Part 30 (2/2)
His time for enjoyment, nevertheless, ran short. Golconda and Bij.a.pur taken, Aurungzebe, triumphant--after, as usual, alienating the people by his religious intolerance--added to religious hatred by capturing the person of Samba-ji while drunk and incapable in his favourite palace of pleasure, and thereinafter, having paraded him through the camp in disgrace, ordering him to prison. Whereupon Samba-ji, roused at last to sense, openly reviled the emperor, his prophet, his faith, in language so strong that it was considered necessary to cut his tongue out as a punishment for blasphemy, before beheading him and his favourite, the vile Kalusha.
Anything more injudicious could not well be conceived. Despised as Samba-ji had been whilst alive by the better cla.s.s of Mahrattas, he was now a martyr. From this time, the fortunes of Aurungzebe, and with them the Empire of the Moghuls, began to fall; and for the few remaining years of his life, the emperor, now growing old, must have felt himself and his power on the downward grade. His indefatigable perseverance, his laborious energy, are almost pitiful. Over eighty years of age, he rested not at all, and despite our reprobation, the heart softens towards the tired old man as we see him, seemingly careless of the greater enemy along his sea-board, leading his armies through trackless forests and flooded valleys, enduring hards.h.i.+ps that would have tried youth, in pursuit of the irrepressible, irresponsible Mahrattas. An old man, small, slender, stooping, with a long nose, a frosted beard, and a perpetual smile.
That smile was worn outside; but within? Within was weariness and fear even for this life. The remembrance of his father's fate at his hands seems never to have left him; every action of his during the later years of his reign showing his fear lest a like fate should be his. So he held every tiny thread of the great warp and woof of Government in his own hands. Only thus could he feel secure.
In such a system abuse is inevitable. No single eye can supervise a wide empire, and so corruption grew apace, and with corruption, inefficiency. The n.o.blemen, waxing effeminate, wore wadded coats under their chain armour; their horses, laden with ornamentations, housed with velvet, were purely processional, and utterly unfit for war. The common soldiers, aping their superiors, followed suit, and became so slothful that they could neither keep watch nor picket, and discipline disappeared utterly.
Yet all the time, while Aurungzebe, old, enfeebled in health, outwearied himself in precautions, in providence, the greatest enemy to the Moghul dynasty was advancing, apparently unnoticed, in rapid strides. For the West had finally set its face towards the East.
Commerce had already joined hands over the empire. In 1667 Britain, France, Holland, and Denmark, signed a treaty of common cause at Breda that was practically a league against the Pagan and the Portuguese. A few years previously the island and town of Bombay had been ceded to England as part of the dower of Catherine of Braganza, and had become thereby so much an integral part of Great Britain that every native in it, every child born there, had the right to claim every privilege of a British subject.
Fort St George, the nucleus of Madras, was finally established, and the group of factories around it formed into a presidency. Job Charnock had founded Calcutta, and Hugli was soon to be merged in it.
Then a new note had come into the dealings of the English with the accession of James II. A large shareholder, he promised the East India Company military support, and henceforward the ”native powers were to be given to understand that the Company would treat with them as an independent power, and, if necessary, compell redress by force of arms.” In consequence of this the President, Sir John Child, was appointed ”Captain-General and Admiral of all forces by sea and land.”
Poor Sir John Child! He was the first instance of a cat's-paw in the East (there have been many since!), and when the tortuous policy of the Company towards the Great Moghul failed, and they found it impossible to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, by making war in Bengal, and wearing a mask of friends.h.i.+p in Bombay, he went to the wall promptly in obedience to Aurungzebe's ”irreversible order”
that ”Mr Child, who did the disgrace, should be turned out and expelled.”
But there was more disgrace than the making of a scapegoat out of one man in store for the old original East India Company. How much of the dirt flung at it in the next ten years or so deserves to stick? Who can tell? Or who can say how much of the moil and turmoil which arose around it was due to honest John Bull's honest love of clean hands, and how much to the itching of his palm? When gold is in dispute, motives are hard to dissever, impossible to pigeonhole. And in those days the PaG.o.da Tree was in full bearing, the gold lay on Tom Tiddler's ground ready to be picked up. So, at least, it must have seemed to England.
A terrible temptation to all sorts of sins. And so we have allegations of bribery, Parliamentary enquiries, scandalous disclosures, pet.i.tions, answers at length, impeachment of the Duke of Leeds, convenient disappearance of the Duke's servant, final hint by the disturbed king--William of Orange--that disclosures and exposures were out of season, as he was under the necessity of ”putting an end to this session in a few days.”
So at last we get at Act 9, William III., c. 44, for ”raising a sum not exceeding 2,000,000 upon a fund for payment of annuities after the rate of 8 per annum, and _for settling the trade to the East Indies_.”
Thus the new company, started by solemn act of legislature, was left eyeing the old one. At first there seemed likelihood of their fighting it out like the Kilkenny cats. But in the pursuit of gold the main chance is a potent factor for peace. And so, while Aurungzebe, near his life's limit, was still, in his ninth decade of years, wearily pursuing the Mahratta, Earl G.o.dolphin, Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain, as referee, succeeded in reconciling the conflicting claims of commerce, and--to make his award binding on both parties--inserted a special clause in an Act of Parliament, by which the old London East India Company and the new English East India Company were for ever amalgamated under the t.i.tle of the ”United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies.”
By this arrangement there pa.s.sed to one control in India alone, the ports and islands of Bombay, the factories of Surat, Sivalli, Broach, of Amadad, Agra, Lucknow, and on the Malabar Coast, the forts of Karwar, Tellicherri, Anjengo, besides the factory at Calicut. Rounding Cape Cormorin, the coast of Coromandel held Orissa, Chingi, Fort St George, the city of Madras and its dependencies; Fort St David, the factories of Cuddalore, Porto-Novo, Pettipoli, Masulipatam, Madapollam, Vizagapatam. Going northward to Bengal there was Fort William or Calcutta, with its large territory, Balasore, Cossimbazaar, Dacca, Hugli, Malda, Rajmahal, and Patna.
From which long list may be seen how steady had been the nibbling at India's coral strand during the last fifty years. The grant of Calcutta, with leave thereupon to erect fortifications, was practically the beginning of the end. This was almost the last act of Aurungzebe's reign. Shortly after, he lay dying, a man of eighty-nine, still in full possession of his faculties.
There is something very terrible about the death-bed of this man, who for fifty long years had held, without aid of any sort, the reins of Government. He had no friends; he could not trust any one sufficient for friends.h.i.+p. His one lukewarm affection seems to have been for his intriguing sister Roshanrai, the woman who had sate beside his sick-bed guarding the Great Seal. For others he had literally no heart.
So in his death he was quite alone. Except for his remorse.
”Old age has arrived.... I came a stranger into this world, and a stranger I depart. I know nothing of myself; what I am, and for what I am destined. The instant which has pa.s.sed in power, hath left only sorrow behind it. I have not been the guardian and protector of the Empire. My valuable time has been pa.s.sed vainly. I had a guide given me in my own dwelling” (conscience), ”but his glorious light was unseen by my dim sight. I brought nothing into this world, and, except the infirmities of man, take nothing out. I have a dread for my salvation and with what torments I may be punished.... Regarding my actions fear will not quit me; but when I am gone, reflection will not remain. Come, then, what come may, I have launched my vessel to the waves. Farewell, Farewell--Farewell!”
So he wrote from his death-bed to his second son, and to his youngest thus:--
”Son nearest to my heart! The agonies of death come upon me fast.
Wherever I look I see nothing but the Divinity. I am going! Whatever good or evil I have done it was done for _you_.”
He was a great letter-writer. Three huge volumes of his epistles are still extant; but even in these last solemn ones the absolute truth was not in them; for under his pillow when he died a paper was found--a sort of will, in which he appoints his eldest son Emperor, bids his second be content with Agra and Bengal, while to the one ”nearest his heart,” the doubtful kings.h.i.+p of Bij.a.pur and Golconda was gifted. Aurungzebe was diplomatic to the last.
[Map: India to A.D. 1707]
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