Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c8.s1: § 1. How the Maratha Power spread over the Mughal Empire
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c8.s1
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§ 1. How the Maratha Power spread over the Mughal Empire
v1.c8.s1.1
The decline of the Mughal Empire presented an opportunity by which the Marāthas profited more than any other people of India. Already, before Aurangzib was dead they had arrested the imperial expansion in their home-land and forced the Delhi Government to acknowledge defeat. The successors of that monarch were too weak to make any attempt at recovering their lost suzerainty in the Deccan and had much difficulty even in holding their own. Selfish quarrels among the Delhi nobility, no less than the moral decadence of the later Emperors and their army, hastened the collapse of the imperial authority in the South. When noble fought noble for the *subahdāri* of Gujrāt or the Deccan, whichever side won, the invariable result was to increase the relative strength of the Marāthas. Thus, the Mughal Government failed to derive any benefit from the utter anarchy that devastated the Mahārāshtra country for several years after Shāhu’s return home from captivity (in 1707) and the factious jealousy that raged among the Marātha nobles.
v1.c8.s1.2
And soon the genius of his wazir Bālāji Vishwanāth, the Peshwā, placed Shāhu above his rivals and secured for his Government a practical control over his country and its people. The next Peshwā, Bālāji Rāo’s son Bāji Rao I, was an ambitious schemer, a daring soldier, and a most enterprising leader. During his term of office (1720—1740) the Marāthas completely overshadowed the legitimate Government in Gujrāt, Malwa and Bundelkhand, while the Deccan proper was as good as ceded to them. The jealous opposition of his rivals, especially the Senāpati Trimbak Rāo Dhābādé and the Senā Sāhib Subah Raghuji Bhonslé,—both of the Marātha caste, while the Peshwās were Brāhmans,—retarded the establishment of Bāji Rāo’s own supremacy in the administration and the unchallenged imposition of Marātha authority over these subahs. But this set-back was temporary. After some fluctuations of fortune and even bloody internecine wars (like the battle of Dābhoi where Dhābādé was killed on 1st April, 1731, and a fight with Raghuji Bhonslé in February, 1739), Bāji Rāo near the end of his life wisely realized the practical limits of his own power and agreed to a scheme for amicably partitioning the Mughal provinces among the rival Marātha generals as their "spheres of influence," so that each sardār would be free to plunder tax and dominate over his special hunting ground without the fear of encroachment or obstruction by any other officer of his master. As a result of this arrangement Gujrāt, Berār and Dhār passed to the Dhābādé the Bhonslé and the Pawār families respectively, while Malwa and Bundelkhand remained the Peshwā's own preserve, with direct access to the Court of Delhi. The plunder of the Madras Karnātak was to be the joint enterprise of several chiefs. Shāhu completed and sanctioned this partition of the Mughal Empire as the best course for the Marātha people as a whole.
v1.c8.s1.3
Raghuji Bhonslé's ambition of ruling at Satārā as his master's master in the place of the Peshwā having been defeated by Bāji Rāo's superior education and inborn genius for war and organisation, he naturally pursued the path of expansion left open to him in the north-east and east of his domain of Nāgpur, namely by raiding Bengal, Bihār and Orissā across the intervening jungles and hills. And soon he received invitations from domestic enemies of that subah on the eastern-most frontier of the Mughal Empire. It was a God-send to Raghuji. His recent Karnātak venture had brought him no gain owing to too many greedy rivals having entered that field; his raids into the Peshwā’s spheres of influence had failed; and he was now sunk over head and ears in debt from his inflated army expenditure. Only one path of relief seemed to be open before him, namely the plunder of Bengal, whose wealth was proverbial throughout India and which had paid no *chauth* to the Marāthas up to now.