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Rh parts, when a dog gave the alarm, and the garrison speedily dispatched the climbers and threw down the ladders.

Meanwhile famine was reducing the Moghul army to extremities. The friends of Golkonda, and especially the Marathas of "that hell-dog" Sambhaji, laid the country waste; the season was dry, and there was a terrible scarcity of rice, grain, and fodder. Plague broke out in the camp, and many of the soldiers, worn out with hunger and misery, deserted to the enemy. When the rain came at last, it fell in torrents for three days, and washed away much of the entrenchments, whereupon the besieged sallied out in force and killed many of the Moghuls, and took prisoners. The occasion seemed favourable for overtures of peace. Abu-l-Hasan showed his prisoners the heaps of corn and treasure in the fort, and offered to pay an indemnity and to supply the besieging army with grain, if the siege were raised. Aurangzib's answer was full of his old proud inflexible resolve: "Abu-l-Hasan must come to me with clasped hands, or he shall come bound; I will then consider what mercy I can show him." Forthwith he ordered fifty thousand fresh sacks from Berar to fill the moat.

Where courage and perseverance failed, treason succeeded. Mines and assaults had been vainly tried against the heroic defenders of Golkonda; money and promises at last won the day. Many of the nobles of the city had from time to time gone over to the besiegers, and at length a bribe admitted the enemy. The