Part 8
The ruins of Futtehpore, the Versailles of the great Akbar, cover the summit of a hill twelve miles from Bhurtpore. On leaving that town, we travelled across a succession of monotonous plains alternately composed of marshes and rocky deserts. The horizon was unbounded, except on the east, where lay the hill of Futtehpore, the fantastic outline of which caught the rays of the rising sun. Even from afar, the eye is struck by the number and size of the buildings, which a royal caprice has erected in the midst of this desert: one would take it for a large and populous city. Those long lines of palaces with their gilded domes and pinnacles could never have been built to be so soon abandoned to solitude. The scene becomes grander the nearer you approach. On arriving at the foot of the hill, the road passes under a majestic gateway, beyond which are the long, silent streets; the palaces still standing perfect and entire amidst the ruined dwellings of the people; with the fountains and the magnificent gardens, wherein the pomegranates and the jessamine have grown for centuries. The whole scene is of imposing grandeur; and the hand of time has fallen so lightly upon it that one might take it for a town very recently deserted by its inhabitants, or one of the enchanted cities of Sinbad the Sailor.
The _bigarri_,[1] whom we had taken with us from the village of Sikri, conducted us to a bungalow which is maintained by the English Government for the accommodation of travellers. This bungalow, which was once the ancient _kutchery_[2] of Akbar, is built of red sandstone, and surrounded by a beautiful verandah supported by columns. It is situated on the northern extremity of the plateau, and overlooks the town on one side and the front of the zenanah on the other. An old Sepoy is placed in charge of the edifice, which contains two comfortably furnished apartments.
The foundations of Futtehpore, “the Town of Victory,” were laid by Akbar in 1571, and the ramparts, city, and palace were all completed with extraordinary rapidity. Akbar was attracted to this desert by the sanctity of a Mussulman Anchorite, Selim Shisti, who inhabited one of the caverns on the hill. Attracted by the situation, he built himself a palace, and finally, being unwilling to give up the society of the holy man, he resolved to establish there the capital of his empire. In a few years this desert spot was transformed into a large and populous city; but the death of Selim soon put an end to this prosperity. Akbar then saw the folly of trying to place his capital in the midst of these sterile plains, unapproached by any of the great rivers, more especially as he possessed the unusually favourable situation of Agra. His resolution was promptly taken. In 1584, he abandoned Futtehpore with all its grandeur, and carried off the whole population to people his new capital of Agra. The evacuation was complete; none of the successors of Akbar cared to carry out his foolish project, and very soon the only inhabitants of Futtehpore were wild animals and a few anchorites. One is almost tempted to think that Akbar built Futtehpore for the sole purpose of giving posterity some idea of his greatness in leaving this monument of his capricious fancy.
[Illustration: FUTTEHPORE-SIKRI, INDIA.]
The fame of Selim still attracts thousands of pilgrims to his tomb, where they assemble at certain seasons of the year; and, to supply the wants of these devotees, two villages have sprung up on the site of the deserted town, one called Futtehpore, and the other Sikri; and it is by this double appellation of Futtehpore-Sikri that the ruins are generally known. Apart from their beauty, which all must admire, they are of special interest to the archæologist as being the work of a single individual, and therefore a perfect specimen of the style of architecture of his epoch. From their marvellous state of preservation, you can trace, step by step, the mode of life of the great Akbar, and can form a just idea of Indian manners and customs in the Sixteenth Century. Everything still breathes of the magnificence of that Eastern Court the fame of which was carried to Europe by contemporary travellers, whose tales were looked upon as fables, and the wealth and splendour of which excited later the avarice and cupidity of the Western nations.
The tomb of Selim, the imperial palace, and some of the dwellings of the Mogul grandees are almost entire. They form a compact group, one mile in length, which occupies the summit of a hill 180 feet high. This hill furnished the whole of the material of which they are built, which is a fine sandstone, varying from purple to rose colour. The stone has been left unornamented throughout; but the architects have avoided the monotony of the colour by artistically arranging its various tints. The mass is now softened by time; and one of its chief beauties is this mellow colouring, which blends ground and building in one, making the latter appear as though carved out of the peaks of the mountain.
The imperial palace lies to the east of the tomb. It is a vast collection of separate buildings connected by galleries and courtyards, and covering an area at least equal to that occupied by the Louvre and the Tuileries.
The first building you come to on leaving the tomb used to contain the private apartments of the emperor. It now goes by the name of _tapili_, or guard-house, from the fact of its being inhabited by the handful of soldiers who are employed to keep off marauders from the ruins. The palace is built with great simplicity, its exterior being nothing but a blank wall, with a small court in its centre, into which the galleries on the different stories open. On one side is a colonnade, profusely ornamented in the Hindoo style; this was the verandah of the apartment of Akbar’s favourite wife, and the mother of Jehanghir: and at the end of an open space which extends in front of the palace is the _kutchery_, now converted into a bungalow for travellers.
A ruined gallery leads from the _tapili_ to the Imperial zenanah, which is surrounded by a high wall. Each princess was allotted a separate palace in this enclosure, with its own gardens, etc., constructed according to her own taste and wishes. The first of these was the palace of the Queen Mary, a Portuguese lady whom Akbar had espoused; in the apartments of which are numerous frescoes, amongst others one representing the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. It is a matter of surprise to find a Mussulman prince, in the Sixteenth Century, with such tolerant views as to allow in his palace a thing so opposed to the principles of his religion; but it does not astonish one in such an enlightened man as the great Akbar. Wishing to put an end forever to the subjects of discord which divided the nations of his empire, he devised the plan of creating a new religion which should unite the sympathies of all. For this purpose he assembled a general council which was attended by the priests of all the religious denominations of India, and even by some of the Christian missionaries from Goa; and to them he submitted his project: but nothing resulted from the discussion. In spite of this the emperor compiled a voluminous work on the different religions of the world, viz., Christianity, Judaism, Islamism, and the various Hindoo sects, in which he displayed very liberal and enlightened views.
From the palace of Queen Mary you enter a court, surrounded by apartments, and almost entirely occupied by a basin of vast dimensions, in the centre of which is an island built on a terrace, and reached by four stone foot-bridges. At the extremity of this court, there is a pavilion, the walls and pillars of which are enriched with fine sculptures; its rooms overlooking on one side the ornamental tank, and on the other a garden still ornamented with shrubberies and fine trees. This was the abode of one of Akbar’s wives, the Roumi Sultani, daughter of one of the Sultans of Constantinople.
On a high terrace, to the right of this palace, is the emperor’s sleeping-apartment; the ground-floor containing a spacious hall with sculptured columns, which is half filled up with rubbish.
On the west of the zenanah, rises a fanciful construction, called _Pânch Mahal_--“the Five Palaces,”--which consists of four terraces, supported by galleries rising one above another, and gradually diminishing in size towards the top, where they terminate in a dome sustained by four columns. It resembles the half of a pyramid, and has a very curious effect. The thirty-five pillars which support the second terrace are all different, comprising almost every style and some very remarkable specimens of original architecture. It is a valuable architectural collection. There has been much discussion as to the design of the building, since the open galleries could not possibly have been intended for habitation. Its position against the walls of the zenanah, the interior of which it overlooks and communicates with, leads to the supposition that it was assigned to the eunuchs; but in any case it was a fanciful idea of the architect. In the little court which surrounds the _Pânch Mahal_ are some very curious detached buildings for the accommodation of the servants of the harem. The architect evidently wished to give them an appearance most befitting their use; and, as there was no wood at his disposal, he minutely copied in stone those light constructions which serve in the palaces of India as a shelter for the lower servants. The roof, formed of slabs of stone, is carved to imitate thatch, and is supported by the same net-work of beams which would be used for a lighter material than sandstone. In a word, they are sheds built of sculptured stone.
After passing through the galleries of the _Pânch Mahal_, you come out upon the principal court of the palace, called the Court of the Pucheesee; on one side of which are the walls of the zenanah, and on the other the apartments of the ministers and the audience-chambers.
Pucheesee is a game of great antiquity, which the Indians have always been passionately fond of; and it is played with pawns on chess-boards greatly resembling those used in Europe. There are four players, with four pawns apiece; and the moves are regulated by throwing the dice, the object being to get your four pawns into the centre of the board. The game of pucheesee was played by Akbar in a truly regal manner; the court itself, divided into red and white squares, being the board, and an enormous stone, raised on four feet, representing the central point. It was here that Akbar and his courtiers played this game; sixteen young slaves from the harem, wearing the players’ colours, themselves represented the pieces, and moved to the squares according to the throw of the dice. It is said that the emperor took such a fancy to playing the game on this grand scale that he had a court for pucheesee constructed in all his palaces; and traces of such are still visible at Agra[3] and Allahabad.
To the north of this court and on the same side as the _Pânch Mahal_ is a palace, built with great simplicity, and in such a good state of preservation that you might mistake it for a modern building. One wing is a perfect labyrinth of corridors and passages, in which the ladies of the Court amused themselves with their favourite games of “aukh-matchorli,” or blind-man’s-buff, and hide-and-seek; and before it rises a kiosk of Hindoo architecture, called the _Gooroo-ka-Mundil_, “Temple of the Mendicant.” The emperor, in order to show his regard for the religion of the majority of his subjects, entertained at his Court a Gooroo, or religious mendicant of the Saïva sect, and even had this temple built for him and his co-religionists.
A little farther on and facing the zenanah is one of the most beautiful buildings of Futtehpore, consisting of a graceful pavilion of one story, surmounted by four light cupolas. This is the _Dewani-Khas_, or Palace of the Council of State. The simplicity of its outline, its square windows and handsome balcony, remind one of our modern buildings. It is, however, quite in accordance with the character of Akbar, who, as well in architecture as in religion and government, never copied his predecessors. The interior of the _Dewani-Khas_ is a large hall the whole height of the edifice, in the centre of which is an enormous column of red sandstone, which terminates at some distance from the ceiling in a large capital magnificently sculptured. This capital forms a platform, encircled by a light balustrade, from which diverge four stone bridges, leading to four niches in the corners of the building; and a staircase hidden in the wall leads to a secret corridor, which communicates with the niche. It is one of the strangest fancies of the architect of Futtehpore.
On the occasion of a council being assembled, the emperor took his place on the platform, his ministers occupying the niches; while the ambassadors and other personages who were called into their presence remained in the hall at the foot of the column, and were unable to judge of the impression which their communication produced on the council.
A long gallery, partly in ruins, leads from the _Dewani-Khas_ to the _Dewani-Am_, or Palace of the Public Audiences. It is a small building, one side of which overlooks the Court of the Pucheesee, and the other a large court surrounded by colonnades.
The chronicler Aboul Fazel says that at certain hours the people were admitted into this court. After the council the emperor repaired to the _Dewani-Am_, where, after having put on his robes of state, he seated himself on a tribune overlooking the court. Here he remained for some time, inquiring into and redressing the grievances of the people, and receiving the strangers who flocked to his court. According to tradition, it was here that he received the Jesuits of Goa, who brought him the leaves and seeds of tobacco; and it was at Futtehpore that Hakim Aboul Futteh Ghilani, one of Akbar’s physicians, is supposed to have invented the hookah, the pipe of India.
It would take too long to describe every part of this vast palace in detail, for, besides what I have already noticed, there are the baths, the mint, the barracks, and numerous other buildings, all in ruins.
CAERNAVON CASTLE
WILLIAM HOWITT
The castles of Caernavon, Beaumaris, and Conway, all on this north-west coast of Wales, are monuments of the subjection of the Principality by Edward I. Other castles on this coast he took and strengthened, for instance those of Flint and Rhuddlan, as yokes on the necks of the North Welsh; these three he built expressly for that purpose, and, though all now more or less in ruin, they remain splendid evidences of his power, and of the architectural taste of the age. We have no finer specimens of castellated buildings than in the fortresses of Caernavon and Conway, and what remains of the extensive castle of Beaumaris shows what it once was. Even the Welsh, who do not forget the object of their erection, yet regard them with pride. Edward I., a warrior and statesman of the first rank, cherished, as the great purpose of his life, the reduction of the whole of the magnificent island of Great Britain into one compact and noble kingdom. This could not be done without invading the country and constitutions of Wales and Scotland, which had as much right to maintain their own independence, their own laws and customs as England had. But warriors by nature and possession think little of such rights, and readily persuade themselves that the project which aggrandizes their own country sanctifies the most flagrant usurpations, and renders innocent all the bloodshed and the crimes which irresistibly attend such enterprises. At the present day, the general sense of both England and Scotland, if not of Wales, would refuse to pronounce on Edward I. any other verdict than that of a great benefactor to his nation for what he did, and even for what he attempted yet failed in, towards the consolidation of Great Britain under one crown.
Whilst, however, he endeavored to mollify the spirit of the Welsh by the extension to them of civil, social, and commercial advantages, he did not trust by any means to these, but planned the erection of a chain of strong fortresses which should command the north as completely as the south was commanded by the same means. And thus arose, with others, the three princely strongholds of Conway, Beaumaris, and Caernavon.
The Castle of Conway seems to have been commenced a couple of years later than Caernavon Castle,--Caernavon being begun immediately on the defeat and death of Llewellyn, that is, in 1282, or in the spring of 1283. Conway was not commenced till the following year, 1284, when, finding that these two castles were not sufficient to keep the Welsh in check, Edward erected the Castle of Beaumaris in 1295. There is a great resemblance in the style of the two castles of Conway and Beaumaris--they have round towers; whilst Caernavon has octagonal, hexagonal, and pentagonal ones.
[Illustration: CAERNAVON CASTLE, WALES.]
The Castle of Caernavon, which is the one now engaging our attention, differs greatly from these other two; and if not more striking in appearance than that of Conway,--than which Pennant says “one more beautiful never arose,”--it is equal in grandeur, and has, in truth, a royal and more stately air. Its situation is very fine; for, though it stands in the not very splendid town of Caernavon, it is placed on the shore of the Menai Straits; and, looked down upon from a rocky eminence called Fort Hill, a good view is obtained of it and the town, of Menai Straits, the opposite shore of Anglesea, with the distant summits of the Holyhead and Parys hills, the blue peaks of the Eiflridge, in the promontory of Lleyn, the group of mountains surrounding Snowdon, and on a clear day the far off heights of Wicklow in Ireland. The architect employed by Edward I., in its erection, was Henry Ellerton, or de Elreton; and, according to tradition, many of the materials were brought from Segontium, or the old Caernavon, and much of the limestone of which it is built came from Twr-Celyn, in Anglesea; and of the gritstone from Vaenol, in the county of Caernavon; the Menai facilitating the carriage from both places.
The foundations of this castle are surrounded on three sides by water. It is bounded on one side by the Menai Straits, on another by the estuary of the Seoint, the river which runs hither from the Lake of Llanberis. As you approach the castle, its walls and towers have an air of lightness, which deceives you completely as to its strength, for these walls are immensely thick and strong. The doorways in the gateway towers and the windows are more lofty and graceful than the doors and windows generally in castles of that age. The walls enclose an area of about three acres, and are themselves from seven to nine feet thick. They have within them each a gallery, with slips for the discharge of arrows, and are flanked by thirteen towers, all angular, but differing in the number of their angles. The very massive pentagonal tower, called the Eagle Tower, guards the south of the Seoint, and is so called from a now shapeless figure of that bird, said to have been brought from the ruins of the neighbouring Roman station of Segontium, but probably placed there simply as being one of Edward I.’s crests. This majestic tower has three turrets, and its battlements display a mutilated series of armour heads of the time of Edward II. This tower is the only one of which the staircase remains perfect, and by 158 stone steps you may ascend to the summit, and obtain a splendid view thence over the straits, the town, and the surrounding country. In the lower part of this tower is shown a small, dark room, measuring twelve feet by eight feet, in which Edward II. was born. That unfortunate prince was most probably born in the castle; but it has been endeavoured to be shown that it could not possibly be in this tower, as it would appear not to have been built for some years afterwards, and, indeed, only to have been finished by Edward II. after he became king of England. The Rev. C. H. Hartshorne, of Cogenhoe, in Northamptonshire, asserted at the annual meeting of the Cambrian Archæological Society, held in Caernavon in September, 1848, that this castle, instead of being built, as Pennant and others represent, in about two years, was not completed in less than thirty-eight years--that it was begun in 1284, and only completed in 1322.
As Edward first entered the town of Caernavon on the 1st of April, 1284, and his son was born on the 25th of the same month, twenty-four days only are left for the building of the Eagle Tower, which would be work, not for English or Welsh builders, but for the Afrits of the _Arabian Nights_, and would seem to put an end to the whole tradition of Edward of Caernavon having been born in the room assigned him by popular affection. And yet tradition so often maintains itself against statistics, and against theories started long afterwards, that we should not be surprised if, after all, the first Prince of Wales was actually born in that little, dismal room. In the then disturbed condition of North Wales; amid the intense indignation of the Welsh at the murder of their beloved prince, and the barbarous execution of his brother David; under the well-known spirit of revolt and revenge which was fiercely fermenting in the minds of the natives, it is not likely that Edward would risk the safety of his wife and his infant in the open town. No doubt he had ordered the erection of a stronghold here immediately on the fall of Llewellyn. This was in the autumn of 1282, and Edward was born, it is said, in the Castle of Caernavon, on the 25th of April, 1284. Here was a good part of two years in which a strong building might have been raised sufficient for a stout defence: and this is probably what is meant when it is said by the historians that Edward commenced this castle in A. D. 1282–3, and completed it in two or three years. It is most probable that he did commence and complete such a castle as answered his immediate purpose, and that in this Castle his son Edward was born; that Edward I., however, contemplated and erected a much larger and more imposing castle on the spot--the present structure; and that he caused the part in which his son’s birth took place to be incased in the larger building, and that it forms an internal part of the present Eagle Tower, just as the poet Thomson’s cottage at Richmond now forms a portion of the larger villa of the Earl of Shaftesbury. It may be remarked that there is no appearance of any different masonry on the exterior of this part of the Eagle Tower. Of course not. The architect would new-front that part in uniformity with the rest; but that need not in the least disturb the existence of this room.