With Bábar, 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.
Bábar, 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 Hindustán. He would have parcelled out the empire into six great divisions, of which Delhi, Agra, Kanauj, Jaunpur, Mándu, 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 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 Humáyún came to interfere with, to prevent the execution of, this plan. Then followed the military events culminating in the triumph of Pánípat. That battle placed the young Akbar in a position his grandfather Bábar had occupied exactly thirty years before. Then, it had given Bábar 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 Pánípat 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 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 Pánípat 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 Lodís, which had preceded it. That it was not more stable was proved by the ease with which the empire founded by Bábar succumbed, in the succeeding reign, to the attacks of Sher Sháh. It may be admitted that if Bábar had been immortal he might possibly have beaten back Sher Sháh. But that admission serves to prove my argument. Bábar was a very able general. So likewise was Sher Khán. Humáyún was flighty, versatile, and unpractical; as a general of but small account. It is possible that the Sher Khán who triumphed over Humáyún might have been beaten by Bábar. But that only proves that the system introduced by Bábar was the system to which he had been accustomed all his life—the system which had alternately lost and won for him Fergháná and Samarkand; which had given him Kábul, and, a few years later, India; the system of the rule of the strongest. Nowhere, neither in Fergháná, nor in Samarkand, nor in Kábul, 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.
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 Pánípat 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 Bairám, 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 Bairám, 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.
1 Akbar was born the 15th October, 1542. The second battle of Pánípat was fought the 5th November, 1556.
CHAPTER X
THE TUTELAGE UNDER BAIRÁM KHÁN