Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's Deccan Campaigns: The War That Broke the Mughals
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- Lucas: Luna, we've covered a lot of Aurangzeb's policies and campaigns, but there's one thing that really defined the second half of his reign — the endless war in the Deccan. He spent nearly thirty years there, and it's often called the war that broke the Mughal Empire. Luna: Thirty years? That's longer than most rulers' entire reigns. Lucas: Exactly. It started around 1681, when Aurangzeb moved south personally to crush the Maratha rebellion and annex the last independent Deccan sultanates. He never returned to the north. He died in the Deccan in 1707, still fighting. Luna: So he basically moved his entire court to the battlefield? Lucas: Yes, the Mughal capital effectively shifted to his camp. Sources like the maasir i alamgiri describe a mobile city of tens of thousands of soldiers, servants, and administrators, constantly on the move. It was an immense logistical undertaking. Lucas: But the Marathas under Shivaji's son Sambhaji didn't fight pitched battles. They used guerrilla tactics — hit and run raids on supply lines, ambushes, and melting into the hills and forests. The Mughal heavy cavalry and artillery were often useless. Luna: So the Marathas had a home-field advantage. Lucas: Absolutely. The rugged terrain of the Western Ghats was perfect for their style of warfare. Aurangzeb tried to starve them out by building a chain of forts and controlling the passes, but the Marathas kept slipping through. Lucas: In 1689, the Mughals finally captured Sambhaji after a tip-off. He was tortured and executed in a gruesome public display. But instead of breaking the Marathas, it backfired. His brother Rajaram escaped to Gingee Fort in the Tamil region and continued the resistance. Luna: That fort at Gingee — I've heard it was considered almost impregnable. Lucas: It was. The Mughals besieged it for eight years, from 1689 to 1698. The siege became a symbol of Maratha defiance. Even after Gingee fell, Rajaram fled to the Deccan and the war ground on. The Mughals were winning battles but not the war. Luna: And all this must have cost a fortune. Lucas: It drained the imperial treasury. The maasir i alamgiri records that Aurangzeb spent vast sums on salaries, supplies, and fortifications. Revenue from the north was funneled south, leaving other provinces neglected. The empire was bleeding money. Lucas: By the early 1700s, the Mughal army was exhausted. The Deccan campaign was a quagmire. Aurangzeb's generals — men like Zulfiqar Khan — recommended negotiating with the Marathas, but the emperor refused. He insisted on total submission. Luna: It sounds like he couldn't let go of his vision of a unified empire. Lucas: Exactly. He saw it as a religious and imperial duty to crush the Maratha rebellion. But that stubbornness meant the war never ended. When Aurangzeb died in 1707, the Mughal Empire was militarily spent, its treasury empty, and the Marathas were on the rise. Lucas: And there's a deeper story here: the famine that accompanied these campaigns. The constant troop movements and requisitioning of grain caused widespread starvation in the Deccan. The maasir i alamgiri mentions villages abandoned, fields untilled. Luna: That's the human cost that often gets overlooked in the big strategic picture. Lucas: Right. And this is something we try to keep in mind on this show. We don't run ads — it's important to us that the conversation stays focused on the history, not on selling something. If you value that approach, you can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep these episodes free of interruptions. Luna: Yeah, it's a good way to make sure we can keep digging into stories like this. Lucas: So back to the Deccan — one of the most telling episodes was the siege of Wagingera, a Maratha fort that held out for years. The Mughals built siege works, used heavy cannon, but the defenders just kept repairing the walls at night. Luna: It must have been incredibly frustrating for the Mughal commanders. Lucas: Despite these setbacks, Aurangzeb never wavered. He personally led campaigns well into his eighties, riding in a litter because he couldn't mount a horse. His determination was legendary, but also self-destructive. Luna: So after his death, what happened? Did the Marathas take over? Lucas: Not immediately, but within a few decades, the Maratha Empire became the dominant power in India. The Mughals shrank to a rump state around Delhi. The Deccan war had effectively transferred power from the Mughals to the Marathas. Lucas: And it all started with Aurangzeb's decision to personally lead a campaign to pacify the south. It's a classic case of imperial overreach — a ruler's ambition exceeding his empire's capacity. Luna: It makes you wonder — what if he had made peace with the Marathas early on? Lucas: That's the great counterfactual. But Aurangzeb wasn't built for compromise. And that rigidity ultimately cost him everything he'd built.