A History of the Mahrattas v2.c51.18

v2.c51.18

After the battle of Poona, an effort was made to induce him to enter upon the defensive alliance, and upon the conclusion of the treaty of Bassein he was again invited, in the manner hereafter detailed, to enter on similar engagements ; but Sindia, though he would have been pleased in the first moment of alarm after the defeat of his army by Holkar, to have seen a British force co-operating with his own for the temporary purpose of re-establishing the Peishwa in his capital and suppressing the power of his rival, was mortified and incensed on finding that his own and his uncle’s plans for controlling the Peishwa’s government were at once frustrated and overturned. Nor were these the only evils resulting from the Peishwa’s engagements. He saw his own independence might be soon affected by the support which the Peishwa derived from a foreign nation, whose power, by a novel system of encroachment, threatened the subversion of the Mahrattas ; as effectually as their establishment of Chouth and Surdeshmookee had overwhelmed the empire of the Moghuls.