etained much of its
Hindu organisation; its system of village and district administration
and government; its division into numerous little chieftainships, or
petty local governments; and, in political revolutions, the people
looked much more to their own immediate rulers than to the prince who
governed in the capital.' In a word, never having realised the
working of a well-ordered system, emanating from one all-powerful
centre, they regarded the latest conqueror as an intruder whom it
might be their interest to oppose.

The dread thus engendered by the arrival of a new invader, whose
character and whose dispositions were alike unknown, was increased by
the machinations of the Muhammadan adherents of the old families.
These men argued that the success of the Mughal invader meant ruin to
them. They spared no pains, then, to impress upon the Hindu
population that neither their temples nor their wives and daughters
would be safe from the rapine and lust of the barbarians of Central
Asia. Under the influence of a terror produced by these warnings the
Hindus fled from before the merciful and generous invader as he
approached Agra, {37} preferring the misery of the jungle to the
apparent certainty of outrage.

To add to Babar's troubles, there arose at this period discontent in
his army. The men composing it were to a great extent mountaineers
from the lofty ranges in Eastern Afghanistan. These men had followed
their King with delight so long as there was a prospect of fighting.
But Panipat had given them Northern India. The march from Delhi to
Agra was a march through a deserted country, at a season always hot,
but the intense heat of which, in 1526, exceeded the heat of normal
years. Like the Highlanders of our own Prince Charlie in '45, these
highlanders murmured. They, too, longed to return to their mountain
homes. The disaffection was not confined to the men. Even the chiefs
complained; and their complaints became so loud that they at last
reached the ears of Babar.

Babar had been greatly pleased with his conquest. Neither the heat
nor the disaffection of the inhabitants had been able to conceal from
him the fact that he had conquered the finest, the most fertile, the
most valuable part of Asia. In his wonderful memoirs[1] he devotes
more than twenty large printed pages to describe it. 'It is a
remarkably fine country,' he begins. 'It is quite a different world
compared with our countries.' He saw almost at a glance