Shivaji and His Times c12.s3.10

c12.s3.10

These disasters fully roused Shiva. The recovery of Danda fort became an absorbing passion as well as a political necessity, with him. To the end of his life and throughout the reign of Shambhuji, hostilities continued between the Marathas and the Siddis, intermittently, indecisively, but with great bitterness and fury. Gross cruelty and wanton injury were practised by each side on the captive soldiers and innocent peasantry of the other, and the country became desolate. The economic loss was more keenly felt by the small and poor State of the Abyssinians than by the Marathas, and the Siddis at times begged for peace, but did not succeed, as they were not prepared to accept Shiva's terms of ceding their all to him.