintained a hereditary jurisdiction subordinate to the governor; and in time of war they supplied their quota of troops for service in the field.

Each province had thus a local army, ready to be placed at the disposal of the governor whenever he should deem it necessary. But, besides, and unconnected with this local army, he had almost always in the province a certain number of imperial troops, that is, of troops paid by the Sultan, and the command of which was vested in an officer nominated by the Sultan. This officer was, to a great extent, independent of the local governor, being directly responsible to the sovereign.

Theoretically, the administration of justice was perfect, for it was dispensed according to the Muhammadan principle that the state was dependent on the law. That law was administered by the Kazis or judges in conformity with a code which was the result of accumulated decisions based on the Kuran, but modified by the customs of the country. The Kazi decided all matters of a civil character; all questions, in fact, which did not affect the safety of the state. But criminal cases were reserved to the jurisdiction of a body of men whose mode of procedure {76} was practically undefined, and who, nominated and supported by the Crown, sometimes trenched on the authority of the Kazi. The general contentment of the people would seem, however, to authorise the conclusion that, on the whole, the administration of justice was performed in a satisfactory manner. Time had welded together the interests of the families of the earlier Muhammadan immigrant and those of the Hindu inhabitant, and they both looked alike to the law to afford them such protection as was possible. In spite of the many wars, the general condition of the country was undoubtedly, if the native records may be trusted, very flourishing.

It is important to note, in considering the administration upon which we are now entering, that neither Babar nor Humayun had changed, to any material extent, the system of their Afghan predecessors in India. Babar, indeed, had been accustomed to a system even more autocratic. Whether in Ferghana, in Samarkand, or in Kabul, he had not only been the supreme lord in the capital, but also the feudal lord of the governors of provinces appointed by himself. Those governors, those chiefs of districts or of jaghirs, did indeed exercise an authority almost absolute within their respective domains. But they were always removable at the pleasure of the sovereign, and it became an object with them to administer on a plan which would secure substantial justice, or to maintain at the court agents who should watch over their interests with the ruling prince.

{77} Similarly the army was composed of the personal retainers of the sovereign, swollen by the personal retainers of his chiefs and vassals and by the native tribes of the provinces occupied.

With Babar, too, as with his son, the form of government had been a pure despotism. Free institutions were unknown. The laws passed by one sovereign might be annulled by his successor. The personal element, in fact, predominated everywhere. The only possible check on the will of the sovereign lay in successful rebellion. But if the sovereign were capable, successful rebellion was almost an impossibility. If he were just as well as capable, he discerned that the enforcement of justice constituted his surest safeguard against any rebellion.

Babar, then, had found in the provinces of India which he had conquered a system prevailing not at all dissimilar in principle to that to which he had been accustomed in the more northern regions. Had he been disposed to change it, he had not the time. Nor had his successor either the time or the inclination. The system he had pondered over just prior to his death shows no radical advance in principle on that which had existed in Hindustan. He would have parcelled out the empire into six great divisions, of which Delhi, Agra, Kanauj, Jaunpur, Mandu, and Lahore should be the centres or capitals. Each of these would have been likewise great military commands, under a trusted general, whose army-corps should be so strong as to render him independent of {78} outside aid: whilst the Emperor should give unity to the whole by visiting each division in turn with an army of twelve thousand horse, inspecting the local forces and examining the general condition of the province. The project was full of defects. It would have been a bad mode of administration even had the sovereign been always more capable than his generals. It could not have lasted a year had he been less so.

The sudden death of Humayun came to interfere with, to prevent the execution of, this plan. Then followed the military events culminating in the triumph of Panipat. That battle placed the young Akbar in a position his grandfather Babar had occupied exactly thirty years before. Then, it had given Babar the opportunity, of which he availed himself, to conquer North-western India, Behar, and part of Central India. A similar opportunity was given by the second battle of Panipat to Akbar. On that field he had conquered the only enemy capable of coping with him seriously. As far as conquest then was concerned, his task was easy. But to make that conquest enduring, to consolidate the different provinces and the diverse nationalities, to devise and introduce a system so centralising as to make the influence of the Emperor permeate through every town and every province, and yet not sufficiently centralising to kill local traditions, local customs, local habits of thought,—that was a task his grandfather had never attempted; which, to his father, would have seemed an impossibility, even if it had occurred or {79} had been presented to him. Yet, in their schemes, the absence of such a programme had left the empire conquered on the morrow of the Panipat of 1526, an empire without root in the soil, dependent absolutely on continued military success; liable to be overthrown by the first strong gust; not one whit more stable than the empires of the Ghaznivides, the Ghors, the Khiljis, the Tughlaks, the Saiyids, the Lodis, which had preceded it. That it was not more stable was proved by the ease with which the empire founded by Babar succumbed, in the succeeding reign, to the attacks of Sher Shah. It may be admitted that if Babar had been immortal he might possibly have beaten back Sher Shah. But that admission serves to prove my argument. Babar was a very able general. So likewise was Sher Khan. Humayun was flighty, versatile, and unpractical; as a general of but small account. It is possible that the Sher Khan who triumphed over Humayun might have been beaten by Babar. But that only proves that the system introduced by Babar was the system to which he had been accustomed all his life—the system which had alternately lost and won for him Ferghana and Samarkand; which had given him Kabul, and, a few years later, India; the system of the rule of the strongest. Nowhere, neither in Ferghana, nor in Samarkand, nor in Kabul, nor in the Punjab, nor in India, had it shot down any roots. It was in fact impossible it could do so, for it possessed no germinating power.

{80} And now, at the close of 1556, the empire won and lost and won again was in the hands of a boy, reared in the school of adversity and trial, one month over fourteen years.[1] Panipat had given him India. Young as he was, he had seen much of affairs. He had been constantly consulted by his father: he had undergone a practical military education under Bairam, the first commander of the day: he had governed the Punjab for over six months. But it was as an administrator as well as a conqueror that he was now about to be tried. In that respect neither the example of his father, nor the precepts of Bairam, could influence him for good. So far as can be known, he had already displayed the germs of a judgment prompt to meet difficulties, a disposition inclined to mercy. He had refused to slay Hemu. But other qualities were required for the task now opening before him. Let us examine by the light of subsequent transactions what were his qualifications for the task.

[Footnote 1: Akbar was born the 15th October, 1542. The second battle of Panipat was fought the 5th November, 1556.]

{81}

CHAPTER X 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.]

{91}

CHAPTER XI CHRONICLE OF THE REIGN

The position in India, in the sixth year of Akbar's reign, dating from the battle of Panipat, but the first of his personal rule, may thus be summarised. He held the Punjab and the North-western Provinces, as we know those provinces, including Gwalior and Ajmere to the west, Lucknow, and the remainder of Oudh, including Allahabad, as far as Jaunpur, to the east. Benares, Chanar, and the provinces of Bengal and Behar, were still held by princes of the house of Sur, or by the representatives of other Afghan families. The whole of Southern India, the greater part of Western India, were outside the territories which acknowledged his sway.

There can be little doubt that, during the five years of his tutelage under Bairam, Akbar had deeply considered the question of how to govern India so as to unite the hearts of the princes and people under the protecting arm of a sovereign whom they should regard as national. The question was encumbered with difficulties. Four centuries of the rule of Muhammadan sovereigns who had made no attempt to cement into one bond of mutual interests the {92} various races who inhabited the peninsula, each ruling on the principle of temporary superiority, each falling as soon as a greater power presented itself, had not only introduced a conviction of the ephemeral character of the successive dynasties, and of the actual dynasty for the time being. It had also left scattered all over the country, from Bengal to Gujarat, a number of pretenders, offshoots of families which had reigned, every one of whom regarded the Mughal as being only a temporary occupant of the supreme seat of power, to be replaced, as fortune might direct, possibly by one of themselves, possibly by a new invader. This conviction of the ephemeral character of the actual rule was increased by the recollection of the ease with which Humayun had been overthrown. Defeated at Kanauj, he had quitted India leaving not a trace of the thirteen years of Mughal sway, not a single root in the soil.

These were facts which Akbar had recognised. The problem, to his mind, was how to act so as to efface from the minds of princes and people these recollections; to conquer that he might unite; to introduce, as he conquered, principles so acceptable to all classes, to the prince as well as to the peasant, that they should combine to regard him as the protecting father, the unit necessary to ward off from them evil, the assurer to them of the exercise of their immemorial rights and privileges, the assertor of the right of the ablest, independently of his religion, or his caste, or his nationality, to exercise command under {93} himself, the maintainer of equal laws, equal justice, for all classes. Such became, as his mind developed, the principles of Akbar. He has been accused, he was accused in his life-time, by bigoted Muhammadan writers, of arrogating to himself the attributes of the Almighty. This charge is only true in the sense that, in an age and in a country in which might had been synonymous with right, he did pose as the messenger from Heaven, the representative on earth of the power of God, to introduce union, toleration, justice, mercy, equal rights, amongst the peoples of Hindustan.

His first aim was to bring all India under one sceptre, and to accomplish this task in a great measure by enlisting in its favour the several races which he desired to bring within the fold. I have thought it advisable for the fuller comprehension of his system to treat the subject in its two aspects, the physical and the moral. This chapter, then, will chronicle the successive attempts to bring under one government and one form of law the several states into which India was then divided. The chapter that follows will deal more particularly with the moral aspect of the question.

It would be tedious, in a work like this, to follow Akbar in all the details of his conquests in India. It will suffice to record that, during the first year of his own personal administration and the sixth of his actual reign, he re-attached Malwa to his dominions. Later in the season his generals repelled an attempt {94} made by the Afghan ruler of Chanar and the country east of the Karamnasa to attack Jaunpur, whilst Akbar himself, marching by way of Kalpi, crossed there the Jumna, and proceeded as far as Karrah, not far from Allahabad, on the right bank of the Ganges. There he was joined by his generals who held Jaunpur, and thence he returned to Agra. The year, at its close, witnessed the siege of Merta, a town in the Jodhpur state, then of considerable importance, beyond Ajmere, and seventy-six miles to the north-east of the city of Jodhpur. This expedition was directed by Akbar from Ajmere where he was then residing, though he confided the execution of it to his generals. The place was defended with great energy by the Rajput garrison, but, in the spring of the following year it was surrendered on condition that the garrison should march out with their horses and arms, but should leave behind all their property and effects.

In the same year in which Merta fell (1562), the generals of Akbar in Malwa, pushing westward, added the cities of Bijagarh and Burhanpur on the Tapti to his dominions. The advantage proved, however, to be the forerunner of a calamity, for the dispossessed governors of those towns, combining with the expelled Afghan ruler of Malwa, and aided by the zamindars of the country, long accustomed to their rule, made a desperate attack upon the imperial forces. These, laden with the spoils of Burhanpur, were completely defeated. For the moment Malwa was lost, but the year did not expire before the {95} Mughal generals, largely reinforced, had recovered it. The Afghan noble, whilom Governor of Malwa, after some wanderings, threw himself on the mercy of Akbar, and, to use the phrase of the chronicler, 'sought a refuge from the frowns of fortune.' Akbar made him a commander of one thousand, and a little later promoted him to the mansab (dignity) of a commander of two thousand. He died in the service of his new sovereign. The reader will not fail to notice how the principle of winning over his enemies by assuring to them rank, position, and consideration, instead of driving them to despair, was constantly acted upon by Akbar. His design was to unite, to weld together. Hence he was always generous to the vanquished. He would bring their strength into his strength, instead of allowing it to become a strength outside his own. He would make those who would in the first instance be inclined to resist him feel that conquest by him, or submission to him, would in no way impair their dignity, but, ultimately, would increase it. We shall note the working of this principle more clearly when we come to describe his dealings with the several chiefs of Rajputana.

A tragic event came to cloud the spring of the eighth year of the reign of Akbar. I have referred already to the regard and affection he entertained for the lady who had been his nurse in his infancy, and who had watched his tender years. It was to a great extent upon her advice that he had acted in dealing with Bairam. She had a splendid provision in the {96} palace, and Akbar had provided handsomely for her sons. The eldest of these, however, fired with jealousy at the elevation of men whose equal or superior he considered himself to be, and goaded probably by men of a like nature to his own, assassinated the Prime Minister as he was sitting in his public office; then, trusting to the favour which Akbar had always displayed towards his family and himself, went and stood at the door of the harem. But for such a man, and for such an act, Akbar had no mercy. The assassin was cut to pieces, and his dead body was hurled over the parapet into the moat below. Those who had incited him, dreading lest their complicity should be discovered, fled across the Jumna, but they were caught, sent back to Agra, and were ultimately pardoned. The mother of the chief culprit died forty days later from grief at her son's conduct.

For some time previously the condition of a portion of the Punjab had been the cause of some anxiety to Akbar. The Gakkhars, a tribe always turbulent, and the chiefs of which had never heartily accepted the Mughal sovereigns, had set at defiance the orders issued for the disposal of their country by Akbar. They had refused, that is, to acknowledge the governor he had nominated. The Gakkhars inhabited, as their descendants inhabit now, that part of the Punjab which may be described as forming the north-eastern part of the existing district of Rawal Pindi. To enforce his orders Akbar sent thither an army, and this army, after some sharp fighting, succeeded in restoring order.

{97} The chief of the Gakkhars was taken prisoner, and died whilst still under surveillance. Akbar caused to be repressed likewise disturbances which had arisen in Kabul, and met with promptitude a conspiracy formed by the favourite of Humayun, Abul Ma'ali, whose pretentions he had more than once put down, but who was now returning, puffed up with pride, from a pilgrimage to Mekka. Concerting a plan with another discontented noble, Abul Ma'ali fell upon a detachment of the royal army near Narnul, and destroyed it. Akbar sent troops in pursuit of him, and Abul Ma'ali, terrified, fled to Kabul, and wrote thence letters full of penitence to Akbar. Ultimately, that is, early the following year, Abul Ma'ali was taken prisoner in Badakshan, and strangled.

Up to the spring of 1564 Akbar had not put into execution the designs which he cherished for establishing the Mughal power in the provinces to the east of Allahabad. Chanar, then considered the key of those eastern territories, was held by a slave of the Adel dynasty. This slave, threatened by one of Akbar's generals, wrote a letter to the Emperor offering to surrender it. Akbar sent two of his nobles to take over the fortress, and to them it was surrendered. The possession of Chanar offered likewise an opening into the district of Narsinghpur, governed by a Rani, who held her court in the fortress of Chauragarh. Against her marched the Mughal general, defeated her in a pitched battle, and added Narsinghpur and portions of what is now styled the district of {98} Hoshangabad to the imperial dominions. In the hot weather of the same year, Akbar, under the pretext of hunting, started for the central districts, when he was surprised by the advent of the rainy season, and with some difficulty made his way across the swollen streams to Narwar, then a flourishing city boasting a circumference of twenty miles. After hunting for some days in the vicinity of that city he pushed on towards Malwa, and passing through Rawa and Sarangpur, proceeded towards the famous Mandu, twenty-six miles south-west of Mhow. The Governor of Mandu, an Uzbek noble placed there by Akbar, conscious that the Emperor had grounds for dissatisfaction with him, and placing no trust in a reassuring message sent him by his sovereign, abandoned the city as Akbar approached, and took the field with his followers. Akbar sent a force after him which pursued him to the confines of Gujarat, and took from him his horses, his elephants, and his wives.

The reception accorded to Akbar in Mandu was of the most gratifying character. The zamindars of the neighbouring districts crowded in to pay homage, and the King of distant Khandesh sent an embassy to greet him. Akbar received the ambassador with distinction. It deserves to be mentioned, as a characteristic feature of the customs of those times, that when Akbar honoured the ambassador with a farewell audience, he placed in his hand a firman addressed to his master, directing him to send to Mandu any one of his daughters whom he might consider worthy {99} to attend upon the Emperor. The native historian adds: 'when Mubarak Shah,' the ruler of Khandesh, 'received this gracious communication, he was greatly delighted, and he sent his daughter with a suitable retinue and paraphernalia to his Majesty, esteeming it a great favour to be allowed to do so.' After a short stay at Mandu, Akbar returned to Agra, by way of Ujjain, Sarangpur, Sipri, Narwar, and Gwalior. During the ensuing cold weather he spent a great part of his time hunting in the Gwalior districts.

There can be but few travellers from the West to India who have not admired the fortress, built of red sandstone, which is one of the sights of Agra. At the time of the accession of Akbar there was at Agra simply a citadel built of brick, ugly in form and ruinous from decay. Akbar had for some time past resolved to build on its ruins a fortress which should be worthy of the ruler of an empire, and in the late spring of 1565 he determined on the plans, and gave the necessary orders. The work was carried on under the direction of Kasim Khan, a distinguished officer whom Akbar had made a commander of three thousand. The building of the fortress took eight years of continuous labour, and the cost was thirty-five lakhs of rupees. It is built, as I have said, of red sandstone, the stones being well joined together and fastened to each other by iron rings which pass through them. The foundation everywhere reaches water.

The year did not close without an event which afforded Akbar the opportunity of displaying his {100} decision and prompt action in sudden emergencies. I have shown how, on his visit to Mandu, the Uzbek governor of that city had taken fright and rushed into rebellion; how Akbar had caused him to be pursued and punished. The treatment of the rebel, though not unduly severe, had spread in the minds of the Uzbek nobles at the court and in the army the impression that the Emperor disliked men of that race, and three or four of them combined to give him a lesson. The rebellion broke out in the autumn of the year at Jaunpur, the governor of which the Uzbeks had secured to their interests. Akbar was engaged in elephant-hunting at Narwar when the news reached him.

He immediately despatched his ablest general with the troops that were available to aid his loyal officers, whilst he should collect further troops to follow. He marched about ten days later, reached Kanauj, received there the submission of one of the rebel leaders, remained there ten days, waiting till the river, swollen by the rainfall, should subside. Learning then that the chief who was the head of the rebellion had proceeded to Lucknow, he promptly followed him thither with a small but chosen body of troops, and marching incessantly for four-and-twenty hours, came in sight of that city on the morning of the second day. As he approached, the rebels fled with such speed that the horses of the Emperor and his retinue, completely knocked up with their long march, could not follow them. The rebel chief then fell back rapidly on Jaunpur, and joining there his colleagues, quitted that place with them, and {101} crossing the Gogra at the ford of Narhan, forty miles west-north-west of Chapra, remained encamped there. Thence they despatched agents into Bengal to implore the aid of the king of that country.

Meanwhile, one imperial army, led by a general anxious for a bloodless termination to the dispute, had arrived in front of them, whilst another, commanded by a fiery and resolute leader, was marching up from Rajputana. The negotiations which the peaceful general had commenced had almost concluded, when the fiery leader arrived, and, declaring the negotiations to be a fraud, insisted upon fighting. In the battle which followed the imperial forces were defeated, and fled to re-assemble the day following at Shergarh.

Before this battle had been fought Akbar had confirmed the peace negotiations with the rebels, and he was not moved from his resolution when he heard of their victory over his army. He said: 'their faults have been forgiven,' and he sent instructions to his Amirs to return to court. He then marched himself to Chanar, alike to plan works for the strengthening of the fortress; to hunt elephants in the Mirzapur jungles; and to await the further action of the rebels he had pardoned with arms in their hands. The experiment was not one to be repeated, for, flushed with their success, the rebel chiefs broke out anew. Akbar, however, by a skilful disposition of his forces, compelled their submission, and received them back to favour. In the course of this year the imperial generals had {102} taken the fortress of Rotas, in Behar, and ambassadors, sent on a mission to the king of Orissa, had returned laden with splendid presents.

The spring of the year 1566 found the Emperor back at Agra. The native historians record that in these times of peace his great delight was to spend the evening in the game of chaugan. Chaugan is the modern polo, which was carried to Europe from India. But Akbar, whilst playing it in the daytime in the manner in which it is now played all over the world, devised a method of playing it on the dark nights which supervene so quickly on the daylight in India. For this purpose he had balls made of palas wood—a wood which is very light and which burns for a long time, and set them on fire. He had the credit of being the keenest chaugan-player of his time.

From this pleasure Akbar was roused by the news of successful rebellions at Kabul and at Lahore. He marched with all haste towards the close of the year in the direction of the Sutlej, reached Delhi in ten days; thence marched to Sirhind; and thence joyfully to Lahore. Thence he despatched his generals to drive the rebels across the Indus. This they accomplished, and returned. The troubles at Kabul were at the same time appeased: but, as a counter-irritant, the absence of the Emperor so far in the north-west brought about rebellion at Jaunpur. It was clear that up to this time—the end of 1566—Akbar had been unable successfully to grapple with the important question how to establish a permanent {103} government in Hindustan. The eleventh year of his reign, counting from the battle of Panipat, was now closing, and he had fixed so few roots in the soil that it was certain that, should a fatal accident befall him, the succession would again be decided by the sword. The beginning of the year 1567 found him still at Lahore, engaged in hunting and similar pleasures. He was roused from these diversions by the intelligence that the Uzbek nobles whom he had pardoned, had taken advantage of his absence to break out again. Accordingly he quitted Lahore on the 22nd of March, and began his return-march to Agra. On reaching Thuneswar, in Sirhind, he was greatly entertained by a fight between two sects of Hindu devotees, the Jogis and the Suniasis, for the possession of the rich harvest of gold, jewels, and stuffs, brought to the shrine of the saint by pious pilgrims. Another sign of the instability of his rule awaited him at Delhi, for he found that a state prisoner had eluded the vigilance of the governor, and that the governor, apprehensive of the imperial displeasure, had quitted the city, and broken into rebellion.

Nor, even when he reached Agra, did more reassuring tidings await him. The country about Kanauj was in a state of rebellion, and it was clear to him that many of his nobles could not be trusted. In this emergency he marched to Bhojpur, in the Rai Bareli district, thence to Rai Bareli. There he learned that the rebels had crossed the Ganges with the object of proceeding towards Kalpi. There had been heavy {104} rains and the country was flooded, but Akbar, eager for action, despatched his main forces to Karrah whilst he hastened with a body of chosen troops to Manikpur, midway between Partabgarh and Allahabad. There he crossed the river on an elephant, pushed on with great celerity, caught the rebels at the village of Manikpur, and completely defeated them. The principal leaders of the revolt were killed during or after the battle. From the battle-field, Akbar marched to Allahabad, then called by its ancient name of Pryaga. After a visit to Benares and to Jaunpur, in the course of which he settled the country, he returned to Agra.

Deeming his eastern territories now secure, Akbar turned his attention to Rajputana. The most ancient of all the rulers of the kingdoms in that large division of Western India was Udai Singh, Rana of Mewar, a man possessing a character in which weakness was combined with great obstinacy. His principal stronghold was the famous fortress of Chitor, a fortress which had indeed succumbed to Allah-ud-din Khilji in 1303, but which had regained the reputation of being impregnable. It stands on a high oblong hill above the river Banas, the outer wall of the fortifications adapting itself to the shape of the hill. It was defended by an army of about seven thousand Rajputs, good soldiers, and commanded by a true and loyal captain. It was supplied with provisions and abundance of water, and was in all respects able to stand a long siege.

{105} Akbar himself sat down before the fortress, whilst he sent another body of troops to make conquests in the vicinity, for the Rana, despairing of success, had fled to the jungles. But if he pressed the siege vigorously, the Rajputs defended themselves with equal courage and obstinacy. Never had Akbar met such sturdy warriors. As their pertinacity increased, so likewise did his pride and resolution. At length the breach was reported practicable, and on a night in the month of March, Akbar ordered the assault. He had a stand erected for himself, whence he could watch and direct the operations. As he sat there, his gun in his hand, he observed the gallant Rajputs assembling in the breach, led by their capable commander, prepared to give his troops a warm reception. The distance between his stand and the breach was, as the crow flies, but short, for the river alone ran between the two.

By the light of the torches, Akbar easily recognised the Rajput general, and believing him to be within distance, he fired and killed him on the spot. This fortunate shot, despatched whilst the hostile parties were approaching one another, so discouraged the Rajputs, that at the critical moment they made but a poor defence. They rallied indeed subsequently, but it was too late, and though they then exerted themselves to the utmost, they could not regain the lost advantage. When the day dawned, Chitor was in the possession of Akbar. In gratitude for its victory Akbar, in pursuance of a vow he had made before he began the siege, made a pilgrimage on {106} foot to the mausoleum of the first Muhammadan saint of India, Ma'inu-i-din Chisti of Sijistan, on the summit of the hill of Ajmere. He had not then emancipated himself from his early training. He remained ten days at Ajmere, and returned thence to Agra by way of Mewat.

Akbar spent the spring and rainy season at Agra. He then designed the conquest of the strong fortress of Ranthambor in Jaipur, but whilst the army he had raised for this purpose was on its march, disturbances in Gujarat, followed by an invasion of Central India from that side, compelled Akbar to divert his troops to meet that danger. He then decided to march in person with another army against Ranthambor. This he did early in the following year (1569). As soon as he had compelled the surrender of the fortress, he returned to Agra, stopping on the way a week at Ajmere, to visit once again the mausoleum of the saint.

This year he founded Fatehpur-Sikri, the magnificent ruins of which compel, in the present day, the admiration of the traveller. The story is thus told by the author of the Tabakat. After stating that Akbar had had two sons, twins, neither of whom had lived, he goes on to say that Shaikh Salim Chisti, who resided at Sikri, twenty-two miles to the south-west of Agra, had promised him a son who should survive. Full of the hope of the fulfilment of this promise, Akbar, after his return from Ranthambor, had paid the saint several visits, remaining there ten to twenty days on each {107} occasion; eventually he built a palace there on the summit of a rising ground; whilst the saint commenced a new monastery and a fine mosque, near the royal mansion. The nobles of the court, fired by these examples, began then to build houses for themselves.

Whilst his own palace was building one of his wives became pregnant, and Akbar conveyed her to the dwelling of the holy man. When, somewhat later, he had conquered Gujarat he gave to the favoured town the prefix 'Fatehpur' (City of victory). The place has since been known in history by the joint names of Fatehpur-Sikri. Towards the end of the year his wife, whom he had sent to reside at Sikri, gave birth to a son at the house of the saint, who is known in history as the Emperor Jahangir, though called after the saint by the name of Salim. His mother was a Rajput princess of Jodhpur. To commemorate this event Akbar made of Fatehpur-Sikri a permanent royal abode; built a stone fortification round it, and erected some splendid edifices. He then made another pilgrimage on foot to the mausoleum of the saint on the Ajmere hill. Having paid his devotions he proceeded to Delhi.

Early the following year Akbar marched into Rajputana and halted at Nagaur, in Jodhpur. There he received the homage of the son of the Raja of that principality, then the most powerful in Rajputana, and that of the Raja of Bikaner and his son. As a tribute of his appreciation of the loyalty of the latter, Akbar took the Raja's daughter in marriage. He {108} amused himself for some time at Nagaur in hunting the wild asses which at that time there abounded, and then proceeded to Dipalpur in the Punjab. There he held a magnificent durbar, and then, with the dawn of the new year, proceeded to Lahore. After settling the affairs of the Punjab, he returned to Fatehpur-Sikri with the intention of devoting the coming year to the conquest of Gujarat.

The province of Gujarat in Western India included, in the time of Akbar, the territories and districts of Surat, Broach, Kaira, Ahmadabad, a great part of what is now Baroda, the territories now represented by the Mahi Kantha and Rewa Kantha agencies, the Panch Mahas, Palanpur, Radhanpur, Balisna, Cambay, Khandeah, and the great peninsula of Kathiawar. This agglomeration of territories had for a long time had no legitimate master. Parcelled out into districts, each of which was ruled by a Muhammadan noble alien to the great bulk of the population, it had been for years the scene of constant civil war, the chiefs grinding the peasantry to obtain the means wherewith to obtain the supreme mastery. Sometimes, fired by information of the weakness of an adjoining province, the chiefs would combine to make temporary raids. The result was that Gujarat had become the focus of disorder. The people were oppressed, and the petty tyrants who ruled over them were bent only on seeking advantages at the expense of others. Akbar had long felt the results of this anarchy, and he resolved now to put an end to it for ever.

{109} The expedition of Akbar to Gujarat is the most famous military exploit of his reign. He was resolved that there should be no mistake either in its plan or in its execution. For the first time since he had become ruler of the greater part of India he felt secure as to the behaviour, during the probable duration of the expedition, of the conduct of his nobles and his vassals. He set out from Fatehpur-Sikri at the head of his army in September, 1572, and marching by Sanganer, eighteen miles south of Jaipur, reached Ajmere the middle of October. There he stayed two days to visit the mausoleum of the saint, then, having sent an advanced guard of ten thousand horse to feel the way, followed with the bulk of the army, and marched on Nagaur, seventy-five miles to the north-east of Jodhpur. On reaching Nagaur a courier arrived with the information that a son, later known as Prince Danyal, had been born to him. He spent there fourteen days in arranging for the supplies of his army, then pushing on, reached Patan, on the Saraswati, in November, and Ahmadabad early in the following month. In the march between the two places he had received the submission of the chief who claimed to be supreme lord of Gujarat, but whose authority was barely nominal. At Ahmadabad, then the first city in Gujarat, Akbar was proclaimed Emperor of Western India.

There remained, however, to be dealt with many of the chieftains, all unwilling to renounce the authority they possessed. Amongst these were the rulers of Broach, of Baroda, and of Surat. No {110} sooner, then, had the Emperor arranged matters at Ahmadabad for the good order of the country, than he set out for Cambay, and reached it in five days. There, we are told by the historians, he gazed for the first time on the sea. After a stay there of nearly a week, he marched, in two days, to Baroda. There he completed his arrangements for the administration of the country, appointing Ahmadabad to be the capital, and nominating a governor from amongst the nobles who had accompanied him from Agra. Thence, too, he despatched a force to secure Broach and Surat. Information having reached him that the chief of Broach had murdered the principal adherent of the Mughal cause in that city, and had then made for the interior, passing within fifteen miles of Baroda, Akbar dashed after him with what troops he had in hand, and on the second night came in sight of his camp at Sarsa, on the further side of a little river.

Akbar had then with him but forty horsemen, and, the river being fordable, he endeavoured to conceal his men until reinforcements should arrive. These came up in the night to the number of sixty, and with his force, now increased to a total number of a hundred, Akbar forded the river to attack ten times their number. The rebel leader, instead of awaiting the attack in the town, made for the open, to give a better chance to his preponderating numbers. Akbar carried the town with a rush, and then dashed in pursuit. But the country was intercepted by lanes, {111} bordered on both sides by cactus hedges, and the horsemen of Akbar were driven back into a position in which but three of them could fight abreast, the enemy being on either side of the cactus hedges. The Emperor was in front of his men, having by his side the gallant Rajput prince, Raja Bhagwan Das of Jaipur, whose sister he had married, and the Raja's nephew and destined successor, Man Singh, one of the most brilliant warriors of the day. The three were in the greatest danger, for the enemy made tremendous efforts to break in upon them. But the cactus hedges, hitherto a bar to their formation, now proved a defence which the enemy could not pass. And when Bhagwan Das had slain his most prominent adversary with his spear, and Akbar and the nephew had disposed of two others, the three took advantage of the momentary confusion of the enemy to charge forward, and aided by the desperate gallantry of their men, roused by the danger of their sovereign to extraordinary exertions, to force them to flight. The followers of the rebel chief, sensible that they were engaged in a losing cause, displayed nothing like the firmness and persistency of the soldiers of Akbar. They dropped off as they could find the opportunity, and the rebel chief himself, abandoned by his following, made his way, as best he could, past Ahmadabad and Disa to Sirohi in Rajputana.

Broach meanwhile had fallen, and there remained only Surat. Against this town, so well known to {112} English traders in the days of his son and grandson, Akbar marched in person on his return from the expedition just related. Against the breaching material employed in those days Surat was strong. But the Emperor pressed the siege with vigour, and after a patient progress of a month and seventeen days, the garrison, reduced to extremities, surrendered. He remained at Surat long enough to complete the settlement of the affairs of the province of Gujarat, and then began his return-march to Agra. He arrived there on the 4th of June, 1573, having been absent on the expedition about nine months.

Whilst Akbar had been besieging Surat, the rebel chief whom he had defeated at Sarsa, and who had fled to Sirohi, had been bestirring himself to make mischief. Joined by another powerful malcontent noble he advanced against Patan, met near that place the Emperor's forces, and had almost beaten them in the field, when, his own troops dispersing to plunder, the Mughal forces rallied, pierced the enemy's centre, and turned defeat into victory. The news of this achievement reached Akbar whilst he was still before Surat. The rebel leader, still bent on doing all the mischief in his power, made his way through Rajputana to the Punjab, encountering two or three defeats on his way, but always escaping with his life, and plundering, as he marched, Panipat, Sonpat, and Karnal. In the Punjab he was encountered by the imperial troops, was defeated, and, after some exciting adventures, was wounded by a party of {113} fishermen near Multan, taken prisoner, and died from the effect of his wound. He was a good riddance, for he was a masterful man. It may here be added that during this year the Mughal troops attempted, but failed to take the strong fortress of Kangra, in the Jalandhar Duab. The besiegers had reduced the garrison to extremities when they were called off by the invasion of the adventurer whose death near Multan I have recorded. Kangra did not fall to the Mughal till the reign of the son of Akbar.

Akbar had quitted the province of Gujarat believing that the conquest of the province was complete, and that he had won by his measures the confidence and affection of the people. But he had not counted sufficiently on the love of rule indwelling in the hearts of men who have once ruled. He had not been long at Agra, then, before the dispossessed lordlings of the province began to raise forces, and to harass the country. Determined to nip the evil in the bud, Akbar prepared a second expedition to Western India, and despatching his army in advance, set out, one Sunday morning in September, riding on a swift dromedary, to join it. Without drawing rein, he rode seventy miles to Toda, nearly midway between Jaipur and Ajmere. On the morning of the third day he reached Ajmere, paid his usual devotions at the tomb of the saint; then, mounting his horse in the evening, continued his journey, and joined his army at Pali on the road to Disa. Near Patan he was joined by some troops collected by his lieutenants, {114} who had awaited the arrival of their sovereign to advance.

His force was small in comparison with that which the rebel chiefs had managed to enlist, but the men who formed it were the cream of his army. The celerity of his movements too had served him well. The rebels had not heard that he had quitted Agra when he was amongst them. They were in fact sleeping in their tents near Ahmadabad when Akbar, who had made the journey from Agra in nine days, was upon them.

That there was chivalry in those days is shown by the remark of the native historian, the author of the Tabakat-i-Akbari, 'that the feeling ran through the royal ranks that it was unmanly to fall upon an enemy unawares, and that they would wait till he was roused.' The trumpeters, therefore, were ordered to sound. The chief rebel leader, whose spies had informed him that fourteen days before the Emperor was at Agra, still declared his belief that the horsemen before him could not belong to the royal army as there were no elephants with them. However he prepared for battle. The Emperor, still chivalrous, waited till he was ready, then dashed into and crossed the river, formed on the opposite bank, and 'charged the enemy like a fierce tiger.' Another body of Mughal troops took them simultaneously in flank. The shock was irresistible. The rebels were completely defeated, their leader wounded and taken prisoner.

An hour later, another hostile body, about five {115} thousand strong, appeared in sight. These too were disposed of, and their leader was killed. In the battle and in the pursuit the rebels lost about two thousand men. Akbar then advanced to Ahmadabad, rested there five days, engaged in rewarding the deserving, and in arranging for the permanent security of the province. He then marched to Mahmudabad, a town in the Kaira district, and thence to Sirohi. From Sirohi he went direct to Ajmere, visited there the mausoleum of the famous saint, thence, marching night and day, stopped at a village about fourteen miles from Jaipur to arrange with Raja Todar Mall, whom he met there, one of the ablest of his officers, afterwards to become Diwan, or Chancellor, of the Empire, regarding the mode of levying the revenues of Gujarat. From that village the Emperor proceeded direct to Fatehpur-Sikri, where he arrived in triumph, after an absence of forty-three days.

His plan of bringing under his sceptre the whole of India had so far matured that he ruled now, at the end of the eighteenth year of his reign, over North-western, Central, and Western India, inclusive of the Punjab and Kabul. Eastward, his authority extended to the banks of the Karamnasa. Beyond that river lay Behar and Bengal, independent, and under certain circumstances threatening danger. He had fully resolved, then, that unless the unforeseen should occur, the nineteenth year of his reign should be devoted to the conquest of Bengal and the states tributary to Bengal. Before setting out on the {116} expedition, however, he paid another visit to the tomb of the saint on the hill of Ajmere.

I have written much in the more recent pages of the marches of Akbar, and the progress of his armies, but up to the present I have not referred to the principle on which those movements were made. There have been warriors, even within the memory of living men, who have made war support war. Upon that principle acted the Khorasani and Afghan barbarians who invaded India when the Mughal power was tottering to its fall. But that principle was not the principle of Akbar. Averse to war, except for the purpose of completing the edifice he was building, and which, but for such completion, would, he well knew, remain unstable, liable to be overthrown by the first storm, he took care that neither the owners nor the tillers of the soil should be injuriously affected by his own movements, or by the movements of his armies. With the object of carrying out this principle, he ordered that when a particular plot of ground was decided upon as an encampment, orderlies should be posted to protect the cultivated ground in its vicinity. He further appointed assessors whose duty it should be to examine the encamping ground after the army had left it, and to place the amount of any damage done against the government claim for revenue. The historian of the Tabakat-i-Akbari adds that this practice became a rule in all his campaigns; 'and sometimes even bags of money were given to these {117} inspectors, so that they might at once estimate and satisfy the claims of the raiyats and farmers, and obviate any interference with the revenue collectors.' This plan, which is in all essentials the plan of the western people who virtually succeeded to the Mughal, deprived war of its horrors for the people over whose territories it was necessary to march.

Whilst Akbar is paying a visit of twelve days' duration to the tomb of the saint at Ajmere, it is advisable that we examine for a moment the position of affairs in Behar and Bengal.

The Afghan king of Bengal and Behar, who sat upon the joint throne at the time of the Mughal re-conquest of the North-western Provinces, had after a time acknowledged upon paper the suzerainty of Akbar. But it was, and it had remained a mere paper acknowledgment. He had paid no tribute, and he had rendered no homage. During the second expedition of Akbar to Gujarat this prince had died. His son and immediate successor had been promptly murdered by his nobles, and these, constituting only a fraction, though a powerful fraction, of the court, had raised a younger brother, Daud Khan, to the throne. But Daud was a man who cared only for pleasure, and his accession was the cause of the revolt of a powerful nobleman of the Lodi family, who, raising his standard in the fort of Rohtasgarh, in the Shahabad district of Behar, declared his independence. A peace, however, was patched up between them, and Daud, taking {118} advantage of this, and of the trust reposed in him by the Lodi nobleman, caused the latter to be seized and put to death. As soon as this intelligence reached the Mughal governor of Jaunpur, that nobleman, who had been directed by Akbar to keep a sharp eye on the affairs of Behar, and to act as circumstances might dictate, crossed the Karamnasa, and marched on the fortified city of Patna, into which Daud, distrustful of meeting the Mughals in the field, had thrown himself. Such was the situation very shortly after the return of Akbar from Gujarat. Desirous of directing the campaign himself, Akbar despatched orders to his lieutenant to suspend operations till he should arrive, then, making the hurried visit to Ajmere of which I have spoken, he hastened with a body of troops by water to Allahabad. Not halting there, he continued his journey, likewise by water, to Benares, stayed there three days, then, taking to boat again, reached the point where the Gumti flows into the Ganges. Thence, pending the receipt of news from his lieutenant, he resolved to ascend the Gumti to Jaunpur.

On his way thither, however, he received a despatch from his lieutenant, urging him to advance with all speed. Directing the boatmen to continue their course with the young princes and the ladies to Jaunpur, Akbar at once turned back, reached the point where he had left his troops, and directing that they should march along the banks in sight of the boats, descended to Chausa, the place memorable, the reader may recollect, for the defeat of his {119} father by Sher Khan. Here a despatch reached him to the effect that the enemy had made a sortie from Patna, which had caused much damage to the besiegers. Akbar pushed on therefore, still by water, and reached the besieging army on the seventh day.

The next day he called a council of war. At this he expressed his opinion that before assaulting the fort it was advisable that the besiegers should occupy Hajipur, a town at the confluence of the Gandak and the Ganges, opposite to Patna. This course was adopted, and the next day Hajipur fell. Daud was so terrified by this success, and by the evident strength of the besieging army, that he evacuated Patna the same night, and fled across the Punpun, near its junction with the Ganges at Fatwa. Akbar entered the city in triumph the next morning, but, anxious to capture Daud, remained there but four hours; then, leaving his lieutenant in command of the army, followed with a well-mounted detachment in pursuit of the enemy. Swimming the Punpun on horseback he speedily came up with Daud's followers, and captured elephant after elephant, until on reaching Daryapur, he counted two hundred and sixty-five of those animals. Halting at Daryapur, he directed two of his trusted officers to continue the pursuit. These pressed on for fourteen miles further, then it became clear that Daud had evaded them, and they returned.

The conquest of Patna had given Behar to Akbar. He stayed then at Daryapur six days to constitute the {120} government of the province, then nominating to the chief office the successful lieutenant who had planned the campaign, he left him to follow it up whilst he should return to Jaunpur. At that place he stayed thirty-three days, engaged in perfecting arrangements for the better administration of the country. With this view he brought Jaunpur, Benares, Chanar, and other mahalls in the vicinity, directly under the royal exchequer, and constituted the newly acquired territories south of the Karamnasa a separate government.

Having done this, he proceeded to Cawnpur, on his way to Agra. At Cawnpur he stayed four days, long enough to receive information that his general in Bengal had occupied, successively, Monghyr, Bhagalpur, Garhi, and Tanda on the opposite side of the Ganges to Gaur, the ancient and famous Hindu capital of Bengal, and that he was preparing to push on further. It may be added that he carried out this resolution with vigour, and followed up Daud relentlessly, defeating him at Bajhura, and finally compelling him to surrender at Cuttack. With the surrender of this prince, the conquest of Bengal might be regarded as achieved.

Very much elated with the good news received at Cawnpur, Akbar, deeming the campaign in Bengal as virtually terminated, pushed on to Delhi, devoted there a few days to hunting, and then made another journey to Ajmere, hunting as he marched. At Narnul he received visits from his governors of the Punjab and of Gujarat, and had the satisfaction of learning {121} that everywhere his rule was taking root in the hearts of the people. After the exchange of ideas with these noblemen, he pushed on to Ajmere, made his pilgrimage to the tomb of the saint, caused to be repressed the rising of a petty chief in the jungles of Jodhpur, and then returned to his favourite residence at Fatehpur-Sikri.

He had noticed, on his many journeys, that a very great part of the territories he had traversed remained uncultivated. The evil was neither to be attributed to the nature of the soil, which was rich, nor to the laziness of the people. Sifting the matter to the bottom, Akbar came to the conclusion that the fault rather lay with the administration, which placed upon the land a tax which rendered cultivation prohibitive to the poor man. The evil, he thought, might be remedied if some plan could be devised for dividing the profits of the first year between the government and the cultivator. After a thorough examination of the whole question, he arranged that the several parganas, or subdivisions of the districts, should be examined, and that those subdivisions which contained so much land as, on cultivation, would yield ten million of tankas,[1] should be divided off, and given in charge of an honest and intelligent officer who was {122} to receive the name of Karori. The clerks and accountants of the exchequer were to make arrangements with these officers and send them to their respective districts, where, by vigilance and attention, the uncultivated land might in the course of three years be brought into a state of production, and the revenues recovered for the government. This scheme was carried out, and was found to realise all the advantages it promised.

[Footnote 1: Blochmann, in his Ain-i-Akbari (note, p. 16), states that, according to Abulfazl, the weight of one dam was five tanks. As the copper coin known as 'dam' was one fortieth part of a rupee (Ibid. p. 31), it follows that ten million of tankas would equal 50,000 rupees. A pargana is a division of land nearly equalling a barony. A parganadar was called 'lord of a barony.']

The nineteenth year of the reign of Akbar was thus in all respects save one a glorious year for the young empire. Bengal and Behar had been added to North-western, Central, and Western India. Practically, in fact, all India north of the Vindhya range acknowledged the supremacy of the son of Humayun. The exception to the general prosperity was caused by a terrible famine and pestilence in Western India, the effects of which were most severely felt. Grain rose to a fabulous price, 'and horses and cows had to feed upon the bark of trees.' The famine and pestilence lasted six months.

The early part of the following year, 1575, was occupied with the pursuit of Daud and the conquest of Orissa. I have already stated how the Afghan prince was defeated at Bajhura, midway between Mughalmari and Jaleswar, and how, pursued to and invested in Cuttack, he had surrendered. The treaty concluded with him provided that he should govern the province of Orissa in the name and on behalf of the Emperor Akbar. It may be added that Daud did not keep {123} the faith he plighted on this occasion. He took the first propitious occasion to rebel, and two years later was defeated in a great battle by the Mughal general. He was taken prisoner, and in punishment of his treason his head was severed from his body on the field of battle. For some time, however, Bengal and Orissa continued to require great vigilance and prompt action on the part of the Mughal administrators.

The other principal events of this year were the building by the Emperor at Fatehpur-Sikri of an Ibadat-khana, or palace for the reception of men of learning, genius, and solid acquirements. The building was divided into four halls: the western to be used by Saiyids, or descendants of the Prophet: the southern by the learned, men who had studied and acquired knowledge: the northern by those venerable for their wisdom and their subjection to inspiration. The eastern hall was devoted to the nobles and officers of state, whose tastes were in unison with those of one or other of the classes referred to. When the building was finished, the Emperor made it a practice to repair there every Friday night and on the nights of holy days, and spend the night in the society of the occupants of the halls, moving from one to the other and conversing. As a rule, the members of each hall used to present to him one of their number whom they considered most worthy of the notice and bounty of the Emperor. The visits were always made opportunities for the distribution of largesses, and scarcely one of {124} the guests ever went empty away. The building was completed by the end of the year.

The following year was uneventful, but the year 1577 was marked by that rebellion in Orissa under Daud of which I have already spoken. The campaign was stirring whilst it lasted, but the death of Daud and his uncle put an end to it.

This year, likewise, there was trouble in Rajputana. Alone of all the sovereigns of the territories known by that name, the Rana of Mewar had refused the matrimonial alliance offered to his female relatives by Akbar. Descended, as he believed, from the immortal gods, he regarded such an alliance as a degradation. He refused it then, whilst he was yet struggling for existence. He refused it, though he saw the Rajput prince whom he most hated, the Raja of Jodhpur, enriched, in consequence of his compliance, by the acquisition of four districts, yielding an ample revenue. He remained obdurate, defying the power of Akbar. Rana Udai Singh had in 1568 lost his capital, and had fled to the jungles of Rajpipla, and there had died in 1572.

His son, Partap Singh, inherited all his obstinacy, and many of the noble qualities of his grandfather, the famous Sanga Rana. Without a capital, without resources, his kindred and clansmen dispirited by the reverses of his house, yet sympathising with him in his refusal to ally himself with a Muhammadan, Partap Singh had established himself at Kombalmir, in the Aravallis, and had endeavoured to organise the country for a renewed struggle. Some {125} information of his plans seems to have reached the ears of Akbar whilst he was paying his annual visit to Ajmere in 1576-7, and he despatched his most trusted general, also a Rajput, the Man Singh of Jaipur, whom we have seen fighting by his side in Gujarat, with five thousand horse, to beat him up. The two opposing forces met at Huldighat, called also Gogandah, in December 1576. The battle which followed terminated in the complete defeat of the Rana, who, when the day was lost, fled to the Aravalli hills. To deprive him of all possible resources Akbar despatched a party into the hills, with instructions to lay waste the country whilst pursuing. Akbar himself entered Mewar, arranged the mode of its administration; then proceeded to Malwa, encamped on its western frontier, arranged the administration of the territories dependent upon the city of Burhanpur, and improved that of Gujarat. To these matters he devoted the years 1577-8. He then marched for the Punjab.

A circumstance, interesting to the people who now hold supreme sway in India, occurred to the Emperor on his way to the Punjab. He had reached Delhi, and had even proceeded a march beyond it, when a certain Haji[2] who had visited Europe, 'brought with him fine goods and fabrics for his Majesty's inspection.' The chronicler does not state more on the subject than the extract I have made, and we are left to imagine the part of Europe whence the fabrics came, and the impression they made. Akbar stayed but a short time {126} in the Punjab, then returned to Delhi, paid then his annual visit to Ajmere, and stopping there but one night, rode, accompanied by but nine persons, at the rate of over a hundred miles a day to Fatehpur-Sikri, arriving there the evening of the third day.

[Footnote 2: A Haji is a Musalman who has made the pilgrimage to Mekka.]

The following year, 1580, was remarkable for the fact that the empire attained the highest degree of prosperity up to that time. Bengal was not only tranquil, but furnished moneys to the imperial exchequer. The ruler of Mewar was still being hunted by the imperial troops, but in no other part of India was the sound of arms heard.

In the course of his journeys Akbar had noticed how the imposition of inland tolls, justifiable so long as the several provinces of Hindustan were governed by rival rulers, tended only, now that so many provinces were under one head, to perpetuate differences. Early in 1581, then, he abolished the tamgha, or inland tolls, throughout his dominions. The same edict proclaimed likewise the abolition of the jizya, a capitation tax imposed by the Afghan rulers of India upon those subjects who did not follow the faith of Muhammad. It was the Emperor's noble intention that thought should be free; that every one of his subjects should worship after his own fashion and according to his own convictions, and he carried out this principle to the end of his days. The most important political event of the year was the rebellion of a body of disaffected nobles in Bengal. Acting without much cohesion they were defeated and dispersed.

{127} The year following, 1582, Akbar marched at the head of an army to the Punjab to repulse an invasion made from Kabul by his own brother, Muhammad Hakim Mirza. The rebel brother had arrived close to Lahore before Akbar had reached Panipat. The news, however, of the march of Akbar produced upon him the conviction that his invasion must miscarry. He accordingly retreated from Lahore, and fell back on Kabul. Akbar followed him by way of Sirhind, Kalanaur, and Rotas; then crossed the Indus at the point where Attock now stands, giving, as he crossed the river, instructions for the erection of a fortress at that place.

He advanced on to Peshawar, and pushed forward a division of his army under his son, Prince Murad, to recover Kabul. Murad was a young man, tall and thin, with a livid complexion, but much given to drink, from the effects of which he and his brother, Prince Danyal, eventually died. Marching very rapidly, he encountered the army of his uncle at Khurd-Kabul and totally defeated him. Akbar had followed him with a supporting army, and entered Kabul three days after him. There he remained three weeks, then, having pardoned his brother and re-bestowed upon him the government of Kabul, he returned by way of the Khaibar to Lahore, settled the government of the Punjab, and then marched, by way of Delhi, to Fatehpur-Sikri. 'He now,' writes the chronicler, 'remained for some time at Fatehpur, administering justice, dispensing charity, and arranging public business.'

{128} Apparently he continued to reside there throughout the year following. Rebellion was still smouldering in Bengal, but the Emperor was represented there by capable officers who reported constantly to him, and to whom he as constantly despatched instructions. The disaffection was not very serious, but it was harassing and interfered greatly with the collection of the revenues.

The beginning of 1584 found Akbar still at Fatehpur-Sikri. The principal events of the year were, the pacification of Bengal; the outbreak and suppression of a rebellion in Gujarat; the revolt of the ruler of Asirgarh and Burhanpur; disturbances in the Deccan; and the death of the brother of Akbar, the then ruler of Kabul. The revolts were put down and a new governor was sent to Kabul. Prosperity reigned over the empire when the year closed.

Among the firmest of the protected allies of the Emperor was Bhagwan Das, Raja of Jaipur, who had not only himself rendered splendid military service to Akbar, but whose nephew, Man Singh, held a very high command in his armies. At the period at which we have arrived this Rajput prince was governor of the Punjab. From his family Akbar now selected a wife for his son, Prince Salim, afterwards the Emperor Jahangir. The marriage was celebrated at Fatehpur-Sikri, with great ceremony and amid great rejoicings. Until this reign the Rajput princes had scornfully rejected the idea of a matrimonial alliance with princes of the Muhammadan faith. But it was the {129} desire of Akbar to weld: to carry into action the cardinal principle that differences of race and religion made no difference in the man. He had many prejudices to overcome, especially on the part of the Rajput princes, and to the last he could not conquer the obstinate resistance of the Rana of Mewar.

The others were more complaisant. They recognised in Akbar the founder of a set of principles such as had never been heard before in India. In his eyes merit was merit, whether evinced by a Hindu prince or by an Uzbek Musalman. The race and creed of the meritorious man barred neither his employment in high positions nor his rise to honour. Hence, men like Bhagwan Das, Man Singh, Todar Mall, and others, found that they enjoyed a consideration under this Muhammadan sovereign far greater and wider-reaching than that which would have accrued to them as independent rulers of their ancestral dominions. They governed imperial provinces and commanded imperial armies. They were admitted to the closest councils of the prince whose main object was to obliterate all the dissensions and prejudices of the past, and, without diminishing the real power of the local princes who entered into his scheme, to weld together, to unite under one supreme head, without loss of dignity and self-respect to anyone, the provinces till then disunited and hostile to one another.

One of the means which Akbar employed to this end was that of marriage between himself, his family, {130} and the daughters of the indigenous princes. There was, he well knew, no such equaliser as marriage. The Rajput princes could not fail to feel that their relationship to the heir to the throne, often to the throne itself, assured their position. When they reflected on the condition of Hindustan prior to his rule; how the Muhammadan conquests of the preceding five centuries had introduced strife and disorder without cohesion, and that this man, coming upon them as a boy, inexperienced and untried in the art of ruling, had introduced order and good government, toleration and justice, wherever he conquered; that he conquered only that he might introduce those principles; that he made no distinction between men on account of their diversity of race or of religious belief; they, apt to believe in the incarnation of the deity, must have recognised something more than ordinarily human, something approaching to the divine and beneficent, in the conduct of Akbar.

His toleration was so absolute, his trust, once given, so thorough, his principles so large and so generous, that, despite the prejudices of their birth, their religion, their surroundings, they yielded to the fascination. And when, in return, Akbar asked them to renounce one long-standing prejudice which went counter to the great principle which they recognised as the corner-stone of the new system, the prejudice which taught them to regard other men, because they were not Hindus, as impure and unclean, they all, with one marked exception, gave way. They recognised that {131} a principle such as that was not to be limited; that their practical renunciation of that portion of their narrow creed which forbade marriages with those of a different race, could not but strengthen the system which was giving peace and prosperity to their country, honour and consideration to themselves.

It was in the beginning of the thirty-first year of his reign that Akbar heard of the death of his brother at Kabul, and that the frontier province of Badakshan had been overrun by the Uzbeks, who also threatened Kabul. The situation was grave, and such as, he concluded, imperatively required his own presence. Accordingly, in the middle of November, he set out with an army for the Punjab, reached the Sutlej at the end of the following month, and marched straight to Rawal Pindi. Learning there that affairs at Kabul were likely to take a direction favourable to his interests, he marched to his new fort of Attock, despatched thence one force under Bhagwan Das to conquer Kashmir, another to chastise the Baluchis, and a third to move against Swat. Of these three expeditions, the last met with disaster. The Yusufzais not only repulsed the first attack of the Mughals, but when reinforcements, sent by Akbar under his special favourite, Raja Birbal, joined the attacking party, they too were driven back with a loss of 8,000 men, amongst whom was the Raja.[3] It was the {132} severest defeat the Mughal troops had ever experienced. To repair it, the Emperor despatched his best commander, Raja Todar Mall, supported by Raja Man Singh, of Jaipur. These generals manoeuvred with great caution, supporting their advance by stockades, and eventually completely defeated the tribes in the Khaibar Pass.

[Footnote 3: Raja Birbal was a Brahman, a poet, and a skilful musician. He was noted for his liberality and his bonhomie. 'His short verses, bon mots, and jokes,' writes Blochmann (Ain-i-Akbari, p. 405) 'are still in the mouths of the people of Hindustan.']