It might be an underappreciated fact, but politics in the rest of the world was not the same as it was in Europe in the ‘early modern’ period. As noted in the last campaign, the death of a ruler in Burma (or in Mexico) did not lead to the eldest son immediately gaining power. The situation was, perhaps, a bit more like what happened after the death of William the Conqueror, Henry II, or Alexander III of Macedon: a bit of a free-for-all.
Thus we come to India, towards the end of the reign of Shah Jahan, Mogul Emperor. He had four sons, Dara Shuhoh, Shah Shuja, Aurangzeb, and Murad Bakhsh (with all due apologies for the spelling…). Shah Jahan had become increasingly reclusive and stayed in the fort at Agra, so the empire was, more or less, under the control of his eldest and favourite son Dara. Shah Shuja, the second son was in Bengal, Aurangazeb governor of the Deccan and Murad in Gujerat. The Imperial army, therefore was under the control of Dara, but Aurangazeb also had an army, and stop–go orders from Agra to capture Golconda and Bijapur further south. The stop-go orders were because the rulers or those states tended to deliver massive bribes to Agra to call Aurangazeb off, much to his frustration.
In late 1657 Shah Jahan fell ill, and none of the brothers apart from Dara knew what was going on, and Dara decided not to let them know anything much. Thus they immediately became concerned for their own position and started jockeying for advantage. The fact was that only one of them, really, stood a chance of surviving. Only one could be the Emperor.
A glance at the map (above) might clarify matters. The yellow and red pins mark Agra, Dara, and the Rajput army under Jai Singh, while the blue pin is Shah Shuja, on the move with an army having plundered Calcutta to obtain funds. The orange pin is Murad while the pink is Aurangazeb. In the south, the white pin is the Maratha army, who are a bit of a disruptive force in the game but inactive at present, while the green and blue are Bijaper (Afzal Khan) and Golconda (Mir Jumla). If you look at the picture closely you can see my scribbled notes in the bottom margin.
Putting the pins in the map actually helped to make sense of a number of things from the historical accounts. There is always something to be gained, I suppose, by setting it out visually rather than just reading about a situation. Murad and Aurangzeb are quite close together (relatively speaking – India is a big place), so it makes sense that historically they had some sort of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ and did not fight each other, at least initially. The other stand-out observation is that Shah Shuja is a long way from where he needs to be to influence events, so it is perhaps less surprising that he was the first to move, historically, and declared himself emperor.
The map actually shows the campaign after a couple of moves. There has been some diplomacy and some attempts at subversion already, with the results recorded on a diplomacy grid (see the book, p 121 for a brief outline of these). Here I have developed the idea a bit further. The four brothers and four non-brother forces (Shah Jahan is not active) have four option – to plunder, to move an army, to send out diplomats and to subvert. Aurangzeb was a well-known subverter, incidentally, on one occasion convincing the Rajputs that the Rajput allied brother and Aurangzeb himself were going to destroy the Rajput army, and it was a trap. The Rajputs fled, leaving Aurangazeb to face only the small forces of his brother.
On the diplomacy chart, a diplomatic activity gets you to a matched roll on the relevant row and column to see if your relationship with others (and theirs to you) goes up or down. Plundering a city costs you diplomatic points, however, and declaring yourself emperor (only open to a brother) also loses you DPs. Subversion matches your relationship with another with theirs with a friend or ally and reduces their DP relationship if successful. Lots of fun and games are possible here.
In the second turn, February 1658 (I am sure that India has a different month designation, but I don’t know it) Jai Singh has moved his army to Agra to support Dara, Shah Shuja has started to move as already noted and Afzal Khan has attacked Golconda.
The latter event of course sparked a wargame, although the thought of non-Mogul forces fighting each other outside the civil war context had not really occurred to me, except, perhaps, for Maratha raids. Anyway, the dice and cards determined the result, and so a wargame was to be fought. The armies are based on my original 100 AP condensed scale DBR forces, adjusted to 12 base plus a general forces. In this case, I had to raid the Burmese for some extra swordsmen, although in retrospect I could have raided my ancient Indians.
The raiding requirement came about because, during the great rebasing a few years ago, I put the Indian archers, musketeers, and swordsmen two (Irregular) strips to a base, hereby halving the numbers available. This was, in retrospect, probably a mistake, as much of the rest remains one strip to a base. On the other hand, the Aztecs were rebased one to a strip and really needed two. But I cannot, at present, face rebasing the Aztecs again, nor, for the matter of that, the Indians or Russians, who also really need it.
Actually, I am finding that only the Western Europeans of the 16th and !7th Centuries look better two deep. I am not entirely sure why that is, but it is the case. The problem here is, of course, that I could spend most of my wargaming time rebasing toy soldiers and not fighting wargames. Rebasing is fairly simple, granted, but it is a bit dull, so improvisation is the name of the game.
So, enough scene setting. Next time, the battle will have to commence.
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