New History of the Marathas v2.c32.36

v2.c32.36

This incident spread alarm throughout Maharashtra about the British objective in India, of which Madhavrao was not slow in taking notice. Indeed hereafter he counted this western power as his enemy number one, and in his own way slowly prepared to meet them. His friendship with Nizam Ali was the first step to that end. His uncle and the Bhosles of Nagpur were the weakest links in this connection, being most likely to yield to any temptation offered by the British. Hence the stern measures that Madhavrao had to take against them. Haidar Ali of Mysore was an antagonist whom the British equally hated and feared, so that when in 1767 war started between them, the Bombay President sent an embassy to Poona headed by Thomas Mostyn to seek an alliance with the Peshwa’s Government. The mission left Bombay on 19 November and reached Poona on 29th. Mostyn had an assistant named Brome who visited Raghunathrao at Nasik. Although the members of the mission were most civilly treated at the Maratha Court, they obtained no material results, as their real intentions had become too naked to the Maratha Government to be ignored, and the party returned to Bombay in great disappointment on 27 February 1768. The only gain they made was the valuable information they gathered about the acute dissension then raging between the Peshwa and his uncle. Brome’s overtures to Raghunathrao will be referred to later. After dealing with his uncle, the Peshwa slowly prepared to meet the British menace, so that the Bombay authorities once more posted Mostyn at the court of Poona, where he arrived on 13 October 1772, a short while before the Peshwa’s death. Mostyn continued there to the end of 1774 and witnessed the affair of Narayanrao’s murder.