Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/231

FALL OF THE KATOR, FORTRESS 189 days and nights, but sending my valiant troops against them, I so pressed them that they were obliged to sur- render and beg for quarter. I sent Ak Sultan to them with the message that if they would submit uncondition- ally and would all become Mussulmans and repeat the creed, I would grant them quarter, but otherwise I would exterminate them to a man. When Ak Sultan reached the infidels with this message, which he ex- plained to them through the medium of an interpreter conversant both with their language and with Turkish, they all proffered submission, and repeating the neces- sary formula, embraced the Mohammedan faith. Re- lying upon this external conversion, I spared their lives and property, and gave orders that no one should in- terfere with their lives, belongings, or estates. I then clothed some of them in dresses of honour and dis- missed them. I halted my army there for the night, whereupon these black-hearted infidels made a noctur- nal attack on the regiment of Amir Shah Malik, but as this leader was on his guard, the enemy were foiled in their intentions. Numbers of them were slain, and 150 fell into our hands alive and were afterwards put to death by my enraged soldiery. As soon as it was day, I ordered my troops to attack on all four sides at once, to force their way into the defiles, and to kill the men, imprison the women and children, and plunder and lay waste their property. In obedience to these orders, my nobles and troops made a valiant assault on all sides at once and put the remnant of the infidels to the sword, after which