The king and the nobles kept large number of soldiers. The emperor recruited extra soldiers at the time of a crisis and when it was over, those soldiers were dismissed from their services. Similarly, the nobles also kept a certain number of soldiers for two main reasons; first, to maintain their status as rich and pompous personnel in the royal court; second, to offer the king their services at the time of war.

Generally people believe that soldiers were honoured during the Mughal period however, the fact was quite contrary to that as there were no set rules regarding the salary of soldiers and sometimes it was paid after a year. Thus, all a soldier looked forward to was war booty. When soldiers were wounded in the battlefield, there was no facility for the provision of proper medical treatment to them and in case they were killed in the battlefield, their families were not even compensated. In addition to all these injustices, there was no system of retirement or pension for soldiers.

French traveller, François Bernier (1625 – 1688) noticed the miserable condition of soldiers and pointed out that the ruler’s careless attitude towards soldiers often resulted in very negative consequences. According to him, in such a situation, when they had no hope to get their salary, they sold their possessions in order to survive.

As there was unemployment in villages, whenever there was recruitment, people were easily available to join the army.

Even, in case of rebellion, it was not a problem to find people who could be trained as soldiers. When Prince Khusrau (1587-1622) rebelled against his father Nur-ud-din Salim Jahangir (1569-1627(1627-11-08)), he gathered a large army in this manner.

Servants

The fate of servants was also not so different from that of soldiers; the emperor and the nobles kept a large number of servants and, like soldiers, they were also not paid regularly.

The more soldiers and servants a noble had, the more honourable he was considered to be. There were servants who looked after a noble’s horses, his elephants, wardrobe, kitchen, etc. Among other servants, a noble would also have a messenger whose duty was to keep communication between him and other nobles. The welfare of these servants depended on the nature of a noble; if they worked under a generous noble, they were awarded time to time for their services. However, if a noble was mean in nature, his servants had to suffer a lot. Yet, a servant’s loyalty to his master was his prime duty which could never be ignored under any circumstances.