Aurangzeb at once invaded Mew&r, but the Rana, considering it unwise to meet face to face the superior strength of the Mughuls, deserted the towns and hamlets of Mewar and retired with all his subjects to mountain fastnesses after laying waste the plains below. The Mulghuls easily occupied Chitor. Sure of success, the Emperor started for Ajmer, leaving a strong force in Chitor under Prince Akbar. But he was soon disillusioned. The Rajputs carried on a guerilla warfare and fell on the Mughul outposts with so much courage that “the command of Mughul outposts went a-begging, captain after captain declining the dangerous honour and offering excuses “. Emboldened by their successes, the Rajputs surprised the Mughul army under Prince Akbar in May, 1680, and carried off its provisions. Reduced to starvation, the imperial army stood ” motionless through fear”, as Prince Akbar complained. Holding Prince Akbar responsible for this discomfiture, the Emperor placed the command of the army at Chitor in the hands of Prince ‘A’zam and sent Akbar to Marwar.
Smarting under the disgrace of his removal, Prince Akbar dreamt of wresting the crown of Delhi from his father in alliance with the Rajputs, whose worth he must have sufficiently understood during his war with them. The Rajput chiefs pointed out to him how his father’s policy was destroying the stability of the Mughul Empire, and hoping thus to “place a truly national king on the throne of Delhi they promised to back him with the armed strength of the two greatest Rajput clans, the Sisodias and the Rathors”. With his army of about 70,000 men, “including the best blood of Rajputana”, Prince Akbar arrived near Ajmer on the 15th January, 1681. Auranzgeb’s situation was then critical, as the two main divisions of his army were quartered near Chitor and the Rajsamudra lake. Had the Prince promptly utilised this “fine opportunity”, the Emperor might have been caught at a disadvantage. But he whiled away, his time in indolence and pleasure and thus allowed his shrewd father to make preparations to defend himself By writing a letter to his rebellious son, which the Emperor contrived should reach the Rajputs, he led Akbar’s allies to believe that the Mughul Prince was playing false with them. The stratagem of the Emperor proved successful, as the Rajput allies of Prince Akbar, suspecting treachery, deserted him and he hurriedly “rode away for dear life in the track of the Rajputs”. The Rajputs, however, soon discovered the fraud played on them, and the chivalrous Rathor chief, Durgadas, convinced of the Prince’s innocence, gallantly saved him from his father’s vengeance and escorted Arm, through Khindesh and Baglana, to the court of the Maratha king, Shambhuji. But the self-indulgent successor of Shivaji could afford no effective aid to the fugitive Mughul prince, whose dream of an Indian Empire, “based on Hindu-Muslim reconciliation and amity, remained an idle one”. About six years later the disappointed Mugbul prince set out for Persia, where be died in A.D. 1704.
Though Prince Akbar’s rebellion-could not change the ruler of Delhi, it gave great relief to the Rana of Mewar, but b-‘s temporary success against the Mughuls caused -. great misery to his subjects. The sufferings of the Mughuls had also been considerable, and they could not gain any definite success against the rajputs. Them considerations led the Emperor and the Rana, Jay Singh, son and successor of Raj Singh, to conclude a treaty in June, 1681. The coded a few districts in lieu of jizya and the Mughuls withdrew from Mewar. Marwar, However, had to continue a “thirty years war” before a peace was concluded on honourable terms. Under the able leadership of Durgadas, the Rathors ceaselessly carried on a guerilla warfare and harassed the Mughul outposts so that the Mughul officers were compelled to pay chauth to their unrelenting foe to save themselves from his aggression. The war dragged on till, after Aurangzeb’s death .’ his son and successor, Bahadur Shah I, recognised Ajit Singh as the Rana of Marwar in A.D. 1709.
The Rajput wars of Aurangzeb produced disastrous consequences for his Empire. Thousands of lives were sacrificed -and enormous were wasted on the desert land without any lasting success to the Emperor. ” Damaging as this result was to imperial prestige, its material consequences were worse still.” It was an act of political unwisdom on the part of Aurngzeb to provoke Rajput hostility and thus forfeit the devoted service of gallant chiefs and soldiers, so long friends of the Empire, in his wasting wars in the Deccan, or in the important work of holding under control the northwestern frontier, where the restless Afghan tribes were still far from being pacified.
Aurangzeb and the Deccan
During the first half of Aurangzeb’s reign his attention was aengrossed with affairs in the north, and the Deccan was left to the viceroys. The decadent southern Sultanates had not been able to recover fully.from the blows that had been inflicted on them, and the Marathas rose at their expense. The rise of the Marathas, as a sort of challenge to the Mughul Empire, complicated the political situation in the Deccan, the full significance of which the Emperor could not realise at first. During the first twenty-four years of his reign his viceroys in the Deccan could achieve no definite success either against the Sultanates or against the Marithas.
The death of Shivaji in 1680 ‘ in no way improved the imperial position in the Deccan, notwithstanding Aurangzeb’s determination to consolidate his supremacy. The flight of the rebellious Prince Akbar to the Maratha king, Shambhriji, and the alliance between the “disturber of India” and the “infernal son of the internal father”, as Aurangzeb called these two, brought a complete change in his policy towards the Deccan. Havino, now realised the necessity of marching there in perison to cheek this menace to imperial interests, he patched up a peace with Mew&r in June, 1681. Leaving Ajmer for the Deccan on the 8th September, 1681, he arrived at Burhanpur on 23rd November, 1681, and at Ahmadnagar’ on the Ist April, 1682. His mind must have been full of high hopes, and he could not foresee that destiny as dragging him to the south to dig the graves of himself and his Empire. The first four years were spent in unsuccessful attempts to seize Prince Akbar and in rather disastrous campaigns against the Marathas. Some of the forts of the latter were conquered by the imperialists, but the sturdy folk whom Shivaji had inspired with new aspirations could not be thoroughly suppressed.
The conquest of the decayed Sultanates next engaged the Emperor’s attention. As in the case of Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb’s attitude towards the Shiab Sultanates of the Deccan was influenced partly by imperial interests and partly by religious considerations. Bijapur, weakened by party factions and the rise of the Marathas, submitted to the invaders. The last Mughul siege of the city began on the Ilth April, 1685, and the Emperor himself went there in July, 1686. The besieged garrison held out gallantly but, exhausted by lack of provisions and the death of countless men and horses, caused by the outbreak of a famine, they capitulated in September, 1686. Sikandar, the last of the ‘Adil Shihis, surrendered to the Emperor and the dynasty founded by Yusuf ‘Adil Sh&h ceased to exist. On entering Bijapur the Emperor destroyed all the fine paintings and frescoes in Sikandar’s palace. Bijapur not only lost its independence, but was turned into a desolate city. “A few years later,” writes Sir J. N. Sarkar, “Bhimsen noticed how the city and its equally large suburb Nauraspur looked deserted and ruined,- the population scattered, and even the abundant water-supply in the city wells had suddenly grown scanty.”
