March, 1558. Bairam Khan was
still, in actual management of affairs, the Atalik, the tutor, of the
sovereign, and he continued to be so during the two years that
followed, 1558 and 1559. It is not easy for a young boy to shake off
all at once the influence of a great general under whom he had been
placed to learn his trade, and possibly Akbar, though he did not
approve many of the acts {86} authorised in his name by his Atalik,
did not feel himself strong enough to throw off the yoke. But the
removal by the strong hand of men whom Akbar liked, but who had
incurred without reason the enmity of Bairam, gradually estranged the
heart of the sovereign from his too autocratic minister. The
estrangement, once begun, rapidly increased. Bairam did not recognise
the fact that every year was developing the strong points in the
character of his master; that he was adding experience and knowledge
of affairs to the great natural gifts with which he had been endowed.
He still continued to see in him the boy of whom he had been the
tutor, whose armies he had led to victory, and whose dominions he was
administering. The exercise of power without a check had made the
exercise of such power necessary to him, and he continued to wield it
with all the self-sufficiency of a singularly determined nature.

Round every young ruler there will be men who will never fail to
regard the exercise by another of authority rightly pertaining to him
as a grievous wrong to the ruler and to themselves. It is not
necessary to inquire into the motives of such men. For one reason or
another, often doubtless of a selfish, rarely of a pure and
disinterested nature, they desire the young and rightful master of
the State to be the dispenser of power and patronage. That there was
a cluster of such men about Akbar, of men who disliked Bairam, who
had been injured by him, who expected from the prince favours which
they could not hope to {87} obtain from the minister, is certain.
Female influence was also brought to bear on the mind of the
sovereign. His nurse, who had attended on him from his cradle until
after his accession, and who subsequently became the chief of his
harem, urged upon him that the time had arrived when he should take
the administration into his own hands. Akbar was not unwilling. He
was in his eighteenth year. The four years he had lived since Panipat
had restored to him part of the inheritance of his father, had been
utilised by him in a manner