Page:Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire.djvu/205

198 to the princes and peoples of India to acknowledge the suzerainty of the one prince who would protect and yet not persecute. He would appeal to them to aid in the regeneration he was preparing, not in his individual intorost, but in the interests of the millions who, for four centuries, had boon harassed by invasions, by civil wars, by persecutions following both.

Akbar did not appeal to an unreflecting or an obstinate people. With one exception, that of Chitor (now known as Udaipur), the Rájpút princes and people of the most influential part of India came into his scheme. The most powerful amongst them, Jaipur and Jodhpur, helped him with the counsels of the men who, Hindus, were his most trusted captains, and with their splendid soldiers. The principal opposition he encountered was from the bigots of his own court, and from the descendants of the Afghán invaders settled in Bengal, in Orissa, and in Western India. For the sake of his beneficent scheme it was necessary to bring those into the fold. Ho tried at first to induce them to accept their authority from him. They accepted it only, on the first occasion, to seize an opportunity to rebel. There was then no choice but conquest. So he conquered. Toleration, good and equal laws, justice for all, invariably followed.

Thus it was that he, first of the Muhammadan invaders of India, welded together the conquered provinces, and made them, to the extent to which he conquered, for a portion of Southern India remained unsubdued, one united Empire. These are his titles