After this period nothing of very great importance occurred in the
kingdom of Cashmere until the year 1584, when the great Akbar summoned
the then king "Yusuf Shah" to present himself in person at the court of
Lahore. Finding his orders not complied with, he despatched an army of
50,000 men to enforce obedience, and Yusuf Shah, preferring apparently
to die than fight, delivered himself up, and was sent to Lahore.
The imperial army was afterwards, however, repulsed in attempting to
subdue the country, and it was not finally conquered for two years,
when Akbar, overcoming all resistance, took possession of the province.
The purity of the emperor's motives in annexing the territory, and
his opinion of his conquest, are amusingly shown in the following
letter to his minister Abdullah Khan: --
"On the mirror of your mind, which bears the stamp of Divine
illumination, be it manifest and evident, that at the time when my
imperial army happened to be in the territories of the Punjab, although
I at first had no other views than to amuse myself with sports and
hunting in this country, yet the conquest of the enchanting kingdom
of Cashmere, which has never yet been subdued by monarchs of the
age, which for natural strength and inaccessibility is unrivalled,
and which, for beauty and pleasantness, is a proverb among the most
sagacious beholders, became secretly an object of my wishes, BECAUSE
I received constantly accounts of the tyranny of the rulers of that
region.
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