Eyoob was but a puppet king, the tool of the family who raised him to
the government; Azeem Khan, who was appointed his vizier, being in truth
the ruler. Several of the young princes who aspired to the throne were
delivered over to Eyoob, who put them to death.
Shooja, driven from Peshawur, retired to Shikarpoor, which the Ameers of
Sinde ceded to him; where, in place of conducting himself with prudence,
he was so addicted to low intrigue with those about him, that his
enemies availed themselves of this propensity to effect his ruin, and
drove him from Shikarpoor, when, crossing the Indus, he fled through the
desert by Juydalmeer, and returned to Loodiana. "The fitness," says
Lieut. Burnes, "of Shah Shooja-ool-Moolk for the station of a sovereign
seems ever to have been doubtful. His manners and address are highly
polished, but his judgment does not rise above mediocrity; had the case
been otherwise, we should not now see him an exile from his country and
his throne, without a hope of regaining them, after an absence of twenty
years, and before he has attained the fiftieth year of his age."
The civil wars which had thus so frequently occurred in Afghanistan
weakened the resources of the country and its means of defence.
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