Page:Our Indian Army.djvu/64

40 hours eight thousand Hindoos, Moguls, and Affghans perished in a horrible carnage. Nadir Shah then seized on the imperial treasures, which were said to be of vast amount, including, amongst other gems, the celebrated Koh-i-noor; and a general contribution was levied with rigid severity; while famine and pestilence followed closely on the devastation of the city, and assisted in completing the horrors of a scene from which numbers escaped by being their own destroyers.

Nadir did not put an end to the Mogul sovereignty, as he might have done, but withdrew from Delhi after an occupation of two months; and was not long after murdered in an insurrection of his own troops. But a fatal blow had been struck at the grandeur of the Mogul empire, which was now fast tending to its close: already had Nizam-ool-Moolk (Regulator of the State), the Loobahdar, or Governor of the Deccan, made himself an independent sovereign; and soon after the visit of Nadir Shah, the sovereignty of Bengal was seized by a second great officer of the empire, while the government of Oude was usurped by a third. On the western side, some of its provinces fell to the Affghans; and the Seikhs seized on a portion of the Punjaub. In other places the Jauts and Rohillas contributed to relieve the Mogul princes from the toils of government, while the Mahrattas availed themselves of the general break up to obtain accessions of territory, power, and influence. The entire surface of India was, indeed, studded with their possessions, which, extending eastward, westward, and southward to the sea, and northward to Agra, wanted nothing but compactness to constitute them a mighty empire.

But, as if it were the will of the Creator that all