Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/30

22 THE removal of two such dangerous enemies to the throne, placed Mahomed Schah in possession of it with a security unknown to his predecessors, since the reign of Aurengzebe; but this security served only to render him unworthy of it. Indolent, sensual, and irresolute, he voluntarily gave to favourites as great a degree of power, as that which the ministers of the throne had lately possessed in defiance of the will of their sovereigns. The fatal moment approached, in which a foreigner was to determine whether he should exterminate the race of Tamerlane, and annex the richest empire of the universe to his own. Caundorah the vizir and favourite of Mahomed Schah quarrelled with Nizam al Muluck the viceroy of the southern provinces, who had under his jurisdiction very near a fourth part of the empire, and who without rebellion had rendered himself almost independant of the emperor. Bred under the eye of Aurengzebe, Nizam al Muluck censured openly and in the strongest terms, the lethargick and pusillanimous administration, as well as the profligate and dissolute manners of the court; hoping, no doubt, to impair the influence of his rival Caundorah. At last pretending that there could be no remedy to such desperate evils, but in a total revolution of the empire, he advised Thamas Kouli Khan, who had usurped the throne of Persia, to come and take possession of that of Indostan; and Thamas Kouli Khan followed his advice.

MR. FRAZER has left us an authentic account of this extraordinary revolution. An army famished by its own numbers, commanded by chiefs unanimous in nothing but their unwillingness to fight, and these by an emperor who could not command his fears, submitted to enemies whom they outnumbered five to one: but these enemies had been inured to conflicts under the most desperate soldier of the age, and were rendered invincible by the expectation of plundering the capital of the richest empire in the world. A skirmish decided the fate of this empire. Mahomed Schah laid his regalia at the feet of Thamas Kouli Khan, who took possession of Delhi, plundered it, and massacred a hundred thousand of its inhabitants.