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November 17 - December 30, 2024
The two men could not be more different: Aliverdi Khan was wise and disciplined, while his grandson was an ignorant debauchee; yet still Aliverdi’s love knew no bounds.
Siraj ud-Daula, on hearing such words, with a vast force, turned back and in one night’s march came and alighted at the back of the English factory at Kasimbazar.’
William Watts, the Chief Factor, after receiving advice from various friends in the Bengal court that the Nawab would be magnanimous if offered unconditional surrender, decided upon the latter course.
Drake did not even bother to reply, so the day after the surrender of Kasimbazar factory, Siraj ud-Daula marched off with his army, now 70,000-strong, to conquer Calcutta, and bring its overmighty merchants to heel.
Prince Ali Gauhar, Shah Alam, was a tall, handsome, well-built man gifted with all the charm, sensitivity and learning that Siraj ud-Daula lacked.
But in 1753, rather than coming together and fighting back, the Mughals had destroyed themselves yet again in a new civil war which brought to a close any foreseeable hope of an imperial recovery.
Vizier Safdar Jung, Nawab of Avadh, had battled it out in the streets of Delhi with his former protégé, the sixteen-year-old Imad ul-Mulk, the teenage megalomaniac grandson of Nizam ul-Mulk.
‘To all appearances, the young Imad ul-Mulk was a handsome young man with a charming and amiable manner,’ wrote Jean Law. ‘Safdar Jung regarded him like his own son and could scarcely have imagined he was actually nursing a serpent at his breast.’
Knowing now that Imad ul-Mulk would stop at nothing to have him killed, the prince decided not to return to Delhi but instead he ‘resolved to move East so that he could take charge of Bengal and Bihar [Purab] which were prosperous and rich provinces’.93 These he resolved to try to take back from the control of the Nawab governors who had stopped sending their proper dues to Delhi.
But in truth, Shah Alam was already too late. The Bengal he was heading to was in the process of being changed for ever by a new force in Indian politics: the East India Company and, in particular, the machinations of Robert Clive.
Siraj ud-Daula led his troops down to Calcutta at far greater speed than anyone imagined possible.
Governor Drake believed for several days after the fall of the Kasimbazar factory that the new Nawab was merely bluffing and would never dare to attack Fort William.
Drake was not just incompetent, he was also deeply unpopular.
Drake was such a divisive figure that it was practically impossible for him to organise a coherent defence:
This was something quite new in Indian history: a group of Indian financiers plotting with an international trading corporation to use its own private security force to overthrow a regime they saw threatening the income they earned from trade.60 This was not part of any imperial masterplan.
The Marathas were the Company’s most formidable rivals in India. They dominated almost the entire west coast of the subcontinent and much of the central interior, too.
In 1762 Ahmad Shah Durrani had ousted Shah Alam’s teenage nemesis, Imad ul-Mulk, from the Red Fort, and installed as governor Najib ud-Daula, a Rohilla of Afghan birth.
Najib was the ‘undefeated but not unchallenged master of Delhi for nine years’,
October 1770, however, Najib died, and rumours reached Allahabad that his unruly son and successor, Zabita Khan, ‘had presumed to enter into the royal seraglio, to have connection with some of the ladies shut up in it. The king’s own sister was one of the number.’
Ahmad Shah Durrani, had now returned to the mountains of his homeland to die.
their first, relatively modest, expedition north of the Chambal since Panipat five years earlier. By 1770, they were back again, this time with an ‘ocean-like army’ of 75,000, which they used to defeat the Jat Raja of Deeg and to raid deep into Rohilla territory east of Agra.19 It was becoming increasingly clear that the future lay once again with the Marathas, and that the days of Afghan domination were now over.
the Marathas had produced two rival young leaders who had showed both the determination and the military ability to recover and expand Maratha fortunes in the north. The first of these was the young Mahadji Scindia.
His great rival, Tukoji Holkar, had also narrowly survived death on the plains of Panipat, but was a very different man. A dashing bon viveur, with a fondness for women and drink, but with little of his rival’s subtlety or intelligence, he and Scindia disagreed on most matters, and their nominal overlord, the Maratha Peshwa, had had to intervene repeatedly to warn the two rival warlords to stop squabbling and cooperate with each other.
On 15 February 1771, an agreement was settled between the Marathas and Shah Alam’s son, the Crown Prince, who was in Delhi acting as Regent, that the Marathas would drive Zabita Khan and his Afghans out of Delhi, after which Scindia would escort Shah Alam to Delhi and hand over the palace to him.
By the middle of the summer, the Marathas had crossed the Yamuna in force and succeeded in capturing Delhi and expelling Zabita Khan’s garrison. They then forded the upper Ganges and headed deep into Rohilkhand, burning and plundering as they went.
Mirza Najaf Khan had only recently entered Shah Alam’s service. He was the young Persian cavalry officer who had previously distinguished himself against the Company in the service of Mir Qasim.
He had carefully observed Company tactics and strategy while fighting with Mir Qasim, and learned the art of file-firing, modern European infantry manoeuvres and the finer points of artillery ballistics.
he set off with Mirza Najaf Khan and Mahadji Scindia to attack Zabita Khan’s fortress.
The imperial army crossed the river and as dawn came up, engaged in fighting at close quarters, swords in hand. ‘Three miles to the right, Mahadji Scindia and his officers also crossed the river, then rode upstream and fell without warning on the Afghan rear.’
One hour after sunrise, Zabita Khan gave up the fight and fled towards the shelter of the Himalayas. Several of his most senior officers were captured hiding in the reeds and rushes.38
The two armies, Mughal and Maratha, then closed in to besiege Zabita Khan’s great stone fortress at Pathargarh, where he had lodged his family and treasure for safety.
the gates of Pathargarh were thrown open: ‘The Marathas took their stand at the gate of the fort,’ recorded Khair ud-Din. ‘At first the poorer people came out; they were stripped and searched and let off almost naked.
After this, the Marathas rushed in and began to carry away all the terrified Rohilla women and children to their tents, including those of Zabita Khan himself. All were robbed and many raped and dishonoured.
The Emperor and Najaf Khan intervened as best they could, and saved the immediate family of their adversary, whom they put under armed guard and sent on to Delhi.
Among those liberated were a number of Maratha women who had been captive since the Battle of Panipat, more than a decade earlier.
The booty, collected by Najib over the thirty years he was Governor of Delhi, was allegedly worth an enormous Rs150 lakhs,* and included horses, elephants, guns, gold and jewels.
Zabita Khan’s young son, Ghulam Qadir, was among the prisoners and hostages brought back to Shahjahanabad. There he was virtually adopted by the Emperor and brought up in style in the imperial gardens and palaces of Qudsia Bagh, north of Shahjahanabad.
Thirty years of incessant warfare, conquest and plunder since 1739 had left the city ruined and depopulated.
Polier blamed Zabita Khan’s father, Najib ud-Daula, who he said had ‘committed every kind of outrage in the city … the devastations and plunders of Nader Shah and Ahmad Shah Durrani were like violent tempests which carried everything before them but soon subsided; whereas the havoc made by the Rohillas over a decade resembled pestilential gales which keep up a continual agitation and destroy a country’.49
the fragile new alliance between the Mughals and the Marathas already appeared to be near collapse as the two sides fought over the division of the spoils:
In the end Scindia handed over to the Emperor just Rs2 lakh* of the 150 he had allegedly taken from Zabita’s citadel. Shah Alam was rightly indignant: ‘For six months not a dam has been paid to my soldiers as salary,’ he said. ‘My men only get their food after three or four days of fasting.’
Things could easily have turned out very badly for Shah Alam, but at the last minute he was saved. In early September 1773, an unexpected message arrived by express courier from Pune, announcing the premature death from consumption of the young Maratha Peshwa, Narayan Rao. A violent succession dispute quickly followed, pitting the many different factions in the Maratha Confederacy against each other.
both Scindia and his rival Holkar realised it was essential that they return south to Pune as fast as they could in order to secure their interests. In their hurry to get to Pune, they both departed within the week, leaving Shah Alam and Mirza Najaf Khan in complete, unmediated control of Delhi.
