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Updated: May 27, 2025
Aurengzebe, who, in the same month in which Oliver Cromwell died, assumed the magnificent title of Conqueror of the World, continued to reign till Anne had been long on the English throne. He was the sovereign of a larger territory than had obeyed any of his predecessors. His name was great in the farthest regions of the West.
As he himself so finely and characteristically says in "Aurengzebe," there was no period in his life when it was not true of him that "He felt the inspiring heat, the absent god return." The verses which follow are full of him, and, with the exception of the single word underwent, are in his luckiest manner: "One loose, one sally of a hero's soul, Does all the military art control.
In the pursuit of these, our path should wind, had we time to take the longest, among deserts and lands of darkness, phoenixes and griffins and sphinxes, human monsters, and more monstrous gods, the courts of Akbhar and Aurengzebe, palaces of the Mogul and the Kathayan Khan, pigmies, monkey-gods, mummies, Fakeers, dancing-girls, tattooed warriors, Thugs, cannibals, Fetishes, human sacrifices, and the Evil Eye, Chinese politeness, Bedouin honor, Bechuana simplicity, the plague, the amok, the bearding of lions, the graves of hero-travellers, flowers in the desert, and the universal tenderness of women.
The advance of the latter, indeed, has probably reached its limit, some twenty leagues outside the extreme south-western corner. The former is still fain to depend largely on Bernier, the Frenchman who visited Kashmir two centuries ago in the train of the Mogul emperor Aurengzebe.
The conqueror, who should lay waste vast portions of the globe, and destroy mighty cities, so that "thorns should come up in the palaces, and nettles in the fortresses thereof, and they should be a habitation of serpents, and a court for owls, and the wild beasts of the desert should meet there," would only do what Tamerlane, and Aurengzebe, and Zingis, and a hundred other conquerors, in every age and quarter of the world, had done before.
Among the other buildings, the one most worthy of notice is the Mosque of Aurengzebe, famous on account of its two minarets, which are 150 feet in height, and reported to be the slenderest in the world. They resemble a couple of needles, and certainly better deserve the name than that of Cleopatra at Alexandria.
It appeared that Aurengzebe had contemptuously granted to the English, in consideration of their penitence and of a large tribute, his forgiveness for their past delinquency, had charged them to behave themselves better for the future, and had, in the tone of a master, laid on them his commands to remove the principal offender, Sir John Child, from power and trust.
Whether Aurengzebe paid much attention to the charges brought by infidel Franks against each other may be doubted. But it is certain that a complete rupture took place between his deputies and the servants of the Company. On the sea the ships of his subjects were seized by the English. On land the English settlements were taken and plundered.
Chandernagore, on the Ganges, or rather that mouth of it now known as the River Hugli, was founded in 1676; and in 1688 the town and territory were ceded to France by the Emperor Aurengzebe. I know of no plan of Chandernagore in the 17th century, and those of the 18th are extremely rare.
Plays of all Sorts have their several Advocates: All for Love is mentioned in above fifteen Letters; Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow, in a Dozen; The Innocent Adultery is likewise highly approved of; Mithridates King of Pontus has many Friends; Alexander the Great and Aurengzebe have the same Number of Voices; but Theodosius, or The Force of Love. carries it from all the rest.
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