s own servants.

But Humayun had no sooner regained his strength than he marched to
recover his capital. Defeating, in the suburbs, a detachment of the
best troops of Kamran, he established his head-quarters on the
Koh-Akabain which commands the town, and commenced to cannonade it.
The fire after some days became so severe and caused so much damage
that, to stop it, Kamran sent to his brother to declare that unless
the fire should cease, he would expose the young Akbar on the walls
at the point where it was hottest.[2] {57} Humayun ordered the firing
to cease. He continued the siege, however, and on the 28th of April
(1547) entered the city a conqueror. Kamran had escaped the previous
night.

[Footnote 2: Abulfazl relates in the Akbarnana that the prince
actually was exposed, and Haidar Mirza, Badauni, Ferishta, and others
follow him; but Bayazid, who was present, though he minutely
describes other atrocities in his memoirs, does not mention this;
whilst Jouher, in his private memoirs of Humayun, a translation of
which by Major Charles Stewart appeared in 1832, states the story as
I have given it in the text.]

Kamran had fled to Badakshan. Thither Humayun followed him. But, in
the winter that followed, some of his most powerful nobles revolted,
and deserted to Kamran. Humayun, after some marches and
countermarches, determined in the summer of 1548 to make a decisive
effort to settle his northern dominions. He marched, then, in June
from Kabul, taking with him Akbar and Akbar's mother. On reaching
Gulbahan he sent back to Kabul Akbar and his mother, and marching on
Talikan, forced Kamran to surrender. Having settled his northern
territories the Emperor, as he was still styled, returned to Kabul.

He quitted it again, in the late spring of 1549, to attempt Balkh, in
the western Kunduz territory. The Uzbeks, however, repulsed him, and
he returned to Kabul for the winter of 1550. Then ensued a very
curious scene. Kamran, whose failure to join Humayun in the
expedition against Balkh had been the main cause of his retreat, and
who had subsequently gone into open rebellion, had, after Humayun's
defeat, made a disastrous campaign on the Oxus, and had sent his
submission to Humayun. That prince, consigning the government of
Kabul to Akbar, then {58} eight years old, with Muhammad Kasim Khan
Birlas as his tutor, marched from the capital to gain possession of
the person of his brother. So careless, however, were his movement