A History of the Mahrattas v2.c41.1

v2.c41.1

A.D. 1785.—The resources of the provinces which Sindia had acquired in Hindoostan were from their exhausted state totally inadequate to meet the great additional disbursements which his late success, more brilliant than lucrative, had entailed. Pressed by pecuniary embarrassments, he was driven to acts equally impolitic and unjust. Against foreign adversaries he might have prevailed, but domestic enemies soon became too strong for his newly established power. The principal cause of discontent arose from his sequestrating the Jagheers of many of the Mahomedan chiefs,¹ and from being suspected of entertaining like designs towards all of them. The most considerable of these chiefs, whom he had not yet dispossessed, was Mohummud Beg Humadanee, whom Sindia had recalled from Raghoogurh to Delhi, and endeavoured, without success, to prevail upon him to disband a portion of his troops. Mohummud Beg, suspecting that Sindia intended to enforce compliance, ever after harboured a secret enmity against him, which the course of events soon afforded an opportunity of declaring.