Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/219

Rh ascended the throne with the title of Bahadur Shah. He found himself face to face with such difficulties as had not been known since the days of Humayun. It was not merely the Marathas that had to be dealt with; the Rajput rajas were in revolt; the Sikhs were rising in the Panjab, and the Jats near Agra; and the English had ventured on bold reprisals, which were to lead to far-reaching consequences in another half-century.

A SIKH QUOIT-TURBAN. With knives and tiger claws, the special Sikh weapons.

Nor was it only among non-Moslem peoples that the spirit of insurrection was alive. These, no doubt, had been excited by the religious intolerance of the late emperor; but the Moslems themselves were scarcely in better order. The fatal system of rewarding services or conciliating jealousies by large grants of territory had produced a kind of baronage fully as dangerous and subversive of central authority as any corresponding class in feudal Europe. The provincial mansabdars had become petty kings, and were far more interested in coercing their neighbours than in supporting their emperor against his many foes. Nor could Bahadur rely upon his troops as Babar and Akbar had trusted them. The toleration of Akbar's