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Conquest — Description

The Mughals were Muslims who ruled a powerful empire in India for hundreds of years, beginning when the empire's founder, Babur, defeated the forces of the Delhi Sultanate at the First Battle of Panipat on April 21, 1526. Now, when the Mughals first took control, India had already been quite chaotic. The Portuguese Templars had been trying to gain control of Calicut with the help of their friend, Vasco de Gama, who laid siege to the city and tried to expel all Muslims in the area in an effort to murder all the local Assassins. However, the Assassins ultimately stopped their plans and worked day and night to repair the damage the Templars left on the innocent lives of India. In came the Mughals, and an unsteady alliance formed between the two groups, the Assassins wanting to repair and unify India out of good will towards others, and the Mughals generally just wanting influence over the land.

Now since Muslims were vastly outnumbered by Hindus in India, the Mughals knew they had to find a way to incorporate both cultures in order to stay in favor. And while this worked to an extent, the Mughal rulers often had to resort to violence and conquering in order to stay in power. As you can imagine, the Assassins didn't much like the way the new rulers treated the civilians. But as I said before, the relationship between the two was complicated. Babur’s grandson, Akbar, became ruler of the Empire in 1556 and he would hold the position until his death in 1605. Akbar, despite the nice quote on the picture up there, had a nasty habit of conquering new territories in rather violent ways, like when he crushed the Rajputs in the Battle of Gogunda in 1576. True, because of him and his policies the Empire grew extremely wealthy and somewhat culturally tolerant, he was the kind of guy who locked up babies and denied them any human contact in the name of pseudo-scientific hypotheses. That is sadly not a joke. He actually did that.

Welp, I'll just go ahead and add him to the list of people I would not invite to a party. Dang this list is getting long

Anyways, at this point, the Assassins pretty much said, “You know what? Screw you guys. You all suck.” And thus devoted their time to keeping the people of India free from Mughal oppression, mostly by assisting in riots and helping citizens step away from being dependant on Mughal policy to survive, much like how the Italian Assassins did to combat the Borgia during the Renaissance.

Shah Jahan, Akbar’s grandson, took the throne in 1628, and under his rule the Empire flourished in architecture. In the 1650s, he had the Taj Mahal built as a massive tomb for his wife. But, his projects also drove the Empire into terrible economic struggle since they were so expensive, giving the Assassins yet another mess to clean up. Things didn't get any better when Shah Jahan’s son, Aurangzeb, took the throne in 1658. Aurangzeb’s rule was defined by intolerance towards other cultures and an overall sense of unfairness and oppression. By the end of his rule, the people of India were fed up and thus the Assassins helped them rise in rebellion all across the Empire. While this didn't end Mughal rule, it certainly made Aurangzeb’s life a royal pain up until his death in 1707.

For the next century, the Mughal Empire just kept going downhill. Dozens of Emperors tried and failed to gain favor with the local people and rebuild what they had lost, but it never happened. And once the British East India Company started taking control of the lands in the 1780s, the Mughals were essentially doomed. By 1857, any traces of the original Empire had been gone for good. Indians had a new threat to deal with afterwards, but that's a long ways away and we'll get to that when we get to that.

For now, we'll head back to the other side of the world. All this history of religious intolerance is getting on my nerves, so hopefully the next one will hold something more progressive and nice. *looks at notes to see what time period is next*

…ah crap...