LUCKNOW fifty years after the death of Aurangzeb, the foundations of the Empire which Baber created and Akbar, Jehangir and Shan Jehan consolidated, were mined to the centre and the Viceroys of the provinces tablished independent kingdoms for themselves. In the south the Turki Chin Kilich Khan, better known as Nizam-ul-Mulk (Regulator of the Kingdom), a capable mander of great personal courage and proud spirit, made himself de facto sovereign of the wide dominion which his descendants, the Nizams of Hyderabad, govern this day. In Hindustan the Persian Sadat Khan, whose original name was Muhammad Amin, carved out of the great Gangetic plain the modern kingdom of Oude. Dow, the historian, spoke of his grandson as " the infamous son of a yet more infamous Persian pedlar," a phrase which raised the ire of Burke. Sadat Khan's ancestors were, as Burke stated, " of noble descent," tracing their origin to the Prophet himself : and they had been long settled at Naishapur in Khor5.san. His father had served the Moghul Emperor, and on the son coming to India he was appointed by the Emperor, Governor of Agra. He took an important part in the overthrow of the Saiads,' and for his services he was appointed by the Emperor Muhammad Shah, Subandar of Oude (1720). torians do not agree as to whether Sadat Khan in concert with Nizam-ul-Mulk, called in the Persian soldier of fortune, Nadir Shah, but there is no doubt that their rivalry led to the defeat of the Moghul Army at Kurnal (i738) and the subsequent sack of Delhi. Sadat Khan was taken prisoner and died before the close of the year. " Ajodhya (the ancient capital) and Lucknow were the places at which he chiefly resided, and having assumed for his crest the fish which is still, so to speak, the arms of Oude, he changed the name of the well known fort of Lucknow from Kila Likna (so called after the founder, one Likna Ahur) to Machi Bhawan or the fish-house." Sadat was succeeded by his nephew and son-in-law, who was appointed by the Moghul Emperor, Vizier of the Empire, or Prime Minister, and so was the first to be called Nawab Vizier ; but he lost the favour of the Emperor and was superseded as Premier of the Empire by Ghazi-ud-din, the grandson of Nizam-ul-Mulk.
He retired to his own kindgom and died in 1756. He was succeeded by his son, Shuja-ud-daulah, who had married the Bhow Begum, a Persian lady, but by no means, as Burke alleged, " of the first birth and quality in India," for her grandfather had been Aurangzeb's head cook. Her griev ances have been immortalized by the fervid oratory of the accusers of Warren Hastings. But those who knew her describe her as a woman of uncommonly violent temper. " Death and destruction is the least menace she denounces upon the most trifling opposition to her caprice." Her main object was the extirpation of the English and their power in Hindustan. Her husband, jealous of their growing ascendancy on the coast, and having the Nawab of Mursheda bad and the titular Emperor of Delhi in his camp, thought the opportunity favourable for an invasion of Bengal. At Buxar on the Ganges, he and his army of fifty thousand men were met by Hector Munro with a small force. Shuja ud-daulah, after a bloody contest, was signally defeated, and his camp and one hundred and sixty guns enriched the victorious troops. It is the battle of Buxar and not the rout at Plassey which laid the foundation of our Empire. It broke the power of the Nawab of Oude ; it led to the Moghul Emperor coming to our camp to negotiate ; and it took our arms across the Ganges into the wide central plain of India. Clive having assumed under a grant from the Emperor of Delhi the direct revenue administration of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, congratulated his masters on " having become the sovereigns of three kingdoms," but to extend their possessions further would be " a scheme so extravagantly ambitious that no government in its senses would dream of it." He determined to restore to the Nawab Vizier, Oude, Ghazepoor and Benares, and to maintain and strengthen the new state as the buffer state between Bengal and the Mahrattas and the Afghans. The districts of Korah and Allahabad were given to the titular Moghul Emperor, who thus became a dependant of the Bengal Government.