It was at this juncture that Aurungzebe himself, possibly suspicious of his generals, always distrustful of everything that did not actually come under his eyes, and pass through his hands, marched southwards. In a way, it was a fatal mistake; for he brought with him all his intolerant authority, his infatuation for his faith. Hitherto his officers, seeing the evil effects of levying the infidel tax strictly in this land of infidels, had let it slide; now affairs took a very different turn. But at first the imperial troops were fairly successful, though by the time they had marched through the Ghât country they were crippled by sickness, outwearied by the difficulty of the roads, harassed by the continual depredations of Samba-ji's guerillas both by sea and land. To add to difficulty, the latter concluded a sort of a defensive alliance with the King of Golconda; whereupon the emperor, tired of hunting a Will-o'-the-Wisp through mists and swamps, seized on a stationary enemy. Golconda reduced to terms, Bijapur next came under displeasure. A very small state, its capital was an extremely large town, the circumference of the walls being more than 6 miles. Garrisoned by a very small force it soon fell, and Aurungzebe was carried in a portable throne through the breach into the deserted city. It remains now much as it was then--a city, not of ruins, but of desertion. The walls, still entire, are surmounted by the cupolas and minarets of the public buildings within, so that from outside Bijapur shows bravely; but within all is desolation. The wide Mosque, the splendid palace, the great domed tomb of the kings, are alike deserted, the home only of bats and hyenas. Yet still, centering the desertion, stands the old brass cannon, weighing 41 tons, which "Rumi the European" cast in 1585.
While this was going on, be-drugged, dissolute Samba-ji watched the proceedings inertly, ineptly. The Mahratta historians accuse Kalusha the Brahman, his favourite, the pandar to all his vices, of having enchanted the young man; but the enchantment was mere sensuality, self-indulgence.
His time for enjoyment, nevertheless, ran short. Golconda and Bijapur taken, Aurungzebe, triumphant--after, as usual, alienating the people by his religious intolerance--added to religious hatred by capturing the person of Samba-ji while drunk and incapable in his favourite palace of pleasure, and thereinafter, having paraded him through the camp in disgrace, ordering him to prison. Whereupon Samba-ji, roused at last to sense, openly reviled the emperor, his prophet, his faith, in language so strong that it was considered necessary to cut his tongue out as a punishment for blasphemy, before beheading him and his favourite, the vile Kalusha.
Anything more injudicious could not well be conceived. Despised as Samba-ji had been whilst alive by the better class of Mahrattas, he was now a martyr. From this time, the fortunes of Aurungzebe, and with them the Empire of the Moghuls, began to fall; and for the few remaining years of his life, the emperor, now growing old, must have felt himself and his power on the downward grade. His indefatigable perseverance, his laborious energy, are almost pitiful. Over eighty years of age, he rested not at all, and despite our reprobation, the heart softens towards the tired old man as we see him, seemingly careless of the greater enemy along his sea-board, leading his armies through trackless forests and flooded valleys, enduring hardships that would have tried youth, in pursuit of the irrepressible, irresponsible Mahrattas. An old man, small, slender, stooping, with a long nose, a frosted beard, and a perpetual smile.
That smile was worn outside; but within? Within was weariness and fear even for this life. The remembrance of his father's fate at his hands seems never to have left him; every action of his during the later years of his reign showing his fear lest a like fate should be his. So he held every tiny thread of the great warp and woof of Government in his own hands. Only thus could he feel secure.
In such a system abuse is inevitable. No single eye can supervise a wide empire, and so corruption grew apace, and with corruption, inefficiency. The noblemen, waxing effeminate, wore wadded coats under their chain armour; their horses, laden with ornamentations, housed with velvet, were purely processional, and utterly unfit for war. The common soldiers, aping their superiors, followed suit, and became so slothful that they could neither keep watch nor picket, and discipline disappeared utterly.
Yet all the time, while Aurungzebe, old, enfeebled in health, outwearied himself in precautions, in providence, the greatest enemy to the Moghul dynasty was advancing, apparently unnoticed, in rapid strides. For the West had finally set its face towards the East. Commerce had already joined hands over the empire. In 1667 Britain, France, Holland, and Denmark, signed a treaty of common cause at Breda that was practically a league against the Pagan and the Portuguese. A few years previously the island and town of Bombay had been ceded to England as part of the dower of Catherine of Braganza, and had become thereby so much an integral part of Great Britain that every native in it, every child born there, had the right to claim every privilege of a British subject.
Fort St George, the nucleus of Madras, was finally established, and the group of factories around it formed into a presidency. Job Charnock had founded Calcutta, and Hugli was soon to be merged in it.
Then a new note had come into the dealings of the English with the accession of James II. A large shareholder, he promised the East India Company military support, and henceforward the "native powers were to be given to understand that the Company would treat with them as an independent power, and, if necessary, compell redress by force of arms." In consequence of this the President, Sir John Child, was appointed "Captain-General and Admiral of all forces by sea and land."
Poor Sir John Child! He was the first instance of a cat's-paw in the East (there have been many since!), and when the tortuous policy of the Company towards the Great Moghul failed, and they found it impossible to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, by making war in Bengal, and wearing a mask of friendship in Bombay, he went to the wall promptly in obedience to Aurungzebe's "irreversible order" that "Mr Child, who did the disgrace, should be turned out and expelled."