Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/82

52 land's two maritime rivals, France and Holland. The reigns of the two autocratic monarchs who ruled France and India throughout the second half of the seventeenth century tally very nearly in point of time, for the dates of their respective accessions. very nearly coincide; and they died early in the eighteenth century within a few years of each other. In the policy to which each of these celebrated rulers personally attached himself, and in its unfortunate consequences, there is also much more than a fanciful resemblance.

The accession of both Aurangzib and Louis XIV took place at a moment when the splendour and fame of their dynasties were in full lustre; they both inaugurated a career of conquest and unscrupulous attacks upon weaker neighbours that was at first triumphant; they both gradually undermined the prosperity of their kingdoms and the stability of their houses by wasteful and impolitic wars. Religious persecution of their own subjects, unwieldy centralization of all governmental authority by the levelling of local institutions, widespread corruption and a magnificent court under the influence of bigots, lackeys, and panders, were characteristics of the reign of the Bourbon as well as of the Moghul. And in each instance half a century's autocratic misrule, complicated by unfortunate foreign wars, sectarian revolts, and grinding fiscal oppression, brought great misery on the people, and fatally enervated the monarchy.

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the clouds began to gather, and from the beginning of the