Shivaji and His Times c8.s5.1

c8.s5.1

Shivaji's defeat at Chakan and Panhala was followed by a lull in the war during the last three months of the year 1660, which he spent quietly at Rajgarh, in planning how to compensate himself for these losses in the Desh country by transferring the war to another part of Bijapuri territory, namely Konkan, or the country west of the Sahyadri range, where the government was very weakly exercised by countless petty vassal Rajahs and Bijapuri city-governors. There was in that province no single powerful viceroy with an army of his own, able to unite the local feudatories under one central authority, exact loyal service from them, and thus successfully oppose an invader like Shivaji, who was his own master and could direct all his resources with absolute unity of command and policy.