Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c21.s3: § 4. Imad turns against Shah Alam and Alamgir II. His downfall
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c21.s3
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§ 4. Imad turns against Shah Alam and Alamgir II. His downfall
v2.c21.s3.1
Meantime, like the abortive expedition of the two Shahzadas into the Doab in the east, two other attempts to restore imperial authority and collect revenue in the Rohtak-Mewat region in the west, under princes Shah Alam (June 1757—June 1758) and Ali Jah (July—August 1757), had ended in total failure. Indeed, Imād’s selfish ambition would not allow any prince the chance of recovering a province and thus acquiring wealth, armed strength, and public prestige; he coerced the tame Emperor into starving and thwarting their enterprises. And his hostility to the eldest and ablest of the Emperor’s sons, Ali Gauhar (Emperor Shah Alam II of the next reign) broke out in an attack on that prince in his Delhi mansion on 19 May 1758. But the latter boldly cut his way out, took shelter with a Maratha general Vithal Shivdev for some time, and when Vithal left him to join Raghunath, Ali Gauhar went into the wilderness in utter destitution and helplessness. By way of the trans-Ganges Ruhela homes he reached Lucknow on 2 January 1759 and with Shujā's help tried to conquer the province of Bihar. But the English defence of the master of Patna and the Emperor's official disavowal of Ali Gauhar's acts (dictated by the wazir) doomed the prince's attempts to utter failure.
v2.c21.s3.2
About May 1758, Imad was foolish enough to renew his dream of an anti-Maratha coalition, of which we get the only details in the Marathi State-papers recently published. It ended in nothing. The wazir next (1 August—22 November 1758) led an expedition into the Rewari-Hisar region, dragging the sick Emperor with himself, in order to chase away Ali Gauhar and thereafter to plunder villages and exact revenue. [*TALS.* 182a, 188a.]
v2.c21.s3.3
When in January 1759 the Maratha hosts returned to Delhi under Dattaji Sindhia, Imād kept aloof from them and shut the gates of Delhi in their faces, putting the capital in a state of siege. The Marathas established their direct rule over Lahor (April-June), plundered the upper Doab in Najib's hands, and broke with Imād by demanding an impossible ransom for Delhi. So Imād shut himself up within the walls of Delhi throughout this year and gave Dattaji no support in his investment of Najib at Shukartal (July-November.) He even planned to play off Malhar against Dattaji, preferring the polite and accommodating spirit of the former to the brusque and exacting manners of the latter. His administrative failure and daily increasing poverty impotence and humiliation through insolvency, drove him mad, and when he learnt that his sole remaining hope the Marathas had failed to crush Najib after five months of exertion and had also lost the Panjab, and that Abdali was coming again, he in utter desperation murdered his master Alamgir II (29 November 1759.) The reign ended and with it Imād’s office as wazir, though he desperately clung to the name for some years after.