Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/86

 58 GHAZNI AND GHOK each harassed the Rajputs on all sides, and when he found their famous soldiery still unbroken he lured them to disorder by a feigned retreat. Then, taking them at a disadvantage, he charged at the head of twelve thousand picked horsemen in steel armour, and " this prodigious army once shaken, like a great build- ing, tottered to its fall and was lost in its own ruins." Many of the Rajput chiefs were killed in the battle. Prithivi Raja himself mounted a horse and fled, but was captured near Sirsuti and " sent to hell." The result of this victory was the annexation of Ajmir, Hansi, and Sirsuti, ruthless slaughter, and a general destruction of temples and idols and building of mosques (1192). Ajmir was left in charge of a son of the late raja, as a vassal of the Sultan, and Kutb-ad- din Aybek, a slave of Mohammad Ghori, was appointed viceroy of India, where, after his master's death, he founded the kingdom of Delhi. There was much, how- ever, to be done before there could be any talk of king- ship. Delhi and Koil indeed fell before the attacks of Kutb-ad-din the same year, but beyond them lay the dominions of the powerful Rathors, who had become rajas of Kanauj on the downfall of the Tomaras. Mo- hammad, returning from Ghazni, himself led the cam- paign against them in the following year, and, after a crushing defeat on the Jumna between Chandwar and Etawa, the Rathors fled south to found a new princi- pality at Marwar, and Kanauj and Benares became part of the empire of Ghor. The Moslems were now in Bihar, and it was not long before they found their way into