Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/191

Rh one time they appeared to be on the point of a decisive victory, and the emperor's cause seemed lost. Directing operations from Ajmir, he had placed his main body under his fourth son, Akbar, at the same time calling up his elder sons, Mu'azzam and A'zam, with their contingents from their commands in the Deccan and Bengal. The three princes were busy ravaging the Rajput country, and Aurangzib was left at Ajmir with hardly a thousand men, when tidings came that Prince Akbar had been seduced by the diplomacy of the Rajput leaders, had gone over with the main army to the enemy, and had proclaimed himself Emperor of India; nay, more, that he was now marching against his father at the head of seventy thousand men. But the prestige, or the diplomacy, of Aurangzib was more than a match for the rebels. The Moghul deserters flocked back to the imperial standard; the Rajput army melted away; and Prince Akbar, with a following of five hundred men, fled to the Deccan, whence he eventually sailed for Persia in 1681, and never again set foot in the realm of his fathers.

The Rajput snake was scotched, but far from killed. The insults which had been offered to their chiefs and their religion, as well as the ruthless and unnecessary severity of Aurangzib's campaigns in their country, left a wound which never healed. The war went on. The Moghuls ravaged the rich lands of Udaipur, and the Rajputs retaliated by pulling down mosques and insulting the Moslems. The cities were indeed in the hands of Aurangzib, but the mountain defiles were thronged