HINDOOSTAN. 71 



agree, that they were magnificent and despotic princes, and that they 

 committed their provinces to rapacious governors, or to their own 

 sons, by which their empire was often miserably torn in pieces. At 

 length, the famous Aurungzebe, in the year 1667, though the youngest 

 among many sons of the reigning emperor, after defeating or mur- 

 dering all his brothers, mounted the throne of Hindoostan, and may 

 be considered as the real founder and legislator of the empire. He 

 was a great and a politic prince, and the first who extended his 

 dominion, though it was little better than nominal, over the peninsula 

 within the Ganges, which is at present so well known to the English, 

 He lived so late as the year 1707, and it is said that some of his great 

 officers of state were alive in the year 1750. 



In 1713, four of his grandsons disputed the empire, which, after a 

 bloody struggle, fell to the eldest, Mauzoldin, who took the name of 

 Jehander Shah. This prince was a slave to his pleasures, and was 

 governed by his mistress so absolutely, that his great omrahs con- 

 spired against him, and raised to the throne one of his nephews, who 

 struck off his uncle's head. The new emperor, whose name was 

 Furrukhsir, was governed and at last enslaved by two brothers of the 

 name of Seyd, who abused their powers so grossly, that being afraid 

 to punish them publicly, he ordered them both to be privately assas- 

 sinated. They discovered his intention, and dethroned the emperor^ 

 in whose place thejwiaised a grandson of Aurungzebe, by his daugh» 

 ter, a youth of seventeen years of age, after imprisoning and strang- 

 ling Furrukhsir. The young emperor proved disagreeable to the 

 brothers, and, being soon poisoned, they raised to the throne his elder 

 brother, who took the title of Shah Jehan. The rajahs of Hindoostan 9 

 whose ancestors had entered into stipulations, or what may be called 

 pacta conventa, when they admitted the Mogul family, took the field 

 against the two brothers, but the latter were victorious, and Shah 

 Jehan was put in tranquil possession of the empire, but died in 1719, 

 He was succeeded by another prince of the Mogul race, who took 

 the name of Mahommed Shah, and entered into private measures 

 with his great rajahs for destroying the Seyds, who were declared 

 enemies to Nizam al Muluck, one of Aurungzebe's favourite gen- 

 erals. Nizam, it is said, was privately encouraged by the emperor 

 to declare himself against the brothers, and to proclaim himself 

 soubah of the Deccan, which belonged to one of the Seyds, who was 

 assassinated by the emperor's ordei*, and who immediately advanced 

 to Delhi to destroy the other brother ; but he no sooner understood 

 what had happened, than he proclaimed the sultan Ibrahim, another 

 of the Mogul princes, emperor. A battle ensued in 1720, in which 

 the emperor was victorious. He is said to have used his conquest 

 with great moderation, for he remitted Ibrahim to the prison from 

 whence he had been taken ; and Seyd, being likewise a prisoner, 

 was condemned to perpetual confinement ; but the emperor took pos- 

 session of his vast riches. Seyd did not long survive his confine* 

 mint ; and, upon his death, the emperor abandoned himself to the 

 same course of pleasures that had been so fatal to his predecessors. 

 As to Nizam he became now the great imperial general, and was 

 often employed against the Mahrattas, whom he defeated, when they 

 had almost made themselves masters of Agra and Delhi. He was 

 confirmed in his soubahship, and was considered as the first subject 

 in the empire. Authors, however, are divided as to his motives for 



