Rulers of India: Akbar

by G. B. Malleson

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 Ahmadábád 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-í-Akbarí, '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 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 Ahmadábád, rested there five days, engaged in rewarding the deserving, and in arranging for the permanent security of the province. He then marched to Mahmudábád, a town in the Kaira district, and thence to Sirohí. From Sirohí 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 Rájá Todar Mall, whom he met there, one of the ablest of his officers, afterwards to become Diwán, or Chancellor, of the Empire, regarding the mode of levying the revenues of Gujarát. From that village the Emperor proceeded direct to Fatehpur-Síkrí, 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 Kábul. Eastward, his authority extended to the banks of the Karamnásá. 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 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 Khorasání and Afghán 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-í-Akbarí adds that this practice became a rule in all his campaigns; 'and sometimes even bags of money were given to these 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 Afghán 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 Gujarát 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, Dáúd Khán, to the throne. But Dáúd was a man who cared only for pleasure, and his accession was the cause of the revolt of a powerful nobleman of the Lodí family, who, raising his standard in the fort of Rohtásgarh, in the Shahábád district of Behar, declared his independence. A peace, however, was patched up between them, and Dáúd, taking advantage of this, and of the trust reposed in him by the Lodí 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 Karamnásá, and marched on the fortified city of Patná, into which Dáúd, distrustful of meeting the Mughals in the field, had thrown himself. Such was the situation very shortly after the return of Akbar from Gujarát. 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 Allahábád. 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 Gúmtí flows into the Ganges. Thence, pending the receipt of news from his lieutenant, he resolved to ascend the Gúmtí 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 Chausá, the place memorable, the reader may recollect, for the defeat of his father by Sher Khán. Here a despatch reached him to the effect that the enemy had made a sortie from Patná, 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 Hájípur, a town at the confluence of the Gandak and the Ganges, opposite to Patná. This course was adopted, and the next day Hájípur fell. Dáúd was so terrified by this success, and by the evident strength of the besieging army, that he evacuated Patná the same night, and fled across the Púnpún, near its junction with the Ganges at Fatwa. Akbar entered the city in triumph the next morning, but, anxious to capture Dáúd, 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 Púnpún on horseback he speedily came up with Dáúd's followers, and captured elephant after elephant, until on reaching Daryápur, he counted two hundred and sixty-five of those animals. Halting at Daryápur, he directed two of his trusted officers to continue the pursuit. These pressed on for fourteen miles further, then it became clear that Dáúd had evaded them, and they returned.

The conquest of Patná had given Behar to Akbar. He stayed then at Daryápur six days to constitute the 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 Karamnásá a separate government.