Page:History of Aurangzib (based on original sources) Vol 1.djvu/291

CHAP. XI.] They now quarrelled with one another and with the prime minister Khan Muhammad for the division of power. To aggravate the evil, Aurangzib intrigued with them, and succeeded in corrupting most of them. "I am trying my utmost," he writes to Mir Jumla, "to win the Bijapur army over, for then the chiefs of that country will join us of their own accord." Randaulah Khan's son and several other leading men of the Court promised their adhesion and prepared to desert to the Mughal territory with their troops. After they had reached him Aurangzib hoped to seduce the others with the aid of Mir Jumla. So, he sent Rs. 20,000 to Multafat Khan, the governor of Ahmadnagar, the nearest point on the Mughal frontier towards Bijapur, with instructions to distribute it among the deserters: every Bijapuri captain who brought a hundred men to the muster was to get Rs. 2,000 out of the local treasury, (evidently after the above sum had been spent). The governor was ordered to welcome and conciliate every arrival from Bijapur, even when he w^as not a captain of known position and importance. An envoy from Shivaji waited on Aurangzib proposing the }