Page:Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire.djvu/103

96 palace, and Akbar had provided handsomely for her sons. The eldest of these, however, fired with jealousy at the elevation of men whose equal or superior he considered himself to be, and goaded probably by men of a like nature to his own, assassinated the Prime Minister as he was sitting in his public office; then, trusting to the favour which Akbar had always displayed towards his family and himself, went and stood at the door of the harem. But for such a man, and for such an act, Akbar had no mercy. The assassin was cut to pieces, and his dead body was hurled over the parapet into the moat below. Those who had incited him, dreading lest their complicity should be discovered, fled across the Jumna, but they were caught, sent back to Agra, and were ultimately pardoned. The mother of the chief culprit died forty days later from grief at her son's conduct.

For some time previously the condition of a portion of the Punjab had been the cause of some anxiety to Akbar. The Gakkhars, a tribe always turbulent, and the chiefs of which had never heartily accepted the Mughal sovereigns, had set at defiance the orders issued for the disposal of their country by Akbar. They had refused, that is, to acknowledge the governor he had nominated. The Gakkhars inhabited, as their descendants inhabit now, that part of the Punjab which may be described as forming the north-eastern part of the existing district of Ráwal Pindi. To enforce his orders Akbar sent thither an army, and this army, after some sharp fighting, succeeded in restoring order.