According to the apologists of the regent, this act was one of just retribution, since it was less to defend himself and his immediate interests than those of the prince whose power and existence were threatened by the insurrection, which had for its object his deposal and the elevation of one of his brothers. The members of the Maharao’s family at this period were his uncle Raj Singh, and his two brothers, Gordhan and Gopal Singh. Since the rebellion of Aton, these princes had been under strict surveillance; but after this instance of reaction, in which their names were implicated as having aspired to supplant their brother, a more rigorous seclusion was adopted; and the rest of their days was passed in solitary confinement. Gordhan, the elder, died about ten years after his incarceration; the younger, Gopal, lived many years longer; but neither from that day quitted the walls of their prison, until death released them from this dreadful bondage. Kaka Raj Singh lived to extreme old age; but, as he took no part in these turmoils, he remained unmolested, having the range of the temples in the city, beyond which limits he had no wish to stray.
We may in this place introduce a slip from the genealogical tree of the forfeited branch of Bishan Singh, but which, in the person of his grandson Ajit, regained its rights and the gaddi. The fate of this family will serve as a specimen of the policy pursued by the regent towards the feudal interests of Kotah. It is appalling, when thus marshalled, to view the sacrifices which the maintenance of power will demand in these feudal States, where individual will is law.
The plots against the existence and authority of the Protector were of every description, and no less than eighteen are enumerated, which his never-slumbering vigilance detected and baffled. The means were force, open and concealed, poison, the dagger—until at length he became sick of precaution. “I could not always be on my guard,” he would say. But the most dangerous of all was a female conspiracy, got up in the palace, and which discovers an amusing mixture of tragedy and farce, although his habitual wariness would not have saved him from being its victim, had he not been aided by the boldness of a female champion, from a regard for the personal attractions of the handsome regent. He was suddenly sent for by the queen-mother of one of the young princes, and while waiting in an antechamber, expecting every instant ‘the voice behind the curtain,’ he found himself encircled by a band of Amazonian Rajputnis, armed with sword and dagger, from whom, acquainted as he was with the nerve, physical and moral, of his countrywomen, he saw no hope of salvation [528]. Fortunately, they were determined not to be satisfied merely with his death, they put him upon his trial; and the train of interrogation into all the acts of his life was going on, when his preserving angel, in the shape of the chief attendant of the dowager queen, a woman of masculine strength and courage, rushed in, and, with strong dissembled anger, drove him forth amidst a torrent of abuse for presuming to be found in such a predicament.
While bathing, and during the heat of the chase, his favourite pursuit, similar attempts have been made, but they always recoiled on the heads of his enemies. Yet, notwithstanding the multitude of these plots, which would have unsettled the reason of many, he never allowed a blind suspicion to add to the victims of his policy; and although, for his personal security, he was compelled to sleep in an iron cage, he never harboured unnecessary alarm, that parent of crime and blood in all usurpations. His lynx-like eye saw at once who was likely to invade his authority, and these knew their peril from the vigilance of a system which never relaxed. Entire self-reliance, a police such as perhaps no country in the world could equal, establishments well paid, services liberally rewarded, character and talent in each department of the State, himself keeping a strict watch over all, and trusting implicitly to none, with a daily personal supervision of all this complicated state-machinery—such was the system which surmounted every peril, and not only maintained but increased the power and political reputation of Zalim Singh, amidst the storms of war, rapine, treason, and political convulsions of more than half a century’s duration.
[1]. [The Empire was now breaking up, and his dominions were gradually reduced to the region held by the later Tughlak dynasty.]
[2]. This was written in A.D. 1821, when Maharao Kishor Singh [died 1828] succeeded.
[3]. [Formerly capital of Dhrāngadhra State in Kāthiāwār (IGI, xiii. 13).]
[4]. Māmā is ‘maternal uncle’; Kākā, ‘paternal uncle.’
[5]. Not Rāna, which he puts upon his seal.