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It was a very daring venture, for his entire following numbered but two hundred and forty men. He made the attempt, was foiled; renewed it, and succeeded. He was but just in time. For the last of the garrison had but just yielded, when the chief of the Uzbeks was seen riding hard for the place, at the head of the vanguard of his army. He had to retire, baffled.

With the notable exceptions of Ukraine and the Czech Republic, east Europeans approve of their religious leaders. Ukrainians distrust their military but all other nationalities are fond of the armed forces. The media and journalists are universally highly rated as positive social influences. Russians and Uzbeks are concerned about lack of housing.

It was in the beginning of the thirty-first year of his reign that Akbar heard of the death of his brother at Kábul, and that the frontier province of Badakshán had been overrun by the Uzbeks, who also threatened Kábul. The situation was grave, and such as, he concluded, imperatively required his own presence.

I must pass lightly over the proceedings of the next seven years, eventful though they were. In those years, from 1507 to 1514, Bábar marching northwards, recovered Fergháná, defeated the Uzbeks, and took Bokhára and Samarkand. But the Uzbeks, returning, defeated Bábar at Kulmalik, and forced him to abandon those two cities.

But Bábar could not keep his conquest. The following spring the Uzbeks returned in force. To foil them Bábar took up a very strong position outside the city, on the Bokhára road, his right flank covered by the river Kohik. Had he been content to await his enemy in this position, he would probably have compelled him to retire, for it was too strong to be forced.

Allah-u-dín Lodí, to whom the district of Dipálpúr had been consigned, fled in despair to Kábul, hoping that Bábar would himself undertake the invasion of India. At the moment Bábar could not comply, for the Uzbeks were laying siege to Balkh. However he supplied Allah-u-dín with troops and ordered his generals in the Punjab to support him.

The treatment of the rebel, though not unduly severe, had spread in the minds of the Uzbek nobles at the court and in the army the impression that the Emperor disliked men of that race, and three or four of them combined to give him a lesson. The rebellion broke out in the autumn of the year at Jaunpur, the governor of which the Uzbeks had secured to their interests.

Only two fifths of Czechs are satisfied with their own life or with the state of their nation. Three quarters are unhappy with the world at large. The figures are even way lower in Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine. Only Uzbeks are content, probably for want of knowing better. In Russia, less than one fifth are at ease with their life, their country, or the world.

The Uzbeks, however, repulsed him, and he returned to Kábul for the winter of 1550. Then ensued a very curious scene. Kámrán, whose failure to join Humáyún in the expedition against Balkh had been the main cause of his retreat, and who had subsequently gone into open rebellion, had, after Humáyún's defeat, made a disastrous campaign on the Oxus, and had sent his submission to Humáyún.

The Uzbeks, however, forced him to raise the siege, and, his own dominions having in the interval been overrun and conquered, he fell back in the direction of Kesh, his birthplace. After many adventures and strivings with fortune, he resolved with the aid of the very few adherents who remained to him, to return and attempt the surprise of Samarkand.