Mahrattas placed in ambush, and routed with the loss of all their equipments. The success of this stratagem, notwithstanding the atrocity of the deed, obtained the admiration of his countrymen beyond many of his other exploits, and the weapon was carefully preserved as an heirloom in the family. Sevajee followed up his victory by plundering the country to the very gates of the capital. The king then took the field in person, and recovered many of the forts and much of the territory he had lost. The war was protracted for two years with varied success, but generally in favour of the Mahrattas. A reconciliation was at length effected, and a treaty concluded through the mediation of Shahjee, who paid a visit to his son after an absence of twenty years. He congratulated him on the progress he had made towards the establishment of a Hindoo power, and encouraged him to persevere in the course he had 1662 begun. At this period, Sevajee, then in his thirty-fifth year, was in possession of the whole coast of the Concan, extending four degrees of latitude, and of the ghauts from the Beema to the Wurda. His army, consisting of 50,000 foot and 7,000 horse, was out of all proportion to his territories and his resources, but he was incessantly engaged in war, and made war support itself by his exactions.

A.D.

Sevajee being now at peace with Beejapore, let loose his 1663 predatory bands on the Mogul possessions, and swept the Shaista Khan country to the suburbs of Aurangabad. The attacks Se- emperor appointed his own maternal uncle, vajee. Shaista Khan, to the viceroyalty of the Deccan, with orders to reduce Sevajee to submission. He captured Poona, and took up his residence in the house in which Sevajee had passed his childhood, and the Mahratta chief conceived the design of assassinating the Mogul general in his bed. He got up a marriage procession, and entered the town in disguise with thirty followers, and proceeding unperceived to the palace, suddenly attacked its inmates. The viceroy escaped the assault with the loss of two fingers, but his guards were cut down. Sevajee, baffled in his project, returned to his encampment amidst a blaze of torches. This daring exploit was so completely in harmony with the national character as to be viewed with greater exultation than some of his most famous victories. 1664 The operations of Sevajee were now extended to a bolder enterprise. A hundred and fifty miles from Poona lay the Attack of city of Surat, the greatest emporium of commerce on the western coast, and two of the firms in the

Surat.

A.D.

town were considered the most wealthy merchants in the world at the time. It was, moreover, the chief port to which devout Mahomedans resorted from all parts of India to embark on pilgrimage to Mecca. Sevajee suddenly appeared before it with 4,000 of his newly raised cavalry, and after plundering it leisurely for six days, returned to his capital. He met with no resistance except from the 1664 European factories. Sir George Oxenden, the English chief, defended the property of the East India Company, and likewise of the natives under his protection, with such valour and success as to extort the applause of Aurungzebe. It is worthy of note that this was the first occasion on which European soldiers came into collision with native troops, and that the result filled both Hindoos and Mahomedans with astonishment.

fleet.

On his return from this expedition, Sevajee heard of the death of his father at the age of seventy, and immediately assumed the title of raja, and struck the coin in his own name. Finding that his power would not be Sevajee complete unless he could obtain the command of creates a the sea, he had been employed for some time in constructing a navy, and while his troops were employed in ravaging the Mogul territories on land, his fleet was engaged in capturing the Mogul vessels bound to the Red Sea and exacting heavy ransom from the opulent pilgrims. In February, 1665, he secretly drew together a fleet consisting of eighty-eight vessels and embarked with 4,000 troops to Barcelore, then a great trade mart on the Malabar coast, where he obtained large booty, and returned to his capital before it was known that he had left it. On his return, he found that a large Mogul army commanded by the renowned Rajpoot raja Jeysing, and the He general Dilere Khan, had entered his territories. Jeysing and Aurangzebe, an intense bigot, had felt greater indignation against Sevajee for obstructing the progress of the devout pilgrims than for any of his audacious assumptions of power, and the largest force yet sent against him now entered his territories, and reduced him to such straits that he was constrained to have recourse to negotiations. They resulted in the memorable "Convention of Poorundur," 1665 in which it was stipulated that he should restore all the forts and districts he had taken from the Moguls with the exception of twelve, which he was to retain as a jageer, and that his son Sambajee should hold rank as a noble in the command of 5,000 men. But he dexterously inserted a

G

attacked by

Dilere Khan.

clause in the treaty granting him, in lieu of certain pretended claims on the old Nizam Shahee state, assignments of a fourth and a tenth of the revenue,-termed by Origin of the him the Chout and Surdeshmookee,-of certain Chout. districts above the ghauts, the charge of collecting which he took on himself. So eager was he to obtain the imperial authority for this grant, that he offered a sum of forty lacs of pagodas for it, and intimated his intention of visiting the emperor at Delhi, and "his desire to kiss the "royal threshold." This is the first mention of the celebrated claim of chout, which the Mahrattas marched throughout India to enforce. In the communication which Aurangzebe addressed him on this occasion, no allusion was made to this claim, the insidious tendency, or even the import, of which the imperial cabinet could not comprehend, and Sevajee assumed that the principle was tacitly conceded.

1665 Delhi

Sevajee had now entered the service of the Moguls and lost no time in marching with 10,000 horse and foot against A.D. Sevajee at Beejapore, though his half-brother commanded the Mahratta contingent in its services. Aurungzebe was gratified with his success and invited him to court, to which he repaired with an escort of 1,500 troops. But he found himself regarded by the emperor in the light of a troublesome captain of banditti, whom it was politic to humour, and he was presented at the durbar with nobles of the third rank. He left the "presence" with ill-concealed indignation, and is said to have wept and fainted away. It became the object of the emperor to prevent his leaving Delhi, and his residence was beleagured, but he contrived to elude the vigilance of his guards and made his escape in a hamper, and reached Rajgurh in the disguise of a 1666 pilgrim, with his face smeared with ashes. The Rajpoot commander in the Deccan was not insensible to the influence of money, and Sevajee was thus enabled through him to make his peace with Aurangzebe, who acknowledged his title of raja and even made some addition to his jageer. Having now a season of greater leisure than he had yet enjoyed, he spent the years 1668 and 1669 in revising and Revision of completing the internal arrangements of his his institu- government, and nothing gives us a higher idea of his genius than to find a rough soldier, who 1669 was unable to read or write, and who had for twenty years been employed in predatory warfare, establishing a form of government and a system of civil polity so well suited to the consolidation of a great kingdom. His military

1668 tions.

and

organisation, which was equally distinguished for its rigid discipline and its strict economy, was admirably adapted to the creation of a new and predominant power in India.

tan.

to

This was also the most prosperous period of Aurungzebe's A.D long reign. The empire was at peace; the emperor was 1666 held in the highest esteem throughout the Tranquillity Mahomedan world, and received complimentary of Hindos- 1670 missions from the Scheriff of Mecca, the Khan of the Uzbeks, the king of Abyssinia, and the Shah of Persia. But his restless ambition again kindled the flames of war, which continued to rage, without the intermission of a single year, during the remaining thirty-seven years of his reign, and consumed the vitals of the empire. Finding it impossible to inveigle Sevajee into his power, War with he issued the most peremptory orders to pursue Sevajee. him to the death. Sevajee prepared for the conflict with unflinching resolution. He opened the campaign by the capture of two important fortresses, and, with an army of 14,000 men, again plundered Surat, where the Company's factors once more covered themselves with renown by their military energy. He overran the province of Candesh, and for the first time levied the chout on a Mogul province: in this instance it was simply black mail. Aurungzebe was dissatisfied with the inactivity of his general, and sent Mohabet with an army of 40,000 against Sevajee, who met his opponents for the first time in the open field and gained 1672 a complete victory, which elevated the crest of the Mahrattas, and not a little disheartened the Mogul generals.

the Khy

Sutnaramees

The turbulent Khyberees and Eusufzies in Afghanistan, the hereditary enemies of order and peace, had again broken out and defeated the Mogul general in the passes Aurungsubsequently rendered memorable by the annihi- zebe's conlation of a British army. The emperor deter- flict with mined to undertake the subjugation of these berees and incorrigible highlanders in person, and led his army as far as Hussun Abdal, where he left the expedition 1673 to his son, who was obliged to content himself with the nominal submission of the tribes, after a bootless warfare of two years. On his return to Delhi Aurangzebe found himself involved in an unexpected and formidable difficulty. Such is the nature of the natives of India, that the peace of the country is liable to be broken any day by the most insignificant cause: the shape of a turban, or the make of a cartridge. On this occasion it was the violence of a single police officer, who insulted a sect of Hindoo fanatics called

A.D. Sutnaramees. Their excitement created an émeute, and the 1676 émeute grew into a revolt. The devotees assembled in thousands, and being joined by some disaffected zemindars, defeated the troops sent against them, and obtained possession of the two provinces of Agra and Ajmere; a general revolt, therefore, appeared imminent. They gave out that they possessed the magic power of resisting bullets, and the imperial troops naturally shrank from an encounter with them, till Aurungzebe wrote out texts of the Koran with his own hand, and attached them to his standards, when the confidence of his troops was revived and the rebellion quelled.

Akbar and his two successors had adopted the wise and generous policy of granting the Hindoos religious liberty Revival of and equality, and they served the state as zealpersecution. ously and faithfully as the Mahomedans, even when employed against their own countrymen. The same principle appears to have prevailed in some degree during the early period of Aurangzebe's reign, and he had formed. two family alliances with Rajpoot princes; but his defeat in the Khyber, and the revolt of the fanatics, appear to have embittered his temper, and roused a feeling of bigoted animosity. No pains or penalties were inflicted on the Hindoos for the profession of their creed, but they were made to feel that they lay under the ban of the ruling power of the empire. Aurungzebe ordered that no Hindoos should in future be employed in the public service, and 1677 he reimposed the odious poll-tax, the jezzia, on infidels. His measures, however disguised, breathed the spirit of intolerance. The Hindoo temples in Bengal, and even in the holy city of Benares, were demolished, and mosques erected on the sites, and the images used as steps. These bigoted proceedings produced a feeling of disaffection in Revolt of the every province, but it was only in Rajpootana Rajpoots. that they created political disturbance. Jeswunt Sing, the faithful Rajpoot general of the emperor, had died in Cabul, and as his widow and family passed through 1677 Delhi, Aurungzebe surrounded their encampment with troops, intending to detain them as hostages. They were rescued by the contrivance of Jeswunt Sing's minister, and conveyed to Joudpore; but this ungenerous treatment of the family of a devoted servant roused the indignation of the high-spirited Rajpoots, and the country was speedily in a blaze. Aurangzebe lost no time in marching into it, 1679 and obliged the rana of Oodypore to make his submission;