6

He had been promised support by the Afghan chiefs; but no sooner had they placed him on the throne of Dehly (1554), than they fell to quarrelling among themselves for honours and estates; and, as Ferishta writes, the flames of discord were rekindled, and blazed fiercer than ever.' No one, in fact, seems to have been able to control these fiery and unstable Afghan chiefs but a man like Shére Shah Soor, with an indomitable will and iron hand; and Sikunder Shah, though a brave soldier, had neither. The army he sent to oppose Hoomayoon was defeated; and leading a second himself, he was beaten near Sirhind by Beiram Khan and the young Prince Akbur. Sikunder fled into the mountains, and continued a desultory contest against the Moghuls, which will be noticed in its proper place, until he was suffered to return to Bengal, where he reigned for some years; but the date of his death is not mentioned. With him the troubled reigns of the Soor dynasty ceased, and the family itself most probably became extinct, as it never afterwards rose to notice. The Emperor Hoomayoon had entered India in triumph: and it may well be supposed that the people, again weary of the rude and faithless Patáns, so long alike untrue to them and to each other, were content to expect better times from a new foreign dynasty, or to witness, with apathy, a fresh contest for superiority.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SECOND REIGN OF HOOMAYOON, AND RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MOGHUL DYNASTY, 1555 to 1556.

THE circumstances connected with the Emperor Hoomayoon's expulsion from India have been already narrated in Chap. III. of this Book, and it is unnecessary to make further reference to them. He proceeded from Sinde to the Persian court of King Thamasp, and was hospitably received; but was perhaps at one time in some danger, owing to a desire on the part of King Thamasp to induce or compel his guest to adopt the Sheea doctrines, which he himself professed, and to introduce them into India, should he become repossessed of his authority there. In spite, however, of some eccentricity on the part of the Persian king, he eventually rendered Hoomayoon material assistance in furnishing 14,000 horse, under the command of his son, to aid the emperor's designs; while, on the other hand, the equivalent given was the cession of the province of Kandahar, if it could be recovered from the Prince Kamrán, who now reigned at Kabool. With his Persian

allies, Hoomayoon appeared before Kandahar, in March 1545. The place was held by Mirza Askary, on the part of Kamrán, and made a brave resistance for six months: when, from want of provisions, it was surrendered, and the Persian prince put in possession of it. So far Hoomayoon had performed his promises; but there seemed little hope of further co-operation on the part of his allies, and Hoomayoon marched towards Kabool, intending to treat with his brother Kamrán. By the way, however, news of the death of the Persian prince reached him, and he returned to Kandahar, gained possession of the fort by a stratagem, and expelled the Persian garrison, which retreated into Persia. Having thus secured a strong footing in the country, Hoomayoon, encouraged by the accounts he heard of his brother Kamrán's unpopularity, marched upon Kabool, and on the road was joined by his brother Hindál, and great numbers of disaffected persons of rank; and the invasion was so formidable, that Kamrán, unable to attempt resistance, fled towards Sinde, pursued by Hindál, while Hoomayoon, on October 2, 1545, entered the city in triumph. Here he had the happiness of being reunited to his beautiful wife and his son Akbur, now four years old; and as he took up the boy in his arms, writes Ferishta, he cried, 'Joseph by his envious brethren was cast into a well, but he was eventually exalted by Providence, as thou shalt be, to the summit of glory!

It might be supposed that Hoomayoon would now have turned his arms against India; but news of the death of Shere Khan Soor did not reach him till some time afterwards. His successor, Sulim Shah Soor, was strong and popular; and Hoomayoon, therefore, proceeded against Budukshán, the affairs of which had fallen into much disorder. During his absence, Kamrán, who had been ill received in Sinde, and was wandering about Afghanistan, contrived to surprise Kabool; but he was unable to retain it. Hoomayoon hurried back from Budukshán, defeated several detached parties of Kamrán's troops, and finally invested the city; which, after committing many cruel acts, Kamrán evacuated, and fled to the hills, and eventually to Balkh, where he received assistance by which he was enabled to repossess himself of Budukshán. The contest between the brothers now continued. Hoomayoon's attempt to expel Kamrán from Budukshán in 1550 was not successful; on the contrary, he had a narrow escape of his life, and was obliged to fly, only eleven attendants remaining with him; but, in the succeeding year, he recovered the power he had lost, and Kamrán became a fugitive among the wild Afghan tribes which inhabited the mountains between Kabool and the Punjab. Here also he was pursued by Hoomayoon, and in a night attack upon his camp, November 19, 1551, the Prince

Hindál was killed. Hoomayoon had latterly loved his brother, who, by his good faith and bravery in the field, had redeemed his former errors, and was much afflicted at his loss; he now married Ruzeea Sooltana, Hindál's only child, to his son Akbur, and settled upon them the wealth Hindál had accumulated. Kamrán received no encouragement from Sulim Shah Soor to come to his court, and led a wild life among the Gukkurs and other hill-tribes of the Punjâb borders. At length, in 1552, he was seized and made over to Hoomayoon by the chief of the Gukkurs. It was the opinion of the Moghul officers of State, that Kamrán should be at once executed for his crimes; but this sentence was commuted by Hoomayoon into loss of sight, which was carried out, Some days afterwards, Hoomayoon went to see him, and Kamrán rising, advanced a few steps and said, 'The glory of the king will not be diminished by visiting the unfortunate;' and Ferishta adds, that Hoomayoon burst into tears, and wept bitterly. Mr. Elphinstone, Book vii. p. 173, vol. vi., gives a detailed account of the whole event from Hoomayoon's biographer; from which, as well as from Ferishta, it may be inferred that the emperor, while he had saved his brother's life, could not defend him from the only other alternative of State punishment. Kamrán dies, Kamrán asked to be allowed to proceed to Mecca, which was granted; but he got no further than Sinde, where he died in 1556.

1556.

Hoomayoon was now the undisputed ruler of all the Moghul territory in Afghanistan, and was free to commence his operations against India. The time was singularly propitious: a civil war was raging in India between the several representatives of the family of Soor, and the people were weary of the race. Hoomayoon's friends at Agra and Dehly wrote beseeching him to come to them; but he hesitated, as indeed was natural, considering the immense hazard of the stake. On the one hand, India might not receive him, and a common danger might unite the whole of the Soor family and Patáns against him; on the other, his ever restless Afghan subjects might break into rebellion. In his perplexity, a courtier suggested an old method of divination: which was, to send three messengers in different directions, to return with the names of the first person they met; and this was put to the test. The first who returned had met a man named 'Doulut,' or empire; the second one named 'Moorád,' or good fortune; the third, a villager named 'Saadut,' or the object of desire. Thus, according to the native historian-and his anecdote bears the impress of truth-the omens were declared propitious: and no delay was made. Hoomayoon could only assemble 15,000 horse, but they were veteran troops, and with them he marched from Kabool, in December 1554. At

Peshawur he was joined by his son Akbur, and his friend and general, Beiram Khan, with a select body of veterans from Ghuzny and Kandahar. It is worthy of remark, that the emperor, in the previous war, had despatched his son Akbur to his government of Ghuzny; and it was doubtless in this early training in public business, that his strength of character was developed. No opposition to the Moghuls was made by the Patán viceroy of the Punjab, Tartar Khan. The fort of Rhotas was abandoned, and Hoomayoon entered Lahore without opposition. Here he halted to make some necessary arrangements in the country, sending on Beiram Khan in advance, with the Prince Akbur to check Sikunder Shah's army, which was advancing under Tartar Khan. Beiram Khan however did not hesitate to engage it, and defeated it at Machywara, near Sirhind, with the loss of elephants and baggage; while he sent out detachments which occupied the country nearly as far as Dehly. The resources of Sikunder Shah Soor were not, however, exhausted. On the defeat of Tartar Khan, he advanced in turn at the head of 80,000 men and a large train of artillery. Beiram Khan was too weak to oppose this host, but he wrote urgently to Hoomayoon to join him, and the emperor did not delay. On the morning of June 18, 1555, a memorable date in India, as well as in Europe in after years, as the young prince Akbur was inspecting the outposts, the Afghans under Sikunder Shah drew up and offered battle, and it was not declined. The contest raged for some time very hotly, the emperor, his noble son Akbur, and Beiram Khan being in the thickest of the fight; but the Moghuls, led by their young prince, were irresistible; the Patán army was defeated with immense slaughter, and Sikunder Shah fled to the hills. This victory once more decided the fate of the empire of India, and established a dynasty, which of all those heretofore existent, was to prove the most glorious and enduring. Debly and Agra were successively taken possession of by an advanced force, and in the month of July the Emperor Hoomayoon re-entered Dehly after an absence of fifteen years of Hoomayoon much vicissitude of fortune. Some revolts of minor Dehly, July character were summarily repressed, and the emperor 1555. was engaged in the general pacification of the country, when he met his death by a strange and untimely accident. On the evening of January 21, 1556, he was walking on the terrace of the library at Dehly, when, in the act of descending the steps to go to the evening prayer, the muezzin of the mosque announced the hour in the usual manner. Pausing to repeat the creed, the emperor sat down till the invocation to prayer was finished, and to assist himself to rise, made use of a pointed staff he usually carried. This slipped on the marble pavement, and he fell over the parapet into the

re-enters

court below. He was taken up, and put to bed; but the injuries he had received were mortal, and he expired after some days of suffering on January 25, 1556. He was fifty-one years Hoomayoon of age, and had reigned in India and Kabool for twenty- dies, 1556. five years.

With many weaknesses, the character of Hoomayoon was yet noble and interesting. With greater firmness he might have preserved his empire against Shére Shah Soor; but in his youth, though personally very brave, he was a bad general, and his adversary was one of the best India had yet produced. It must be remembered also, that the Moghuls were as yet foreigners in India, and were far from popular. To the Hindoos indeed it might have mattered little whether Moghul or Patán was in the ascendant; but the native Mahomedans were of the latter party, and had attained under it power and wealth; the Moghuls were hereditary enemies of long standing, and it was only a natural consequence that when the first flush of Babur's conquest was past, the local Mahomedan party should have rallied under a vigorous leader, and thus they may have obtained the sympathy and assistance of the Hindoos. If the first reign of Hoomayoon had been one of rest and peace, it is probable India would have prospered greatly under his mild and tolerant government. As it was, the reigns of Shére Shah and Sulim Shah Soor were exceptions to the Patán or Afghan rule, and left little to be desired as to the well-being of the people; but in Mahomed Shah Soor Adily, the worst features of the Patán domination were resumed, civil war among the members of the family was desolating the country, and the well-timed advance of Hoomayoon was productive of general relief and peace. It is impossible not to sympathise with Hoomayoon in his early misfortunes, in his miserable wanderings in the desert, his struggles in Sinde, and his personal sufferings: nor to follow his variations of fortune at Kabool without interest; and the truthful memoirs of his servant Jouhur, exhibit him in all the conditions of his life as a simple, genial, good-humoured man, inferior in capacity to his great father Babur, but with a deep, fond love for his wife and child, so rare among eastern princes. Charitable and munificent, kind and courteous to all around him, and a pleasant companion, Hoomayoon's character is not tainted by crime; and the sorest test he was ever put to, was the blinding of his brother Kamrán, to save him from death. Passionately fond, as he was, of his boy Akbur, yet when he was only ten years old his father at once pushed him into public life at Ghuzny; and before he was twelve, he was fighting with his father and his gallant tutor and general, Beiram Khan, in the fierce battles with the Patáns of Sikunder Shah, which were to decide his future glorious empire of India. To