The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c21.98

v4.c21.98

Meanwhile, important events were taking place in the north. Throughout the rainy season of 1730, Bājī Rāo had been making preparations for the invasion of Gujarāt, with the assistance of his brother Chimājī Appa. On 10 October the brothers celebrated the Dasara in great splendour at Poona, and took the field at once. In February, 1731, Bājī Rāo reached Ahmadābād, and concluded a treaty with the new viceroy, Abhay Singh of Mārwār, who had been sent to supersede Sarbuland Khān. On 1 April, twelve days before Shāhū and Shambhūjī signed the treaty of Warnā, the Peshwā moved out to meet the forces of Trimbak Rāo and his lieutenant the Gāikwār, on the broad plain of Bilhāpur, between Barodā and Dabhoi. The Senāpati’s numerous levies proved no match for the small but compact army of the Peshwā: the famous *Khās Pāgā*, the household cavalry, carried all before it. But Trimbak Rāo, disdaining offers to surrender, chained together the legs of his war-elephant, and continued the fight single-handed, until a musket-ball (fired, it is now known, by a traitor’s hand) brought him down, while he was drawing the bowstring to his ear. The pious Shāhū, deeply shocked by this fratricidal strife, behaved with the utmost chivalry towards the family of his late Senāpati, and bestowed the office upon his younger brother Yashwant Rāo. But the family of Dābhāde never recovered its prestige, and Bāji Rāo, his last and greatest rival removed, was now sovereign in all but name. In Gujarāt, the power once wielded by the Dābhādes passed to their erstwhile lieutenants, the Gāikwārs, the Mughul viceroy receding more and more into the background. Pilāji Gāikwār was assassinated by Abhay Singh, the Mughul viceroy, in 1732, and was succeeded by Dāmāji II, who was present at Pānīpat, and died in 1768.¹