User blog comment:GunsnadGlory/The Mughals Stay/@comment-32656-20120705221430/@comment-32656-20120708082354

Guns, you are being very biased on the subject. To the point where you really need to sit down and think about what you are saying some more,

Imp has part of it, Guns, with the European factor.

Even more so, however are the other factors involved.

The Roman Empire was never "renewed." Ever. Once it reached its zenith under Trajan, it did nothing but decline. Best you can do after the decline starts is to slow it down.

The Marathas did not succeed because the Mughals were "declining." While that didn't hurt their cause, it was far from the only reason. In fact, the Marathas were already by the proposed PoD in control of most of southern India. Aurangzeb managed to vassalize them after this point, if you could call it that, fairly peacefully. It did not last, and from there the Marthas managed to best - easily the local rulers and many generals, many of whom were the same both before, and after, the battle you are discussing as the PoD. The defeats had nothing whatsoever to do with the who ruled the empire.

The Marathas were warlike, capable of using the terrain to their advantage, capable of raising substantial numbers of men, and held great loyalty in the region. Nor were they revolting for religious reasons.

Heck, were it not for Aurangzeb, they would have expanded faster.

You are incorrect - Dara Shukoh was none of those things. More interested in the arts and religion than governing, and a poor military commander. About the only advantage he would have held over his brother was being more tolerant to the other religions of India.

Really, the influences of the European powers had little to do with the Mughal fall. Hell, they supported it. Did no good. Moreover, the Spanish and Portuguese were in no position to do anything, and had been declining for some time already by this point. The Dutch were concentrating elsewhere, and the French were almost non-existent. And the English were Mughal allies. Nor did they ever "invade" until the mutiny - centuries later.

The French and Brits ceased to be enemies following the Napoleonic Wars.

Moreover, the French military outnumbered the German militaries, who needed to bring up their reserves to have even parity - and that was with conscripts, not regular troops, something in which the French held a large advantage, and weeks before the Prussians and their Allies could mobilize. Their loss had little to do with "numbers" and everything to to with tactics. supply, and equipment. And even with the German states being fully mobilized, it was nowhere even close to "six times their number."

There is literally no way that all of those powers would ally with the Mughals against the Brits. Just impossible. Add to that the Portuguese being their allies. And the others far, far, far more concerned with each other.

Other factors?

This was far from the first war of succession - and far from the last. Common event, if you'll notice - and that was the case in the entire region. The more there is of these, the weaker it gets.

Not even the greatest Mughal Emperor - the father of the two princes, in fact - managed to get peace in the region, or to beat the Persians.

The expansion under Aurangzeb did not "hurt" them - rather, he removed most of their enemies, at least temporarily. Something which his father, and the emperors before them, had largely failed at. Not that it held, mind, but at least it lessened for a while.

Governors of various regions had been revolting and establishing themselves as independent since nearly the first day of the empire. Something which none of them managed to stop.

Their armies were sapped by all of this fighting - as was their treasury. Had been for decades by this point. And your PoD makes that worse. I mean, the Taj Mahal was being built at this point, among other massive excesses. And it cost more than their treasury to build it.

And then, no matter how much the rulers kept peace with the various religions, the non-Muslims hated them, and were constantly revolting.

And Guns, you've ignored all of that.