A History of the Mahrattas v1.c23.36

v1.c23.36

The death of Bajee Rao is an event in Mahratta annals, which, on his account alone, deserves a pause. In the history of this nation, whose very existence was the confusion of other states, an occasional survey, however brief, of those powers with whom they have transactions, is absolutely necessary. The reader may now indeed be less at a loss to comprehend who the Mahrattas were than European contemporaries of Bajee Rao, who heard of a people unknown a century before,³ that had overturned ancient monarchies, who were plundering and burning on the east and on the west, from the Hooghly to the Bunass and from Madras to Delhi; yet, from the diffusive nature of their conquests, one may be apt, without some survey of the kind, combined with a retrospective view of their past history, to lose sight of the rise and progress of their power, and of their relative importance in India. The Mahomedan wars from the commencement of the seventeenth century, the plans and conquests of Sivajee, the state of the Deccan after his death, the increase of habitual rapine by the absence of controlling authority, the immense predatory power which was thus prepared, and the means of directing it, placed by the Moghuls in the hands of Shao, had all their share in accumulating the mighty mass of Mahratta force ; and when we consider the skill with which Ballajee Wishwanath and his successor combined and guided the whole weight of such a tremendous engine of destruction, we cease to feel surprised at the havoc which it spread. Other causes, besides Mahratta progress, had concurred to complete the humiliation of the Timoorian dynasty, and at the period of Bajee Rao’s death the vast fabric of the Moghul empire was disjointed or in ruins.