The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (31 page)

However, though Sikandar avoided wars of conquest, he, following the policies of his father, launched a number of campaigns to assert his authority over the provinces of the kingdom and to consolidate the state, so that the Sultanate under him became the most powerful state in the subcontinent, though still a dwarf compared to what it had been under Khaljis and Tughluqs. One of the main military challenges that Sikandar faced was to keep under control the ever turbulent Rajput chieftains, but he was largely successful in that endeavour. In 1504 he shifted his capital from Delhi to the new township he founded in Agra, partly to keep the Rajputs under close watch, but also because Delhi had by this time become quite dilapidated.

On the whole Sikandar’s reign was marked by peace and prosperity. Comments Ni’matullah: ‘During the springtime of his rule, the garden of the
world blossomed forth anew … On the cradle of his rule people lived in peace, security and contentment.’ The sultan, by his wise and moderate policies, ‘won the hearts of both the high and the low,’ states Abdullah. ‘During his reign everything was cheap, and safety and security prevailed … The public roads in his territory were so well secured that there was not a sign of highwaymen and robbers throughout his dominions … Grain, merchandise and goods of all description were so cheap during his reign that even people with small means could live comfortably … In his reign business was carried on in a peaceful, honest, straightforward way. A new sort of life obtained, for people high and low were polite, and self-respect, integrity, and devotion to religion prevailed, such as had never been the case in former reigns …

It was a wonderful age. All enjoyed peace.

In every house was pleasure and festivity …

No one saw rebellion, even in his dreams …’

Sikandar died in November 1517, at the age of 46, after a reign of 28 years and some months. ‘Sikandar was taken ill with a disease of the throat, which daily became worse,’ writes Abdullah. ‘[He] became weaker every day … [and] by degrees his illness arrived at such a pitch that his throat would allow him neither to swallow food nor to drink water, and the passage of his breath was choked.’

SIKANDAR WAS SUCCEEDED on the throne by his eldest son Ibrahim. His coronation was one of the grandest celebrations in the history of the Delhi Sultanate. ‘On that day, all those who were attached to the royal person prepared the tents, embroidered with gold and adorned with jewels, and spread carpets of various colours, worked with gold thread,’ writes Ahmad Yadgar, an early seventeenth century chronicler. ‘They placed the throne … covered with costly gems and jewels of great value, on a colourful carpet. The tributary kings and nobles wore beautiful dresses and embroidered garments … Horses and elephants were decked with the most magnificent trappings. So splendid a coronation had never been witnessed, and the people … long remembered the day on which this fortunate and youthful monarch obtained the crown.’ This was the last hurrah of the Delhi Sultanate.

On the accession of Ibrahim some of the nobles in Delhi persuaded him—presumably hoping to clip his power—to partition the empire and give Jalal Khan, his uterine brother, the independent charge of Jaunpur. Ibrahim acted on this suggestion. But a few months later some other nobles in Delhi warned him that he had committed a grave error in dividing the kingdom, because

Two souls cannot occupy one body,

Nor two monarchs one kingdom.

So Ibrahim revoked the arrangement with his brother and sought to repossess Jaunpur. Jalal naturally would not agree to this. ‘Sultan Ibrahim, of his own accord, gave me a portion of the inheritance which our father left, because I was his own brother, the son of the same mother,’ he asserted. ‘He has now broken the phial of the connection which we derived from our parent’s womb with the stone of unkindness.’ The issue evidently could be settled only on the battlefield. But Jalal was no match to Ibrahim, who chased him from place to place, finally captured him, and sent him to be imprisoned in the fort of Hansi, where his other four brothers were confined. But Jalal was assassinated on the way to Hansi, presumably on the order of Ibrahim.

Except for this ruthless act, the reign of Ibrahim was relatively clean, in so far as the reign of any medieval ruler could be clean. The prosperity that the Sultanate enjoyed under Buhlul continued under Ibrahim for a while. According to Abdullah, during Ibrahim’s reign ‘corn, clothes, and every kind of merchandise were cheaper than they had ever been known to be in any other reign, except perhaps in the time of Sultan Ala-ud-din Khalji, but even that is doubtful. Moreover, in the time of the later, the cheapness was achieved by means of every kind of disgusting interference and oppression, and by a hundred thousand enforcements and punishments; whereas the cheapness of … [farm produce in] this reign was occasioned by abundant harvests … Rain fell in the exact quantity that was needed, and the crops were consequently luxuriant, and the produce increased tenfold beyond the usual proportion.’

This state of peace and prosperity did not however last long. Presently one trouble after another began to beset the kingdom. ‘Sultan Sikandar’s death was followed by an internecine strife,’ notes Ni’matullah. ‘All his regulations were undone, low and mean persons won ascendency over the high and the noble, and caused disorder and disturbance. Administrative and financial affairs were thrown into total disorder. Although Sultan Ibrahim devised ways and adopted measures to rectify matters, these [very] steps unwittingly caused the undoing of his Sultanate.’

These problems were in part caused by the odd personality of Ibrahim. But the views of medieval chroniclers on this are rather confusing. According to Ni’matullah, the ‘wrath and violence of the sultan,’ his implacability and ‘ill temper, kept the courtiers and nobles of the realm in perpetual dread and suspicion.’ On the other hand, Yadgar states that Ibrahim was ‘celebrated for
his personal beauty and excellent disposition,’ though a few pages later he notes that some nobles held that the sultan was ‘fickle’ and of ‘evil disposition.’ Some even held that ‘the king had gone mad.’

These harsh condemnations of Ibrahim by the nobles probably have a good amount of exaggeration in them, and were tainted by their resentment of the disciplinary measures that the sultan imposed on them. Ibrahim was indeed a medieval tyrant, but he was not very much worse so than most other Delhi sultans. But he clearly did not trust his nobles, and suspected, rightly, malice in them towards him, and he sought to keep them on a tight leash.

Ibrahim wanted total subservience from his nobles, and, to achieve that goal he sought to create a suitable psychological distance between himself and them. This led to a further tightening of the formal court etiquette introduced by Sikandar. According to Ferishta, Ibrahim declared that ‘kings should have no relations or clansmen, but all should be considered as subjects and servants of the state. The Afghan chiefs, who had hitherto been allowed to sit in the [king’s] presence, were now constrained to stand in front of the throne, with their hands crossed on the breast.’

ALL THIS CREATED considerable resentment among the nobles, whose support was the very base on which the royal throne rested. The situation became worse after Ibrahim’s conquest of Gwalior, a Rajput kingdom that had long defied his predecessors. ‘When the sultan had conquered Gwalior … he waxed very proud, so that he began to maltreat and punish the nobles of his father,’ writes Yadgar. ‘[He] has put 23 of them … to death without any cause … Some he suspended from walls, and caused others to be burnt alive.’ Once he had a whole group of troublesome nobles exterminated by blowing up with gunpowder the building where they had assembled.

‘The sultan has lost his sense; he cannot distinguish between those who serve him well and those who serve him ill,’ commented a grandee. His capricious tyranny made many nobles writhe in anxiety, and it ignited several rebellions. But Ibrahim was also fortunate in having several dedicated nobles in his service, who would not under any circumstance betray him, not necessarily out of loyalty to his person, but out of loyalty to his dynasty. Thus when Azam Humayun, a top noble, was warned that Ibrahim might harm him, and that he should save himself by rebelling, he refused, even though he had then a cavalry force of 30,000 under his command. ‘I cannot act thus,’ he said. ‘I cannot turn aside and blacken my face, let what may happen.’ Predictably, he was presently imprisoned by Ibrahim, and later slain.

Ibrahim had several honourable grandees like Azam in his service, so he had no difficulty in crushing the rebel nobles. The real threat to his throne came from outside India, from Babur, the Mughal ruler of Kabul. But what
directly led to the invasion of Babur was the discontent of Ibrahim’s nobles, particularly of Daulat Khan Lodi, the long time governor of Punjab. His son, Dilwar Khan, who was in Delhi, had an inkling of the sultan’s ill will towards his father, so he secretly fled from Delhi to Punjab to warn his father. The warning threw Daulat Khan ‘into deep meditation,’ writes Yadgar. ‘He reflected that if he rebelled he would be accused of ingratitude, and that if he fell into the clutches of the sultan’s wrath, he would not escape alive.’ He also feared that he might not able to prevail over Ibrahim in a military confrontation. So he finally decided to send his son to Kabul to invite Babur to invade India and overthrow Ibrahim. Around this time Alam Khan, a disaffected uncle of Ibrahim, also made a similar appeal to Babur.

This was an opportune development for Babur, for he was at this time being menaced by Uzbegs on the west, and was thinking of India as a possible refuge. So in 1524 he invaded Punjab, and, in alliance with Daulat Khan, defeated the army sent against him by Ibrahim. But instead of handing over the province to the Khan, as the latter had expected, Babur annexed the province to his kingdom and appointed his own officers there. This resulted in the breakup of the alliance, so Babur returned to Kabul to prepare a fresh invasion. During his previous campaign his sole objective was to acquire Punjab as a safe retreat from the menace of the Uzbegs, but he had a much grander plan now, to conquer and rule over Hindustan.

In November 1525, Babur again set out from Kabul for India. He first consolidated his position in Punjab, and then sped—‘like a roaring lion’, as Yadgar puts it—south-eastward towards Delhi, and pitched his camp between Yamuna and the town of Panipat, some 80 kilometres north of Delhi.

Ibrahim Lodi was close by, to the south of Panipat, in a good blocking position to prevent the Mughals from advancing further into India. There was some disquiet in the Sultanate army at this time because some astrologers had predicted that Ibrahim would be defeated in the battle. This apparently induced Ibrahim to hold a grand celebration in his army camp on the day before the battle, to counter the demoralising effect of the astrological predictions and to inspirit his army.

Ibrahim, according to Yadgar, ‘summoned all his nobles and soldiers and ordered them to dress themselves in the best clothes they had with them. He caused his embroidered tents and satin canopies to be erected, and made all the preparations for a fiesta. He threw amongst them all the gold, jewels, pearls and
ashrafis
which he possessed, and said, “O friends, tomorrow we shall do battle with the Mughal army. If I gain victory, I will endeavour to please you; if I do not, be at least content with these presents and my declared intentions.” The whole of that day was spent in feasting and rejoicing. On the morrow they made ready for war.’

THE BATTLE BETWEEN the rival forces was fought on 20 April 1526. It was a fiercely contested battle—‘so desperate a battle, indeed, had never been seen,’ comments Yadgar. Still, the battle lasted only just a few hours, from sunrise to noon. And Babur, though his army was much smaller than that of Ibrahim, defeated him decisively through the use of clever and innovative tactics.

As the trend of the battle became evident, an Afghan noble appealed to Ibrahim to leave the battlefield, saying, ‘If the king is saved, it will be easy to find another army, and again make war against the Mughals.’ But Ibrahim rejected the plea. ‘O Mahmud Khan, it is a disgrace for kings to flee from the field of battle,’ he said. ‘Look here, my nobles, my companions, my well-wishers and friends have partaken of the cup of martyrdom … My horse’s legs are dyed with blood up to its chest … It is better that I should be like my friends, [lying] in the dust and in blood.’

And that was how it would be. Ibrahim fell in the battle, the first and only sultan of Delhi to die in battle. He had been much vilified in life, but death entirely redeemed his honour. After the battle, Babur went to see Ibrahim lying dead in the battlefield. He ‘beheld that powerful sultan prostrate in the dust and weltering in blood, the royal crown fallen from his head, the state canopy also on the ground,’ reports Yadgar. Ibrahim’s valour in battle elicited the admiration of Babur, and he had the sultan’s body shrouded richly, and buried honourably at the very spot where he had fallen.

‘Sultan Ibrahim’s reign lasted eight years, eight months and thirteen days,’ states Ni’matullah. ‘He was buried in the western suburb of Panipat and his resting place is now frequented by singers and minstrels. Pilgrims make offerings every Friday night to the departed spirit of the sultan and offer charity to the poor.’

Soon after the battle Babur sent his son Humayun to occupy and secure Agra, the Lodi capital. Babur followed him there presently, but did not immediately enter the city. He pitched his camp in the maidan outside Agra and remained there for a week, presumably waiting for an auspicious time to enter the city.

On 10 May 1526, he ceremoniously entered Agra and took up his residence in the royal palace there, as the emperor of Hindustan. And with that ended the over three centuries long history of the Delhi Sultanate.
¹

The Delhi Sultanate had attained its greatest territorial extent under Muhammad Tughluq, when it stretched over virtually the entire Indian subcontinent. But it was fancy rather than earnest purpose that motivated Muhammad in his conquests, and the final consequence of the venture, as in nearly everything else he did, was the opposite of what he desired, for the mammoth expansion of its territory made the empire ungovernable, and eventually, towards the end of his reign, led to the beginning of its disintegration. Though this process was interrupted during the reign of Firuz Tughluq—who sensibly focussed his attention on governing efficiently what remained of the empire, rather than on recovering the lost provinces—the atrophying of the empire accelerated after his death, so that by the end of the Tughluq dynasty, the Sultanate had shrunk in size to a tiny state, covering just the city of Delhi and its suburbs. There was some revival of the fortunes of the Sultanate under the Sayyid and Lodi dynasties, but the fate of the kingdom was finally sealed by the invasion of Babur in 1526.

The history of India during almost the entire period of the Delhi Sultanate was one of incessant wars, rebellions and internecine conflicts. The number of these rebellions and conflicts multiplied several times during the final phase of the Delhi Sultanate, when the subcontinent fragmented into numerous kingdoms, which constantly engaged each other in war.

The story of these warring splinter kingdoms, many of them quite small and transient, is dreary. In most cases what we know of their history is a bare list of their kings, the rebellions they faced, and the battles they fought. And even the veracity of these incidents is in many cases uncertain, as their accounts vary from chronicler to chronicler, depending on their partisan affiliation. No
worthwhile story can be told of them. The process of the fragmentation of the Sultanate, and the perpetual clashes between these fragments that went on during this period, are, as historical trends, very significant, but the details of the history of the numerous individual kingdoms are of little significance. The pattern of events is important, but not the details of individual events.

THE MOST NOTABLE of the numerous successor kingdoms of the Delhi Sultanate were Sind, Multan, Rajput principalities, Gujarat, Malwa, Khandesh, Jaunpur, Kashmir, Bengal, Orissa, Telingana, Bahmani, and Vijayanagar. Some of the kings of these states were legendary characters, of varied and rich talents, and they deserve to be noticed. One of these notable kings was Rana Kumbha, the mid-fifteenth century ruler of the Rajput kingdom of Mewar. He was a celebrated playwright, an eminent literary critic who wrote an acclaimed commentary on Jayadeva’s
Gita Govinda
, and was a knowledgeable patron of musicians and architects. Unfortunately, he later went insane and was assassinated by his son.

Equally notable was Sultan Mahmud Begarha of Gujarat, though for entirely different reasons. A late contemporary of Rana Kumbha, Begarha’s very appearance was bizarre. He was a gigantic man, with a beard that reached down to his waist, and a moustache that was so long that it had to be pulled up over both sides of his face and tied into a coiffure. Also, he had a gargantuan appetite, to match his size. And, most curious of all, he took a swig of poison with his meals, which turned his breath, sweat, spittle, semen, urine and faeces deadly poisonous. Not surprisingly, Begarha’s sexual appetite matched his size, and he is said to have kept several thousand women in his harem—he needed so many of them, for every woman he slept with died soon after the coitus, poisoned by his deadly ejaculation.
¹

Among the provinces of the Delhi Sultanate, the one that occupied the most unique position was Bengal, which pulsed to a rhythm somewhat different from that of the other regions of the empire. Bengal had always enjoyed a fair amount of autonomy, because of its ethnic and cultural distinctiveness, and its great distance from Delhi. And it invariably broke free from the Sultanate at the first sign of political debility in Delhi. The region also went through some very peculiar political convulsions during the medieval period. And it has the distinction of being the only medieval Muslim state ever to be ruled by a Hindu. According to Ferishta, the de facto ruler of Bengal in the early fifteenth century was a Hindu zamindar named Ganesa.

Ganesa exercised regal powers for about seven years, but apparently without assuming the royal title. But his son, who became a Muslim, did ascend the
throne, and the dynasty remained in power for nearly a quarter century, but was eventually ousted by a member of the resurgent old dynasty. After this, in the late fifteenth century, Bengal was ruled by Ethiopians for a few years, and then by an Arab.

As in Bengal, the politics of Kashmir too did not quite conform to the Indo-Gangetic Plain pattern. Buddhism had been the dominant religion of Kashmir for many centuries, but it virtually disappeared from there in early medieval times. The state however came under a Buddhist king briefly in the early fourteenth century, when Rinchana, an invader from western Tibet, established his rule there. Rinchana was however a Buddhist only nominally, and was quite savage in his conduct—once, while suppressing a rebellion, he not only impaled the rebels but ‘ripped open with sword the wombs of the wives of his enemies’ and tore out the foetuses in them. But at the other end of the political spectrum, Kashmir in the fifteenth century had the distinction of having had one of the most liberal and tolerant Muslim rulers of medieval India, Zaynul Abidin, who rebuilt some of the Hindu temples demolished by his predecessor, prohibited cow slaughter, permitted sati, allowed the Hindus who had been forcibly converted to Islam to revert to their ancestral faith, and encouraged Brahmins to occupy high official positions.

OF ALL THE many independent kingdoms that emerged out of the fragmented Delhi Sultanate, the most important were two peninsular kingdoms, Bahmani and Vijayanagar, both founded at around the same time: Vijayanagar in 1336 and Bahmani a decade later, in 1347. The histories of these two kingdoms, like that of most other Indian kingdoms of this age, are marked by periodic internal turmoils, internecine conflicts, and endless wars with their neighbours. But unlike the histories of most other kingdoms of the age, which are bare lists of events, there is a good amount of detailed information about these two states and their rulers, in the accounts of Muslim chroniclers, as well as of foreign travellers who visited the region at this time, so their stories can be told in some detail.

Of these two kingdoms, the Bahmani Sultanate endured as a unified state for only about a century and a half, till 1490, and then gradually broke up into five independent kingdoms. However, titular Bahmani sultans continued to occupy their throne till 1527, so that the Sultanate may be said to have endured nominally for 180 years. Vijayanagar endured longer as a unified state, for 229 years, till 1565, when the armies of a league of Deccani sultans in a joint campaign routed the Vijayanagar army in a decisive battle and reduced the kingdom to the status of a minor state. Eventually, even this truncated kingdom fragmented into a number of independent principalities. However, the last reigning dynasty of Vijayanagar survived till the mid-seventeenth century, ruling
over Chandragiri, a small realm in South India, so the history of Vijayanagar may be said to have lasted in all for 300-odd years. In the end nearly all the peninsular kingdoms, of rajas as well as of sultans, were obliterated during the tidal sweep of the Mughal empire into the peninsula in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The primary activity of the Bahmani and Vijayanagar kings, as well as of the kings of their successor states, was to wage war against each other, and this went on all through their history. These were singularly savage wars, involving the slaughter of very many thousands of people, soldiers as well as civilians. According to Ferishta, during the reign of the mid-fourteenth century Bahmani sultan Muhammad Shah ‘nearly 500,000 unbelievers fell by the swords of the warriors of Islam, by which the population of the Carnatic was so reduced that it did not recover for several ages.’

Curiously, these wars were fought not to exterminate the enemy, but to gather plunder and to collect tribute—and, most importantly, to vaingloriously demonstrate the military prowess of kings. It was a game, but a savage game. Some districts of the enemy territory were sometimes annexed by the victor, but there was hardly ever any annexation of the whole enemy kingdom. For instance, the only major territory that changed hands back and forth, again and again, during the numerous wars between Vijayanagar and Bahmani kingdoms was the fertile and mineral rich Raichur Doab between Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers. And, although the warring peninsular kings usually belonged to rival religions, Hinduism and Islam, this divergence was hardly ever a decisive factor in their relationships, though a religious colouration was sometimes given to their wars, to rouse the zeal of the soldiers, and to justify the brutal reprisals that the adversaries inflicted on each other. Indeed, Hindu and Muslim rulers at times allied with each other to wage wars against the states ruled by kings of their own religion.

THE BAHMANI KINGDOM had in all eighteen sultans in its 180-year long history, though its last five sultans were mere figureheads. The kingdom was founded during the political turmoil of the closing years of the reign of Muhammad Tughluq, when several of his provincial chieftains rebelled against him and founded independent kingdoms. One such chieftain was Hasan Gangu, who seized control of Daulatabad and set himself up as an independent ruler there. On his investiture he took the title Ab’ul Muzaffar Ala-ud-din Bahman Shah, so the kingdom he founded came to be known as the Bahmani Sultanate.

There is considerable uncertainty about Hasan’s background. According to a fascinating but improbable story told by Ferishta, Hasan was originally a farm labourer, who one day, while ploughing his master’s field on the outskirts of Delhi, dug up a copper pot full of gold coins, and he dutifully took it to
the landlord, a Brahmin named Gangu. And Gangu, awestruck by Hasan’s probity, took him to the sultan, who then rewarded him by appointing him a captain in his army. The Brahmin then predicted, on the basis of the astrological calculations he made, that Hasan would one day become a king. And this destiny Hasan eventually fulfilled.

Other medieval sources tell a less romantic but more vaunting story, and trace Hasan’s ancestry to the ancient Persian king Bahman. Ferishta however dismisses this story as a fabrication by the sycophantic courtiers of the sultan. ‘I believe his origin was too obscure to be traced,’ Ferishta states, and goes on to assert that Hasan took the appellation Bahman as a ‘compliment to his former master … the Brahmin, a word often pronounced as Bahman. The king himself was by birth an Afghan.’

Hasan ascended the throne in August 1347 and ruled for eleven years. A short while after his accession he shifted his capital from Daulatabad to the southern city of Gulbarga, presumably to be further away from Delhi. Over the next few years he consolidated his position by launching a number of military campaigns, to subdue refractory chieftains, to expand his territory, to exact tribute, and to seize plunder and war materials. The perennial conflict between the Bahmani Sultanate and the Vijayanagar kingdom also began during the reign of Hasan, in the very second year of his reign. This was followed by another clash five years later. The results of these campaigns are given differently by the two kingdoms, each claiming victory over the other. However that may be, by the end of Hasan’s reign the Bahmani Sultanate covered a fairly large area in central Deccan, from the Tungabhadra northward up to the Penganga, and from the Telingana Plateau westward up to the Arabian Sea, covering parts of Marathi, Kannada and Telugu linguistic regions. Hasan regarded his military achievements to be grand enough for him to assume the title Second Alexander and stamp it on his coins, probably in imitation of Ala-ud-din Khalji.

HASAN DIED IN 1358, aged 67, after a prolonged illness, and was succeeded by his eldest son Muhammad Shah I. Muhammad’s mettle was tested right at the beginning of his reign by the Hindu kingdoms of Warangal and Vijayanagar, each impudently demanding that he should surrender certain territories to it. Muhammad met that insolence with an even greater insolence on his part, by treating the two rajas as his vassals, and accusing them of neglecting to send him, their overlord, the customary presents on his accession. He then demanded that they should therefore send to him, in reparation for their discourtesy, all their elephants loaded with treasures. Warangal’s response to this was to send an army to seize the territory it demanded from the sultan. But the raja was defeated in the ensuing battle, and he had to purchase peace by sending
to the sultan a large quantity of gold coins and several war elephants. The peace between them did not however last long, and hostilities between the two kingdoms broke out again and again in the following years. The raja was the loser in all those battles, and he had to surrender to the sultan the fortress of Golconda, and even his treasured turquoise throne, which thereafter became the throne of the Bahmani kings.

Bukka, the Vijayanagar king, too had no success against Muhammad. The raja invaded the Raichur Doab soon after Muhammad’s accession, hoping to annex that rich region to his kingdom. But on Muhammad’s impetuous advance against him, Bukka, ‘not withstanding his vast army consisting of 30,000 cavalry, besides infantry,’ hastily retreated, reports Ferishta. But the raja left behind a good part of his camp, presumably to entice the enemy soldiers to plunder the camp, and thus distract them from pouncing on him. The Bahmani army then, according to Ferishta, swept into the defenceless camp, and ‘put to death, without distinction, men, women, children, free and slave, to the number of 70,000 souls.’

The sultan then crossed the Tungabhadra into Vijayanagar territory. Meanwhile Bukka reassembled his scattered forces and turned to confront Muhammad. The ensuing battle was hard-fought and lasted from dawn till evening, in which the Bahmani army suffered heavy losses. Its wings were routed early on and their commanders killed, but its centre held, and in the end it prevailed over the Vijayanagar army by the effective use of its artillery—manned by European and Middle Eastern gunners—and by the headlong charge of its cavalry. Bukka then retreated into the fortified city of Vijayanagar. Muhammad did not have the means to storm the city, so he turned to ravage the countryside, indulging in unconscionable, indiscriminate slaughter of thousands and thousands of people.